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He really pushed you to the limits but you were patient and wise and treated him well. Any tips for finding time to do focused solo work like writing and carving when you have a family?
This discussion was exciting. You're actually getting better at talking to atheists. I was wondering whether you and John Vervaeke would be there when Jordan Peterson talks to Richard Dawkins? I am afraid I still don't see how he is going to bridge the gap between him and Dawkins successfully. But maybe I am wrong.
Peter; you deny your Armenian heritage as it was the first Christian nation ✝️. The original family name is Janbazian changed at Elis Island. How do you establish the premise that God can't exist or is improbable when science is limited in its knowledge and ability to test the physical Universe.. Not able to test the Supernatural. Most Christians that have any knowledge of Islam know many Muslims believe Allah took Jesus to heaven and put someone else in his place on the Cross ✝️. Quit talking down: to us : Peter!!! So, pathetic listening to you.
Have you ever talked to John Vervaeke? Might be somewhere in between you and Jonathan. Probably closer to you than Peterson and someone I think understands both pretty well.
Have you consider that the power of prayer is in the one who answers, not the one who prays? And that power would obviously be subservient to the His will? The study, did it work within a particular understanding of God? What framework was used? Is this God who was prayed to obligated to answer in a particular way? I’m sure you get it. Why then take it into consideration at all? What did it really prove? Seems to me the study was not a study at all, but a test of an individual.
Based on the conversation, here are some key aspects of Jonathan Pageau's views: 1. Participative Reality: Pageau sees religion primarily as a participative reality rather than just a set of truth claims. He emphasizes the importance of how religious beliefs shape one's world and way of being. 2. Hierarchy of Being: Pageau believes in a hierarchy of being, with different levels of consciousness and agency. This extends from simple organisms to humans, and even to larger entities like nations or concepts. 3. Patterns and Meaning: He sees patterns and meaning as objectively real aspects of the universe, not just human constructs. These patterns exist independently of their individual instantiations. 4. God as Ultimate Unity: Pageau views God as the ultimate unifying principle that binds all other agencies and patterns together. 5. Teleology: He seems to believe in a kind of teleology or purpose inherent in the universe, rather than seeing everything as the result of random chance. 6. Embodied Intelligence: Pageau suggests that the way humans have evolved physically is not arbitrary but is somehow necessary for the kind of intelligence and consciousness we possess. 7. Religion as Binding: He sees religion as an extension of the general principle of binding multiplicity into unity, which occurs at various levels of reality. 8. Truth and Value: For Pageau, the value or meaning offered by a belief is primary, with its factual truth being secondary (though still important). 9. Transcendent Agency: He believes in forms of transcendent agency (which he likens to "gods" or "angels") that influence human behavior and social patterns. 10. Coherence of Reality: Pageau sees a deep coherence or interconnectedness in reality, from the physical constants of the universe to the patterns of human behavior and belief. Overall, Pageau presents a worldview that is deeply religious and metaphysical, seeing meaning, purpose, and divine agency as fundamental aspects of reality.
Peter Bhogossian was probably the best man for pushing JP to explain his worldview from scratch and to ask challenging questions. And it's great how both of them are at edge of their seats whole conversation. It's also fascinating, how an atheist and a believer live a different worlds, and how from atheistic point of view is honestly hard to grasp, that being religious is not just adding some arbitrary silly claims at the top of worldview which is more or less the same as that of materialist, but it is needed to reframe the whole mode of thinking. Struggle from both sides is real, both of them did the great job, one of the most interesting conversation which can serve as bridge or introduction for religious thinking I've seen.
Peter is what is called a "street epistemologist". They ask people leading questions that are sort of meant to try and poke holes in your beliefs, but that's all they really do. They don't present their own, better theory or worldview. Often times the approach is rather disingenuous as well, though I don't necessarily get that from Peter. I just think Peter's objections aren't very sophisticated or really very challenging at all.
@@brando3342 Bhogossian's Street Epistemology isn't what you described. Street Epistemology is simply the act of going up to people, asking them to flesh out their worldview, and seeing if they can actually do it, or if it's the case that they're holding on to a belief they don't actually have the capacity to justify (at least, justify off the cuff). I wouldn't say it's the best method for a formal debate, or even for an honest back-and-forth, but it's certainly crucial in this day and age, where many people hold extremely illogical beliefs and positions that blow over like a house of cards when even politely questioned. I struggle to understand why you claim it's the act of asking leading questions. Maybe there are some examples of him doing this, but from what I've seen, it's oftentimes simply asking people the question of, "Why do you believe what you believe?" Which is very important to ask, imo. And for context, I'm an Orthodox Christian. Street epistemology isn't a debate tool, it isn't even really debate. It's more of a public service, really! 😉
That was a really fun conversation. You can see Peter getting stuck in the rationalist/materialist framework, but it's not as frustrating as with most people because you can also see him truly trying to work it out and dig deeper. He will definitely have his "AHA" moment.
He should probably speak to someone like Kastrup, as he's perfect for breaking the materialist framework from a purely scientific perspective. Materialism is objectively, scientifically false. Yet it's the basis of so many atheists entire worldview.
@@johns2220 I got some bad news for you: it's also the basis of many "Christians" worldviews. So it's understandable that it's held by many who aren't.
@@syntheticsleep why’s that bad news, that goes without saying, this is just silly tribalistic counter argument. It provides nothing of value to the questions at hand.
@@danhallett4952 If the religious worldview that someone has been brought up in is just as materialistic as the secular, then it makes sense that a modern, rationalistic thinker would have problems wrapping their head around more mystical ideas. It's not tribalistic, it's common sense. It's reasonable to think that people would struggle to break out of that frame. I did, and I've always had a more natural inclination towards mysticism and mythology than most.
I think you could see how many totally revelationary concepts were introduced to him in the conversation in his expressions and speed of speaking. We really do swim in rational/materialistic waters. Can we go to swim in fresh waters? Can a leopard change its spots?
Based on the conversation, here are some key aspects of Peter Boghossian's views: 1. Epistemological Focus: Boghossian is primarily concerned with the epistemological claims made by religions, rather than their social or community aspects. 2. Skepticism of Supernatural Claims: He expresses skepticism towards supernatural claims, such as the efficacy of intercessory prayer or miracles. 3. Naturalistic Explanations: Boghossian seems to prefer naturalistic explanations for phenomena, questioning the need to posit supernatural entities or forces. 4. Critical Thinking: He emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and questioning beliefs, including one's own deeply held beliefs. 5. Separation of Benefits and Truth: Boghossian distinguishes between the benefits a belief might offer and its factual truth, suggesting that these should be evaluated separately. 6. Scientific Approach: He references scientific studies (like the Harvard prayer study) to evaluate religious claims, indicating a preference for empirical evidence. 7. Thought Experiments: Boghossian uses thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios to test the coherence and limits of belief systems. 8. Recognition of Religion's Social Role: While critical of religious truth claims, he acknowledges the positive social and community aspects of religion. 9. Concern for Societal Issues: He mentions that given current "civilizational threats," debates about religion might be less relevant now. 10. Open to Discussion: Despite his skepticism, Boghossian engages in respectful dialogue and seems open to continuing the conversation. 11. Philosophical Rigor: He tries to pin down precise definitions and implications of the ideas being discussed, showing a philosopher's attention to detail. 12. Pragmatic View of Belief: He raises the question of whether a "flawed epistemology" might be justified if it leads to moral flourishing in society. Overall, Boghossian presents a more skeptical, scientifically-oriented worldview that emphasizes critical thinking and empirical evidence, while still recognizing the complex role of religion in society.
This conversation is genuinely wholesome and hilarious. It’s amazing trying to watch Peter, the rationalist skeptic, struggle in good faith to try to comprehend Jonathan’s medieval cosmology and metaphysic. You can see he’s trying so hard to understand, but his world view just cannot wrap itself around what Jonathan is saying. Then you have Jonathan, who is trying desperately to communicate his ideas in a way that a rationalist could understand. But he does not have eyes to see!
It just needs a point of view shift, is hard but once you do it everything clicks. You have to understand that everything is relative... but there are things that when you make everything relative to them the world becomes more shiny, healthy and full of life.
@dmitrypetrouk8924 I don't think he meant it that way. I rather understood it as the opposite. Because it is actually true that everything is relative in relationship to the one true that is Absolute.
I am very surprised how shallow Boghossian's understanding is about theological and philosophical matters. But I also found him to be very honest and a careful listener. Truth seems to be sacred to him. Great conversation.
I think it is a schtick. I think he is such an agreeable person that he uses this “dumb guy” attitude so he doesnt have to directly disagree and be confrontational. I could be wrong but just my sense
I get the idea he is trying to lower himself to Jonathan's level. The question "would prayer work if there was no God?" from a Christian perspective is like asking "would triangles still have 3 sides if there were no geometry?". He thinks prayer is like a wish button, which can be laboratoried. It's like Dean Radin said about studying love. "I won't believe she ever calls him 'schmoopy' unless she calls him that while I record them". Or something like that. Edit: Dean Radin, not Dean Kamen. The psi guy, not the Segway guy.
