all right so let's jump straight into this i'm gonna listen to as much as i can today comment when appropriate and this is episode one so let's see what we've got oh dear all right so here's the categorization of arguments we've got so just um break this down a bit we've got cosmological arguments teleological arguments ontological arguments two types of theological arguments theological arguments against um theism in general and then theological arguments against christianity specifically or like yahweh and jesus and so forth we've got epistemological arguments axiological arguments like moral type arguments experiential arguments anthropological arguments biblical arguments focusing on specific on the bible uh historical arguments focusing on like the history of christianity and then a grab bag of leftover arguments so lots of different categories here um and yeah i i do think that there are some good arguments in here mixed up with a lot of repetition and a few weaker ones so let's make a start we're going to start with the cosmological arguments um okay so it's actually quite large when i i just wonder is there a way i can not full screen this or something i don't think there is um i mean it's kind of hard to read oh you're already on a microsoft powerpoint right so you're gonna have different yeah yeah i mean i i guess if you you could just maybe i can just flip back to the stream it's fine it's fine yeah yeah i'll just get used to it um all right so causal closure of the physical so this i actually think is a good argument um and this is the point i've actually made before if the physical world is causally closed the existence of god generally is taken to imply causal effects from outside the physical world onto it then that's impossible if you believe in the cause or closure of the physical there just isn't anything that exercises causal powers outside the physical world of course the theist is just going to deny one right but like so the thing is in developing these arguments you sort of realize the many games that apologists play like someone like william lane craig for example would just say sure i can't prove that the first premise is true but there's a lot of reason to think that it's more okay uh there's no guesswork required to know that premise one is false if you believe that you have free will right causal closure means that all causes are physical that's nonsense we know that the one thing we know with certainty causal closure is false we know this because we are we have free will we're humans we have human nature we're made in the image likeness of god and we have free will and reason and we reason freely and so we know that every thought we have is supernatural it's not natural and the atheist might want to claim that everything is natural and that causal causal closure is the case but in doing so they're accepting her determinism and then they lose every argument because they render themselves incapable of making a meaningful argument and everything just becomes it is what it is and then you just appeal to all of our scientific evidence and no good evidence in favor of anything against that and so and craig would say something like so two is just the standard definition of what theaters say so one is the only controversial premise here and there's lots of evidence to fail to think that one is more likely true than not therefore it follows logically and inescapably that god does not exist yeah i've been recently i've just been reading like um a popular level kind of like intro to physics book that talks about a bunch of topics um stuff like causal closure and there was a bit a bit of talk about like reductionism super symmetry stuff like that and what's really interesting is the difference between the way that apologists represent the um discourse about what our best scientists tell us about how the world is and the difference different way that physicists actually like talk talk about it like there's a bunch of things that physicists will always like take for granted and just be like yeah this is just what you'll get taught in like an undergraduate physics course um that like apologists will be like yeah only the hardcore dogmatic material is gonna commit to this no i know i know like um say the the physical word world being causally closed there's some some philosophers who are like not particularly dogmatic but are going to like say maybe you know this is maybe maybe we don't actually know that this this applies maybe maybe like consciousness is like something natural but it somehow has like downward causation and violates this principle something like that i mean i don't know enough to make any kind of um strong claim about about that myself but i do i studied physics at university we dismiss as negligible all kinds of things friction air currents uh rotation of the earth rotation of the galaxy the rotation of the universe all sorts of things okay that the mainstream physicists take for granted but we dismiss them when doing calculations in order in order to simplify because otherwise it's just too cumbersome we can't do any calculation if we have to take into consideration all of the messy reality okay so it's the same thing with the supernatural mind with which the physicist is thinking as he's doing physics we dismiss the fact that our thoughts our minds our souls our free will our reason is supernatural we dismiss that as a negligible thing because just as we can dismiss the quantum effects when we're dealing with the macro world we can dismiss the supernatural causes behind each and every thought of each and every human including the scientists in the laboratory we could dismiss those because we know that at the macro level how this is all playing out is in a well-ordered way in a predictable way okay so that's what you're missing in your analysis of this and the causal the causal closure is just it's just a simplification we're just saying we're only dealing the reason we're only dealing with physical uh effects is because that's what physics is limited to physics by definition as a natural science is ill-equipped to deal with god the supernatural and all these other things it's only dealing with these events in the natural world right which are well ordered aka god exists and predictable and the wonderful weirdness that you can explore when you start zooming in a little too much that's when you start to maybe get a little bit closer to the interplay between the supernatural mind of the human with the decisions and the choices they're making and the natural world but it all it's all well ordered it's all well ordered the laws of nature are never violated but just as in a computer game that was built and designed by a superior mind to the actual players the hardware itself the software itself the design of the software all of the contingencies all of the loopholes that the programmer built into it those are all following the laws of nature there's no violation ever it's the same thing with our human minds when we're in the laboratory we are part of nature and yet we transcend nature with our supernatural souls with their supernatural minds but there's no violation of nature if we were able to zoom in sufficiently with our mind's eye i mean you can forget about using lab equipment to zoom in to find that interplay between the the supernatural and the natural although some have speculated that the uh the effects of the observer are sort of hinting at that proximity to the interplay between the supernatural and the natural i don't commit to that it might be possible i don't know i think we've got a long way to go uh i think the the abyss between what our instruments can pick up and uh the subtle interplay between the supernatural and the natural that abyss is insurmountable to natural science but uh god only knows he'll find out on judgment day but it just seems plausible to me and that's kind of like all you need right to get get the argument off the ground that like the premise is more well this premise premise one the physical world is causally closed it's a nice neat tidy assumption for the natural scientist