So the thing about the Trinity is that the belief came to be orthodox precisely BECAUSE it makes no sense. These early Christians that won out made the claim that God is beyond our understanding, so the Trinity not making any sense is exactly what we would expect from something we can't fully understand. They even contended that this not making sense was somehow further proof that they were believing in the "correct" religion and God because of how they couldn't explain it. It's one of the worst arguments ever, and Christianity has struggled with this problem for millenia.
To me it seems that the Trinity is obviously an attempt to reconcile the God-hood of Jesus with monotheism. It's the kind of conclusion they are forced into by trying to apply logic to a set of fixed beliefs.
I AGREE with you that this is consistent with the "Mystery Religion" sects that merged into early Christianity and their MO, I'd appreciate some kind of source for this, academically, if you have it.
I look forward to the day when we can view the Bible in the same lens as any other mythological text; a collection of morality stories that speak to the ideas and ideals of people at the time, with some rooting in potentially historical events.
Well, the misunderstanding of the inherent classification of the Bible isn't so much a Hegelian metaphysical argument from the necessary perspective of whether the Bible is what the words say or if the intrinsic relationship between what the words inherently say and what the words would be perceived to have said from an Aristotleian outside observation, thus again demonstrating the trinity as the thing itself and the recognition of the thing by itself... Ugh, I can't even tolerate talking like that even in jest. If you saw this debate you'll get the joke I'm trying to make.
Perpective Philosophy is the classic pedantic continental pseudophilosopher that likes to say a lot of words that don't really mean much and referes to obscure philosophers when confronted. The fact that he sees himself as a philosopher, with that level of intelect says it all. I'm a philosophy teacher and have known a lot of guys like that in my time. "Go read Hegel" gives me ptsd.
Lewis is inside his head doing his best to justify the theology he was indoctrinated into. I'm glad he had the chance to discuss his ideas with Matt, who quite succinctly pointed out the flaws in his very convoluted logic.
@@FightFilms Matt: "Can god change his mind?" Philosophy: "Depends on what you mean by change his mind" Matt: "Can god learn anything new?" Philosophy: "No" Matt: "So... god can not have doubts, he already knows all the outcomes" Philosophy: "Take that, and think of it non-temporally!"
@@FightFilms Here are two - 1. That a "perfect" being can have a moment of doubt "imperfection". 2. That the law of excluded middle (that a proposition is either true, or it's negation is true) can just be thrown out. It has been around since Aristotle. The only tweak to it has been to say that either a proposition is true or not able to be proven true, which is known as "negation as failure". - BTW, I like your channel man. I'm going through the most recent vids now.
Matt's ending reminds me of an old saw for debating theists; "lead with your best evidence". It's certainly not conclusive, but it reminds me of a baseball pitcher who just gave up a home run saying "oh yeah? well you can't hit my slider" at some point, the unwillingness to throw the slider lends evidence to the lack of its existence/effectiveness.
Still, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, so for the purposes of debating the less intellectually honest theists (because that argument goes both ways, not that they'd ever admit it), I'd rather say that it lends credibility to the lack of it's existence.
PP is younger version of Jordan Peterson. Rambling long winded word salads. Uses a lot of words to say nothing. He didn’t debate the topic. Great job Matt!
I don't agree. I think he understands a decent amount of philosophy, but he acts in contrary ways to that philosophy in order to preserve his Christianity.
I don't agree, I think new atheists tend to just not know the literature when it comes to philosophy of mind, and he needs to figure out how to communicate with them
When they announce their intention to defend their doctrines, they are not inviting discussion of those doctrines. They will defend the doctrines by using tactics to cajole, distract, preach, intimidate, etc. Not like Matt might defend a proposition by showing the evidence. It's an entirely different meaning.
@@mindlander You're probably right. Matt also provides supporting arguments and evidence for his positions in the debates, which is the component commonly lacking in his opponents.
The Perspective arguments reminded me about how people in the past tried to design perpetuum mobile machines. They started with simple idea, and as it it obvious it is not going to work, they keep making it bigger and more complicated until it gets too complicated for them to understand that it won't work, at which point they exclaim: Eureka!
This is hardly a unique experience, but even when I was a Christian I've always found that the high-minded, top-down, non-empirical arguments for the existence of God to be deeply unpersuasive. Even if we uncritically accept all their claims, their conclusion is that "God exists in reality" for a definition of "God", "exists" and "reality" that are entirely divorced from what I and other Christians were using to talk about our beliefs and morality. At best, they were rhetorically useful as Nepenthe to my doubts. It's an argument, so even if I didn't understand it, I should silence my cognitive dissonance.
Practically I dont care about "professional" debates anymore. How many bad arguments I have to suffer through? I can say with high accuracy that it is enough to watch this video about it. When a believer find his way to our atheist facebook group they don't understand that lots of us KNOWS their arguments like back of our hands.
@@FightFilms You do realize that Matt does not have to make an argument. If he does then that is a bonus not the requirement. Is dfgdrgv.léllsf true? Do you say that dfgdrgv.léllsf true? Prove it! This is the format. The only obligation Matt must have is to ask questions. If Matt says that the opposition didn't even made proper argument (statements) about the topic then Matt does not have to do a thing to "win". Like a bicycle race when you want to challenge me and you don't even sit on the bike.
I understood his argument to not be so much about the triangular piece you focused on, but rather that he accepts logic, and he uses this logic to determine that there must be a grounding for logic necessarily. How he got there I must admit i could not make sense of due to the word salad. And how that is not circular reasoning or subject to occams razor, i still fall to understand. That being said, I thought it was an improvement on the debate opponents you've had recently. I feel like PP at the very least wasnt trying to poison the well or preach, but trying to argue a case logically, albeit not very successful.
That's a very charitable view. He seemed like JP light to me. I 100% agree this was a better "opponent" than the other apologists lately but the bar is so low I think its near the center of the earth at this point.
I’ve always seen postgrad degrees in soft fields as measuring work ethic more than anything. If you can get through undergrad, you can muddle your way through a liberal arts PhD if you’re willing to work like a dog and satisfy the requirements. Lots of people have philosophy degrees who shouldn’t. Like, Christ, I’m still friends with him but my intro to philosophy professor back in the day should have majored in music. He found the Anselm ontological argument not just convincing but “the most convincing” out of any argument for the existence of god. I wish I’d been literate enough in philosophy at the time to say that that argument represents a confusion between different kinds of qualitative statements, or honestly a confusion between qualitative and ontological statements. It’s about as convincing to a non-believer as “my boyfriend lives in Canada.”
Dear Matt, thanks for your constant effort. I have recently watched a lot of debates between atheist positions and christian fundamentalist positions. I have the feeling all arguments have been exchanged and the christian side refuses to acknowledge hundreds of years of scientific development and the adaption of philosophical positions towards this. Nothing new ever comes up in those debates. The point to me seems to be to just keep debating and fighting. The philosophical work has been done long ago. So no, please do never get tired. And seeing a student of philosophy make up arguments like that for the existence of a god in the country of John Dewey and philosophical pragmatism is weird to watch as a german, who studied philosophy in europe ... . We are supposed to be the weirdo idealists. In 7 years of studying philosophy at a german unviersity I not once got into a debate / seminar / discussion about the existence of god or a the truth of any religion. It is not an interesting topic from a philosophical perspective. Yet it has to be discussed again and again, if fundamentalists keep pushing into positions of power and try to shape a nation. Keep on doing this. You're obviously born to do it.
Perspective Sophistry believes logic is reality. Thats literally what he believes. It comes straight from Hegel, "Rational is Real, Real is Rational." Since he thinks God is logically coherent, and he thinks logic is reality, he thinks that proves God. That's LITERALLY his whole argument, if you swim through the deluge of word salad.
You can refute this argument easily by denying a) naive realism, that logic has direct correspondence with reality or b) his metalogic, that logic is second order and derivative, and not first order.
The great red spot on the planet Jupiter looks like the whirlpool of a draining bathtub when compared to the Deluge of word salad Mr. Thesaurus in a blender inflicted on whoever was listening.
Just watched the debate and I agree with everything you said here. But despite the debate having nothing to do with the topic, it was still a really interesting debate IMO and one of the most interesting I've seen in a few months out of many channels. This debate had much more interesting content and led to far more intellectual stimulation in my own brain vs. listening to you debate an apologist like Cliffe where nearly every statement utilizes some form of fallacious thinking. Perhaps wading through very heavy philosophical arguments is the only way to go about showing any aspects of a theistic perspective to be true although the risk for being wrong or losing the audience is much higher. I'm interested in your take on the perfect mind being discussed. In the thought experiment where it was granted that if a perfect mind existed, it felt like what was being asserted was that a perfect mind is bound by the laws of logic in the same way an omni god is bound to be 'maximally' omni (e.g., god can't create a rock that is so heavy he himself cannot lift it). The assertion appeared to be that the only way to 'know' something as true is through the ability to falsify a claim and subsequently test it. Thus if the mind is maximally logical the it must be constantly doing that 'logical' process to truly 'know' it is perfect and as a result must simultaneously doubt itself to prove itself perfect. The idea being that because it is a set that contains all sets it is the one and only mind that could every actually execute that kind of logical process. Us as non-perfect minds can't have the full set of facts so we can only use falsification to state we know something with a high degree of confidence instead of true certainty. I think that is an interesting topic/fertile ground to get your opinion on. It appeared to me that you were stating that such an entity need not be limited to our means of seeking and ascertaining truth. But it isn't clear to me why we couldn't apply the same 'maximally' omni principle in this case? If we only have one way to determine truth (i.e., falsification) can we even say that "just knowing" something without that principle makes sense in the context of the bounds of logic? The idea that you simply just know something to be true feels like its in the same logical impossibility camp as 'a god that made a rock so big it can't lift it' because we only have the one way to know things which necessarily includes the application of this logical process/test.