@@martinzarathustra8604It’s actually not an ad hominem believe it or not. The ad hominem fallacy is saying someone is wrong because [insert insult here] and using that as an argument. Merely saying someone has a shallow grasp of something outside the context of an argument is not a fallacy. You “rational” people need to stop throwing around the logical fallacy card everywhere when usually there isn’t one
What a delightful conversation. I really enjoyed this. A good faith effort on both sides to understand each other’s perspectives without straw manning and ad hominem. I’m totally catching what Johnathan is throwing and I’m here for it! But I know his style can be a challenge for many because it’s conceptually not how most people are used to thinking. I wish more people thought the way Johnathan does and I appreciate that he seeks to find the deeper meaning of our reality.
I love these conversations Jonathan has with guests who have different worldviews. It shows Jonathan is stretching himself and developing new ways to describe the Christian worldview that are intelligible (sometimes) to other people.
The reason it's so hard to pierce the worldview of a firm materialist is that the materialist holds a theoretical model of the world which he expresses through the telling of stories, but doesn't recognize the telling of stories as valid means of modeling the world. He views his stories as indistinguishable from the matter which he is describing, so he doesn't view it as story telling. He doesn't view it as engaging in the symbolic. Because of this he is stuck. He is not able to replace his symbology with another. He ironically can only engage in thought experiments ('thought experiment' being a materialist approved term for story telling) which use materialistic symbols.
I find something like this with evolution. It's frustrating attempting to talk to them because they cannot distinguish between "how" and "why". Ask them how something evolved and pretty much every time they will tell you why it evolved instead. Ask how sea creatures evolved lungs and the answer will be something about air bladders for buoyancy. Ask how sexual dimorphism evolved and the answer will be that it helps create a healthy gene pool. The evolutionist mindset is "If I can think of a reason why it could have evolved, it therefore evolved". The fact that it would take such unimaginably vast numbers of individual random mutations to turn a tyrannosaurus into a chicken that the Earth has not existed long enough for that to be even a remote mathematical probability will be entirely absent from their thinking, and you will be called stupid if you bring it up. Note that they will never answer the question. They'll just call you stupid for asking it. It's all similar to the reaction you'll get if you ask "if we need more gun control to reduce violence, how come the violence was lower before the gun control was there in the first place?" or "if voter ID is racist, how come minority turnout in districts with voter ID isn't lower?" or "if we need more funding for education, how come test scores were higher in the past with less funding?"
@@patrickbarnes9874 ha, and it gets even worse with "evolutionary psychology" where it becomes something like, "if I can make up a vaguely plausible Darwinian story for some sort of human behavior, I can then claim the behavior is entirely justified, or dismiss it as primal and unsophisticated, depending on context"
This was better than I thought it would be as I generally expect these conversations to fraught with new atheist style gotcha debating, but Boghossian at least seems to try to understand the people he speaks with. That said, at this point atheist talking points just sound like nails on a chalkboard. They always coming off as insanely smug and self congratulating despite their utter failure at preventing any of the societal ills all of this enlightened rationalism purported to save us from. Boghossian suffers from this. His blind faith in things like a "Harvard prayer study" is incredible, given everything he's seen of our education system.
Very impressed with Peter’s sincerity and curiosity about Jonathan’s perspective. I am Christian and understand that faith can be hard to understand from outside. A big part of it is that Christians (in my experience) tend to have at least two major frameworks for “knowing.” One is more materialist while the other is too big for words. We can describe it, but there is no apt description for meeting God. He is deeper than language. But because the experiences we have with Him transcend words, we can just sound like we are bonkers or cultish. I get it. It’s easier to break down the pieces we can explain through rationality, evidence, and philosophical illustrations, but they are really just the visible parts of largely invisible scaffolding.
I can't believe there are still atheists who aren’t transformed by Jonathan's presentations. They're getting more refined, concise, and powerful every time! A great conversation and Peter was a great listener and contributor.
You make the mistake that atheists are atheists because of reason, desire for truth, etc When the religious have been saying it for years: many atheists are atheists in their heart. Not the mind
Agree, they’re getting more and more refined, articulated for the rationalist, skeptic, atheists. I keep listening to JP, leaving hope to articulate it myself. I also appreciate how PB seeks to understand, moving slowly, not glossing over, assuming, or presuming.
He's definitely getting better and conversations like this are great practice. But at the foundation, someone who doesn't understand or disagrees just has a completely different way of looking at the world, and that's why people won't be "transformed" by Pageau's words. He put this difference well when he talked about the truth claims coming downstream of everything else. This is just not the way a lot of people approach the world at all, but this perspective is ingrained in almost all of what Pageau talks about. And for someone to flip the way they think about the world to understand this is very difficult... I think listening to Pageau with actual curiosity can help nudge people toward understanding that worldview, but they would have to change their own mind in a way that nobody can do for them, in the end.
I have been an atheist for decades, having been raised Catholic. And I am not in ANY way moved by Pageau's views and commentary. Not one bit. Talking to religious people is so often a waste of time, if you're trying to challenge them on their beliefs and assumptions. They want to believe, and they don't want to consider life without belief in a deity. Some do, but most don't. Even so, non-belief is on the rise, and will likely eventually displace belief when it comes to belief in a deity--though not entirely.
This was the best conversation. Jonathan, you explain religion in such a beautiful and meaningful way. I am sure Peter Boghossian will contemplate the conversation for some time. I would love to hear the next conversation you two have. Bring it on!!
Amazing Jonathan! Talking to smart and earnest atheists like this helps those of us ex-atheists who are still trying to understand after all these years. Keep trying we’re getting there! This reminds me of the feeling I had in the Arkon interview years ago. Thank you for your efforts🙏
I see Jonathan has recently been engaging in more out and out debates (has said many times he doesn’t like them). It’s definitely appreciated, as seeing you talk through the ideas with someone who strongly disagrees helps us flesh out the nuances.
@martinzarathustra8604 I am not sure what you mean by 'theist' but I likely wouldn't fit into your characterization. It is true that every explanation of reality is ultimately tautological. The source of our reality can not be proven from within our reality. But a participatory metaphysic like traditional religion accounts for both the reason for our world and the reason within our world. Naturalism assumes reason while denying its ontological reality. If you cant hear it from a religious person, this argument is also made very effectively by folks like Mcgilchrist and Vervaeke who are outside of traditional practice.
That was a great conversation! Not at all was I expecting to have so many deep belly laughs! It’s like surfing on the Symbolic World surfboard, but Peter kept falling off.😂
“Different sun” 😂 this conversation is hilarious. PB seems like someone who learned lots so that he could show he learned lots, and the outcome is that he can show he learned lots - mission accomplished, but that’s it.
Jonathan's ability to have these conversations, at those levels, is really admirable. If THE thing that binds was indeed the impulse to perpetuate being, then why would one be wasting time having these conversations and worrying about the epistimological soundness of religious claims? Why wouldn't one be out there "perpetuating being", procreating, as much as they can? Either because one believes the questionable epistemological soundness of religious claims prevents the perpetuation of being (in which case, it is one's duty to fight those claims) or because perpetuation of being is not what ultimately binds. Listening to Peter's thought process, seeing his courage to enter into conversation with somone at the opposite side of the meaning question, and observing his yearning for truth, I can't help but recollect Fr Rose's words --- "Atheism, true 'existential' atheism [...] is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ."
I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you both for your friendship and good faith discussion. The question of Religion needs to be reevaluated in our culture. It doesn't serve people properly.
I love both of you and this discussion! I hope for the dozens of us watching that you keep it going with many more chats! I especially love how both of you are oriented to the Logos so the conversation manifests with respect and humor instead of rivalry. Keep it up gentlemen
"I believe my wife loves me" is based on unfolding patterns of reciprocity over time, not brain scans and hormone levels etc. "I believe in the Christian God" is also based on the pattern of reciprocity revealed through the ages and recorded in Scripture and Tradition.
Came here from the @wisedisciple react video, where he couldn’t track the conversation and quit mid-way through. Glad I watched to the end at source over here. I absolutely loved this entire conversation! Jonathan, you helped me think about all of these things in entirely new ways - I loved the way you apply an integrating whole of life worldview that frames how you approach everything and prevents you from being easily boxed in by the opposing framework of your interlocutor.
Thanks for the great discussion! The part that struck me the most was the discussion of miracles and the end of the world. It's very difficult to argue for the existence of miracles these days. If I had been in JP's shoes I might have started with more mundane examples than healing prayer. For example, the fact that each one of us exists is a miracle in the scientific sense: the probablility of if occurring is zero, and yet here I am! And this applies to all our identities - some of which led to cancer treatments! No "miraculous" identities, no treatment. How many doctors and scientists who solved such problems problems prayed (hoped, cared and attended to) for their resolution? As for the end of the world, the enlightened rationalists always forget that the concepts of "universe", "meteor", "physics" - everything in fact - would cease to exist without humans. They might respond that the universe would persist materially after our disappearance but, as JP says, "what does that even mean"? What being would remain to observe such patterns? And in a universe without humans, what relevance could these patterns possibly have?