he cannot assume otherwise because he doesn't have access to the supernatural as a natural scientist so this whole exercise is totally misguided when you start talking you start blending the physical sciences the natural sciences and physics as i say time and time again physics just means nature so we're examining nature we're examining the natural realm the natural sciences preeminently physics is limited to studying natural events it doesn't say anything about the ultimate cause of any particular event it just observes observes the events and then tries to make models and tries to predict and these sorts of things so you should go back to school if you haven't studied physics uh you should start and if you have studied physics you should go back and brush up boys yeah that's interesting i mean i think that if you're going to argue along those grounds you shouldn't use deductive style arguments because it doesn't it's like combining probabilistic and deductive reasoning which doesn't make sense but i guess it's useful to realize that that is what apologists do especially i mean i know most about craig right but he definitely does that and others do i don't use probabilities we can get to a certain knowledge of god by the natural light of reason without recourse to probabilities statistics guesswork bayesian logic abduction induction we don't need any of that okay we have pure reason without any faith-based beliefs without any holy books without any so you boys are out to lunch you don't know even the distinction between the natural sciences and philosophy much less philosophy theology and ultimately got himself as the source of science science with the big s in his um you know following up from as well so it's interesting how easy it is to actually come up with arguments like that where you can say like it's it's you know it's um it's valid premise two is generally agreed to be true one is the only controversial premise to say that if god existed he would exert causal effects on the physical world he's not up for grabs if you're a christian if you're a christian you know that god created the world and he is sustaining the world and you know that god does miracles you know that god is that all-knowing programmer who made the game and we're the players in the game and he doesn't violate any of the laws because the laws are his laws he made the laws as saint thomas aquinas famously said god set out to create nature and he was not frustrated in his design he created nature and guess what it is natural hello there's no contradiction the supernatural god set out to create nature a natural world a natural realm and guess what he was not frustrated in his design he created a realm that is natural he's the master of the natural and like you can just say well it's more likely true than not so boom yeah it's like a sneaky shift because you're not present you're presenting it as if it's like a deductive argument so it's got that kind of certain yeah yeah you guys are full of baloney the existence of god could be known with certainty using pure reason alone there's no guesswork and there's no there's no recourse to probabilities or or anything of that kind or induction or abduction or bayesian proofs or anything like that so right off the get-go cosmological argument number zero zero one you guys are full of it you have no idea what you're talking about it's embarrassing let's keep going yeah so although i do think this is a good argument i wouldn't phrase it like this precisely because of that for that reason and obviously one is not going to be accepted by the cs right but um i do think that uh that is a reason not to believe in supernatural all right so now i'm going to introduce you to the structure of the different forms of the argument so there's like a vanilla form right which is like this but of course no series of arguments is complete without a modal form of the same argument so get used to these there's going to be a few of them so um it is possibly necessary that the physical world is causally closed under s5 the physical world is uh causally closed because if it's possibly necessary um and it's possible then it's follows that it is um and so if god existed he would exert causal effects on the physical world so that's just the same as the previous premise uh the premise in the previous argument so it follows that god does not exist this is such an abuse of logic you know the the modal form of proof requires that something can only not be not exist or not be true if it is logically impossible you can't just willy-nilly apply the modal argument the modal proof to whatever suits your fancy you can't say uh like for example today it's monday i can't just say well it's possibly necessary that today therefore by uh because it's possible it's tuesday and using this modal logic if it's possible it's necessary therefore it's tuesday you can't twist logic like this you need to you need to justify the one criterion of a modal argument which is that the only way that something could not be the case is if it's logically impossible you haven't established that it's logically impossible that the physical world is not causally closed you haven't established that in fact we know the opposite to be the case we know that the physical world is not causally closed we know that how do we know that because we ourselves are thinking about it in the supernatural realm we are not monkey bots we are not okay we're not stinky robots we're supernatural minds supernatural souls united mysteriously with physical bodies at conception we have the procreated zygote which at the moment of its conception is infused by god so not only is this modal argument false it's uh premises are false but the whole application throughout this whole video of the modal style proof is a complete reckless and irresponsible abuse of the modal style of proof because you need to establish that the only way something cannot be the case is if it's logically impossible and these boys don't even make the slightest effort to understand that or to to explore that or to see if they can make it work so to say that this is silly this seven hour plus video is silly is uh a great a great understatement um i should say here this is a this is a summarized form of the argument when i when i sometimes say by s5 there's there's um so some of the arguments i had to abbreviate the premises so that they would fit in and i didn't want to reduce the size of the font too much so really here there should be another premise that says it is possible that the physical world is causally closed and then you would say bias five if it's possible then then it is the case only if that's only the case if you can show that the only way that your is not possible is because of a logical impossibility let me rephrase that the only way that you can use the modal argument is if you show that the only way something cannot be the case is if it's logically impossible and you fail to do that um but for arguments like this where this modal i just sort of abbreviated by saying under s5 as long as you think it's possible if it's possibly necessary and possible then it follows that it's necessary yeah if it's possibly necessary meaning it meets the criteria the correct the one criterion of the modal proof under s5 so that's the structure of this argument so sometimes i'll slot that premise in explicitly and other times i'll just sort of enclose it in to say by s5 but that's what i mean there so in other words just a question sorry james the the theist isn't necessarily going to accept this argument right oh well so necessarily it's just the same as the modal argument right i was just i was trying to make a necessarily joke yeah no well but yeah the point is that uh if you something like a physical world for example plausibly it is either causally close or like that could be a necessary truth that whether it's causally close so you know if the theist or to put it another way if god exists then he exists necessarily and therefore the physical world is not causally cl is necessarily not causally closed if god doesn't exist then he doesn't