¶1[music] >> Hi guys. So, I want to make a response to Josh Smith's case for God. And I want to do it in parts. So, today I want to respond to the to the part on the contingency argument. For the record, I consider Josh Smith to be a very smart guy, and I have always admired him and watched his videos, and I continue to do so.
¶2So, this should be very interesting. >> Something that can fail to exist. It doesn't have to be in reality. There's some possible way that reality could be such that it doesn't exist. So, for instance, you and me are contingent things, right?
¶3Like, had our parents never met, we wouldn't have existed. My water bottle is a contingent thing. You know, it's not like my water bottle must exist. In fact, there was a time when it didn't exist, and it'll eventually be destroyed. >> Okay, so how do you know whether something is a contingent thing or not, right?
¶4[snorts] So, let's take a look at the water bottle. Somebody could say, "Wait, hold on. Given the initial conditions of the singularity, then it was the water bottle had to exist eventually, right? Somebody could say that. I mean, it does this still count as contingent?
¶5And in fact, it's not so simple, right? As it's not so instant there are there are people called necessitarians. They think that everything is necessary. You might say, "Wait, wait, but this water bottle could be destroyed." It means it's not necessary. You know, you're just missing the point.
¶6It was necessary that it the water bottle existed at time T, for example. That's how it work in their worldview, right? So, it's not even that obvious, right? Whether something is a contingent thing. Now, the way this usually work is they will say, "Oh, look, what I mean by contingent is it is at least logically possible to imagine that it doesn't exist, or or there is a possible world where it doesn't exist, right?
¶7But if that's the way you're going, I can't just say well, to me it seems like I can also imagine of a possible world where God God doesn't exist, right? Where only like two balls exist. Like a world where only this exist or a world where with nothing concrete exist. A world where only empty space exists or something like that. So that's if if we're going to go that way, it seems like God would also be contingent, right?
¶8>> Contrast this with something like, you know, 1 + 1 = 2. This is a necessary truth. It couldn't fail to be true. It must be true. There's no possible world in which it's false, in which you know, 1 + 1 equals like 7,812.
¶9In other words, there's no comprehensive way that reality could be such that that claim is false. Likewise, a necessarily existing thing or a necessary thing is something that cannot fail to exist. It's It's non-existence is impossible. It must be in reality. You can think >> So, when he says its non-existence is impossible, what kind of possibilities he talking about there?
¶10Is it logically impossible? That because that's usually what impossible means. Because I I don't think it's physically impossible, right? And look, this is a very interesting thing. Notice that almost always when they give examples of necessary truths, these are truths that are logical, right?
¶11These are statements that are logically have to be true. For example, the statement 1 + 1 = 2. I actually think that that's true by definition. I think the definition of two is just that which comes from adding one to one. I think that's true in a way.
¶12Another example, this one is even more obvious. For example, bachelors are unmarried. They will say that's a necessary truth. Well, yeah, because the negation of that entails a contradiction. That's what makes it a necessary truth.
¶13So, when usually when they give examples of necessary truths, it's always logical stuff. But, if that's the case, notice that no necessary truth ever is of the type this concrete thing exists or or this concrete thing has feature X, right? It's never like that, right? And that because that will never entail a contradiction. And this is a good point to bring up a paper that Richard Swinburne made called What Kind of Necessary Be- Being Would God Be?
¶14And in that super interesting paper, Swinburne actually makes the point he he disagrees with most theists who think that God is a necessary being. He says that this is not true and there is nothing that can account for that. He thinks that God is a brute contingent fact in a in a sense. He thinks that there is only one kind of necessity and it is logical necessity. And he thinks that's the only kind and and that's it, right?
¶15And because the statement God doesn't exist is not a contradiction, then it is not the case that God exists is a necessary truth, right? So, it's not the case that God is a necessary being. That's actually the point that he makes. Okay, and at this point what some people are going to say is to say, "Okay, wait, wait, there is something called logical impossibility or logical necessity. And there is there's physical impossibility, but there is something in between called a metaphysical necessity.
¶16And there is a laws that are like not physical laws that are stronger than physical laws, but they are not quite logical laws. And they are something in between. Now, and they will say God exists because of metaphysical necessity, it is somehow metaphysically necessary that God exists. What do I think of this? I actually have a very interesting chat with Alex Malpas about this a while ago.
