✅CORRECTION(S)✅ In the section entitled "Should’ implies alternative possibilities?", I contest the idea that 'S should φ' implies 'S could do something other than φ-ing'. I think my counterexamples to that idea are correct, but I don't think they actually address Trent's claim in the preceding clip. In particular, Trent's claim was instead that 'S should φ' implies 'S could φ'. Thankfully, though, many of my examples can be modified to motivate denying this claim too. For instance, just imagine the boulder-trapping-arm case to be one in which you're compelled *not* to hack off your arm by your psychology (maybe you're very queasy). Still, it seems like you *should* hack off your arm! Or, at least, it seems that way to me 😄 Also, I should have added the following Bible passage to the section entitled "Old Testament God = North Korea": "...for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." (Exodus 20:5)
I don’t know if this is a reasonable response but I’m not sure I prima facie see how in that or any other situation one should act some way while being unable to act in that way. I seem to want to add a clause at the end: ”One should perform act Phi GIVEN that they could.” If you psychologically can’t hack your arm of then it is not even in the set of options between which you can come to a decision on which one you should opt for. Not sure if this is merely a semantic issue but would be interested in hearing you flesh out your position a bit more here, if possible.
New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University, in 1746 in order to train ministers dedicated to their views. The college was the educational and religious capital of Scottish-Irish America. Atheism is simply radical Protestantism. Joe is a radical Protestant minister being trained to share his views.
Man, I wrote a big ol' comment addressing this very point, only to look up and see you and others already noticed it first. Comment is still there, but man, I _should have_ not even bothered in the first place :P
@@Christus-totalis Yes a college was founded by a certain group of presbyterians over 275 years ago .. much older than the USA even. How does this history make Joe a protestant minister 😂
@@azophiradical Protestantism is atheism. It is a radical form of scepticism that was an overreach of the Protestant reformation. So a radical Protestant is sceptical of his own religious foundation, the bible. Joe is preaching this radical scepticism only made possible by its reformational foundation.
To me, 90% of this video can be boiled down to this: Joe Schmid would prefer if Trent Horn's videos were 3h+ long comprehensive scholarly studies which attempt to answer every possible system. It seems fairly obvious to me that Trent clearly implies whom he means by "atheists" and whom he is answering. He's clearly implied Dawkins and O'Connor as his primary targets which, to my knowledge, are absolutely reductive materialists (well, at least Dawkins is, I'm not ceratin about O'Connor). So, to give but one example, I find it uncharitable when Joe blames Trent Horn (at 19:39) for not answering atheists who could well be "property dualists or substance dualists". Atheist substance dualists are quite fringe both on TH-cam as well as in the general population, so Trent is perfectly excused not to address such positions in a short-form youtube video. To me, Joe displays a glass-half-empty attitude: the same fact can be stated in two different ways: the glass-half-full statement would be "Trent Horn has successfully rebutted reductive materialist incompatiblist determinist position i.e. a position of incompatiblists who also think of themselves merely as physical automata" (which may well have been his sole intention) or "Trent Horn has completely failed to rebut hundreds of possible alternative atheist positions out there", which almost certainly has never been his intention. Perhaps a slightly better approach would be to go through Trent's video and for every argument X, reconstruct which position this argument successfully refutes. If we went through every argument X he's made and, through analysis of his assumptions, state what set of beliefs his opponent would need to have for X to be relevant in a discussion, then this would be a far more constructive video. If some argument X is completely fallacious (e.g. self-refuting), then such analysis would show that the argument targets no real position and thus, in all likelihood, zero people. If, on the other hand, he's made at least one good argument against a decently popular position (e.g. that humans are merely advanced physical automata), then that deserves to be pointed out. In the current format, it all sounds undeservedly negative. But then, that's only my opinion and I don't want to be a smartass claiming to know better what Joe should do on his channel.
"To me, 90% of this video can be boiled down to this: Joe Schmid would prefer if Trent Horn's videos were 3h+ long comprehensive scholarly studies which attempt to answer every possible system. " I think he (and the rest of us) will prefer that he doesn't make such unsustained assumptions, like atheism entails determinism. "It seems fairly obvious to me that Trent clearly implies whom he means by "atheists" and whom he is answering. He's clearly implied Dawkins and O'Connor as his primary targets which, to my knowledge, are absolutely reductive materialists (well, at least Dawkins is, I'm not certain about O'Connor" Then he should make that clear, and stop pretending people like Dawkings represent all atheists. Or you will feel comfortable if we atheists pretended all theists are fundamentalists or Young Earth Creationists? "So, to give but one example, I find it uncharitable when Joe blames Trent Horn (at 19:39) for not answering atheists who could well be "property dualists or substance dualists". Atheist substance dualists are quite fringe both on TH-cam as well as in the general population, so Trent is perfectly excused not to address such positions in a short-form youtube video. " First, Joe gives far more alternatives than "property dualists or substance dualists". Second, the point is not who belongs to those groups, but the fact there is nothing in atheism that prevent us from taking different metaphysical positions other than just eliminating materialism or hard-core physicalism. Third, again, if Trent video is a discussion of "TH-cam atheism", it is his responsibility to make that clear. But of course, if he pretended atheism can be reduced to "TH-cam atheism" (TH-cam atheism in the Anglo-Saxon sphere), nobody will take him seriously. "Perhaps a slightly better approach would be to go through Trent's video and for every argument X, reconstruct which position this argument successfully refutes." One thing is to have intellectual charity, and another it is just blindly pretending a bad argument is a good one just because you want it to, by artificially reducing the scope of its reach.
@@mendez704 I mostly agree with what you have said. I think Tent should have and could have specified explicitly whom he's targeting, with little effort on his part. But then, it seems fairly clear to me, we can infer it as well. Obviously, a statement "atheism implies determinism" is false and it is indeed a caricature similar, as you said, "theism implies young-earth creationism". But if Trent has said it, then for the remainder of the video I would assume that everything Trent said about atheists he actually said about atheist determinists. This is how examiners mark, for example, physics exams both in high school and university: if you've made a mistake in part (a) of the question and this mistake propagates to parts (b-f) because they rely on part (a), then the examiner marks down part a, but for the remaining parts the examiner assumes the faulty answer of (a) and checks if (b-f) are derived consistently with the initial mistake. This is what I mean by exercising charity when evaluating someone. I don't see Joe doing much of that here. I'm assuming that Joe, by releasing this video, is trying to be constructive and help Trent improve. But no one can drink from a fire hose and the current format is essentially that. Pointing out some obscure positions Trent could not have possibly been intending to answer comes across more as a rhetorical tactic than an actual constructive feedback. I'm sure Joe is not interested in rhetorical tactics, but that's what's inadvertently coming across. Basically, if Joe wants to claim, as he does at the beginning, that Trent is a friend, then I'd expect to be able to roughly infer a friendly attitude from the rest of the video. At the moment, if I started watching the video from 5 mins in, I'd think Joe wants to rip Trent apart. Don't get me wrong. I don't follow Trent, I've not seen any of his videos, my knowledge of him is limited to his appearances on other channels, mostly this one (like the debate with Dustin Crumett), and I thought his performance was rather poor. I'm just saying that there seems to be a dissonance between what Joe says at the beginning and what he does throughout the video. A fire hose of pedantic minutiae is not going to help Trent get any better. Let me provide another observation. Trent said that O'connor agreed with Sapolsky that people don't have free will. This is a perfectly valid way for Trent to motivate his video, to provide context, and to show that what Trent is talking about is relevant to a large TH-cam audience. And it provides a strong implication of who is the target of Trent's video: determinists. What does Joe say? "a quick note about Sapolsky's book *and proceeds to say it's basically trash, lacking in intellectual depth and rigour*". Okay, so at this point Joe could have said something to the effect of "So let's appreciate that while Trent is responding to a very weak position, this weak position has been popularised by big youtubers, so, arguably, merits a response on TH-cam, for which Trent is commended" (and, again, the remainder of Joe's analysis should focus on whether Trent successfully answers Alex O'connor and Sapolsky) . Instead, Joe leaves no comment or recognition of why Trent brought up O'Connor and Sapolsky in the first place. Overall, Joe left an impression that Trent makes a mistake of reaching for a low-hanging fruit. But if this low-hanging fruit is relevant to a wide audience, we can't criticise Trent for reaching for it. This is why I'm under the impression that Joe disregards the context of TH-cam culture and hasn't been charitable in reading Trent's intentions and primary targets. This is not to say that Trent need not be more explicit about stating these.
As a Christian, I completely agree with Joe here. There are atheists that are not determinists it is like saying atheism entails nihilism. Also really appreciate you answering my question I have been going through some mental health issues recently and it really made me 😊
hah, knew it! when trent horn made that video i commented "joe schmid is typing..." edit: come to think of it, trent's argument about us "rising above the laws of nature" reminds me of ben shapiro's "favourite argument for the existence of God" , (and having your argument closely resemble ben shapiro's is probably not a good thing...)
@@blamtasticful Why wouldn't you be one? Libertarian free will at least seems to be completely logically impossible, and I find modal properties to be dubious in their explanatory virtues at best. As a reductive physicalist/atheist myself, I don' think that true metaphysical moral responsibility exists or even needs to exist in order for some ethical framework to be possible( as a negative utilitarian, minimizing negative utility is entirely absent of any meaningful acting agents.)
After practically making a career of criticising the New Atheists for (rightly in my opinion) not understanding the philosophy of theism and Christianity, he doesn't understand the philosophy of atheism. He's clearly an intelligent and well-spoken guy, but that video was such a fall on his face.
He won't, his aim is to preach to the choir not philosophers or rigorous skeptics. If he would, he would be in danger of refuting his holy book and therefore his religion.
How many times does someone need to be called out for this when they know better before someone can conclude that he is engaging at the very least in some epistemic vice if not in some dishonesty or some bad faith?
@HarryNicNicholas lying is a pretty egregious thing to level. Plus it implies Trent isn't sincere about what he's saying. Idk why atheists are so quick to ascribe scienter
@newglof9558 Notice that I specifically didn't simply call him a liar. However, it seems to me that some will come up with any small reason one might not be lying and basically aren't convinced of legitimate evidence that one very possibly is. People lie and it's fine to point to evidence of that and people need to get over that.
"if atheism is true, then determinism is true' Some of the greatest atheist/theistic philosophers in the world(though certainly not all)would sign on to this statement. It's a rare area of agreement. Are you saying it's an irrational position to hold? I promise you Joe wouldn't say that to to these philosopher's faces. They would laugh at him.
@@reevertoun Rofl, no they wouldn't. It's a straightforward non-sequitur. It might be that they do believe that both atheism and determinism is true (and would probably give arguments for each), but I am certain they don't think determinism follows necessarily from atheism.
@@rumraket38 You're burden shifting and unnecessarily using the world necessarily. "If atheism is true then determinism is true" is a position held by many great atheistic philosophers. Do you think this is an irrational position to hold? Perhaps when Joe has a atheistic determinist on we can get clarification on whether Joe think they're "irrational" as @logicalliberty132 suggested. I'm happy to superchat it in to clear up the matter. How do you think Joe will respond? He did like the comment so maybe you're correct and he agrees that these philosophers are irrational after all.
@@rumraket38 You're burden shifting. Who's talking about necessity here? Are you arguing that respected philosophers don't hold to "'if atheism is true, then determinism is true"? If so you're just flat out wrong. Maybe next time a atheistic determinist comes on a superchat to Joe asking if he thinks this position is irrational would be helpful. How do you think he'll respond? I'd be absolutely shocked if he characterized this claim as irrational. Although he did like the post in this thread so maybe I'm wrong. We will see.
Not sure if you respond to comments, but I was curious to know what your defense of free will is. I heard in one of your QnA vids that you were once a determinist but then switched to free will. I couldn't find any videos where you give a proper response of it, would love to hear it or read it! :)
Good video. The most bewildering point that Trent made, in my opinion, was at 53:45: "and the only way we can rise above the physical order to be that kind of primary cause is if an all-powerful, morally perfect God gives us the power to do that". Nonsense. The power in question has to do with acting in some sense independently from deterministic physical processes. It could be that we're something that has that sort of power, regardless whether that power was given to us from something else or, if it was so given, what the features are of the thing(s) that gave it. None of deity, omnipotence, and moral perfection are required.
@@AlexADalton Us having those powers may be compatible with Christian theism, but so what? My point is that us having those powers is compatible with the denial of Christian theism. More generally, we could also have them even if they weren't given to us by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity.
Havent watched yet. But Im going to guess what Trent says here before watching. My prediction is that Im going to be annoyed by Trent conflating realism with using the concept "responsible" or something and say if you don't have his metaphysical views then you cant say anyone is -reallllly-responsible
Shock horror, I was correct. I really dont understand how intelligent people can continue making this mistake. And given that Trent believes that *actual*-*responsibility* does *actually* exist it's not that he thinks Atheists are incorrect to use "responsibility" language, just that such use is alleged to be in tension with other metaphysical commitments. That could be correct, and it still perfectly fine to use responsibility language. The question of whether or not the use of "responsibility" language is appropriate in any given situation then deflates from a second order Theoretical one about deep concepts and worldviews to a first order one about the features of any particular application of that language.
I feel Trent has become no more than a propagandist for a worldview. His recent videos on philosophical topics have been egregiously stupid and not well thought out.
@@DigitalGnosis That's exactly why I'm doubtful of Trent's sincerity. He is smart, he has interacted with a plethora of atheists, he clearly engages with relevant literature, so why is he making arguments like these? I don't understand at all
@@MajestyofReason It's open source (free), highly customizable, very flexible. You can do all sorts of things with it like mind mapping, drawing, etc. I'd recommend at least considering it.
The caveat to Obsidian, Logseq, Notion etc is that PKM software is a pretty deep rabbit hole. Arriving at a setup that is good for you is not trivial, partially _because_ of the level of flexibility that is allowed. (I personally use Logseq and have heard that a range of things that it does automatically are in Obsidian, but as plugins; I haven't used Obsidian myself, but this does give the impression that more setup might be required in that case) I'd encourage anyone considering PKM to take some time to compare the different options, look at some videos of workflows, as they all have different emphasises (I've heard that Logseq emphasizes blocks of text, so it's more focused on the task of "outlining" than Obsidian, which is said to emphasize individual pages more). Serious time commitment to get into any of them IMO.
What do you think of the Aztec culture? What would the "right thing" be to do if we discovered a culture like that today? Would one culture be right in destroying a culture based upon human sacrifice? 20k-250k estimated human sacrifices a year.
Regardless of the specific answer, I think it is clear that committing genocide against the Aztecs is not the answer. You could read Bartomolé de las Casas’ A short account of the destruction of the Indies (a Dominican friar who recorded Spanish atrocities against the Aztecs).
