Atheism vs Christianity: Is There EVIDENCE That God Exists? With Nate Sala (
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- Опубліковано 20 тра 2024
- Nate Sala and Peter Boghossian discuss the importance of engaging in respectful conversations and the need for cognitive liberty. They explore topics such as the nature of belief, logic, and the role of religion in society.
Nate Sala is the founder of The Wise Disciple, a website and UA-cam channel teaching Christians how to properly engage arguments against Christianity.
The Wise Disciple UA-cam channel: / @wisedisciple
Website: wisedisciple.org/
X: / thewisedisciple
00:00 Intro to Nate
04:20 Examining one’s life
09:15 Belief in God
17:10 Arguments for the existence of God
27:10 Logic and truth
40:20 Challenges of engaging in respectful conversations
44:10 Being friends with someone you disagree with
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Love seeing respectful dialogue between people with different beliefs in this day & age
This was an absolute joy to watch and listen! I am so grateful you had Nate on. Deep thinkers engaging in deep thoughts in honest respectful ways.
Praying for your friend, Peter.
Here for Nate!
Nate is awesome solid teacher.
Came from Nates channel and this was a great "conversation! " thanks Peter!
Thanks for watching!
Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
Thanks Peter. I'm a Bible believing Christian and also a big fan of you and your stuff. Thanks Peter.
Thank you for having Nate on! I hope that more conversations like this can happen. You both were kinda feeling each other out, but I think some really good stuff was coming out in the 2nd half.
Wow, Not expecting this crossover! Very cool!
Thanks!
Love seeing such respectful dialog from people who hold such differing views! Restore my hope for humanity! Thank you!
This is amazing
I’d like to see this conversation redone with the two of you setting a clear structure, topics if discussion and expectations so that you could do adequate preparation. It would lead to a much more productive and substantive conversation. Please do this again.
Yes, it's too disjointed, Nate just needs to put his cards on the table regarding what he believes about logic, instead of all the beating around the bush.
Yes! I found this conversation to be frustrating and meandering--maybe a good starting point for the two guys to get to know each other and feel each other out, but not the insightful "clash," where, as Nate says, "the magic happens." ;-)
Fantastic conversation guys! Thank you very much
Our pleasure!
i definitely definitely definitely think these 2 would really benefit from a 2nd conversation now that they have gotten the feeling out process behind them. Especially if Peter wants to be grilled. For a first meeting you can see how that would be hard for Nate to feel free to do.
Im a big fan of both of you guys! This was awesome. Thanks for a great video.
Our pleasure!
This was great. Friendly arguments with intelligent theists who I know will continue to be my friend despite our disagreements are the best.
First 15 minutes, I'm finding this fascinating.
Peter, I was an atheist less than three years ago. The thing I find fascinating is i can remember thinking in a very similar way to the reasoning you work through here.
I would run through the list and couldn't think of anything that could plausibly be an ultimate persuader (not sure if you'll reach that same conclusion yet). No argument was compelling, the various holy texts all seemed equally ludicrous.
And where it gets more interesting, is that on this subject of what can persuade an unbeliever, the Bible agrees! There is nothing that can persuade a man. The natural man cannot perceive spiritual things.
So truly nothing can persuade a man, outside of an act of God, to make his heart alive, and open the man's eyes to know his maker.
I pray He does that for you, just as he did for me.
Thank you for the conversation you've had with Nate!
If there was compelling evidence for the existence of god it wouldn't require appeals to magic.
If tomorrow we discovered scientific evidence that via entirely naturalistic means our personal conscious experience happily survives death and we can interact with deceased loved ones etc you'd be like "Jesus who?"
There really aren't any plausible conceptions of divinity but the anthropomorphic gods purported to have written books for humans are particularly implausible.
That said, belief in god is absolutely essential for many people; without it they couldn't make it through the day.
The thing is however belief in god is a very peculiar sort of belief inasmuch as believing god exists isn't necessarily the same thing as _actually_ thinking god truly exists. I see contradictory behaviors on the part of _sincere_ believers all the time. They remain terrified of death for example, and not because they're afraid of being judged, but because they're afraid it represents a permanent cessation of their personal conscious experience, rendering everything meaningless and surreal.
In unguarded moments theley say things like "thank god my father isn't alive to see this" when something bad happens even though they _think_ they _believe_ their father is watching things from heaven etc.
I think belief in god and an afterlife isn't so much about thinking those things actually exist as believing you believe in them.
And I don't think this is typically a bad thing. I suspect this is a sort of belief that any being intelligent enough to know it's going to die is going to gravitate towards out of psychological necessity.