We all operate using some form of Faith In regards to the Harvard study on prayer: Peter is expressing Faith in that study, Does he know the all people involved? How does he know that there weren’t lie, blunders or some outlier that skewed the data? He BELIEVES in that study, without thorough knowledge
God is in control. God can decide to answer prayers or not. At least prayers are directed towards the highest authorian God. Will God answer the prayers in a Harvard study which seeks to disprove or pinpoint God?
@@benjaminmcvay9864 God is no vending machine. Plus, there are so many variables to account for. Can they rule out other people praying for these people outside the study? Given that Christianity is still the majority in this country it is reasonable to assume many of the patients who supposedly didn’t get prayer probably had people close to them praying for them, should God consider the prayers of distant people chosen by some study over them? And then even outside of that there are tons of people around the World praying for people with sickness, even if not by name. Should God ignore the faithful elderly woman praying that someone in the World should be healed just so some dubious study can go forward? There is just no way to control for this. And then even beyond that God can obviously see through this attempt to pinpoint him, he’s literally Omniscient, you can’t trick him with some clever study. Just way too many variables to account for. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Having an experiment where there are 2 groups of people, one praying and the other not praying for healing. It does nothing to determine the efficacy of prayer. That would be like taking random people and asking them to write letters of recommendation for other people who are applying for jobs, and then concluding that writing a letter of recommendation does nothing to help someone looking for a job (and maybe hurts). Appropriate intention, context, and sincerity must count for something here.
I LOVE this! Well done gentlemen. The juxtaposition of your existential positions made this a rich opportunity for “perspecting” on bigger ideas! Thank you so much.
1:02:44 "The only reason we can appreciate the universe's incredible precision is because it if was any different we wouldn't be able to appreciate it" Of course... but that doesn't refute the fact that it is incredibly precise... that statement doesn't advance the conversation in any meaningful way. You can do a parallel with surviving an execution by firing squad: "Wow it is amazing that both of us survived! There were a lot of soldiers in the firing squad! This is an extraordinary situation!" -Of course we can say that, because if it was any other way we wouldn't be able to say it. ??? How does that statement remove the extraordinary nature of the situation?
What we see here is two people steeped in worldviews so different that they don't have the same glossary. You might call them phenomenological and objective. I appreciate seeing two people trying to bridge that communication gap, even if the bridge may not have been fully constructed. To put that differently, their priors are so different, they will need to converse for hours just to get to a point that they are both talking about the same thing. And now that I've made it to the end of the video: This is the video I will send to people whom I want to introduce to symbolism and religion. Johnathan explained himself, for a materialist, better than I have ever heard him before. I suspect Peter has a lot to chew on before their next discussion.
Jonathan is a miraculously superb Christian Apologist, while employing zero of the rules of Christian apologetics. This is precisely why he is so effective. Rather than listing a set of theological presuppositions and defending them one by one in what might become a heated polemic debate… …He simply, humbly, walks us, hand in hand, through the doors of reality. And he does so with a smile and pleasant disposition, while engaging in an exchange of colossal ideas until we all find ourselves resting on the same common ground, otherwise known as the truth.
This conversation really highlighted a big problem in academic discourse in our day. Jonathan had to spend half an hour explaining to Dr. Boggossian why epistemology matters before they could even start talking. Even someone who’s more attuned to symbolic thinking than the average academic probably still has spent so little time in his career asking the question “why” that this is not intuitive to him.
I think It’s harder for intellectuals to understand this unity Jonathan speaks of because in their world we can be united by facts about the world. But there is an infinite number of facts. Facts about the world and the universe cannot unite us. The Christian story does unite people. To celebrate, to worship.
Try going to a Lakers game and telling everyone there that Bird was better than Kobe or Magic. You'll see very quickly that sports teams do have truth claims, even if they are implicit.
At the end Peter says he doesn't think about these things anymore, given the world we are currently living in, he thinks they are totally irrelevant. The truth is VERY much to the contrary. The world we are living in now exponentially exasperates why these discussions ARE important. They don't make them irrelevant, they make them supra-relevant. Unless you start looking a little deeper, you'll always end up with serious problems, and trying to fix them with answers comparable to putting a band-aid on a lopped off limb.
I agree. Seems to me that secularism (money-theism) is what we are seeing play out. People need to be looking higher, but they have told themselves that there is nothing higher.
Honestly I’m not convinced there is any way NOT to be religious. Humans identify what they think is the highest thing and they worship it. Social justice, race, victimhood, money, sex, God, people worship all these things. Find me a man who worships nothing and I will be truly impressed.
@@chdao We're seeing Nietzschianism play out into a dead-end. Turns out Man is more prone to invent new toys to distract himself than grand new ideals for a future.
This was a really fascinating conversation. Their dynamic is a bit funnily weird at times, because you can tell just how fundamentally different their worldviews are, and how they have difficulty relating on certain topics. I could also tell how neither of them is close to getting swayed by the other side. They both are already well and firmly established in their views, and so this conversation is more an attempt to bridge and facilitate understanding, than to convince the other side. Nonetheless, they stay civil and open, and try to answer each other's questions as authentically to their own views as they can, which is so good to see. I don't know how fruitful people think this conversation was, but I certainly hope that they converse again. I am best described as an agnostic, almost closer to Peter than to Jonathan. I don't think there's any way to definitively know whether there is an intelligence behind the universe, or whether things happen randomly and arbitrarily, and so I bring a certain skepticism towards religious claims. Nonetheless, I am not closed off to the possibility of there being an ultimate intelligence / Mind behind everything, and that consciousness and meaning play a constitutive role for the world. These certainly are intriguing possibilities. IF there is an ultimate Mind behind it all, it would still be a mystery to me why specifically Christianity would be true though - a topic they didn't get into that much. I hope they meet again to explore these topics further. Genuinely enjoyed this conversation. Well done!
I think this is one of the most important conversations we can all have. If the truth claims are false or preposterous, how can there be good in this world? In other words, the problems we have with evil means we aren’t following the actual truth claims.
This conversation is akin to the picture of Plato and Aristotle. Both metaphysical and epsitemologically they are each starting from different places and each critique is as well. In a simple sense one is arguing from the transcendent to the imminent while the other is arguing in reverse. Each starting place is in some sense more fundamentally real than the other. I would like to see another discussion on reality grounding starting places.
I used to have frequent migraines. A neighbour asked several thousand Rosecrucians to pray for me. My migraines stopped. Now, it could be shere coincidence but ... the idea their belief and goodwill was directed at me adds a new colour to my spectrum. I chose to live in a world where people are good, goodwilled, and are sacrificing their time to do good works. That alone, and the fact it was directed to me, makes me think better of mankind and the world I live in. The bottom line is, no more migranes and the possibility, the hint, there is more to it than appears.
is Pageau trying to say: "Truth claims hold significant value due to the knowledge, understanding, and ethical guidance they provide. When you actively participate in these claims, you place trust in their potential to help you grow personally and ethically. This participation not only aids in your self-improvement but also contributes to the creation of a better, more just world."
One needs to understand that everything is relative... but there are things that when you make everything relative to them the world becomes more shiny, healthy and full of life.
No. It's more fundamental. You want proof that something is true? Gather evidence. If prayer puts you into a pattern of life that is more bountiful and loving, this is evidence of the truth of its claim. Science is about testing claims, but engineering is about trusting them. To live a fruitful life your theology, your metaphysics have to move at some point from a science to an engineering project, otherwise you will never do anything. In this conversation both parties are attempting to move the others fundamental view from engineering back to science, to reorganize the life of the other. And I'll tell you right now, jonathan will win this. The concept that reality coheres in beings is irresistibly beautiful and coherent, because it happens to be true. Inconveniently for most, this also means we live in fairy land.
@RodrigoMera and if you make everything relative to your self in your pride, you sap the very brightness of your own identity until there is nothing left in you to be proud of. Relativism is dangerous because it's half true. Yes you can walk in front of a train, (no, you Won't survive)
I started this thinking there was no way I would sit through the whole thing, but it was actually a good conversation. I disagree with Boghossian on God, but he's one of the heroes of the Woke World War and has my admiration for that.
I'm seeing a repeating pattern forming here with the last few people you have spoken with. First in the Alex O'Conner interview and now here: the absolute obsession in our culture with hypothetical "what if" scenarios that never happened and from what we understand are not even technically possible. With O'Connor it was a hypothetical scenario of the fall being avoided, and here with Mr. Boghossian positing humans instead becoming insectoids instead of bipedal mammals. I'd be curious for a video on this phenomenon, I am noticing it all over the place now both online and in my personal life. Everyone seems obsessed with the impossible "what if" scenario and using examples of them all the time to make their points.