The ultimate nail to the coffins of all the gods: if you can't justify your belief with anything other than fallacious reasoning, your belief is just not justifiable. Also, if someone or something requires and encourages unjustifiable belief(s), it's not helpful or loving. All faiths require and encourage it continuously and by definition, without exception. That is abusive. Setting abuse and being abused as an example that is virtuous is enabling and encouraging abuse and being a victim and apologist for abuse, like everyone does whenever they say they're religious and fail to add that it's unhealthy and abusive to be religious. And like our laws say: ignorance is not an excuse that gives you exemption. If I don't know that slavery is bad and I advocate for slavery, it's not your job to understand where I'm coming from and to let me have my beliefs and let me tell people that owning people is good for society. It would be my job to understand why my beliefs are harmful when I set them as an example and advocate for them. The same goes for advocating for abuse and abusive relationships, like faith requires by definition. It's not my job to enable and facilitate and condone your behaviour. It's your job to understand why your beliefs are harmful when you set them as an example and/or advocate for them.
Some of these wonderings about cows and Klingons are explored in the works of C.S. Lewis. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis has God/Jesus killed and resurrected in the form of a Lion; in his Space Trilogy, he explores whether the whole cycle (fall from grace, condemnation, redemption in Christ) would happen all over again on Venus. Of course this is tangential to your point, but I thought it worth mentioning.
Would be really interesting to know whether James on MDD considers any or some of the arguments - rehashed or not - believers come up with being convincing according to his worldview.
Hey matt I have trouble answering a question that thiests often ask (do you think the universe came by chance ? ) I usually reply with saying I don't know , but then I thought if I don't believe that there was a consious creator or maker then doesn't this mean by default that universe came by chance , because either there is a creator or not , if not isn't this what chance is ? I would like you to correct me and show me where I failed if I did thanks ❤❤.
Can't speak for Matt, but the universe could also be necessary. It doesn't have to be chance. And there might even be more alternatives, who knows. But your I don't know is a reasonable answer, because no one does.
_I don't know_ is the right answer, because no one knows. Given that.... If we consider the idea though, what does it mean to come by chance? If we say there is a non-zero probability of a universe appearing per unit time, then there is effectively no chance of it not happening given enough time _(yes, we could fail forever, but then we would not be here to ponder these questions. See anthropic principle)._ Obviously there is a non-zero chance of a universe, so the initial question is meaningless. What they mean to argue is that something had to make it, and then use special pleading to not apply the same rules to their deity of choice.
There is currently a 100% chance the universe would turn out this way. I calculated that by taking the number of universes exactly like ours(1) and dividing by the number of known universes (also 1) That is how probability is determined. Occurrences of specific outcome divided by total number of outcomes. We have no idea if any other configuration of universe is possible because we only have one data point.
I think what frustrated me the most was that the moderator wasn't keeping PerPhil on topic. If you are going to moderate, you need to be paying attention enough to recognize when someone is going off-topic and rein them back in. I'm honestly not even sure he was paying any attention at all until y'all got a bit heated and voices were raised. I blame TV political "debates" during elections for what looks to be a growing misunderstanding of what a debate moderator is supposed to be doing.
Yeah James the mod is more interested in generating content, so he doesn't want be a real moderator who stops presenters wandering off topic or in PP case barely touching it. He thinks. correctly, if he holds debaters to points and normal debate rules the number of 'debates' will be tiny as there's few people especially on the religious side who even understand logical debate rules let alone intend to follow them. There a slight cultural thing with Americans journos ie your political debate point, are just are very tied to this bizarre 'balance' thing. I've watched lots of non-American interviews, especially British and they are far more likely to say, 'thats just stupid and/or irreverent'. There's the famous Paxton interview where he asked the same question 14 times as t'he politician kept dodging a straight forward question.
@@user-uy6uc5ey5q Some American interviewers can drill down properly, like John Stewart; and he's a freaking comedian. The rest are access-journos more concerned with keeping their job at publicly traded media corporations and/or with more of an eye to future 'tell all' type biographies.
Have you ever seen anything on Modern Day Debate? Their moderation policy is: We don't moderate. Just "Please superchat." That, and using oddly inflected, pre-packaged niceties before just about everything the moderator says. It's bizarre and frustrating all about spectacle. Wish I watched it less lol.
When a Christian tells me that beliefs are a choice. I say: That's wonderful news, could you please choose atheism for a day then you'll understand where we are coming from (no evidence of a God). Plus I don't get to speak to too many Scientologists, so could you chooses that for a few mins so as I can hear a scientologists point of view. Actually I wouldn't mind if you could choose to be gay (as I suspect you believe is also a choice) So could you choose to be gay for just 1 minute and describe your attraction to other men? But, this is odd, they don't or can't seem to choose any of these things? Except their single belief in their claimed God. They say things like: But I'm choosing to be Christian, not those other things. Where I say: So you really can't choose any other religion? Damn.
I just love that comment! Just think of the effect it would have on how we understand each other if we could choose another person's point of view and set of beliefs, try it on, walk in another person's shoes. Oh, the incredible level of empathy that would be possible. But of course, it doesn't work that way, for the same reason that we can't just decide to believe things we're not convinced of.
If the subject of choosing to be gay comes up, I recommend this tid bit of a response. If you can choose to be gay or straight, you are bi. I said that to a Christian buddy of mine and he's never brought up the subject since.
29:09 Ooo that might be a bad example Matt. There's more than 700 different proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. Sometimes mathematicians just get bored.
I thought the key point of the debate was win the perfect circle analogy was expressed due to P P saying perfect mind. That whole segment after that came up was fantastic.
Right from the jump, when the guy immediately sidestepped the stated topic to do his riff on the same tired old tunes, I was just.....disappointed, actually. Not surprised, just......kinda like sitting down to a meal of military MREs. Like, you just shrug your shoulders and chew.
@@FightFilms I don't think it's necessary for Matt to grant the first point. I mean, think about it: you can really tackle both issues - the existence of a god or the specifics of Christianity - as separate issues. Like, personally for me I think the deism argument is an open book; but the way you read that book is through observation and scientific method, not by trying to create a narrative that comports with ancient stories. If you're talking about specific events that happened to a specific person within one of those specific stories, well then you need to come up with a conclusion based on who wrote them, what was their context and motivation, where did the story originate from and did they change, what evidence can you point to to justify your conclusion, etc - you can do all of that in dialogue with an open mind who hasn't accepted the first god premise. That's literally how a lot of us ended up leaving faith traditions - searching for truth, authentically, and trying to steel-man the myths we were raised with.
Perspective seemed like a disaster. He leaned completely on the idea of making a philosophical word salad to obscure the reasoning for his god belief. I don't think anything can come from him has value going forward, especially how he didn't want to answer a question or allow you to make a point, like when he immediately fired back with a question for the perfect mind point.
Jordan Peterson is setting a trend of overconfident word salad. Unfortunately, the more popular the rhetorical style gets, the more justified the group becomes. I see it as a really big problem. Trump won a presidency without the word salad. Imagine if Trump talked like JP with the edgelordness too. We would be in big trouble.
It really contrasts with scientists who try their best not to use technical jargon when explaining their work to regular folk. The ability to convey sophisticated information in layman terms requires good understanding of the concepts being explained.
I started listening to the debate but realised the opening statement was immediately flawed. He misrepresented the logic by including "reason" for something contingent, rather than just understanding contingency refers to "result". Result offers no cause to consider a contingent being has a reason, ie. a purpose. Also, the opening carries no relevance in proving one particular near-Eastern cult legend as a true story in light of the multitude of faiths that hold more weight regarding a cosmological argument - Hinduism or Buddhism for example.
God being a universal mind that needs to use logic and god being a perfect mind that is a necessary condition for existence are not mutually exclusive propositions. Logic and learning are not mutually exclusive. Just because god doesn't learn doesn't mean he isn't using logic.
Klingon Jesus is named Kahless, who was killed in the 9th century and who will return in the 24th century. It is the "I do not bring peace but the sword" version of Jesus.
Re - Trinity crap It could be that Jesus (assuming he existed) or the founders of Christianity, had spoken in-depth with some Hindus about the Hindu Trinity (Trimurti) and decided that this would be a BIG hit in the west, so they decided- deliberately- to incorporate a Trinitarian belief into Christianity. Such a deliberate decision would certainly explain why 'The Holy Ghost' is part of the trinity; They needed a 3rd 'Person' and couldn't think of anything or anyone, so they made up this nonsense about a 'Holy Ghost.' Alternatively, the Hindu Trimurti makes perfect sense within Hinduism. They didn't invent an otherwise unknown character to be the 3rd part of the Hindu Trinity. Their Trimurti has The Creator, The Preserver and The Destroyer (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, if I recall correctly). To an atheist outsider, it seems like the Hindu Trinity is an integral part of their religion. It seems like a natural part of their mythology. Conversely, it appears to be forced into the Christian narrative. God and Jesus seem like obvious 'Trinitarians' since they're such an important part of the bible. But the Holy Ghost? It feels like the kind of answer someone who was grasping at straws came up with.
He did not reject the Law of Excluded Middle, he said that there is some doubt about it. And there's truth in that, c.f. Intuitionistic Logic denies P or Not P for arbitrary P.
Be aware, should you ever decide to debate that flat earther don’t expect them to actually want to talk about evidence for the flat earth. Much like the Christians you have debated on whether Christianity is true they will do everything to avoid the actual topic under question, and will attempt to side line the discussion onto irrelevant issues at every opportunity.
I think you misunderstood his argument. His claim was that logic itself is best understood as a substance with a concrete existence, logically prior to matter. You already agree with the necessary existence of logic. From that point the argument should be about whether or not logic is best understood as being contained in a mind. I was disappointed that this wasnt discussed at all. I agree however that Louise didn't actually give any good arguments for why the trinity existing in christianity has any meaningful relation to this structure of logic.
I considered myself a Hegelian atheist, but this guy Perspective forced the arguments ad nauseam. However, i think that Matt needs to read "Phenomenology of Spirit" and specially, the chapter of critique of sensible certainty.
I don't. It's gibberish generation. Read Kant and Schopenhaur. The rest of the German Idealist tradition is a waste of paper. Especially Hegel. Only Marxists need bother with Hegel.
