"As Close to PROOF As You're Gonna Get!" | Matt Dillahunty and Dara the Magic Skeptic
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Original Episode Here: www.youtube.co...
Kevin from Australia calls in arguing that consciousness constitutes proof of God, as he believes it couldn't have arisen through evolution. Hosts Matt Dillahunty and Dara dispute this, pointing out Kevin's mischaracterization of evolution as a random process and his failure to justify his claim that consciousness can't be explained naturally. Despite acknowledging he can't prove evolution couldn't produce consciousness, Kevin still maintains God is an equally reasonable explanation, much to the hosts' frustration. Matt accuses Kevin of ignorance and fallacious reasoning as he and Dara argue Kevin hasn't met his burden of proof.
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"That's as close to proof as you get" is basically the same as me saying "Seeing pictures of Beyonce is as close to marrying her as I'll get".
I mean I have at least heard from Beyonce, she was in NY having a nice day enjoying her coffee like Jesus should be doing if he is still alive.
Well, the honey moon will be quite onesided...
At least we can prove that Beyonce exists and it would technically be possible to marry her.
It is like saying going to the doctors office with my mother is the closest thing to a threesome
I'd say it's worse than that.
You're comparing it to an individual that actually exists. I'd say it's more like a picture of a videogame character.
"eleven billion years (of evolution)" - and right there, we knew that this guy knows about half of f*ck-all. At that point, I was already done with this caller.
Eleventy trillion years
I was going to say that. He doesn't know enough about evolution to even make a case. Listening to anything else he has to say is pointless...
@@alanlowe9716 I don't even think he knows enough about basic arithmetic.
I think 11 billion years of evolution might actually produce a god.
Half of fk all lol
Kevin the homicide detective:
“Gotta be fairies that did it.”
He's got a 100% solve rate.
"Fairies dunnit."
I would totally watch that CSI spinoff.
like... when pdf file atheists claim that men can menstruate and give birth while nowhere in history has this beenn true, it's a blatant lie?
"Fit" in "survival of the fittest" refers to
how well an organism 'fits' the ecosystem in which it lives and
not to how smart, muscular and healthy that organism is.
Note: every member of a species is genetically different from every other member
(except in the case of twins etc.).
Thus each member is imbued with unique abilities/attributes/behaviors etc. and
when an ecosystem changes, some members 'fit' the changed circumstances
better than do others
so they find enough to eat,
have what it takes to replicate and
spread their genes within the population.
The opposite,
members who fit new circumstances poorly,
don't do as much of that and so
their less fit genes propagate less and
in severe cases of poor fit,
propagate not at all.
This is how species adapt to changing circumstance and
how changing circumstance create new species,
i.e. the essence of evolution.
It helps to have a statistical frame of mind when thinking about all this.
So if I'm wandering around the UK and witness a chav point at a girl with a 'big gyat', if you will, and proclaim "she looks well fit, fam", I'm to assume said chav is referring to how the girl's big gyat (i.e. her unique attribute) fits the South London ecosystem?
@@NoEvidenceForGod If my guesses as to the meanings of 'chav' and 'gyat'
are correct then my answer is
'indirectly and unconsciously yes'.
Edit: the ecosystem is not South London though, it is human culture.
This is what gives us the sense that humans are distinct from nature.
And the phrase "survival of the fittest" is NOT a correct summary of evolution by natural selection.
Karl Popper was once fooled by this, and went on to dismiss the theory as tautological. (It would be, too, if it were a correct summary, because it amounts to saying that the most fit are selected because they are the most fit.)
In the actual theory, the survivors are favored to reproduce, so that their traits tend to be passed on more than the traits of those who didn't survive.
@@NoEvidenceForGodYou’re from south London, so I can’t expect you to know that words sometimes have more than one meaning.
@@NoEvidenceForGod
It's sad that I'm actually impressed with the caller around the 6 minute mark, for giving yes/no answers to yes/no questions several times in a row... and on top of that actually admitting he has no evidence that consciousness can't arise through evolution.
Agreed, this caller was relatively honest in his responses to Matt's questions........ UNTI they got to the painful point of cognitive dissonance with their Wishful Thinking.
Yes, the caller is honest and not really trying to take a position although he wants there to be a god. This argument is one he got at the Theist Apologetics thrift store.
I'll never understand the leap from "this concept doesn't make sense to me." to "The invisible guy in the sky doing it makes total sense to me."
You are so right! The literary critic George Steiner once said there is a self-discipline in not knowing and refusing to fill the gap with nonsense.