@@MajestyofReason I’m not asking what they did. I’m asking what you would do and on what grounds would you do it if you encountered a culture like that. Or project a foreseeable future where radical Islam takeover what would you do and why.
The moment someone equates atheism to specific views like determinism, reductive materialism and proceeds attacking those specific views, you understand it is mostly rhetoric and propaganda. Or plain ignorance, but I assume Trent is familiar with the diversity of views among atheists, that atheism means "no god" and that being an atheist doesn't necessarily entail subscribing to any of those specific views. Anyway glad that Joe is here to roast anyone who makes such mistakes.
"The moment someone equates atheism to specific views like determinism, reductive materialism and proceeds attacking those specific views, you understand it is mostly rhetoric and propaganda." Lol wat? How does critiquing a particular view qualify as propaganda under any definition of the word propaganda? Not everyone is inclined to play Whack-a-Mole with every combination of atheist views. If you did indeed have to respond to every plausible combination of beliefs then you'd literally have to debunk millions of unique sets of beliefs. Just go through the philpapers survey to see how little agreement there is on any given subject.
@@vozcalma4127 The point is that simplifying a position to then pretend to rebut it is just fallacious and dishonest. I'm speaking from a reductive naturalist/atheist perspective, and I didn't find such criticisms to be valid or impactful to my views on ethics, epistemology,etc.
@@jackkrell4238 There's absolutely nothing wrong with picking the most plausible, or common, or whatever atheist view(in your opinion) and responding to that specific view. Joe does this constantly when it's convenient. You're placing the bar so high no one can reach it, including atheists responding to millions of combinations of theistic views.
@@vozcalma4127 It qualifies as propaganda when you publicly pretend to have refuted atheism or to have shown an inconsistency regarding atheism. Theists wouldn't be happy if an atheist with a wide audience attacks creationists/evolution deniers, and then pretends to have refuted theism. Why would they be after all? That does not exhaust theism. P. S I do not intend to say that creationism has the same level of plausibility as reductive materialism. The analogy stands for being a very specific view and not exhaustive.
A big point you keep raising is him reducing atheism to determinist physicalism, but I think he was pointing out specifically the atheists who assert that very line of thought. Yea he shoulda made a clearer distinction. No I don’t think he was reducing all of atheism to that. Just those who assertnit already.
Two thoughts. 1. When I first saw Trent's combative title it struck me as odd. It comes off as if he thinks I, an physicalist atheist, would disagree and his video has some earth shattering logic as to why I'm wrong... but he's missed the boat because I already agree. Trent: you're not on the defensive, I'm not putting any blame at your door, I don't think you could have believed otherwise. Trent: WHY ATHEISTS CAN'T BLAME CHRISTIANS! Me: Cool, I'm a physicalist atheist and I don't do that. Trent: wait? what? you don't want more convincing? Me: Yup, we're done. I agree. By my lights, doxastic involuntarism is true. Can we stop this sideshow now and get to dealing with the internal criticism of Christianity that the problem of evil presents? Trent: WHY ATHEISTS CAN'T BLAME CHRISTIANS! 2. Even granting that Trent was speaking about physicalist atheists, his grasp on the philosophy is still very poor. He's not just basic, he's wrong. It's a bad video, and Joe does a good job working through that. And Trent's a product of his environment, so I don't really blame him for that either. But he's commited the mortal sin in Catholicism of bearing false witness. I guess Trent is going to Hell for that video, according to his own theology. (I doubt he'll repent to a priest, or do a public apology for his mistakes. So absent any repentance, Hell it is.) But let's be charitable and say that his video was valid, and had it been more narrowly focused it would have played better. Trent has all his work ahead of him to 1) define the free will he believes in and 2) demonstrate it. Is there free will? Maybe he should get empirical and show some free will. Trent's weak strawman of Frankfurt cases suggests he doesn't want to go there. If he has free will to choose to have different intuitions about free will, let him show that. As Joe said, Alex's critique of WLC still holds as an internal critique of Christianity. It's not about atheists "blaming", or our views on free will. It's asking how believers manage to square their own views within themselves. Nothing turns on whether atheists are determinists or not. All Trent's work to rescue WLC and get out from under the problem of evil is still ahead of him, even if atheists are all physicalists or atheism necessarily entails physicalism. It doesn't matter if I don't believe in leeway freedom, Trent does. WLC does. The problem of evil is a problem for Christians because of their beliefs, not mine. But instead of engaging with the problem, we get this red herring about atheists blaming Christians. As a video for atheists like me, it's very poor. As a defense of WLC's interaction with O'Connor, it's very poor. As a yardstick of how well Trent understands philosophy, and how analytically he thinks, he did very poorly. But perhaps it was a video... for other Christians. In that it succeeds. It gave his predominantly Christian audience what they wanted, and it attacks the people they want to attack.
Thoughts on the 2 Doors Halting Problem counterpoint to theistic free will? You ask God which door you will go through, assuming God cant lie. If he says 1, do you go through 1? Or 2? If 1 did u have a choice? If 2, is God omniscient?
PineCreek said something similar, if you could ask God a question, "how many days I would live?" and God says "five", can you still die tomorrow? If no, than you don't have free will (to do otherwise, as it usually defined). If yes, than we have some absurd situation, either God is lying or misinformed, if neither of those things are possible for this particular God, than the question would be "why God didn't say you will die tomorrow in the first place?"
When I was 10 yrs old, i thought about a similar argument too. Lol, for what it's worth, my 10 yr solution was that just as characters in a movie ive watched before have free-will, we too still have free-will despite God knowing what we will do. And God knows what we do from His view of eternity or outside time. I'm agnostic now by the way haha .
It's actually embarassing that a theist philosopher who regularly debates atheists and agnostics misunderstands his opposition so severely. Like, you have an obligation to understand atheism and what it's proponents arguments are, and it looks like he either hasn't tried (AT ALL) or doesn't care.
Trent just cannot think analytically. He mimicks analytical breakdown, but all he's doing is starting with a conclusion and finding ANY justification. But since it's not analytical, his justifications cannot be consistently applied.
45:25 Are you sure about your use of the word "desert" ? I checked in the oxford dictionary, "desert" either means to abandon, or a place without water like Sahara... There is no definition of "desert" that is linked with "deserve" or "being deserving".
It seems like Trent Horn's entire argument was "If we are deterministic, then no one should be punished for doing morally reprehensible things." And, yeah, I don't think revenge is a good way to solve antisocial behaviors. So I agree with him. That doesn't mean that we should allow extremely antisocial people free reign on our economic or political structure though.
There is nothing biblical about Free Will given how humans had original sin or how how humans were "knit together in womb" by the omniscent god who knew every action they would take. If free Will exists, it would only be in a non-christian worldview.
It's biblical. God knowing the action you commit is still your own action. Original sin isn't the guilt you get from Adam and eve. "Knit togeter" Buddy that's metaphorical and literary device being used here.
I watch virtually all of your videos but I just have a very hard time making it through the ones about Trent at this point. I find him extremely frustrating - consider how *bad* the arguments he's making here are, literally just totally unfounded premises, question begging, and flat out invalid conclusions. Like, really? Atheists can't blame anyone for anything because Trent believes that determinism abdicates moral responsibility and that atheism always implies determinism? You can't make it more than 3 words without finding a blatant, obvious flaw. And then he uses these terrible arguments to justify behaviors and advocate for policies that I find absolutely disgusting. And he does this all under a pseudo-philosophical guise that I just really can not muster the strength to sit through anymore. With the recent discussion by WLC on justifying the murder of children, I'm just so well past the point of being able to sit through these weak, grotesque displays anymore. I don't know how you do it, I suppose you are just able to grant such a significant amount of charitability and good faith, but I can't do it anymore. Anyways, I love 99% of the content you produce, but I couldn't get through this video.
We commented something very similar and I feel you on the last sentence specially. That video of Craig on the Caananites was appalling, and to then come out and say "oh well you can't really blame us for that because you believe this" seems like a terrible retort. I understand the use of ad hominems in the technical sense, and for some atheists Trent's arguments will work, but to extend it as a way to dismiss the critiques of divine command theory is crossing the line of intellectual honesty IMO
I sympathize with that feeling, I too felt once worn out by these "grotesque displays" (mainly from Mike Winger, Girl Defined, and Jon McCray's surprisingly deluded take on Genesis). Maybe I deep down have faith that someday we'll all achieve a common ground and understanding. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic.
If God is omnibenevolent, then he can only do good and kind works and cant do anything but that. So isn't god a deterministic entity ? Where is his free will if he can't do anything but good ?
God is omnibenevolent because he only does good. He is pure goodness in a nutshell. No I don’t think he is forced to do good, rather he willingly by his own nature chooses to do so because he is purely good. Aka my dad is a cigarette addict, he’s been smoking for 40+ years and won’t quit until he’s dead, when given the choice to smoke he will fall back on his smoking nature and smoke, I see smoking as disgusting, smelly, and I’ve seen the effects smoking has caused on my father. When given the choice I could smoke but my nature makes it so that even though I am free to smoke I find it repugnant in my nature so that I don’t want to smoke, that’s how I view God, he could sin but his nature naturally allows him to reject sin
@japexican007 it just deterministic even by your description though. Gods nature allows him to only do what his goodness let's him do and your repugnance to smoke has determined the fact you won't smoke ?
The point you raised is excellent and has been one of the major issues in contemporary philosophy of religion. However, I would like to highlight two things. Typically, the term "determinism" is used to refer to external influences on the agent that result in a certain action, whereas it seems you are using determinism to encompass any influence, whether external or internal, that leads to an action. This distinction is crucial because there is a certain group of libertarians called virtue libertarians who concede that free will is compatible with determinism in the second definition but not in the first. Specifically, they concede that free will is compatible with determinism if the influences are only internal, or in other words, if the agent is the source of the action. Thus, God could be entirely determined by his character to do φ and still be free in doing φ. And secondly, there are some puzzles with what we mean by "omnibenevolent". For example, R. Zachary Manis argues, because of the reasons you mentioned, that God is omnibenevolent in the sense that in every feasible world, God always chooses the best. So it's possible that God could do some evil even while being omnibenevolent in this sense. Other philosophers have argued that God has the ability to do φ even if it's not possible for him to do φ, so God would have the ability to do the impossible. Anyway, all of this is very complex, difficult, and controversial, but it's just to point out that there are ways to circumvent this challenge. Notes and articles. I would just like to point out that I used φ to refer to any action; φ here is like the x in mathematics, which serves to represent something else. If you're not comfortable with this symbol, feel free to change it or use the word itself. I only used it because it seems to me to be a very beautiful symbol. Also, here are some articles I think you'll be interested in: Could God Do Something Evil? A Molinist Solution to the Problem of Divine Freedom, by R. Zachary. (philpapers.org/rec/MANCGD). This is the article I mentioned in the second part; Zachary explains and defends this idea in much more detail and depth than I could here. Best Feasible Worlds: Divine Freedom and Leibniz's Lapse, by Justin Mooney. (philarchive.org/rec/MOOBFW). This article explains in greater detail the notion of virtue libertarianism; it's worth reading. Theism and Secular Modality, by Noah Gordan. (philarchive.org/rec/GORTAS-3). This isn't an article but a dissertation, but I think it's fine given that it's to defend that incredible idea I told you about, that God is capable of doing the impossible, even logically; it's worth checking out. I hope this helps you. May God bless you as you continue exploring philosophy.
@@jezah8142I’m confused here, what being wouldn’t be “deterministic” according to your definition, please explain In my example I gave my nature to not smoke, and my father to smoke but if it were the case that I did smoke then I was just determined to do so by whatever force/nature drove me to do so. In that case when do you believe one is not determined? When I think of determined I think of no freedom, but that’s not how I see God nor myself, I am free to choose my lusts or act against them just as I believe God is also able to, the difference being is his nature is all good as such he isn’t “persuaded” to do evil just as I am not persuaded to smoke, but that doesn’t mean I can’t literally not smoke if someone had a gun and told me to smoke then there’s nothing actually preventing from doing so, what stops me is my ability to reject that which I’m not prone or inclined to accept by my very nature.
I think you give Trent a bit too much credit. You and so many others have responded in depth multiple times to the equivocation between atheism and determinism, moral nihilism, and naturalism. It is very reminiscent of the complaints many theists make about the new atheist movement. In my opinion the reaction to the new atheists has ushered in a “new theist” movement where apologists continue to strawman atheism and refuse to respond to the best objections.
This is a 4/20 blessing 🙏🙏 No but for real, it's difficult for me to put my emotions aside whenever Trent Horn makes arguments like these, because I believe him to be a very smart person. It feels so out of character then for him to say things like "we don't have moral responsibilities without god", completely ignoring the centuries of philosophical work that argue for the contrary. Obviously if that's his position and he defends it it's his prerogative, but then he whips out his "if atheism is true, then determinism is true" premise, which feels disingenious AF (of course from my pov, Trent might actually intellectualy honest reasons to believe it).
Joe I’m a subscriber and love your channel it’s very informative. But in reference to certain things like objective morality, I think it’s absurd to think any system of truly objective morality can exist apart from God. I would love to see you debate William Lane Craig on that issue because I’m willing to have my beliefs challenged. I just think claims like those and others have never been validly substantiated in any serious way
god can't be objective, that's absurd for a start, two reasons, one he is a subject and two he says thou shalt not then goes ahead and shalts. don't be daft. lane craig is no better than a concentration camp guard, as are all religists, they use god as an excuse to exterminate what they personally don't like. you can translate everything lane craig says into "i was just following (god's #) orders" he's a disgusting lunatic. go watch mr deity, he's not polite about the lane craigs of this world.
Absent a WLC debate, if you want another high-quality take on morality from an atheist, I recommend this. th-cam.com/video/OsAaxOFOUl4/w-d-xo.html If you are willing to have your beliefs cahllenged, that channel will do it, and you have my respect.
Great video, Joe. I liked it and shared it on X. Just one brief thought here. So, at some point you mentioned that atheism doesn't necessitate determinism because nothing prevents an atheist from accepting non-deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. One potential response is that Trent is only concerned with macro-determinism, that is to say, determinism that is relevant to the human mind. And relevant quantum or 'coherent' (a technical term) behavior only occurs in sufficiently cold and isolated systems (such as in laboratories). The human mind isn't conducive to such non-deterministic behaviors. For more on this you can read the academic objections to Penrose-Hameroff's quantum theory of mind.
