The fine tuning argument does not necessitate us. Nor does it require the Biblical God. For example, the neoplatontic One would be provide a set of constraints. In fact Plotinus argues that mind is dependent on principles that make it possible. There is equivocation in the notion of information between the Shanon sense with is probabilistic relations between events and semantic information which what intelligence has. A lifeless universe has titanic amount of information in it in the first sense but none in the second. Shanon was repeatedly clear that he was not talking about meaning. The argument about information is very problematic and the fine tuning argument does not necessitate the emergence of mind. All of this is being run together. There is tremendous mindless information in a diamond. Are diamonds made by minds? If you don’t keep this distinction then computers are minds because they have extremely complex Information processing. Simply rolling some dice rules out alternatives and generates Shanon information. Using the language of choosing between alternatives is misleading. The dice are not choosing anything. The laws of nature rule out billions of alternatives but that does make them minds. Current evolutionary theory does not rely on just random change but also through processes of exaptation (tongue exalted for speech) niche construction, self-organization and emergence. Also if information only emerges from minds then how does it arises in brains? If information only arises from intelligence then how do neurons give rise to intelligence? Do they have minds? This position has many if not more than the questions being raised here against evolutionary theory. Nagel did not conclude theism. He concluded that we need to change our fundamental ontology. To see that developed well see The Blind Spot.
You have to read The Design Inference by William Dembski, he addresses most of these concerns. ID proponents aren’t speaking of just any information, but Specified Complexity. Furthermore, Dembskis elucidation of the Law of Conservation of Information disqualifies any stochastic process from explaining the emergence of specified complexity. Natural selection and other mechanisms solve nothing - they just push the problem back, usually to the environment. EDIT: I will expand this point below because John's comment has been pinned. Natural selection does not create information, it TRANSFERS information. Biological complexity cannot come from biological simplicity; it must come from pre-existing environmental complexity. The image of a man coming from a monkey is propagandistic nonsense - a blatant absurdity. "Natural selection" is just a different way of saying environmental to biological transference. The human does not come from the monkey, according to actual Darwinist logic, but the ENVIRONMENT. The question then arises, "Where did this environment come from?" You cant say its by chance, because then you might as well just say that the organism came about by chance: Insofar as you invoke natural selection to explain the "origin" of information, you are positing at least the SAME AMOUNT of information to be present in the environment itself, and thus you have accomplished absolutely nothing. Nothing has become more plausible at all. Dembski has proven this mathematically with his S4S "Search for Search" theorems and it is really quite straightforward... All of this is really just basic logic: X cannot come from Y unless X is in some way contained within Y. If X comes about and X is not contained within Y, it did not come from Y; it came from somewhere else. In evolutionism, that "somewhere else" has got to be the environment. The Darwinists have successfully swindled the population for over 100 years and I have to say it is actually impressive. Here is an example to help you understand the problem very simply: We have a target with a bullseye, and we can see that there are arrows consistently hitting the bullseye. We conclude, logically, that this is not due to chance and that there is a skilled archer involved here. The Darwinist, in a sense, would say, "No, no, no! There is no archer here! There is just an arrow shooting machine that is shooting the arrows! There is no mind involved, just a mechanism!" But they don't ask the obvious follow-up question: "What is this arrow shooting machine and where did it come from?" Could it be designed? Well the answer is yes, because the information necessary to hit the bullseye - specified complexity - is CONSERVED as you push the problem back. Evolution as it is conceived by moderns is impossible; true evolution is an unfolding - the word evolve comes from Latin evolvere, which means to roll out, yet an OUT always presupposes an IN from which it has rolled out FROM. It is like the petals of a flower which unfold from the center. Only two options remain: the entire human genome and the genome of every other animal (as well as other types of information) have been encoded from the beginning of the universe and have unfolded in some convoluted and mysterious way via different environments, OR the universe is not a closed clockwork system. The traditional perspective holds the latter, but neither of these are compatible with secularism, unless you wish to invoke multiverses. (which is just a cry for help) Personally, I don't subscribe to transformist evolution at all, but even if you do, you cannot escape the fact that natural selection is inherently teleological.
I will give my unsolicited opinion and most likely wrong interpretation. I believe that if I understood the arguments in the video correctly, the argument about information is that complex information that leads to function, like bits in a computer or ACGT nucleotide bases, point to a mind. The argument does not seem to be (at least what I interpreted) that the more information there is, the more likely a mind was involved. The fine tuning parameters for example, are important because they lead to life on earth, not because they generate massive amounts of complex information by existing. But having said that, even "mindless" information is only subjectively mindless, given different contexts, it could have meaningful interpretations, and the context comes from a mind. I don't see a way to escape the connection between mind and information. But that is just my opinion, and I am not a scientist, nor do I have a PhD. on anything.
There's something very materialistic about Stephen's argument. To explain away evolution, he's making everything mechanical in a Newtonian sense. I'm imagining God writing his programs in C that are later compiled into into machine code stored in carbon based lifeforms to be executed as written. Software updates come from above rather than the rich interconnection that life has with it's environment in it's attempt to traverse uncertain terrain. He unwittingly includes everything into the titanic amount of lifeless information with the exception of a programing engineer that is nowhere to be seen... in his mother's basement maybe.
Dembski points out that improbability itself is not sufficient to infer activity of mind. It must be improbable event confirming to an independently given pattern: getting any given number in a roulette rules out the same amount of alternatives, but when a given number is the winning number, then there is something more going on. He has an explanatory filter in his book, which I don't fully recall. Here is a wild thought: Is the world a covenant between form and flux, a semiotic/symbolic interface between the two? Implying, to me, that information comes on the scene after the covenental act?
How about a three-way discussion with Meyer? I am not a scientist, but I think that could be interesting if we did it in a way that is not too technical.
Of all the interviews of Dr. Stephen Meyer I have seen, Jonathan, I have to say, in this interview he seemed most engaged. I think that is due to your ability to pick out and elucidate points throughout the discussion that were quite profound, and allowed Stephen to connect dots he doesn’t usually get prompted on in most interviews. This was truly one of the most enjoyable discussions I’ve seen with Stephen, and that is certainly due to you both being high in intelligence, but also looking at things from slightly different angles. Great interview! 👏
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the truth of Christianity at this point. I was an ardent atheist for years, but with all the research I’ve done the last 6 years, I can’t hold that position any longer. Great conversation!
why specifically Christianity? if atheism is false that doesnt mean God is a mortal human being... there is a better and more coherent alternative for you out there..
Arguments for Christianity as a true philosophical and phenomenological way of understanding the world are gaining prominence. Coupled with Meyer’s work on the scientific front, we may be on the brink of a return to an era in the West where goodness, beauty, and truth take center stage again.
We had to go through rough times to get there (and there may be more to come) but it truly is a Renaissance of thought now. All aspects of information are being questioned in a good way. It's exciting to be alive.
@@anon_genz nobody should make the error of confusing Christianity with the only source of goodness, beauty, and truth. There is so much more that has not yet been apprehended by even some of the greatest minds of our time. Christianity is a good starting point for goodness and beauty. But Truth is always beyond that. People prematurely latch on to the greatest thing they have seen or heard of and call that true. Always keep a watchful and unattached eye and you will see marvels that outclass everything even Jesus spoke about. Christianity is only a stage in a very short beginning.
@@Philibuster92 I actually agree. I know many people who find God through Christianity and feel that they've grasped all necessary knowledge. I don't only think this is wrong, but in many cases, it can be harmful because it impedes the desire to learn, engage with culture, and innovate technologically. I view Christianity as the necessary starting point to enable us to pursue knowledge in the material world, especially in an ethical manner.
@@anon_genz knowing God in Christianity and especially Orthodox Christianity is not a question of knowledge. The idolizing of knowledge is in some sense one of our biggest problems as described in the Garden of Eden story
@@harmonicproportions6588 Yeah, there can be a hyper-fixation of the acquisition of knowledge. The Enlightenment exposed the flaws of that. There is definitely a balance to strike.
Jonathan, please discuss with your friend and frequent collaborator, Jordan Peterson, the idea of having Steven Meyer on his podcast. JP read Meyer's most recent book Return of the God Hypothesis and remarked that rarely had he read a book which contained so much information that he did not previously know. Pretty high praise from the hyper educated JP. I have been lobbying him in the comment section of his podcast to have Meyer on, but somehow I think you may be a bit more influential. Anyway, thanks for having SM on.
So glad to hear that Jordan Peterson has read some of Meyer's work. It has always seemed to me that JP basically just takes the Neo Darwinian synthesis as a given (as many with a modern, Western education do) and so I have wondered what it would do for him to call that into question by engaging with Meyer's work. I've actually contemplated trying to mail him a copy, though I'm sure people do that all the time and I'd imagine it might be somewhat annoying, so I never did XD
I discovered Mr Meyer recently so this discussion came right on time! Would love to see a 4-way discussion with Jonathan Pageau, Stephen Meyer, Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke!
Meyer is a grifter. Within two years of college bio I have personally seen and done enough in labs to know why he's full of it. He just wants more ignorant people to hear what he's saying
I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Stephen Meyer and his talks… And I’ve never seen him so anxious to enter into a conversation (to interrupt / in a good way). - This looks like to me that he is extremely engaged in this level of thinking… I’d say you’re definitely pulling the right strings to get this kind engagement from Meyer. By the way, I find all of this fascinating, and I find Myers work to be at the top of a very impressive list of scientific research. - great interview.
You: "I find Myers work to be at the top of a very impressive list of scientific research." Oh really, where are his peer reviewed scientific articles then? Did I miss them? Maybe you could help this ignoramus (me) out and give me the references to the scientific journals he published in? Let's see if he made a splash in the biology community. Here's a hint, they don't even know who Meyer is. He's a charlatan who excells at misrepresenting science to promote a view that is not even testable, let alone offering an explanation. (You guys should really look up the meaning of the term "explanation" because "an intelligent designer did it it" in no way explains a thing.)
Unfortunately Meyers' degree is in philosophy of science, and his knowledge of biological science is limited, and not accepted by actual scientists. Dave Farina completely debunks the claims of Meyers and other Discovery Institute apologists as pseudoscience.
@@soundsnags2001I read Return of the God Hypothesis, it is an incredible book that I reference often. It touches on aspects of his previous books, but with less detail on those specific topics.
He gets a lot wrong. It all stems from his misrepresentation of the Cambrian explosion. He knows enough to not be seriously making his arguments, so I think he must be intentionally full of it
It’s nice to see these two together today. Steven Meyers book Signature is n the cell started me down a long road that lead me to Christianity. Johnathan’s work has lead me down a long road that lead to Orthodoxy. I was baptized today in the Orthodox Church on Pentacost due to the help of many people like these men guided by the Holy Spirit. Glory to God, and God bless these men and everyone who’s helped me along the way!
Jonathan, it would be great to hear your conversation with biologist Michael Levin. He's already in conversation with Vervaeke and McGilchrist and, as I see it, kinda open for different ideas.
What a blessing to millions that this man has devoted his life and research to intelligent design, which gives believers every where a viable theory opposing Darwinian evolution!
it really doesnt do that, though. this guy doesnt understand evolutionary theory. we have had responses to his problems for decades, but he doesnt even address them.
@@Gwyll_Arboghast Hah! Anytime _anyone_ examines the details, especially the problems, of evolutionary theory, some joker pipes up and claims he _"doesn't understand"_ it. What a joke!
@@KenJackson_US There are decades-old books that refute his arguments. if he knew his material, he would address those refutations and explain why they are wrong, but he demonstrates no awareness of them. so, yes. he doesn't understand it. you would notice this too, if you had read about it.
@@Gwyll_Arboghast Have you read any of Dr.Meyer's books? They're exhausting because he so thoroughly and exhaustively covers all aspects of the material. If he didn't appear to address something that you know about in this interview, it's likely because the interview wasn't six hours long. Read his books. Or at least flip through them and see if he didn't address EVERYTHING.
@@KenJackson_US I admit i have not read Meyers books. but it should have been absolutely simple for him to demonstrate knowledge of what i referred to; for a brief interview it is necessary to give the most condensed, strongest case for his side. it isnt just that he "didnt get to it". his arguments positively rely on the refutations not existing. to me, an interview's purpose is largely to convince the viewer that someone knows what they are talking about, such that it is worth reading their books. it would require some serious incompetence in the skill of interviewing to know the literature and somehow appear to not; and I dont think meyer is an incompetent interviewee.
I'm so pleased to see Jonathan Pageau and Stephen Meyer in conversation. I had seen the Uncommon Knowledge video discussion with Mr. Meyer previously, and have read his book Return of the God Hypothesis. God bless you both and keep up the good work!
Great conversation. I'm glad to hear Jonathan bring up Kastrup. While Bernardo has many good points, I was a bit frustrated in our conversations with him and have long thought that someone like Meyer could fill in the holes in his work. Stratford Caldecott goes back to Pythagoras, from a distinct Christian perspective, in his terrific book: Beauty for Truth's Sake.
