Debating One of Academia's Leading Atheists | #6 Dr. Graham Oppy
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Dr. Graham Oppy, professor of philosophy at Monash University and author of the wide-ranging exploring of arguments for God's existence 'Arguing about Gods' published by Cambridge University Press, joins me to discuss the relationship between science and religion, morality and God's existence, the future of philosophy of religion, and what the point of philosophy is in the first place.
For Oppy's, 'The Best Argument Against God,' see: www.amazon.com...
For more information about Oppy and a list of his publications, see: research.monas...
if you're designing a universe, and designing it's inhabitants, why would you need to fine tune? you fine balance.
if god wants life, he should coarse tune.
if life is a zillion to one against, then you're saying god was more likely to fail to create life, god's odds should 1:1 - inevitable, not unlikely.
if god has to make the universe work for humans, whose laws of physics is he following, god should be able to make life from chewing gum and rubber bands.
and as oppy points out early on, is there only one way god can make the universe? god had to decide how to make the universe, was he limited, or could he have made ANY universe and bingo, life? in which case, there is no fine tuning argument to be had. there's no need for fine tuning if the universe can be any way at all.
Hey, Miles. I just discovered your channel today. This was one of the best interviews of Oppy that I've seen. Thank you. You're asking questions and pushing back in ways that I wished many of his other interviewers had done. I'm a theist, but at the end of the day, I think the fine-tuning argument succumbs to the "so what?" objection. Interestingly, Oppy includes this as more or less a side note to start things off. I don't think the fine-tuning argument gets off the ground without strong background assumptions related to the evidence that life itself is supposed to provide in favor of the existence for God; so, I wind up thinking that fine-tuning needs a side-car to balance it, e.g. with whatever is supposed to support the claim that human life makes God's existence more probable. (As a side note, it was terribly annoying reading some of the comments you received here. Sartre was right about hell, haha. Just kidding.)
Since atheism isn't an organized religion, there is no world leader of it, so I'd love for you to explain how Dr Graham Oppy was able to convince you of that fact.
academia's leading doesn't mean he is a leader of any sort it simply means he's well respected in academic circles
you're not on the best page for accuracy.
Could be because Graham Oppy is a merited analytical philosopher known for his interests in philosophical arguments on the existence of god.
Also makes a short and sweet video title.
Why do we have a bottom-up view of Dr. Graham Oppy? 😅😅
Just think, Miles, you could have been a believer in some other religion if you had been born somewhere else in the world, raised by parents of a different belief system. We don't choose our religious beliefs. We are raised into them. It's not like our parents sit us down when about 3 or 4 years and say, "Okay now, here are a dozen of the world's religions and their beliefs. Tell us which one you want us to raise you in."
We certainly choose to remain in our religious beliefs or not, as many deconversion accounts will testify to. So, whatever beliefs I now have are ones that I am responsible for having, at least in some sense. Of course, as with any beliefs, religious or otherwise, we only "choose" them indirectly, by choosing to apprise ourselves of the relevant evidence or not, attempt objective reflection on that evidence or not, etc. But that point applies to all beliefs whatsoever that we hold to.
That's true about atheism too. Those who are born in atheistic societies are more likely to be atheists. So that argument is not special or decisive.
@@mileskdonahue75 But very few people brought up in a religious belief even consider that "choosing" is even an option. Being surrounded constantly by voices reinforcing those beliefs can have a very strong effect on eliminating such thoughts. If we could support our beliefs with evidence, real evidence, there would only be one religion and faith would not be required.
@@mileskdonahue75 odd that atheists pop up all over the world though not very often do baby muslims get born into christian families. it would be interesting to see the stats on buddhist children growing up in hindu families....
At 15:40 Oppy says that stars spelling out the nicene creed are not a fixed property of the universe, unlike the laws of physics which are (or became at some point in the past) fixed.
I think your awesome theistic argument would be immune to his objection if instead of stars spelling out the nicene creed you had, for example, every fundamental particle coming with a label spelling out the nicene creed. Even if we created new particles in a collider, they would also appear with the label. Obviously, the fundamental particles in our universe do not come with any observable labels, but if they did, then you'd have a perfect analogy, since those labels would be a fundamental law of nature.
I wonder what Oppy would say to that sort of scenario...
I think you're quite right, that's a good point. I do still think that Oppy's objection is guilty of overkill, but I'll need to reflect on it more.