exist necessarily and so plausibly the physical world is necessarily causally closed right yeah but we know that's not the case because you're using your mind right now and unless you want to say every that everything you say is meaningless and that all your arguments are then you are admitting that your mind is supernatural right so that's the um that's the basis of thinking that it's necessary and then so the debate just then takes a step back and argues like well is it necessary truth actually pertains like so again the point here is it's really just the same argument but um you know modal logic though so let's make it another form all right um next one so we've had the vanilla form and the modal form there's also an inductive form so inductive arguments are slightly different in form because they try to uh basically well perform induction over a large number of cases um so in in doing 500 of these i may have been a little bit sloppy in some of them but i generally try to make it actually work as inductive arguments so here we've got every node effect has sufficient material causes sufficient meaning like it's enough for those courses to bring about the effects that you don't need any additional causes um the god hypothesis or like theism asserts that god's actions lack a material cause uh because god's not material um and so because we have inductive reasons to think that there aren't any such uh cor effects therefore we have like an inductive evidence to believe that there is no god again just think about your creativity when you make something happen with your mind like the architect who designs something and then hires people to build it so premise one every known effect has sufficient material causes are you sure about that because your mind is not and you've caused this whole video to manifest you caused it it didn't just happen you caused it to happen with your supernatural mind you're the architect of this whole ridiculous project this whole video all these 500 to assume that every known effect has sufficient material causes is to beg the question is to assume what you want to be true this is not logic this is not this is an abuse of logic this is not philosophy this is not the love of wisdom the love of truth it's the you're doing a disservice to yourself you're doing a disservice to philosophy you're doing a disservice to the natural so again it's basically the same argument but reformulated in inductive form so vanilla modal inductive now we've got an abductive argument so abductive reasoning is an inference to the best explanation so here instead of reformulating it as an induction over cases we're formulating we're formulating it as a best explanation so all causal phenomena that have been explained or explained with reference to natural causes best explanation of this is that all causes are natural causes or you could say the best explanation of this is that nature is causally closed or something similar to that um if that's true then atheism is true therefore we have reason to believe atheism is true so why are you willing to say if that's true then atheism is true but you're not willing to say if that's true then i'm just a monkey bot and none of my arguments have any weight and one configuration of matter energy cannot be superior in any way to any other configuration of matter energy and space time because you're jumping to the conclusion oh if that's the case then atheism is true wow yay let's celebrate let's have a little parade okay but there are other implications besides your silly atheism being true there are other more obvious implications one of them being that let that sink in what would that be false you're gonna know more about that than me i mean in theory yes i don't actually know a lot about what mormon philosophers would say about this i don't know how many of them have sort of published on this issue or thought about it a lot but i mean the idea is that god is material in a sense but not in the same sense as right the material universe it's like a finer materiality or something so yeah i'm actually not entirely sure about that but i i i don't think i i think you could still use this argument to deploy against it because it's not supposed to be a type of matter that we can describe scientifically this is all completely irrelevant mormons are not christians so this is supposed to be 500 arguments against christianity mormons are not christian so i mean there's going to be a lot of time wasting banter here i'm just going to put up with it and maybe i'll comment once in a while right okay and so i think you could still use i'm not sure how a deist would sidestep some of these um oh if you're saying that deists are not christians let's get on with the uh christian stuff well no because we haven't appealed to miracles here it's just the existence of god right so yeah i'm just thinking how yeah like ways that a theist could sort of accept the premises and kind of get out of it like maybe deists are not theists could be like a pan uh pantheist kurd if they're like god pantheists are not theists pantheists are not monotheists right they're modests you boys really need to brush ups oh yeah a pantheon like a materialist panties could but that's a nonstandard conception of god right yeah yeah so sometimes i talk about theism to try to um i mean i vary the conclusions a little bit but christianity is a monotheistic religion guys wake up yeah a standard conception of god i think this does rule out um yeah i agree anyway and the last form we have is a bayesian form because of course we need some basin we need more bayesian inference in our lives so now just to because all the basin forms are pretty similar so i'll just in the future we'll go through this more quickly but because this is the first time so uh t is the proposition god exists um t for theism and then here i've called it e but the lettering varies depending on what it is so here's the proposition all effects have material causes right so um so so that's taken to be asserted in this case right um because all known effects known as causes yeah exactly so that's what we're positing as being it being the case um i'm just letting this run because i just want to get past and the idea here is that the probability of um all known effects having physical causes given that theism is false um is much greater than the probability that all known physical effects oh sorry all motor effects have physical causes given that theism is true because if season was true we might expect to you know observe uh or at least it's possible that we could observe um effects that have non-physical causes whereas that's much less likely under if theism is false and if you like you could replace that with naturalism to make that even stronger but i think that the point still holds overall if you consider those classes of theories the probability it would be much much greater which is what that means now this second premise here is just saying that it's not the case that the prior probability of atheism is a lot much much less than the prior probability of theism so this is um this is adapted from i think a form of the uh fine-tuning argument that uh what's his face uses uh robin robin collins yeah where he this is a similar form that he has so we're not making a statement about what the prior probabilities are just that it's not the prior of atheism is not way less than the prior theism and then it follows from that that the prior probably sorry the posterior probability of atheism given um all physical all known effects of physical causes is a lot greater than the posterior probability of theism given this observation so this is this is saying that um this evidence updates us in favor of atheism this is such nonsense you're wasting everyone's time bayesian arguments are out of place to put it mildly on those things that were we have certain knowledge over that we're able to have certain knowledge of for you you would never use a bayesian argument to talk about the probabilities of one being one or one plus one being two or two being greater than one or one being less than two there