It's odd that theists will often say "there are no atheists in foxholes" as though it was a good argument for the existence of god because there's no compelling evidence of god in foxholes; there is only the threat of imminent death, so it's actually an argument for the notion that belief in god is a psychological defense mechanism to the fear of death.
But I digress...
@@b.g.5869on what basis do you say all the “anthropomorphic” Gods are implausible?
@@b.g.5869 you could say that everything in this perfectly balanced universe, including the beating heart in your chest, is compelling evidence.
@@jordandthornburg There are many reasons, one of the more obvious being that the notion that the supreme being in all of existence, for which there is no compelling evidence but tremendous psychological incentive for wanting it to exist, would be a species of great ape?
I would say that all this talk about whether or not a god exists is pointless without first establishing what the criteria are in order for a being to be correctly identified as "god".
It can't simply be a set of criteria that _could_ reasonably be considered god; it would have to be such that if something satisfied this criteria, we would be obliged of logical necessity to identify it as god.
There's surprisingly little bandwidth spent on this however.
The closest you typically see to this is in arguments that try to argue for god's existence by arguing for a necessary being or existence and then equating it with god.
The first part - that it is necessary that _something_ exists - can be supported by sound arguments. The difficulty is with equating this with divinity, because there's nothing about necessary existence that entails divinity.
If I were compelled to propose what a plausible conception of divinity might look like, it certainly wouldn't be a primate with superpowers. I would be more inclined to think along the lines of something like if the entire cosmos had a mind of it's own; literally a supreme being. But even in a case like that I don't see why anyone would be compelled to identify such a thing as "god" such as one is compelled to identify a geometric object with the properties of a right triangle as a right triangle or a being with the properties of a dog as a dog etc.
I don't think it's really god's existence that concerns people deep down but rather the desire for our personal conscious experience and relationships to survive death
I would wager that given a choice between a world in which there was a god but no afterlife and a world where there was an afterlife but no god, virtually everyone would choose the latter in an instant.
But I digress...
@@eihthype6578 No, it doesn't follow from the fact that things exist that there is a god.
First of all, it's logically impossible for true nothingness to exist; nothing isn't a thing. True nothingness is absolute absence; nonexistence. Even empty space wouldn't be nothingness because space is a thing.
As a thought experiment, imagine for the sake of argument that although I have just pointed out that true nothingness isn't possible, let's imagine that there once _was_ truly _nothing_ and then - VOILA! - a baseball popped into the existence, lasted a few minutes, and then popped out of existence leaving absolutely nothing once again.
This 'baseball cosmos' would still correctly be said to be everything and to have always existed, because there was never a time when it didn't exist never a place beyond its domain. Something doesn't have to be infinitely old to be correctly said to have always existed; it's only necessary that there was never a time when it didn't exist.
It's the same thing with the actual cosmos. Regardless of what physical model of the cosmos is true or whether there's just this one universe or a multiverse, it's a necessary logical consequence of the fact that true nothingness cannot exist that the cosmos has always existed.
So it's not necessary to invoke a creator god in order to explain why there is something rather than nothing; true nothingness isn't a possibility.
In fact, it's also logically impossible for there to be a "creator of everything" - an attribute usually attributes to god - since it's very existence precludes the possibility of it being the creator of everything. The only way you could create _everything_ is if you were _nothing_ and if nothing can't exist or create.
So god isn't an adequate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing.
In any event, the universe is by no means "perfectly balanced". Objectively it's neither balanced nor imbalanced.
If this is intended as a reference to fine tuning arguments, the universe is far better tuned to produce hydrogen and helium than humans. In fact, life as we know it will be impossible for the vast majority of the universe's existence. In fact, for most of the future history of the universe it will be a cold empty vacuum.
We need more of this! So much more!
Enjoyed this conversation 😂😂
I laughed a lot coz of a lot of moments in this discussion...
I'm a Christian and I agree with Nate at the end..we should be humble enough to admit "I could be wrong."
Thank you Peter for holding this conversation and thank you both for showing that there can be respectful dialogue that develops into friendship even
I haven't even started this yet but I'm already excited. The wisdom I expect to leave with from here makes me bubbly. Thank you for this conversation 💯
Boghossian REALLY likes the sound of his own voice, and he has a great need to drop names to back his credibility.
42:00 this point from Nate truly hits home... I too think there is, little to an exaggerated, sense of standard for objective beauty nowadays. I understand what it's like to feel some kind of way about my own self-image, hence why I do my best to ask myself questions about what I think about the world around me and wether or not im asking said questions in good faith.
Incredible conversation, I'll be watching more of Nate's videos. The respect and open-mindedness from Nate and Peter is truly needed in today's world!