@@MajestyofReason You're welcome! :) Yes, it is true that atheism doesn't entail determinism. My point is just that an atheist (or anyone for that matter) cannot use quantum mechanics to justify the idea that the brain could be non-deterministic. Well, at least that's my understanding of it. If you research a bit, you'll see proposals by some biologists that there could be relevant/coherent quantum behavior in the human brain, but there are harsh criticisms of these speculative ideas. To, to sum up, your point -- that atheism doesn't require determinism -- still stands, but QM is of no help to show that.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco Thanks again! I think we mostly agree, then; but there's one remaining point of potential disagreement. You say that QM is of no help to show that . (Though, I grant that it is *not* of help to show that
@CosmoPhiloPharmaco I get that QM is an objection to like literally the entire universe is deterministic, but what does the position of a subatomic particle have to do with morality? "Is it right or wrong to push an old lady in front of a train?" "Well, according to Quantum Mechanics..." Did all these Philosophers get PHD's in Physics? I don't think they understand QM any better than the average person. Next time anyone else brings that up as an argument I want to demand that they show me an equation for the density of water.
@@MajestyofReason Sorry for the delay, Joe! Having read your response I also think that we mostly agree. :) :) Sure, it is definitely true that atheism doesn't entail determinism (neither micro- nor macro-). So, that's a point we agree on!! My contention is simply that, regardless of whether atheism requires it or not, quantum mechanics doesn't give the atheist (or theist and deist for that matter) the type of indeterminism that is relevant to the free will debate, namely, brain-indeterminism. Now, you already pointed out before that Trent didn't specify whether he was specifically talking about brain (or mind) determinism or determinism _simpliciter._ However, I submit that we can be quite confident he was primarily (or even exclusively) concerned with the former given the context of this debate, which is free will.
"free will, for many atheists, can not exist in a godless universe" this is the same slippery nonsense that apologists do when citing atheistic nihilists. atheists who reject free will generally don't think a theistic universe could have free will either.
Trent is spending so much time labelling actions rather than looking at their effects. If God doesn't exist, we can't call this action that. So what? The action of telling someone that they are to "blame" is still effective at controlling future behavior. "Moral blame" is when you tell someone that they need to adjust their internal decision framework to correct the given output.
Human beings lack of free will has nothing to do with quantum randomness. Our lack of free will is not that we don’t have a will or agency. Oh, our lack of free will is do to how our brains function. Everything that we receive through our senses Hass to be processed and interpreted by our subconscious brain and even though that process happens very quickly so much so that we don’t even give it much of a thought after our brain has processed and interpreted what our senses have given it, it will let our conscious mind know what it decided. It’s just that simple. You cannot choose to believe something that you do not believe and at the same time you can’t not believe something that you do believe. change occurs with the introduction of new information in which the subconscious mind will accept or reject or somewhere in between. Example you put food into your mouth your sensory organs, evaluate those chemical compounds and send a signal to your brain. Your brain will let you know what it six of the food that you ever put into your mouth. You are your subconscious mind that receives all things to be evaluated. The subconscious mind always does what does based upon all factors of which you have no agency over, so there is no ability to have done. Otherwise the only way that would even make sense is if she changed something in the prior state which defeats the purpose of the argument. Randomness is irrelevant, because whether in exist or not, you’re not in control of it. In conclusion, the reasons why people do not have what I label. Libertarian free will is because everything is processed by the brain without your conscious mind. The conscious mind. Is made aware. After all the decisions have been made.. so yes, we do have Will and agency. Just not “Free Will”
Rip, because of the thumbnail I thought this video was the kalam documentary video and so I kept ignoring it in my feed, thinking the algorithm was being silly I guess I should read Trents speech bubble 😂
I think there is a very basic issue with many "what atheists can say about ..." type arguments. Here is a simple example: Someone claims that god is moral, and the atheist brings up issues of god's actions seeming immoral. When the theist insists that the atheist has no ground "in their world view" for morals. But, this was not about the theists position on morals. In the conversation, the atheist is bringing up inconsistencies. They are saying, if I take your argument seriously, if I assume your position, and I thus assume morals are ontologically real, then I see an inconstancy. The atheist may believe in morals or not, but this has no effect on the ability of the atheist to assume the theists position for the sake of argument. Am I missing something here?
it's all about making videos. the difference is trent is a liar and joe is pointing out the lies. my only chagrin is i'm tired of people who are polite to other people who basically back genocidal maniacs. i'm no fan of dawkins, but he says it like it is, lane craig is no better than a camp guard.
Commonality of a hypothetical opposition and lack of sth cannot be considered a philosophical position in itself. A position whose definition depends on lack or absence of another position is untenable. Even if we assume that there is paradox in religion, what does atheism offer? Is "none" really a solution to "paradox"? Being illogical is not limited to "being paradoxical" but can also be about being "nonsensical". Some atheists see paradox in religions and in order to escape from paradox they prefer "none" to "paradox"?! Prefering none to paradox is just as illogical: it just means that a person has " no" solution to that paradox and might be a sign of intellectual irresponsibility. Even if we make either theism or atheism internally coherent, we will still have the problem of comprehensiveness: what makes us think one is superior to the other? We might consider going beyond both theism and atheism. I think monotheism (or polyatheism) is the solution. It has a balance of theism and atheism (theism toward monotheistic God and atheism towards polytheistic gods).It should be balanced by being put in a bigger framework. For example, to me, atheism is an apophatic (indirect) approach to God as long as it is seen in a bigger monotheistic context. But when it is exaggerated and considered as a general position in itself, it becomes untenable. All monotheists are atheists towards polytheistic gods. When we say "God is not an idol", or" there is no god but God", we are atheistically (indirectly or negatively or apophatically) pointing towards the monotheistic God. To put it simply, when we say "there is no god" it is atheistic but when we add "except for God" to it, it becomes an apophatic theology and epistemologically more balanced. I have more clarification of this on my video called "reality model, metaphysics part 5 (philosophy of math.."
43:22 Trent should add the word objective before the word morality, because I’m sure that’s what he means, and would not accept what SOME atheist believe which is that we can have more responsibility in a subjective sense
kudos for generating so much engagement! (full stop) around 1:30 you lay out some definitions. I suggest you continue a confusion by overlooking one key point: God's Eye View. determinism is effectively gibberish because it relies on a "God's eye view" of the system, a view that is not possible. we've known this for a century, at least since Kurt Godel. we CANNOT use linear analysis (our common sense) to understand or to predict a nonlinear system -- as our world obviously is. Daniel Dennett RIP argued that determinism is compatible with free will because they reflect distinct frames of analysis; while this was perhaps expedient, it obscures the meaninglessness of 'determinism'. yet the discourse on determinism indicates something very real: human anxiety. we struggle to accept responsibility, and thus we clutch to our breasts fantasies of power such as determinism and gods.
13:35 P2 is true because we are a social species and if we want to survive as such we need to have moral responsibility or else we might encourage antisocial-behavior which is contrary to our stated goal.
EDIT - oh, MoR himself left a comment already about this very point. I see he has beaten me to his own punch haha. 6:25 - @MajestyOfReason I might have missed something, but I think you might be getting at something slightly different than what Trent was trying to communicate here... let me see if I can steel-man what he said. Trent is saying that to claim Craig _should_ have done differently is to imply that Craig _could_ have done differently, which is incompatible with determinism (which he implicitly associates with atheism for some strange reason). He is focusing on the should-have-done-differently aspect of the issue, but you raised counterpoints about should-have-done-the-same, which seems to be going in the wrong direction. I think a better counterpoint about should-have-done-differently, yet still couldn't have failed to do what they did, would be to take a twist on the mountain climber story. The mountain climber was caught in an avalanche and, once again, got his arm crushed under a great rock, this one just slightly too heavy for the climber to move by himself. The only way out would be to take his axe and hack his arm off. He eventually does so, in order to survive, but as soon as he stands up, he sees a rescue helicopter descending to pick him up. In his own hindsight, the climber _should have_ done something different - waited just a few more minutes for the rescuers to arrive, who could have moved the rock and saved his arm - yet he couldn't have failed to do what he did, because he had imperfect knowledge of his situation. If you happen to see this, I'm curious what you think of this critique :)
I think most of the criticisms you offer, while very well considered, as per usual, would be more accurately directed if Trent weren't conditionalizing his critique on a particular kind of atheistic noetic structure.
47:07 Exodus 20:5 "...for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."
So I'll address the OT part, since I mostly agree with your critique of Trent here. The main difficulty in the OT, I think, comes down to God killing babies. But here's why it's not immoral for God to do so. A conjunctive principle is true that only applies to God: a) if One is the creator of all things and the determiner of the being of all other things, then that One has rights over the life of those things and b) God only ever exercises his power with a view to the flourishing of creation in accordance with his omniscience. In defense of a), if God is the creator of life, then he's also the One who determines the conditions upon which life is given. In other words, he determines what life is for. He has a right, then, to decisively indicate when a person in a condition of life has decisively run amok of those purposes. The context in which infants are brought up can irrepairably shape them. God, in his wisdom, would only take the life of a baby, then, not as a judgment *against that baby*, but only when the baby is in such a context that it cannot freely thrive in that context. When he takes a baby, he takes it back to himself/in a context in which it has the possibility of thriving (not to hell, I think, since it's absurd to suppose that babies go to hell for sin). As One who is omniscient and thus knows the context intimately and the possible ways a baby's life can pan out, he might choose to take that life accordingly. He's the only One in this position because of the conjunctive above.
If Bible would contain a mandatory child sacrifices, would you still regard it as word of God? Because, it seems to me, that if I apply your defence to any real or hypothetical holy texts, it just wouldn't work. "God is loving, He is smart, He gave your baby a life, now He can take it back, and blah-blah..."
@whelperw No, I wouldn't--but I don't see how that at all applies. If the Bible turns our moral whites black and vice versa, then sure, I don't see how it would be intelligible guide to morality. But I don't see how this means my defense here can be widely applied to anything whatsoever. My defense isn't "God can do what he wants". It's rather that as the owner of life, he sets limits on what it's for, and only ever takes life in accordance with preserving his world. I don't see how mandatory child sacrifice has anything to do with this defense. The Bible doesn't in fact contain mandatory child sacrifice, so we're left to deal with what it actually says.
@whelperw As to the hypothetical you pointed out ("God is loving and smart etc"), I'd affirm yeah--he can take life as it's author and owner. I don't object to other religions on this ground. I object on other grounds.
@@anglicanaesthetics I think, the problem with you here, it's that you possess a concept of God, which is by definition all-loving, omnipotent and you use it to say stuff like "war on caninates was necessary, because it was commanded by all-loving omni God". I bring up child sacrifices to demonstrate, that you would be able to say same thing, if text would contain such commandment as well. From my view point, I construct a generic model of god, with attributes, which current theist gives him, and compare them to the text (like Bible), to see whether or not it's checks out. Do child sacrifices are inline with all-loving attribute of this god? I think not. Do conquest wars are inline with all-loving attribute? I think not. So it's strange to me, that you would reject holy texts that have child sacrifices, but accept one with conquest wars, since I would regard both as "intelligent guides to morality".
@whelperw Ah--so in principle, I actually agree that there needs to be some point of contact between the claim that God is all loving and Scripture if Scripture is describing the true God. So let's think it through--does it? The wars on the Canaanites is, when we think about the adults, actually not hard to explain since the text doesn't frame the event as a general holy war. In Lord of the Rings, the Men of the East side with the orcs; it's quite easy to explain why we cheer when Legolas shoots them down. That's how the text portrays the Canaanites. Now, you might say "well the text isn't fairly portraying them", but then this ceases to be a critique of the God portrayed by these texts. The hardest thing, I think, is the kids. But we can actually see why an all loving God might take back their life. When he does so, on the Biblical picture anyway, he takes them back to himself. In other words, he takes them out of a context in which they may have been corrupted beyond their natural abilities to get themselves out of it. Now, only God who is omniscient could know whether a baby is in such a state. But if he does know this, why has he done the baby any wrong? This is exactly, again, the situation we find portrayed--that the kids are enmeshed in a context that irretrievably sweeps them up into it.
Christ died (FOR YOUR SINS) Was buried Rose again (the third day) Accept this truth and you shall not perish but have everlasting life by he who is The Life, Jesus The Christ! “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26 NKJV
Apologists will just hand-wave away these responses. The rebuttals are too far above their head to grasp, and because they are practicing motivated reasoning and confirmation bias they won't comprehend them. Anything counterintuitive that conflicts with what they already think they "know" is disguarded as "can't be true b/c I know that I know what I know".
"The apologists always do this. I don't know why I'm surprised by apologists anymore. Apologists broke into my house and shot my dog. Apologists stole my girlfriend and had their way with her while I was in the corner, crying and watching. We need to stop these apologists. I can't take these apologists anymore."
My intuition here is to just say let’s hypothetically grant a maximally great being you describe - I just don’t agree this being you describe would do the sorts of things described in your holy book, or would inspire a text depicting he would command them.
At 9:50 I think the point you make is not correct. Trent isn't claiming that if we lack free will, then the world or everything is determined. He says that if we lack free will then *we* are determined, which seems obviously true.
Sorry, majesty... your rebuttal is rubbish. Objective Proper Function = teleology = God. There is no proper function for physical systems that can be justified on atheism. Admitting to any such, requires that pesky unembodied mind. Good luck tho.
"Modulating your behaviour in light of "reasons" is relevant to moral responsibility." Except it isn't. There is no account of proper function under atheism. Responding to reasons for not murdering with no with a healthy brain and giving the same response because tumour made me do it is equivalent.
Be more straightforward next time. The "good luck tho" feels incomplete and improper from your character. Better directly say "good luck in judgement day when Jesus comes to you and asks why have you been willingly denying him for so long despite knowing deep down the truth that God always existed". That's what you really think, isn't it? Christians… 🤦♀️
yes such rubbish. He should clearly believe the same things you do: God created a global flood, but Noah saved all the animals in his zoo-boat, oh and there is no evidence for the flood. And also a whole town was resurrected from the dead in leviticus. Plus all the failed prophecies
Interesting. So, according to your reasoning, god's mind has no proper function given that it is not the product of any teleology. Thus, god commanding us not to murder for reasons and god giving the same command due to mindless randomness is equivalent.
@felipedantas2001 not really. God is that which perfect by definition. The perfect Mind and a necessary being. Analogically, you can decide what a device should do, like a clock, so you ascribe to it its proper function. If it doesn't do that, it's not functioning correctly. You can do that to all things that are designed. But you can't ascribe improper function to undesigned things, or to necessary beings or abstract objects. God is the ultimate, he is the criterion by which the proper function of everything else is measured because He's thar which can't malfunction or be mistaken by definition.
"The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord?"