How can consciousness not be a survival advantage? The benefits of executive control in decision making seems to insanely obvious.
It all depends. Some of the most successful organisms don't even have nervous systems, much less brains
Of course it all depends. It depends on the organism and the natural conditions it operates in and ambiguity (because there is frequently more than one way to deal with a selectional pressure). The question is that given that consciousness exists, and is extremely widespread, why would one even consider the selection pressure mysterious? One can hunt like a venus flytrap without consciousness, but once it gains the added layers of a goal-driven and decision-making exercise, the selective pressure is self-evidently there.
"The eye is a perfect creation" Ken Ham, the man wearing glasses ;)
bananas are divinely designed; ray comfort describing genetically engineered bananas.
Ken Ham's eyes weren't created. Duh.
This is the Matt that i enjoy. Calm and actually teaching people how to work through this type of logical thinking.
I enjoy all his forms tbh 😂
Matt: your ozzie accent is, well, let's say understated, but to me there's of a whiff of ad hominem. Please consider.
@@emordnilaps I thought it was not bad, surprisingly. Most American attempts that I hear are either bad English accents or unwittingly satirical or cartoonish - like that old Simpsons episode.
@@Jake_DapperInsideJoke_Nelson sarcasm without emojis is difficult to spot.
@@StukaUKThere’s always r/s
I think the issue is that we think too highly of what consciousness is. Processing information and then making decisions is important to pass on one’s genes.
Yes consciousness is overly mystified by the religious and philosophers alike
I agree with this conclusion, it's like getting upset you can't understand why water is wet
I look at levels of response to stimuli, which makes most animals conscious.
100%. Credulous people love talking about consciousness as if it's somehow transcendent or unexplainable to science.
I've always believed that consciousness is the product of a brain.
Kevin is something of an oddity here in Australia. Most people I know are not religious (or at least aren’t outwardly so, and don’t let religion inform their understanding of the world).
I can count on one hand the amount of overtly religious folks I've met in my 30 years living in Australia.
Wow. That sounds so refreshing. If only here
@@jamesharvey7739 I feel the same way. I recall being a teenager and realising one day that there were actual adults in the real world that believed all the stories in the Bible.
Until social media I had no idea how wildly out of control the US is with religion. Seems like a twilight zone.
You are very lucky, Where I am in Australia it's a little different, but still nothing like in the US.
*Apology accepted!*
😆
20 seconds in and the caller has already admitted that there's no evidence for his god. This is The Line's most efficient call.
I understand why Matt gets irate. He has to refute some ridiculous ideas over and over again. It must be exhausting. He is asking for one thing; one simple thing- show empirical evidence that god exists. I know it’s hard when you’ve been indoctrinated since birth, but there comes a time when you have to start asking difficult questions and not let fear or emotion dictate the answers.
Excellent statement
This can believes men can be women hahaha
@@nandogarza8807thats the point of the show. Thousands of episodes and callers and not once has someone come up with a good argument.
@@RaphaelSloanYusukeUrimeshi Thank you.
2:57 - 5:00 Well put by Dara. 'Survival of the good enough' - love that!!!
I've watched many episodes of the series and I just can't understand one thing. The only thing I can't understand here is why all these people are calling. For what purpose? Each of them spews random nonsense like "God exists because consciousness exists" or "God is real because it is obvious that he is Jesus and he loves us". Can anyone in their right mind believe that this is any kind of argument? More like sophisticated trolling
They all think they have the gotcha reason.
@@user-lk7wk3cd8e I imagine a moment of insight. Eureka! I'm calling the line urgently ha ha
They all want to prove to themselves that they have good reasons to believe. They’ve never asked themselves the question before, and so are trying to come up with any reason they can to support their Theism.
@@user-lk7wk3cd8e I wonder what kind of weed they were smoking before it dawned on them. Give me the same and the same amount
Some people think that the Holy Spirit imbues their words with magical mind control powers to convert people. Other people might just be stupid people who actually want to become less stupid; we don’t always know what happens after they digest the call.
Other people still just want attention.
as an Australian I weep that these blokes still make arguments like this, it's embarrassing.
Really curious about what kevin would say concerning the vast amount of evidence that non-human great apes also have consciousness, how would that factor into his religious belief?
Elephants/Wales, dolphins/birds/rats also appear conscious and display moral inclinations...
You beat me to it! 😉
We have a very wide array of species (most of them not even mammals) which we can reasonably describe as having consciousness to varying degrees. So where exactly is this insurmountable boundary which Kevin imagines exists? I wish the hosts had come up with that approach during the call instead since it might have been more productive (but it's easy for me to say that as an observer after the fact).