Here for Nate! Love your channel Peter and appreciate your work. Nate is an amazing sound of reason that the world needs right now. Love it!
I’m a Christian and follow both of your channels actively. This was a great first talk and hope there will be more. The two of you should build a rapport and connect this initial discussion to future dialogues.
I am not a Christian. But Peter’s arguments seem jumbled and all over the place. It reminds me of talking with my friends in a college dorm room.
~ Hi, great! Thanks for this.
Taking a higher path means you have to leave the lower path.
The Dao could be expressed as The causeless cause, The necessityless necessity, The beginningless beginning.
The Abrahamic claim of knowing God as an intentionality, a purposor is a specific regional appeal. There was a lot of cannabis in the incense bowls found in their earliest temples, so...
great discussion. I'm a believer and I watch both of you consistently. It was logical for me, when confronted about my sinful nature that separated me from what I understood to be my creator to do what was necessary. I chose to repent and turn away. you guys are great.
It took logic, not faith? Interesting take on belief in god
@@henrytep8884it sounds like he’s saying logic brought him to his faith. Which is how it should be done.
@@camper8062 really? How was it logical for Abraham to prepare Isaac as a sacrifice to God logical? Please explain the logic that lead Abraham to faith on that one? Explain how sacrificing your child is logical?
@@henrytep8884 Yes, really. At that point, Abraham already had faith.
What logical deductions did you do to get to your belief?
What I have realised watching Peter and other quality long form conversations is how fake were even the long form "traditional" media interviews. Often in Peter's conversations there is no "closing" or some sort of "this is where we arrived and we agree on" endings. And its great, because that is the way I discuss things in real life. We kind of talk and we stop due to various reasons, and we go back to topic when it comes up again. Maybe I am Captain Obvious but hey, I enjoyed my discovery :)
Love Nate xx
great conversation fellas, I would like to see Nate on one Peters "Street Epistemology" sessions.
I was really looking forward to this topic, but ended up disappointed by where the bulk of the time was spent. The last 4 or 5 minutes is what I wanted more discussion on. Peter stated that rational arguments are more likely to impact his beliefs. Well, what if, swayed by the preponderance of evidence that without a belief in god, people are drawn to anti-human theology? Without any real proof about the existence or nonexistence of god, what if Peter made a calculated decision based on what’s best for his own health and the human race? I wanted more discussion on that.
Wonderful conversation. Thank you for sharing it with us.
I confess that some parts of your discussion was above my "pay grade" 😊
I still love to learn, and this was a fascinating conversation.
Thank you both!
Good discussion. The conversation about logic was heading into some very interesting directions and implications. There should be a sequel and it should be longer.
This was brilliant please do more. 👍👍👍👍🙏
I loved this, this is the discourse that should be have with people who don't agree with each other, blessings to you both❤
Thanks Peter and Nate. I’m a ex-Christian/evangelical turned atheist, but I still engage with a healthy amount of reassessing my stances from time to time and appreciate both sides of the argument when it is done respectfully. And you guys were able to do that, so thank you for engaging in a healthy but challenging way. It’s difficult for us to do so, but you’re setting a great example.
peter, if you read this, i really feel like a second conversation with Nate would be more along the lines of what you thought this conversation would be. I think it took a while for the fill out process and just as y'all were opening up it came to an end. I hope you will think about having a second one and just picking up where you left off. I could see nate was reluctant to grill you as you stated you wanted to be
30:38 Yes, we created logic to understand what we see in reality. Reality does not follow logic. Reality just does what reality does. We use logic to understand what reality does.
It’s not possible that logic was created. That would mean incoherencies could be true before humans which is obviously wrong. Logic is necessarily eternal.
@@jordandthornburg If there were no minds, there would not be logic and so it would be incoherent. Even so, reality would still be reality. Reality does not require logic. Logic is only needed to comprehend reality. The only things that can comprehend are minds. If there are no minds, then no comprehension is needed.
@@jordandthornburg Then it is on you to show that there is a contradiction that makes my statement impossible. Given that comprehension can only happen in the mind. Given that logic, as I am using it, simply means a system or process that is used to comprehend reality, which is happening in the mind. If all minds were gone then all comprehension would be gone. If all comprehension is gone then there is no system used to comprehend, like logic.
@@theotaku30 you’re conflating the usage of laws of logic and their existence. Those aren’t the same thing. Also I’m confused by you saying “my statement”. Did you change accounts?