Materialist/atheists can’t defeat the ontological truth of Christianity (or Neoplatonism) unless they explicitly recognise that materialism is ontologically false without an axiomatic belief to create their world (which they deny). Accordingly they do this post-modern technique of destabilising the discourse disingenuously to avoid addressing the substantive argument. If you recall Harris vs Peterson debates several years ago, Harris was expert at denying the ontological argument even existed by using repeated diversion tactics.
setting up alternative scenarios for many historical moments is something I keep coming across. it seems to be quite set into our western culture. definitely would love to see some discussion regarding this on the channel
I think I get what you mean. With Alex, it's how he pushes his points across. But at the same time, hypotheticals have no bearing on the current reality, and dealing with the now to explain things works much better. It's like asking "if communism made all the countries it was tried in super powerful and happy, would you think communism was good" and its like...well yes but that betrays the reality and historical examples we have. Just weird overall
Materialist/atheists can’t defeat the ontological truth of Christianity (or Neoplatonism) unless they explicitly recognise that materialism is ontologically false without an axiomatic belief to create their world (which they deny). Accordingly they do this post-modern technique of destabilising the discourse disingenuously to avoid addressing the substantive argument. If you recall Harris vs Peterson debates several years ago, Harris was expert at denying the ontological argument even existed by using repeated diversion tactics.
Yes this is interesting, I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to argumentation or rhetoric, but isn't it a way of bolstering an argument by bending reality to fit it? I don't see what makes it a go-to move.
I loved the questions he had for pageau even though im almost finished with his brothers book i still have moments of ambiguity from him he helped me out more then I thought he could great conversation 👍
this is just like walker percy's "message in a bottle." If anyone is interested in the importance of different truth claims and what that means I would highly recommend this essay.
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Sorry. I'm commenting before finishing because I'm dying to make this side comment-which may well be brought up in the conversation later on: I believe there's a huge breakdown in the communication in the most crucial point. This breakdown comes when Jonathan says something like, "I believe it's true because of the world it affords me." I may be wrong (or maybe Jonathan is), but what he really means does not refer to the belief itself but to the reality that is the object of that belief. And I get the strong impression that Peter understands it as *the belief affording the world,* and not the truthfulness of the belief. If I'm wrong in this assumption, then I think that Jonathan approach to faith and reality is misguided (and misleading). I would have categorically answered Peter's question with an emphatic, "yes, I believe what I believe because it's true." Then I could go on to explain how I may well take the affordances provided *by this reality* (and not by my subjective belief in the truth of that reality) into account for my critical judgment about the truthfulness of the proposition. In other words, it may well be that on an experiential level, the value of a proposition comes first, but on an ontological level being is and must be intellectually contemplated as emphatically primary. Whether the belief is well grounded in reality or not is besides the point. When we believe something (for example, that Jesus died and was raised back to a new life), we believe it primarily because it's true. This doesn't mean that it is actually true. I may be mistaken, and all the rest of my faith is in vain, and Peter would be very right in pitying me. But when I say that Jesus is God Incarnate, it is first and foremost because I believe it's true in the deepest and most comprehensive and multidimensional sense of the word: that is, if there were other worlds or dimensions, it would still be true in them. Or, to put it another way, if there are other levels of reality, the truth of God's Incarnation is as real and relevant in them as it is on the ontological level where we exist. In other words, the way I believe is that God is not as real as I am, but infinitely more real, and that Jesus is God is infinitely truer than me typing right now from my phone into a UA-cam comment box.
This is a huge deal and I am glad you said this. I hope Johnathan misspoke or I would have to admit I can’t understand him at all. I don’t understand how if Jesus did not literally rise from the dead that it would not at least have some sort of outcome for the implications for life after death and what that reality might look like (in which case the “Why” for a person being a Christian would have to completely change as would the definition of Christianity for at least one type of Christian).
That's something different and I also like it. It's harder to talk to a person from a much different worldview, but this challenge allows for more significant cultural events to happen. It's like genuine birth of language. There seems to be more reality here than in less challenging conversations, its refreshing in that sense. Both interlocutors are facing an unknown (which is close to pattern of reality), both are in risk and struggle. Both are in tension and extend themselves to each other and through that tension a bridge happens that others also would be able to use. But that tension wouldn't be possible to hold on if both weren't in good disposition. So thank you both for courage to try that.
Love peter and how lighthearted this conversation was. Thank you for answering the tough questions Jonathan, it’s helping me understand “The Language of Creation” and bridging the gap between the naturalistic framework im coming from and the Christian worldview im seeking and learning to incorporate. 👍🏻
That little thing in the intro, on why I care about truth claims, is almost exactly what I was talking to myself yesterday during my lunch break after a week of getting lost in the sea of philosophical thought.
this was really interesting. as difficult as it was for you guys for do this I really hope theres a second one. maybe one where you interrogate peter about his beliefs or lack thereof
It's clear to me that the meaning we find in the world is often taken for granted, Dawkin's 'the blind watchmaker' springs to mind and if you read that book you should realise there are choices of world view being made.
I don’t even know how you could have a valid prayer study. First, God isn’t a vending machine. Second, God can obviously see through the study. Third, you can’t rule out other people praying for them. I just don’t see how you can have a valid way of doing it.
yeah that comment was both misunderstanding prayer and misunderstanding studies if our elites believed prayer works in that manner, the study would've proven prayer works in that manner
Thanks to both speakers, certainly challenging content. I’m getting a sense that “the plane never landed.” That is to mean the conversation was elevated up, but didn’t come back to rest… For Peter, I think you stated that you were asking these continuous “what if” questions in order to get a sense of where Jonathan was at, however you never shed light on what that means for the viewer. Seemed quite arbitrary. There are many aspects to explore here. Looking forward to further conversation. Thanks.
Thank you all. Remember to like and share. Next month Richard Rohlin and I are presenting our second course on Dante's Comedy, Purgatorio. Patrons at the Involved tier or higher get 10% off. Check it out: thesymbolicworld.com/courses/dantes-purgatorio
You should do another session with Peter.
Peter, what are your truth claims? Why aren't you skeptical of your own truth claims?
He really pushed you to the limits but you were patient and wise and treated him well. Any tips for finding time to do focused solo work like writing and carving when you have a family?
This discussion was exciting. You're actually getting better at talking to atheists.
I was wondering whether you and John Vervaeke would be there when Jordan Peterson talks to Richard Dawkins?
I am afraid I still don't see how he is going to bridge the gap between him and Dawkins successfully. But maybe I am wrong.
Peter; you deny your Armenian heritage as it was the first Christian nation ✝️.
The original family name is Janbazian changed at Elis Island.
How do you establish the premise that God can't exist or is improbable when science is limited in its knowledge and ability to test the physical Universe..
Not able to test the Supernatural.
Most Christians that have any knowledge of Islam know many Muslims believe Allah took Jesus to heaven and put someone else in his place on the Cross ✝️.
Quit talking down: to us : Peter!!! So, pathetic listening to you.
Thanks for having me on your show, Jonathan. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Have you ever talked to John Vervaeke? Might be somewhere in between you and Jonathan. Probably closer to you than Peterson and someone I think understands both pretty well.
Im one of the 10! Great conversation!
@@bradspitt3896 great suggestion
Have you consider that the power of prayer is in the one who answers, not the one who prays? And that power would obviously be subservient to the His will?
The study, did it work within a particular understanding of God? What framework was used? Is this God who was prayed to obligated to answer in a particular way? I’m sure you get it. Why then take it into consideration at all? What did it really prove? Seems to me the study was not a study at all, but a test of an individual.
Really appreciate how you genuinely tried to understand Pageau's worldview.
Boghossian stuck at the propositional level. I get it. This conversation is like my current self trying to talk to me from 6 years ago.
Exactly the same feeling I had
Haha dead on!
Is that a propositional statement there bud?
Relatable
That's a good summary
Based on the conversation, here are some key aspects of Jonathan Pageau's views:
1. Participative Reality: Pageau sees religion primarily as a participative reality rather than just a set of truth claims. He emphasizes the importance of how religious beliefs shape one's world and way of being.
2. Hierarchy of Being: Pageau believes in a hierarchy of being, with different levels of consciousness and agency. This extends from simple organisms to humans, and even to larger entities like nations or concepts.
3. Patterns and Meaning: He sees patterns and meaning as objectively real aspects of the universe, not just human constructs. These patterns exist independently of their individual instantiations.
4. God as Ultimate Unity: Pageau views God as the ultimate unifying principle that binds all other agencies and patterns together.
5. Teleology: He seems to believe in a kind of teleology or purpose inherent in the universe, rather than seeing everything as the result of random chance.
6. Embodied Intelligence: Pageau suggests that the way humans have evolved physically is not arbitrary but is somehow necessary for the kind of intelligence and consciousness we possess.