I think some of you are confusing consciousness with sapience. Anything with a brain is conscious.
@@JanetStarChild absolutely correct
@@JanetStarChild I don't think so. I'm using:
Conscious: aware of one's own existence in the world, having an internal mental life and an identity.
Sentient: able to feel and experience.
Sapient: able to reason, to actively think about something and come to conclusions.
All beings with a brain are _sentient_ . But this doesn't tell you if they are able to think "this is me, I'm an individual in the world". Do you think, say, tadpoles have an internal mental life, an identity?
8:49 "Damn, Matt's being refreshingly gentle with this earnest simpleton."
8:50 "Whelp..."
How can people watch all of these videos showing how to investigate and hold belief until its proven? Its baffles me its so circular and redundant. Why bother at all if you have no desire to learn the truth?
"What evidence do you have?"
"None."
Can we take a moment to appreciate this answer? It is so rare to see it. Kudos to the caller for being honest.
...but it's as reasonable an explanation says the same caller.
@@rickyhits6547 that is likely a misunderstanding on the caller's part. Because science doesn't have an understanding of how something happened, and I don't either, it's reasonable to believe whatever.
It's always better in that situation to go with what is most likely, rather than whatever answer you want to be true
@@SolemnlySquid
If you genuinely "don't have an understanding" of something, then you're in NO POSITION to judge what is "most likely."
It's far better to say "I don't know" and work on developing a better understanding.
@@starfishsystems I don't think that is exactly true. I don't have a very good understanding of gravity, but given that gravity is a thing, gravity is a more likely explanation for something than God is.
If you find an airplane in a cornfield, two of the many possible explanations for how it got there is God and Gravity. Gravity could have caused the plane to crash there or God could have placed it there, but the most logical conclusion between the two is gravity.
The conversation should have ended there😂
"Goodbye kevin!"
At 6:45 you can actually hear Kevin's brain fold back in on itself and collapse.
ROFLMAO!
To be honest he answered Matt's questions very honestly. At the very least the "path" is present, he just needs to learn to walk that path
Hahaha
Classic brain shart
Two groups of animals have consciousness, the vertebrates and the cephalopods. It's been almost half a billion years since consciousness arose during the Cambrian Era. Human consciousness started in the last half million years.
If the closest we are ever going to get to proof of a god is an argument from ignorance and some arbitrary statements, then I think they should stop trying to convince anyone. Just be happy with your absurd beliefs, theists, and stop trying to prove it to us.
egotism and narcissism won't allow that to ever happen in this particular human reality
The problem with this argument is jumps into the rabbit hole when you realize most creatures have a conscientiousness. They just lack ego. This stems from communal and social behavior over time. This is how it was created.
That is quite a claim.
I don't know what you mean by ego - presumably something that is aware of what it is like to be itself - but how do you conclude other organisms don't have (or have) it?
@@landsgevaer sorry, I missed this comment. By ego, I mean only higher levels of intelligence act out beyond what an animal raised in a community of animals will do. Take a herd of water buffalo acting to fend off predators and protecting their young. There is no reason for them to do this other than for them to realize their young are important and need to be protected. We don't need to go any farther into that discussion. This simple act of senselessness placing themselves at risk shows a level of conscientiousness. We can go higher in intelligence and look at Orca, who not only protect their young, but use other animals as training aids to teach their young how to hunt. Sometimes even allowing the animal to escape when clearly they could kill it. One such encounter captured on video shows an Orca bringing a seal it had beaten and used as a training aid for over an hour back to the shore and gently placed it on the sand. Then the Orca swam away. Higher Intellect animals using tools, even Crows and Octopus have the ability to solve complex problems but will eat their own young. So the rabbit hole then starts to go down vary fast because almost all creatures are smart, but only a few understand self worth, ego.
@@dijax7863 I think I initially read "conscientiousness" as "consciousness", oops. But you mean something like some types of altruistic social behaviour.
Personally, I would not use a term like "higher intelligence" perhaps, but as long as it refers to behaviour I agree.
As far as I am concerned, the buffalo do not need to "realize" anything, however; it could be completely automatic behaviour, but evolution gives that behaviour an advantage so buffaloes that did not do this were selected away. To be clear, I don't positively claim buffalo do not realize what they do, but all that mental machinery is not necessary for the behaviour to occur and sounds a bit antropomorphic to me.