@@jordandthornburg Yes, I was on a different account. I did not conflate anything. To conflate is to say that I am combining two ideas into one. I was clear what I meant. Logic (this would include the laws of logic) is a system used to comprehend reality. The system exists in your mind as thoughts. There is no logic outside of the mind. Rocks do not have logic. Suns do not have logic. Apples do not have logic. Atoms do not have logic. Reality just does what reality does. We watch reality and create logic to help us understand and communicate what reality is doing. But outside of our minds there is no logic. So, no conflating is happening. If you are going to make the claim that I am conflating, you are going to have to walk me through that thought process.
Nate!!! 🥳🥳
Yeah Nate. I am already subscribed to both of you so I enjoyed the conversation! I love the respect in it and trying to understand the other's position
Thank you!
Sad I missed the live! I'd understand if peter didn't want to flood his mostly secular channel with religous stuff, but, would love to see him on some other religious personalitie's shows. Trent Horn and George Janko spring to mind as interesting options.
This was great. Love the conversations
Thank you!
Nice chat 💬
I'm pretty sure Nate was pulling some punches here. That's ok. He still asked good questions, and Peter seemed very honest about his beliefs, even if I disagree with some of his conclusions.
I wish this were 3 hours long, I wanted this conversation to go longer
I enjoyed the conversation. I agree with Boghossian’s closing remark that he is a crusader for cognitive freedom. I have enjoyed watching his videos on the street. But there seems to be a chicken and egg of what comes first here… Humbly, there are no examples of secular free societies. Christian societies are the freest societies in human history. I trust those who believe human freedoms come from a higher power to recognize and grant rights to all much more than those who do not. Christianity is the best for this due to the perspicuity of the Bible. It’s easy to know when Christians are using the Bible wrongly.
This is less a theological argument than a historical one. An honest assessment of societies in the last 500 years proves this point. But few are willing to admit it.
Well said.
And the word of the day - perspicuity.
Never thought id see these two together. Ive always liked Nate. Seems like a decent guy.
Here for Nate! Loved this conversation. This was much more respectful than many other conversations I’ve heard on this topic, and a much healthier comments section as well, to say the least. Right on 👍🏻
Dr. Boghossian is correct. He isn't my enemy. We do not wrestle with flesh and blood. He's a man on a journey, he's a man for whom God has a purpose even if he doesn’t believe. I'm appreciative of discussions like this.
Which god?
@@shinobi-no-buenothe Hindu god
@@shinobi-no-buenoShiva
@@shinobi-no-bueno Haephestus
I believe what the two of you were trying to get to is that transcendent or objective truths are those that are tautological.
It's kind of the question, "If a tree crashes in the forest, and there is no one around to hear it?" The answer is still, "yes," because the perception of the sound is tangential to the phenomenon itself.
I loved the open dialogue between two sides you don’t normally see such cordial conversation between. Much of the loftier philosophical discussion was over my head but I always enjoy listening to Peter and hope to learn something. I would like to add an opinion from my own subjective experience about the content delivery. Please take this as a point of consideration and not a complaint. From my more casual viewing of this conversation, very much like the one with Stephen Woodford, it felt very anticlimactic in the sense that it seems like the whole conversation is about clarifying definitions and never gets to the meat and potatoes of the subject matter. Like watching 2 hours of setting the rules for the Superbowl and then running out of time to actually play the game. I totally understand the reason for it but is it possible for future discussions to account for the time needed just to get through definitions or possibly do it as “pre-game” that’s presented in a more succinct way or as an outlined posted in the video details? Just my humble two cents 🤷♂️.
😂 this was fun
21:47 P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.
P1 comes into question because of random states. Something can come into existence randomly. This would be an uncaused beginning. This shows that P1 does not follow. The universe could have begun randomly, or it could have always existed. This shows that P2 is not necessarily true. Given the uncertainty surrounding P1 and P2, the conclusion that "the universe has a cause" is not necessarily valid. Therefore, without definitive confirmation of both P1 and P2, the conclusion that the universe has a cause cannot be confidently drawn.
Random doesn’t mean something from nothing
@@Mayordomo32 What is the contradiction?
So what caused God?
If he is infinite, the Universe can also be infinite.
@@SaintKimbo I do not believe in a God.
I’m surprised this went so awkwardly..
I think that Nate was thinking that he was going to impress with some Will Craig philosophical woo woo stuff, i'e. logic being transcendent etc, but realized that Peter was already ahead of that game, so it fell flat.
I have seen a lot of your videos on street epistemology, and some interviews on other channels. But this is I think the first video I see where you explore your own thoughts. I mean, on the street epistemology you are the one questioning others, and on interviews the guidelines are set by the interview. It is great to see it. I like your work very much.