Im glad to say ive been posting your darwins doubt video to fb, twitter (x) , on joe rogans saying he has to interview stephen etc. Hundreds of atheistic forums just placing the link. Hopefully ive helped open people's eyes.
This is incredible. Jonathan I believe what you're saying when you talk about something preexisting is the question, "what makes it sensible?" That's also the responsibility of a higher mind.
"Information is the capability of choosing between two or more possibilities in concrete" The decision process necessary to produce information implies or demands an intelligent mind. We all are in a physical universe without asking to come and be here. We can reason from effect to cause. Mathematics conceives infinite as a necessity for mathematics to function completely with full future potential: Therefore we are capable of accepting by demonstrating by reduction to the absurd, that forcibly we are born for a purpose already existent in the Creator's Mind before we came into existence. The opposite void or nothing can't choose between something that doesn't exist. Once, while looking up at the nocturnal sky, I was filled with an intense joy beholding such a vast wonderful beauty; I realized that I was not alone as if listening to a loud voice shouting; And Manuel you are part of this. I felt loved and happy with all intelligent beings like me forever and ever. Alleluia!
I know Steve well and he means this as a genuine compliment which I think Jonathan could appreciate. In Steve‘s world he is dealing with theoretical scientists and philosophers who dogmatically insist upon ideas that don’t actually work in the real embodied world that an engineer has to deal with.
Well actually engineers aren’t like scientists and mathematicians dealing with theories and abstractions but modern day artisans who construct things that are actually incarnated and embodied that people actually participate in like trains, roads etc.
I DEEPLY appreciate scientists like Meyer and others who provide strong evidence for intelligent design, HOWEVER, as Christians it’s important to understand that adopting theistic evolution undermines the Gospel and really the entirety of scripture (or at least most of the Old Testament).
Agreed. Does Meyers believe in theistic evolution though? I took it to mean we weren't evolved at all and were created each according to its kind by God. Not that God put the information into evolution. But into DNA. I could wrong about Meyers thoughts on this though.
@@tacsmith if I remember correctly, in other interviews he’s said he believes in theistic evolution. But to be fair, that was awhile ago. Whenever the Hoover institute interview was new
I have no problem with intelligent evolution and the Fall as they're both just descriptions of how we came to be, one is mechanistic and the other is philosophical. It's the same reason I don't have a problem with people calling Genesis "mythological", something being a myth doesn't make it untrue, it's just a higher form of description
"Information presupposes intelligence": a paraphrase of Dr Meyer's observation early in the wonderful discussion that I find truly pivotal. Considering we don't really know what 'matter' is, or 'energy', but have a far better idea about information - data made meaningful by mind/intelligence, where mind/intelligence is, in part, a meaning-making process - we can start from this clear fact of existence - information - and not need a big leap to swap out our concept of matter/energy for data, data which mind then 'creates' or 'organises' into our universe of laws - who knows exactly how at this point - such that we have a functioning or feasible idealism in which there is only consciousness (there is only God), and can do away with the ugly over-complications of mind-matter dualism. That's my (ontological) sense of it, anyway.
Information is not data that's made meaningful by our minds. If that were true, either ribosomes couldn't read and then write mRNA into proteins, or DNA and RNA would have to be said to not be Information. In other words, since ribosomes are not mindful, either they are incapable of reading RNA (which is false), or RNA is not actually Information, or Information does not require a mind and you gave a bad definition of it
@@valtersjanevics65 Lol... how did a science denier get an h-index over 150? Outstanding synthetic chemistry research by the science denier - that's for sure
Excellent to see these two conversing. Intelligent design vs randomness. All observation points to intelligent design. Especially in our human experience.
@@therick363 look around your own world. There is design everywhere. Even your thoughts and words you are conjuring up. That process is design - not random. Perhaps you have a different understanding of design. It looks like when you apply the idea of nature, that excludes or opposes design.
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh I think there must be an uncaused cause but lets not pretend we understand. If I see a good portrate painting I know there is a painter even though I dont know where the artist came from..
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh If matter always existed then there must be infinite time. There must be infinite space to put infinite matter in. If random interactions of matter and energy explain all of reality, and matter and energy are infinite, then anything that is possible must necessarily exist regardless of how unlikely. Do you believe in small, red-headed, bearded men who speak with an Irish accent and grant wishes that coincidentally happen to come true? What makes that impossible?
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh Has logic been discovered? If matter is infinite, then anything possible must exist. Why believe nothing, if everything possible must exist? Makes me wonder how we got through an infinite amount of time to reach now, and how will time ever reach infinity if it has a starting point?
Girlfriend: I'm a Methodist and I'm not sure I want kids, the world is a cruel place. Me: I'm an Atheist, but I should learn enough about Christianity to hold a conversation with you. Kids? I don't know. GOD LAUGHS FOR 4 YEARS (GF) Wife: I'll take care of the baby girl, are the boys dressed for Mass? Me: Is your veil in the minivan? We better hurry if we're going to make Confession. It's amazing how things work out, I only wanted to know enough about Christianity to talk to some chick I was dating, but I ended up marrying that chick and converting both of us to the Catholic faith. I just wanted to know enough to talk to some girl, but I kept learning and kept researching and at some point, the truth of Christianity and the Catholic Church just got harder and harder to deny. At some point, it just became intellectually dishonest to deny it anymore. In fact, being an atheist gave me an advantage, I didn't have all the Protestant hangups. My wife and her mother would shriek, " they worship Mary" and because I was an atheist that just researched without bias, I had already learned that wasn't true and I didn't have to work through any Mary baggage. The only real issues I had to work through were the existence of God, the Resurrection and the divine establishment of a Church. Once I was convinced of that, church history led me the rest of the way. Moral of the story, when you see a couple get together and you're thinking, "Oh this won't end well," just cool your jets. God does amazing things with broken people. That's kind of His thing.
Hilarious.... I got mine because I Heard the gospel While I was high as a kite from a girl who was on acid. Go figure. Your story, totally understand.... (Ya,... the veil is in the mini van, now hurry up.)
The one sentence summary: The functional sequences (of genetic code) are so rare that if you change the bit streams, you are inevitably after very few changes, going to destroy the function long before ever get to something new or functional. - Stephan Meyer
i was hoping this conversation would take place... looking forward to it. signature in the cell was one of the best books I've read from the last few years. i would say that the panpsychist perspective follows logically... we don't have an awareness of "Mind" capital M, or anything transcendent. We infer a transcendent mind in relation to our own, less transcendent mind. However, there's no reason to assume that line from more consciousness to less consciousness has to stop at us, or that it jumps arbitrarily from whatever nameless force or forces created the universe to our arbitrary level of awareness. Why would a table not be somewhere on the continuum from "most mind" to "least mind"
Hmm the metaphor that comes to mind is, this text you're reading, is it less or more of my mind than I am? I'd say it's a medium. No need to suppose continuities, but merely to note distinct givens. And these givens have their own continuities. Panpsychism is interesting; though it strikes me as just a plausible misapplication of that minding work that likes to characterize all the minder can as continuous, despite knowing distinctions experientially and categorically, and that these distinctions make different compositions. In metaphorical terms, the notation of letters recognized by us, and the medium of youtube etc, are distinct ways my mind can express itself--knowing that there are alternates and even novelties possible to mediate my mind. What is the case I don't know, but I'm instinctively examining of attempts to totalize and note continuity in a way that's easy for a mind to hold to as a placeholder for exploration.
@@notloki3377 I wrote it fast and somewhat dense, but my diction is precise. If you're interested I can unpack, but if you dismiss it as nonsense because you can't decrypt the sense and more important don't care to, then it'll just be for others. Take care, I'm not going to interact with condescending strangers behind text
@@dominicowusu3032 I think it's fully clear you halfway know what half the words you're using mean. some examples... Hmm the metaphor that comes to mind is, this text you're reading less or more of my mind than I am? aside from the horrible grammar and punctuation, this isn't a metaphor. it's a question. I'd say it's a medium. No need to suppose continuities, but merely to note distinct givens. And these givens have their own continuities. This makes no sense, and also doesn't relate to the first thing you said. Panpsychism is interesting though it strikes me as just a plausible misapplication of that minding work that likes to characterize all the minder can, as continuous, despite knowing distinctions, and that these distinctions make different compositions. This also makes no sense... yeah it's not just me bud. I'll bet a lot of people fail to understand you, and until you learn to take responsibility for your manic ramblings, you will continue to be misunderstood.
@@notloki3377 I just tuned up the grammar so you'd get the metaphor was the text I sent to you, a meta-text as a metaphor. The rest will flow from this. I'll most likely edit the rest given how you read it so that those who are charitable will get what I was exploring. It's pretty easy to understand once you decrypt the mapping I was doing given your spectrum schema with panpsychism. A way to put it is you're talking about a rainbow, while I'm saying it's more like a 🎨 palate of colors when it comes to how we understand, which is a type of painting, and this makes up the painting of what we note as conscious, not conscious etc. I hope this illustrates the idea better.
I think it just helps explain the mechanism of the physical world and appreciate God's excellence all the more. The main cut, I feel, is to hit back at Anti-theistic Atheists who've been dodging arguments made by Thomas Aquinas and perverting science to support their world view since Darwin. Shocker, material science doesn't support their world view.
@@sigurdholbarki8268 I have heard Anthony Bloom of Sourozh say something to the effect that the one does not have to be refuted by the other because they are two seperate means of acquiring knowledge. And I have heard it said its the limitations of our human minds to see beond some seemingly aparrent contradictions.
Yes. I think it’s important to not simply let it rest on how an artisan relates to an artifact in a distant indirect way (pulling from Hart), but that it’s also “in and through” all things in how the world coheres and is intelligible… to realize that those intelligible forms permeate the world through and through, and are not simply the product of our “brain” creating these things in our heads to where we’re lonely islands of meaning and purpose
And I think that is another reason why the Triune God is the only One. Pageau doesn't have the molecular physics background of Meyer's, and Meyer doesn't have the rough hands of a carver. But, through their dialogos, we glimpse the "One".
There's plenty of design in a cat. Cats are fragile but resilient. If you could design a machine with half the agility of a cat, and the ability to suffer through to survive and thrive after catastrophic injuries that would literally kill any human being, they wouldn't be showing off ridiculous, clunky robots as if they think people will be impressed. You sound really undereducated. I feel sorry for you. I guess you went to public school. 😢
beautiful and revealing conversation. Loved the heady exploration of arguments for the presence of God. Inspiring, Sending to a bunch of my atheist friends.
I've talked about this for some time. If origin of life simulations were ever to model reality. The scientist who managed to pull it off would find intelligent organisms inside his simulation, arguing over whether or not he exists.
“The privileged planet” is an awesome film. I thought it was dedicated to explaining the Fine Tuning argument but that’s just half of it. The universe was not only finely tuned to have complex life. It was finely tuned to be scientifically discoverable!
Fantastic. Thank you Dr. Meyer for your endurance and courage! It was great hearing that the arguments are finally gaining some traction and momentum among the Big Thinkers. May YHWH bless your work!
I love how someone else saw the clints reptiles video and is here 😂. I took two semesters of biology, but I genuinely struggled to make meaningful and understandable arguments before I saw that video. Clint was really helpful at showing me how to make understandable arguments
It makes sense that information, dna etc would take the form of language derived from mind when God spoke the world into being, whatever that means technically doesn’t really matter to me very much, but phenomenologically it would look like a language so that’s a fine analog to explain what’s happening there in a symbolic manner that we can actually understand.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Dr. Meyer for pronouncing "processes" correctly. (Most Darwinians say "process-ease", and that's my favorite reason for not taking them seriously.)
salvation isn’t an issue about intelligence but the heart, Bible said that we were born blind in sin, we can’t see the truths even if it’s in front of us, such is the case with Alex O Conner, there’s enough evidence for faith, but only the one given the sight to see and ears to hear can recognize themselves as sinners and come to faith
@@leim100 Both d'souza and Alex o conner are intelligent, so the issue was not so much about intelligence but the ability to support one's position. In the Bible, it says believers should be ready to give reasons for their faith. The topic the 2 discussed was the old testament (not if God exists) and frankly d'souza struggled to answer those questions which I suspect many Christians would also struggle. The old testament poses difficult questions compared to the new testament. Do you think you could have fared better? I hope you watched the debate and considered the questions Alex asked and which d'souza couldn't answer
Stephen and Jonathan, thank you for chaseth our OWN. As WHO chaseth ye! From Who am I? Time liken unto a messenger sent forth. Is like Jonathan and Stephen, who are you? Our names don't exist! Without thy shared "i" AM Jonathan and Stephen! Gratitude and Honor! Share
The argument he made for quite some time that because DNA works like a code just like computers interpret ones and zeros isn’t a good one. Computers only interpret ones and zeroes because of the physics of semiconductors when a voltage is applied. You could make computers based off of binary code out of pneumatic, macroscopic tubes that perform the same functions. From a one and zero to typing a comment on this video is a traceable line of physics. While I’m not a biologist, I can’t imagine there isn’t a similar line of physics that go from DNA encodings to how it instructs proteins to be built. It’s all analog in the end. So essentially his argument boils down to, “there are laws of physics so there has to be a law maker,” but that has nothing to do with intelligent design.