(My point would have been that we have no way of looking into the mind of an animal to see what is going on or what drives them to do what they do. Looking into a human brain is hard enough, but there at least we can communicate fairly effectively.)
@@landsgevaer yeah, I agree, we shouldn't go farther then they do it and risk themselves in the process, there is a huge debate out there because herds that do not do that are just as prolific... so yeah... not going down that road... my point was internalized understanding of self can be measured by behaviors not needed for evolution such as seen when an Orca plays a deadly game with a seal, its normal food item, for hours, then carefully brings it to the beach to let it go. Our evolution didn't give us God, our Art and our fear in turn gave rise to myth and story. This is why Many believe God is responsible for himself in our lives. Its hard for many to wrap their heads around.
how, things like cognition, consciousness, and rationality help us move through the world more effectively, and it isnt exclusive to humans. so it definitely is a helpful adaptation. and therefore would more likely be selected for.
alas, folks like kevin seem to have opted out of that vital process...
You are right. 9 out of 10 here in Australia don’t give a dam about the sky daddy.
That's true, but there's no shortage of these nut jobs in Oz.
Can just hear his brain breaking. Time to double down on ignorant!
Some questions:
Is consciousness a function of the brain?
Is the brain a biochemical process?
Does evolution affect biochemical processes?
If so, would it not be prudent to consider evolution as being part of the history of the arising of consciousness?
Note, this doesn’t mean that evolution necessarily had anything to do with it. It’s just a question of whether or not it would make sense to look at evolution.
Before you can claim that “god did it,” you need to demonstrate that god exists. If we have no reason to think that a god even exists, how can we possibly suggest it being the cause for anything? That we don’t know how something happened doesn’t mean “god did it” is a rational response or even something we should be looking at as a candidate explanation. That’s affirming the consequent. You’re assuming the existence of a god to be the cause of the effect.
We know that evolution exists. Thus, it is rational to consider evolution as a potential cause.
We don’t know that god exists. Thus, it is not rational consider god as a potential cause.
I find it most likely that consciousness is a side effect of complex information-processing systems. Along those lines.
Evolution may quite likely tend to lead to complex information-processing systems.
However, I yet have to find anything that consciousness itself is "useful" for. Brains do stuff; consciousness just tags along.
@@landsgevaer
Consciousness is a massive game changer in terms of our ability to refer to our own thoughts as objects to be studied.
Other species survive without it, by relying on unconscious cognitive responses such as associative memory and ad hoc imagination. These can exploit simple pattern matching to perform simple planning tasks, but not much more.
Humans became smart enough to develop an ability for storytelling, which is already a survival advantage because it allows the amplification of relevant experience into a whole community.
But for the stories to be able to refer to other stories and to critique them, that's what allowed us to think about thinking, in turn to develop abstractions as objects of thought, to build upon these, extracting the relevant details and discarding the irrelevant ones. This referentiality is critical to the process of knowledge building, and it's not available without consciousness.
@@starfishsystems I don't think consciousness allows you to express anything. Your brain expresses things, your consciousness tags along with everything your brain does. Your brain self-references. Everything you can do is explained by brain function; consciousness isn't "necessary" for anything. That is my best guess. I even see no evidence that consciousness affects reality in any way. The brain does what it does, following the laws of nature, the biochemistry and whatever it is. Consciousness passively follows along, pretending it itself was the ego that made choices and what not. Imho, free will is an illusion. Consciousness is like the trailer that pretends to be driving the truck.
@landsgevaer. Consciousness doesn’t just “tag along” unless you don’t think there is any role for executive control. You are perhaps thinking of psychological experiments in which decision-making is predicted by neural activation prior to the moment in which a person identifies making the decision. The problems with experimental designs like this are twofold at least. One, we know from lexical decision-making that activation is indiscriminate and only a first stage. Activation gets one anything semantically related to the sought after word or starting with the same consonant or rhyming with the sought after word and so on. Actual lexical choices are made in stage two, when activation of undesirable choices are inhibited. I have not ever seen any experimental design that has been able to study inhibition of activation of how the choices of what to inhibit are actually carried out.
Two, the experimental designs of such experiments tend to simplify and dumb down the decision-making task, so as to avoid confounds. However, if the task is simply to press a button with your left hand or alternatively with your right hand, there’s really no serious role for executive control to take part in. So, why wouldn’t executive/conscious decisions not just go with what it’s fed through activation? In sum, decisions are certainly influenced by and funneled through activation, but it is a misnomer that it obviates any role for executive control.
@@toddmcdaniels1567 I see three reasons why consciousness doesn't affect reality.