¶17I have a very hard time coming up with things that are metaphysical laws but are not like logical laws. Like it doesn't seem to be There doesn't seem to be many candidates for this. And I am a little skeptic if such a thing even really exists, right? One possible candidate for for this is the casual causal principle. Like if you have nothing nothing is going to pop out of that, right?
¶18That's a That's a law that some people say that this is a like a metaphysical law. Like nothing can come from nothingness. That's one possible example, right? Like is the negation of it is not like a contradiction but it feels like really impossible in a in a sense that is even stronger than the laws of physics, right? Other than that, well, I cannot really think of many examples.
¶19And here's the thing. Here's the the important part. If you're saying that God exists by metaphysical necessity you are essentially saying that there was a metaphysical law that says an omnipotent conscious being has to exist, right? That's what you're saying basically. Okay, but this is my question.
¶20Why would that be the case? Why should I accept that this law exists, right? That seems weird for a law to for this law to to to exist. It doesn't see I don't again I I don't see that there is anything that could account for that. Why would that be the case?
¶21>> [snorts] >> It's just very strange, right? So So in a So that's why the I think the whole idea of a necessary concrete being has a lot of issues. I don't agree with that. >> [snorts] >> And in fact, I'm not the only one. In fact, one of Joe Smith's buddies who is writing his the his book alongside Joe Matthew Allacastine even agrees with me but kind of agrees with me on this.
¶22Let me show you a quote from our from our debate. But I have a weird view. Maybe we can talk about it some more today. I would love to talk to some philosopher about this. I I I don't agree that a concrete necessary thing is is a is a thing.
¶23I don't think that's possible. I agree with I think Have you read Richard Swinburne's beyond this? He thinks like necessary truths are are make sense but a unnecessary concrete thing like it doesn't really make sense. But >> Yeah, I actually that's that's actually my leaning as well. I'm I'm sympathetic to this particular view.
¶24>> So yeah, as you can see uh not everyone agrees that a necessary concrete being is a is a is a coherent thing. Also Michael Huemer has also said the same thing in my in again, I also had a chat with him on my channel. So anyway, let's move on. >> There's something whose nature almost like demands that it exists. Well >> Uh so he's saying that his nature God's nature makes it the case that he's has to exist.
¶25But to me that sounds really weird because it's like you can only have a nature once you exist, right? If you exist then there is a way that you are but if you don't exist then there isn't, right? Now as a nominalist I have to make a clarification. I think Superman for example doesn't exist but I think he has a nature. There's he has certain features.
¶26Uh so but I again when it comes to to non-existent things I don't think their natures like can account for, you know something happening in reality, right? They're like casually inert. Like abstractions. So I yeah, I don't agree I don't I think it's weird to say well, it's our nature accounts for the fact that it exists, right? I mean, what?
¶27>> For any contingent things, it seems plausible that there is an explanation of their existence. You know, suppose you and a friend are hiking in the forest and come across a group of shiny spheres on the ground. Naturally, you'd wonder how they came to be there. If your friend said, "Well, hey, like listen, there's no reason or explanation for why they're here. You know, their existence is just an unexplained or brute fact.
¶28Like, you just stop wondering. Like, they just are. They just exist." I mean, if he said that, you you'd probably think that, you know, he's lost the plot, you know, he's pulling a trick, or he's gone insane or something, right? Like >> Okay, so if your friend says there's no explanation for why these balls are in the forest, he's going to sound crazy, right? Okay, but what if he says, "Well, I think it is it was metaphysically necessary that these balls were there in that particular point." How is that less insane, right?
¶29Well, I think it isn't. In fact, Joe would probably agree with me here, but he's going to say, "That's why the ball That's because the balls are a bad candidate for something that is necessary." And he's going to say that Yeah, the the feature of being necessary it seems fits better in a god instead of stuff like balls. And one thing he's going to do to appeal to that, and this is very, very important, is the existence of apparently arbitrary features. Uh like, the balls could have had uh they have a certain size, but you one could conceive of them having a different size, right? a color.
¶30It's a red ball, but it could have been blue, right? Many They could have been in a slightly different position, right? Many things that are arbitrary. And at this at this point, it's usual to distinguish between two things. One is the principle of sufficient reason, which basically says that for a the contingent for the fact that a if a contingent thing exists, there's an explanation for the fact that it exists, like for its existence.