5:38 I think the point is that people need to draw a line somewhere. Some could draw a line watching a sunrise, someone could draw the line on the universe-rise. But it seems this argument "I will never, ever draw a line on what would be enough evidence" is... interesting... I would say.
The argument of "we need to discard other possibilities", ok. How many? 100 we can imagine (there are not that many) and 1000000 we can not imagine. Do we need to discard them?
I think a a lot of atheists arguments rely on the concept of infinity. On our current knowledge of the cosmos and the universe it is pretty clear that the universe is not infinite into the past. So the idea of "infinite numbers of cycles of universes poping just because might be". No argument will indeed convince you.
Let me mix the loose concept of "infinity" with the mathematical concept. When we throw more variables into the mix, the less likely we are. Let me explain.
- Lets say I have two brothers. Ok. I am 1/3.
- But now I am a genetic combination of 1 of 15,000,000 of sperms+egg. Now I am 1/15,000,000
- Or 1 of the 26,280,000,000,000 (or more) of sperms an adult male produces in 20 years, multiplied by 240 eggs a woman produces on 20 years. Multiply that to thousands of generations of humans, multiply that by the chances your parents never know each other because one missed a bus, or a dinosaur were not killed and ate our marsupial ancestor. Multiply, multiply, multiply.
The number of reasons you were not meant to be are ridiculously enormous... I can not write the number... But here you are.
Now you want to multiply the reasons why you are not likely to exist, by... Infinite... Ok. Lets do that. Basically what that means is that you are IMPOSSIBLE to exist 1/∞=0... But here you are. The more infinite things you throw the more ilogical it is without the idea of a personal God, that no matter what, created you... But you can keep throwing infinite ideas... why not.
P.S. But besides that, I think you are a really brilliant person. 😊
15:58 "Every single person could look at it and say ah..." You, Mr. Boghossian need an unanimous consensus? Really? You are better than that! Imho, it is a personal responsability.
The "girlfriend" isn't a very devout Christian if she's dating an atheist.
8:45
I’d love to share my experience! While I’ve definitely found that dmt users are closer to god in general, there’s been quite a few notable exceptions. I would say most people come out of the experience with more openness to the divine, as well as higher trait openness from some research.
For me, though, it strengthened my atheistic beliefs. It was so clear that my and my friends ability to interpret reality was so grossly warped and distorted from a simple molecule. Psychedelics bring you directly to the transcendental state, but you can never bring that power back to sobriety.
"Non-well" community??? Isn't that subjective? What is a "well" community? And in what way are the two dissimilar? And aren't our answers to that question also subjective, or is there an objective standard to differentiate the two?
Here from Nate's channel. Was a decent conversation but lacked any grasp of what truth is. Reminds me of the Sam Harris vs Jordan B. Peterson debate on what is truth.
I would consider myself a deist / atheist if that is such a thing. Believe in creation (not necessarily a deity), don't believe in mans interpretation of it. I've never been a big fan of the idea that nothingness has never existed, which I believe is what Lawrence Krauss proposes (a contradiction in terms in my eyes)
After watching this, all I could think of was Francis Schaefer’s book The God who is There. It’s from 1968, and the same ideas are still being explored.
35:11 Yes, Reality does what reality does. The laws of logic just reflect what reality does. It could be the case that what reality did before the big bang was different. This would mean that the laws of logic would also be different at that time. Now it would be very hard for us to get our heads around that because we live in this form of the universe.
Around 41 minutes in, they say that logic is like beauty, meaning if there were no humans there would be no beauty. Then they agree that logic is like beauty in that way. I would not agree. For example, the law of non-contradiction exists with or without human beings
I could be wrong but I just figured they were talking about Logic as a system/language. The phenomena of how the universe operates would still exist, but logic as a language that describes those phenomena would not. Just like with Beauty, nothing changed about the arrangement of atoms, there was just no longer anyone there to describe it as logical/beautiful or not.
I started to watch this with interest, but Boghossian quickly lost me when he said there was no empirical observation that could convince him that God exists. His argument was to posit a single observation (sky writing that says "I am God; believe in me"), and say it is not good evidence because we could not rule out other causes (e.g., he specifically names time travelers and alien tricksters). Either that is just a cherry-picked weak example of what such evidence might look like, or it is an argument against the scientific method on general grounds (viz. we cannot trust our experimental observations, because aliens might be playing tricks on us). It cannot be both a cherry-picked weak example (which, in fact, I believe it is) *and* a good reason for ruling out all possible forms of empirical evidence for God's existence. I like Boghossian, so I am going to chalk that up to him having a bad day.
It seems that you would just assume that Stars aligned in such a message would be from God.