1 is neuroscience, indeed, the brain biologically doing lots of stuff that we attribute closely to our consciousness. Responses like you mention are one, but complete changes of personality after brain damage are another sign that our sense of "I" is firmly rooted in material reality.
2 is physics. To my knowledge, the laws of physics leave no room for consciousness to affect anything. Or certainly such a consciousness would be a lot different than we seem to experience it to be, so we could just as well let go of such notions.
And 3, introspection. When considering what happens when you answer a question like "name a random city?", it should make you realize that you have no control over how you come up with an answer. It is just the brain doing stuff that results in something, and consciousness pretending it was all the "mind" only after the fact. This introspective experiment made me let go of the (also introspective) idea that my free will decides stuff, and once you let that go lots of pieces have room to fall into place.
Those are three separate reasons that I find very strong.
Now what is your argumentation behind your claim that consciousness does not just slavishly tag along with the material world? You have a lot of explaining to do because we have no idea how the mind could even steer anything. Or is that just because that is how it feels? (I agree it feels like that, btw, but rationally and empirically I cannot justify it at all.)
I give Kevin props for the amount of times he actually directly answered Matt’s questions with a simple yes or no compared to other callers. Not holding my breath, but hopefully he will reflect more after the call.
This guy sounds like a familiar apologist .. Ken ham ?
Ken and the caller are from the same country
The total amount of Human intelligence is a constant. The problem is that the population is increasing.
Almost every vertebrate and many other animals are conscious. Most social animals are also sentient. Sapience, the ability to reason is found throughout the animal kingdom. Heck, octopuses have this ability.
It is obvious how these mental abilities give an evolutionary positive survival benefit to these organisms, so have been selected for survival.
Shoutout to the "Magic Skeptic" and thanks for having him on the show! Great channel that you all should check out, along with Brandon at Mindshift!
I had a similar conversation once and I said “by George, you’re right! I don’t believe in evolution anymore. Now what?”
Then you're silly...Do you believe that fire is hot? I know fire is hot.
I am a fan of Julian Jaynes' theory of the evolution of consciousness in that it was a byproduct of the development of language. I'm wondering if other atheists/fans of The Line have any thoughts.
I think that consciousness is an emergency phenomena, linked to and operating on many different systems, including motor, vision, hearing, taste, touch, memory, and other centers if the brain. We are not the neurons, after all, we are the electrical impulses between them.
@quotedotes "We are not the neurons, we are the electrical impulses between them."
That's fucking beautiful, mate.
Newborn babies are conscious but can't communicate. It's fair to say that a language is needed to communicate effectively. I'm not sure if consciousness is a byproduct of language but intelligence certainly is.
Is he the author of a book with a title that includes the words - breakdown ,bicameral mind??
@@degaussingatmosphericcharg575 Yes, it's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." Yup, he should have re-thought the title, but he has interesting ideas about why we believe in gods. And that's gods, emphasis on plural. There is no way to prove his works, but he believed that "gods" did "speak" to ancient people, but this was an artifact of developing language. The "gods" stopped speaking to us as we developed the use of the concept of "I." His proof is basically the world-wide ceasing of incorporating the daily obsession of gods in our lives about 2,000 years ago.
Matt, I was with you right up to the point where you suggested that explaining the evolution of consciousness was equivalent to explaining the evolution of a brain. If that were the case, we would not have the “hard problem of consciousness“. Explaining a brain is a difficult but conceivable problem. Just a matter of structure and function, and can be at least theoretically completely understood in those terms.
Consciousness on the other hand does not at least seem to be just structure and function and in fact does not have an obvious role to play in structure and function. Given that every observable thing we do seems to be explainable on the basis of physical phenomena - cerebral cortex made of neuronal and other cells functioning in measurable ways, sending messages to muscles, etc., there is no obvious reason that a brain needs to “feel like something” to “do something”, to process information, etc. So consciousness is, in fact, special, and we have no idea how to explain it. But I agree that saying, therefore God did it is patently silly and presumptuous.
Brain is a quantum computer. No, seriously - recent discoveries indicate that brain utilizes quantum effects in processing and transmitting neural impulses.
I like what you've said. Maybe God didn't do it but instead, raw consciousness is what God is?
@@Ash1959 but don’t you think using the word God, given all of its connotations, just unnecessarily muddies the discussion?
Every creature has consciousness. Humans are just another creature. Get over your ego.
That’s a pretty bold claim I’m not fully on board with, but I’m happy to accept that lots of creatures have consciousness.