are things we can know by the light of natural reason without recourse to any faith-based belief any face faith-based beliefs and so bayesian logic does not apply to these things okay including the existence of the supernatural minds and of god okay these are not up for debate this is not this is not a topic for bayesian logic or probabilities or statistics or anything guesswork or anything like that so this is a complete waste of time so honestly this is just a less transparent way of saying basically what we said in the previous like three slides but of course if it's a bayesian form then it's a distinct argument right so that that's the point here and bayesianism means that you you know your exactly yeah so it's you know it's it's super scholarly when it's bayesian there's nothing impressive about misapplying something that's completely inappropriate there's nothing big brained or academic about that all right um moving on so that was the cause of closure physical so the quantum gravity argument so i actually think this one's quite interesting um our best theory is the origin of the universe positive quantum gravity realm where causation breaks down if causation breaks down the quantum gravity realm then god could not of course the universe because there's not a cause outside of space and time um if god exists he calls the universe to begin which theists typically hold therefore god does not exist here's a question though is this argument going to be inconsistent with the previous ones about physical or i guess you'd say whatever weird quantum stuff's going on is still physical oh you say that the cause the closure of the physical that's interesting yeah you're probably going to need to talk there about what it counts as physical so maybe maybe at the point causation breaks down you cease to call it physical as well i'm not really sure about that oh my god have you boys heard of the principle of equivalence by a little guy by the name of einstein you heard about that e equals mc square do you know about the principle of equivalence between matter and energy do you know that a quantum gravity field is not nothing even lawrence krauss admits in his book that quantum field is not nothing it's not nothing okay so where did this quantum field come from explain that it's not within the purview of the natural sciences to explain it so you can have to explain it using your philosophy use your atheistic philosophy to explain to me where the quantum field came from where energy is physical matter is physical okay take a little introductory course to physics because you boys are because i mean yeah physical is not really well defined i mean you could call something physical if it is in the um how to phrase this if it's if it's part of this the system of course and effect of other physical things then it's physical right so then a real quantum gravity outside of that although that would just be like one way to define the physical we could define the physical as anything that's composite anything that has essence that's a composite being and that is a physical being it's subject to change it's contingent and yeah sorry sorry red hattering we can yeah i was just thinking about that it's an interesting question yes i mean the point here sorry i was just gonna say i mean it in chad and cameron's video um they also had arguments that weren't consistent with each other like from different like theology absolute models of god and stuff like that so i guess so some of these may well be i should uh just qualify what i said uh sub domain of what i said because the the what i talked about essence and existence that also exists for the human soul for the satan and his demons so we would have to take a subcategory of that broader category that i mentioned and talk about matter energy this is probably the best definition of the physical matter energy in space time i think that's the best definition but when you examine any instance of matter energy it is composite necessarily composite necessarily subject to change listen with each other i haven't actually checked that but that but i mean it might it might not be i was just yeah threw that out there too yeah let's just derail the stream uh what was it going to say yeah so the idea here is that if if causation breaks down a quantum gravity realm then it and the earliest parts of the universe are in like temporary earliest parts of the universe in that quantum gravity realm do these morons think that it's ever been observed this quantum gravity creationism that they're fantasizing about has do they think that it's been observed or did they realize that it's speculation based on mathematical models it's speculation on speculation on speculation on speculation it's such a fantasy world that these people live in and when i say these people i mean nathan and james but atheists generally it's a fantasy world these physicists sell books to morons like james and nathan because they're selling a dream they're selling a fantasy it has never been observed the creation of the universe has never been observed by a physicist as an astronomer or by anyone else and if you want to tell me that you can look in a hubble telescope and you can see way back in time and you can observe the quantum gravity field good luck with convincing me of that you're really going to convince me that you've seen a quantum gravity field at the beginning of the material universe is that what you're going to this is modeling it's sophisticated modeling based on a fairy tale based on a fantasy based on a whole buttload of assumptions it's just nonsense just look at your first premise our our best theories of the origin of the universe our best and best of all time the best uh the best today among the competing theories today i mean i've got a better theory for you the uncaused first cause because anything other than the uncaused first cause as the creator of the universe the natural world anything other than that implies the complete contradiction entailed in circular causality circular causality where the effect precedes its own cause so we reject it and we accept the uncaused first cause as the source of all that we see in the laboratory and all we can witness in our day-to-day lives everything that we see in the natural world including humans who possess necessarily logically a supernatural mind supernatural soul we can know this with certainty but you bozos don't know it you don't know anything you just have a fairy tale you have a story given to you by secular scientists all of these secular scientists who are pushing this garbage are very very very poor philosophers then anything any any events they don't have causes and so it becomes impossible for god to cause the universe under that conception that that's the idea of this argument it's impossible for god not to have created the universe there's literally no competing theory there's no competing there is no alternative um so that obviously depends on your conception of causality and so forth now of course we've got the modal version of that it's possibly necessary that causation breaks down and so forth and we've got the bayesian form of that now not every argument has all the formulations because some don't make sense but the um yeah pretty much all them have at least multiple variations here my same critiques apply the problem of induction is absolutely unreliable it's not a reliable pathway to truth and the bayesian just does not apply to things that are not probabilistic that are certain we can know with certainty we don't apply bayesian logic to one plus one equals two we just know it deductively um and you know a proposition like the universe out of quantum origin now obviously we don't know that that for a certain but i would say that's our best theory of you know uh the ultimate origins at the moment and so you know you'd say well it's a lot more plausible than not so so even if q is not taken as certain um you'd still say that that observation or that proposition is evidence in favor of um atheism over theism which is what the bayesian argument establishes it doesn't say how high the