¶31Another one, which is stronger, is the contrastive principle of sufficient reason, which is by that for any feature X, there is also an explanation for why the thing has that feature A, let's say A, instead of a feature B, right? That's a stronger and even stronger version of the principle of sufficient reason. And Joe and Rasmus say they need that principle, they need that version to be true, because they're going to appeal to that to say, "Yeah, well, therefore, it can only be an omni God, cuz all the if it's anything else, it's going to have arbitrary features that demand an explanation because of this principle." What is the problem? The problem, I'm going to explain this later. This is my This is, I think, the main objection to the contingency argument, is that adopting the contrastive principle of sufficient reason leads to moral collapse.
¶32All right? This you you There's no way that you can explain the apparently arbitrary features of the world if that is true, okay? We're going to look at that later. Another problem with that is that indeterminism seems to violate this principle, like you if indeterminism is true, there is no explanation as to why did a particle decay at that and this time instead of this other specific time, right? You can explain, "Okay, the the existence of the particle was explained by a probabilistic in a you know, some kind of probabilistic distribution, right?" But the question of why exactly at that moment instead of another moment, that has no answer, okay?
¶33If the indeterminism is true. So, the Yeah, that's This is a very important thing to keep in mind. >> their existence needs explaining. They didn't have to exist, and they certainly didn't have to be in the forest or be shiny or be spherical or have that exact size. It seemed like these facts need explanation.
¶34>> Yeah, like I was saying is the apparently arbitrary facts, the facts that could have been otherwise, which seem to demand for an explanation. Okay, but let's look at an analogy, okay? Okay, so we find these balls with that specific size. Okay. What is the explanation for that size?
¶35It can only be God wanted it to have that size, like Okay, let's say God explains their existence, but what explains them having this specific size? The way I see it, the only possible explanation for that is that God desired it to them to have that size, right? Okay, but that moves the contingency somewhere else. Because now God had a desire that seems contingent. Since the God could God could have had the desire that this ball had a a smaller size or a bigger size.
¶36Like I don't see any way around it. Now, Joe thinks that he there's a response to that and we will look at that at the end. I don't think it works. And like I was saying, this is basically the moral collapse argument. For the apparently arbitrary features of the world the only way you can explain it is by appealing to a desire of God, and this will be also contingent.
¶37So it doesn't end up explaining anything. >> And the spheres would still need explanation if they were larger, for example, the size of a stadium or even the size of the whole universe. In fact, they call for explanation even more if they were like that. >> Wait, you think that if they're larger, they need more of an explanation? I don't agree with that.
¶38Like why? I mean, do you think the small one needs an explanation just as much as the bigger one does. Really, I don't I don't see a a symmetry record there. >> [laughter] >> But if that's true if that logic is true then God I think God would be even larger, right? I mean I know you think God is non-spatial, right?
¶39But as far as magnitude goes or in fact there are some people who think that God is constituted by a some kind of divine substance, right? It seems to be that they would be infinitely large in a sense, right? So, so God needs God would need even more of an explanation than the bigger ball. >> And even if they were produced by earlier shiny spheres, we would be left none the wiser, since we would rightly wonder where those spheres came from. Even an infinite regress of shiny spheres replicating for all eternity wouldn't remove the need for explanation, since the whole infinite series of shiny spheres would call out for explanation.
¶40Or >> I actually agree with Joe here. Now, there are some atheists who believe in uh that an infinite series is possible. Uh they some of them have tried to make this move. Like, imagine there is a series an infinite series of balls, one causing the other, like ball one causes ball two and causes ball three, right? They want to say that, okay, each member has an explanation, is the previous member.
¶41Uh but then you can ask, why does the whole series of ball exist at all? And the move they try to make is to say, wait. Look. If each of the members has an explanation, well, then the series itself also has an explanation, right? So, you don't need an additional explanation.
¶42Now, I think that this move doesn't work at all. In my opinion, this is like really wrong. This this sounds intuitively intuitively very wrong to me. And I think there is a way to formalize why. Like, imagine the series of explananda, or or things to be explained, is ball ball one, ball two, ball three, ball four, okay.
¶43Now, what is the series of explanations? For ball one, the explanation is ball zero. For ball two, the explanation is ball one. For ball three, okay. So, the series of explanations is bar zero, bar one, bar two, bar three, bar four.
