This is my favorite episode of Counter Apologetics (and I have listened to nearly all of them). So concise yet powerful. A neat way of explaining god of the gaps type arguments that I heard somewhere (perhaps from Emerson, I'm not sure) is this: "If it is a problem for us, it is not a problem for me."
Please consider doing an episode on the transcendtal argument for God (tag). I'm thinking that tag fails for essentially the same reason contingency arguments fail? Tag seems to be gaining steam among internet apologists.
they are indeed very weak. there’s one exception though - I think the moral knowledge argument is pretty intriguing. but yeah, the moral argument as formulated by Craig is just so so bad
the problem is that the universe is a composite of parts. the contingency argument from actuality is more about anything that has "this-ness" and "such-ness" (attributes and instantiation) must be held together or instantiated by something outside of itself. the infinite regress impossibility would lead to a thing which must NOT be a composite of parts. So that disqualifies the universe. The only thing that does qualify is "pure actuality". Which is the God as defined in classical theism... But this argument wouldn't work for personal theists. Dr. Steven Nemes explains it way better than I could on Capturing Christianity debating Ryan Mullins on God's Nature.
You just mentioned it in the video, but How would you respond to the argument from arbitrary limits? If the initial cause is physical then it must have arbitrary limits. As Physical things must have some thing arbitrary about them,Size,shape,structure,density etc. And in theism the initial cause is an unlimited God. So does that give an advantage to theism over naturalism? Amazing video btw. Would also like to see you do a video on your version of panpsychism and mental causation. I think you could give a clearer account of that! Crazy stuff dude! Like to hear more. Keep em coming 👍
arbitrary limits deserve their own episode, I think. I would recommend Felipe Leon's dialogue with Josh Rasmussen for something more detailed, but here's my short response: (1) naturalism entails nothing one way or the other on whether the foundation of reality has arbitrary limits. (2) sometimes arbitrary-seeming features only appear to be arbitrary, and greater knowledge reveals that what at first appeared arbitrary was not in reality. how do we identify actually arbitrary limits? I'd love to hear some examples (especially since providing real cases from nature would only provide inductive support for the idea that arbitrary limits are an actual feature of the natural order). (3) assigning an infinite value is neither the simplest nor the most plausible hypothesis in any other area of inquiry. if we didn't know the mass of the sun, it would be insane to suggest its mass must be infinite. I'm not sure it would even be the simplest hypothesis, but it would clearly not be the most plausible. (4) theism does not live up to this "no arbitrary limits" rule--certainly not any form involving a trinitarian god. (5) incoherence worries arise when we start claiming that all of God's attributes are infinite, much more so than if we were willing to put some limits on his attributes. (6) it's not at all clear that arbitrary limits should be a decisive consideration. even if theists who make this particular argument were basically correct, I think this point is of very limited interest. as for panpsychism and mental causation, I made a video about epiphenomenalism that gets into that a bit.
So the classical philosophers started a 'non-necessary' struggle between theism and atheism instead of realizing they were all just talking about the same thing in the end? Dang! (Or was that a 'necessary' struggle?) Thanks for this video! Helpful summary of the Oppy view. I appreciated the Oppy - Feser discussion along these lines.
The difficulty with the "range of options" argument (which is fine as far as it goes) is that the universe, as modern science views it, has no properties that can avoid an infinite regress or be self-existent, or, or.... As a result, you can have naturalism, but it is a strange kind of naturalism indeed that has a large number of undetectable magical properties. That's fine if you want to assiduously avoid God, but it means that you can't pretend that naturalism is a "scientific" position.
Great video! I'd be interested in hearing you expand more on responses to some of the stage 2 arguments e.g. the William Lane Craig Style "the cause must be timeless, spaceless, powerful, conscious" or the argument from limits from Joshua Rasmussen.
a timeless and spaceless consciousness must be the poorest type of consciousness. Neither do you have any dimension to think different contents, nor do you have time to change the content. now i can give a solution, what that is: it is nothing which is conscious about nothing and does nothing.
okay then. but the point of this video is “whatever range of options is open to the theist to explain existence, the same range of options is open to the naturalist.” and if what you say is true, then it’s a problem for *both* theists and naturalists.
@@EmersonGreen I felt like the section needed expounding a bit. You start off by saying the naturalist could follow the theist down the path of a foundation being necessary, timeless, spaceless, conscious, beginingless, powerful... Gof addresses timeless, necessity and then an argument on conceivability of it's absence but doesn't address consciousness or power. I would agree we could technically have a natural, conscious, powerful agent as the foundation but I can't imagine the theist not feeling like they'd won the argument at this point. If they've established a conscious mind as the foundation of the universe, they probably don't particularly care if this was labelled natural or supernatural (since the terms are often not very meaningful anyway).