posterior probability is it just says that it's a lot higher than the posterior probability of theism um given the update based on this um because it's a conditional probability it's just conditional on this observation it's not saying what what it would be if you condition it on all the other other all right um i'm trying i'm not mentioning that there's stuff going on in the chat but i don't want to like derail us even more than i've already done just so as uh i i don't know how much you want to comment on like there's people talking about like how they're idealists and they can sidestep all of this by doing idealism which like we're like the point of this is to parody what cameron's doing and point out that it's bad methodology um people talking about like how their interpretation of quantum mechanics is gonna get them out of that observer effects debunk this like uh like let's not go down the rabbit hole i don't want to talk about observer effects idealism is interesting though because i mean we are here to talk about the arguments to some extent oh we're not going to defend all the arguments like that they didn't do that in the stream i'm not going to do announce here i'm just going to sort of talk through them briefly um idealism is interesting though because i'm wondering i don't really know if that's even true right because under idealism there's still phenomena and the question is yeah the question is the expectedness of that phenomena under different hypotheses so like traditionally theism holds traditional theism is a realist worldview if you're a theistic idealist i think you can still say so if you're a theistic idealist you're not a christian i guess it's 2.8 first of all the arguments are tailored towards a realist conception of these and which i think is the standard form but the second aspect is that i don't even know if you are like a theistic idealist that that really changes a lot because you could still ask given theistic id uh given theistic idealism how would we expect things to be yeah the god mind simulation would be a particular yeah yeah would we expect that to be causally close within the simulation well we wouldn't necessarily right because god could intervene in the simulation so i i don't think that idealism really gets you around at least most of these arguments um anyway so yeah i'm not not so convinced about that but i mean obviously obviously there are objections to these arguments um and we're not going to go through all the details of them so that's that's not the point here let's keep going um so this is kind of um this is kind of the classic where did god come from um i don't think it's necessarily a good argument but i thought i'd throw it in these can't explain what god came from if they can't explain what god came from it's unreasonable believe in god so it's unreasonable believe in god oh my god strengthen me for this boring task okay so we have the principle of sufficient reason right everything has a your reason is either contained within yourself or in another so the contingent beings have their being from another and the one and only necessary being the uncaused first cause has his being in and of himself this is this is philosophy 101. how do boys sleep at night pushing this nonsense these cannot explain where god came from premise one how do you sleep at night pushing this absolute nonsense pick up an introductory textbook on classical theism this is embarrassing you're surrounded by books both of you you can see in your webcam i can see books upon books what are those books are they fairy tales lies darwin evolution theory what is it because if you claim to be interested in theology especially natural theology philosophy you're reading the word you're reading the wrong books obviously or you're just not digesting what you're reading this is persuasive to some people um i think it's persuasive for atheists who just want to cling to their think that it's interesting that theists won't find this persuasive well obviously but they do find this persuasive when it's reversed like if you say atheists can't explain where the universe came from yeah yeah atheists can explain where it came from they can explain that it came from the uncaused first cause and then they could just say well i don't think that's good right the uncaused i'll grant you the uncaused first cause i've had many conversations with atheists and they say well i'll grant you that there it that there must be an uncaused but can you please stop calling it god because that makes me uncomfortable they don't say that in those terms but they say why should i equate that with god well because that's what god is it's like if you are talking to a pagan sitting by an oak tree and you know you say this is an oak tree and he says yes it is and it's also my god you can't well you can't say well i'll grant you that it's an oak tree but i won't grant you that it's god because the pagan worships the oak tree as god okay he's wrong to worship the oak tree as god but for you to try to argue him out of that it's a manifest fact that that's his object of worship he worships that thing that contingent natural object it's a foolish thing to worship and to adore as god but he just told you that that that's that when the tree is manifest you can reach out you can touch it and the pagan is manifest you can reach out and touch him you have ears to hear what he's saying he says he worships god he worships this oak tree as god so when you say i'll grant you when the atheist says i'll grant you that there must be an uncaused first cause but i don't think that's god you could say well that's fine just like you don't think just like i don't think that that oak tree is god almighty but the pagan i believe the pagan when he tells me that that oak tree is his god i just happen to think he's wrong right so if the pagan could convince someone that the oak tree which is manifest is god almighty good luck with that but if he if he can and obviously he can because paganism is thriving then he'll gain adherence to his religion and it's the same thing with me and my monotheism if i can convince you the atheist that that uncaused first cause which you must acknowledge if you have two brain cells to rub together and if you have free will you're not a monkey bot and a slave to your animal passions which is dimming your intellect and weakening your will and rendering you incapable of the most basic philosophical analysis then i can convince you that that uncaused first cause is the source of everything but it has and that it's it alone is worthy of adoration as god this came from well i think this is why this is such a good argument is because um it's basically going to annoy the right people who are going to say like well that's just you know the question like god exists necessarily like no we don't just hand wave we assume the opposite we say well let's say god does not exist what does that mean it means a circle of causality which is absurd so we reject that and we're left with an uncaused first cause it's that simple guys it's that simple and then yeah you know you get them to like really really strongly commit to something like that and then just offer that about the universe and see the reasons for why they reject it and then offer them back but replace the word universe with god and go in a big circle like that the universe is contingent voice a good point cj even a weak argument does add to the probability so that's it's all it's all important here we don't need strength of arguments to convince us it's not somewhere in the middle of the spectrum it's 100 guaranteed and 100 certain that there is one and only one uncaused first cause and that's what everyone calls god um all right let's see and of course there's a modal form because because obviously anything about um wait hang on oh no sorry yeah sometimes the motor form is actually quite different so this is a different this is quite a different formulation it is possibly necessary that all persons have a causal origin this is actually just some of these are unique to me and this is one that i just sort of thought