¶44In other words, the things to be explained, this is the series. And the explanations is also the series. It's the exact same series. And that's but that's just saying that the series explains itself, right? And this cannot be.
¶45This is just nothing can explain itself, right? So, I agree with Joe that an infinite series still needs for an explanation. >> The explanatory principle is also just like abundantly confirmed by our universal experience. Right? Like when we encounter contingent things in our experience, every which way we look, they uniformly have explanations, including quantum particles that indeterministically fluctuate into existence in a law-governed way from causally prior conditions.
¶46And >> I think I think indeterminism really seems to violate the principle of sufficient reason, at least the contrastive one. Because if indeterminism is true, there is no re-explanation for why did the particle decay at this point instead of this other point. There is literally isn't any. And this is super counterintuitive. Well, at least I find it to be the case.
¶47But that seems to be the case, right? So, no, I do I do think that the indeterminism provides a really strong counterexample to the strong version of the principle of sufficient reason. >> You know, just more generally, the principle just very nicely accounts for our observations. You know, like if this explanatory principle is false, like by what means do we consistently and repeatedly find that contingent things have explanations and never stumble across violations of the principle? Like if contingent things really could exist without any deeper explanation, why don't we witness widespread chaos?
¶48Like like bunches of photons, say, popping into existence inexplicably on my front porch. Or clusters like I >> Okay. This is a common argument. Okay, why don't things just pop out of nowhere in out of the thin air? Why don't photons pop out of my porch?
¶49Why doesn't a an elephant just pop right here right right now, for example? What's preventing that from happening? One possible answer an atheist could give is say that the universe is that which is preventing them from happening. So that there is something about the fabric of space itself that prevents elephants or or things for just popping out of nowhere, right? Because it would have to like move some air or or whatever, right?
¶50I think that's a possible response to why don't we see a microscopic objects popping out of nowhere in our normal experience. So what an atheist could say, maybe in the universe this is the case, but outside a universe, like in the multiverse or the the the nothingness or the blind eternities, you know, whatever, uh this is not the case, right? Things can't just pop out of nowhere. That this is how the multiverse is, right? It could I maybe I mean at least not like it's surely it's weird, but it's not like logically impossible, right?
¶51So that would be a one answer there. >> As Bruce and Rob Koons have also argued that denying the explanatory principle has disastrous implications that undermine our empirical knowledge. One reason beyond those they give is that, you know, if it really were a live possibility that contingent things exist inexplicably, then it would also be a live possibility that inexplicably there exist universes causally disconnected from our own, which are filled with brains that duplicate your brain structure and dynamics for a very short period of time before fizzling out of existence. But if that's a live possibility, then it's a live possibility we have no empirical knowledge and no knowledge of the future, which is absurd. Because if it's a live possibility that a large proportion of observers who are indistinguishable from you from a first-person perspective are radically deceived, then that would just undermine your knowledge of the empirical world.
¶52>> I I don't agree with him there. I think this is a very bad argument. He seems to be saying that there if there is one scenario that that leads to, you know, global skepticism, well, then that's somehow proof that that scenario must be false. But how's that work? Look, imagine this analogy.
¶53I'm going to make an analogy that shows you just how how wrong this argument is. I mean, we are trying to evaluate this hypothesis, this scenario. In a million years, humanity will be able to create computers that can connect to human brains and can send them the stimuli of our simulation of a complete reality. And these humans will be able to take a brain from the moment they were born and place them in a simulation that that sends them to like another period in history. For example, is the year 2 millions, right?
¶54But they can put brains in and make them think that they are in the year they were born in the year 2000 or in the '90s, right? I want to evaluate. So, is this possible? Is it possible that humanity will ever reach this stage of technological or or advanced aliens or or whatever, right? Is this possible?
¶55Now, imagine someone like Joe says, "Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on." If that scenario is possible, then I could be one of those humans that they place in a simulation, right? So, I would have no know the real knowledge of the world. I would be deceived. And that's impossible. So, it must be that that scenario is impossible, right?
¶56It must be that humans will never have this this ability. I mean, does that work? Do you think that Joe's reasoning just disprove the that scenario of humans simulating brains? I don't I don't think he did. Obviously not, right?