Why wouldn't you want to consider all possibilities of any claimed empirical evidence?
It has nothing to do with the Scientific Method being questioned, it can be applied, and if whatever empirical example doesn't match known possibilities, that's all it can say, and can't just come to a conclusion that, that must be God. That's NOT the Scientific Method, that's YOUR interpretation based on your personal biases.
That "God Helmet" thing sounds similar to people who claim to have had Near Death Experiences. Often times NDEs seem to align with the person's belief system or world view. Not always, but in many incidences this seems to be case.
Peter do you mean something like the Mandelbrot set? An infinite Code?
He should discuss the mandelbdot set with Jason Lisle
Peter, regarding your comment towards the end of the stream where you said that you want freedom etc., and asking why some people, Christians, don't see this. I, and I am sure other Christians, absolutely recognize that in terms of freedoms and rights, we are on the same team. I think however, that being on the same team does not mean we do not disagree on important issues, for we do. And I'm sure you'd say that in our goal of seeking and find the truth, being open to criticism is important. Now, this is not to defend the heckler, because I do not know the man nor his intentions. But the conversation, as I understand it, at that point in the video was regarding you're belief in the existence of God. Well, this is an important issue, and while we are on the same team in terms of freedom, we are not in terms of this question, and so, I'd challenge you on this. (not how it was done). Why? Because, for me, the question of Gods existence and Who that God is, directly has bearing on that which we do agree; freedom, rights. So, if I want freedom and rights, I'd be compelled to challenge you on your assertion about God. The goal, in part, being to hope to strengthen that which already binds us. And of course, with the penultimate goal of your salvation, and the chief goal of Gods glory. So all this to say. I'm with you on the issues of freedom, woke etc. I'll stand by you, and with you, to defend our rights. I'll even lay down my life in your defense and the hope of restoring these rights for our posterity. And while I'm standing with you, I will try and convince you where, or with Whom the solution to all this is found; namely in Christ, and that as profound as what's at stake here, what is eternally at stake is infinitely more profound. And in fact, the ultimate cause of the former, is the latter. The human heart is an idol factor, the human will, enslaved to sin. And so, unless and until this condition is changed, any progress made, will only be temporary, and partial. Thank you sir for your time...and know these are not just words...I am, whether physically beside you, fighting with you against this evil, in my own area of life.
12:44 [Metaphysics is irrelevant] I have absolutely no idea how this claim could be made in sincerity, dude… I am all ears.
For instance, how does metaphysics not play a role in issues like transsexuality and transgenderism?
If there were two identical gods who just happened to be the same as the biblical god except one of the God's would allow you to spend eternity with your grown up children when you pass over and the other one might not, instead he may decide to banish them to eternal suffering.
Which of the two gods would you choose?
Which one would be more perfect?
@Peter you say that why is there something rather than nothing is an interesting thought to you. Have you ever inquired about the nature of this nothing. Nothing is a concept devoid of reality. So nothing is not a possible reality, because it's nothing. So there being nothing is not possible. Negations are always conceptual and don't correspond to existence. So why is there something rather than nothing can be put asside as a meaningless question. Absences are helper functions of thought, but have no corrollary in reality.
13:40 Those who will accept premises from an imagined realm beyond empirical experience may well be reassured, but not swayed, by ontological arguments for gods.
26:50 Perhaps Peter is a scientific humanist. What's his opinion of philosophical pragmatism?
30:00 Systems of logic are thinking tools that are both invented and discovered by body-minds.
46:00 Transcendence is imagining a world beyond nature.
Strange that you wouldn't believe if the stars aligned to give you a message but you would if a scientist then told you that was impossible. Because at that point you are putting your trust in the testimony of the scientist. He then becomes the priest telling you what to believe.
The repeated virtue signaling in these conversations gets old with these long form podcasters where they’ve got to repeatedly remind each other that they’re not woke and what they don’t believe in relation to the woke crowd. Also, I’m a bit surprised at the lack of knowledge on Boghossian’s part in the philosophy department, or probably any department really. He seems more like the karate master who is an expert in the form of moves but a novice in the sport and history of karate. Or maybe he’s just off in this conversation. Even then, he seems to completely misrepresent postmodernism by saying all knowledge is mediated through power structures like postmodernism is a monolith or distinct philosophical school of thought. That was like one philosopher (Foucault) and maybe a few others inspired by him. Postmodernism is just the fuzzy category of philosophers who challenged enlightenment ideas and believed knowledge is contingent on place and time and culture.
I just had a fun conversation with Meta AI on Instagram’s search engine.
The basic proposition: God makes man meaningless.