7. Religion as Binding: He sees religion as an extension of the general principle of binding multiplicity into unity, which occurs at various levels of reality.
8. Truth and Value: For Pageau, the value or meaning offered by a belief is primary, with its factual truth being secondary (though still important).
9. Transcendent Agency: He believes in forms of transcendent agency (which he likens to "gods" or "angels") that influence human behavior and social patterns.
10. Coherence of Reality: Pageau sees a deep coherence or interconnectedness in reality, from the physical constants of the universe to the patterns of human behavior and belief.
Overall, Pageau presents a worldview that is deeply religious and metaphysical, seeing meaning, purpose, and divine agency as fundamental aspects of reality.
Why does this read so much like an AI wrote it
Good summary, thanks
@@IntentionalSpellingMistakes Because an AI did write it...
Peter Bhogossian was probably the best man for pushing JP to explain his worldview from scratch and to ask challenging questions. And it's great how both of them are at edge of their seats whole conversation. It's also fascinating, how an atheist and a believer live a different worlds, and how from atheistic point of view is honestly hard to grasp, that being religious is not just adding some arbitrary silly claims at the top of worldview which is more or less the same as that of materialist, but it is needed to reframe the whole mode of thinking. Struggle from both sides is real, both of them did the great job, one of the most interesting conversation which can serve as bridge or introduction for religious thinking I've seen.
Peter is what is called a "street epistemologist". They ask people leading questions that are sort of meant to try and poke holes in your beliefs, but that's all they really do. They don't present their own, better theory or worldview. Often times the approach is rather disingenuous as well, though I don't necessarily get that from Peter. I just think Peter's objections aren't very sophisticated or really very challenging at all.
@@brando3342 good points
I love watching this. I think it's good for both of them, and I'm routing for both of them!
Rooting
@@brando3342 Bhogossian's Street Epistemology isn't what you described. Street Epistemology is simply the act of going up to people, asking them to flesh out their worldview, and seeing if they can actually do it, or if it's the case that they're holding on to a belief they don't actually have the capacity to justify (at least, justify off the cuff).
I wouldn't say it's the best method for a formal debate, or even for an honest back-and-forth, but it's certainly crucial in this day and age, where many people hold extremely illogical beliefs and positions that blow over like a house of cards when even politely questioned.
I struggle to understand why you claim it's the act of asking leading questions. Maybe there are some examples of him doing this, but from what I've seen, it's oftentimes simply asking people the question of, "Why do you believe what you believe?" Which is very important to ask, imo.
And for context, I'm an Orthodox Christian. Street epistemology isn't a debate tool, it isn't even really debate. It's more of a public service, really! 😉
That was a really fun conversation. You can see Peter getting stuck in the rationalist/materialist framework, but it's not as frustrating as with most people because you can also see him truly trying to work it out and dig deeper. He will definitely have his "AHA" moment.
He should probably speak to someone like Kastrup, as he's perfect for breaking the materialist framework from a purely scientific perspective. Materialism is objectively, scientifically false. Yet it's the basis of so many atheists entire worldview.
@@johns2220 I got some bad news for you: it's also the basis of many "Christians" worldviews. So it's understandable that it's held by many who aren't.
@@syntheticsleep why’s that bad news, that goes without saying, this is just silly tribalistic counter argument. It provides nothing of value to the questions at hand.
@@danhallett4952 If the religious worldview that someone has been brought up in is just as materialistic as the secular, then it makes sense that a modern, rationalistic thinker would have problems wrapping their head around more mystical ideas. It's not tribalistic, it's common sense. It's reasonable to think that people would struggle to break out of that frame. I did, and I've always had a more natural inclination towards mysticism and mythology than most.
I think you could see how many totally revelationary concepts were introduced to him in the conversation in his expressions and speed of speaking. We really do swim in rational/materialistic waters. Can we go to swim in fresh waters? Can a leopard change its spots?
Based on the conversation, here are some key aspects of Peter Boghossian's views:
1. Epistemological Focus: Boghossian is primarily concerned with the epistemological claims made by religions, rather than their social or community aspects.
2. Skepticism of Supernatural Claims: He expresses skepticism towards supernatural claims, such as the efficacy of intercessory prayer or miracles.
3. Naturalistic Explanations: Boghossian seems to prefer naturalistic explanations for phenomena, questioning the need to posit supernatural entities or forces.
4. Critical Thinking: He emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and questioning beliefs, including one's own deeply held beliefs.
5. Separation of Benefits and Truth: Boghossian distinguishes between the benefits a belief might offer and its factual truth, suggesting that these should be evaluated separately.
6. Scientific Approach: He references scientific studies (like the Harvard prayer study) to evaluate religious claims, indicating a preference for empirical evidence.
7. Thought Experiments: Boghossian uses thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios to test the coherence and limits of belief systems.
8. Recognition of Religion's Social Role: While critical of religious truth claims, he acknowledges the positive social and community aspects of religion.
9. Concern for Societal Issues: He mentions that given current "civilizational threats," debates about religion might be less relevant now.
10. Open to Discussion: Despite his skepticism, Boghossian engages in respectful dialogue and seems open to continuing the conversation.
11. Philosophical Rigor: He tries to pin down precise definitions and implications of the ideas being discussed, showing a philosopher's attention to detail.
12. Pragmatic View of Belief: He raises the question of whether a "flawed epistemology" might be justified if it leads to moral flourishing in society.
Overall, Boghossian presents a more skeptical, scientifically-oriented worldview that emphasizes critical thinking and empirical evidence, while still recognizing the complex role of religion in society.
This conversation is genuinely wholesome and hilarious. It’s amazing trying to watch Peter, the rationalist skeptic, struggle in good faith to try to comprehend Jonathan’s medieval cosmology and metaphysic.
You can see he’s trying so hard to understand, but his world view just cannot wrap itself around what Jonathan is saying.
Then you have Jonathan, who is trying desperately to communicate his ideas in a way that a rationalist could understand. But he does not have eyes to see!
It’s so endearing towards the end too. I love these two together!
Yea but is very important to have conversations like this
It just needs a point of view shift, is hard but once you do it everything clicks. You have to understand that everything is relative... but there are things that when you make everything relative to them the world becomes more shiny, healthy and full of life.
"Everything is relative" is a weak point, because it doesn't account for itself.
@dmitrypetrouk8924 I don't think he meant it that way. I rather understood it as the opposite. Because it is actually true that everything is relative in relationship to the one true that is Absolute.
When Jonathan says: "How can I say this" means that his understanding surpasses his vocabulary. Brilliant man!
I am very surprised how shallow Boghossian's understanding is about theological and philosophical matters. But I also found him to be very honest and a careful listener. Truth seems to be sacred to him.
Great conversation.
I think it is a schtick. I think he is such an agreeable person that he uses this “dumb guy” attitude so he doesnt have to directly disagree and be confrontational. I could be wrong but just my sense
I get the idea he is trying to lower himself to Jonathan's level. The question "would prayer work if there was no God?" from a Christian perspective is like asking "would triangles still have 3 sides if there were no geometry?". He thinks prayer is like a wish button, which can be laboratoried. It's like Dean Radin said about studying love. "I won't believe she ever calls him 'schmoopy' unless she calls him that while I record them". Or something like that. Edit: Dean Radin, not Dean Kamen. The psi guy, not the Segway guy.
This is an ad hom. Yawn, Same old same old.
@@martinzarathustra8604It’s actually not an ad hominem believe it or not. The ad hominem fallacy is saying someone is wrong because [insert insult here] and using that as an argument. Merely saying someone has a shallow grasp of something outside the context of an argument is not a fallacy. You “rational” people need to stop throwing around the logical fallacy card everywhere when usually there isn’t one
@@martinzarathustra8604 no it is an observation.
“I am very surprised how much of a massive moron Boggossian is” would be an ad hom
I’m one of those ten people that thought this conversation was amazing. I’m looking forward to the next one!
What a delightful conversation. I really enjoyed this. A good faith effort on both sides to understand each other’s perspectives without straw manning and ad hominem. I’m totally catching what Johnathan is throwing and I’m here for it! But I know his style can be a challenge for many because it’s conceptually not how most people are used to thinking. I wish more people thought the way Johnathan does and I appreciate that he seeks to find the deeper meaning of our reality.
Beautifully put and I totally agree!
I love these conversations Jonathan has with guests who have different worldviews. It shows Jonathan is stretching himself and developing new ways to describe the Christian worldview that are intelligible (sometimes) to other people.
The reason it's so hard to pierce the worldview of a firm materialist is that the materialist holds a theoretical model of the world which he expresses through the telling of stories, but doesn't recognize the telling of stories as valid means of modeling the world. He views his stories as indistinguishable from the matter which he is describing, so he doesn't view it as story telling. He doesn't view it as engaging in the symbolic.