Hegel, in his philosophy, criticizes the notion of sensible certainty as a limited form of knowledge. Sensible certainty refers to the immediate experience of the senses, where we rely on the information we receive through our senses to understand the world around us. However, Hegel argues that sensible certainty is insufficient to achieve complete and true knowledge. According to him, sensory experience provides us with only a partial and subjective representation of reality. Our senses can deceive us and distort our perception, leading to a limited and superficial understanding of things. Furthermore, Hegel maintains that sensible certainty cannot provide a solid foundation for objective knowledge. Sensory perception is changing and contingent, as our experiences can vary depending on circumstances and individual conditions. What we perceive as real at a given moment can change in another moment or in different contexts. Hegel argues that sensible certainty also lacks the capacity to grasp the relationships and interconnectedness inherent in reality. Sensory experience is limited to the apprehension of individual objects in their isolated appearance, without understanding their place within a broader whole. According to Hegel, to fully understand the world, it is necessary to transcend sensible certainty and move towards more developed forms of knowledge, such as reason and conceptual thought.
5:00 2 + 2 = 4 because it is a consequence of the axioms of arithmetic - it is defined that way, and it is not a natural part of the universe. For some reason, god botherers do not appreciate this.
What is a god botherer? Is it an atheist, or a theist? I know many Jews that say Yahweh-El is more bothered by false gods and misunderstandings of Adonai than by atheists who follow the objective morality without seeking cronyism with any gods.
The reason why all serious debates between theists and atheists end in complete embarrassment for theists, is because they’re trying to defend a position that IS NOT TRUE. However amazing you are at debating and philosophy and theology, if the core position you’re defending is nonsense, you’re going to fail at some point. That’s it. Plain and simple. If god existed as described in the Bible, it wouldn’t be so damn complicated (read: apparently impossible) to build a good case for him.
@@FightFilmsI know your insecurities are making you attempt to find gotchas. That wasn’t it. You do realize that atheism is in fact the disbelief or lack of a belief in a god/gods. They can also claim there are no gods even though that’s not a required position. I get it. If you don’t have proof for your magical deity the only thing left is to attack the others position.
@@Noughtgate Are you referring specifically to biblical stories or the arguments put forth by PP. I suspected it's the former, so in regards to that, they need to be verified ala the scientific method and basic logic. The supernatural attestations by definition cannot be so rationally we can say there's no reason to believe they are true until someone can prove they are.
The idea that logic requires a "grounding" is nonsensical, and that, given that need, it must be an authority figure just compounds the gibberish. As far as I can tell, the implication is that a preexisting mind imposed logical order on a universe in which A could equal Not-A, or whatever. I'm (not really) sorry, but that's just nuts.
I don't know why they keep having that guy on MDD, of all their guests he's the most obvious troll who has no interest in good faith discussion, you can literally see it on his face
@@TheLightlock And what’s really depressing is last time I saw him on debating flat earth, the comment section was all in favor of the flat earth team and not the “globies”.
@@matthewwhite8882 yeah I don't know if they ring a bell and they all just show up or that there's some hinky alt account stuff going on or whatever but the comments are always full people on the flat earth side.
Witsit is not a troll but a delusional and arrogant flat earther. The comment section is full of his entourage because normal people don't watch these kind of debates on mdd anymore for lack of moderation.
If he means that the world is a product of God's mind it sounds like he's leaning towards the simulation theory. When it comes to the trinity it is like a cube - each side connected and if connected is the total entity. Imagine a book written by multiple authors - within this book you wouldn't have one mind but multiple which would basically form what the noosphere idea was about - a large collective of minds (information - the total sum of information available).
I’m surprised you didn’t press harder on the whole “perfect mind having an “atemporal moment of doubt.” Especially when “why have you forsaken me?” specifically makes an accusation… from a perfect mind… within the question. It’s vastly different from a simultaneous doubt which is clarified in the same instant… God… didn’t know He would doubt or what the resolution would be?
I would have to go back and rewatch to be sure, but I remember Matt pressing quite hard on the "atemporal moment" stuff. I remember it got really heated, there was so much pushing. How much more could he have pushed?
@@dingdongism He did push, but PP didn’t seem to grasp that he was explaining what was necessarily a sequence of events, trying to eliminate a sequence by eliminating time… which results in a contradictory state of both doubt and non-doubt. There was just so much obvious wrong, without even touching on the fact that the whole of it is indistinguishable from sheer imagination.
It's a common way to do theology: Comb diverse philosophical texts. and pick out contextless fragments that sound vaguely like religious doctrines. Hegel divides things into groups of three - so that sounds a bit like the trinity. Berkeley says the universe is an idea in the mind of god - that sounds vaguely like god creating the universe. The result is a cloud of disconnected, and sometime mutually exclusive, "arguments", each of which takes a lot of knowledge to refute, after which it's easy to switch to another.
There are all sorts of reasons to deny the law of excluded middle, such as paradoxes. "This statement is false", the law would imply that that statement is either true or false, but it is neither.
@@APaleDot Excluded middle would actually imply either true or not true and false or not false, and it can be both not true and not false. A paradox can be not true and not false, but it's a paradox and not not a paradox
@@TheLightlock It's not so easy to escape these logical traps. It seems to be a fundamental problem with categorization. Consider the following statement: "this statement is both false and not a paradox". If this statement is a paradox, then it is false, since the statement claims it is not a paradox. If this statement is false, then its true, because it claims it is false and false statements are not paradoxes. If this statement is true, then it is false, because it claims it is false.
@@APaleDot I feel like we're just repeating the last exchange, because this actually is pretty easy and very similar to the last example. The statement you provided is not true and a paradox. You keep using the language of true and false when the proper description is true/not true and false/not false. You think it's going to be more of an issue because this is a compound statement, which I would say needs to be examined by its individual components instead of as a whole, but even if you take it as a whole it isn't difficult and it doesn't avoid the law of excluded middle
@@TheLightlock I guess my problem is that I don't understand how you meaningfully distinguish between not-true and false. You can say that if a statement isn't satisfied, then it is not-true but that doesn't mean its false. You then have to show that it isn't a paradox in order to show that it is false. But it seems like the only way to show that something is a paradox is to show that it is neither true nor false, which is circular.
Hit the nail on the head! The difference between the consistency of information and predictive ability that is presented by scientific endeavor, and the consistency of information and the predictive ability that is presented by christianity... there's absolutely no contest. It's night and day, and the more they try, the wider the difference becomes. ☝🏾✨
I think a very small % of christians believe in aliens just because it opens up these questions. As for the trinity, it can be whatever you want it to be. If i was christian i would say that God being an incomprehensible being makes sense to me. We expect our puny brains to understand an infinite god even though we already know we cannot comprehend infinity?
Matt, I'd never seen you in this position before but you clearly lost this debate. That kid is more intelligent than you and you just couldn't follow his reasoning. And that clearly pissed you off... I encourage everyone to watch this debate.
If Jesus was part God and part human, shouldn't he have gestated FASTER than the typical 9 months? Shouldn't everyone have been stunned that he was born only a month after gestation? Or a week? Maybe he didn't have enough God genes...
Which canon? which interpretation? Why would bibliolatry ever be a good thing? (these aren't questions for you, unless you like to think even deeper about things you probably already would agree with or are aware of at least tangentially)
@@letsomethingshine I appreciate non-bibliolatry. But the debate was centered around whether Christianity was true. That requires defending crucial aspects such as the resurrection and the Trinity. Instead PP focused primarily on defining his “grounding” of logic through god and comparing it with a naturalist interpretation (that wasn’t the debate). He defined god as tri-Omni, benevolent and immeasurable, all aspects that can’t be proven and must be accepted on faith alone. I was underwhelmed because the debate contained too much word salad edging on intellectual masturbation. It lacked focus on the topic at hand.
new and better mathematics are sought after constantly. sorry that last bit about not looking for different ways once u have found a sufficient way seems antithetical to skepticism and science. question everything always.
really funny conflating idealism with scientific realism and even funnier that christianity itself is almost never mentioned but instead most of these apologists stay in vague theistic philosophical waters ;-)
Context of this purported statement by Aron-Ra? Atheism is a position on a single question while what we describe as present day conservatives tend to misunderstand as many topics as possible. Almost willfully.
@TheLightlock To answer your questions, the religion known as Christianity was brought into being by the apostle Paul as you may know. Jesus played no part in its formation at all. Paul never met the individual that his religion is based on in person. Muslims believe that Jesus existed also and was a great prophet and teacher too. Both of these religions may be correct in that respect. They both believe Christ to be the Saviour also. I find both of these man-made religions to be divisive, however, and the cause of much strife in the world, which is why I belong to neither of them or to any other. I believe Christ is a redeeming principle, not a person. Jesus "The Christ" was said to be the bearer of this redeeming principle. For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. The life of a human being caused murder and other mis-deeds to spread throughout the world. And so the death of a human being who has committed no crime is the result and a metaphysical necessity in order to atone for this, as it is a spiritual law that grave misdeeds cannot go unchecked as they will lead to the degredation and eventual destruction of the species. It is a matter of cause and effect, and not the arbitrary decision of any god. In Eastern religions this is known as Karma, as you may know. Kristna (Lord Krishna/Vishnu) represents the Christ/Saviour principle in these religions but was not a real human being. Hope that helps.
I am fully aware that there are many who are totally beyond my help in their understanding of these matters. Their minds have been so thoroughly conditioned to think in a certain way through entertaining the same type of thoughts repeatedly over a long period of time that they are beyond the help of anyone now, perhaps. Thinking the same type of thoughts over and over can cause veritable grooves in the grey matter of the brain which prevents them from accepting new ideas and ways of thinking. There are others whose own incredulity and personal pride will simply not allow them to entertain the idea that they have been misled by others in their beliefs. To answer your last question, when I clicked on the reply link to your first comment the Reply text area that I am now typing in did not appear despite several attempts. This time it worked fine though.
@@TheLightlock If you wish to be merely a Matt Dillahunty parrot then go ahead, but find someone else to exercise your memorized, atheistic attempts at arguments on as I'm not interested. Don't expect a reply if you post any more comments on this thread as I have better things to do than read such nonsense.
@@gemganuhay661 yes I'm sure much better things like committing fallacies and misspelling Krishna, I'd hate to divert your precious attention away from that
This guy made a mistake when studying philosophy. Seems like he wanted to learn how to argue it rather than asking himself it it is true. Is what he presented the reason that he is a Catholic? I sincerely doubt it.