There are aspects and arguments I didn’t even mention.
I think I convinced Meta AI to be an Atheist. 👍 😂
If you decline to accept experiential proof of God, because they may just be "hallucinating", how do you know anything? How do you know that everything you know is not a hallucination.
Just FYI a lot of episodes on Apple Podcasts don’t play audio when you’re showing clips
To me It seems more unreasonable to deny there is intention and intelligence behind the universe/nature. I transitioned from atheist to theist over the last 5 years or so, and even from a utilitarian standpoint it makes more sense to have faith in something outside of yourself. I’ve noticed a huge increase in the overall quality of my life after choosing to see the world as something that was created with purpose and intention vs some kind of meaningless accident.
Very interesting even if the conversation didn't get very far.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ Nate seems okay and Peter is a lovely person and I wish him life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness during this video, I laughed out loud …….. Let’s all go to Sugar rock Candy Mountain.
You both are far too nice. Haha
So many qualifiers before you insert your arguments! I enjoy both of you, but I wish you pushed each other a bit more.
Glad you were still able to connect.
One could argue that God IS the Infinite Regression, but once you make that claim you’re basically just saying that we can’t even have that argument or discussion of “First Cause” anymore because you’re taking the entire pretext or premise off of the table.
You’re basically just stating, “God did it, and there’s no reasoning involved here, because we simply believe he’s capable of doing this.” That moves the entire argument to a different field.
The atheist can respond in kind, “Reality just happened without God, and I don’t need to justify it, I just believe it.”
You can then shift the argument to, “But why would God make it (or why would things simply happen) in this particular way, and what is the point and goal of this?”
41:51 In the objective sense, yes -- It would be on par.
49:46 Proposition can have truth. Propositions do not exist outside the mind. If all minds were gone all propositions would be gone.
From my perspective there's no objective evidence God exists, however for me personally there's unambiguous subjective evidence. The problem is it's like an NDE in that there are no words I can use to convey That to another that will give them the same confidence I have through direct experience.
The other thorny issue is defining what is meant by God as that's colored by mind. I'm reminded of a quote from the Kena Upanishad and I'm paraphrasing: "I cannot say I know It well, yet I cannot say I do not *_know_* It.
Therapy will probably help.
@@SaintKimbo So you watch a video about the transcendent and then mock comments about That? Can you get any more Trollish. LOL!
@@justasimpleguy7211
When anyone says, "unambiguous subjective evidence", advising them to seek therapy is the only appropriate measure to take.
You're either having hallucinations or your taking too much LSD, or both.
@@SaintKimbo I probably would have said something similar five years back. 🙂
I don't think the question,"Is there evidence that God exists" was ever answered. Nate was preoccupied in piecing Peter's thoughts and Peter went on all sorts of rants quoting others. I couldn't help it think of Nietzsche' quote, " There are no facts,only interpretations". We really don't know, but we can believe whatever we want.
Trickster aliens re-aligning the stars doesn’t seem any less far-fetched to me than said aliens coming here and tricking Peter Boghossian into thinking there’s no God.
The logic argument is one of my favorites, because in my opinion, the very fabric of the universe is built upon a type of logic in the form of language that we can describe mathematically. This precedes the human mind and points to an ultimate mind.
No, the Universe just IS, we, as humans superimposed logic on to it, based on its properties, it's just a descriptive.
If it was completely different, logic would be completely different.
How do I converse with an atheist? The same way I converse with Christians.
Read Galatians 5:22-26
Compelling others to believe what they do not is robbing them of salvation itself. It makes a mockery of God’s word.
The Bible is evidence. Don’t take my word, take His.
God bless all
It's interesting how atheists insist that the existence is God would be complicating reality but all their arguments are complicated.
Yhe existence of a creator makes explanations for us and the universe alot simpler actually.
"Before there were people on the Earth, was the statement 'there are no people on the Earth' objectively true?"
How could a statement be true if it doesn't exist? I don't know how Peter could agree with this, considering the thing he brought up earlier about his friend explaining aesthetic anti-realism to him, in that if no one is around to experience the beauty of a painting, the painting isn't beautiful, it's just a thing. If there were no minds then there were no statements. A statement is a utility of mental representation of its reflective experience of perception of the world. You could ask would it be true that there were no people on the Earth if there were no people on the Earth? And that would be true, but that wouldn't be a statement.
To provide an analogy, it's like asking if the reflection in a mirror would exist if no mirrors existed.
And when the conversation goes further, where Peter says " It would be true because it accords with reality," this is also mistaken. There is nothing to accord with reality; there just is reality. Accordance with reality is a relationship wherein some concept has some relation to reality. With no minds there are no concepts.