I don't think human consciousness is all that different from the consciousness of other higher animals. What made the difference was when we evolved language centers in our brains which drastically changed how we communicate our thoughts and view the world in terms of discrete "words" as opposed to impressions and feelings.
The humancenteric view and ego couple to make one believe that we are the pinnacle of evolution. The average mullusk is way older evolutionarily than us.
As for conscious being a unique characteristic of humans, we're previous species of homicide not considered to have been conscious? Where is the line being drawn to define what organisms are conscious vs just alive? I do not understand this argument for theism?
We don’t even know what consciousness really is yet beyond a descriptor. We don’t know how it works beyond knowing that it’s an emergent property of brains/neural networks.
Please don’t think that Kevin is a representative of all Australians.
Some of us listened at school.
Also, some of our understandings have evolved since school.
Even some of the theists.
False. Kevin is clearly a representation of every Australian who ever was or ever will be.
@@Leith_Crowther oh… kaaaaay ….
"That's hugely problematic Kevin."
Consciousness is a really tricky concept.
How do we determine what life forms are/aren’t conscious.
My cats have distinct personalities that differ between the 2 of them. I'm pretty sure they have a sufficient level of "consciousness".
If they didn't.. they would just be cat 1 and cat 2.
😂I love it when Matt gets mad - that 'piss off' was timed like a comedy maestro.
I wonder how Kevin thought that was going to go. What is the thought process; to what end?
Everyone needs to read neuroscience right now! It's accessible. It should be a cultural norm to know what we need to know about consciousness. I have a recommendation of 19 Ways of Looking at Consciousness by Patrick House, and The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms. Consciousness is attached to movement, it arises from various movement and prediction overlapping programs. We need to stop (as humans) behaving as tho we have no information and everything is up for personal rumination.
We also have access to how big the observable universe is and how old it is. If you multiply the age of the universe in the tiny Planck time units with the volume of the universe in tiny Planck cubes, you get a number less than 10^500. That's FAR less than the number of possibilities you can get randomly typing a book. It's pretty shocking. But a lot of people don't run the numbers so they think that the universe had plenty of time for everything to randomly assemble itself over billions of years. No way though. The numbers in probability are far too big. Much bigger than the numbers in cosmology.
Very good and clear exposing his ignorance. Or should I say arrogance. This was great.
New research by artificial intelligence shows there's some level of consciousness in whales as it's beginning to decipher the grunts and squeeks they make and determine that individual whales can talk to other specific whales or the group in general. They identify some of the whales as individuals by particular noises the make. It's believed that there are messages and communication involved in these noises but AI has not yet been able to decipher all of the content or even most of the content of what's being communicated. It may well turn out that whales are UTTERLY CONSCIOUS with whale consciousness and that their consciousness is simply a different consciousness than human consciousness. We as humans should not discount the consciousness of other species merely because we don't experience other consciousness. When my dog comes over to me scratches my leg lays down on his back and exposes his belly I know exactly what he wants . . . he's coming to me and asking me a question, "will you please scratch my belly?". This is purposeful / intentional behavior that demonstrates awareness, an understanding of the future and how to manipulate the environment to bring about a desired result. Is this not consciousness???
I appreciate the nuance of “good enough” for reproduction. Happy to have heard that idea today.
Giant argument from incredulity.
The informal logical 3:30 fallacy of appealing to your own incredulity by the Australian.
IncreJOOLiddie.
(In Oz accent)
A much more interesting direction this call could have taken would be the discussion of what consciousness is. If it is the ability to recognise one's body, have memories of past experiences, and make plans, the main parts of it we can test; then fish and some insects have expressed these abilities, and we have recently started to make AI systems capable of passing similar tests to near human level. This means that if consciousness is real and measurable:
- humans are not special for having it
- "god" is not the only one capable of creating consciousness
I like your description of natural selection of "good enough." In truth, natural selection can even promote detrimental traits. Say climate change or abundant food supply or any of a number of things can mask a detrimental trait that becomes incorporated into the entire population then the conditions can change.
“Random shuffling of atoms”. Kevin skipped Biology class.
"Survival of the most adaptable."
I think a lot of people confuse 'conscious' with 'sentient.'
I do.
I just cannot believe (or can hardly believe) that these beautiful brains that host our consciousness can lead to people that do not understand, and misunderstand, logic to such degree.
Apologies to the World, from Australia. Sometimes things just go wrong.
We started as primitive hunter gatherers right. As we travelled and our hunting needs grew more complex our cognitive abilities also developed. We learnt to communicate and function as societies learning morals and ethics as instincts along the way.