8:20 Isn't this where a theist might invoke an ontological argument to answer the 2nd part of Rowe's distinction? Theists might argue that you _can't_ posit an equal but opposite natural foundation because natural entities do not possess the requisite necessity needed of a necessary foundation. Only a maximally great being does (so they argue). Hence, there is actually an emiment reason to think the same options for a necessary foundation are not open to the naturalist.
if a theist is making the ontological argument, then there's no need for all this theory comparison and evidence-confirmation nonsense. they've already proven God exists through reason alone! fortunately for atheists, ontological arguments don't work. so maybe theists and atheists should just compare models and assess evidence.
he’s an atheist who accepts that there is a fine-tuning problem. I’m more inclined to dispute that there is a problem to begin with. but if it is a legit problem, his version of axiarchism would solve it and could be endorsed by naturalists such as myself!
I guess I'm not sure what it'd mean to say that the universe was initially timeless and then underwent some change so as to become temporal, because I take a change to involve some cause and an effect, and so if the effect is the universe having the property of temporality, the cause must be the universe in its timeless state. But if the change being discussed is the universe becoming temporal, then the cause of this change cannot be temporally prior to the effect, because then the universe is already temporally located when it brings about the effect of becoming temporal, so no change would actually occur. If we want to instead say that the initial timeless state is not temporally prior to its effects, then it must be simultaneous to its effect, but then we have the one and the same universe simultaneously timeless and temporal, which I take to be contradictories, since to be timeless is to not undergo successive duration, and to be 'temporal' is to undergo successive duration. This is the same line of reasoning Alex Malpass goes over in his criticism of William lane Craig's view, in his discussion with Scott Clifton at 50:30, a line of reasoning I happen to agree with him on against non-classical theists.
I see no problem with having both timeless and temporal “regions” of the global natural order. Again, if God is timeless, then the global order, on your view, does have both timeless and temporal regions. So if there really are irresolvable problems that you’ve hit upon, then they’re also irresolvable for the theist. The move that’s emphasized in this video is basically “whatever you can do, I can do.” I haven’t seen why that’s not the case. We’re in the same boat when it comes to advantages and problems.
A theist's answer is some of sort of indeterministic event that can happen timelessly, free will in the case of God, and quantum indeterminate event in the case of naturalists. And this only applies to Kalam arguments, contingency arguments don't entail anything about the nature of time.
@@EmersonGreen Give your opinion on modal collapse objection against Cosmological Argument in a video since many find that objection to be best objection.
@@snowfall4734 modal collapse arguments are used against classical theism. I don't like modal collapse arguments because I'm not all that spooked by modal collapse. so if I were to make that argument, I'd have to just try to show that there's an inconsistency in the theist's worldview, since there's a conflict between necessitarianism and libertarian free will, or something.
wasn’t planning on it. Majesty of Reason has a lot of great stuff on Thomism, if you’re interested. but I doubt I’ll be talking about it anytime soon, if ever.
However, the only way a naturalist can adopt the range of options of the theist and apply them to the universe...is to use the same reasoning of the theist. What reasoning is that? It's faith.
Nothing Emerson agreed to entails free will, moral concern, intention, or thought processes. If you want to call something that may not have those properties a god, go ahead. By the way, don't conflate consciousness with thought processes to get there. Emerson would not agree that consciousness necessarily entails thought and neither would I. That's a whole other discussion. My point is that a deterministic, non-moral, purposeless, thoughtless, but still conscious, immensely powerful force, which is all Emerson contingently agreed to, does not conform to most people's conception of God. It sounds like something without analyzable component characteristics or identifiable intentions-- something utterly primitive and simple-- not very God-like. It's also not something with any clear division between itself and the resultant universe it "created." Once again, not very God-like.
I am sorry, but Oppy's argument is simply incorrect. No, the range of options open to the theist is not the same as to the naturalist, because the natural world only contains material causation, and we know that all material events have material causes. Therefore, even the first material cause cannot be necessary / uncaused. God is not material, and therefore does not face this problem.
Great video. I really like your channel, I've been watching several of your videos and oh man, you really deserve more views and subscribers.
There's no possible world in which I'd disagree with you.
🥰
This is my favorite episode of Counter Apologetics (and I have listened to nearly all of them). So concise yet powerful.
A neat way of explaining god of the gaps type arguments that I heard somewhere (perhaps from Emerson, I'm not sure) is this: "If it is a problem for us, it is not a problem for me."