up it's possibly necessary that all persons have caused origin by s5 um again there's a premise that i've said admitted it is possible that one is true therefore by s5 all persons have a causal origin um you can see there's a typo there that should just say have a cause origin necessarily god is defined to be a person with no causal origin but that's the standard definition of theism so therefore god does not exist again like well if you're maybe there's some heterodox versions of things look premise one says there's no uncaused first cause but we know by the light of natural reason without recourse to faith or any faith-based beliefs or any revelation or anything like that we know with certainty that there is there must be necessarily one and only one uncaused first cause that's the only necessary being that than which nothing greater can be thought we know that you're wasting a lot of time with really really inane arguments here this is logic 101 philosophy 101 classical theater 101 and you boys just don't know what the hell you're talking about isn't that they could escape this argument but i think three is pretty standard conception of theism um so of course you could reject one but then you could say well um you know it seems that there's a lot of evidence in favor of this you could maybe make a conceivability objection if you think conceivability is an argument is points to possibility so uh there's there's things to be said about that okay the fact that james thinks that evidence can help his cause is so laughable all evidence by the very fact that it can be placed under a microscope or examined by a scientist all this evidence these they're natural right you admit that right so it's all contingent so we're right back where we started you can't point to evidence to support atheism because all of the evidence just reinforces the certainty that we have that there is and must be one and only one necessary to talk about evidence is a complete embarrassment um and there's an inductive version of that so every known person has a cause of origin the god hypothesis says that god is a person with no cause of origin therefore we haven't duck events believe that oh lord every known person so is god a known person or an unknown person you could argue both ways right god is unknowable etc and so on there are many theologians that will admit that so if you want to say that if you want to say only creatures have uh only creatures are caused by but then you can't use god in premise two right you're doing a category error here you're switching it up but if you want to say that god is a known person because we don't comprehend god but we apprehend god in prayer and in religious life and contemplation if you want to admit that god is a then premise one is false because we know that god is uncaused so either way you you approach this it's just nonsense and it just betrays a total lack of understanding of natural theology philosophy classical theism you boys are out of your depth um again it's similar to um similar to how craig makes these sort of arguments that well we have lots of evidence that all persons have caused origins so it seems impossible to think that god's the exception to that it's the evidence all these contingent beings that force the thinking person to conclude that there must be one and only one uncaused first cause how many times do i have to say this during this seven hour all right and yep so that was the last example of that now this one ah yes so some of these arguments are borrowed from uh the list of 100 arguments for atheism uh put out by uh philippines yeah that's right felipe leon so some of these are adopted from there actually or taken from papers that he links to um it's sad to think about academia being bloated with so much and nonsense excuse my language academia is bloated with pseudoscience it's nonsense it's an embarrassment all right so i think this is one of them i haven't put citations in by the way oh that's the other thing i was going to say at the beginning i haven't i've literally decided not to put citations in for these so of course that means that they're all irrelevant and you don't have to leave any of them so it's all right but that's just the futility of the atheistic worldview anyway i mean yeah exactly exactly just two moist robots trying to um get more and more serotonin and dopamine like moist robots yeah monkey bots well not actually but in their own conception according to their own stupid no meaning exactly you nailed it no this is sort of yeah i mean a variation of the um a variation of the um argument i just gave essentially but this is appealing to all concrete entities rather than or persons all concrete entities have an explanation outside themselves god is said to be a concrete entity with no explanation outside himself so he doesn't exist i don't know what a concrete entity is but if you are saying in premise 2 that then one is false by definition because the principle of sufficient reason says there are two ways to have your being from yourself or from another right this is not rocket science people you're assuming what you want to prove it's called begging the question circular reasoning it's a fallacy your whole package here of 500 plus arguments and it's full of these fallacies begging the and you could appeal to all sorts of you could appeal to philosophical arguments in for everyone you could appeal to empirical like in favor of one you know you could you could do a bigger song and dance about that um of course there's a modal form of that you know it's possibly necessary that all concrete entities have an explanation of themselves possibly um all conquered entities have an explanation of themselves so by s5 all concrete identities have an explanation inside the cells and therefore god does not exist and there's an inductive form of that which is the same thing again all known concrete entities have explanations outside themselves i should say a concrete entity is something that has like causal powers so like abstract objects are not concrete entities they're abstract so concrete anders would include physical objects as well as something like god or spirits that have any sort of causal powers or can interact with the world okay thanks for the explanation now i agree that god is according to your definition a concrete entity thanks for okay so moving on ah the atheistic kalam is basically just anakilam so the first frame is the same everything begins with just has a cause if you haven't noticed i sped up the video because this is painful painfully boring and repetitive this is just heaps and heaps of the same nonsense number one everything that begins to exist has a cause that is absolutely true the universe did not begin to exist that is false therefore the universe did not have a cause that is false if god exists he caused the universe that is true therefore god does not exist that is false so let's look at this again they're saying that the universe does not have a cause we know that that's false because of the precisely because of the uh contingent nature of the universe right the two options a cycle a circle of cause and effect which is absurd or an uncaused first cause it's the same thing over and over again um really you just have to defend premise two here um and then you were just appeal to philosophical or scientific arguments in favor of that um now the standards like the philosophical arguments of the use of claim would be against the possibility of natural internet but it seems to me here you could just deploy arguments from the impossibility of a course of the universe like well take the theory of causation it seems that most of them don't make any sense of how the universe would have course like the universe is all the space and time and uh um causation is like something happens in the reason that we know the natural is not the whole story the reason we know there's something above aka the super natural that's why we call it the super natural above the natural the reason we know that with certainty even though it's freaky and wild and weird just like uh people get