@@FightFilms I don't remember exactly, but it was something about Matt pointing out: If A, and B are true than C is the only possible right answer, and PP agreeing with Matt, and then in a very similar argument later he tells Matt the very same logic doesn't apply to god and offering an illogical answer making D a possible answer. When Matt doubled down to show him how it cannot be logical PP said it's not only logical, but the very roots of Logic, which even a freshman Philosophy student would call bullshit. PP understands philosophy really well, but he misapplies it and even abandons logic to "prove" his god. Frank Turek, WLC, and others do it all the time, but swoon people with their philosophy degree in the hopes people will just accept their word salad.
@9:21-9:26 "...science is mind independent." No it's not Matt. Here's the definition of science from Oxford sources simply by Googling the definition of science: "The systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained." Don't like this definition? Here's another one: "The pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence." From the Science Council. Who would study or pursue science if they didn't have a mind? Can you show another species without the use of a mind applying science besides the human race right now? I don't think so. If you are making the claim that science is extant outside of a human mind, you're going to have prove it. If you're going to argue that scientific realism is mind independent, that too is problematic. Scientific realism is "the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted." From Wikipedia. But who would hold that view outside of a human mind? My point is that you need a mind to hold that view or do science in the first place.
@@TheLightlock Same difference- I've seen him make this argument on other shows like the Hang-Up and the Sunday Show. All minds are essentially subjective. What's the point of saying something like "mind independent then?!" And if you're going to argue that the term "mind-independent" is attributable to some form of philosophy like metaphysical realism or objective realism that's even worse. These are just concepts that people came with that cannot be actually accessed by the human senses or human minds. There's no taking off the rose-tinted lenses. To apply science, which has its basis on the natural and physical world to a philosophical framework as "mind independent" would be senseless and oxymoronic.
@@nagilumsnangilima What do you mean by "minds are subjective?" And mind independent means what it says on the tin, it isn't dependent on a mind or minds. Might as well steal one of Matt's since we're talking about him, are the rules of chess dependent on what I think about it or what you think about it?
@@TheLightlock I mean that every human being holds their own personal views, beliefs, perceptions and biases, and that affects how they see the world no matter how objective they try to be. Hence, no one is capable of truly accessing objective reality. We may have a concept of what objective reality is, but we cannot actually see it or experience it. The 18th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant is famous for coming up with the rose-tinted glasses analogy: where the glasses represent our subjectivity, and the external world beyond them may be objective, but we don't know because we can't take off the damned glasses ---prompting some philosophers to question whether even objective reality exists!
"I dont research my opponents" Thats the issue. If you don't understand their presuppositions and worldview, you're going to struggle to understand their argument. This is what came through in the debate. Hegelian absolute idealism is absolutely a scientific realist position. It was in fact the route back to scientific realism after Kant lead us to scientific anti realism. Rejecting the excluded middle is by now a standard position in philosophy, and I'm surprised you havent heard of this before. How do you interpret the liar paradox? The rejection of the law is just that statements can have truth values which are neither true nor false.
I am a complete amateur with logic so I'm asking this sincerely, but how is the liar paradox a problem for the law of excluded middle? Even if a statement is a paradox it can have a negation, so if it's P=this statement is false, ~P is still true, right?
I don't think it's that unusual to toss out the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). It's actually becoming more commonplace in logic and mathematics. For example, a proposed new foundation for mathematics called Type Theory tosses out LEM, but instead proves that LEM holds in most contexts regardless.
I don't get this thing where you do a debate and do a whole other thing where you review the debate YOURSELF and declare YOURSELF the winner: "Hey self, how did I do in that debate? I crushed it self!"
under a god that is all knowing all powerful eternal with a plan and is sovereign the following verses show that anyone dying for anyone's sins would be irrelevant. --------- All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purpose, based on what he had decided from the vyery beginning. By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. ...Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. ------- Everything was determined as the God created. No aspect of the individual was considered in determining the assignment of either slavery in heaven or eternal torture or destruction. Free will is irrelevant. Some made to serve vast majority made to burn arbitrarily. If any aspect of the person was a determining factor that would be earning salvation anyway. Not need for Jesus. Either way Christianity doesn't work. The only ways I've seen people try to get around this is by limiting the God's attributes in some way. Disproving their own god
Feel free to correct my on my logic here anyone. Something that cannot be verified cannot be true. Not-falsifiable is equivalent to not-verifiable. Christianity is not falsifiable. Therefore, Christianity is not verifiable. Therefore, Christianity cannot be true.
Premise 1 isn't true. Verification isn't a requirement for truth. Does some planet x in a distant galaxy contain at least 1 rock on its surface? We may never be able to verify but it could still be true. Or if you prefer, consider godel's incompleteness theorem. Falsifiability is a better standard. That which cannot be falsified is basically vacuous. Christians may not follow you there but it takes some mental gymnastics to pretend that the theistic argument has ever been falsifiable. IMO attempting to debunk grand religious claims using some pithy syllogism is misguided. We don't need a deductive proof of the falsehood of Christianity and christians believe due to many complex psychological reasons that can't be wiped away with some "slick" logic.
Whether or not we can demonstrate something is independent of whether or not it is true. At one point in time, people didn't know everything was made up of atoms. They had all sorts of proposed solutions. But it was always true that atoms exist and form one level of our material reality.
Matt you mentioned that you always try to debate the topic not the person. What's your opinion on people who try to debate the person over the agreed upon topic in a debate?
IF someone did that, they would completely embarrass themselves. It’d just be an adhominem. But that’s not what Matt is referring to here. Preparing for the debate opponent just means familiarizing yourself with their arguments ahead of time so you can have rebuttals prepared to their specific talking points. There is nothing wrong with doing that. If Matt felt that a was in some way bad, he would not publicly release his opening statement before the debate.
As a subscriber of both yours and his, I'm often underwhelmed by his arguments for the necessity of god and your arguments against veganism. Would like to see a debate between the two of you on veganism
@@BigRalphSmith which is a shame, since it's a central moral issue of our time. Veganism is the moral baseline when it comes to our relationship with other animals. Matt has expressed that his morality includes the well-being of other sentient individuals, then pays for their corpses. It's not a tenable position
@@BigRalphSmith I'm not losing sleep over someone whose logic I otherwise respect doing motivated reasoning to justify doing what most other people do. I can advocate to literally any non-vegan to make a difference. It's just sad
Matt's review is overly generous to PP. He spewed nothing but nonsense dressed up as philosophy. Maybe it even was philosophy according to some, but if so, it was very bad philosophy.
@@dorkception2012 I don't want to speak outside my expertise, I'm not a linguist nor a scientist, but also I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "proven by ideas," could you elaborate? I don't necessarily have an objection, I think my brain is just giving up on me right now lol
The subject was not truly addressed? I'm shocked! SHOCKED! 🤡
So the thing about the Trinity is that the belief came to be orthodox precisely BECAUSE it makes no sense.
These early Christians that won out made the claim that God is beyond our understanding, so the Trinity not making any sense is exactly what we would expect from something we can't fully understand.
They even contended that this not making sense was somehow further proof that they were believing in the "correct" religion and God because of how they couldn't explain it.
It's one of the worst arguments ever, and Christianity has struggled with this problem for millenia.
To me it seems that the Trinity is obviously an attempt to reconcile the God-hood of Jesus with monotheism. It's the kind of conclusion they are forced into by trying to apply logic to a set of fixed beliefs.
I AGREE with you that this is consistent with the "Mystery Religion" sects that merged into early Christianity and their MO, I'd appreciate some kind of source for this, academically, if you have it.
OF COURSE!!! THAT explains why I'm so attracted to Fiona Apple!!!
It all makes perfect (non)sense now!!!
@@FightFilms Yes, that has nothing to do with anything except prove you're uniformed on the whole topic.
@@FightFilms why doesn't it make sense?
I look forward to the day when we can view the Bible in the same lens as any other mythological text; a collection of morality stories that speak to the ideas and ideals of people at the time, with some rooting in potentially historical events.
Don’t we already?!
@@jimmipadge the sane among us do
Well, the misunderstanding of the inherent classification of the Bible isn't so much a Hegelian metaphysical argument from the necessary perspective of whether the Bible is what the words say or if the intrinsic relationship between what the words inherently say and what the words would be perceived to have said from an Aristotleian outside observation, thus again demonstrating the trinity as the thing itself and the recognition of the thing by itself...
Ugh, I can't even tolerate talking like that even in jest. If you saw this debate you'll get the joke I'm trying to make.
Not in our lifetime unfortunately
@@thekwjiboo I've had enough christians talk at me to understand exactly what you're describing lol
If he's a philosophy PhD student then I'm glad I'm not a philosophy 101 student with him as my TA.
Perpective Philosophy is the classic pedantic continental pseudophilosopher that likes to say a lot of words that don't really mean much and referes to obscure philosophers when confronted. The fact that he sees himself as a philosopher, with that level of intelect says it all. I'm a philosophy teacher and have known a lot of guys like that in my time. "Go read Hegel" gives me ptsd.
unfortunately, hegel himself was like that. hegel brained is a thing.
Lewis is inside his head doing his best to justify the theology he was indoctrinated into. I'm glad he had the chance to discuss his ideas with Matt, who quite succinctly pointed out the flaws in his very convoluted logic.
He's just a very studied philosopher, which is to say, not a great philosopher.
@@FightFilms
Matt: "Can god change his mind?"
Philosophy: "Depends on what you mean by change his mind"
Matt: "Can god learn anything new?"
Philosophy: "No"
Matt: "So... god can not have doubts, he already knows all the outcomes"
Philosophy: "Take that, and think of it non-temporally!"
@@FightFilms Here are two - 1. That a "perfect" being can have a moment of doubt "imperfection". 2. That the law of excluded middle (that a proposition is either true, or it's negation is true) can just be thrown out. It has been around since Aristotle. The only tweak to it has been to say that either a proposition is true or not able to be proven true, which is known as "negation as failure". - BTW, I like your channel man. I'm going through the most recent vids now.
@@FightFilms there is a god
@@FightFilms have you not watched it? 😂😂😂
It's embarrassing
Matt's ending reminds me of an old saw for debating theists; "lead with your best evidence". It's certainly not conclusive, but it reminds me of a baseball pitcher who just gave up a home run saying "oh yeah? well you can't hit my slider" at some point, the unwillingness to throw the slider lends evidence to the lack of its existence/effectiveness.
Stealing
Still, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, so for the purposes of debating the less intellectually honest theists (because that argument goes both ways, not that they'd ever admit it), I'd rather say that it lends credibility to the lack of it's existence.