Because of this he is stuck. He is not able to replace his symbology with another. He ironically can only engage in thought experiments ('thought experiment' being a materialist approved term for story telling) which use materialistic symbols.
I find something like this with evolution. It's frustrating attempting to talk to them because they cannot distinguish between "how" and "why". Ask them how something evolved and pretty much every time they will tell you why it evolved instead. Ask how sea creatures evolved lungs and the answer will be something about air bladders for buoyancy. Ask how sexual dimorphism evolved and the answer will be that it helps create a healthy gene pool.
The evolutionist mindset is "If I can think of a reason why it could have evolved, it therefore evolved". The fact that it would take such unimaginably vast numbers of individual random mutations to turn a tyrannosaurus into a chicken that the Earth has not existed long enough for that to be even a remote mathematical probability will be entirely absent from their thinking, and you will be called stupid if you bring it up. Note that they will never answer the question. They'll just call you stupid for asking it.
It's all similar to the reaction you'll get if you ask "if we need more gun control to reduce violence, how come the violence was lower before the gun control was there in the first place?" or "if voter ID is racist, how come minority turnout in districts with voter ID isn't lower?" or "if we need more funding for education, how come test scores were higher in the past with less funding?"
@@patrickbarnes9874Those questions you asked in your last paragraph is the perfect example of the scientific method.
@@patrickbarnes9874 ha, and it gets even worse with "evolutionary psychology" where it becomes something like, "if I can make up a vaguely plausible Darwinian story for some sort of human behavior, I can then claim the behavior is entirely justified, or dismiss it as primal and unsophisticated, depending on context"
Nice insight.
This was better than I thought it would be as I generally expect these conversations to fraught with new atheist style gotcha debating, but Boghossian at least seems to try to understand the people he speaks with. That said, at this point atheist talking points just sound like nails on a chalkboard. They always coming off as insanely smug and self congratulating despite their utter failure at preventing any of the societal ills all of this enlightened rationalism purported to save us from. Boghossian suffers from this. His blind faith in things like a "Harvard prayer study" is incredible, given everything he's seen of our education system.
Yes his 100% belief in that study was painful to hear, I would expect more skepticism from him
Pray for Peter Boghossian.
Very impressed with Peter’s sincerity and curiosity about Jonathan’s perspective. I am Christian and understand that faith can be hard to understand from outside.
A big part of it is that Christians (in my experience) tend to have at least two major frameworks for “knowing.” One is more materialist while the other is too big for words. We can describe it, but there is no apt description for meeting God.
He is deeper than language. But because the experiences we have with Him transcend words, we can just sound like we are bonkers or cultish. I get it.
It’s easier to break down the pieces we can explain through rationality, evidence, and philosophical illustrations, but they are really just the visible parts of largely invisible scaffolding.
I can't believe there are still atheists who aren’t transformed by Jonathan's presentations. They're getting more refined, concise, and powerful every time! A great conversation and Peter was a great listener and contributor.
You make the mistake that atheists are atheists because of reason, desire for truth, etc
When the religious have been saying it for years: many atheists are atheists in their heart. Not the mind
Totally agree! He is amazing 🙂
Agree, they’re getting more and more refined, articulated for the rationalist, skeptic, atheists. I keep listening to JP, leaving hope to articulate it myself.
I also appreciate how PB seeks to understand, moving slowly, not glossing over, assuming, or presuming.
He's definitely getting better and conversations like this are great practice.
But at the foundation, someone who doesn't understand or disagrees just has a completely different way of looking at the world, and that's why people won't be "transformed" by Pageau's words.
He put this difference well when he talked about the truth claims coming downstream of everything else. This is just not the way a lot of people approach the world at all, but this perspective is ingrained in almost all of what Pageau talks about. And for someone to flip the way they think about the world to understand this is very difficult...
I think listening to Pageau with actual curiosity can help nudge people toward understanding that worldview, but they would have to change their own mind in a way that nobody can do for them, in the end.
I have been an atheist for decades, having been raised Catholic. And I am not in ANY way moved by Pageau's views and commentary. Not one bit. Talking to religious people is so often a waste of time, if you're trying to challenge them on their beliefs and assumptions. They want to believe, and they don't want to consider life without belief in a deity. Some do, but most don't.
Even so, non-belief is on the rise, and will likely eventually displace belief when it comes to belief in a deity--though not entirely.
Wow Jonathan, I really feel that you are the secret “Evangelist” for the Truth in Orthodoxy. God bless you always and your ministry!
I cannot possibly overstate how much joy this conversation brought me. Thank you both.
Bro, the 4chan argument made me spill my cola. That's some good ass argumentation of the historicity.
Man, the point about the telos/pattern preexisting the instantiations of the pattern just clicked so hard in my brain.
A wonderful conversation.
This was so good!! Thank you both! My vote for next time…JP, JP and PB!
This was the best conversation. Jonathan, you explain religion in such a beautiful and meaningful way. I am sure Peter Boghossian will contemplate the conversation for some time. I would love to hear the next conversation you two have. Bring it on!!
Amazing Jonathan! Talking to smart and earnest atheists like this helps those of us ex-atheists who are still trying to understand after all these years. Keep trying we’re getting there! This reminds me of the feeling I had in the Arkon interview years ago. Thank you for your efforts🙏
Excellent conversation and example of patience while each other unpack foundational understandings.
Very appreciated 👏 💐 bravo men!
I see Jonathan has recently been engaging in more out and out debates (has said many times he doesn’t like them). It’s definitely appreciated, as seeing you talk through the ideas with someone who strongly disagrees helps us flesh out the nuances.
As somebody who've held to both of these views, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you gentlemen!
Boghossian: "naturalism explains our world more parsimoniously"
David Bentley Hart: "except that it doesn't explain the source or purpose of anything"
Neither does theism. You folks are in a big circular argument.
@@martinzarathustra8604prime mover
@martinzarathustra8604 I am not sure what you mean by 'theist' but I likely wouldn't fit into your characterization.
It is true that every explanation of reality is ultimately tautological. The source of our reality can not be proven from within our reality.
But a participatory metaphysic like traditional religion accounts for both the reason for our world and the reason within our world. Naturalism assumes reason while denying its ontological reality.
If you cant hear it from a religious person, this argument is also made very effectively by folks like Mcgilchrist and Vervaeke who are outside of traditional practice.
This assumes that there is both a source and a purpose.
@@IfYouSeekCaveman Yes
That was a great conversation! Not at all was I expecting to have so many deep belly laughs! It’s like surfing on the Symbolic World surfboard, but Peter kept falling off.😂
“Different sun” 😂 this conversation is hilarious. PB seems like someone who learned lots so that he could show he learned lots, and the outcome is that he can show he learned lots - mission accomplished, but that’s it.
Jonathan's ability to have these conversations, at those levels, is really admirable.
If THE thing that binds was indeed the impulse to perpetuate being, then why would one be wasting time having these conversations and worrying about the epistimological soundness of religious claims? Why wouldn't one be out there "perpetuating being", procreating, as much as they can? Either because one believes the questionable epistemological soundness of religious claims prevents the perpetuation of being (in which case, it is one's duty to fight those claims) or because perpetuation of being is not what ultimately binds.
Listening to Peter's thought process, seeing his courage to enter into conversation with somone at the opposite side of the meaning question, and observing his yearning for truth, I can't help but recollect Fr Rose's words ---
"Atheism, true 'existential' atheism [...] is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ."
I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you both for your friendship and good faith discussion. The question of Religion needs to be reevaluated in our culture. It doesn't serve people properly.
Culture needs to reevaluate culture to align with eternal true patterns of being.
I love both of you and this discussion! I hope for the dozens of us watching that you keep it going with many more chats!
I especially love how both of you are oriented to the Logos so the conversation manifests with respect and humor instead of rivalry. Keep it up gentlemen
"I believe my wife loves me" is based on unfolding patterns of reciprocity over time, not brain scans and hormone levels etc.
"I believe in the Christian God" is also based on the pattern of reciprocity revealed through the ages and recorded in Scripture and Tradition.
Great conversation! Dr. Boghossian is really genuine in trying to understand. I hope you guys try and do pt.2!
As a professional, and 2x champion Table-Rubber, I'm offended at your dismissal of my sport!
Came here from the @wisedisciple react video, where he couldn’t track the conversation and quit mid-way through. Glad I watched to the end at source over here. I absolutely loved this entire conversation! Jonathan, you helped me think about all of these things in entirely new ways - I loved the way you apply an integrating whole of life worldview that frames how you approach everything and prevents you from being easily boxed in by the opposing framework of your interlocutor.