¶57Obviously, the entire point of this thought experiment like a deceiving demon or a brain in a vat, obviously the conclusion is where they Yeah, I mean, you don't have certain knowledge. You can never know. Maybe that's the case, right? So, I think he I think it's a very bad epistemological analysis. You look he he says something here.
¶58>> If our minds are deceived, then that would just undermine your knowledge of the empirical world. But of course we do have lots of knowledge of the empirical world, so it can't be a live possibility that contingent things exist inexplicably. >> Wow, this is really bad. He's saying, of course we have knowledge of the empirical world. Well, Joe, those Boltzmann brains that you brought up, that you're saying that they are deluded, they also think that they have knowledge of the empirical world.
¶59Don't you see that? Because they are duplicates of you. So, how do you know if you have real knowledge of the empirical world or if you're a duplicate? You cannot know that. That's entirely the the point.
¶60>> But considering all the contingent things that exist, if there's an explanation of their existence, it seems that some necessary thing must exist. I could see why people think that necessary >> Okay, this is stage two of the argument, right? Because So, there are some atheists that do grant that there is a necessary thing. For example, Graham Oppy thinks that there is a necessary thing, but he just thinks that this is some kind of physical thing. He calls it the ultimate material reality or something like that, right?
¶61So, now there are some arguments to why does there have to be a god, right? So, let's take a look at at those additional arguments. >> Everything would have to be non-physical or immaterial. Like physical and material things seem contingent, and no physical thing seems relevantly dissimilar to contingent physical things that could account for why one would be necessary while the others are contingent. >> I mean, normal physical things seem contingent, right?
¶62Like I don't know, this uh this fork seems contingent, right? That's that's right. But you don't know if all possible physical things are contingent. Like I don't know, maybe the singularity or something like that. Does that does that seem contingent?
¶63I don't know. Maybe it seems could be that it was necessary because it like the initial supposed to be like the initial thing. I don't know, man. It doesn't I don't think it's so easy to "Yeah, everything material seems contingent." >> I could see why one should posit only one necessary entity, since that's much simpler and less arbitrary than other numbers, and only one seems needed to explain contingency. And while I wasn't fully convinced at the time >> Okay.
¶64Um is it Is he saying there's only one simpler than saying there are more than one? Yeah, maybe, but on the other hand, let's let's look at this principle from experience. Things usually exist in multiples, right? There's no one rock, there are multiple rocks. There's no one star, it turns out there are multiple stars.
¶65There's no one There's no one galaxy, it turns out there are multiple galaxies. If you go by that, then somebody may think, "Well, maybe there are just multiple necessary things, each one cause their the contingent things in their region, right?" I don't know. Maybe. >> And I could definitely see where Josh was coming from when he argued that the necessary thing would be unlimited in value. According to Josh, it had at least some value, given that it has various valuable powers to produce lots of good things.
¶66And any finite cut-off in value would seem to be an arbitrary, unexplained cut-off. That alone seems somewhat problematic, but it also just seems problematic to posit brute, unexplained necessary features of things. >> Okay, so value. I think value is a really problematic concept to use here, because it's just so so subjective, right? Now, value depends on an observer.
¶67Things are valuable for somebody. Like, imagine a world with no conscious beings, right? There are only There are rocks, and there is also gold. I mean, can can anyone really say, "Yeah, the gold is more valuable than the rocks"? I think no.
¶68I think obviously not. Valuable for who? If there is no If nobody exists in that world, I don't think the the gold is more valuable than the rocks, right? I don't think anything has value, actually. So, value is a subjective thing.
¶69Things are object valuable for somebody. Okay, you apply that to God. Let's say God exists exists alone. Now, is God valuable valuable Remember that things has to be valuable for somebody. Is God valuable for himself?
¶70Well, yeah, obviously yes. How valuable is he? How How valuable? Well, I think the answer is obviously infinitely or maximally value, right? Because one is infinitely valuable for oneself.
¶71But, here's the key point. Imagine instead of God, it would be me. Or or a limited God. Imagine it's me. Now, am I valuable for myself?
¶72Yes, how much? Infinitely valuable or maximally valuable. It's obvious that I'm maximally valuable for myself. So, God or my or me it makes no difference. Everything is valuable for himself, right?