It's closer to 1) Information comes from a mind 2) Computer code contains information 3) Computer code comes from a mind 1) information comes from a mind 2) DNA contains information 3) DNA comes from a mind The laws of physics are insufficient for explaining the phenomenon of seeing these pixels in the screen and interpreting them into language. You can take it for granted as "just happening" but without being able to justify it it becomes an arbitrary "just is" And if that can just be arbitrarily assumed everything else can also be with equal validity.
@@SuperJohnmusic premise "all mammals live on land" is false because we have found marine mammals In order for that analogy to not be faulty you would need to be able to prove "all information comes from minds" is a false statement without begging the question
It seems that you don't understand the relationship between a DNA codon and the choice of amino acid for each point in the sequence of amino acids of a protein. There are 20 amino acids to choose from, each choice depends on the DNA code, a thing that has no known provenance. And you don't understand the importance of each amino acid in a protein to its function; single point mutations cause many diseases.
Great talk! Thank you so much! I have something to say in regards to the claim that the universe is composed of matter, energy and information. I will pose it as a question: what is information if not ordered energy? God bless you!
I wasn't done watching the whole discussion when I left the comment above but like Jonathan, my mind was flaring up and I had to say something. I am not done yet!
Ok so let’s imagine there was an intelligent designer - what’s the mechanism by which god starts off life, and then moulds it to make each new species? The universe is already going for billions of years and then suddenly he’s manually sticking together the right chemicals in the right way so that they can later replicate all on their own without continued intervention? So it’s just a short time thing where he’s meddling with the physical world? Or he sets it all off at the start of the universe knowing that everything will collide in such and such a way? Or maybe it’s just a few times that he does the meddling? Why did god start with unicellular life, then multicellular, then chordates, then fish, then primitive (not modern) amphibians then lizards etc. why make that gradual increase in physiological complexity? I don’t see how this idea is actually useful scientifically, there’s no actually mechanism being posited here, no set of constraints of when we might expect there to be a bit of godly meddling and when it’s ‘business as usual’ and the biological processes are doing their self replication thing on their own.
Do you have to know the intention behind every stroke of an artists brush in order to accept that it was painted by an intelligent sentient being? Or do you believe the painting came to be through completely natural chemical processes without any intelligent input? I find this line of reasoning incredibly odd. I guess it makes the purely materialistic worldview easier to swallow because you can omit any “why” questions.
@@dirtyharold7164 I’m not a materialist, I just don’t think this line of thought is fruitful or useful or convincing. I’m not talking about the intention, that’s not the contention here. I’m saying this is offering a quasi rational/scientific argument that actually offers no greater explanatory power. In addition, it’s not a fruitful line of thinking for the spiritual life, and coming to theosis. The question of whether god exists is not something to tie yourself to one scientific proposition or another. What if they suddenly did find the RNA that could replicate itself. Would you stop believing in God? It’s the same trap as before with the materialists. God is something to aim to apprehend in each moment.
If intelligent design is not a factor, then tell the software programmers that are designing artificial intelligence to just let it be and all will come together on its own.
@@sh0k0nesIf we are walking though a forest and come across an old helicopter, must we first know how the designer came up with the idea, the factory in which it was assembled and the airfield in which it was tested in order to safely assume it had a creator? Me: “look at this beautiful wristwatch, the craftsmanship that went into it is outstanding” You: “I refuse to believe it was designed and built by intelligent beings, as far as I’m concerned it came to be through random chemical processes until you can tell me who designed it, where it was built and how it was tested”
1:10:30 - Maxwell is how we understand light, electricity and magnetism. You get really mind-blown when you realize that this guy came up with the notion that light is in fact two perpendicular waves of electricity and magnetism. Like what? How does someone come up with that? Later on, quantum mechanics does experiments showing that there is a wave-particle duality of light with packets of light called photons coming into prominence but his theories of electricity and magnetism that he created in the 1860s are still used today and how we have many of the modern appliances we enjoy. Newton, Maxwell, Einstein. Maxwell is the physicist no one outside of physics has heard of. It's crazy too because everything we use in modernity relies on his equations.
I don't find the fine tuning argument convincing. It's just looking at phenomena backwards, from the point of a foregone conclusion. From a certain perspective, my toast crumbs have a one in a trillion chance of landing on my plate in the particular pattern that they do -- but we don't wax that they were designed that way. Likewise, if the universe was "set up" another way with different parameters, there might well be a different type of intelligence that thought itself lucky that gravity or radiation or what have you was "just right" for it to exist. It seems to be the same type of physicalist analysis that Pageau critiques when it comes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc. We can still talk about God establishing the pattern to which things tend, for example, without insinuating that "complexity as such" (much less the complexity of physical processes) is somehow indicative of his activity.
What functionality are your toast crumbs engaged in? That might be the key difference here. The rarity of living organisms includes their FUNCTIONALITY. You can claim your random toast crumbs ARE serving a function. But let's see those same crumbs, eminate from themselves a new generation of crumbs which perform a similar function. It's not the odds that are "important", it's the functionality nested within those odds.
My understanding is that there simply aren’t enough possible combinations of physical parameters that would lead to chemistry (let alone life) to make random chance a reasonable conclusion. Of course it’s not impossible, but so unfathomably unlikely that it’s laughable. So we owe existence itself either to an unfathomably unlikely chance or a mind.
@@blairholmgren9748This seems fallacious. You are analyzing a phenomena from the privileged position of it having already occurred. The likelihood of any given phenomena occurring is 100%, provided you analyze it in the present. You are also comparing our reality vs "our reality, changed" - not our reality vs some wholly different reality. So all you are really saying is, "things would be different if things had been different". Sure, and provided there was still time and cause and effect, those "different things" would seem just as "fine tuned" as our own - reliant as they would be on the whole history of the universe before them. There's also no saying that there couldn't be consciousness in your alternate reality, either. We are on Jonathan's channel after all, and it seems like having your cake and eating it too to suggest that consciousness is reliant on a particular configuration of chemistry, but also immaterial/miraculous. I'm sure Jonathan would find it silly to speculate on how chemistry determined the consciousness of Man before the Fall, for example.
@@easymentalityI did separate phenomena from their function - I said we can talk about God's establishment of a pattern to which things tend (a pattern of being or function, if you like) without fine tuning. I really just find the topic to be a red herring that needlessly muddies the waters with a kind of physicalism. On the one hand we disparage the notion of "balls bouncing into each other" - on the other we suggest that God's work is in one way or another reducible to arranging or upholding a particular configuration of balls. You yourself say here that "functionality is nested within the odds", which is deterministic and totally at odds with Jonathan's notion of vertical causality, for example. Life and consciousness is not sacred because it has a self-perpetuating function (so does a cloud or a crystal, if you really want another example) or because it is apparently "rare".
You kind of dodged the physical constraint challenge. This is a series of events that have to happen in the order they did because they have low tolerance. Any change in any of the steps would cause the stable structure to collapse. Many of these also happen in a timed sequence, where any other order would cause the stable structure to collapse.
The information system (DNA) is in the cell...and the cell is the only place that it is manufactured...by the instructions of the info system (DNA). So which comes first? The Programmer.
@@stevepaige7557 I agree. I guess I shouldve said the idea that life evolves from the poressures of survival seems to me to be right. How the instructions got into DNA and how they actually do change becuase of outside forces, to me, is where a programmer would come into play.
I highly recommend listening to the Hoover Institute discussion he mentioned. They have an ID biologist on the panel that will go into deeper discussion on the pitfalls of evolution. It is a very stimulating discussion.
The physical laws are not only tuned to generate an environment where life, as we know it, can occur, but also to the possibility that it survives and replicates. These laws should be totally indifferent to whether an organism survives or not, and whether it replicates or not. However, the theologians of evolution, want us to believe that the principle of survival and replication is sacrosanct, there is something in an organism that wants to make it survive, because that's how it has to be, and there is something that wants to make it replicate, also because that's how it has to be. Let's imagine that potential first organism, formed by some chemical miracle, well, that's not the only miracle, it also, miraculously, has the "will" to search, passively or actively, for the resources it needs for its survival. Now, in a totally random environment, and devoid of all consciousness, where would that need for survival arise from? To survive or not to survive is the same from non-consciousness perspective, and not to survive is the simplest thing from the point of view of purely random change, and we are not talking about replication yet. But for the theologians of evolution, those miracles are simply possible due to the great God of chance, who can do everything with enough time, although they really never seriously began to calculate how much that enough time would be. They also don't want us to think much about it, it's rather, the magic potions are poured, they let them to be mixed for "enough" time, they say abracadabra, and what we see now happens ..
*_The sheer impossibility of life is something which took me by surprise._* For most of my 74 years, I fully expected scientists to get closer and closer to building cells from scratch. But to expect life to spring forth from a primordial sludge is like expecting a magma red Mercedes Benz SL500, with a full gas tank to result from natural, random processes. While the Jennifer Blank experiment proved that more complex chemicals can result from collisions, that was a splatter-gun effect -- not one with usable, organized materials. 😎♥✝🇺🇸💯
Actually, the probabilities of an RNA world are 5!4!...or 120 x 24 = 2880 Hardly astronomical as you suggest and practically guaranteed in terms of probability and the number of planets where similar conditions are available.
What I would like to see from the leading atheist in this era is well formulated and coherent arguments that only concerns their position. Instead, most of the time is trying to debunk all Christian arguments or ridiculing them to earn sympathy from their audience. Contrast is mother of clarity.
@@therick363to be fair Christians have been this for nearly 2000 years, whether in scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, St Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton, through to C.S. Lewis and more modern authors. On the other hand that courtesy has not been afforded by atheists from Rousseau and Voltaire to Hegel, Marx and Darwin. Even as recently as Richard Dawkins they've been arguing against an interpretation of Christianity of their own making. I've not met a single atheist who has properly understood Christianity, even when I was an atheist! I do know plenty who have been perfectly respectful though. On the flip side there are a lot of Christians who haven't been properly catechised and seem to have adopted positions that owe more to historic atheism than Christian thought (especially overly literal materialistic interpretations of Scripture) Edit: to be doubly sure to reiterate I'm not trying to be a confrontational bell-end, I'm adding that I'd put a "Like" on your comment! So I might be being a bell-end, but I'm at least trying hard not to!
I'd say it's because atheism can only come from Christianity. And because atheism refuses to acknowledge that its foundations are actually rooted in Christianity, it will always make arguments against Christianity to defend its position.
This is all fine, but unfalsifiable hypotheses do not avail themselves of scientific methodology. You are talking about philosophical questions, not scientific ones. Fine tuning is not really evidence, for example. In what universe would you expect to be in in order to be able to even ask such a question? And arguing things are “too complex” could just mean we simply don’t understand what’s going on yet. The problem is using these philosophical ideas to somehow justify belief in any one particular religion or even type of spiritual practice.
I agree, using this reasoning to back up your religious beliefs is disingenuous. However, materialistic methodology doesn’t prove or disprove the origin of the universe or life. People who think they know for sure the answer to the origin of the universe and life, whether through design or pure materialism, religion or atheism are both as ignorant as each other. It’s an age old mystery that I don’t believe will ever be answered.
Pageau's way of equating Bernardo Kastrup's Analytical Idealism with panpsychism makes me suspect that he has not fully understood Analytical Idealism.
Potholes are created, and water fits them perfectly, which is really annoying because you can't always tell how deep they are before driving through it.
Jonathan, are you familiar with the work of Human Biologist Michael Levin. On your point about pattern organisation. "that to some extent the pattern should pre exists for the organization to happen". (might have butchered that) Anyhow his work is on how cells know to organise themselves to produce the particular biological structure/structure's that we see and well are. He has discovered that there is some unseen mover behind the bio-electrical signals that guides the electrical signals within cells so as to show them or make them gather in the desired pattern. That at the very least the electrical pattern for the cells exists before the cells move or become formed in there final way. Well wroth checking out. I believe he works with Harvard and Tufts. He also has much information online.
Trying hard to keep listening, but so far it's sophistry, pseudo-science, cobbled together misunderstandings of many different fields, and lots of god of the gaps arguments. Seems like both speakers have studied these fields only deeply enough to find any place that allows them to sow doubt, and immediately insert god. I try to listen to all sides in order to be informed, but this seems like childish uninformed/underinformed wishful thinking. Anyone with any expertise in biological evolution, information theory or software development could clear up most of these misunderstandings, so they cant be run away with and turned into this kind of techno/psycho-babble.
yes indeed ... his use of "highly improbably" gives the game away. Pageau's contributions concerning "mind" were better, but neither seemed to see that they were on different pages.