Thanks for the great discussion! The part that struck me the most was the discussion of miracles and the end of the world. It's very difficult to argue for the existence of miracles these days. If I had been in JP's shoes I might have started with more mundane examples than healing prayer. For example, the fact that each one of us exists is a miracle in the scientific sense: the probablility of if occurring is zero, and yet here I am! And this applies to all our identities - some of which led to cancer treatments! No "miraculous" identities, no treatment. How many doctors and scientists who solved such problems problems prayed (hoped, cared and attended to) for their resolution? As for the end of the world, the enlightened rationalists always forget that the concepts of "universe", "meteor", "physics" - everything in fact - would cease to exist without humans. They might respond that the universe would persist materially after our disappearance but, as JP says, "what does that even mean"? What being would remain to observe such patterns? And in a universe without humans, what relevance could these patterns possibly have?
I love being alive now. The conversations are incredible, and we have access to them all for free lol. Amazing.
Eta: I'm one of the "ten" 😂
We all operate using some form of Faith
In regards to the Harvard study on prayer:
Peter is expressing Faith in that study, Does he know the all people involved? How does he know that there weren’t lie, blunders or some outlier that skewed the data?
He BELIEVES in that study, without thorough knowledge
“Prayer doesn’t work because Harvard did a study”🤦♂️🙏
Soyence!!
😲
God is in control. God can decide to answer prayers or not. At least prayers are directed towards the highest authorian God.
Will God answer the prayers in a Harvard study which seeks to disprove or pinpoint God?
Not the most convincing argument 🤣
@@benjaminmcvay9864 God is no vending machine. Plus, there are so many variables to account for. Can they rule out other people praying for these people outside the study? Given that Christianity is still the majority in this country it is reasonable to assume many of the patients who supposedly didn’t get prayer probably had people close to them praying for them, should God consider the prayers of distant people chosen by some study over them? And then even outside of that there are tons of people around the World praying for people with sickness, even if not by name. Should God ignore the faithful elderly woman praying that someone in the World should be healed just so some dubious study can go forward? There is just no way to control for this. And then even beyond that God can obviously see through this attempt to pinpoint him, he’s literally Omniscient, you can’t trick him with some clever study. Just way too many variables to account for. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Thank you gentlemen. I love that you two love each other. Please do this again 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽❤️❤️❤️
Having an experiment where there are 2 groups of people, one praying and the other not praying for healing. It does nothing to determine the efficacy of prayer.
That would be like taking random people and asking them to write letters of recommendation for other people who are applying for jobs, and then concluding that writing a letter of recommendation does nothing to help someone looking for a job (and maybe hurts).
Appropriate intention, context, and sincerity must count for something here.
What a brillant and fun conversation. Good faith and respect can do so much. Merci à tous les deux.
I LOVE this! Well done gentlemen. The juxtaposition of your existential positions made this a rich opportunity for “perspecting” on bigger ideas! Thank you so much.
Great talk!! Please do more this was respectful and engaging!!!
1:02:44 "The only reason we can appreciate the universe's incredible precision is because it if was any different we wouldn't be able to appreciate it"
Of course... but that doesn't refute the fact that it is incredibly precise... that statement doesn't advance the conversation in any meaningful way.
You can do a parallel with surviving an execution by firing squad:
"Wow it is amazing that both of us survived! There were a lot of soldiers in the firing squad! This is an extraordinary situation!"
-Of course we can say that, because if it was any other way we wouldn't be able to say it.
???
How does that statement remove the extraordinary nature of the situation?
What we see here is two people steeped in worldviews so different that they don't have the same glossary. You might call them phenomenological and objective. I appreciate seeing two people trying to bridge that communication gap, even if the bridge may not have been fully constructed.
To put that differently, their priors are so different, they will need to converse for hours just to get to a point that they are both talking about the same thing.
And now that I've made it to the end of the video: This is the video I will send to people whom I want to introduce to symbolism and religion. Johnathan explained himself, for a materialist, better than I have ever heard him before. I suspect Peter has a lot to chew on before their next discussion.
Shaking (or at least neutralizing) Boghossian is not an easy task. C'était excellent! Merci pour ce bel échange.
Jonathan is a miraculously superb Christian Apologist, while employing zero of the rules of Christian apologetics.
This is precisely why he is so effective.
Rather than listing a set of theological presuppositions and defending them one by one in what might become a heated polemic debate…
…He simply, humbly, walks us, hand in hand, through the doors of reality. And he does so with a smile and pleasant disposition, while engaging in an exchange of colossal ideas until we all find ourselves resting on the same common ground, otherwise known as the truth.
This conversation really highlighted a big problem in academic discourse in our day. Jonathan had to spend half an hour explaining to Dr. Boggossian why epistemology matters before they could even start talking. Even someone who’s more attuned to symbolic thinking than the average academic probably still has spent so little time in his career asking the question “why” that this is not intuitive to him.
I think It’s harder for intellectuals to understand this unity Jonathan speaks of because in their world we can be united by facts about the world. But there is an infinite number of facts. Facts about the world and the universe cannot unite us. The Christian story does unite people. To celebrate, to worship.
Try going to a Lakers game and telling everyone there that Bird was better than Kobe or Magic. You'll see very quickly that sports teams do have truth claims, even if they are implicit.
You seem to be confused about how causal sequences happen.
@@martinzarathustra8604 I don't think I am. Neither sports stars nor messiahs emerge from a vacuum.
I was thinking this same thing. Have the argument for GOAT and you get pretty darn close to a religious war.
@@martinzarathustra8604 You seem to assert your analysis, without addressing the issue with his opinion.
@@hologramjosh Great point
At the end Peter says he doesn't think about these things anymore, given the world we are currently living in, he thinks they are totally irrelevant. The truth is VERY much to the contrary. The world we are living in now exponentially exasperates why these discussions ARE important. They don't make them irrelevant, they make them supra-relevant. Unless you start looking a little deeper, you'll always end up with serious problems, and trying to fix them with answers comparable to putting a band-aid on a lopped off limb.
I agree. Seems to me that secularism (money-theism) is what we are seeing play out. People need to be looking higher, but they have told themselves that there is nothing higher.
Honestly I’m not convinced there is any way NOT to be religious. Humans identify what they think is the highest thing and they worship it. Social justice, race, victimhood, money, sex, God, people worship all these things.
Find me a man who worships nothing and I will be truly impressed.
@@chdao We're seeing Nietzschianism play out into a dead-end. Turns out Man is more prone to invent new toys to distract himself than grand new ideals for a future.
Thank you both. This was one thought-provoking conversation. True refreshment. Great questions and even greater reflective responses❤.
This was a really fascinating conversation. Their dynamic is a bit funnily weird at times, because you can tell just how fundamentally different their worldviews are, and how they have difficulty relating on certain topics. I could also tell how neither of them is close to getting swayed by the other side. They both are already well and firmly established in their views, and so this conversation is more an attempt to bridge and facilitate understanding, than to convince the other side.
Nonetheless, they stay civil and open, and try to answer each other's questions as authentically to their own views as they can, which is so good to see.
I don't know how fruitful people think this conversation was, but I certainly hope that they converse again. I am best described as an agnostic, almost closer to Peter than to Jonathan. I don't think there's any way to definitively know whether there is an intelligence behind the universe, or whether things happen randomly and arbitrarily, and so I bring a certain skepticism towards religious claims. Nonetheless, I am not closed off to the possibility of there being an ultimate intelligence / Mind behind everything, and that consciousness and meaning play a constitutive role for the world. These certainly are intriguing possibilities. IF there is an ultimate Mind behind it all, it would still be a mystery to me why specifically Christianity would be true though - a topic they didn't get into that much.
I hope they meet again to explore these topics further. Genuinely enjoyed this conversation. Well done!
Great conversation! Honest & good humored. Gives me hope for the future. 🙏🏻
Another hello from Greece!
This was great! Can't wait to hear you two talk again!
I think this is one of the most important conversations we can all have.
If the truth claims are false or preposterous, how can there be good in this world?
In other words, the problems we have with evil means we aren’t following the actual truth claims.
This conversation is akin to the picture of Plato and Aristotle. Both metaphysical and epsitemologically they are each starting from different places and each critique is as well. In a simple sense one is arguing from the transcendent to the imminent while the other is arguing in reverse. Each starting place is in some sense more fundamentally real than the other. I would like to see another discussion on reality grounding starting places.
Great conversation! Thank you both.
I used to have frequent migraines. A neighbour asked several thousand Rosecrucians to pray for me. My migraines stopped.
Now, it could be shere coincidence but ... the idea their belief and goodwill was directed at me adds a new colour to my spectrum.
I chose to live in a world where people are good, goodwilled, and are sacrificing their time to do good works.
That alone, and the fact it was directed to me, makes me think better of mankind and the world I live in.
The bottom line is, no more migranes and the possibility, the hint, there is more to it than appears.
is Pageau trying to say: "Truth claims hold significant value due to the knowledge, understanding, and ethical guidance they provide. When you actively participate in these claims, you place trust in their potential to help you grow personally and ethically. This participation not only aids in your self-improvement but also contributes to the creation of a better, more just world."
One needs to understand that everything is relative... but there are things that when you make everything relative to them the world becomes more shiny, healthy and full of life.
No. It's more fundamental. You want proof that something is true? Gather evidence.