8:07 consciousness
If there were a god, not necessarily christian, how would I recognize it?
Well, atheists want it to be really obvious. That much is clear.
Omg when matt whipped out his epistemological didgeridoo, I lost my shit... 🤣🤣🤣 Wtf was that??? What a great clip... Love you, Dara! I support you on patreon because I love your work and how you dunk on dooshbags like Alan Par... That shit was so savage 😂
Hahahahah
This penny is as close as being rich you're gonna get. Therefore, you're rich
Good analogy. If that's the reason he believes, it's not a good reason.
Sometimes somebody can believe the right thing for the wrong reason though. They just luck out and their crummy reasoning and/or evidence wasn't a factor in the outcome in any way.
Evidence can be misleading. I learned that from Sherlock Holmes when they found a bloody fingerprint of the suspect in the house, but it was still NOT the suspect that committed the crime. It was a short story called "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder." It was fiction, but it was realistic fiction where the events in the story weren't improbable for a real-life case. Beautiful writing.
@@theboombodyDoyle was not exactly a genius. Sherlock appeared to be because he was set in a clockwork Victorian world. He was written that way. Doyle kept going to mediums, admittedly he was grieving for his dead son, but he also thot photos of obviously fake fairies were of real ones
@@dwightfitch3120 Doyle may have been misled by easily faked photos, but he was a magnificent writer. The biggest character trait of his Holmes creation wasn't the power of logic as most people think. It was the power of OBSERVATION. Holmes saw things most people missed because they dismissed those things as unimportant.
In the case of the Norwood Builder story, the police found evidence later that only Holmes knew was fake. He knew the bloody fingerprint was NOT there during the initial investigation because he searched even that particular mundane spot and remembered finding nothing. Because of his powers of observation in that case, he was able to discern between genuine evidence and misleading evidence.
Many people immediately conclude that everything that's rational is automatically true, or everything that has lots of evidence in favor of it is automatically true. But life isn't always that simple. Maybe most of the time, but not always. It can certainly get interesting.
If consciousness is as close to proof of god you are going to get then there will never be proof of a god. Consciousness didn't evolve randomly. It came about as brains evolved to be more complex because better understanding the environment and responding to it properly is a huge survival advantage.
I am by no means an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that "consciousness" is simply the input data from all the senses, processed by the brain into a composite output, that results in awareness of our environment.
"There is no reason why consciousness should have evolved" says Kevin. Which is a pretty wild assertion. There are plenty of advantages that consciousness - e.g. awareness of ourself and our surroundings, and the interaction of the two - would bring to the party. Planning, society, morals, etc., all rely on consciousness. It's arguably the reason we're (currently) the alpha species on this rock.
Kevin MIGHT have more cogently argued: what survival advantage does big C Self Aware "Consciousness" confer to us? From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, I'm having trouble thinking of anything.
Things like sophisticated problem solving abilities, social behavior, and inter-organism communication evidently don't require it. We observe those qualities in other animals.
We might infer some level "Consciousness" in those other animals, but we don't know; and asserting that they MUST therefore have it appears to me to be rather begging the question.
I've watched a bunch of these back to back and have seen how belligerent some of these callers can be. I like Kevin, he has been the most reasonable and willing to answer honestly. I think he got frazzled and defensive towards the end because he realised his argument had no legs to stand on and he was kind of spiraling
Matt again did the “Im not gonna talk because I’m going to get irritated” but as usual can’t help himself and needs to talk 😂 why can’t he let the host speak like he said in the beginning ?
Is Kevin Ken Ham’s brother?
When I saw Australia listed, just for a moment, I thought ( and hoped) that it was "Biblically" coming to somehow improve on the 'discussion' between him, Matt and Forrest where it ended with "It depends what you mean by mint", where Matt hung up and banned him forever, Forrest lost his shit and I fell off my chair laughing hysterically.
Kevin was certainly entertaining, but not in the same league as "Biblically".
Definitely worth a look.
I know Oz is very secular, but when you do occasionally breed them, they are good!!
Lol😂
I was thinking we don't have a lot , but the ones that we do have, make up for the others.🤪 👀👀👀
Kevin would be better off sitting by the billabong waiting for his billy to boil and guarding some jumbuks before getting involved in an adult conversation.