How many times is Jonathan going to use the word Constraint? Only joking Jonathan great interview!!! G. Nathan Barnes: Intellectual Physics Inc / Prison Exposure Project L.L.C
54:30 - Physics has this as a principle in quantum mechanics - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You cannot know both the velocity and the position of an electron because the act of observing the electron will change its position and/or its velocity. And that's because for us to observe anything we require light (in any part of the spectrum) to bounce off of the electron which would mean the electron would absorb the energy from the light wave and thus change its position and/or velocity. There's a lot of weird things like this in physics where we can never fully extract ourselves to observe reality as an outsider. The theory of relativity also shows that as well. Einstein was quite ahead of everyone when he asked "what would reality look like if I were traveling at the speed of light?" Many examples of relativity will show how bouncing balls look different to people based on where they are and what frame of reference they are in, ex. a moving train vs being stationary. I think this is why physics in all its abstraction seems to always get people who are more faith-based than other sciences. When I was using complex calculus in my upper division physics courses, it always felt like I was sort of looking at the programming code of reality. It's hard to escape that it seems to have been written by God. I used to say I was looking at "the mind of God" when looking at upper division physics even though I was an agnostic at the time.
If there is an infinite number of possible universes, then ours (with its "fine tuning") is just a statistical possibility. We get to see it only because we can exist in it. So it's kind of dumb to wonder how fine tuning could be possible, if we only get to exist in universes that are fine tuned enough to allow life.
If these proposed universes are causally related then information from one influences another. If these proposed universes are not causally related, then what happens in one has no effect on the outcome of another. There is only 1 roll of the dice that can be accounted for, no rerolls. To suggest that we passed some criteria of randomness to come to a particular result that allows life is survivorship bias.
4:50 - One way to thin about apparent design is to think of an observer seeing design and inferring nothing, because they are outside that design. Another way to think about this is 'middle out' thinking, starting from where you are, instead of where things began. Both of these views require something I call Objective Material Reality (OMR) which is the scientific world view, where no responsibility exists. Also no intimacy, because you have removed yourself from participation (the cost of not being responsible) and live in an opponent processing world. Reality, however, is made up of and held together by cooperative processing where you participate with the world. 5:35 - Inference is not a problem, unless you try to do it from OMR. Then you've hid your assumptions (framing) about (of) the world. 14:45 - The problem is that Darwin wrote a book called 'The Origin of Species' - materialists have extended this to imagine he was writing about the origin of life. Those aren't the same thing at all. Technically, Darwin was talking about how the Ontology (proper science) of species comes about, life happens along before that. 17:30 - One confusion is this idea of 'evolutionary theory' - when people use this term, they seem to be referring to some theories, some hypothesis, some unprovable ideas and lots of inference. So it's a large set, most of things that aren't theories at all or things that cannot have science applied to them. 34:20 - One way to think about the claim that the universe is knowing itself is to realize that this is a bottom up (emergence) view. Where emergence is good. This means that when anything happens, it is good. Sounds like chaos to me. This one axiom explains the entirety of thought. The better axiom for understand is "being is good". Sure, you have a hole, but you have the same hole with emergence. Being requires structure, which requires intelligence, but it also requires care (agapic love or something) but once you put that in, everything else follows quite nicely. With emergence first or emergence is good, you get nothing for long and nothing that lasts as good. 34:50 - Good stuff, this is emergence as explanation (notice, science carves things up to reduce free variables, to make accurate, precise, consistent and reliable predictions) which causes a loss of relationship (and therefore reduces the qualities or potential qualities of that relationship - loss of Intimacy) and therefore causes use to see the world as emergent. This requires OMR (Objective Material Reality) to be the stance you take to do all this work. You've removed yourself from creation, as such, this is creation denial. Meaning crisis explained. Individualism explained. materialism (what else can emerge?) explained. 39:16 - Great phrase - in the past - yes, this is middle out thinking. Reasoning forwards and backwards from today. Rejecting the frame of creation (there was something here before you, bigger than you, that you were born into). I realize this sounds like an illogical, irrational, unreasonable way to think about the world, but if you listen, you'll hear that is how many scientists talk about the world. 54:00 - My issue is this is a well known phenomenon in physics called the observer effect. So if the most disciplined and least tied to material objects (because atoms and light are technically below materiality in some sense) and the issue is not only far more pronounced but well studied and taken for granted as irresolvable. I can see where other scientific disciplines are catching up, but also, why reinvent this wheel when another branch has the 'answer' (unscientific and unsatisfying as it may be). 1:04:00 - The assumption of new atheists is that philosophy resolves morality and therefore would lead you to a proper political view, scientific view, etc. This is really ignorant, it's a huge misunderstanding of how the Greeks thought of philosophy. Of course for them, morals resolve meaning, then when it doesn't, everything falls down. Meaning Crisis confirmed. Of course, this comes because when you remove persons by using Objective Material Reality, you remove the ability to create quality relationships, thus the Intimacy Crisis, which precludes meaning from even being able to be discussed. 1:08:00 - Emergence is good - flat world theology (without creation) which is caused by creation denial, not the story, the concept of a creation that existed before you were conscious. If you listen carefully, you'll hear Sam Harris types talk like this all the time. The larger issue is that they are ignoring the idea of Final Cause (which I'll argue is emanation) and combining the other Aristotelian causes together to form 'science' (which is a flattening of itself).
The statement from Meyer of "the problem" of the cause and needing a cause sufficient enough to produce the effect while at the same time being somewhat separate from the effect is something I would like more answers to. I understand the line of reasoning, but this seems such a human-mind limitation of imposing our own duality and presuppositions, and in some ways our own axioms which arrive from and dualistic thinking and separation from what we now perceive to be the effect. Why must there be this constant insistence on the cause being outside the effect, why cannot the cause be the effect and the effect the cause, in other words an inward causation and an outward expression of that causation, and in that expression the full extent of the causation expressed as everything which there is and ever was, just the same as it was before this expression. That the cause and effect can be one and the same thing is very clearly the case in our own minds, what causes thinking is the same as the effect of thinking, there is no separation aside from what we impose. When we create a watch, there is a watch and there is us, and we have seemingly, to us, created a sperate entity, but when god creates a watch, god stays god and also becomes the watch, otherwise "he" would not be god.
As far as I understand, our thoughts are caused by something other than what we commonly perceive to be us. That implies that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts, and having them we cannot be one with our thoughts, our thoughts cannot be both the cause and the effect. I don't know of an effect that can also be its own source. Me as a son (an effect) could not become the father (the cause) of myself. I need to have a cause (a real father) outside of myself. In the same vein, our thinking is an effect. An effect of what, what really causes thoughts? Definitely not themselves (nothing can cause itself - not even God, he just is), and not our thinking either. It may be a book that you read which may generate/cause some thinking, your own passions that push you towards satisfying them and thinking about them, or an evil spirit/holy spirit that tempts/beckons you according to their nature. We are not our thoughts, we are not our body, we are not anything that we ever identify with in this human life. I don't know if anybody can say what we trully are, but what we can certainly say is what we have (eg. a body, a brain, hands, legs, eyes, a house, a car, a bank account, etc.). We have all these things as effects that we have not caused nor sourced, simply because we are not the source of them. They were given to us at various moments in life, and being given they were just effects of some cause prior to them. If we were both the source and the effect we would have everything all at once. Human reality just doesn't work that way. Between cause and effect there is always some distance. This distance can be work, sweat, and expended energy. Nothing comes easy in our reality. This may as well be the curse of Adam, the need to toil to get fruit/effect in life. The curse due to that original sin might be exactly that: a separation between cause and effect, a distancing between what was once one whole. About Adam this is just my speculation. Regardless, the cause must always be outside of the effect in our world, they cannot be one and the same, at least not according to how we experience life in this mortal world. So I don't think cause being outside of the effect is a presuposition that we all make unfoundedly. It is anchored in the way we perceive the world, it is an understanding of how the reality (human reality) works based on mundane and simple scenarios. Saying that cause should be taken as being one with the effect, is more of a supposition, in my oppinion, because this can be seen nowhere in our human reality. It may be true outside of human reality, (eg. God being both the begining and the end at the same time) but that is outside of our comprehension as the humans we are today. We always see cause as separated from the effect. God stays God and also becomes the watch is only what God can do, we humans cannot do that. God stays God and at the same time he became man in the person of Jesus. Only God befits the description of the cause being the same with the effect. This is the only way how God can can remain uncreated, by being both the cause and the effect af the same time. Hence what can be said about God in this state is that he just IS, or the classic "I AM". What we are actually saying is that God is the beginning and the end, both at once. But this is incomprehensible to humans. Only God can be whole, humans do not experience wholeness, but separation and distance, and that is visible in a cause needing to precede an effect. This is as far as I understand this matter, anyway.
It's the Enlightenment 2.0 as James Lindsay notes. We are in the transition to a new age. I doubt that it will use modern in the title because it will be so different.
The fine tuning argument does not necessitate us. Nor does it require the Biblical God. For example, the neoplatontic One would be provide a set of constraints. In fact Plotinus argues that mind is dependent on principles that make it possible.
There is equivocation in the notion of information between the Shanon sense with is probabilistic relations between events and semantic information which what intelligence has. A lifeless universe has titanic amount of information in it in the first sense but none in the second. Shanon was repeatedly clear that he was not talking about meaning. The argument about information is very problematic and the fine tuning argument does not necessitate the emergence of mind. All of this is being run together. There is tremendous mindless information in a diamond. Are diamonds made by minds? If you don’t keep this distinction then computers are minds because they have extremely complex Information processing. Simply rolling some dice rules out alternatives and generates Shanon information. Using the language of choosing between alternatives is misleading. The dice are not choosing anything. The laws of nature rule out billions of alternatives but that does make them minds.
Current evolutionary theory does not rely on just random change but also through processes of exaptation (tongue exalted for speech) niche construction, self-organization and emergence. Also if information only emerges from minds then how does it arises in brains? If information only arises from intelligence then how do neurons give rise to intelligence? Do they have minds? This position has many if not more than the questions being raised here against evolutionary theory.
Nagel did not conclude theism. He concluded that we need to change our fundamental ontology. To see that developed well see The Blind Spot.
You have to read The Design Inference by William Dembski, he addresses most of these concerns. ID proponents aren’t speaking of just any information, but Specified Complexity. Furthermore, Dembskis elucidation of the Law of Conservation of Information disqualifies any stochastic process from explaining the emergence of specified complexity. Natural selection and other mechanisms solve nothing - they just push the problem back, usually to the environment.
EDIT: I will expand this point below because John's comment has been pinned.
Natural selection does not create information, it TRANSFERS information. Biological complexity cannot come from biological simplicity; it must come from pre-existing environmental complexity. The image of a man coming from a monkey is propagandistic nonsense - a blatant absurdity. "Natural selection" is just a different way of saying environmental to biological transference. The human does not come from the monkey, according to actual Darwinist logic, but the ENVIRONMENT. The question then arises, "Where did this environment come from?" You cant say its by chance, because then you might as well just say that the organism came about by chance:
Insofar as you invoke natural selection to explain the "origin" of information, you are positing at least the SAME AMOUNT of information to be present in the environment itself, and thus you have accomplished absolutely nothing. Nothing has become more plausible at all. Dembski has proven this mathematically with his S4S "Search for Search" theorems and it is really quite straightforward... All of this is really just basic logic: X cannot come from Y unless X is in some way contained within Y. If X comes about and X is not contained within Y, it did not come from Y; it came from somewhere else. In evolutionism, that "somewhere else" has got to be the environment. The Darwinists have successfully swindled the population for over 100 years and I have to say it is actually impressive.
Here is an example to help you understand the problem very simply: We have a target with a bullseye, and we can see that there are arrows consistently hitting the bullseye. We conclude, logically, that this is not due to chance and that there is a skilled archer involved here. The Darwinist, in a sense, would say, "No, no, no! There is no archer here! There is just an arrow shooting machine that is shooting the arrows! There is no mind involved, just a mechanism!" But they don't ask the obvious follow-up question: "What is this arrow shooting machine and where did it come from?" Could it be designed? Well the answer is yes, because the information necessary to hit the bullseye - specified complexity - is CONSERVED as you push the problem back.
Evolution as it is conceived by moderns is impossible; true evolution is an unfolding - the word evolve comes from Latin evolvere, which means to roll out, yet an OUT always presupposes an IN from which it has rolled out FROM. It is like the petals of a flower which unfold from the center. Only two options remain: the entire human genome and the genome of every other animal (as well as other types of information) have been encoded from the beginning of the universe and have unfolded in some convoluted and mysterious way via different environments, OR the universe is not a closed clockwork system. The traditional perspective holds the latter, but neither of these are compatible with secularism, unless you wish to invoke multiverses. (which is just a cry for help)
Personally, I don't subscribe to transformist evolution at all, but even if you do, you cannot escape the fact that natural selection is inherently teleological.
I will give my unsolicited opinion and most likely wrong interpretation.
I believe that if I understood the arguments in the video correctly, the argument about information is that complex information that leads to function, like bits in a computer or ACGT nucleotide bases, point to a mind.