1. If theism is true, then free will exists 2. If free will exists, then saying "Kang and Kronos" instead of "Kang and Kodos" is an unforgiveable sin 3. However, Trent Horn is totally cool and does not commit unforgiveable sins Therefore, theism is false. 😜
Trent has no problem reconciling Judas being predetermined to betray Jesus with his eternal damnation. But he says atheists can't do it for some reason.
@@thomasbailey921 He doesn't but Jesus predicted it (Judas is very oddly unfazed and betrays him anyways) so at least from that point onward he must have been predetermined to betray Jesus.
@@tomasrocha6139 Not specifically in the scenario you mention, but in general, do you believe prediction or future knowledge contradicts free will, and aligns with determinism?
@@tomasrocha6139 "predetermined to betray Jesus" Perhaps, it's quite possible, though by no means necessary that that is the case. Judas' betrayal amounts to just pointing to the guards "hey that's him" - something that no one in Jerusalem at the time likely needed to be told. The Sanhedrin was already planning on killing Jesus, so I highly doubt that Judas' betrayal was necessary - but Jesus, being God, would be able to see into Judas' mind. But ALL of that aside, even if Judas' betrayal was completely necessary, that STILL doesn't mean that Judas is predetermined to hell. That's a view that no well-formed, practicing Catholic holds to.
I really like the way that you have made clear that the term ‘free will’ is amorphous and can be used in many different ways. But I think that the same can be said for moral responsibility. Moral responsibility also comes in many different forms, and we might possess some without others. We use the term ‘responsibility’ in several different morally relevant ways. Sometimes we say that someone *is* responsible for an action, but other times we say that they ought to *take* responsibility for it, while other times we say that people are responsible for things that are not discrete actions at all: the Police Chief is responsible for fighting crime etc.. These all express very different ideas about what moral responsibility is. On the first, moral responsibility is something that exists absolutely and objectively, while on the second it is a kind of attitude that we take towards our actions, and on the third it is a state we occupy due to our social role. In particular for this debate, I see an important distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘attribution’ forms of moral responsibility. An individual has choice responsibility for an action if they chose it in a morally relevant way. This is the sense of responsibility that Trent assumes is in play throughout the video. Conversely, a person has attribution responsibility for the action just if they occupy a certain social role which carries responsibility for actions of that kind. For example, plausibly a general is morally responsible for the actions of his troops in a way that cannot just be reduced to his choice over what those troops do. If his troops go on a rampage without orders, the general has not chosen for them to do this, and yet he can still be blamed, and it is reasonable to expect him to apologise on behalf of his men. My particular gloss of this is that the general’s rank gives him particular powers over other people. He can order his troops to kill other people, for instance, which most people cannot do. And with this power comes responsibility (the Spider-Man Principle). This kind of responsibility is a kind of social construct between individuals who assign these responsibilities to one another. It is not a metaphysical property that people just have intrinsically (though intrinsic properties such as rationality might be relevant to whether people can be assigned responsibilities). In any case, we can expand this notion of attribution responsibility to all people. Just being a rational member of society is a social role. And this role carries responsibilities, such as responsibility for one’s own behaviour. This responsibility may be undercut by certain factors, such as coercion or losing one’s rational faculties, but it is not derived from any intrinsic freedom to choose that people possess. Rather attribution responsibility seems to be something that exists to serve a social function. We assign responsibilities in order to coordinate people and maintain social relationships. Now, you may reject that attribution responsibility exists or that it is independent from choice responsibility. But it seems to me at least plausible that it might be. And if this is the case, the atheists could be holding theists morally responsible in the attribution sense, even if they don’t believe in moral responsibility in the choice sense. They are saying that, as rational members of our society, the theists are responsible for not peddling immoral and nasty ideas that may harm other members of that society, and therefore that they can be blamed for doing so. On the other extreme, Trent seems to believe in a super radical form of choice responsibility. I don’t know what his exact views are, but I imagine that he believes in some form of divine punishment or reward. And in order for this to make sense and be fair, it has to be possible to take someone’s choices and isolate them from everything around them: their genes, their environment, their culture, and even the unchosen nature of their non-physical soul (if they have one). It is only once that is done that we are left with someone’s choices themselves, and so judge those choices on their own merits. If this is what Trent has in mind when he talks about moral responsibility, then I highly doubt that he can establish its existence just by pointing to our everyday intuitions about moral responsibility. It is one thing to say that we are morally responsible on the level of ordinary interpersonal relationships (that we can appropriately praise and blame each other), but it is something entirely different to say that our choices can be isolated from everything else about us and morally judged. It might be common sense that moral responsibility exists in the first sense, but I don’t think it is common sense that it exists in the second sense. I guess the TLDR of this is that your definition of free will in terms of moral responsibility makes me uneasy. At least as I see it, people can be morally responsible in some ways but not in others. Depending on how moral responsibility is understood, either compatibilism or incompatibilism might be true. And depending on how moral responsibility is understood, atheists may or may not be able to blame theists (or vice versa).
Its quite strange honestly. Trent Horn is very intelligent, and seems cordial and charitable in his discussions with atheists. So why has he been making such implausible and uncharitable claims lately? Surely he isn't just trying to appeal to the Frank Turek types in his comment sections, right? Either way, thanks for taking the time to make this Joe.
Trent says that compatibalist free-will cannot count as a real form of freedom because if determinism is true, while we acted upon the reasons or desires that we have, we did not choose the reasons or desires that we have. I wonder what he takes the alternative to be. Suppose that I did choose the reasons/desires that I presently have. On what basis did I choose those reasons/desires? It couldn't be on the basis of further reasons/desires, for then we enter into a vicious regress. But it also couldn't be that there was no basis at all for choosing my present reasons/desires, since, in that case, my reasons/desires would be arbitrary. As far as I can tell -- and I'm open to being shown otherwise -- no matter what our view about free-will is, whatever reasons/desires we presently have either originated in a regress of reasons/desires that terminates in something other than reasons/desires or themselves originated from something other than reasons/desires. So, as far as I can tell, the fact that we did not choose our reasons/desires is not a feature that separates libertarian and compatibilist accounts of free-will.
I also don't know why Trent doesn't consider non-cognitive accounts. Couldn't the repulsion, at least in some cases, just be atheists disliking gods actions as in "I hate pineapple pizza"? I guess Trent would have a response, but addressing if non cognitive accounts work is his job (since it's his video) in the first place.
What’s up with the controlling a puppet imagery? There can’t be a human hand controlling another person, because that person also wouldn’t control their actions if no one can. Explaining lack of freedom with a person being free to control you in every way, means that that person is more free or free still then
the puppeteer is you, the little man inside your head is who tells you what to do, most people think - as you point out - that determinism means someone else is controlling you, when it is really you - your unconscious mind - telling you what you think, where do thoughts come from? nowhere, they pop into your head from inside your head.
Trent's entire argument is just, "You can't have morality without god" with more word salad comprising of deceptively sophisticated nuanced sounding philosophical terminologies.
John McTaggart was an atheist. He had some really interesting and creative arguments against theism. McTaggart also believed that, despite appearances, there’s really only a community of timeless and non-spatial immaterial spirits united by love. There are many more ways to be an atheist than religious apologists acknowledge.
3:38 See I feel like Trent has immediately lost me here. Listening to people like him and WLC defend this issue recently has become a conversation ender for me. If you are defending the brutal murder of children and trying to convince me that this is sometimes a good and moral thing, then that's it, we are done. I no longer care about anything else you have to say. You have well and truly put yourself in the category of "moral monster" as far as I am concerned, and I no longer want anything else to do with you.
@@UncannyRicardo And I don't care. If you are going to defend genocide and the mass murder of children, then I want nothing more to do with you. You are a moral monster, it is as simple as that, discussion over.
This was a great video, and well put. One thing I might add is that being blameworthy or praiseworthy implies that the blame/praise will affect the person's future decisions. This does not hold true for blaming a lightning bolt. Blame is only helpful when it will bring about change in the future.
Just watched your latest appearance on Mr. Cosmic Skeptic's TH-cam channel Alex O' Conner! Please consider doing more debates. Philosophy people seems to me to do the best against theist apologists, much more effective than people who debate them purely on scientific basis. And I say that being a fan and student of science.
Possibly unpopular but this whole notion of preknowledge / omniscience might very well be impossible. If God knows I will choose X, then it's impossible for me to choose Y. But is it possible for God to know I will choose X and tell me beforehand I will choose X? Would I then become a robot and choose X or can I choose Y? At what point would God see that I chose Y?
Great as always Joe. My only issue is that it seems like sometimes you might not be considering that Trent’s goals with his videos are not the same as yours. His videos (mostly) unlike yours don’t aim to be sophisticated analyses but rather consumable pieces for a largely philosophically untrained audience. My guess is that Trent didn’t intend to ignore the more nuanced atheistic positions. Rather he made a video tailored for laypeople attacking a very mainstream form of atheism. And while it is uncharitable when put under philosophical scrutiny, I would contend Trent probably has reasons for why those nuanced views fail but simply didn’t include it in the video to make it digestible for his audience. So I think that on top of great videos like this, a discussion is the most charitable thing to do.
@@jackkrell4238 I think you're missing the point OP was trying to make. Trent wasn't intending on addressing the nuanced points - only on addressing mainstream "New Athiesm" (which is very clear in his original video, if not explicitly stated). So ofc the nuanced points might make Trent's arguments "fail;" he wasn't addressing them. A chestplate doesn't defend blows to the head, but that doesn't mean you can't wear a helmet. Trent certainly has defenses to the more nuanced points, he simply didn't raise them in his original video because that was not the purpose of the original video.
@@thomasbailey921 The issue here is that Trent has proven to either deliberately obfuscate our arguments, is genuinely clueless of anything that isn't part of his script, or make claims that apply just as if not more to his own worldview( free will not existing, for example.) Personally, I don't like the term "new atheism" because it's just a tool theists can use to make the atheist position seem less cohesive.
@@jackkrell4238 i don't mind it cos it gives me permission to coin the term "new christian", that is someone with zero interest in jesus and just after subscriptions, patron, likes and book sales, and possible course sales if they are professional scammers. youtube apologists in simple terms.
4:40 - You'd think Christians would learn that you can't infer a person's meta-ethics based on simple moral statements they make, but no, even the "educated" apologists continue to make this mistake.
The attribution of blame and occasional punishment have the function of influencing future behavior of the culprit as well as of observers. This can be completely determined or not.
I appreciate your quality of work, Joe. You're one of the people that contributed to me being more philosophically rigorous. I hope that Trent Horn takes your notes. Ironically, I am a reductive physicalist, so his video is a critique of my position (that atheism is far from entailing), but I just know it's a worthless caricature and a disgusting strawman version of it that I couldn't be bothered to even watch.
Hey Joe! I seem to be a bit confused, or the point is just going over my head. When you say at 6:30 that there is this sense where we “should” do something, I really don’t see a reason to accept this. Why should we do something? Excuse my ignorance, but it seems to me that this is just saying that the majority of people have the natural instinct to act in this moral/ethical way. Why ought we take what the majority feels, as truth? Also, I don’t believe a true moral distinction can be made between hitting the pedestrian, and not hitting the pedestrian, besides asserting that our natural instinct should make us feel that we shouldn’t, or that the majority deem this to be “bad”. What if someone has no alternative, and their moral reasoning leads them to harm others, even if we feel they shouldn’t? Are they to blame because we rule the majority natural instinct is correct? I apologize if this is a complete misrepresentation, and would love clarity on this!
Joe, I know you’re agnostic with respect to the god of classical theism, but are you also agnostic towards the average conception of the Judeo Christian God that most western Christians believe in?
✅CORRECTION(S)✅
In the section entitled "Should’ implies alternative possibilities?", I contest the idea that 'S should φ' implies 'S could do something other than φ-ing'. I think my counterexamples to that idea are correct, but I don't think they actually address Trent's claim in the preceding clip. In particular, Trent's claim was instead that 'S should φ' implies 'S could φ'. Thankfully, though, many of my examples can be modified to motivate denying this claim too. For instance, just imagine the boulder-trapping-arm case to be one in which you're compelled *not* to hack off your arm by your psychology (maybe you're very queasy). Still, it seems like you *should* hack off your arm! Or, at least, it seems that way to me 😄
Also, I should have added the following Bible passage to the section entitled "Old Testament God = North Korea":
"...for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." (Exodus 20:5)
I don’t know if this is a reasonable response but I’m not sure I prima facie see how in that or any other situation one should act some way while being unable to act in that way. I seem to want to add a clause at the end: ”One should perform act Phi GIVEN that they could.” If you psychologically can’t hack your arm of then it is not even in the set of options between which you can come to a decision on which one you should opt for. Not sure if this is merely a semantic issue but would be interested in hearing you flesh out your position a bit more here, if possible.
New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University, in 1746 in order to train ministers dedicated to their views. The college was the educational and religious capital of Scottish-Irish America.
Atheism is simply radical Protestantism.
Joe is a radical Protestant minister being trained to share his views.
Man, I wrote a big ol' comment addressing this very point, only to look up and see you and others already noticed it first. Comment is still there, but man, I _should have_ not even bothered in the first place :P
@@Christus-totalis Yes a college was founded by a certain group of presbyterians over 275 years ago .. much older than the USA even. How does this history make Joe a protestant minister 😂
@@azophiradical Protestantism is atheism. It is a radical form of scepticism that was an overreach of the Protestant reformation. So a radical Protestant is sceptical of his own religious foundation, the bible. Joe is preaching this radical scepticism only made possible by its reformational foundation.
The Majesty of Refuting Trent Horn
It’s a beautiful thing 😜
To me, 90% of this video can be boiled down to this: Joe Schmid would prefer if Trent Horn's videos were 3h+ long comprehensive scholarly studies which attempt to answer every possible system.
It seems fairly obvious to me that Trent clearly implies whom he means by "atheists" and whom he is answering. He's clearly implied Dawkins and O'Connor as his primary targets which, to my knowledge, are absolutely reductive materialists (well, at least Dawkins is, I'm not ceratin about O'Connor).
So, to give but one example, I find it uncharitable when Joe blames Trent Horn (at 19:39) for not answering atheists who could well be "property dualists or substance dualists". Atheist substance dualists are quite fringe both on TH-cam as well as in the general population, so Trent is perfectly excused not to address such positions in a short-form youtube video.
To me, Joe displays a glass-half-empty attitude: the same fact can be stated in two different ways: the glass-half-full statement would be "Trent Horn has successfully rebutted reductive materialist incompatiblist determinist position i.e. a position of incompatiblists who also think of themselves merely as physical automata" (which may well have been his sole intention) or "Trent Horn has completely failed to rebut hundreds of possible alternative atheist positions out there", which almost certainly has never been his intention.