I find that Kevin's argument ignores even the most intuitive musings and curiousity one has when having relationships with animals with (by even an initial observation) "different levels of consciousness". I have, and have had, relationships with various pets/animal companions (cats, collies, snake, dove, horse, etc.). As soon as there is life that responds to its environment, communicates, and has neurological and chemical processes that can be at least compared with our own, one can at least propose expanding and varied consciousnesses/experience. Awareness is on a continuum, and not even necessarily linear; we may only "seem pinnacle" to ourselves. His argument is anthropocentric.
The battle of the accents that USA folks adore
The point of the show is that Christians or theists call in and try their luck, but Matt seems constantly surprised that this happens. He already knows they can’t provide “evidence” so why must he get so pissy about it when they don’t instantly convert to atheism?
I don’t even bother arguing with people now as I know it’s futile.
Because having an honest conversation about the subject is very different from being an idiot
@@knowme4iam326 no theist can ever have a truly honest conversation about god as they only have either presupps (idiots disguised as intellectuals), personal revelations (mind tricks), or beliefs from incredulity (creationists). Matt knows this so expecting every caller to come up with something new is pointless.
Matt's gonna blow!!! He's gonna blow!! BOOM! ❤😂
As an Australian with family that have indigenous blood although same amount of chromosome in their DNA like the rest of the males on earth did he forget that humans have been here for 80k years . Dont think all aussies are like this . We do have our share of humans believing 12k religions
Sounds like Ken scam.
Did he have to imitate the accent though? 😂😂😂
We cannot even say consciousness as we have it nowadays is the definitive because as every other animal aspect is evolving and changing and adapted to the environment
At most consciousness might be evidence for dualism, mind and matter. I don't know where there is a connection to a god and consciousness.
Evolution is entirely passive which depends on the active forces as described by physics and chemistry. Survival of the fittest means organism which are the best fit for the environment.
I liked the idea that consiousness/thought are a natural by-product of brain matter. He forgets that animals also have consiousness. They are very limited as far as thought is concerned.
"I feel like I am very very special, and therefore magical, and therefore nature couldn't have made me because I'm way too special. Therefore god".
This is why I say that there's no arrogance like christian humility XD
6:14
Lol
consciousness happens in every living thing to a greater or lesser extant
you can go easy on people when they dont know particular facts, but never when they think that 'i dont know how that could possibly happen...' is an argument
13:50 😂😂😂
I think Matt is auditioning for that Daddy in the Sky dude. 🤣🤣🤣
As soon as he opened his mouth and I heard the accent I was like aur naur not one of these callers
Consciousness is a prerequisite for any kind of multicellular life. Its the means by which we process all the neural feedback provided by our nervous system about our environment. Pour some salt on a slug's tail. You'll soon find out whether it's conscious or not.
I think the question is more that snails don't seem to have higher level conscious thinking. Metacognitive abilities that many humans seem to show.
Australians are not normally very religious nor do we talk openly about our beliefs. Not sure about this bloke though, seems like an odd one.
TL:DR "I started with the assumption that God exists, therefore God must have done it" - Kevin
14:15- it WAS the Matt i enjoy!
Well we all know why Jesus wasn't born in Australia, they couldn't find three wise men or a virgin!
I resemble that remark 😂
Plenty of hotels. (No "no room in the inn" dilemma.)
Gold...but not much myrrh. No frankincense deposits.
@@brucebaker810 I’m incensed, frankly.
@@RealHooksy But so far there are only myrrh myrrhs of irritation from the gold section.
@@brucebaker810 we may need 3 wise men to sort this out ….. doh🤦🏻♂️
Read Daniel Dennett’s “From Bacteria to Bach and Back” for a breakdown of how consciousness likely evolved and where we have gaps in our understanding of how this happened. 👍
Darma’s reactions to Matt’s agitations
The difference there is like:
Murder, we have a suspect who was proven to be at the scene or nearby and we have hypothesis on how he could have done it, but we don't have the murder weapon and motive.
Or we have an anonymous note with a name, which doesn't seem to be from the same time of the murder, nobody of that name could be find in the area.
While we cannot put anyone into jail at this point it's obvious which way the investigation will go.
I was all ready to play Kevin's Advocate, Matt's argument was sounding alarmingly similar to a religious argument "I don't see any other option, therefore evolution", if Matt and Dara couldn't offer support for evolution the most they could have done is brought Kevin to consciousness-agnosticism.
But then Kevin comes out with "You're wrong" when they haven't made a positive inference. Wrong about what? At that point their phrasing was off, at most!
Can we get Matt to do an entire show in his Australian accent?
I give Matts Aussie accent a 9 out of 10. I give Kevins reasoning a -9 out of 10.