¶73So, and if there are no other observers, it can't really be if it is the fundamental thing that exists. You have to analyze like the thing alone. You cannot say, "Wait, wait. God becomes valuable for the creatures when he makes them, for example." No, because at the point the the fundamental point, the the the God prior to creation, right? Which was the necessary state.
¶74God is alone, right? So, he has to be only valuable valuable only for himself. >> Especially when they seem highly arbitrary and could conceivably be different in hordes of ways. The same reasoning would motivate thinking this reality has unlimited power, too. I mean, after all, it has some power, you know, it made contingent things after all.
¶75And a finite arbitrary causal power seems problematic for the reasons already noted. >> Okay. So, infinite power. That's what we're going to say. It has unlimited or infinite power.
¶76So, here I want to point to Michael Hummer's um theories about why some infinites are problematic. And he made a a video He had a chat with me on my channel. And he also had a recent debate with this uh and just Rasmussen. It was super interesting. And what Michael Hummer says is that there are some quantities, some magnitudes that cannot be infinite, like the unlimited saying that there's an unlimited amount of this is very problematic.
¶77And let me give you one example, speed. Imagine if an object can have infinite speed. Okay, if this object travels at infinite speed for 1 second, where does it end up? The answer is is unknown. It is it cannot end up anywhere.
¶78It is impossible to answer that, right? It cannot be a solution to that. So, that that's a paradox and it shows that it just can't an object cannot have infinite speed. It just is impossible. And the same thing happens with other magnitudes.
¶79He he thinks that uh extensive magnitudes can be infinite, but for example, space. Space is seems to be infinite, empty space. But he thinks that intensive magnitudes cannot be infinite. And he thinks that God's power or knowledge will be some will work more like an intensive magnitude. So, this will be if it's true, this will be very problematic for Rasmusen the way Rasmusen and Joe want to think about this because they want to say, "Okay, yeah, God has infinite power." And precisely that's the important is very super important because any limit this amount of power will be an arbitrary uh fact that will demand an explanation and will ruin the contingency argument.
¶80So, they really need he got to have infinite power, but Human is saying that's not possible. That's not logically possible. Now, do I agree with Human that power works like this? No, necessarily. I'm not saying I'm not sure.
¶81But Human does make a great case for why at least some quantities cannot be infinite. And if any of that affects this infinite being, now that just kills your your the argument that go that Joe is trying to make here. >> But generally, it just didn't seem plausible that the necessary foundation could be, say, you know, like a turtle or the shape of a Disney princess or a football. Like all these things have arbitrary-seeming limits in shape and size and location and duration and power and whatnot. But arbitrary limits like that seem to call out for deeper explanation.
¶82Like why does the limit have that value? Like why that shape or size? Why that precise duration or location? And if arbitrary limits have further explanations than the basic attributes of this necessary foundation, precisely because they have no further explanation, because this is the ultimate explanatory stopping point of reality, must be unlimited. Before moving on, >> Okay.
¶83So, here we are moving on to the one of the super important uh parts of this, the moral collapse. So, any arbitrary feature like being a specifically in the shape of a turtle of this is going to be a problem, right? Cuz there will be no explanation for why this that instead of another one. Okay, what happens with the arbitrary features in the world? Okay, let's say let let the world has um let's say a given number of trees or a given number of grains of sand or stuff like that.
¶84And this seems to be like this contingent, right? Like it could be just different. There could be one more grain of sand in the world, right? Obviously. So, why was that a specific amount of trees instead of another one?
¶85To me, what I want to say here is it has to be because God had the desire so as that he will make a world with that amount of trees. It has to go back to a desire of God. And that is will be a contingent feature on God because it could have been otherwise. That's the That's what I want to make here. So, Joe now wants to respond to that.
¶86So, let me look at the response to the to the moral collapse. >> Now, let me address one of the biggest objections to contingency arguments. Some people worry that contingent things can't be explained by necessary thing, since whatever is explained by something necessary would itself be necessary. But this objection fails. It assumes that the explanatory connection between the necessary thing and contingent things is deterministic or necessitating.
¶87But the explanation need not be like that. Right, it might be indeterministic if, for example, the necessary thing has free will to choose among a variety of outcomes, each of which has adequate but non-coercive reasons favoring its actualization. A contingent thing is something that >> Okay. So, but even if you say that God had free will and he chose to make a world with this amount of trees and that explains the fact that the trees exist. Okay.