Please consider doing an episode on the transcendtal argument for God (tag). I'm thinking that tag fails for essentially the same reason contingency arguments fail? Tag seems to be gaining steam among internet apologists.
Also, I'd be very interested in a follow up to this episode that considers the common objections you mention at the end.
Just rewatched this. So great.
I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels moral arguments are very weak (as it is proved in your survey). :)
they are indeed very weak. there’s one exception though - I think the moral knowledge argument is pretty intriguing. but yeah, the moral argument as formulated by Craig is just so so bad
@@EmersonGreen yeah his objective morality one you can form your own objective morality through platoism.
the problem is that the universe is a composite of parts. the contingency argument from actuality is more about anything that has "this-ness" and "such-ness" (attributes and instantiation) must be held together or instantiated by something outside of itself. the infinite regress impossibility would lead to a thing which must NOT be a composite of parts. So that disqualifies the universe. The only thing that does qualify is "pure actuality". Which is the God as defined in classical theism... But this argument wouldn't work for personal theists.
Dr. Steven Nemes explains it way better than I could on Capturing Christianity debating Ryan Mullins on God's Nature.
You just mentioned it in the video, but How would you respond to the argument from arbitrary limits?
If the initial cause is physical then it must have arbitrary limits. As Physical things must have some thing arbitrary about them,Size,shape,structure,density etc. And in theism the initial cause is an unlimited God. So does that give an advantage to theism over naturalism?
Amazing video btw. Would also like to see you do a video on your version of panpsychism and mental causation. I think you could give a clearer account of that!
Crazy stuff dude! Like to hear more. Keep em coming 👍
arbitrary limits deserve their own episode, I think. I would recommend Felipe Leon's dialogue with Josh Rasmussen for something more detailed, but here's my short response: (1) naturalism entails nothing one way or the other on whether the foundation of reality has arbitrary limits. (2) sometimes arbitrary-seeming features only appear to be arbitrary, and greater knowledge reveals that what at first appeared arbitrary was not in reality. how do we identify actually arbitrary limits? I'd love to hear some examples (especially since providing real cases from nature would only provide inductive support for the idea that arbitrary limits are an actual feature of the natural order). (3) assigning an infinite value is neither the simplest nor the most plausible hypothesis in any other area of inquiry. if we didn't know the mass of the sun, it would be insane to suggest its mass must be infinite. I'm not sure it would even be the simplest hypothesis, but it would clearly not be the most plausible. (4) theism does not live up to this "no arbitrary limits" rule--certainly not any form involving a trinitarian god. (5) incoherence worries arise when we start claiming that all of God's attributes are infinite, much more so than if we were willing to put some limits on his attributes. (6) it's not at all clear that arbitrary limits should be a decisive consideration. even if theists who make this particular argument were basically correct, I think this point is of very limited interest.
as for panpsychism and mental causation, I made a video about epiphenomenalism that gets into that a bit.
So the classical philosophers started a 'non-necessary' struggle between theism and atheism instead of realizing they were all just talking about the same thing in the end? Dang! (Or was that a 'necessary' struggle?)
Thanks for this video! Helpful summary of the Oppy view. I appreciated the Oppy - Feser discussion along these lines.
The difficulty with the "range of options" argument (which is fine as far as it goes) is that the universe, as modern science views it, has no properties that can avoid an infinite regress or be self-existent, or, or.... As a result, you can have naturalism, but it is a strange kind of naturalism indeed that has a large number of undetectable magical properties. That's fine if you want to assiduously avoid God, but it means that you can't pretend that naturalism is a "scientific" position.
Because you just want to sin then?
we out here suppressing the truth in unrighteousness
Great video! I'd be interested in hearing you expand more on responses to some of the stage 2 arguments e.g. the William Lane Craig Style "the cause must be timeless, spaceless, powerful, conscious" or the argument from limits from Joshua Rasmussen.
see the section on Goff
a timeless and spaceless consciousness must be the poorest type of consciousness. Neither do you have any dimension to think different contents, nor do you have time to change the content.
now i can give a solution, what that is: it is nothing which is conscious about nothing and does nothing.
okay then. but the point of this video is “whatever range of options is open to the theist to explain existence, the same range of options is open to the naturalist.” and if what you say is true, then it’s a problem for *both* theists and naturalists.
@@EmersonGreen I felt like the section needed expounding a bit. You start off by saying the naturalist could follow the theist down the path of a foundation being necessary, timeless, spaceless, conscious, beginingless, powerful... Gof addresses timeless, necessity and then an argument on conceivability of it's absence but doesn't address consciousness or power. I would agree we could technically have a natural, conscious, powerful agent as the foundation but I can't imagine the theist not feeling like they'd won the argument at this point. If they've established a conscious mind as the foundation of the universe, they probably don't particularly care if this was labelled natural or supernatural (since the terms are often not very meaningful anyway).