Perhaps a slightly better approach would be to go through Trent's video and for every argument X, reconstruct which position this argument successfully refutes. If we went through every argument X he's made and, through analysis of his assumptions, state what set of beliefs his opponent would need to have for X to be relevant in a discussion, then this would be a far more constructive video. If some argument X is completely fallacious (e.g. self-refuting), then such analysis would show that the argument targets no real position and thus, in all likelihood, zero people. If, on the other hand, he's made at least one good argument against a decently popular position (e.g. that humans are merely advanced physical automata), then that deserves to be pointed out. In the current format, it all sounds undeservedly negative. But then, that's only my opinion and I don't want to be a smartass claiming to know better what Joe should do on his channel.
"To me, 90% of this video can be boiled down to this: Joe Schmid would prefer if Trent Horn's videos were 3h+ long comprehensive scholarly studies which attempt to answer every possible system. "
I think he (and the rest of us) will prefer that he doesn't make such unsustained assumptions, like atheism entails determinism.
"It seems fairly obvious to me that Trent clearly implies whom he means by "atheists" and whom he is answering. He's clearly implied Dawkins and O'Connor as his primary targets which, to my knowledge, are absolutely reductive materialists (well, at least Dawkins is, I'm not certain about O'Connor"
Then he should make that clear, and stop pretending people like Dawkings represent all atheists. Or you will feel comfortable if we atheists pretended all theists are fundamentalists or Young Earth Creationists?
"So, to give but one example, I find it uncharitable when Joe blames Trent Horn (at 19:39) for not answering atheists who could well be "property dualists or substance dualists". Atheist substance dualists are quite fringe both on TH-cam as well as in the general population, so Trent is perfectly excused not to address such positions in a short-form youtube video. "
First, Joe gives far more alternatives than "property dualists or substance dualists". Second, the point is not who belongs to those groups, but the fact there is nothing in atheism that prevent us from taking different metaphysical positions other than just eliminating materialism or hard-core physicalism. Third, again, if Trent video is a discussion of "TH-cam atheism", it is his responsibility to make that clear. But of course, if he pretended atheism can be reduced to "TH-cam atheism" (TH-cam atheism in the Anglo-Saxon sphere), nobody will take him seriously.
"Perhaps a slightly better approach would be to go through Trent's video and for every argument X, reconstruct which position this argument successfully refutes."
One thing is to have intellectual charity, and another it is just blindly pretending a bad argument is a good one just because you want it to, by artificially reducing the scope of its reach.
@@mendez704 I mostly agree with what you have said. I think Tent should have and could have specified explicitly whom he's targeting, with little effort on his part. But then, it seems fairly clear to me, we can infer it as well. Obviously, a statement "atheism implies determinism" is false and it is indeed a caricature similar, as you said, "theism implies young-earth creationism". But if Trent has said it, then for the remainder of the video I would assume that everything Trent said about atheists he actually said about atheist determinists. This is how examiners mark, for example, physics exams both in high school and university: if you've made a mistake in part (a) of the question and this mistake propagates to parts (b-f) because they rely on part (a), then the examiner marks down part a, but for the remaining parts the examiner assumes the faulty answer of (a) and checks if (b-f) are derived consistently with the initial mistake. This is what I mean by exercising charity when evaluating someone. I don't see Joe doing much of that here.
I'm assuming that Joe, by releasing this video, is trying to be constructive and help Trent improve. But no one can drink from a fire hose and the current format is essentially that. Pointing out some obscure positions Trent could not have possibly been intending to answer comes across more as a rhetorical tactic than an actual constructive feedback. I'm sure Joe is not interested in rhetorical tactics, but that's what's inadvertently coming across. Basically, if Joe wants to claim, as he does at the beginning, that Trent is a friend, then I'd expect to be able to roughly infer a friendly attitude from the rest of the video. At the moment, if I started watching the video from 5 mins in, I'd think Joe wants to rip Trent apart. Don't get me wrong. I don't follow Trent, I've not seen any of his videos, my knowledge of him is limited to his appearances on other channels, mostly this one (like the debate with Dustin Crumett), and I thought his performance was rather poor. I'm just saying that there seems to be a dissonance between what Joe says at the beginning and what he does throughout the video. A fire hose of pedantic minutiae is not going to help Trent get any better.
Let me provide another observation. Trent said that O'connor agreed with Sapolsky that people don't have free will. This is a perfectly valid way for Trent to motivate his video, to provide context, and to show that what Trent is talking about is relevant to a large TH-cam audience. And it provides a strong implication of who is the target of Trent's video: determinists. What does Joe say? "a quick note about Sapolsky's book *and proceeds to say it's basically trash, lacking in intellectual depth and rigour*". Okay, so at this point Joe could have said something to the effect of "So let's appreciate that while Trent is responding to a very weak position, this weak position has been popularised by big youtubers, so, arguably, merits a response on TH-cam, for which Trent is commended" (and, again, the remainder of Joe's analysis should focus on whether Trent successfully answers Alex O'connor and Sapolsky) .
Instead, Joe leaves no comment or recognition of why Trent brought up O'Connor and Sapolsky in the first place. Overall, Joe left an impression that Trent makes a mistake of reaching for a low-hanging fruit. But if this low-hanging fruit is relevant to a wide audience, we can't criticise Trent for reaching for it.
This is why I'm under the impression that Joe disregards the context of TH-cam culture and hasn't been charitable in reading Trent's intentions and primary targets. This is not to say that Trent need not be more explicit about stating these.
As a Christian, I completely agree with Joe here. There are atheists that are not determinists it is like saying atheism entails nihilism. Also really appreciate you answering my question I have been going through some mental health issues recently and it really made me 😊
hah, knew it!
when trent horn made that video i commented "joe schmid is typing..."
edit: come to think of it, trent's argument about us "rising above the laws of nature" reminds me of ben shapiro's "favourite argument for the existence of God" , (and having your argument closely resemble ben shapiro's is probably not a good thing...)
Quite literally ! 😂
"If god does not exist, we are large bags of meat floating around in space"
Another episode in the 1980s supersoap titled “Trent Horn confuses atheism with eliminative physicalism and anti-realism”
He was just generalizing, and very disgustingly tbh
I am not even sure one has to be a determinist if they are that either lol
@@blamtasticful Why wouldn't you be one? Libertarian free will at least seems to be completely logically impossible, and I find modal properties to be dubious in their explanatory virtues at best. As a reductive physicalist/atheist myself, I don' think that true metaphysical moral responsibility exists or even needs to exist in order for some ethical framework to be possible( as a negative utilitarian, minimizing negative utility is entirely absent of any meaningful acting agents.)
After practically making a career of criticising the New Atheists for (rightly in my opinion) not understanding the philosophy of theism and Christianity, he doesn't understand the philosophy of atheism.
He's clearly an intelligent and well-spoken guy, but that video was such a fall on his face.
Wrong, it depends upon how one is defining atheism. You're making a presumption here.
Isn’t it about time that Trent Horn become educated on philosophically rigorous atheism?
its inconvenient to his pocket book to do so
@@hello-cn5nh there's no meaningful distinction between those two other than "I think one is good and one is bad"
>implying such atheism even exists
jk
He won't, his aim is to preach to the choir not philosophers or rigorous skeptics. If he would, he would be in danger of refuting his holy book and therefore his religion.
I think you’re confusing Trent with a more standard apologist like Frank Turak
“Molecules to Man” is such a strawman. At this point it just betrays the superficiality of the apologist’s understanding.
How many times does someone need to be called out for this when they know better before someone can conclude that he is engaging at the very least in some epistemic vice if not in some dishonesty or some bad faith?
i would say trent is just another two faced liar, i don't have to be polite.
@HarryNicNicholas lying is a pretty egregious thing to level. Plus it implies Trent isn't sincere about what he's saying.
Idk why atheists are so quick to ascribe scienter
@newglof9558 Notice that I specifically didn't simply call him a liar. However, it seems to me that some will come up with any small reason one might not be lying and basically aren't convinced of legitimate evidence that one very possibly is. People lie and it's fine to point to evidence of that and people need to get over that.
@@blamtasticfulI was not talking to you
@newglof9558 And? I still responsed and what I said was relevant. Maybe get over it?
I appreciate the dark mode on google docs 😎
Was waiting for this video the moment i watched his 😂
'if atheism is true, then determinism is true' 💀💀💀
Ok, I'm a philosophy lay person and even I know that's pretty bad.
"if atheism is true, then determinism is true'
Some of the greatest atheist/theistic philosophers in the world(though certainly not all)would sign on to this statement. It's a rare area of agreement. Are you saying it's an irrational position to hold? I promise you Joe wouldn't say that to to these philosopher's faces. They would laugh at him.
@@reevertoun Rofl, no they wouldn't. It's a straightforward non-sequitur. It might be that they do believe that both atheism and determinism is true (and would probably give arguments for each), but I am certain they don't think determinism follows necessarily from atheism.
@@rumraket38 You're burden shifting and unnecessarily using the world necessarily.
"If atheism is true then determinism is true" is a position held by many great atheistic philosophers. Do you think this is an irrational position to hold? Perhaps when Joe has a atheistic determinist on we can get clarification on whether Joe think they're "irrational" as @logicalliberty132 suggested.
I'm happy to superchat it in to clear up the matter. How do you think Joe will respond? He did like the comment so maybe you're correct and he agrees that these philosophers are irrational after all.
@@rumraket38 You're burden shifting. Who's talking about necessity here? Are you arguing that respected philosophers don't hold to "'if atheism is true, then determinism is true"? If so you're just flat out wrong.
Maybe next time a atheistic determinist comes on a superchat to Joe asking if he thinks this position is irrational would be helpful. How do you think he'll respond? I'd be absolutely shocked if he characterized this claim as irrational. Although he did like the post in this thread so maybe I'm wrong. We will see.
Sorry joe, but "Reductive Physicalists cannot blame Christians for anything" is not as appealing
Even that is still rejected by the majority of philosophers (compatibilists) 😊
Not sure if you respond to comments, but I was curious to know what your defense of free will is. I heard in one of your QnA vids that you were once a determinist but then switched to free will. I couldn't find any videos where you give a proper response of it, would love to hear it or read it! :)
Good video. The most bewildering point that Trent made, in my opinion, was at 53:45: "and the only way we can rise above the physical order to be that kind of primary cause is if an all-powerful, morally perfect God gives us the power to do that". Nonsense. The power in question has to do with acting in some sense independently from deterministic physical processes. It could be that we're something that has that sort of power, regardless whether that power was given to us from something else or, if it was so given, what the features are of the thing(s) that gave it. None of deity, omnipotence, and moral perfection are required.
Thanks! And I absolutely agree. In fact, I should have more strongly emphasized how implausible that claim is.
Isnt' it the case though that Christian theism provides an explanation for how we might have such powers, though naturalism does not?
@@AlexADalton Us having those powers may be compatible with Christian theism, but so what? My point is that us having those powers is compatible with the denial of Christian theism. More generally, we could also have them even if they weren't given to us by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity.
@@Friction I wasn't speaking of compatibility but explanatory power/scope.
Havent watched yet. But Im going to guess what Trent says here before watching. My prediction is that Im going to be annoyed by Trent conflating realism with using the concept "responsible" or something and say if you don't have his metaphysical views then you cant say anyone is -reallllly-responsible
Shock horror, I was correct. I really dont understand how intelligent people can continue making this mistake. And given that Trent believes that *actual*-*responsibility* does *actually* exist it's not that he thinks Atheists are incorrect to use "responsibility" language, just that such use is alleged to be in tension with other metaphysical commitments. That could be correct, and it still perfectly fine to use responsibility language. The question of whether or not the use of "responsibility" language is appropriate in any given situation then deflates from a second order Theoretical one about deep concepts and worldviews to a first order one about the features of any particular application of that language.
I feel Trent has become no more than a propagandist for a worldview. His recent videos on philosophical topics have been egregiously stupid and not well thought out.
@@DigitalGnosis That's exactly why I'm doubtful of Trent's sincerity. He is smart, he has interacted with a plethora of atheists, he clearly engages with relevant literature, so why is he making arguments like these? I don't understand at all
Surgical destruction of Trent's arguments. I hope Trent listens to this and improves.
Joe, have you ever tried Obsidian to write and store scripts?
i have not! should i?
@@MajestyofReason It's open source (free), highly customizable, very flexible. You can do all sorts of things with it like mind mapping, drawing, etc.
I'd recommend at least considering it.
The caveat to Obsidian, Logseq, Notion etc is that PKM software is a pretty deep rabbit hole. Arriving at a setup that is good for you is not trivial, partially _because_ of the level of flexibility that is allowed.
(I personally use Logseq and have heard that a range of things that it does automatically are in Obsidian, but as plugins; I haven't used Obsidian myself, but this does give the impression that more setup might be required in that case)
I'd encourage anyone considering PKM to take some time to compare the different options, look at some videos of workflows, as they all have different emphasises (I've heard that Logseq emphasizes blocks of text, so it's more focused on the task of "outlining" than Obsidian, which is said to emphasize individual pages more). Serious time commitment to get into any of them IMO.
Its incredibly time efficient for not just creating notes, but going over them in videos. Would reccomend giving it a try.
For a moment I thought you were talking about carving the scripts in actual obsidian
What do you think of the Aztec culture? What would the "right thing" be to do if we discovered a culture like that today? Would one culture be right in destroying a culture based upon human sacrifice? 20k-250k estimated human sacrifices a year.
Regardless of the specific answer, I think it is clear that committing genocide against the Aztecs is not the answer. You could read Bartomolé de las Casas’ A short account of the destruction of the Indies (a Dominican friar who recorded Spanish atrocities against the Aztecs).
I agree with Caleb's answer above
@@MajestyofReason I’m not asking what they did. I’m asking what you would do and on what grounds would you do it if you encountered a culture like that. Or project a foreseeable future where radical Islam takeover what would you do and why.
The moment someone equates atheism to specific views like determinism, reductive materialism and proceeds attacking those specific views, you understand it is mostly rhetoric and propaganda. Or plain ignorance, but I assume Trent is familiar with the diversity of views among atheists, that atheism means "no god" and that being an atheist doesn't necessarily entail subscribing to any of those specific views. Anyway glad that Joe is here to roast anyone who makes such mistakes.
It’s like equating Christianity with young earth creationism.
"The moment someone equates atheism to specific views like determinism, reductive materialism and proceeds attacking those specific views, you understand it is mostly rhetoric and propaganda."
Lol wat? How does critiquing a particular view qualify as propaganda under any definition of the word propaganda? Not everyone is inclined to play Whack-a-Mole with every combination of atheist views. If you did indeed have to respond to every plausible combination of beliefs then you'd literally have to debunk millions of unique sets of beliefs. Just go through the philpapers survey to see how little agreement there is on any given subject.