¶88That explains the existence of the trees. But it doesn't explain why that amount of trees instead of another one, right? The the existence aspect is explained, but the contrastive aspect is not explained. It's obvious that it's not like So, you say, "Okay, God freely chose to make those." Well, but why Well, let's say there's a a red ball and it could have been blue. And you find it in the world and you say, "Okay, what is the explanation for the red ball?" And you say, "Well, God explains that.
¶89God freely chooses the red chose the red ball." Okay, that's fine. But let's say you have a I ask you, "Why is it the red instead of blue?" And you say, "Well, because he chose that." I can still ask you, "But why did he pick red instead of blue?" And it's obvious that you have no response to that. It's obvious that there is no answer to that. Right? You kind of say, "Well, but he just chose it." Yeah, but why?
¶90Why is What accounts for him choosing red instead of choosing blue? You can say, "Well, there were some reasons for red and some reasons for blue." I mean, yeah, but I can still ask you, "Yeah, but why did blue end or did red end up being picked?" Right? I don't think there is a response to that. I don't think this solves the issue. And you may want to appeal to libertarian free will to that.
¶91Uh personally, I'm a compatibilist. I think libertarian free will is deeply problematic. In fact, I think it's an incoherent thing. But even then, this this still doesn't work. It just seems like if you believe that libertarian free will is true and that agents make decisions like without other causes you still that still violates the the strong principle of sufficient reason because there's nothing that accounts for why did they pick that alternative instead of another one, right?
¶92The free will says that he could have picked any one of them, but why that one one instead of the other one? That's something that is still unexplained. And okay, Roderick is very little space to this this super important objection. I understand that because he just want to make a an introduction to the continuous argument. So, let me give you another way that they try to resolve this.
¶93For example, what Coons says. He makes this analogy. Imagine he to to motivate to justify the fact that an explanation doesn't need to entail the explanada. He says, imagine a guy has cancer lung cancer. And he's asking, okay, what is the explanation for me having lung cancer?
¶94The doctor might say, well, you have lung cancer because you smoked, right? That's the explanation. Now, think of this, however, does smoking entail lung cancer? The answer is no. And Rob Coons wants to say smoking we still want to say that smoking is an explanation for the lung cancer even if it doesn't entail it.
¶95What I would say in response to that is that smoking is an explanation for the lung cancer, but it's not a full explanation. And that's the key difference here. An explanation may not need to entail the explanada, but a full explanation does in my view. So, in the case of smoking, there are other factors that together explain why you get cancer. Like those do those factors do exist.
¶96Your genetics uh your I don't know how mhm mhm like the property of your body, you know. I mean the environmental factors, right? There are other factors that will add to the explanation. But once you add all of them, you you will you will have a full explanation for why you got cancer. I think you can have them.
¶97But in the case of God, these factors cannot exist, right? There is nothing else that can can that can be a factor for the explanation. The factors all have to be in God. Because they cannot come from anywhere else. So, that means the contingency has to be in God, right?
¶98The the answer to why did God pick a red ball instead of a blue one? It has to be a a desire of God that just it just brute. It have no explanation. I don't really I don't think there is any way I don't think they have any way around this argument. I think the moral collapse argument is just just destroys the contingency argument, in my opinion.
¶99That's that's what how how I see things. Anyway, that's all I wanted to to mention. So, thank you guys for for what I mean oh, I want I want uh to say something very cool. I've been talking to Josh Rasmussen over email, and he actually agreed to to come to my channel to talk to me about the contingency argument. He says he's kind of busy right now, so maybe in October, I don't know, we will see.
¶100He's not like sure. So, yeah, I think that would be very cool. In fact, now that Joe is uh now that we are doing this, maybe Joe would be interested in hosting that this and you know, making it a >> [laughter] >> a three-way discussion, right? >> [snorts] >> Uh who knows, right? Maybe that could be fun.
¶101By the way, I want to make other parts later. Like I want I do want to look at the psychophysical harmony thing and the fine-tuning and, you know, the the nomological harmony. I definitely want to take a look at this. I don't know that much about those topics, but I want to research and maybe make a response as well. So, stay tuned for that.
¶102So, yeah, anyway, guys, thank you for watching. Please subscribe to my channel. Please go check out Joe's channel. And see you next time. Bye.
¶103>> [music]