excited about the quantum effect because they're freaky and wild and weird right but the reason we know that there is a supernatural realm is because of pure reason not guesswork not probability not evidence in the sense that you use the word evidence in terms of like forming probabilistic bayesian arguments no but because the evidence itself is contingent always and so to avoid the absurdity of a circle of causation we have to admit we are forced by logic to admit that there is one and only one uncaused first cause that is necessarily supernatural not composed of parts not subject to change so you could develop arguments along these lines to show that it's unreasonable to think that the universe would have a cause so it's basically just an inversion and c is just see it's only think about doing this one way so they never think about the possible you could just do the opposite way you can't just do logic the opposite way logic and reasoning and philosophy when done properly right you don't just have a preferred way of living and then so you adopt the preferred label for your lifestyle or your worldview and then you go ahead and justify it you can only justify perversion by an abuse of logic by an abuse of deduction by an abuse of induction by an abuse of abduction and the bayesian you can't reverse syllogism and argue for the opposite it's complete nonsense especially i guess i guess the the interesting thing about that is i mean if you're a naturalist you you're naturally naturally going to i mean trivially naturally going to deny um at least one of the premises in their depth of argument and then if you just like plug that in but with the other premises it's generally just going to like run the opposite way yeah well that's one of the points you i think it's really busy that there are some people in the chat saying how terrible these arguments are like well but watch cameras i don't think it's any worse than that anyway so we're not defending the arguments we're just sort of giving some um giving some thoughts about them um anyway so okay so you don't you don't have any what's the point why not if his arguments if this camera guy or whoever it was that you're talking about i have no idea if his arguments are flawed if someone gives me directions if i ask directions on the street and someone says turn left and then right and then the guy next to him says oh no those are bad directions turn back go back two streets and hang a left and when i say your directions were bad he says well the other guy's directions were bad too is this does this sound like someone that loves the truth to you does it sound like someone that wants to be or does it sound like someone that's in love with themselves in love with their sin into existence argument and the uh inductive argument and so forth um and so that gets you to the conclusion that the universe had a material cause but god caused the interest of that material course at least at least ultimately um there was an ultimate action of creation that didn't require materials material so from that you get the god does exist um all right i just want to point out that god uses secondary causation okay next one goddess obviously has a primary causation but as i said earlier when i quoted saint thomas aquinas god created the natural realm he set out to create nature in the natural realm and he was not frustrated in his design it's a well ordered material universe in the natural realm there are secondary causes okay it's not like god is doing a miracle on every single cause and effect in the universe he created nature it's what he wanted to do and he was not frustrated in his design does he intervene does he make miracles yes he does do those violate his laws no truth never contradicts truth affection so this is one that i'm increasingly interested in actually um and i think it's called this because um yeah i borrowed it from a paper this particular formulation so it's well that's the idea i have all of the specific syllogisms in my formulation but the arguments aren't borrowed from elsewhere if i was to say here would have reasonable material universe these moles are called the universe for a reason before these missiles oh my god if god existed he could have no reason to create the material universe says who is one of the dogmas of your stupid religion says who have you heard of the principle of sufficient reason everything has a reason everything has a sufficient reason everything no matter how trivial no matter how small and apparently unnoticed by sentient beings everything has a reason for its existence and for its place in the big picture god himself has a reason his reason is in himself everything else has reasons in other beings so promise one is false so i mean you could i think it could reject two by saying god created the universe no reason um but i think that's not standard yeah and hard to wreck yourself these are actually arguments against christianity so if you like you could just make a specific argument against a christian god by saying that so go ahead i think in this case when i've talked to theaters about this they're actually just happy to hold two inconsistent beliefs so they'll believe that a model of god existed who's entirely self-sufficient so has no reason to create a material universe but then they'll also believe that um you know god desires a family or something like that there's no contradiction between saying and yet he created the universe there's no contradiction there if you see a contradiction there it's because you don't understand philosophy theology or god himself right so there's no contradiction and i'll go even further and say that there are no contradictions there are no in god outside of god in the interaction between god and his creation there are no contradictions anywhere zero contradictions ever zero genuine contradictions are there apparent contradictions yes they abound just like the stumbling stones abound for the atheist who loves the creature more than his creator they abound and they're just like happy to sit with that tension and not actually like draw out any contradiction there's a difference between tension which is inevitable because of the finite nature of our intellects there is tension just and i'm aware of the infinite so that's one tension there's another tension in the fact that i have a supernatural mind a supernatural soul and a physical body there's a tension there but there's no contradiction obviously because it's manifest this is what we call a mystery it doesn't mean that it's irrational or unreasonable but it goes beyond so tension is something we all live with but contradiction is something that none of us live with there's no genuine contradiction ever there are stories of contradiction there's apparent contradiction there are uh models that are not coherent and therefore contain these theoretical contradictions like if i say one equals two it's a fantasy story about contradiction but one does not equal two there is no contradiction when i say one equals two or two plus two equals five my lips my tongue my vocal chords my whole body and the air around me that's moving and vibrating is all conforming with god's laws the natural there's no contradiction there because everything is true there's just the fantasy of the lie there's the story of the lie and this is this is the difference there are no contradictions but you can spin a web of deceit but if you examine you zoom in on that web of deceit that you've woven with your mind with your supernatural mind when you say there's no god we evolved from apes and you know sodomy is good masturbation is good pornography is good you're not violating any of the laws of nature you're not everything that you're engaged in whether it's thinking speaking writing doing in acting dancing publishing propaganda for your cult all of that is ontologically good it's all good but the way that you're acting the way that you're behaving the way that you're thinking is falling away from the good it's evil so to understand who and what you are what your human nature is and the nature of god not that we can