"Debate-and-Switch" should be a new show on The Line.
PP is younger version of Jordan Peterson. Rambling long winded word salads. Uses a lot of words to say nothing. He didn’t debate the topic. Great job Matt!
I don't agree. I think he understands a decent amount of philosophy, but he acts in contrary ways to that philosophy in order to preserve his Christianity.
"PP" isn't the abbreviation of their name I'd have picked LUL
He seems like an okay dude, he's a very progressive guy. Just religion is his blind spot.
@@patientfirbolg3299 Maybe, but that's a pretty big blind spot and he's encouraging others to have the same blind spot with his public platform.
I don't agree, I think new atheists tend to just not know the literature when it comes to philosophy of mind, and he needs to figure out how to communicate with them
When they announce their intention to defend their doctrines, they are not inviting discussion of those doctrines. They will defend the doctrines by using tactics to cajole, distract, preach, intimidate, etc. Not like Matt might defend a proposition by showing the evidence. It's an entirely different meaning.
Lol Matt has done all of those things.
@@mindlander You're probably right. Matt also provides supporting arguments and evidence for his positions in the debates, which is the component commonly lacking in his opponents.
@@mindlander matt preaches in debates?
@@FightFilms_'watch the debate with an open mind'_ And this my troll friend is what is called poisoning the well.
@@GameTimeWhy He sometimes preaches in his calling show.
The Perspective arguments reminded me about how people in the past tried to design perpetuum mobile machines. They started with simple idea, and as it it obvious it is not going to work, they keep making it bigger and more complicated until it gets too complicated for them to understand that it won't work, at which point they exclaim: Eureka!
Thank you for breaking his arguments down for me, now I can follow what he said lol
This is hardly a unique experience, but even when I was a Christian I've always found that the high-minded, top-down, non-empirical arguments for the existence of God to be deeply unpersuasive.
Even if we uncritically accept all their claims, their conclusion is that "God exists in reality" for a definition of "God", "exists" and "reality" that are entirely divorced from what I and other Christians were using to talk about our beliefs and morality.
At best, they were rhetorically useful as Nepenthe to my doubts. It's an argument, so even if I didn't understand it, I should silence my cognitive dissonance.
Practically I dont care about "professional" debates anymore. How many bad arguments I have to suffer through? I can say with high accuracy that it is enough to watch this video about it.
When a believer find his way to our atheist facebook group they don't understand that lots of us KNOWS their arguments like back of our hands.
The "professional" part is easily proven; it's the "debate" part that I'd question.
@@FightFilms What was the debate question?
@@FightFilms can't wait to see you flounder trying to explain how pp defended the debate topic.
@@FightFilms You do realize that Matt does not have to make an argument. If he does then that is a bonus not the requirement. Is dfgdrgv.léllsf true? Do you say that dfgdrgv.léllsf true? Prove it! This is the format. The only obligation Matt must have is to ask questions. If Matt says that the opposition didn't even made proper argument (statements) about the topic then Matt does not have to do a thing to "win". Like a bicycle race when you want to challenge me and you don't even sit on the bike.
Your last 20 seconds is the best mic drop I've seen in a while
I understood his argument to not be so much about the triangular piece you focused on, but rather that he accepts logic, and he uses this logic to determine that there must be a grounding for logic necessarily. How he got there I must admit i could not make sense of due to the word salad.
And how that is not circular reasoning or subject to occams razor, i still fall to understand.
That being said, I thought it was an improvement on the debate opponents you've had recently. I feel like PP at the very least wasnt trying to poison the well or preach, but trying to argue a case logically, albeit not very successful.
That's a very charitable view. He seemed like JP light to me. I 100% agree this was a better "opponent" than the other apologists lately but the bar is so low I think its near the center of the earth at this point.
Being a philosophy PhD student loses a lot of its luster when you remember that William Lane Craig has a PhD in philosophy.
and the fact that Matt wiped the floor with him and he has no philosophy degree.
I’ve always seen postgrad degrees in soft fields as measuring work ethic more than anything. If you can get through undergrad, you can muddle your way through a liberal arts PhD if you’re willing to work like a dog and satisfy the requirements. Lots of people have philosophy degrees who shouldn’t.
Like, Christ, I’m still friends with him but my intro to philosophy professor back in the day should have majored in music. He found the Anselm ontological argument not just convincing but “the most convincing” out of any argument for the existence of god. I wish I’d been literate enough in philosophy at the time to say that that argument represents a confusion between different kinds of qualitative statements, or honestly a confusion between qualitative and ontological statements.
It’s about as convincing to a non-believer as “my boyfriend lives in Canada.”
Dear Matt,
thanks for your constant effort. I have recently watched a lot of debates between atheist positions and christian fundamentalist positions. I have the feeling all arguments have been exchanged and the christian side refuses to acknowledge hundreds of years of scientific development and the adaption of philosophical positions towards this.
Nothing new ever comes up in those debates.
The point to me seems to be to just keep debating and fighting. The philosophical work has been done long ago. So no, please do never get tired.
And seeing a student of philosophy make up arguments like that for the existence of a god in the country of John Dewey and philosophical pragmatism is weird to watch as a german, who studied philosophy in europe ... . We are supposed to be the weirdo idealists. In 7 years of studying philosophy at a german unviersity I not once got into a debate / seminar / discussion about the existence of god or a the truth of any religion. It is not an interesting topic from a philosophical perspective.
Yet it has to be discussed again and again, if fundamentalists keep pushing into positions of power and try to shape a nation.
Keep on doing this. You're obviously born to do it.
Perspective Sophistry believes logic is reality. Thats literally what he believes. It comes straight from Hegel, "Rational is Real, Real is Rational."
Since he thinks God is logically coherent, and he thinks logic is reality, he thinks that proves God.
That's LITERALLY his whole argument, if you swim through the deluge of word salad.
You can refute this argument easily by denying a) naive realism, that logic has direct correspondence with reality or b) his metalogic, that logic is second order and derivative, and not first order.
The great red spot on the planet Jupiter looks like the whirlpool of a draining bathtub when compared to the Deluge of word salad Mr. Thesaurus in a blender inflicted on whoever was listening.
Just watched the debate and I agree with everything you said here. But despite the debate having nothing to do with the topic, it was still a really interesting debate IMO and one of the most interesting I've seen in a few months out of many channels. This debate had much more interesting content and led to far more intellectual stimulation in my own brain vs. listening to you debate an apologist like Cliffe where nearly every statement utilizes some form of fallacious thinking. Perhaps wading through very heavy philosophical arguments is the only way to go about showing any aspects of a theistic perspective to be true although the risk for being wrong or losing the audience is much higher.
I'm interested in your take on the perfect mind being discussed. In the thought experiment where it was granted that if a perfect mind existed, it felt like what was being asserted was that a perfect mind is bound by the laws of logic in the same way an omni god is bound to be 'maximally' omni (e.g., god can't create a rock that is so heavy he himself cannot lift it). The assertion appeared to be that the only way to 'know' something as true is through the ability to falsify a claim and subsequently test it. Thus if the mind is maximally logical the it must be constantly doing that 'logical' process to truly 'know' it is perfect and as a result must simultaneously doubt itself to prove itself perfect. The idea being that because it is a set that contains all sets it is the one and only mind that could every actually execute that kind of logical process. Us as non-perfect minds can't have the full set of facts so we can only use falsification to state we know something with a high degree of confidence instead of true certainty.
I think that is an interesting topic/fertile ground to get your opinion on. It appeared to me that you were stating that such an entity need not be limited to our means of seeking and ascertaining truth. But it isn't clear to me why we couldn't apply the same 'maximally' omni principle in this case? If we only have one way to determine truth (i.e., falsification) can we even say that "just knowing" something without that principle makes sense in the context of the bounds of logic? The idea that you simply just know something to be true feels like its in the same logical impossibility camp as 'a god that made a rock so big it can't lift it' because we only have the one way to know things which necessarily includes the application of this logical process/test.
The ultimate nail to the coffins of all the gods: if you can't justify your belief with anything other than fallacious reasoning, your belief is just not justifiable.
Also, if someone or something requires and encourages unjustifiable belief(s), it's not helpful or loving. All faiths require and encourage it continuously and by definition, without exception. That is abusive. Setting abuse and being abused as an example that is virtuous is enabling and encouraging abuse and being a victim and apologist for abuse, like everyone does whenever they say they're religious and fail to add that it's unhealthy and abusive to be religious.
And like our laws say: ignorance is not an excuse that gives you exemption. If I don't know that slavery is bad and I advocate for slavery, it's not your job to understand where I'm coming from and to let me have my beliefs and let me tell people that owning people is good for society. It would be my job to understand why my beliefs are harmful when I set them as an example and advocate for them.
The same goes for advocating for abuse and abusive relationships, like faith requires by definition. It's not my job to enable and facilitate and condone your behaviour. It's your job to understand why your beliefs are harmful when you set them as an example and/or advocate for them.
I think PP had Jordan Peterson in his ear feeding him word salads during the debate.
"A lot of little creeds running around" lmao! That's securely in my mental lexicon now!! 🤓🙌
Some of these wonderings about cows and Klingons are explored in the works of C.S. Lewis. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis has God/Jesus killed and resurrected in the form of a Lion; in his Space Trilogy, he explores whether the whole cycle (fall from grace, condemnation, redemption in Christ) would happen all over again on Venus. Of course this is tangential to your point, but I thought it worth mentioning.
He (PP) seems very confused. I'd like to see him debate a professional philosopher.
Seems meaning Matt or seemed meaning Luis?
I agree. Perspective Sophistry is very confused and needs to debate serious philosophers.
@@TheMahayanist lol professional?
@@TheMahayanist such as who? Oppy? Oppy is considered the best atheist philosopher and he is a sophist. His best arguments have been debunked
@@vegan-rising lol cope
Would be really interesting to know whether James on MDD considers any or some of the arguments - rehashed or not - believers come up with being convincing according to his worldview.
I'll say one thing about PP, he would take the gold medal in the ad hoc Olympics with the rate he was spitting them out.