@@vozcalma4127 The point is that simplifying a position to then pretend to rebut it is just fallacious and dishonest. I'm speaking from a reductive naturalist/atheist perspective, and I didn't find such criticisms to be valid or impactful to my views on ethics, epistemology,etc.
@@jackkrell4238 There's absolutely nothing wrong with picking the most plausible, or common, or whatever atheist view(in your opinion) and responding to that specific view. Joe does this constantly when it's convenient. You're placing the bar so high no one can reach it, including atheists responding to millions of combinations of theistic views.
@@vozcalma4127 It qualifies as propaganda when you publicly pretend to have refuted atheism or to have shown an inconsistency regarding atheism. Theists wouldn't be happy if an atheist with a wide audience attacks creationists/evolution deniers, and then pretends to have refuted theism. Why would they be after all? That does not exhaust theism.
P. S I do not intend to say that creationism has the same level of plausibility as reductive materialism. The analogy stands for being a very specific view and not exhaustive.
A big point you keep raising is him reducing atheism to determinist physicalism, but I think he was pointing out specifically the atheists who assert that very line of thought.
Yea he shoulda made a clearer distinction.
No I don’t think he was reducing all of atheism to that. Just those who assertnit already.
Two thoughts.
1. When I first saw Trent's combative title it struck me as odd. It comes off as if he thinks I, an physicalist atheist, would disagree and his video has some earth shattering logic as to why I'm wrong... but he's missed the boat because I already agree. Trent: you're not on the defensive, I'm not putting any blame at your door, I don't think you could have believed otherwise.
Trent: WHY ATHEISTS CAN'T BLAME CHRISTIANS!
Me: Cool, I'm a physicalist atheist and I don't do that.
Trent: wait? what? you don't want more convincing?
Me: Yup, we're done. I agree. By my lights, doxastic involuntarism is true. Can we stop this sideshow now and get to dealing with the internal criticism of Christianity that the problem of evil presents?
Trent: WHY ATHEISTS CAN'T BLAME CHRISTIANS!
2. Even granting that Trent was speaking about physicalist atheists, his grasp on the philosophy is still very poor.
He's not just basic, he's wrong. It's a bad video, and Joe does a good job working through that. And Trent's a product of his environment, so I don't really blame him for that either. But he's commited the mortal sin in Catholicism of bearing false witness. I guess Trent is going to Hell for that video, according to his own theology. (I doubt he'll repent to a priest, or do a public apology for his mistakes. So absent any repentance, Hell it is.) But let's be charitable and say that his video was valid, and had it been more narrowly focused it would have played better. Trent has all his work ahead of him to 1) define the free will he believes in and 2) demonstrate it.
Is there free will? Maybe he should get empirical and show some free will. Trent's weak strawman of Frankfurt cases suggests he doesn't want to go there. If he has free will to choose to have different intuitions about free will, let him show that.
As Joe said, Alex's critique of WLC still holds as an internal critique of Christianity. It's not about atheists "blaming", or our views on free will. It's asking how believers manage to square their own views within themselves. Nothing turns on whether atheists are determinists or not. All Trent's work to rescue WLC and get out from under the problem of evil is still ahead of him, even if atheists are all physicalists or atheism necessarily entails physicalism. It doesn't matter if I don't believe in leeway freedom, Trent does. WLC does. The problem of evil is a problem for Christians because of their beliefs, not mine. But instead of engaging with the problem, we get this red herring about atheists blaming Christians.
As a video for atheists like me, it's very poor. As a defense of WLC's interaction with O'Connor, it's very poor. As a yardstick of how well Trent understands philosophy, and how analytically he thinks, he did very poorly. But perhaps it was a video... for other Christians. In that it succeeds. It gave his predominantly Christian audience what they wanted, and it attacks the people they want to attack.
Thoughts on the 2 Doors Halting Problem counterpoint to theistic free will? You ask God which door you will go through, assuming God cant lie. If he says 1, do you go through 1? Or 2? If 1 did u have a choice? If 2, is God omniscient?
PineCreek said something similar, if you could ask God a question, "how many days I would live?" and God says "five", can you still die tomorrow?
If no, than you don't have free will (to do otherwise, as it usually defined).
If yes, than we have some absurd situation, either God is lying or misinformed, if neither of those things are possible for this particular God, than the question would be "why God didn't say you will die tomorrow in the first place?"
When I was 10 yrs old, i thought about a similar argument too.
Lol, for what it's worth, my 10 yr solution was that just as characters in a movie ive watched before have free-will, we too still have free-will despite God knowing what we will do. And God knows what we do from His view of eternity or outside time.
I'm agnostic now by the way haha .
If Christianity is true, aren't we all following god's script?
@@utubepunk I see you're rolling with the movie analogy. Consider a recording of the 2022 world cup instead. There's no script there.
@@Efesus67 Doesn't matter. It's all part of god's plan. He unfolded exactly as he intended it.
@@utubepunk okay but that's not quite the argument that Joe gives here 35:46 .
@@Efesus67 Okay. I'm not there yet. Lol
It's actually embarassing that a theist philosopher who regularly debates atheists and agnostics misunderstands his opposition so severely. Like, you have an obligation to understand atheism and what it's proponents arguments are, and it looks like he either hasn't tried (AT ALL) or doesn't care.
Calling Trent a "philosopher" is very generous.
Trent just cannot think analytically. He mimicks analytical breakdown, but all he's doing is starting with a conclusion and finding ANY justification. But since it's not analytical, his justifications cannot be consistently applied.
45:25 Are you sure about your use of the word "desert" ? I checked in the oxford dictionary, "desert" either means to abandon, or a place without water like Sahara... There is no definition of "desert" that is linked with "deserve" or "being deserving".
There’s a whole SEP entry on it: plato.stanford.edu/entries/desert/
It seems like Trent Horn's entire argument was "If we are deterministic, then no one should be punished for doing morally reprehensible things." And, yeah, I don't think revenge is a good way to solve antisocial behaviors. So I agree with him. That doesn't mean that we should allow extremely antisocial people free reign on our economic or political structure though.
There is nothing biblical about Free Will given how humans had original sin or how how humans were "knit together in womb" by the omniscent god who knew every action they would take. If free Will exists, it would only be in a non-christian worldview.
It's biblical.
God knowing the action you commit is still your own action.
Original sin isn't the guilt you get from Adam and eve.
"Knit togeter"
Buddy that's metaphorical and literary device being used here.
I watch virtually all of your videos but I just have a very hard time making it through the ones about Trent at this point. I find him extremely frustrating - consider how *bad* the arguments he's making here are, literally just totally unfounded premises, question begging, and flat out invalid conclusions. Like, really? Atheists can't blame anyone for anything because Trent believes that determinism abdicates moral responsibility and that atheism always implies determinism? You can't make it more than 3 words without finding a blatant, obvious flaw.
And then he uses these terrible arguments to justify behaviors and advocate for policies that I find absolutely disgusting. And he does this all under a pseudo-philosophical guise that I just really can not muster the strength to sit through anymore. With the recent discussion by WLC on justifying the murder of children, I'm just so well past the point of being able to sit through these weak, grotesque displays anymore. I don't know how you do it, I suppose you are just able to grant such a significant amount of charitability and good faith, but I can't do it anymore.
Anyways, I love 99% of the content you produce, but I couldn't get through this video.
We commented something very similar and I feel you on the last sentence specially. That video of Craig on the Caananites was appalling, and to then come out and say "oh well you can't really blame us for that because you believe this" seems like a terrible retort. I understand the use of ad hominems in the technical sense, and for some atheists Trent's arguments will work, but to extend it as a way to dismiss the critiques of divine command theory is crossing the line of intellectual honesty IMO
I sympathize with that feeling, I too felt once worn out by these "grotesque displays" (mainly from Mike Winger, Girl Defined, and Jon McCray's surprisingly deluded take on Genesis). Maybe I deep down have faith that someday we'll all achieve a common ground and understanding. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic.
God bless you
@@logans.butler285rel 😢
If God is omnibenevolent, then he can only do good and kind works and cant do anything but that. So isn't god a deterministic entity ? Where is his free will if he can't do anything but good ?
God is omnibenevolent because he only does good. He is pure goodness in a nutshell. No I don’t think he is forced to do good, rather he willingly by his own nature chooses to do so because he is purely good. Aka my dad is a cigarette addict, he’s been smoking for 40+ years and won’t quit until he’s dead, when given the choice to smoke he will fall back on his smoking nature and smoke, I see smoking as disgusting, smelly, and I’ve seen the effects smoking has caused on my father. When given the choice I could smoke but my nature makes it so that even though I am free to smoke I find it repugnant in my nature so that I don’t want to smoke, that’s how I view God, he could sin but his nature naturally allows him to reject sin
@japexican007 it just deterministic even by your description though. Gods nature allows him to only do what his goodness let's him do and your repugnance to smoke has determined the fact you won't smoke ?
The point you raised is excellent and has been one of the major issues in contemporary philosophy of religion. However, I would like to highlight two things. Typically, the term "determinism" is used to refer to external influences on the agent that result in a certain action, whereas it seems you are using determinism to encompass any influence, whether external or internal, that leads to an action. This distinction is crucial because there is a certain group of libertarians called virtue libertarians who concede that free will is compatible with determinism in the second definition but not in the first. Specifically, they concede that free will is compatible with determinism if the influences are only internal, or in other words, if the agent is the source of the action. Thus, God could be entirely determined by his character to do φ and still be free in doing φ.
And secondly, there are some puzzles with what we mean by "omnibenevolent". For example, R. Zachary Manis argues, because of the reasons you mentioned, that God is omnibenevolent in the sense that in every feasible world, God always chooses the best. So it's possible that God could do some evil even while being omnibenevolent in this sense. Other philosophers have argued that God has the ability to do φ even if it's not possible for him to do φ, so God would have the ability to do the impossible. Anyway, all of this is very complex, difficult, and controversial, but it's just to point out that there are ways to circumvent this challenge.
Notes and articles.
I would just like to point out that I used φ to refer to any action; φ here is like the x in mathematics, which serves to represent something else. If you're not comfortable with this symbol, feel free to change it or use the word itself. I only used it because it seems to me to be a very beautiful symbol.
Also, here are some articles I think you'll be interested in:
Could God Do Something Evil? A Molinist Solution to the Problem of Divine Freedom, by R. Zachary. (philpapers.org/rec/MANCGD).
This is the article I mentioned in the second part; Zachary explains and defends this idea in much more detail and depth than I could here.
Best Feasible Worlds: Divine Freedom and Leibniz's Lapse, by Justin Mooney. (philarchive.org/rec/MOOBFW).
This article explains in greater detail the notion of virtue libertarianism; it's worth reading.
Theism and Secular Modality, by Noah Gordan. (philarchive.org/rec/GORTAS-3).
This isn't an article but a dissertation, but I think it's fine given that it's to defend that incredible idea I told you about, that God is capable of doing the impossible, even logically; it's worth checking out.
I hope this helps you.
May God bless you as you continue exploring philosophy.
@@magno1177 looks like I got some homework to do! This god must be the god of the intellectuals and not the god for the laymen! 😂
@@jezah8142I’m confused here, what being wouldn’t be “deterministic” according to your definition, please explain
In my example I gave my nature to not smoke, and my father to smoke but if it were the case that I did smoke then I was just determined to do so by whatever force/nature drove me to do so. In that case when do you believe one is not determined?
When I think of determined I think of no freedom, but that’s not how I see God nor myself, I am free to choose my lusts or act against them just as I believe God is also able to, the difference being is his nature is all good as such he isn’t “persuaded” to do evil just as I am not persuaded to smoke, but that doesn’t mean I can’t literally not smoke if someone had a gun and told me to smoke then there’s nothing actually preventing from doing so, what stops me is my ability to reject that which I’m not prone or inclined to accept by my very nature.
I think you give Trent a bit too much credit. You and so many others have responded in depth multiple times to the equivocation between atheism and determinism, moral nihilism, and naturalism. It is very reminiscent of the complaints many theists make about the new atheist movement. In my opinion the reaction to the new atheists has ushered in a “new theist” movement where apologists continue to strawman atheism and refuse to respond to the best objections.
Trent's argument: "you don't belief in free will so stfu".
This is a 4/20 blessing 🙏🙏
No but for real, it's difficult for me to put my emotions aside whenever Trent Horn makes arguments like these, because I believe him to be a very smart person. It feels so out of character then for him to say things like "we don't have moral responsibilities without god", completely ignoring the centuries of philosophical work that argue for the contrary. Obviously if that's his position and he defends it it's his prerogative, but then he whips out his "if atheism is true, then determinism is true" premise, which feels disingenious AF (of course from my pov, Trent might actually intellectualy honest reasons to believe it).
Why are you overly sympathetic to this intellectually vapid fool? He's just another run-of-the-mill apologist.
@@jackkrell4238you realize apologist just means "someone who defends a position", right
Joe I’m a subscriber and love your channel it’s very informative. But in reference to certain things like objective morality, I think it’s absurd to think any system of truly objective morality can exist apart from God.
I would love to see you debate William Lane Craig on that issue because I’m willing to have my beliefs challenged. I just think claims like those and others have never been validly substantiated in any serious way
god can't be objective, that's absurd for a start, two reasons, one he is a subject and two he says thou shalt not then goes ahead and shalts. don't be daft. lane craig is no better than a concentration camp guard, as are all religists, they use god as an excuse to exterminate what they personally don't like. you can translate everything lane craig says into "i was just following (god's #) orders" he's a disgusting lunatic. go watch mr deity, he's not polite about the lane craigs of this world.
Absent a WLC debate, if you want another high-quality take on morality from an atheist, I recommend this. th-cam.com/video/OsAaxOFOUl4/w-d-xo.html If you are willing to have your beliefs cahllenged, that channel will do it, and you have my respect.
Great video, Joe. I liked it and shared it on X.
Just one brief thought here. So, at some point you mentioned that atheism doesn't necessitate determinism because nothing prevents an atheist from accepting non-deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics.
One potential response is that Trent is only concerned with macro-determinism, that is to say, determinism that is relevant to the human mind. And relevant quantum or 'coherent' (a technical term) behavior only occurs in sufficiently cold and isolated systems (such as in laboratories). The human mind isn't conducive to such non-deterministic behaviors. For more on this you can read the academic objections to Penrose-Hameroff's quantum theory of mind.