@@SteveVgod I don't think theists will feel as if they've won if we agree to panpsychism...speaking from experience
8:20 Isn't this where a theist might invoke an ontological argument to answer the 2nd part of Rowe's distinction? Theists might argue that you _can't_ posit an equal but opposite natural foundation because natural entities do not possess the requisite necessity needed of a necessary foundation. Only a maximally great being does (so they argue). Hence, there is actually an emiment reason to think the same options for a necessary foundation are not open to the naturalist.
if a theist is making the ontological argument, then there's no need for all this theory comparison and evidence-confirmation nonsense. they've already proven God exists through reason alone! fortunately for atheists, ontological arguments don't work. so maybe theists and atheists should just compare models and assess evidence.
Philip Goff suggested that the universe designed itself in fine tuning as well
he’s an atheist who accepts that there is a fine-tuning problem. I’m more inclined to dispute that there is a problem to begin with. but if it is a legit problem, his version of axiarchism would solve it and could be endorsed by naturalists such as myself!
@@EmersonGreen thank you my friend
I guess I'm not sure what it'd mean to say that the universe was initially timeless and then underwent some change so as to become temporal, because I take a change to involve some cause and an effect, and so if the effect is the universe having the property of temporality, the cause must be the universe in its timeless state. But if the change being discussed is the universe becoming temporal, then the cause of this change cannot be temporally prior to the effect, because then the universe is already temporally located when it brings about the effect of becoming temporal, so no change would actually occur. If we want to instead say that the initial timeless state is not temporally prior to its effects, then it must be simultaneous to its effect, but then we have the one and the same universe simultaneously timeless and temporal, which I take to be contradictories, since to be timeless is to not undergo successive duration, and to be 'temporal' is to undergo successive duration.
This is the same line of reasoning Alex Malpass goes over in his criticism of William lane Craig's view, in his discussion with Scott Clifton at 50:30, a line of reasoning I happen to agree with him on against non-classical theists.
I see no problem with having both timeless and temporal “regions” of the global natural order. Again, if God is timeless, then the global order, on your view, does have both timeless and temporal regions. So if there really are irresolvable problems that you’ve hit upon, then they’re also irresolvable for the theist.
The move that’s emphasized in this video is basically “whatever you can do, I can do.” I haven’t seen why that’s not the case. We’re in the same boat when it comes to advantages and problems.
A theist's answer is some of sort of indeterministic event that can happen timelessly, free will in the case of God, and quantum indeterminate event in the case of naturalists. And this only applies to Kalam arguments, contingency arguments don't entail anything about the nature of time.
talks about modal collapse in future video
what about it?
@@EmersonGreen Give your opinion on modal collapse objection against Cosmological Argument in a video since many find that objection to be best objection.
@@snowfall4734 modal collapse arguments are used against classical theism.
I don't like modal collapse arguments because I'm not all that spooked by modal collapse. so if I were to make that argument, I'd have to just try to show that there's an inconsistency in the theist's worldview, since there's a conflict between necessitarianism and libertarian free will, or something.
Do you intend to spend your time on Aquinas's first way?
wasn’t planning on it. Majesty of Reason has a lot of great stuff on Thomism, if you’re interested. but I doubt I’ll be talking about it anytime soon, if ever.
However, the only way a naturalist can adopt the range of options of the theist and apply them to the universe...is to use the same reasoning of the theist. What reasoning is that? It's faith.
In summary agree to God's existance but just dont call him God 😀
Nothing Emerson agreed to entails free will, moral concern, intention, or thought processes. If you want to call something that may not have those properties a god, go ahead. By the way, don't conflate consciousness with thought processes to get there. Emerson would not agree that consciousness necessarily entails thought and neither would I. That's a whole other discussion. My point is that a deterministic, non-moral, purposeless, thoughtless, but still conscious, immensely powerful force, which is all Emerson contingently agreed to, does not conform to most people's conception of God. It sounds like something without analyzable component characteristics or identifiable intentions-- something utterly primitive and simple-- not very God-like. It's also not something with any clear division between itself and the resultant universe it "created." Once again, not very God-like.
I am sorry, but Oppy's argument is simply incorrect. No, the range of options open to the theist is not the same as to the naturalist, because the natural world only contains material causation, and we know that all material events have material causes. Therefore, even the first material cause cannot be necessary / uncaused. God is not material, and therefore does not face this problem.