Hey matt I have trouble answering a question that thiests often ask (do you think the universe came by chance ? ) I usually reply with saying I don't know , but then I thought if I don't believe that there was a consious creator or maker then doesn't this mean by default that universe came by chance , because either there is a creator or not , if not isn't this what chance is ? I would like you to correct me and show me where I failed if I did thanks ❤❤.
Can't speak for Matt, but the universe could also be necessary. It doesn't have to be chance. And there might even be more alternatives, who knows. But your I don't know is a reasonable answer, because no one does.
_I don't know_ is the right answer, because no one knows. Given that....
If we consider the idea though, what does it mean to come by chance?
If we say there is a non-zero probability of a universe appearing per unit time, then there is effectively no chance of it not happening given enough time _(yes, we could fail forever, but then we would not be here to ponder these questions. See anthropic principle)._ Obviously there is a non-zero chance of a universe, so the initial question is meaningless. What they mean to argue is that something had to make it, and then use special pleading to not apply the same rules to their deity of choice.
@@Rogstin exactly. Even god can't know if they're created.
There is currently a 100% chance the universe would turn out this way.
I calculated that by taking the number of universes exactly like ours(1) and dividing by the number of known universes (also 1)
That is how probability is determined.
Occurrences of specific outcome divided by total number of outcomes.
We have no idea if any other configuration of universe is possible because we only have one data point.
@@leebarnett2610 this comment doesn't address any other comment in this thread. 😊
I think what frustrated me the most was that the moderator wasn't keeping PerPhil on topic. If you are going to moderate, you need to be paying attention enough to recognize when someone is going off-topic and rein them back in. I'm honestly not even sure he was paying any attention at all until y'all got a bit heated and voices were raised.
I blame TV political "debates" during elections for what looks to be a growing misunderstanding of what a debate moderator is supposed to be doing.
Yeah James the mod is more interested in generating content, so he doesn't want be a real moderator who stops presenters wandering off topic or in PP case barely touching it. He thinks. correctly, if he holds debaters to points and normal debate rules the number of 'debates' will be tiny as there's few people especially on the religious side who even understand logical debate rules let alone intend to follow them.
There a slight cultural thing with Americans journos ie your political debate point, are just are very tied to this bizarre 'balance' thing. I've watched lots of non-American interviews, especially British and they are far more likely to say, 'thats just stupid and/or irreverent'. There's the famous Paxton interview where he asked the same question 14 times as t'he politician kept dodging a straight forward question.
@@user-uy6uc5ey5q Some American interviewers can drill down properly, like John Stewart; and he's a freaking comedian. The rest are access-journos more concerned with keeping their job at publicly traded media corporations and/or with more of an eye to future 'tell all' type biographies.
Have you ever seen anything on Modern Day Debate? Their moderation policy is: We don't moderate. Just "Please superchat." That, and using oddly inflected, pre-packaged niceties before just about everything the moderator says. It's bizarre and frustrating all about spectacle. Wish I watched it less lol.
When a Christian tells me that beliefs are a choice. I say: That's wonderful news, could you please choose atheism for a day then you'll understand where we are coming from (no evidence of a God). Plus I don't get to speak to too many Scientologists, so could you chooses that for a few mins so as I can hear a scientologists point of view. Actually I wouldn't mind if you could choose to be gay (as I suspect you believe is also a choice) So could you choose to be gay for just 1 minute and describe your attraction to other men?
But, this is odd, they don't or can't seem to choose any of these things? Except their single belief in their claimed God. They say things like: But I'm choosing to be Christian, not those other things.
Where I say: So you really can't choose any other religion? Damn.
I just love that comment! Just think of the effect it would have on how we understand each other if we could choose another person's point of view and set of beliefs, try it on, walk in another person's shoes. Oh, the incredible level of empathy that would be possible. But of course, it doesn't work that way, for the same reason that we can't just decide to believe things we're not convinced of.
If the subject of choosing to be gay comes up, I recommend this tid bit of a response. If you can choose to be gay or straight, you are bi.
I said that to a Christian buddy of mine and he's never brought up the subject since.
@6:10: Indeed, sometimes people say things you didn't ask them about. The nerve of some people.
29:09 Ooo that might be a bad example Matt. There's more than 700 different proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. Sometimes mathematicians just get bored.
I thought the key point of the debate was win the perfect circle analogy was expressed due to P P saying perfect mind. That whole segment after that came up was fantastic.
Right from the jump, when the guy immediately sidestepped the stated topic to do his riff on the same tired old tunes, I was just.....disappointed, actually. Not surprised, just......kinda like sitting down to a meal of military MREs. Like, you just shrug your shoulders and chew.
@@FightFilms I don't think it's necessary for Matt to grant the first point. I mean, think about it: you can really tackle both issues - the existence of a god or the specifics of Christianity - as separate issues. Like, personally for me I think the deism argument is an open book; but the way you read that book is through observation and scientific method, not by trying to create a narrative that comports with ancient stories. If you're talking about specific events that happened to a specific person within one of those specific stories, well then you need to come up with a conclusion based on who wrote them, what was their context and motivation, where did the story originate from and did they change, what evidence can you point to to justify your conclusion, etc - you can do all of that in dialogue with an open mind who hasn't accepted the first god premise. That's literally how a lot of us ended up leaving faith traditions - searching for truth, authentically, and trying to steel-man the myths we were raised with.
Perspective seemed like a disaster. He leaned completely on the idea of making a philosophical word salad to obscure the reasoning for his god belief. I don't think anything can come from him has value going forward, especially how he didn't want to answer a question or allow you to make a point, like when he immediately fired back with a question for the perfect mind point.
Jordan Peterson is setting a trend of overconfident word salad. Unfortunately, the more popular the rhetorical style gets, the more justified the group becomes. I see it as a really big problem. Trump won a presidency without the word salad. Imagine if Trump talked like JP with the edgelordness too. We would be in big trouble.
I was going to write this exact comment. Yours is said better. 😂
@Fight Film It wasn't entirely clear Perspective knew what he was saying either...
It really contrasts with scientists who try their best not to use technical jargon when explaining their work to regular folk. The ability to convey sophisticated information in layman terms requires good understanding of the concepts being explained.
I remember in the year 2011 my grandfather told me that one day people will waste their time reading my comment.🙂
This message saved my life. Best 5 seconds invested ever.
Matt my G you a funny dude xD
I started listening to the debate but realised the opening statement was immediately flawed. He misrepresented the logic by including "reason" for something contingent, rather than just understanding contingency refers to "result". Result offers no cause to consider a contingent being has a reason, ie. a purpose.
Also, the opening carries no relevance in proving one particular near-Eastern cult legend as a true story in light of the multitude of faiths that hold more weight regarding a cosmological argument - Hinduism or Buddhism for example.
I think "global skepticism" is officially the biggest oxymoron I've ever heard. "Military intelligence" just lost it's title belt.
I guess he would say that science studies the mind of god instead of a mind-independent reality.
That is what he'd say too. And I'd agree the half of that sentence, the end half.
Matt...you are a fucking hero...I could listen to you forever.
God being a universal mind that needs to use logic and god being a perfect mind that is a necessary condition for existence are not mutually exclusive propositions. Logic and learning are not mutually exclusive. Just because god doesn't learn doesn't mean he isn't using logic.
Klingon Jesus is named Kahless, who was killed in the 9th century and who will return in the 24th century. It is the "I do not bring peace but the sword" version of Jesus.
Re - Trinity crap
It could be that Jesus (assuming he existed) or the founders of Christianity, had spoken in-depth with some Hindus about the Hindu Trinity (Trimurti) and decided that this would be a BIG hit in the west, so they decided- deliberately- to incorporate a Trinitarian belief into Christianity. Such a deliberate decision would certainly explain why 'The Holy Ghost' is part of the trinity; They needed a 3rd 'Person' and couldn't think of anything or anyone, so they made up this nonsense about a 'Holy Ghost.'
Alternatively, the Hindu Trimurti makes perfect sense within Hinduism. They didn't invent an otherwise unknown character to be the 3rd part of the Hindu Trinity. Their Trimurti has The Creator, The Preserver and The Destroyer (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, if I recall correctly). To an atheist outsider, it seems like the Hindu Trinity is an integral part of their religion. It seems like a natural part of their mythology. Conversely, it appears to be forced into the Christian narrative. God and Jesus seem like obvious 'Trinitarians' since they're such an important part of the bible. But the Holy Ghost? It feels like the kind of answer someone who was grasping at straws came up with.
He did not reject the Law of Excluded Middle, he said that there is some doubt about it. And there's truth in that, c.f. Intuitionistic Logic denies P or Not P for arbitrary P.
Be aware, should you ever decide to debate that flat earther don’t expect them to actually want to talk about evidence for the flat earth. Much like the Christians you have debated on whether Christianity is true they will do everything to avoid the actual topic under question, and will attempt to side line the discussion onto irrelevant issues at every opportunity.
"He rejects excluded middle."
........ What.
I think you misunderstood his argument. His claim was that logic itself is best understood as a substance with a concrete existence, logically prior to matter. You already agree with the necessary existence of logic.
From that point the argument should be about whether or not logic is best understood as being contained in a mind. I was disappointed that this wasnt discussed at all.
I agree however that Louise didn't actually give any good arguments for why the trinity existing in christianity has any meaningful relation to this structure of logic.
I considered myself a Hegelian atheist, but this guy Perspective forced the arguments ad nauseam. However, i think that Matt needs to read "Phenomenology of Spirit" and specially, the chapter of critique of sensible certainty.
I don't. It's gibberish generation. Read Kant and Schopenhaur. The rest of the German Idealist tradition is a waste of paper. Especially Hegel.
Only Marxists need bother with Hegel.
Sensible certainty means you can't possibly know. Neither could the creator of our universe. That is certain.
Hegel, in his philosophy, criticizes the notion of sensible certainty as a limited form of knowledge. Sensible certainty refers to the immediate experience of the senses, where we rely on the information we receive through our senses to understand the world around us.
However, Hegel argues that sensible certainty is insufficient to achieve complete and true knowledge. According to him, sensory experience provides us with only a partial and subjective representation of reality. Our senses can deceive us and distort our perception, leading to a limited and superficial understanding of things.
Furthermore, Hegel maintains that sensible certainty cannot provide a solid foundation for objective knowledge. Sensory perception is changing and contingent, as our experiences can vary depending on circumstances and individual conditions. What we perceive as real at a given moment can change in another moment or in different contexts.