The argument does not seem to be (at least what I interpreted) that the more information there is, the more likely a mind was involved. The fine tuning parameters for example, are important because they lead to life on earth, not because they generate massive amounts of complex information by existing. But having said that, even "mindless" information is only subjectively mindless, given different contexts, it could have meaningful interpretations, and the context comes from a mind.
I don't see a way to escape the connection between mind and information.
But that is just my opinion, and I am not a scientist, nor do I have a PhD. on anything.
There's something very materialistic about Stephen's argument. To explain away evolution, he's making everything mechanical in a Newtonian sense. I'm imagining God writing his programs in C that are later compiled into into machine code stored in carbon based lifeforms to be executed as written. Software updates come from above rather than the rich interconnection that life has with it's environment in it's attempt to traverse uncertain terrain. He unwittingly includes everything into the titanic amount of lifeless information with the exception of a programing engineer that is nowhere to be seen... in his mother's basement maybe.
Dembski points out that improbability itself is not sufficient to infer activity of mind. It must be improbable event confirming to an independently given pattern: getting any given number in a roulette rules out the same amount of alternatives, but when a given number is the winning number, then there is something more going on. He has an explanatory filter in his book, which I don't fully recall.
Here is a wild thought: Is the world a covenant between form and flux, a semiotic/symbolic interface between the two? Implying, to me, that information comes on the scene after the covenental act?
How about a three-way discussion with Meyer? I am not a scientist, but I think that could be interesting if we did it in a way that is not too technical.
Great conversation, gentlemen!
Awesome to see you watch symbolic world! Love your channel brother!
Great to see you here
Of all the interviews of Dr. Stephen Meyer I have seen, Jonathan, I have to say, in this interview he seemed most engaged. I think that is due to your ability to pick out and elucidate points throughout the discussion that were quite profound, and allowed Stephen to connect dots he doesn’t usually get prompted on in most interviews.
This was truly one of the most enjoyable discussions I’ve seen with Stephen, and that is certainly due to you both being high in intelligence, but also looking at things from slightly different angles.
Great interview! 👏
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the truth of Christianity at this point. I was an ardent atheist for years, but with all the research I’ve done the last 6 years, I can’t hold that position any longer. Great conversation!
no its not. Even if there was proof of intelligent design, that in no way gets you to the christian god.
"Every knee will bow, every tongue confess that He is Lord". We aren't going to accomplish that - He will. Welcome aboard! :)
@@neilknowsnuthinyour intelligence coming from a Nonintelligence source makes perfect sense!!! 😂
why specifically Christianity?
if atheism is false that doesnt mean God is a mortal human being...
there is a better and more coherent alternative for you out there..
Thats a poor strawman of the Christian position@@Harris19941
Arguments for Christianity as a true philosophical and phenomenological way of understanding the world are gaining prominence. Coupled with Meyer’s work on the scientific front, we may be on the brink of a return to an era in the West where goodness, beauty, and truth take center stage again.
We had to go through rough times to get there (and there may be more to come) but it truly is a Renaissance of thought now. All aspects of information are being questioned in a good way. It's exciting to be alive.
@@anon_genz nobody should make the error of confusing Christianity with the only source of goodness, beauty, and truth. There is so much more that has not yet been apprehended by even some of the greatest minds of our time. Christianity is a good starting point for goodness and beauty. But Truth is always beyond that. People prematurely latch on to the greatest thing they have seen or heard of and call that true. Always keep a watchful and unattached eye and you will see marvels that outclass everything even Jesus spoke about. Christianity is only a stage in a very short beginning.
@@Philibuster92 I actually agree. I know many people who find God through Christianity and feel that they've grasped all necessary knowledge. I don't only think this is wrong, but in many cases, it can be harmful because it impedes the desire to learn, engage with culture, and innovate technologically. I view Christianity as the necessary starting point to enable us to pursue knowledge in the material world, especially in an ethical manner.
@@anon_genz knowing God in Christianity and especially Orthodox Christianity is not a question of knowledge. The idolizing of knowledge is in some sense one of our biggest problems as described in the Garden of Eden story
@@harmonicproportions6588 Yeah, there can be a hyper-fixation of the acquisition of knowledge. The Enlightenment exposed the flaws of that. There is definitely a balance to strike.
Jonathan, please discuss with your friend and frequent collaborator, Jordan Peterson, the idea of having Steven Meyer on his podcast. JP read Meyer's most recent book Return of the God Hypothesis and remarked that rarely had he read a book which contained so much information that he did not previously know. Pretty high praise from the hyper educated JP. I have been lobbying him in the comment section of his podcast to have Meyer on, but somehow I think you may be a bit more influential. Anyway, thanks for having SM on.
So glad to hear that Jordan Peterson has read some of Meyer's work. It has always seemed to me that JP basically just takes the Neo Darwinian synthesis as a given (as many with a modern, Western education do) and so I have wondered what it would do for him to call that into question by engaging with Meyer's work.
I've actually contemplated trying to mail him a copy, though I'm sure people do that all the time and I'd imagine it might be somewhat annoying, so I never did XD
Great idea!
I'm sure it's in the works, he is a perfect fit for JBP's channel
Jordan Peterson, the Trump supporter?
@@petermclaren4933Yes.
I discovered Mr Meyer recently so this discussion came right on time! Would love to see a 4-way discussion with Jonathan Pageau, Stephen Meyer, Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke!
Make this happen, Jordan Peterson needs to hear what Stephen Meyer has to say about biology.
Meyer is a grifter. Within two years of college bio I have personally seen and done enough in labs to know why he's full of it. He just wants more ignorant people to hear what he's saying
And Bret Weinstein
@@michaelstapleton9128 Bret Weinstein is a complete idiot. John Vervaeke is not far from that.
John Vervaeke is a broken man
I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Stephen Meyer and his talks… And I’ve never seen him so anxious to enter into a conversation (to interrupt / in a good way). - This looks like to me that he is extremely engaged in this level of thinking… I’d say you’re definitely pulling the right strings to get this kind engagement from Meyer. By the way, I find all of this fascinating, and I find Myers work to be at the top of a very impressive list of scientific research. - great interview.
You: "I find Myers work to be at the top of a very impressive list of scientific research."
Oh really, where are his peer reviewed scientific articles then? Did I miss them? Maybe you could help this ignoramus (me) out and give me the references to the scientific journals he published in?
Let's see if he made a splash in the biology community.
Here's a hint, they don't even know who Meyer is. He's a charlatan who excells at misrepresenting science to promote a view that is not even testable, let alone offering an explanation. (You guys should really look up the meaning of the term "explanation" because "an intelligent designer did it it" in no way explains a thing.)
Unfortunately Meyers' degree is in philosophy of science, and his knowledge of biological science is limited, and not accepted by actual scientists. Dave Farina completely debunks the claims of Meyers and other Discovery Institute apologists as pseudoscience.
Never heard of this fella. Ordering some of his books now.
Darwin’s Doubt
Signature In The Cell
The Return Of The God Hypothesis
Three important books.
@@brando3342 Recommend reading in that order?
@@soundsnags2001I read Return of the God Hypothesis, it is an incredible book that I reference often. It touches on aspects of his previous books, but with less detail on those specific topics.
He gets a lot wrong. It all stems from his misrepresentation of the Cambrian explosion. He knows enough to not be seriously making his arguments, so I think he must be intentionally full of it
It’s nice to see these two together today. Steven Meyers book Signature is n the cell started me down a long road that lead me to Christianity. Johnathan’s work has lead me down a long road that lead to Orthodoxy. I was baptized today in the Orthodox Church on Pentacost due to the help of many people like these men guided by the Holy Spirit. Glory to God, and God bless these men and everyone who’s helped me along the way!
Been looking forward to this episode of Better call Saul
😂
😂
Awesome interview, Dr. Stephen Meyer!!!
I would love to see a conversation between Stephen and John Verveake
John Vervaeke is a broken man. A lot of mumbo jumbo and no value. He is a broken man. He is Bret Weinstein part 2
My Hosts Stephen and Jonathan. Here, I'm just listening and attending unto my OWN! Watching!
Jonathan, it would be great to hear your conversation with biologist Michael Levin. He's already in conversation with Vervaeke and McGilchrist and, as I see it, kinda open for different ideas.
Oh yea, that would be fantastic.
In the past, Dr. Levin was not interested in speaking with anyone who believes in God.
Absolutely brilliant stuff guys! - "information.... it's right THERE!" 😄 Your enthusiasm is contageous.
What a blessing to millions that this man has devoted his life and research to intelligent design, which gives believers every where a viable theory opposing Darwinian evolution!
it really doesnt do that, though.
this guy doesnt understand evolutionary theory. we have had responses to his problems for decades, but he doesnt even address them.
@@Gwyll_Arboghast Hah! Anytime _anyone_ examines the details, especially the problems, of evolutionary theory, some joker pipes up and claims he _"doesn't understand"_ it. What a joke!
@@KenJackson_US There are decades-old books that refute his arguments. if he knew his material, he would address those refutations and explain why they are wrong, but he demonstrates no awareness of them. so, yes. he doesn't understand it. you would notice this too, if you had read about it.
@@Gwyll_Arboghast Have you read any of Dr.Meyer's books? They're exhausting because he so thoroughly and exhaustively covers all aspects of the material. If he didn't appear to address something that you know about in this interview, it's likely because the interview wasn't six hours long. Read his books. Or at least flip through them and see if he didn't address EVERYTHING.
@@KenJackson_US I admit i have not read Meyers books. but it should have been absolutely simple for him to demonstrate knowledge of what i referred to; for a brief interview it is necessary to give the most condensed, strongest case for his side. it isnt just that he "didnt get to it". his arguments positively rely on the refutations not existing.
to me, an interview's purpose is largely to convince the viewer that someone knows what they are talking about, such that it is worth reading their books. it would require some serious incompetence in the skill of interviewing to know the literature and somehow appear to not; and I dont think meyer is an incompetent interviewee.
I'm so pleased to see Jonathan Pageau and Stephen Meyer in conversation. I had seen the Uncommon Knowledge video discussion with Mr. Meyer previously, and have read his book Return of the God Hypothesis. God bless you both and keep up the good work!
Great conversation. I'm glad to hear Jonathan bring up Kastrup. While Bernardo has many good points, I was a bit frustrated in our conversations with him and have long thought that someone like Meyer could fill in the holes in his work. Stratford Caldecott goes back to Pythagoras, from a distinct Christian perspective, in his terrific book: Beauty for Truth's Sake.
Im glad to say ive been posting your darwins doubt video to fb, twitter (x) , on joe rogans saying he has to interview stephen etc. Hundreds of atheistic forums just placing the link. Hopefully ive helped open people's eyes.
Something’s happening and I like it
Yeh!
Something is coming - LA Marzulli
Yes! Great combo!
This is incredible. Jonathan I believe what you're saying when you talk about something preexisting is the question, "what makes it sensible?" That's also the responsibility of a higher mind.
Good talk, thank you! ❤
Wonderful host!
Wonderful guest!
"Information is the capability of choosing between two or more possibilities in concrete" The decision process necessary to produce information implies or demands an intelligent mind. We all are in a physical universe without asking to come and be here. We can reason from effect to cause.
Mathematics conceives infinite as a necessity for mathematics to function completely with full future potential: Therefore we are capable of accepting by demonstrating by reduction to the absurd, that forcibly we are born for a purpose already existent in the Creator's Mind before we came into existence. The opposite void or nothing can't choose between something that doesn't exist.
Once, while looking up at the nocturnal sky, I was filled with an intense joy beholding such a vast wonderful beauty; I realized that I was not alone as if listening to a loud voice shouting; And Manuel you are part of this. I felt loved and happy with all intelligent beings like me forever and ever. Alleluia!
I don't know if anyone has insulted Jonathan so thoroughly by accident as Stephen did when he said Jonathan was thinking like an engineer. 🤣
YES!!!!! I love it! This is Sooooo Good
I know Steve well and he means this as a genuine compliment which I think Jonathan could appreciate. In Steve‘s world he is dealing with theoretical scientists and philosophers who dogmatically insist upon ideas that don’t actually work in the real embodied world that an engineer has to deal with.
Well actually engineers aren’t like scientists and mathematicians dealing with theories and abstractions but modern day artisans who construct things that are actually incarnated and embodied that people actually participate in like trains, roads etc.
HAHAHA, i think he saved himself by adding "Design Engineer".
It ties up nicely with the icons of Christ as the Divine Architect.
@@anniecrawford2500 to be clear I don't think there's animus. It was a joke.
I DEEPLY appreciate scientists like Meyer and others who provide strong evidence for intelligent design, HOWEVER, as Christians it’s important to understand that adopting theistic evolution undermines the Gospel and really the entirety of scripture (or at least most of the Old Testament).
Is that because of original sin?
@@nathanbell6962 because it assumes death before the fall which undermines the Gospel.