If prayer puts you into a pattern of life that is more bountiful and loving, this is evidence of the truth of its claim.
Science is about testing claims, but engineering is about trusting them.
To live a fruitful life your theology, your metaphysics have to move at some point from a science to an engineering project, otherwise you will never do anything.
In this conversation both parties are attempting to move the others fundamental view from engineering back to science, to reorganize the life of the other.
And I'll tell you right now, jonathan will win this.
The concept that reality coheres in beings is irresistibly beautiful and coherent, because it happens to be true.
Inconveniently for most, this also means we live in fairy land.
@RodrigoMera and if you make everything relative to your self in your pride, you sap the very brightness of your own identity until there is nothing left in you to be proud of.
Relativism is dangerous because it's half true. Yes you can walk in front of a train, (no, you Won't survive)
@@marcschaeffer1584This science and engineering comparison is very helpful.
Great conversation. Greetings from Helsinki.
Hoping for part 2 soon, you were getting so close.
I started this thinking there was no way I would sit through the whole thing, but it was actually a good conversation. I disagree with Boghossian on God, but he's one of the heroes of the Woke World War and has my admiration for that.
this one was refreshingly lively, they both challenged each other
What a discussion 😮
This is brilliantly revealing. Thank you both
I love Jonathan’s “what does the even mean” 😂
I'm seeing a repeating pattern forming here with the last few people you have spoken with. First in the Alex O'Conner interview and now here: the absolute obsession in our culture with hypothetical "what if" scenarios that never happened and from what we understand are not even technically possible. With O'Connor it was a hypothetical scenario of the fall being avoided, and here with Mr. Boghossian positing humans instead becoming insectoids instead of bipedal mammals. I'd be curious for a video on this phenomenon, I am noticing it all over the place now both online and in my personal life. Everyone seems obsessed with the impossible "what if" scenario and using examples of them all the time to make their points.
Materialist/atheists can’t defeat the ontological truth of Christianity (or Neoplatonism) unless they explicitly recognise that materialism is ontologically false without an axiomatic belief to create their world (which they deny). Accordingly they do this post-modern technique of destabilising the discourse disingenuously to avoid addressing the substantive argument.
If you recall Harris vs Peterson debates several years ago, Harris was expert at denying the ontological argument even existed by using repeated diversion tactics.
setting up alternative scenarios for many historical moments is something I keep coming across. it seems to be quite set into our western culture. definitely would love to see some discussion regarding this on the channel
I think I get what you mean. With Alex, it's how he pushes his points across. But at the same time, hypotheticals have no bearing on the current reality, and dealing with the now to explain things works much better.
It's like asking "if communism made all the countries it was tried in super powerful and happy, would you think communism was good" and its like...well yes but that betrays the reality and historical examples we have.
Just weird overall
Materialist/atheists can’t defeat the ontological truth of Christianity (or Neoplatonism) unless they explicitly recognise that materialism is ontologically false without an axiomatic belief to create their world (which they deny). Accordingly they do this post-modern technique of destabilising the discourse disingenuously to avoid addressing the substantive argument.
If you recall Harris vs Peterson debates several years ago, Harris was expert at denying the ontological argument even existed by using repeated diversion tactics.
Yes this is interesting, I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to argumentation or rhetoric, but isn't it a way of bolstering an argument by bending reality to fit it? I don't see what makes it a go-to move.
I got alot out of that...thank you both for the effort :)
I loved the questions he had for pageau even though im almost finished with his brothers book i still have moments of ambiguity from him he helped me out more then I thought he could great conversation 👍
this is just like walker percy's "message in a bottle." If anyone is interested in the importance of different truth claims and what that means I would highly recommend this essay.
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.
Sorry. I'm commenting before finishing because I'm dying to make this side comment-which may well be brought up in the conversation later on: I believe there's a huge breakdown in the communication in the most crucial point. This breakdown comes when Jonathan says something like, "I believe it's true because of the world it affords me." I may be wrong (or maybe Jonathan is), but what he really means does not refer to the belief itself but to the reality that is the object of that belief. And I get the strong impression that Peter understands it as *the belief affording the world,* and not the truthfulness of the belief.
If I'm wrong in this assumption, then I think that Jonathan approach to faith and reality is misguided (and misleading).
I would have categorically answered Peter's question with an emphatic, "yes, I believe what I believe because it's true." Then I could go on to explain how I may well take the affordances provided *by this reality* (and not by my subjective belief in the truth of that reality) into account for my critical judgment about the truthfulness of the proposition. In other words, it may well be that on an experiential level, the value of a proposition comes first, but on an ontological level being is and must be intellectually contemplated as emphatically primary. Whether the belief is well grounded in reality or not is besides the point. When we believe something (for example, that Jesus died and was raised back to a new life), we believe it primarily because it's true. This doesn't mean that it is actually true. I may be mistaken, and all the rest of my faith is in vain, and Peter would be very right in pitying me. But when I say that Jesus is God Incarnate, it is first and foremost because I believe it's true in the deepest and most comprehensive and multidimensional sense of the word: that is, if there were other worlds or dimensions, it would still be true in them. Or, to put it another way, if there are other levels of reality, the truth of God's Incarnation is as real and relevant in them as it is on the ontological level where we exist. In other words, the way I believe is that God is not as real as I am, but infinitely more real, and that Jesus is God is infinitely truer than me typing right now from my phone into a UA-cam comment box.
This is a huge deal and I am glad you said this. I hope Johnathan misspoke or I would have to admit I can’t understand him at all. I don’t understand how if Jesus did not literally rise from the dead that it would not at least have some sort of outcome for the implications for life after death and what that reality might look like (in which case the “Why” for a person being a Christian would have to completely change as would the definition of Christianity for at least one type of Christian).
Incredible conversation!
That's something different and I also like it. It's harder to talk to a person from a much different worldview, but this challenge allows for more significant cultural events to happen. It's like genuine birth of language. There seems to be more reality here than in less challenging conversations, its refreshing in that sense. Both interlocutors are facing an unknown (which is close to pattern of reality), both are in risk and struggle. Both are in tension and extend themselves to each other and through that tension a bridge happens that others also would be able to use. But that tension wouldn't be possible to hold on if both weren't in good disposition. So thank you both for courage to try that.
I BEG YOU TO TALK MORE ON THIS!!!❤
Can't wait to see the next installment!
Love peter and how lighthearted this conversation was. Thank you for answering the tough questions Jonathan, it’s helping me understand “The Language of Creation” and bridging the gap between the naturalistic framework im coming from and the Christian worldview im seeking and learning to incorporate. 👍🏻
That little thing in the intro, on why I care about truth claims, is almost exactly what I was talking to myself yesterday during my lunch break after a week of getting lost in the sea of philosophical thought.
this was really interesting. as difficult as it was for you guys for do this I really hope theres a second one. maybe one where you interrogate peter about his beliefs or lack thereof
This is the second one, check the channel for the first! And hopefully there is a third!
It's clear to me that the meaning we find in the world is often taken for granted, Dawkin's 'the blind watchmaker' springs to mind and if you read that book you should realise there are choices of world view being made.
"Meaning stacks vertically and moves up towards unity."
Hello from Greece!!
Hello from Madagascar
Hello from Brazil 🇧🇷
This was great...! I wish they could have finished it all together. I guess part II will have to do.
Why is a university that hired an atheist as their head of theology the benchmark for prayer studies?
I don’t even know how you could have a valid prayer study. First, God isn’t a vending machine. Second, God can obviously see through the study. Third, you can’t rule out other people praying for them. I just don’t see how you can have a valid way of doing it.
God would know it is a study 😂@@cosmicnomad8575
Because the universities are corrupt.
You can't. It was never a truth-seeking venture.@@cosmicnomad8575
yeah that comment was both misunderstanding prayer and misunderstanding studies
if our elites believed prayer works in that manner, the study would've proven prayer works in that manner
Two of my favorite people❤
Excellent!!! I get you Jonathan Pageau!
Man, this really was a fun conversation! I look forward to the next one.
That was an absolutely thrilling ride!
Boghossian's brain is in some sort of a loop. It's fascinating to see how he cannot break out of it.
Aren't we all stuck in our own loops?
@@davidg4682 occasionally. But many of us can at least break out of them long enough to think differently.
That 4chan line was a slam dunk
I love Peter Boghossian brain melting questions 😊
I'm one of the 10. This conversation is amazing.
Thanks to both speakers, certainly challenging content. I’m getting a sense that “the plane never landed.” That is to mean the conversation was elevated up, but didn’t come back to rest…
For Peter, I think you stated that you were asking these continuous “what if” questions in order to get a sense of where Jonathan was at, however you never shed light on what that means for the viewer. Seemed quite arbitrary. There are many aspects to explore here. Looking forward to further conversation. Thanks.
Love Peter's shoutout to Starcraft, I literally am watching a starcraft match on mute while I listen to the dialogue