comprehend even ourselves much less god but to apprehend it and to have a basic catholic understanding of human nature and the nature of god will radically change your perception of how to do philosophy how to do logic and what what is a contradiction what is truth what are lies changes everything transforms everything so nathan i don't believe that you were ever a monotheist i don't believe you're ever a christian i could be wrong i'd love to chat with you again on my live stream on one of your live streams but you've you've strayed so far from christ and it's church and you've strayed so far from classical theism and the beautiful wholesome certain truths of classical theism that i think you really need help you really need to sit down and talk with someone if it's not me then find someone else who understands the fundamental basic philosophy 101 of metaphysics ontology epistemology and all the rest you need to start over if you want to apply radical doubt and go to heart solipsism and start building from there i don't think that'll help you because you've you told me that you were a hard agnostic but i might call a soft solipsist and uh you fell into atheism so i don't know if you have that the mental toughness to go that route you may need to go another way but there's still a philosophical basis that you need to build if you're going to have any chance of becoming a monotheist and once you're a monotheist you're pretty much home free at that point if you become a devout jew devout muslim a devout christian i'll be ecstatic for we very little doubt that you're well on your way into the catholic church yeah so i've heard do you say something like that it's the it's in the nature of which which doesn't make sense because that would seem to be saying that there's something lacking about what he was initially such that he has a movie on that i don't know how you can hold both of those um yeah actually if you think he desires a family or something then it's like well how can how can you say that he's like self-sufficient because he's not got something that he wants there like or i guess i guess you could just define all the terms in like these right when it's like divine self-sufficiency it's like this special like yeah well you just have a lot of words to find in very special ways that apply only to god when it just looks more ad hoc i think causation like that with the column actually i think that the the only type of the only instance where that random causation has happened is when god created the universe it seems to me uh anyway so i think this is one interesting argument would you not expect to be surprised by god and his attributes and it says not that you have any reason to believe the holy books of any monotheistic my ways are not your ways says the lord my thoughts are not your thoughts says the lord so would you not expect really honestly sincerely would you not in your heart of hearts would you not expect that if monotheism is true and god is a personal god would you not expect to be surprised would you not expect to be delighted and astounded by god's truth and by his revelation would you not expect that seriously you gotta raise your bar just a little bit because you're you're setting your bar way too low in terms of what you think god would be if he existed from your atheistic perspective you're setting your bar way too low if god is just a moronic human then yeah he's like you but he's not a moronic human he's god almighty put some respect on his name um and of course there's a modern form of arguments possibly necessarily if they've got succeeded have no reason so that's quite natural there and there's a basic form of the argument of course um based on the fact that the industrial universe does exist so um if god is perfectly sufficient then why does it why do you make any of those okay now this is an interesting argument quentin's uh smith's self-cause universe argument so here's the idea um chronos miss here says that a collection has a cause if only if all of its elements have causes so you can say like um a period of time has a cause if all of the elements like instance say of that time period have a cause and so the second person says the universe is simply the set of events which is a pretty standard way of conceiving of the universe um now if there's a cosmic singularity then every space travel event in the universe could have had a prior cause so basically that's saying that um this is this is an argument that's saying there's there was no first event in the universe for every event that occurred there was an event before that so people know about the um uh the green roof is paradox it's basically a variant or it's the same idea here um so for this to hold then time would have to be infinitely divisible but i mean it could be as far as you know um i mean you know quantum theory maybe would say this but but we don't necessarily know that and this is a philosophical like anyway so the idea here is that you know if you mentioned go back to the first nanosecond well you can have the first half now the second or the first half you know uh put a piece of second or whatever picture second or whatever it is going down and so each event uh before had a cause before that and before that and there was no first cause so what when smith is saying here is that every special temple event in the universe could have had a prior cause and that means that the set of all events had a prior cause but the set of all causes and events in the universe it just is the universe and so therefore uh the universe has a cause internal to itself so this is a sense in which itself caused okay we need to make the distinction between logically prior and temporally prior okay god is not temporarily prior to the natural realm that he created he did not create the natural realm in time he did not sit down at a workbench god is logically prior but he's not temporarily prior because god created space-time he created matter i can't believe i have to explain this basic metaphysics to two people who claim to be interested in philosophy i'm going to just hop over now to the live chats i see jay over here hi jay how are you doing jay's the one who got me started on this uh i don't know if i should thank you or curse you jay because this is a nightmare these these morons are frustrating me but uh no i'm just being silly but thank you very much uh jay i appreciate it god bless you glad to see you here in the live chat glad to take a little break from this frustrating task that you set me up with and then we've got wellmaker dsw2315 a real catchy name you got there hi he created out of desire not need yeah the that's uh we we have to speak of god in uh analogous terms using analogies and the via negativa is a healthy antidote to anthropomorphism so it's a touchy touchy subject but i'm very casual i'm very flippant with my anthropomorphisms and because i know i have a ground i'm grounded my monotheism is grounded in pure reason natural theology philosophy and i'm not in danger of falling into mormonism or any bizarre non-monotheistic religion i'm just not hinduism or buddhism or anything else idealism i'm well grounded in classical theism aka monotheism so and we cannot possibly comprehend god god is a mystery but we know we have the we have the manifest reality in this natural world that forces us to draw many many certain conclusions about god his pure perfections that's enough that's enough to inspire awe fear fear meaning we don't want to offend god it's enough to motivate us to strive sincerely every day and every moment of our day to know god to love god and to serve god in this world so we can be happy with him and forever in the next life so i guess end of rant i'll just continue this boring task and because god is out of the universe if the universe is of course then god didn't course the universe so um if god is sort of a thing that being the course universe and exist under this and of course there's a modal form of that naturally uh anything you want to say about that argument no no i was just i was just thinking um there was a similar argument to the s