Agreed. Does Meyers believe in theistic evolution though? I took it to mean we weren't evolved at all and were created each according to its kind by God.
Not that God put the information into evolution. But into DNA.
I could wrong about Meyers thoughts on this though.
@@tacsmith if I remember correctly, in other interviews he’s said he believes in theistic evolution.
But to be fair, that was awhile ago. Whenever the Hoover institute interview was new
I have no problem with intelligent evolution and the Fall as they're both just descriptions of how we came to be, one is mechanistic and the other is philosophical.
It's the same reason I don't have a problem with people calling Genesis "mythological", something being a myth doesn't make it untrue, it's just a higher form of description
This is the most rational scientific discussion I think I've ever seen.
Amazing interview. Stephen is a genius and living legend! The tide is turning, toward God
I’ve been wanting this conversation to happen for at least a year!!
Thank you!! 🙏🙏
"Information presupposes intelligence": a paraphrase of Dr Meyer's observation early in the wonderful discussion that I find truly pivotal. Considering we don't really know what 'matter' is, or 'energy', but have a far better idea about information - data made meaningful by mind/intelligence, where mind/intelligence is, in part, a meaning-making process - we can start from this clear fact of existence - information - and not need a big leap to swap out our concept of matter/energy for data, data which mind then 'creates' or 'organises' into our universe of laws - who knows exactly how at this point - such that we have a functioning or feasible idealism in which there is only consciousness (there is only God), and can do away with the ugly over-complications of mind-matter dualism.
That's my (ontological) sense of it, anyway.
Information is not data that's made meaningful by our minds. If that were true, either ribosomes couldn't read and then write mRNA into proteins, or DNA and RNA would have to be said to not be Information.
In other words, since ribosomes are not mindful, either they are incapable of reading RNA (which is false), or RNA is not actually Information, or Information does not require a mind and you gave a bad definition of it
Bring on James tour next please
You mean the crazy science denier?
@@valtersjanevics65 Science is gay and should be denied.
@@valtersjanevics65 Lol... how did a science denier get an h-index over 150? Outstanding synthetic chemistry research by the science denier - that's for sure
Excellent to see these two conversing. Intelligent design vs randomness. All observation points to intelligent design. Especially in our human experience.
All observation points to natural explanations
@@therick363 look around your own world. There is design everywhere. Even your thoughts and words you are conjuring up. That process is design - not random. Perhaps you have a different understanding of design. It looks like when you apply the idea of nature, that excludes or opposes design.
@@therick363 no, no it doesn’t.
@@antbrown9066I have looked around. I’ve investigated and studied. All I see is natural.
Give some good evidence of supernatural causes
@@dirtyharold7164sure it does. What are the supernatural explanations I’m ignoring?
Now this will be good!
Great discussion guys, thanks
The best explanation for the appearance of design is design
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh I think there must be an uncaused cause but lets not pretend we understand.
If I see a good portrate painting I know there is a painter even though I dont know where the artist came from..
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh If matter always existed then there must be infinite time. There must be infinite space to put infinite matter in. If random interactions of matter and energy explain all of reality, and matter and energy are infinite, then anything that is possible must necessarily exist regardless of how unlikely.
Do you believe in small, red-headed, bearded men who speak with an Irish accent and grant wishes that coincidentally happen to come true? What makes that impossible?
@@attackhelicopter-up3dh Has logic been discovered? If matter is infinite, then anything possible must exist. Why believe nothing, if everything possible must exist?
Makes me wonder how we got through an infinite amount of time to reach now, and how will time ever reach infinity if it has a starting point?
@@Huckabilly-w7ginfinity is never " reached", if it was reached, it would an ending and hence, wouldn't be infinite.
@@michellejohnsen912 If infinity is never reached, then the universe can not have existed infinitely, or we would never reach now.
I would love to hear Michael Levin opinions on this episode
Girlfriend: I'm a Methodist and I'm not sure I want kids, the world is a cruel place.
Me: I'm an Atheist, but I should learn enough about Christianity to hold a conversation with you. Kids? I don't know.
GOD LAUGHS FOR 4 YEARS
(GF) Wife: I'll take care of the baby girl, are the boys dressed for Mass?
Me: Is your veil in the minivan? We better hurry if we're going to make Confession.
It's amazing how things work out, I only wanted to know enough about Christianity to talk to some chick I was dating, but I ended up marrying that chick and converting both of us to the Catholic faith.
I just wanted to know enough to talk to some girl, but I kept learning and kept researching and at some point, the truth of Christianity and the Catholic Church just got harder and harder to deny. At some point, it just became intellectually dishonest to deny it anymore.
In fact, being an atheist gave me an advantage, I didn't have all the Protestant hangups. My wife and her mother would shriek, " they worship Mary" and because I was an atheist that just researched without bias, I had already learned that wasn't true and I didn't have to work through any Mary baggage.
The only real issues I had to work through were the existence of God, the Resurrection and the divine establishment of a Church. Once I was convinced of that, church history led me the rest of the way.
Moral of the story, when you see a couple get together and you're thinking, "Oh this won't end well," just cool your jets. God does amazing things with broken people.
That's kind of His thing.
Hilarious.... I got mine because I Heard the gospel While I was high as a kite from a girl who was on acid.
Go figure.
Your story, totally understand....
(Ya,... the veil is in the mini van, now hurry up.)
What a beautiful story! God bless you and your family, my sibling in Christ 😊
Ah, that truly is His thing. God bless!
I loved this! Next question - what is this intelligence driving us towards? Or is that a matter of faith?
Glad you guys got together for an honest discussion.
The one sentence summary:
The functional sequences (of genetic code) are so rare that if you change the bit streams, you are inevitably after very few changes, going to destroy the function long before ever get to something new or functional. - Stephan Meyer
so what? Stephen knows nothing about evolution.
i was hoping this conversation would take place... looking forward to it. signature in the cell was one of the best books I've read from the last few years.
i would say that the panpsychist perspective follows logically... we don't have an awareness of "Mind" capital M, or anything transcendent. We infer a transcendent mind in relation to our own, less transcendent mind. However, there's no reason to assume that line from more consciousness to less consciousness has to stop at us, or that it jumps arbitrarily from whatever nameless force or forces created the universe to our arbitrary level of awareness. Why would a table not be somewhere on the continuum from "most mind" to "least mind"
Hmm the metaphor that comes to mind is, this text you're reading, is it less or more of my mind than I am? I'd say it's a medium. No need to suppose continuities, but merely to note distinct givens. And these givens have their own continuities. Panpsychism is interesting; though it strikes me as just a plausible misapplication of that minding work that likes to characterize all the minder can as continuous, despite knowing distinctions experientially and categorically, and that these distinctions make different compositions. In metaphorical terms, the notation of letters recognized by us, and the medium of youtube etc, are distinct ways my mind can express itself--knowing that there are alternates and even novelties possible to mediate my mind. What is the case I don't know, but I'm instinctively examining of attempts to totalize and note continuity in a way that's easy for a mind to hold to as a placeholder for exploration.
@@dominicowusu3032 grade A circumrambulation.
@@notloki3377 I wrote it fast and somewhat dense, but my diction is precise. If you're interested I can unpack, but if you dismiss it as nonsense because you can't decrypt the sense and more important don't care to, then it'll just be for others. Take care, I'm not going to interact with condescending strangers behind text
@@dominicowusu3032 I think it's fully clear you halfway know what half the words you're using mean.
some examples...
Hmm the metaphor that comes to mind is, this text you're reading less or more of my mind than I am?
aside from the horrible grammar and punctuation, this isn't a metaphor. it's a question.
I'd say it's a medium. No need to suppose continuities, but merely to note distinct givens. And these givens have their own continuities.
This makes no sense, and also doesn't relate to the first thing you said.
Panpsychism is interesting though it strikes me as just a plausible misapplication of that minding work that likes to characterize all the minder can, as continuous, despite knowing distinctions, and that these distinctions make different compositions.
This also makes no sense... yeah it's not just me bud. I'll bet a lot of people fail to understand you, and until you learn to take responsibility for your manic ramblings, you will continue to be misunderstood.
@@notloki3377 I just tuned up the grammar so you'd get the metaphor was the text I sent to you, a meta-text as a metaphor. The rest will flow from this. I'll most likely edit the rest given how you read it so that those who are charitable will get what I was exploring. It's pretty easy to understand once you decrypt the mapping I was doing given your spectrum schema with panpsychism. A way to put it is you're talking about a rainbow, while I'm saying it's more like a 🎨 palate of colors when it comes to how we understand, which is a type of painting, and this makes up the painting of what we note as conscious, not conscious etc. I hope this illustrates the idea better.
Although many may not realize it, this is one of the most important TH-cam channels of the time.
Meyer should talk to Vervaeke, they have significant disagreements regarding darwinism and naturalism.
thank you both very much
you should have Rupert Sheldrake on to talk about Morphic Resonance
Jonathan, how does this fit with the spiritual understanding of life?
I think it just helps explain the mechanism of the physical world and appreciate God's excellence all the more.
The main cut, I feel, is to hit back at Anti-theistic Atheists who've been dodging arguments made by Thomas Aquinas and perverting science to support their world view since Darwin. Shocker, material science doesn't support their world view.
@@sigurdholbarki8268 I have heard Anthony Bloom of Sourozh say something to the effect that the one does not have to be refuted by the other because they are two seperate means of acquiring knowledge. And I have heard it said its the limitations of our human minds to see beond some seemingly aparrent contradictions.
Meyer see sign of designing mind in a cat. Pageau see a sign of mind in the fact that we see a cat.
Yes. I think it’s important to not simply let it rest on how an artisan relates to an artifact in a distant indirect way (pulling from Hart), but that it’s also “in and through” all things in how the world coheres and is intelligible… to realize that those intelligible forms permeate the world through and through, and are not simply the product of our “brain” creating these things in our heads to where we’re lonely islands of meaning and purpose
And I think that is another reason why the Triune God is the only One. Pageau doesn't have the molecular physics background of Meyer's, and Meyer doesn't have the rough hands of a carver. But, through their dialogos, we glimpse the "One".
Are you saying Pageau is a solipsist?
@@Michaelfrikkie No. I think he thinks that mind lump objects into categories. That sorting process give rise to identities.
There's plenty of design in a cat. Cats are fragile but resilient. If you could design a machine with half the agility of a cat, and the ability to suffer through to survive and thrive after catastrophic injuries that would literally kill any human being, they wouldn't be showing off ridiculous, clunky robots as if they think people will be impressed. You sound really undereducated. I feel sorry for you. I guess you went to public school. 😢
beautiful and revealing conversation. Loved the heady exploration of arguments for the presence of God. Inspiring, Sending to a bunch of my atheist friends.
I've talked about this for some time. If origin of life simulations were ever to model reality. The scientist who managed to pull it off would find intelligent organisms inside his simulation, arguing over whether or not he exists.
And some would use their knowledge of how the simulation works to "prove" the simulation had no creator.
I really enjoyed this talk and hope to see him back sometime
A cookie is the universe being delicious, therefore the universe is delicious.
you wouldn't say that a man is hard just because his bones are hard either. But we do say that a man is intelligent
Thanks for the conversation!
“The privileged planet” is an awesome film. I thought it was dedicated to explaining the Fine Tuning argument but that’s just half of it. The universe was not only finely tuned to have complex life. It was finely tuned to be scientifically discoverable!
Amazing
In the beginning was the Logos…
5:12 the wine at the wedding at Cana would also have had the appearance of being ‘old’. It wasn’t.
Fantastic. Thank you Dr. Meyer for your endurance and courage! It was great hearing that the arguments are finally gaining some traction and momentum among the Big Thinkers. May YHWH bless your work!
Pageau should talk to someone who actually understands natural selection.
I'd recommend Clint from Clint's Reptiles. He's actively religious and very good at explaining things.
Do tell. Natural selection creates nothing. It has zero creative power.
People who make these comments should bother to explain themselves.
Natural selection creates nothing. It selects for things that already exist. So maybe the lack of understanding is on you, just saying..
I love how someone else saw the clints reptiles video and is here 😂. I took two semesters of biology, but I genuinely struggled to make meaningful and understandable arguments before I saw that video. Clint was really helpful at showing me how to make understandable arguments
46:55 isn’t this a description of the fall?
"We live in a simulation."
How do these people think a simulation works?
Simulation Theory is deism-lite
Terrific discussion. Had trouble with vision -Jonathan was too far away from Steven on the 55 inch TV.
It makes sense that information, dna etc would take the form of language derived from mind when God spoke the world into being, whatever that means technically doesn’t really matter to me very much, but phenomenologically it would look like a language so that’s a fine analog to explain what’s happening there in a symbolic manner that we can actually understand.
Nice comment, I wish I'd written it but I at least thought that even if I couldn't articulate it!
Thank you, thank you, thank you Dr. Meyer for pronouncing "processes" correctly. (Most Darwinians say "process-ease", and that's my favorite reason for not taking them seriously.)
Really good talk. Thank you.