@@mileskdonahue75 yes, and I think that a strengthened version of an awesome cosmological argument which puts the nicene creed directly into the fundamental laws of physics can help demonstrate that he would have to simply state "it is a brute necessity that a nicene creed appears on fundamental particles". And I think this shows that stating "once you've reached necessity, there is nothing more to explain" is a cop-out.
To me, the question really is: what credence do atheism and theism assign to the nicene creed appearing on fundamental particles? This is much much less expected on atheism, so we could say this evidence would disprove atheism relative to theism.
Remember also, that Oppy defended elsewhere a view that the causal history of the universe can be traced back to an "Original Necessary Item", which isn't too far from theism. If he were to trace the origin of the law of nicene creed on fundamental particles to this Original Necessary Item, then it seems to me that he ought to identify this Item with God. If he somehow argues his way out of making this identification by some esoteric contrual of what constitutes simplicity or by appeals to "brute neccesity is the end of explanation", then his argument must be deeply flawed and is just a trick of some sort rather than a satisfying position.
@@tymmiara5967 Hear, hear! This is a quality analysis.
@@mileskdonahue75 Perhaps I agree with Oppy that ultimately it will be a matter of personal judgement, but I somehow feel like I find brute contingencies much simpler than brute necessities.
I feel like an explanation "this thing happened as a result of brute contingency i.e. it could have happened but it didn't have to have happened" is a far more modest than saying "this thing happened out of brute necessity i.e. it not only happened because it could have happened, but also it could not have happened otherwise".
I feel like most people in everyday situations would find the latter type of statements epistemically more difficult to make, because you not only need to prove possibility but also necessity.
As far as epistemic statements go, this is uncontroversial. "Possible" is always more modest than "necessary".
The question really is about whether this transfers to ontological statements. It would seem Oppy disagrees that it does.
I think I agree, but ultimately I think it doesn't matter, because I think our minds are completely bound to the epistemic realm. Even when we talk about necessary truths, we almost always consider our own cognitive weaknesses, which leads us to assign non-binary credences.
For example, if you ask someone on the street "is the number 27464737 divisible by 7, they will say 'maybe', and someone else could comment "there is 1/7 chance that it is". But obviously ontoligically, there is no "maybe" or "chance" here. That number is not divisible by seven and that fact is necessary. It serves to illustrate that our minds always by default resort to epistemic thinking. We can't escape it.
Ultimately, we fundamentally operate on emotions such as "surprise" (when we expected a wide range of possibilities, but a very narrow outcome happened, this leads to feelings of positive reward whose ultimate role is to narrow our range of expectations, leading to high confidence) and "disappointment" (which occurs when something occurred outside of our narrow range of expectations, which leads to negative reward, whose role is to widen our range of expectations which can lead to anxiety if we have to widen it so much that we become overwhelmed).
And we always will think emotionally. That doesn't mean we are irrational. These emotions are perfectly rational as far as optimal learning strategies go (you widen an narrow your expectations appropriately to the observed outcomes and eventually your expectations match the true range of possibilities. That's a state of competence). They are, however, completely tied to the epistemic realm.
Which is why I think the real question should be "is fine-tuning more surprising on atheism than on theism?" the answer is "yes" (no matter what your modal theory is). Therefore, a rational seeker should decrease their credence/confidence in atheism and increase their credence/confidence in theism.
I think I cannot adopt Oppy's preference for brute necessities without going into so much cognitive dissonance with epistemic way of thinking about everything.
Exactly how does someone become the world’s “leading” atheist? Who is the world’s “leading Christian”?
The title alone shows a complete lack of comprehension of what atheism is, as well as a profound level of philosophical ignorance.
It may however prove useful in getting clicks/views, so there is that.
I think what would be a better descirption of Oppy is that he is currently quite popular and has good arguments, even William Lane Craig says he is "scary smart" and ranks him among the most formidable atheists in terms of debating skills.
Yeah, how can you be a "leader" of not being convinced of there being a God? Maybe he is a leader of being able to explain why a Gods existence is not a likely proposition.
By being one of the most notable and important philosophers of religion currently operating and with massive influence on various arguments?
This is the one haha
@@fredroberts8275that still doesn’t answer the question. So, who’s the world’s leading theist? Who’s the world’s leading vegan?
I can think of quite a few famous atheists, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais… just of those three, who’s ranked higher? Because I guess they’re all second rate compared to this guy, but now I really wanna know who’s number two! Please explain!
World leading atheist?😂 cool discussion though
Yeah, he believes in God even less than ME! LOL.
My bad 😅