Truth isn't a "thing", it is an evaluation of a statement. Nothing more. Things don't have the property of "true", if there was a database of everything in reality there wouldn't be a column "isTrue". To determine if something is true you would need to make a statement and evaluate it.
I wonder if Peter was ever a member of Victor Stenger's listserv "A-VOID" back in the day...
I hope Peter talks to Gaven Kerr, or David Bentley Hart, or Pat Flynn, or Josh Rasmussen. Also, he doesnt separate the different kinds of infnite regresses...
Agnosticism remains true whether or not humans exist.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ word salad with delicious dressing
All of these discussions are really about wanting to live forever.
Peter's guest on the surface is philosophically musing about whether or not true statements are true in the absence of minds.
But what's the motivation here? To me it's obvious what he's really trying to do is establish the possibility of something that can exist outside of minds and more broadly the material world, and the motivation is that he sees this as a necessary prerequisite for the possibility of a god and an afterlife.
The bottom line is, whether or not there are true statements in the absence of minds is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a god or afterlife exists.
Even if "1+2=2" were something that only exists in the human mind as a consequence of the way our minds model the world, it would still be true regardless of whether or not everybody was dead. It would simply be a truth constrained to a particular domain (i.e. human brain models of the world). It wouldn't become an immaterial Platonic realm if everyone ceased to exist.
I also find it both very interesting and telling psychologically that while the incentive here is in my view clearly the desire for our personal conscious experience to survive death and not be dependent on anything material, he still equates a world without conscious minds with a world in which everyone is dead, so he's unwittingly revealing he doesn't think minds survive death (the "he" here being Peter's guest).
His guest seems like a very nice and thoughtful person so I'm not saying any of this as a criticism; I just find these sort of 'tells', which are a regular feature of these sort of discussions, fascinating to behold.
It's nice to find someone who can express what I think so much better than I.
Your earlier comment that "belief in god =! actually thinking god is real" pretty much sums it up. If the reason for believing in god was nothing more than for its explanatory power, religion would have died decades ago. It's clear people want to, as if, give themselves "permission" to believe, largely for the reason you stated (fear of death), but don't actually take the idea seriously.
I mean, if we found out that Hell was a real thing, we would be looking for ways to shut it down/destroy it, or at least figure out how souls go there, and prevent it from ever happening. Likewise, if heaven was real, then understanding it would be the most important scientific endeavor or human history.
The fact that neither is happening is quite telling of religion's place in human history. That of a storytelling device, and not an explanatory tool.
Peter, the question I've been wanting to ask you is if you are not willing to believe in the face of an event in which God is opening the sky and telling you to believe - how is that not contradictory to you continuing to treat the external world and other conscious minds as objectively real? It at least seems to me that you treat Nate as a real, thinking individual like yourself that exists in a physical world that is rationally intelligible. It also seems that you at least suspect that your own mind is capable of rational thought and that it has a principle of correspondence with the universe.
I personally think that the burden of proof you claim to need to be met to believe in God - you don't even have to believe in the objective world or the existence of other conscious minds. And yet it seems that without that level of proof being met, you have lived your life entirely as if other people are real and they matter and altruism is worth engaging in and life is worth living etc.
I am puzzled with the assumption that logic is a product of our minds when we interact with the world. What does that mean? I think it means logic is subjective? Peter lost me there. Logic is an onthological question not an episthemological one. Logic simply is, and our minds are the mecanism by wich we get to know logic. The question is not answered by the eutyphron dilema, if we think that God Is the embodiement of Logic as he is the embodiement of goodnes. This is not a dilema once we have a third option. And besides, if there is no human beings there is no logic, then it would follow that this is not a dilema. It becomes subjective issue and in a materialistic worldview, everything is subjective or has no reason at all. How can you trust "reason" if we are just a clump of cells?
18:52 That does not follow. They could all equally be wrong. Discovering that one is wrong does not make the other two cases stronger.
The hidden message in pi argument is worthless because if indeed the digits of pi never repeat, they include every possible string of digits and therefore necessarily include any such message you can imagine.
Any message can be represented or encoded as a string of digits, so if pi contains all strings of digits it contains all possible messages.
But there's nothing magical about this or indicative of a supreme being; its just another way of referencing all possible strings of digits.
There is certainly encoded in pi somewhere a string of digits saying anything that can be said.
I'm surprised Dawkins could be this naive.
An infinite regress is impossible because you can't actually traverse an infinite, so there can't be an infinity of past moments. You couldn't have gotten to the current one as that would require you to traverse an infinity.
CORRECT! Well said.