Thanks for sharing it!! Always nice to see you here
@@MajestyofReason You're welcome! :)
Yes, it is true that atheism doesn't entail determinism. My point is just that an atheist (or anyone for that matter) cannot use quantum mechanics to justify the idea that the brain could be non-deterministic. Well, at least that's my understanding of it. If you research a bit, you'll see proposals by some biologists that there could be relevant/coherent quantum behavior in the human brain, but there are harsh criticisms of these speculative ideas.
To, to sum up, your point -- that atheism doesn't require determinism -- still stands, but QM is of no help to show that.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco Thanks again! I think we mostly agree, then; but there's one remaining point of potential disagreement. You say that QM is of no help to show that . (Though, I grant that it is *not* of help to show that
@CosmoPhiloPharmaco I get that QM is an objection to like literally the entire universe is deterministic, but what does the position of a subatomic particle have to do with morality? "Is it right or wrong to push an old lady in front of a train?" "Well, according to Quantum Mechanics..." Did all these Philosophers get PHD's in Physics? I don't think they understand QM any better than the average person. Next time anyone else brings that up as an argument I want to demand that they show me an equation for the density of water.
@@MajestyofReason Sorry for the delay, Joe!
Having read your response I also think that we mostly agree. :) :)
Sure, it is definitely true that atheism doesn't entail determinism (neither micro- nor macro-). So, that's a point we agree on!!
My contention is simply that, regardless of whether atheism requires it or not, quantum mechanics doesn't give the atheist (or theist and deist for that matter) the type of indeterminism that is relevant to the free will debate, namely, brain-indeterminism.
Now, you already pointed out before that Trent didn't specify whether he was specifically talking about brain (or mind) determinism or determinism _simpliciter._ However, I submit that we can be quite confident he was primarily (or even exclusively) concerned with the former given the context of this debate, which is free will.
"free will, for many atheists, can not exist in a godless universe"
this is the same slippery nonsense that apologists do when citing atheistic nihilists. atheists who reject free will generally don't think a theistic universe could have free will either.
*would be EVEN LESS able to support free will
38:39 I'm having fun too, disturbingly satisfying fun.
What are some different analyses of free will other than ones concerning moral responsibility?
Naturalism is a religion. If naturalism were true there simply never would have been anything.
Trent is spending so much time labelling actions rather than looking at their effects. If God doesn't exist, we can't call this action that. So what? The action of telling someone that they are to "blame" is still effective at controlling future behavior.
"Moral blame" is when you tell someone that they need to adjust their internal decision framework to correct the given output.
Human beings lack of free will has nothing to do with quantum randomness.
Our lack of free will is not that we don’t have a will or agency.
Oh, our lack of free will is do to how our brains function. Everything that we receive through our senses Hass to be processed and interpreted by our subconscious brain and even though that process happens very quickly so much so that we don’t even give it much of a thought after our brain has processed and interpreted what our senses have given it, it will let our conscious mind know what it decided. It’s just that simple. You cannot choose to believe something that you do not believe and at the same time you can’t not believe something that you do believe. change occurs with the introduction of new information in which the subconscious mind will accept or reject or somewhere in between.
Example you put food into your mouth your sensory organs, evaluate those chemical compounds and send a signal to your brain. Your brain will let you know what it six of the food that you ever put into your mouth.
You are your subconscious mind that receives all things to be evaluated. The subconscious mind always does what does based upon all factors of which you have no agency over, so there is no ability to have done. Otherwise the only way that would even make sense is if she changed something in the prior state which defeats the purpose of the argument. Randomness is irrelevant, because whether in exist or not, you’re not in control of it. In conclusion, the reasons why people do not have what I label. Libertarian free will is because everything is processed by the brain without your conscious mind. The conscious mind. Is made aware. After all the decisions have been made.. so yes, we do have Will and agency. Just not “Free Will”
Rip, because of the thumbnail I thought this video was the kalam documentary video and so I kept ignoring it in my feed, thinking the algorithm was being silly
I guess I should read Trents speech bubble 😂
I think there is a very basic issue with many "what atheists can say about ..." type arguments. Here is a simple example: Someone claims that god is moral, and the atheist brings up issues of god's actions seeming immoral. When the theist insists that the atheist has no ground "in their world view" for morals. But, this was not about the theists position on morals. In the conversation, the atheist is bringing up inconsistencies. They are saying, if I take your argument seriously, if I assume your position, and I thus assume morals are ontologically real, then I see an inconstancy. The atheist may believe in morals or not, but this has no effect on the ability of the atheist to assume the theists position for the sake of argument. Am I missing something here?
it's all about making videos. the difference is trent is a liar and joe is pointing out the lies. my only chagrin is i'm tired of people who are polite to other people who basically back genocidal maniacs. i'm no fan of dawkins, but he says it like it is, lane craig is no better than a camp guard.
@@HarryNicNicholas bud you really do a disservice to Joe's fan base. I like Joe but your comment is histrionic
Philosophers of your quality are in a different class to apologists like Bent Lawn. But that’s what makes it so fun to watch you dunk on them
49:51 Cool thanks for pointing out the difference between the Majesty of Reason Experience and the Atheist Experience!
Commonality of a hypothetical opposition and lack of sth cannot be considered a philosophical position in itself. A position whose definition depends on lack or absence of another position is untenable. Even if we assume that there is paradox in religion, what does atheism offer? Is "none" really a solution to "paradox"? Being illogical is not limited to "being paradoxical" but can also be about being "nonsensical". Some atheists see paradox in religions and in order to escape from paradox they prefer "none" to "paradox"?! Prefering none to paradox is just as illogical: it just means that a person has " no" solution to that paradox and might be a sign of intellectual irresponsibility. Even if we make either theism or atheism internally coherent, we will still have the problem of comprehensiveness: what makes us think one is superior to the other? We might consider going beyond both theism and atheism. I think monotheism (or polyatheism) is the solution. It has a balance of theism and atheism (theism toward monotheistic God and atheism towards polytheistic gods).It should be balanced by being put in a bigger framework. For example, to me, atheism is an apophatic (indirect) approach to God as long as it is seen in a bigger monotheistic context. But when it is exaggerated and considered as a general position in itself, it becomes untenable. All monotheists are atheists towards polytheistic gods. When we say "God is not an idol", or" there is no god but God", we are atheistically (indirectly or negatively or apophatically) pointing towards the monotheistic God. To put it simply, when we say "there is no god" it is atheistic but when we add "except for God" to it, it becomes an apophatic theology and epistemologically more balanced. I have more clarification of this on my video called "reality model, metaphysics part 5 (philosophy of math.."
after this last argument shouldn't the title be "Why atheists can and can't blame Trent Horn for his bad arguments" ?
43:22 Trent should add the word objective before the word morality, because I’m sure that’s what he means, and would not accept what SOME atheist believe which is that we can have more responsibility in a subjective sense
kudos for generating so much engagement!
(full stop)
around 1:30 you lay out some definitions. I suggest you continue a confusion by overlooking one key point: God's Eye View. determinism is effectively gibberish because it relies on a "God's eye view" of the system, a view that is not possible. we've known this for a century, at least since Kurt Godel. we CANNOT use linear analysis (our common sense) to understand or to predict a nonlinear system -- as our world obviously is.
Daniel Dennett RIP argued that determinism is compatible with free will because they reflect distinct frames of analysis; while this was perhaps expedient, it obscures the meaninglessness of 'determinism'. yet the discourse on determinism indicates something very real: human anxiety. we struggle to accept responsibility, and thus we clutch to our breasts fantasies of power such as determinism and gods.
13:35 P2 is true because we are a social species and if we want to survive as such we need to have moral responsibility or else we might encourage antisocial-behavior which is contrary to our stated goal.
Well, making response videos are usually the next steps most TH-camr made further into their career....
EDIT - oh, MoR himself left a comment already about this very point. I see he has beaten me to his own punch haha.
6:25 - @MajestyOfReason I might have missed something, but I think you might be getting at something slightly different than what Trent was trying to communicate here... let me see if I can steel-man what he said.
Trent is saying that to claim Craig _should_ have done differently is to imply that Craig _could_ have done differently, which is incompatible with determinism (which he implicitly associates with atheism for some strange reason). He is focusing on the should-have-done-differently aspect of the issue, but you raised counterpoints about should-have-done-the-same, which seems to be going in the wrong direction.
I think a better counterpoint about should-have-done-differently, yet still couldn't have failed to do what they did, would be to take a twist on the mountain climber story.
The mountain climber was caught in an avalanche and, once again, got his arm crushed under a great rock, this one just slightly too heavy for the climber to move by himself. The only way out would be to take his axe and hack his arm off. He eventually does so, in order to survive, but as soon as he stands up, he sees a rescue helicopter descending to pick him up.
In his own hindsight, the climber _should have_ done something different - waited just a few more minutes for the rescuers to arrive, who could have moved the rock and saved his arm - yet he couldn't have failed to do what he did, because he had imperfect knowledge of his situation.
If you happen to see this, I'm curious what you think of this critique :)
Great minds think alike😉
Why would i tip you if you havent even brought me breadsticks yet
I see the Holy Spirit has granted Trent Horn some serious philosophical insights... 😅
I think most of the criticisms you offer, while very well considered, as per usual, would be more accurately directed if Trent weren't conditionalizing his critique on a particular kind of atheistic noetic structure.
47:07 Exodus 20:5 "...for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."
So I'll address the OT part, since I mostly agree with your critique of Trent here.
The main difficulty in the OT, I think, comes down to God killing babies. But here's why it's not immoral for God to do so. A conjunctive principle is true that only applies to God: a) if One is the creator of all things and the determiner of the being of all other things, then that One has rights over the life of those things and b) God only ever exercises his power with a view to the flourishing of creation in accordance with his omniscience.
In defense of a), if God is the creator of life, then he's also the One who determines the conditions upon which life is given. In other words, he determines what life is for. He has a right, then, to decisively indicate when a person in a condition of life has decisively run amok of those purposes. The context in which infants are brought up can irrepairably shape them. God, in his wisdom, would only take the life of a baby, then, not as a judgment *against that baby*, but only when the baby is in such a context that it cannot freely thrive in that context.
When he takes a baby, he takes it back to himself/in a context in which it has the possibility of thriving (not to hell, I think, since it's absurd to suppose that babies go to hell for sin). As One who is omniscient and thus knows the context intimately and the possible ways a baby's life can pan out, he might choose to take that life accordingly. He's the only One in this position because of the conjunctive above.
If Bible would contain a mandatory child sacrifices, would you still regard it as word of God? Because, it seems to me, that if I apply your defence to any real or hypothetical holy texts, it just wouldn't work. "God is loving, He is smart, He gave your baby a life, now He can take it back, and blah-blah..."
@whelperw No, I wouldn't--but I don't see how that at all applies. If the Bible turns our moral whites black and vice versa, then sure, I don't see how it would be intelligible guide to morality.
But I don't see how this means my defense here can be widely applied to anything whatsoever. My defense isn't "God can do what he wants". It's rather that as the owner of life, he sets limits on what it's for, and only ever takes life in accordance with preserving his world. I don't see how mandatory child sacrifice has anything to do with this defense. The Bible doesn't in fact contain mandatory child sacrifice, so we're left to deal with what it actually says.
@whelperw As to the hypothetical you pointed out ("God is loving and smart etc"), I'd affirm yeah--he can take life as it's author and owner. I don't object to other religions on this ground. I object on other grounds.
@@anglicanaesthetics I think, the problem with you here, it's that you possess a concept of God, which is by definition all-loving, omnipotent and you use it to say stuff like "war on caninates was necessary, because it was commanded by all-loving omni God". I bring up child sacrifices to demonstrate, that you would be able to say same thing, if text would contain such commandment as well.
From my view point, I construct a generic model of god, with attributes, which current theist gives him, and compare them to the text (like Bible), to see whether or not it's checks out. Do child sacrifices are inline with all-loving attribute of this god? I think not. Do conquest wars are inline with all-loving attribute? I think not.
So it's strange to me, that you would reject holy texts that have child sacrifices, but accept one with conquest wars, since I would regard both as "intelligent guides to morality".
@whelperw Ah--so in principle, I actually agree that there needs to be some point of contact between the claim that God is all loving and Scripture if Scripture is describing the true God. So let's think it through--does it?
The wars on the Canaanites is, when we think about the adults, actually not hard to explain since the text doesn't frame the event as a general holy war. In Lord of the Rings, the Men of the East side with the orcs; it's quite easy to explain why we cheer when Legolas shoots them down. That's how the text portrays the Canaanites. Now, you might say "well the text isn't fairly portraying them", but then this ceases to be a critique of the God portrayed by these texts.
The hardest thing, I think, is the kids. But we can actually see why an all loving God might take back their life. When he does so, on the Biblical picture anyway, he takes them back to himself. In other words, he takes them out of a context in which they may have been corrupted beyond their natural abilities to get themselves out of it. Now, only God who is omniscient could know whether a baby is in such a state. But if he does know this, why has he done the baby any wrong? This is exactly, again, the situation we find portrayed--that the kids are enmeshed in a context that irretrievably sweeps them up into it.
Christ died (FOR YOUR SINS)
Was buried
Rose again (the third day)
Accept this truth and you shall not perish but have everlasting life by he who is The Life, Jesus The Christ!
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26 NKJV
Your ridiculous fantasy stories do not impress anyone.
Joe, if you ever really need to do some penance, you should pick up one of Trent's books and do a review. It would be ... painful.
Why's it painful?
@@glof2553 Trent's book tend to be pretty much like his videos.
@@Kevigen As opposed to your videos in which you just copy and paste philpapers opinions with virtually no understanding of the underlying issues?
@@vozcalma4127 I'd love for you to correct any lacks of understanding of misunderstandings that I have!
Great response video!
I love Joes Trent horn saga
Apologists will just hand-wave away these responses. The rebuttals are too far above their head to grasp, and because they are practicing motivated reasoning and confirmation bias they won't comprehend them. Anything counterintuitive that conflicts with what they already think they "know" is disguarded as "can't be true b/c I know that I know what I know".
What do you mean? Trent has regularly engaged with this channel.
"The apologists always do this. I don't know why I'm surprised by apologists anymore. Apologists broke into my house and shot my dog. Apologists stole my girlfriend and had their way with her while I was in the corner, crying and watching. We need to stop these apologists. I can't take these apologists anymore."
My intuition here is to just say let’s hypothetically grant a maximally great being you describe - I just don’t agree this being you describe would do the sorts of things described in your holy book, or would inspire a text depicting he would command them.
At 9:50 I think the point you make is not correct. Trent isn't claiming that if we lack free will, then the world or everything is determined. He says that if we lack free will then *we* are determined, which seems obviously true.
More precisely : if we lack free will, then we can't control our action (our "action" could still be the effect of an undeterministic process).