Hegel argues that sensible certainty also lacks the capacity to grasp the relationships and interconnectedness inherent in reality. Sensory experience is limited to the apprehension of individual objects in their isolated appearance, without understanding their place within a broader whole. According to Hegel, to fully understand the world, it is necessary to transcend sensible certainty and move towards more developed forms of knowledge, such as reason and conceptual thought.
Was this the numpty touting a 'Perfect mind' that questions itself?
Yes. It momentarily questioned itself while existing outside time.
@@thekwjiboo lol, momentarily, outside time
Thanks Matt. I have yet to be disappointed with your content.
5:00 2 + 2 = 4 because it is a consequence of the axioms of arithmetic - it is defined that way, and it is not a natural part of the universe. For some reason, god botherers do not appreciate this.
What is a god botherer? Is it an atheist, or a theist? I know many Jews that say Yahweh-El is more bothered by false gods and misunderstandings of Adonai than by atheists who follow the objective morality without seeking cronyism with any gods.
@@letsomethingshine Here in UK a god-botherer is a proselytizer.
Spot on!
The reason why all serious debates between theists and atheists end in complete embarrassment for theists, is because they’re trying to defend a position that IS NOT TRUE. However amazing you are at debating and philosophy and theology, if the core position you’re defending is nonsense, you’re going to fail at some point. That’s it. Plain and simple. If god existed as described in the Bible, it wouldn’t be so damn complicated (read: apparently impossible) to build a good case for him.
@@FightFilmsI know your insecurities are making you attempt to find gotchas. That wasn’t it. You do realize that atheism is in fact the disbelief or lack of a belief in a god/gods. They can also claim there are no gods even though that’s not a required position. I get it. If you don’t have proof for your magical deity the only thing left is to attack the others position.
@@SupremeSquiggly I can’t see fight film’s comment; I’m sure it was nonsense, once again providing evidence for my point ;)
Can you truly be a Catholic vegan? When every Sunday the cracker you eat is said to be turned to the actual flesh of Jesus? Just a random thought lol
The only way to make sense of it is if its all metaphor, even the real bits, and you put yourself in the shoes of an author of the time and place.
It still wouldn't make sense to a rational person
@Omega Weapon I mean, how much sense does it have to make before someone can say it's true?
@@Noughtgate Are you referring specifically to biblical stories or the arguments put forth by PP. I suspected it's the former, so in regards to that, they need to be verified ala the scientific method and basic logic. The supernatural attestations by definition cannot be so rationally we can say there's no reason to believe they are true until someone can prove they are.
@@_Omega_Weapon I refer to religious mythology in its entirety, which biblical stories are an instance of.
It's a toss up whether debating a philosophy major or a Muslim is worse.
The idea that logic requires a "grounding" is nonsensical, and that, given that need, it must be an authority figure just compounds the gibberish. As far as I can tell, the implication is that a preexisting mind imposed logical order on a universe in which A could equal Not-A, or whatever. I'm (not really) sorry, but that's just nuts.
Do you plan on making a response video to Trent Horn on claims arent evidence?
Why does Matt refer to the principles of identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle as 'nomological laws'? I have not seen this usage before.
I didn't ... I was worrying what he said. Watch the debate
@@SansDeity Then I misheard what you said here th-cam.com/video/kDMpQJweSiE/w-d-xo.html
2:15 He must be referring to that ‘Witsit’ guy…
I don't know why they keep having that guy on MDD, of all their guests he's the most obvious troll who has no interest in good faith discussion, you can literally see it on his face
@@TheLightlock And what’s really depressing is last time I saw him on debating flat earth, the comment section was all in favor of the flat earth team and not the “globies”.
@@matthewwhite8882 yeah I don't know if they ring a bell and they all just show up or that there's some hinky alt account stuff going on or whatever but the comments are always full people on the flat earth side.
Witsit is not a troll but a delusional and arrogant flat earther. The comment section is full of his entourage because normal people don't watch these kind of debates on mdd anymore for lack of moderation.
Matt, are you still going to debate Daniel Haqiqatjou?
He said he is going to at next Debatecon.
@@synergygaming65 but he also mentioned his opening statement video for secular humanism that he's going to release.
If he means that the world is a product of God's mind it sounds like he's leaning towards the simulation theory. When it comes to the trinity it is like a cube - each side connected and if connected is the total entity.
Imagine a book written by multiple authors - within this book you wouldn't have one mind but multiple which would basically form what the noosphere idea was about - a large collective of minds (information - the total sum of information available).
If you can listen to Eric Hernandez you can listen to anyone.
the most difficult debates seem to be with those that just don't get logic
I’m surprised you didn’t press harder on the whole “perfect mind having an “atemporal moment of doubt.”
Especially when “why have you forsaken me?” specifically makes an accusation… from a perfect mind… within the question. It’s vastly different from a simultaneous doubt which is clarified in the same instant…
God… didn’t know He would doubt or what the resolution would be?
I would have to go back and rewatch to be sure, but I remember Matt pressing quite hard on the "atemporal moment" stuff. I remember it got really heated, there was so much pushing. How much more could he have pushed?
@@dingdongism He did push, but PP didn’t seem to grasp that he was explaining what was necessarily a sequence of events, trying to eliminate a sequence by eliminating time… which results in a contradictory state of both doubt and non-doubt. There was just so much obvious wrong, without even touching on the fact that the whole of it is indistinguishable from sheer imagination.
Lewis barely got into the specifics of Christianity. The debate should have been about is the proposition of god existing true.
It's a common way to do theology: Comb diverse philosophical texts. and pick out contextless fragments that sound vaguely like religious doctrines.
Hegel divides things into groups of three - so that sounds a bit like the trinity. Berkeley says the universe is an idea in the mind of god - that sounds vaguely like god creating the universe. The result is a cloud of disconnected, and sometime mutually exclusive, "arguments", each of which takes a lot of knowledge to refute, after which it's easy to switch to another.
I wonder how much they pay the debaters.
How do you reject excluded middle and actually have a background in philosophy?
There are all sorts of reasons to deny the law of excluded middle, such as paradoxes. "This statement is false", the law would imply that that statement is either true or false, but it is neither.
@@APaleDot Excluded middle would actually imply either true or not true and false or not false, and it can be both not true and not false. A paradox can be not true and not false, but it's a paradox and not not a paradox
@@TheLightlock
It's not so easy to escape these logical traps. It seems to be a fundamental problem with categorization.
Consider the following statement: "this statement is both false and not a paradox".
If this statement is a paradox, then it is false, since the statement claims it is not a paradox.
If this statement is false, then its true, because it claims it is false and false statements are not paradoxes.
If this statement is true, then it is false, because it claims it is false.
@@APaleDot I feel like we're just repeating the last exchange, because this actually is pretty easy and very similar to the last example. The statement you provided is not true and a paradox. You keep using the language of true and false when the proper description is true/not true and false/not false. You think it's going to be more of an issue because this is a compound statement, which I would say needs to be examined by its individual components instead of as a whole, but even if you take it as a whole it isn't difficult and it doesn't avoid the law of excluded middle
@@TheLightlock
I guess my problem is that I don't understand how you meaningfully distinguish between not-true and false. You can say that if a statement isn't satisfied, then it is not-true but that doesn't mean its false. You then have to show that it isn't a paradox in order to show that it is false. But it seems like the only way to show that something is a paradox is to show that it is neither true nor false, which is circular.
Hit the nail on the head!
The difference between the consistency of information and predictive ability that is presented by scientific endeavor, and the consistency of information and the predictive ability that is presented by christianity... there's absolutely no contest. It's night and day, and the more they try, the wider the difference becomes. ☝🏾✨
I think a very small % of christians believe in aliens just because it opens up these questions. As for the trinity, it can be whatever you want it to be. If i was christian i would say that God being an incomprehensible being makes sense to me. We expect our puny brains to understand an infinite god even though we already know we cannot comprehend infinity?
Matt, I'd never seen you in this position before but you clearly lost this debate. That kid is more intelligent than you and you just couldn't follow his reasoning. And that clearly pissed you off...
I encourage everyone to watch this debate.
Cool story. Sock
If Jesus was part God and part human, shouldn't he have gestated FASTER than the typical 9 months?
Shouldn't everyone have been stunned that he was born only a month after gestation? Or a week?
Maybe he didn't have enough God genes...
PP basically rewrote the Bible through his own interpretation and borrowing from other theologians and philosophers. Underwhelming to say the least
Which canon? which interpretation? Why would bibliolatry ever be a good thing? (these aren't questions for you, unless you like to think even deeper about things you probably already would agree with or are aware of at least tangentially)
@@letsomethingshine I appreciate non-bibliolatry. But the debate was centered around whether Christianity was true. That requires defending crucial aspects such as the resurrection and the Trinity. Instead PP focused primarily on defining his “grounding” of logic through god and comparing it with a naturalist interpretation (that wasn’t the debate). He defined god as tri-Omni, benevolent and immeasurable, all aspects that can’t be proven and must be accepted on faith alone. I was underwhelmed because the debate contained too much word salad edging on intellectual masturbation. It lacked focus on the topic at hand.
Technically Hegel did, and PS just copies Hegel.
new and better mathematics are sought after constantly. sorry that last bit about not looking for different ways once u have found a sufficient way seems antithetical to skepticism and science. question everything always.
More like a debait and switch
🙂🙂🙂
really funny conflating idealism with scientific realism and even funnier that christianity itself is almost never mentioned but instead most of these apologists stay in vague theistic philosophical waters ;-)
I found the debate atrocious, and PP simply wasted a ton of time by saying not much to nothing.
Kahless is the Klingons' version of Jesus so you don't need to bring Jesus to the Klingons. :) 😘
I love these videos
I hope you read comments. Aron Ra has told me an Atheist Conservative is wrong. Do you agree?
Context of this purported statement by Aron-Ra? Atheism is a position on a single question while what we describe as present day conservatives tend to misunderstand as many topics as possible. Almost willfully.
@TheLightlock To answer your questions, the religion known as Christianity was brought into being by the apostle Paul as you may know. Jesus played no part in its formation at all. Paul never met the individual that his religion is based on in person.
Muslims believe that Jesus existed also and was a great prophet and teacher too. Both of these religions may be correct in that respect. They both believe Christ to be the Saviour also.