Finally talking about something that isn't AI
Meyer needs to debate Alex O'conner. O'Conner did a thorough demolition job of Dinesh D'Souza, it was embarrassing. Can Meyer salvage it?
salvation isn’t an issue about intelligence but the heart, Bible said that we were born blind in sin, we can’t see the truths even if it’s in front of us, such is the case with Alex O Conner, there’s enough evidence for faith, but only the one given the sight to see and ears to hear can recognize themselves as sinners and come to faith
@@leim100 Both d'souza and Alex o conner are intelligent, so the issue was not so much about intelligence but the ability to support one's position. In the Bible, it says believers should be ready to give reasons for their faith. The topic the 2 discussed was the old testament (not if God exists) and frankly d'souza struggled to answer those questions which I suspect many Christians would also struggle. The old testament poses difficult questions compared to the new testament. Do you think you could have fared better? I hope you watched the debate and considered the questions Alex asked and which d'souza couldn't answer
Stephen and Jonathan, thank you for chaseth our OWN. As WHO chaseth ye! From Who am I? Time liken unto a messenger sent forth. Is like Jonathan and Stephen, who are you? Our names don't exist! Without thy shared "i" AM Jonathan and Stephen! Gratitude and Honor! Share
The argument he made for quite some time that because DNA works like a code just like computers interpret ones and zeros isn’t a good one. Computers only interpret ones and zeroes because of the physics of semiconductors when a voltage is applied. You could make computers based off of binary code out of pneumatic, macroscopic tubes that perform the same functions.
From a one and zero to typing a comment on this video is a traceable line of physics. While I’m not a biologist, I can’t imagine there isn’t a similar line of physics that go from DNA encodings to how it instructs proteins to be built. It’s all analog in the end.
So essentially his argument boils down to, “there are laws of physics so there has to be a law maker,” but that has nothing to do with intelligent design.
It's closer to
1) Information comes from a mind
2) Computer code contains information
3) Computer code comes from a mind
1) information comes from a mind
2) DNA contains information
3) DNA comes from a mind
The laws of physics are insufficient for explaining the phenomenon of seeing these pixels in the screen and interpreting them into language.
You can take it for granted as "just happening" but without being able to justify it it becomes an arbitrary "just is"
And if that can just be arbitrarily assumed everything else can also be with equal validity.
@@isaacclarkefanread his book for a better understanding
Ali G would say:
1)All mammals live on land.
2)Whales are mammals.
3)Therefore, whales live on land.
And Terrence Howard :
1x1=2
@@SuperJohnmusic premise "all mammals live on land" is false because we have found marine mammals
In order for that analogy to not be faulty you would need to be able to prove "all information comes from minds" is a false statement without begging the question
It seems that you don't understand the relationship between a DNA codon and the choice of amino acid for each point in the sequence of amino acids of a protein. There are 20 amino acids to choose from, each choice depends on the DNA code, a thing that has no known provenance. And you don't understand the importance of each amino acid in a protein to its function; single point mutations cause many diseases.
Great talk! Thank you so much! I have something to say in regards to the claim that the universe is composed of matter, energy and information. I will pose it as a question: what is information if not ordered energy? God bless you!
I wasn't done watching the whole discussion when I left the comment above but like Jonathan, my mind was flaring up and I had to say something. I am not done yet!
Ok so let’s imagine there was an intelligent designer - what’s the mechanism by which god starts off life, and then moulds it to make each new species? The universe is already going for billions of years and then suddenly he’s manually sticking together the right chemicals in the right way so that they can later replicate all on their own without continued intervention? So it’s just a short time thing where he’s meddling with the physical world? Or he sets it all off at the start of the universe knowing that everything will collide in such and such a way? Or maybe it’s just a few times that he does the meddling? Why did god start with unicellular life, then multicellular, then chordates, then fish, then primitive (not modern) amphibians then lizards etc. why make that gradual increase in physiological complexity?
I don’t see how this idea is actually useful scientifically, there’s no actually mechanism being posited here, no set of constraints of when we might expect there to be a bit of godly meddling and when it’s ‘business as usual’ and the biological processes are doing their self replication thing on their own.
Do you have to know the intention behind every stroke of an artists brush in order to accept that it was painted by an intelligent sentient being? Or do you believe the painting came to be through completely natural chemical processes without any intelligent input?
I find this line of reasoning incredibly odd. I guess it makes the purely materialistic worldview easier to swallow because you can omit any “why” questions.
@@dirtyharold7164 I’m not a materialist, I just don’t think this line of thought is fruitful or useful or convincing. I’m not talking about the intention, that’s not the contention here. I’m saying this is offering a quasi rational/scientific argument that actually offers no greater explanatory power.
In addition, it’s not a fruitful line of thinking for the spiritual life, and coming to theosis. The question of whether god exists is not something to tie yourself to one scientific proposition or another. What if they suddenly did find the RNA that could replicate itself. Would you stop believing in God? It’s the same trap as before with the materialists. God is something to aim to apprehend in each moment.
It’s almost as if materialism and idealism are two polarities of reality & we are only constrained by our perception of their apparent exclusivity.
If intelligent design is not a factor, then tell the software programmers that are designing artificial intelligence to just let it be and all will come together on its own.
😂😂
So how did the designer come up with it? Where did they do it and how was it tested?
@@sh0k0nesIf we are walking though a forest and come across an old helicopter, must we first know how the designer came up with the idea, the factory in which it was assembled and the airfield in which it was tested in order to safely assume it had a creator?
Me: “look at this beautiful wristwatch, the craftsmanship that went into it is outstanding”
You: “I refuse to believe it was designed and built by intelligent beings, as far as I’m concerned it came to be through random chemical processes until you can tell me who designed it, where it was built and how it was tested”
@@dirtyharold7164 Stop being an NPC repeating tropes from last century. Have an original thought for once. Fux sake🙄
@@dirtyharold7164 1000 years ago u'd be one of the people that thought the gods sent lighting to smite people. I mean, lightning is complicated right?
Hi Jonathan, I am a great fan of yours and also Bernado Kastrup. I would like to let you know you have misunderstood Kastrup.
The Natural Selection part of Darwin's theory doesn't break down. The evolving part does break down, and he knew nothing about DNA back in his time.
How does natural selection not break down? If it can’t account for evolution?
1:10:30 - Maxwell is how we understand light, electricity and magnetism. You get really mind-blown when you realize that this guy came up with the notion that light is in fact two perpendicular waves of electricity and magnetism. Like what? How does someone come up with that? Later on, quantum mechanics does experiments showing that there is a wave-particle duality of light with packets of light called photons coming into prominence but his theories of electricity and magnetism that he created in the 1860s are still used today and how we have many of the modern appliances we enjoy.
Newton, Maxwell, Einstein. Maxwell is the physicist no one outside of physics has heard of. It's crazy too because everything we use in modernity relies on his equations.
this guy has some serious ignorance of basic evolutionary theory.
consciousness imagines the type of world that would be necessary for it to maintain its desired form
I don't find the fine tuning argument convincing. It's just looking at phenomena backwards, from the point of a foregone conclusion. From a certain perspective, my toast crumbs have a one in a trillion chance of landing on my plate in the particular pattern that they do -- but we don't wax that they were designed that way. Likewise, if the universe was "set up" another way with different parameters, there might well be a different type of intelligence that thought itself lucky that gravity or radiation or what have you was "just right" for it to exist.
It seems to be the same type of physicalist analysis that Pageau critiques when it comes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc. We can still talk about God establishing the pattern to which things tend, for example, without insinuating that "complexity as such" (much less the complexity of physical processes) is somehow indicative of his activity.
What functionality are your toast crumbs engaged in?
That might be the key difference here.
The rarity of living organisms includes their FUNCTIONALITY.
You can claim your random toast crumbs ARE serving a function. But let's see those same crumbs, eminate from themselves a new generation of crumbs which perform a similar function.
It's not the odds that are "important", it's the functionality nested within those odds.
My understanding is that there simply aren’t enough possible combinations of physical parameters that would lead to chemistry (let alone life) to make random chance a reasonable conclusion. Of course it’s not impossible, but so unfathomably unlikely that it’s laughable. So we owe existence itself either to an unfathomably unlikely chance or a mind.
@@blairholmgren9748This seems fallacious. You are analyzing a phenomena from the privileged position of it having already occurred. The likelihood of any given phenomena occurring is 100%, provided you analyze it in the present.
You are also comparing our reality vs "our reality, changed" - not our reality vs some wholly different reality. So all you are really saying is, "things would be different if things had been different". Sure, and provided there was still time and cause and effect, those "different things" would seem just as "fine tuned" as our own - reliant as they would be on the whole history of the universe before them.
There's also no saying that there couldn't be consciousness in your alternate reality, either. We are on Jonathan's channel after all, and it seems like having your cake and eating it too to suggest that consciousness is reliant on a particular configuration of chemistry, but also immaterial/miraculous. I'm sure Jonathan would find it silly to speculate on how chemistry determined the consciousness of Man before the Fall, for example.
@@easymentalityI did separate phenomena from their function - I said we can talk about God's establishment of a pattern to which things tend (a pattern of being or function, if you like) without fine tuning.
I really just find the topic to be a red herring that needlessly muddies the waters with a kind of physicalism. On the one hand we disparage the notion of "balls bouncing into each other" - on the other we suggest that God's work is in one way or another reducible to arranging or upholding a particular configuration of balls. You yourself say here that "functionality is nested within the odds", which is deterministic and totally at odds with Jonathan's notion of vertical causality, for example.
Life and consciousness is not sacred because it has a self-perpetuating function (so does a cloud or a crystal, if you really want another example) or because it is apparently "rare".
You kind of dodged the physical constraint challenge. This is a series of events that have to happen in the order they did because they have low tolerance. Any change in any of the steps would cause the stable structure to collapse. Many of these also happen in a timed sequence, where any other order would cause the stable structure to collapse.
I think evolution is the an information system that we do not fully understand but seems to be sound.
The information system (DNA) is in the cell...and the cell is the only place that it is manufactured...by the instructions of the info system (DNA). So which comes first?
The Programmer.
@@stevepaige7557 I agree. I guess I shouldve said the idea that life evolves from the poressures of survival seems to me to be right. How the instructions got into DNA and how they actually do change becuase of outside forces, to me, is where a programmer would come into play.
I highly recommend listening to the Hoover Institute discussion he mentioned. They have an ID biologist on the panel that will go into deeper discussion on the pitfalls of evolution. It is a very stimulating discussion.
The physical laws are not only tuned to generate an environment where life, as we know it, can occur, but also to the possibility that it survives and replicates. These laws should be totally indifferent to whether an organism survives or not, and whether it replicates or not.
However, the theologians of evolution, want us to believe that the principle of survival and replication is sacrosanct, there is something in an organism that wants to make it survive, because that's how it has to be, and there is something that wants to make it replicate, also because that's how it has to be.
Let's imagine that potential first organism, formed by some chemical miracle, well, that's not the only miracle, it also, miraculously, has the "will" to search, passively or actively, for the resources it needs for its survival. Now, in a totally random environment, and devoid of all consciousness, where would that need for survival arise from?
To survive or not to survive is the same from non-consciousness perspective, and not to survive is the simplest thing from the point of view of purely random change, and we are not talking about replication yet.
But for the theologians of evolution, those miracles are simply possible due to the great God of chance, who can do everything with enough time, although they really never seriously began to calculate how much that enough time would be. They also don't want us to think much about it, it's rather, the magic potions are poured, they let them to be mixed for "enough" time, they say abracadabra, and what we see now happens ..
*_The sheer impossibility of life is something which took me by surprise._* For most of my 74 years, I fully expected scientists to get closer and closer to building cells from scratch. But to expect life to spring forth from a primordial sludge is like expecting a magma red Mercedes Benz SL500, with a full gas tank to result from natural, random processes. While the Jennifer Blank experiment proved that more complex chemicals can result from collisions, that was a splatter-gun effect -- not one with usable, organized materials.
😎♥✝🇺🇸💯
Actually, the probabilities of an RNA world are 5!4!...or 120 x 24 = 2880
Hardly astronomical as you suggest and practically guaranteed in terms of
probability and the number of planets where similar conditions are available.
Johnny Paggy pookie bear deluxe
Lol! Please make this a meme. It is endearing and will totally confuse JP.
😂 New Merch Drop
Consciousness is prior to mind.
If you are no more than looped goop in a contained brain,
There is no basis for me to heed your retort or refrain.
Perfection! 😂
What I would like to see from the leading atheist in this era is well formulated and coherent arguments that only concerns their position. Instead, most of the time is trying to debunk all Christian arguments or ridiculing them to earn sympathy from their audience. Contrast is mother of clarity.
That’s a fair ask. But I would also say it should go both ways yes?
@@therick363to be fair Christians have been this for nearly 2000 years, whether in scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, St Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton, through to C.S. Lewis and more modern authors.