No, we could be random
@@tomasrocha6139 Yes you are right, I wanted to say "you can't control our action".
It's clear that Trent Horn is not familiar with the free will literature
This channel is a treasure
“What can I say that is nice? This is silly, this is just silly”. 🤩
❤
You don't get ad revenue? As a waitress I get paid $2.13 an hour, which is usually enough to cover all the deductions taken out.
You guys need to have another conversation or debate
Atheism is when no moral responsibility >:(
Yes.
Joining the chorus of voices encouraging you to stop engaging Trent Horn
38:54 rofl! 🤣
Sorry, majesty... your rebuttal is rubbish. Objective Proper Function = teleology = God. There is no proper function for physical systems that can be justified on atheism. Admitting to any such, requires that pesky unembodied mind. Good luck tho.
"Modulating your behaviour in light of "reasons" is relevant to moral responsibility." Except it isn't. There is no account of proper function under atheism. Responding to reasons for not murdering with no with a healthy brain and giving the same response because tumour made me do it is equivalent.
Be more straightforward next time. The "good luck tho" feels incomplete and improper from your character. Better directly say "good luck in judgement day when Jesus comes to you and asks why have you been willingly denying him for so long despite knowing deep down the truth that God always existed". That's what you really think, isn't it? Christians… 🤦♀️
yes such rubbish. He should clearly believe the same things you do: God created a global flood, but Noah saved all the animals in his zoo-boat, oh and there is no evidence for the flood. And also a whole town was resurrected from the dead in leviticus. Plus all the failed prophecies
Interesting. So, according to your reasoning, god's mind has no proper function given that it is not the product of any teleology. Thus, god commanding us not to murder for reasons and god giving the same command due to mindless randomness is equivalent.
@felipedantas2001 not really. God is that which perfect by definition. The perfect Mind and a necessary being. Analogically, you can decide what a device should do, like a clock, so you ascribe to it its proper function. If it doesn't do that, it's not functioning correctly. You can do that to all things that are designed. But you can't ascribe improper function to undesigned things, or to necessary beings or abstract objects. God is the ultimate, he is the criterion by which the proper function of everything else is measured because He's thar which can't malfunction or be mistaken by definition.
"The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?"
1. If theism is true, then free will exists
2. If free will exists, then saying "Kang and Kronos" instead of "Kang and Kodos" is an unforgiveable sin
3. However, Trent Horn is totally cool and does not commit unforgiveable sins
Therefore, theism is false. 😜
Trent has no problem reconciling Judas being predetermined to betray Jesus with his eternal damnation. But he says atheists can't do it for some reason.
Where does Trent say that Judas was predetermined to go to hell? I'm just surprised because that's contradictory to Catholic teaching as far as I know
@@thomasbailey921 He doesn't but Jesus predicted it (Judas is very oddly unfazed and betrays him anyways) so at least from that point onward he must have been predetermined to betray Jesus.
@@tomasrocha6139 Not specifically in the scenario you mention, but in general, do you believe prediction or future knowledge contradicts free will, and aligns with determinism?
@@tomasrocha6139 "predetermined to betray Jesus"
Perhaps, it's quite possible, though by no means necessary that that is the case. Judas' betrayal amounts to just pointing to the guards "hey that's him" - something that no one in Jerusalem at the time likely needed to be told. The Sanhedrin was already planning on killing Jesus, so I highly doubt that Judas' betrayal was necessary - but Jesus, being God, would be able to see into Judas' mind.
But ALL of that aside, even if Judas' betrayal was completely necessary, that STILL doesn't mean that Judas is predetermined to hell. That's a view that no well-formed, practicing Catholic holds to.
@@CalebLove-ci8bv Yes it aligns with determinism
44:30 Trent seems to be arguing a more nuanced version of "Atheists just want to sin."
lol.barely.
Some want to cos.
I really like the way that you have made clear that the term ‘free will’ is amorphous and can be used in many different ways. But I think that the same can be said for moral responsibility. Moral responsibility also comes in many different forms, and we might possess some without others.
We use the term ‘responsibility’ in several different morally relevant ways. Sometimes we say that someone *is* responsible for an action, but other times we say that they ought to *take* responsibility for it, while other times we say that people are responsible for things that are not discrete actions at all: the Police Chief is responsible for fighting crime etc.. These all express very different ideas about what moral responsibility is. On the first, moral responsibility is something that exists absolutely and objectively, while on the second it is a kind of attitude that we take towards our actions, and on the third it is a state we occupy due to our social role.
In particular for this debate, I see an important distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘attribution’ forms of moral responsibility. An individual has choice responsibility for an action if they chose it in a morally relevant way. This is the sense of responsibility that Trent assumes is in play throughout the video. Conversely, a person has attribution responsibility for the action just if they occupy a certain social role which carries responsibility for actions of that kind.
For example, plausibly a general is morally responsible for the actions of his troops in a way that cannot just be reduced to his choice over what those troops do. If his troops go on a rampage without orders, the general has not chosen for them to do this, and yet he can still be blamed, and it is reasonable to expect him to apologise on behalf of his men.
My particular gloss of this is that the general’s rank gives him particular powers over other people. He can order his troops to kill other people, for instance, which most people cannot do. And with this power comes responsibility (the Spider-Man Principle). This kind of responsibility is a kind of social construct between individuals who assign these responsibilities to one another. It is not a metaphysical property that people just have intrinsically (though intrinsic properties such as rationality might be relevant to whether people can be assigned responsibilities).
In any case, we can expand this notion of attribution responsibility to all people. Just being a rational member of society is a social role. And this role carries responsibilities, such as responsibility for one’s own behaviour. This responsibility may be undercut by certain factors, such as coercion or losing one’s rational faculties, but it is not derived from any intrinsic freedom to choose that people possess. Rather attribution responsibility seems to be something that exists to serve a social function. We assign responsibilities in order to coordinate people and maintain social relationships.
Now, you may reject that attribution responsibility exists or that it is independent from choice responsibility. But it seems to me at least plausible that it might be. And if this is the case, the atheists could be holding theists morally responsible in the attribution sense, even if they don’t believe in moral responsibility in the choice sense. They are saying that, as rational members of our society, the theists are responsible for not peddling immoral and nasty ideas that may harm other members of that society, and therefore that they can be blamed for doing so.
On the other extreme, Trent seems to believe in a super radical form of choice responsibility. I don’t know what his exact views are, but I imagine that he believes in some form of divine punishment or reward. And in order for this to make sense and be fair, it has to be possible to take someone’s choices and isolate them from everything around them: their genes, their environment, their culture, and even the unchosen nature of their non-physical soul (if they have one). It is only once that is done that we are left with someone’s choices themselves, and so judge those choices on their own merits.
If this is what Trent has in mind when he talks about moral responsibility, then I highly doubt that he can establish its existence just by pointing to our everyday intuitions about moral responsibility. It is one thing to say that we are morally responsible on the level of ordinary interpersonal relationships (that we can appropriately praise and blame each other), but it is something entirely different to say that our choices can be isolated from everything else about us and morally judged. It might be common sense that moral responsibility exists in the first sense, but I don’t think it is common sense that it exists in the second sense.
I guess the TLDR of this is that your definition of free will in terms of moral responsibility makes me uneasy. At least as I see it, people can be morally responsible in some ways but not in others. Depending on how moral responsibility is understood, either compatibilism or incompatibilism might be true. And depending on how moral responsibility is understood, atheists may or may not be able to blame theists (or vice versa).
Its quite strange honestly. Trent Horn is very intelligent, and seems cordial and charitable in his discussions with atheists. So why has he been making such implausible and uncharitable claims lately? Surely he isn't just trying to appeal to the Frank Turek types in his comment sections, right?
Either way, thanks for taking the time to make this Joe.
Gonna be honest, I don't see any real functional difference between intellectual seemings and plain old intuitions.
Trent says that compatibalist free-will cannot count as a real form of freedom because if determinism is true, while we acted upon the reasons or desires that we have, we did not choose the reasons or desires that we have. I wonder what he takes the alternative to be. Suppose that I did choose the reasons/desires that I presently have. On what basis did I choose those reasons/desires? It couldn't be on the basis of further reasons/desires, for then we enter into a vicious regress. But it also couldn't be that there was no basis at all for choosing my present reasons/desires, since, in that case, my reasons/desires would be arbitrary.
As far as I can tell -- and I'm open to being shown otherwise -- no matter what our view about free-will is, whatever reasons/desires we presently have either originated in a regress of reasons/desires that terminates in something other than reasons/desires or themselves originated from something other than reasons/desires. So, as far as I can tell, the fact that we did not choose our reasons/desires is not a feature that separates libertarian and compatibilist accounts of free-will.
I also don't know why Trent doesn't consider non-cognitive accounts. Couldn't the repulsion, at least in some cases, just be atheists disliking gods actions as in "I hate pineapple pizza"? I guess Trent would have a response, but addressing if non cognitive accounts work is his job (since it's his video) in the first place.
Im starting a petition to include an order of breadsticks with every video.
What’s up with the controlling a puppet imagery? There can’t be a human hand controlling another person, because that person also wouldn’t control their actions if no one can. Explaining lack of freedom with a person being free to control you in every way, means that that person is more free or free still then
the puppeteer is you, the little man inside your head is who tells you what to do, most people think - as you point out - that determinism means someone else is controlling you, when it is really you - your unconscious mind - telling you what you think, where do thoughts come from? nowhere, they pop into your head from inside your head.
All of this guy's arguments are pure trash.
why does it look like you have black lipstick on
Trent's entire argument is just, "You can't have morality without god" with more word salad comprising of deceptively sophisticated nuanced sounding philosophical terminologies.
John McTaggart was an atheist. He had some really interesting and creative arguments against theism.
McTaggart also believed that, despite appearances, there’s really only a community of timeless and non-spatial immaterial spirits united by love.
There are many more ways to be an atheist than religious apologists acknowledge.
3:38 See I feel like Trent has immediately lost me here. Listening to people like him and WLC defend this issue recently has become a conversation ender for me. If you are defending the brutal murder of children and trying to convince me that this is sometimes a good and moral thing, then that's it, we are done. I no longer care about anything else you have to say. You have well and truly put yourself in the category of "moral monster" as far as I am concerned, and I no longer want anything else to do with you.
But just claiming moral monster is not an argument or conclusion. But just an effect of primitive emotions
@@UncannyRicardo And I don't care. If you are going to defend genocide and the mass murder of children, then I want nothing more to do with you. You are a moral monster, it is as simple as that, discussion over.
This was a great video, and well put. One thing I might add is that being blameworthy or praiseworthy implies that the blame/praise will affect the person's future decisions. This does not hold true for blaming a lightning bolt. Blame is only helpful when it will bring about change in the future.
Just watched your latest appearance on Mr. Cosmic Skeptic's TH-cam channel Alex O' Conner! Please consider doing more debates. Philosophy people seems to me to do the best against theist apologists, much more effective than people who debate them purely on scientific basis. And I say that being a fan and student of science.
Possibly unpopular but this whole notion of preknowledge / omniscience might very well be impossible.
If God knows I will choose X, then it's impossible for me to choose Y. But is it possible for God to know I will choose X and tell me beforehand I will choose X? Would I then become a robot and choose X or can I choose Y? At what point would God see that I chose Y?
Great as always Joe. My only issue is that it seems like sometimes you might not be considering that Trent’s goals with his videos are not the same as yours. His videos (mostly) unlike yours don’t aim to be sophisticated analyses but rather consumable pieces for a largely philosophically untrained audience. My guess is that Trent didn’t intend to ignore the more nuanced atheistic positions. Rather he made a video tailored for laypeople attacking a very mainstream form of atheism. And while it is uncharitable when put under philosophical scrutiny, I would contend Trent probably has reasons for why those nuanced views fail but simply didn’t include it in the video to make it digestible for his audience. So I think that on top of great videos like this, a discussion is the most charitable thing to do.
Saying that "he probably has reasons" isn't sufficient, buddy. His arguments fail like usual, end of story.
@@jackkrell4238
I think you're missing the point OP was trying to make. Trent wasn't intending on addressing the nuanced points - only on addressing mainstream "New Athiesm" (which is very clear in his original video, if not explicitly stated). So ofc the nuanced points might make Trent's arguments "fail;" he wasn't addressing them. A chestplate doesn't defend blows to the head, but that doesn't mean you can't wear a helmet. Trent certainly has defenses to the more nuanced points, he simply didn't raise them in his original video because that was not the purpose of the original video.
@@thomasbailey921 The issue here is that Trent has proven to either deliberately obfuscate our arguments, is genuinely clueless of anything that isn't part of his script, or make claims that apply just as if not more to his own worldview( free will not existing, for example.)
Personally, I don't like the term "new atheism" because it's just a tool theists can use to make the atheist position seem less cohesive.
it would have been quicker and more accurate to say "trent is just lying"
@@jackkrell4238 i don't mind it cos it gives me permission to coin the term "new christian", that is someone with zero interest in jesus and just after subscriptions, patron, likes and book sales, and possible course sales if they are professional scammers. youtube apologists in simple terms.
4:40 - You'd think Christians would learn that you can't infer a person's meta-ethics based on simple moral statements they make, but no, even the "educated" apologists continue to make this mistake.
I say Routledge the way Joe does. 31:03
Of everything in this video, the one thing that steams me is "Kang or Kronos"
Trent, it's KODOS!!!
The attribution of blame and occasional punishment have the function of influencing future behavior of the culprit as well as of observers. This can be completely determined or not.
I appreciate your quality of work, Joe. You're one of the people that contributed to me being more philosophically rigorous. I hope that Trent Horn takes your notes.
Ironically, I am a reductive physicalist, so his video is a critique of my position (that atheism is far from entailing), but I just know it's a worthless caricature and a disgusting strawman version of it that I couldn't be bothered to even watch.
Hey Joe! I seem to be a bit confused, or the point is just going over my head. When you say at 6:30 that there is this sense where we “should” do something, I really don’t see a reason to accept this. Why should we do something? Excuse my ignorance, but it seems to me that this is just saying that the majority of people have the natural instinct to act in this moral/ethical way. Why ought we take what the majority feels, as truth? Also, I don’t believe a true moral distinction can be made between hitting the pedestrian, and not hitting the pedestrian, besides asserting that our natural instinct should make us feel that we shouldn’t, or that the majority deem this to be “bad”. What if someone has no alternative, and their moral reasoning leads them to harm others, even if we feel they shouldn’t? Are they to blame because we rule the majority natural instinct is correct? I apologize if this is a complete misrepresentation, and would love clarity on this!
Joe, I know you’re agnostic with respect to the god of classical theism, but are you also agnostic towards the average conception of the Judeo Christian God that most western Christians believe in?