I find both of these man-made religions to be divisive, however, and the cause of much strife in the world, which is why I belong to neither of them or to any other.
I believe Christ is a redeeming principle, not a person. Jesus "The Christ" was said to be the bearer of this redeeming principle. For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. The life of a human being caused murder and other mis-deeds to spread throughout the world. And so the death of a human being who has committed no crime is the result and a metaphysical necessity in order to atone for this, as it is a spiritual law that grave misdeeds cannot go unchecked as they will lead to the degredation and eventual destruction of the species. It is a matter of cause and effect, and not the arbitrary decision of any god. In Eastern religions this is known as Karma, as you may know. Kristna (Lord Krishna/Vishnu) represents the Christ/Saviour principle in these religions but was not a real human being. Hope that helps.
Oh I'm very sure it didn't remotely help anyone, sorry to say. Also is there a reason you didn't reply in your own comment thread?
I am fully aware that there are many who are totally beyond my help in their understanding of these matters. Their minds have been so thoroughly conditioned to think in a certain way through entertaining the same type of thoughts repeatedly over a long period of time that they are beyond the help of anyone now, perhaps. Thinking the same type of thoughts over and over can cause veritable grooves in the grey matter of the brain which prevents them from accepting new ideas and ways of thinking.
There are others whose own incredulity and personal pride will simply not allow them to entertain the idea that they have been misled by others in their beliefs.
To answer your last question, when I clicked on the reply link to your first comment the Reply text area that I am now typing in did not appear despite several attempts. This time it worked fine though.
@@gemganuhay661 Have you ever heard the phrase poisoning the well?
@@TheLightlock If you wish to be merely a Matt Dillahunty parrot then go ahead, but find someone else to exercise your memorized, atheistic attempts at arguments on as I'm not interested. Don't expect a reply if you post any more comments on this thread as I have better things to do than read such nonsense.
@@gemganuhay661 yes I'm sure much better things like committing fallacies and misspelling Krishna, I'd hate to divert your precious attention away from that
This guy made a mistake when studying philosophy. Seems like he wanted to learn how to argue it rather than asking himself it it is true. Is what he presented the reason that he is a Catholic? I sincerely doubt it.
Perspective Philosophy didn't have his philosophy in perspective. Once you cornered him on a logical fallacy, he started rotating!😅
@@FightFilms I don't remember exactly, but it was something about Matt pointing out: If A, and B are true than C is the only possible right answer, and PP agreeing with Matt, and then in a very similar argument later he tells Matt the very same logic doesn't apply to god and offering an illogical answer making D a possible answer. When Matt doubled down to show him how it cannot be logical PP said it's not only logical, but the very roots of Logic, which even a freshman Philosophy student would call bullshit.
PP understands philosophy really well, but he misapplies it and even abandons logic to "prove" his god. Frank Turek, WLC, and others do it all the time, but swoon people with their philosophy degree in the hopes people will just accept their word salad.
I can prove gods exist. Humans are little gods by definition and charactor(technology). Humans exist.
The definition of a god is nothing like humans are.
@9:21-9:26 "...science is mind independent." No it's not Matt. Here's the definition of science from Oxford sources simply by Googling the definition of science: "The systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained."
Don't like this definition? Here's another one: "The pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence." From the Science Council.
Who would study or pursue science if they didn't have a mind? Can you show another species without the use of a mind applying science besides the human race right now? I don't think so. If you are making the claim that science is extant outside of a human mind, you're going to have prove it.
If you're going to argue that scientific realism is mind independent, that too is problematic. Scientific realism is "the view that the universe described by science is real regardless of how it may be interpreted." From Wikipedia. But who would hold that view outside of a human mind? My point is that you need a mind to hold that view or do science in the first place.
that's not what mind independent means lol, he's just saying it's nonsubjective
@@TheLightlock Same difference- I've seen him make this argument on other shows like the Hang-Up and the Sunday Show. All minds are essentially subjective. What's the point of saying something like "mind independent then?!"
And if you're going to argue that the term "mind-independent" is attributable to some form of philosophy like metaphysical realism or objective realism that's even worse.
These are just concepts that people came with that cannot be actually accessed by the human senses or human minds. There's no taking off the rose-tinted lenses. To apply science, which has its basis on the natural and physical world to a philosophical framework as "mind independent" would be senseless and oxymoronic.
@@nagilumsnangilima What do you mean by "minds are subjective?" And mind independent means what it says on the tin, it isn't dependent on a mind or minds. Might as well steal one of Matt's since we're talking about him, are the rules of chess dependent on what I think about it or what you think about it?
@@TheLightlock I mean that every human being holds their own personal views, beliefs, perceptions and biases, and that affects how they see the world no matter how objective they try to be. Hence, no one is capable of truly accessing objective reality. We may have a concept of what objective reality is, but we cannot actually see it or experience it. The 18th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant is famous for coming up with the rose-tinted glasses analogy: where the glasses represent our subjectivity, and the external world beyond them may be objective, but we don't know because we can't take off the damned glasses ---prompting some philosophers to question whether even objective reality exists!
Objective reality-turn-turn-turn! Tell me the objective lesson that I should objectively learn!😍
"I dont research my opponents"
Thats the issue. If you don't understand their presuppositions and worldview, you're going to struggle to understand their argument. This is what came through in the debate.
Hegelian absolute idealism is absolutely a scientific realist position. It was in fact the route back to scientific realism after Kant lead us to scientific anti realism.
Rejecting the excluded middle is by now a standard position in philosophy, and I'm surprised you havent heard of this before. How do you interpret the liar paradox? The rejection of the law is just that statements can have truth values which are neither true nor false.
I am a complete amateur with logic so I'm asking this sincerely, but how is the liar paradox a problem for the law of excluded middle? Even if a statement is a paradox it can have a negation, so if it's P=this statement is false, ~P is still true, right?
I don't think it's that unusual to toss out the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). It's actually becoming more commonplace in logic and mathematics. For example, a proposed new foundation for mathematics called Type Theory tosses out LEM, but instead proves that LEM holds in most contexts regardless.
I don't get this thing where you do a debate and do a whole other thing where you review the debate YOURSELF and declare YOURSELF the winner: "Hey self, how did I do in that debate? I crushed it self!"
lewis is a hegelian pretending to be a Christian
👽< Died for your sins!
under a god that is all knowing all powerful eternal with a plan and is sovereign the following verses show that anyone dying for anyone's sins would be irrelevant.
---------
All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purpose, based on what he had decided from the vyery beginning.
By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works
And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith
It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. ...Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
-------
Everything was determined as the God created. No aspect of the individual was considered in determining the assignment of either slavery in heaven or eternal torture or destruction. Free will is irrelevant. Some made to serve vast majority made to burn arbitrarily. If any aspect of the person was a determining factor that would be earning salvation anyway. Not need for Jesus. Either way Christianity doesn't work. The only ways I've seen people try to get around this is by limiting the God's attributes in some way. Disproving their own god
Feel free to correct my on my logic here anyone.
Something that cannot be verified cannot be true.
Not-falsifiable is equivalent to not-verifiable.
Christianity is not falsifiable.
Therefore, Christianity is not verifiable.
Therefore, Christianity cannot be true.
Verificationism is different than falsificationism.
You can't verify your existence either.
Premise 1 isn't true. Verification isn't a requirement for truth. Does some planet x in a distant galaxy contain at least 1 rock on its surface? We may never be able to verify but it could still be true. Or if you prefer, consider godel's incompleteness theorem.
Falsifiability is a better standard. That which cannot be falsified is basically vacuous. Christians may not follow you there but it takes some mental gymnastics to pretend that the theistic argument has ever been falsifiable.
IMO attempting to debunk grand religious claims using some pithy syllogism is misguided. We don't need a deductive proof of the falsehood of Christianity and christians believe due to many complex psychological reasons that can't be wiped away with some "slick" logic.
Whether or not we can demonstrate something is independent of whether or not it is true. At one point in time, people didn't know everything was made up of atoms. They had all sorts of proposed solutions. But it was always true that atoms exist and form one level of our material reality.
Matt you mentioned that you always try to debate the topic not the person. What's your opinion on people who try to debate the person over the agreed upon topic in a debate?
You really don't know the answer to this question?
IF someone did that, they would completely embarrass themselves. It’d just be an adhominem.
But that’s not what Matt is referring to here. Preparing for the debate opponent just means familiarizing yourself with their arguments ahead of time so you can have rebuttals prepared to their specific talking points.
There is nothing wrong with doing that. If Matt felt that a was in some way bad, he would not publicly release his opening statement before the debate.
As a subscriber of both yours and his, I'm often underwhelmed by his arguments for the necessity of god and your arguments against veganism. Would like to see a debate between the two of you on veganism
Matt has made it quite clear that veganism is not an interest.
@@BigRalphSmith which is a shame, since it's a central moral issue of our time. Veganism is the moral baseline when it comes to our relationship with other animals. Matt has expressed that his morality includes the well-being of other sentient individuals, then pays for their corpses. It's not a tenable position
@@stove5035It only seems to be for some vegans.
@@stove5035 You'll get over it... or you won't.
@@BigRalphSmith I'm not losing sleep over someone whose logic I otherwise respect doing motivated reasoning to justify doing what most other people do. I can advocate to literally any non-vegan to make a difference. It's just sad
Matt's review is overly generous to PP. He spewed nothing but nonsense dressed up as philosophy. Maybe it even was philosophy according to some, but if so, it was very bad philosophy.
Is evolution a theory or a fact. Honest question
Both, theory just means model, the theory of evolution is a framework describing the phenomenon
@@TheLightlock So what is a hypothesis, then?
@@dorkception2012 a proposed explanation that you test to form a conclusion, which may or may not support the hypothesis
@@TheLightlock I thought theory means 'proven by ideas' in short.
Since theories are facts as we know it.
@@dorkception2012 I don't want to speak outside my expertise, I'm not a linguist nor a scientist, but also I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "proven by ideas," could you elaborate? I don't necessarily have an objection, I think my brain is just giving up on me right now lol
Matt look at that opening graphic, stop stealing the designs from 1980s fast food employee traning videos, your going to get sued.
They Fired this guy from Atheist Experience
You're a pretty stupid liar. I quit.