On the other hand that courtesy has not been afforded by atheists from Rousseau and Voltaire to Hegel, Marx and Darwin. Even as recently as Richard Dawkins they've been arguing against an interpretation of Christianity of their own making.
I've not met a single atheist who has properly understood Christianity, even when I was an atheist! I do know plenty who have been perfectly respectful though.
On the flip side there are a lot of Christians who haven't been properly catechised and seem to have adopted positions that owe more to historic atheism than Christian thought (especially overly literal materialistic interpretations of Scripture)
Edit: to be doubly sure to reiterate I'm not trying to be a confrontational bell-end, I'm adding that I'd put a "Like" on your comment!
So I might be being a bell-end, but I'm at least trying hard not to!
I'd say it's because atheism can only come from Christianity. And because atheism refuses to acknowledge that its foundations are actually rooted in Christianity, it will always make arguments against Christianity to defend its position.
@@francestaylor9156what is atheism?
What is theism?
What are my foundations that I took from Christianity?
Amazing
This is all fine, but unfalsifiable hypotheses do not avail themselves of scientific methodology. You are talking about philosophical questions, not scientific ones. Fine tuning is not really evidence, for example. In what universe would you expect to be in in order to be able to even ask such a question? And arguing things are “too complex” could just mean we simply don’t understand what’s going on yet. The problem is using these philosophical ideas to somehow justify belief in any one particular religion or even type of spiritual practice.
I agree, using this reasoning to back up your religious beliefs is disingenuous. However, materialistic methodology doesn’t prove or disprove the origin of the universe or life. People who think they know for sure the answer to the origin of the universe and life, whether through design or pure materialism, religion or atheism are both as ignorant as each other. It’s an age old mystery that I don’t believe will ever be answered.
@@dirtyharold7164
Nope
They know for sure it’s NOT a supernatural explanation because the supernatural has NEVER been demonstrated
Did Darwin provide a way to falsify his concepts? If so, has it been done? If his concepts can't be falsified, then are they scientific statements?
@captaingaza2389 Is it that the supernatural hasn't been seen, OR is it that many people refuse to see it?
@@roblangsdorf8758
It’s never been DEMONSTRATED
Pageau's way of equating Bernardo Kastrup's Analytical Idealism with panpsychism makes me suspect that he has not fully understood Analytical Idealism.
The puddle insists the pothole has been designed for it.
Cope and seethe.
@@linusloth4145yes. They did the whole time.
@@Pllatinum1 you wouldn't recognize a deathblow to naturalism even if it would hit you in the face.
Potholes are created, and water fits them perfectly, which is really annoying because you can't always tell how deep they are before driving through it.
@@Huckabilly-w7g They begin as cracks and change over time. Not "created."
Now do a conversation with Bernardo Kastrop and Meyer with Pageau moderating. Brilliant minds.
No. Not THAT.
Jonathan, are you familiar with the work of Human Biologist Michael Levin. On your point about pattern organisation. "that to some extent the pattern should pre exists for the organization to happen". (might have butchered that) Anyhow his work is on how cells know to organise themselves to produce the particular biological structure/structure's that we see and well are. He has discovered that there is some unseen mover behind the bio-electrical signals that guides the electrical signals within cells so as to show them or make them gather in the desired pattern. That at the very least the electrical pattern for the cells exists before the cells move or become formed in there final way. Well wroth checking out. I believe he works with Harvard and Tufts. He also has much information online.
Trying hard to keep listening, but so far it's sophistry, pseudo-science, cobbled together misunderstandings of many different fields, and lots of god of the gaps arguments.
Seems like both speakers have studied these fields only deeply enough to find any place that allows them to sow doubt, and immediately insert god.
I try to listen to all sides in order to be informed, but this seems like childish uninformed/underinformed wishful thinking.
Anyone with any expertise in biological evolution, information theory or software development could clear up most of these misunderstandings, so they cant be run away with and turned into this kind of techno/psycho-babble.
yes indeed ... his use of "highly improbably" gives the game away. Pageau's contributions concerning "mind" were better, but neither seemed to see that they were on different pages.
How many times is Jonathan going to use the word Constraint?
Only joking Jonathan great interview!!!
G. Nathan Barnes: Intellectual Physics Inc / Prison Exposure Project L.L.C
54:30 - Physics has this as a principle in quantum mechanics - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You cannot know both the velocity and the position of an electron because the act of observing the electron will change its position and/or its velocity. And that's because for us to observe anything we require light (in any part of the spectrum) to bounce off of the electron which would mean the electron would absorb the energy from the light wave and thus change its position and/or velocity.
There's a lot of weird things like this in physics where we can never fully extract ourselves to observe reality as an outsider. The theory of relativity also shows that as well. Einstein was quite ahead of everyone when he asked "what would reality look like if I were traveling at the speed of light?" Many examples of relativity will show how bouncing balls look different to people based on where they are and what frame of reference they are in, ex. a moving train vs being stationary.
I think this is why physics in all its abstraction seems to always get people who are more faith-based than other sciences. When I was using complex calculus in my upper division physics courses, it always felt like I was sort of looking at the programming code of reality. It's hard to escape that it seems to have been written by God. I used to say I was looking at "the mind of God" when looking at upper division physics even though I was an agnostic at the time.
If there is an infinite number of possible universes, then ours (with its "fine tuning") is just a statistical possibility. We get to see it only because we can exist in it. So it's kind of dumb to wonder how fine tuning could be possible, if we only get to exist in universes that are fine tuned enough to allow life.
If these proposed universes are causally related then information from one influences another. If these proposed universes are not causally related, then what happens in one has no effect on the outcome of another. There is only 1 roll of the dice that can be accounted for, no rerolls. To suggest that we passed some criteria of randomness to come to a particular result that allows life is survivorship bias.
4:50 - One way to thin about apparent design is to think of an observer seeing design and inferring nothing, because they are outside that design. Another way to think about this is 'middle out' thinking, starting from where you are, instead of where things began. Both of these views require something I call Objective Material Reality (OMR) which is the scientific world view, where no responsibility exists. Also no intimacy, because you have removed yourself from participation (the cost of not being responsible) and live in an opponent processing world. Reality, however, is made up of and held together by cooperative processing where you participate with the world.
5:35 - Inference is not a problem, unless you try to do it from OMR. Then you've hid your assumptions (framing) about (of) the world.
14:45 - The problem is that Darwin wrote a book called 'The Origin of Species' - materialists have extended this to imagine he was writing about the origin of life. Those aren't the same thing at all. Technically, Darwin was talking about how the Ontology (proper science) of species comes about, life happens along before that.
17:30 - One confusion is this idea of 'evolutionary theory' - when people use this term, they seem to be referring to some theories, some hypothesis, some unprovable ideas and lots of inference. So it's a large set, most of things that aren't theories at all or things that cannot have science applied to them.
34:20 - One way to think about the claim that the universe is knowing itself is to realize that this is a bottom up (emergence) view. Where emergence is good. This means that when anything happens, it is good. Sounds like chaos to me. This one axiom explains the entirety of thought. The better axiom for understand is "being is good". Sure, you have a hole, but you have the same hole with emergence. Being requires structure, which requires intelligence, but it also requires care (agapic love or something) but once you put that in, everything else follows quite nicely. With emergence first or emergence is good, you get nothing for long and nothing that lasts as good.
34:50 - Good stuff, this is emergence as explanation (notice, science carves things up to reduce free variables, to make accurate, precise, consistent and reliable predictions) which causes a loss of relationship (and therefore reduces the qualities or potential qualities of that relationship - loss of Intimacy) and therefore causes use to see the world as emergent. This requires OMR (Objective Material Reality) to be the stance you take to do all this work. You've removed yourself from creation, as such, this is creation denial. Meaning crisis explained. Individualism explained. materialism (what else can emerge?) explained.
39:16 - Great phrase - in the past - yes, this is middle out thinking. Reasoning forwards and backwards from today. Rejecting the frame of creation (there was something here before you, bigger than you, that you were born into). I realize this sounds like an illogical, irrational, unreasonable way to think about the world, but if you listen, you'll hear that is how many scientists talk about the world.
54:00 - My issue is this is a well known phenomenon in physics called the observer effect. So if the most disciplined and least tied to material objects (because atoms and light are technically below materiality in some sense) and the issue is not only far more pronounced but well studied and taken for granted as irresolvable. I can see where other scientific disciplines are catching up, but also, why reinvent this wheel when another branch has the 'answer' (unscientific and unsatisfying as it may be).
1:04:00 - The assumption of new atheists is that philosophy resolves morality and therefore would lead you to a proper political view, scientific view, etc. This is really ignorant, it's a huge misunderstanding of how the Greeks thought of philosophy. Of course for them, morals resolve meaning, then when it doesn't, everything falls down. Meaning Crisis confirmed. Of course, this comes because when you remove persons by using Objective Material Reality, you remove the ability to create quality relationships, thus the Intimacy Crisis, which precludes meaning from even being able to be discussed.
1:08:00 - Emergence is good - flat world theology (without creation) which is caused by creation denial, not the story, the concept of a creation that existed before you were conscious. If you listen carefully, you'll hear Sam Harris types talk like this all the time. The larger issue is that they are ignoring the idea of Final Cause (which I'll argue is emanation) and combining the other Aristotelian causes together to form 'science' (which is a flattening of itself).
The statement from Meyer of "the problem" of the cause and needing a cause sufficient enough to produce the effect while at the same time being somewhat separate from the effect is something I would like more answers to. I understand the line of reasoning, but this seems such a human-mind limitation of imposing our own duality and presuppositions, and in some ways our own axioms which arrive from and dualistic thinking and separation from what we now perceive to be the effect. Why must there be this constant insistence on the cause being outside the effect, why cannot the cause be the effect and the effect the cause, in other words an inward causation and an outward expression of that causation, and in that expression the full extent of the causation expressed as everything which there is and ever was, just the same as it was before this expression. That the cause and effect can be one and the same thing is very clearly the case in our own minds, what causes thinking is the same as the effect of thinking, there is no separation aside from what we impose. When we create a watch, there is a watch and there is us, and we have seemingly, to us, created a sperate entity, but when god creates a watch, god stays god and also becomes the watch, otherwise "he" would not be god.
As far as I understand, our thoughts are caused by something other than what we commonly perceive to be us. That implies that we are not our thoughts. We have thoughts, and having them we cannot be one with our thoughts, our thoughts cannot be both the cause and the effect. I don't know of an effect that can also be its own source. Me as a son (an effect) could not become the father (the cause) of myself. I need to have a cause (a real father) outside of myself. In the same vein, our thinking is an effect. An effect of what, what really causes thoughts? Definitely not themselves (nothing can cause itself - not even God, he just is), and not our thinking either. It may be a book that you read which may generate/cause some thinking, your own passions that push you towards satisfying them and thinking about them, or an evil spirit/holy spirit that tempts/beckons you according to their nature. We are not our thoughts, we are not our body, we are not anything that we ever identify with in this human life. I don't know if anybody can say what we trully are, but what we can certainly say is what we have (eg. a body, a brain, hands, legs, eyes, a house, a car, a bank account, etc.). We have all these things as effects that we have not caused nor sourced, simply because we are not the source of them. They were given to us at various moments in life, and being given they were just effects of some cause prior to them. If we were both the source and the effect we would have everything all at once. Human reality just doesn't work that way. Between cause and effect there is always some distance. This distance can be work, sweat, and expended energy. Nothing comes easy in our reality. This may as well be the curse of Adam, the need to toil to get fruit/effect in life. The curse due to that original sin might be exactly that: a separation between cause and effect, a distancing between what was once one whole. About Adam this is just my speculation. Regardless, the cause must always be outside of the effect in our world, they cannot be one and the same, at least not according to how we experience life in this mortal world. So I don't think cause being outside of the effect is a presuposition that we all make unfoundedly. It is anchored in the way we perceive the world, it is an understanding of how the reality (human reality) works based on mundane and simple scenarios. Saying that cause should be taken as being one with the effect, is more of a supposition, in my oppinion, because this can be seen nowhere in our human reality. It may be true outside of human reality, (eg. God being both the begining and the end at the same time) but that is outside of our comprehension as the humans we are today. We always see cause as separated from the effect.
God stays God and also becomes the watch is only what God can do, we humans cannot do that. God stays God and at the same time he became man in the person of Jesus. Only God befits the description of the cause being the same with the effect. This is the only way how God can can remain uncreated, by being both the cause and the effect af the same time. Hence what can be said about God in this state is that he just IS, or the classic "I AM". What we are actually saying is that God is the beginning and the end, both at once. But this is incomprehensible to humans. Only God can be whole, humans do not experience wholeness, but separation and distance, and that is visible in a cause needing to precede an effect.
This is as far as I understand this matter, anyway.
@Jonathan Pageau @Stephen Meyer, do you guys think there could be a “Post-Post-Modernism-Phase” coming up the next years?
It would certainly be termed a regression lol
It's the Enlightenment 2.0 as James Lindsay notes. We are in the transition to a new age. I doubt that it will use modern in the title because it will be so different.