Yes, I do read the title cards! And also, that turtlecorn was adorable. Thank you for addressing these topics that many in the YT-sphere don't. It's a real blessing. Take care!
I love this topic, and I approve of your first three minutes surveying it :) Good job :) A second problem from recombination theories maybe worth mentioning is the one where it gets you straight to an infinite past being possible, by recombining lots of time segments.
Here is a syllogism. Feedback welcome: A. Suppose physical reality consists of an ordered sequence of moments (A-Theory of Time) B. In order for a given moment to happen, the sequence of all prior moments must finish up first. (like how in order to eat a sandwich, making the sandwich must first finish) C. If physical reality has always existed, then any sequence of prior moments is never-ending and hence never finishes up D. Therefore, if physical reality has always existed, then no moment could happen. (B & C -> D)
Interesting approach. First I'm thinking about paralleling what you said at ~5:30 with my own general principle against the theist. Perhaps we can say that conceptions of God so frequently turn out to produce contradictions, as you were saying for infinite causal chains. For example if God exists we get the classical question about a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it. Perhaps he could make an unstoppable force hit an immovable object, send people back in time to kill their grandfather or become their own grandfather, etc. Theodicy is a field because reconciling conceptions of God with the existence of suffering is so difficult. What do you reckon? The parallel picks up again at 6:40, where I could likewise say that 'all the worldviews which allow for the possibility of [God] take a hit in their probability, due to the general principle derived from all those paradoxes we looked at.'
Nice video! Suppose we accept that general principle, and suppose that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability. We mustn't forget, though, the whole panoply of hits to the probability of worldviews *not* allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains in virtue of that very denial. E.g., they'll arguably be led into necessarily discrete views of time and space, spaces necessarily finite in extent, pasts necessarily finite in extent, will have to take a stance about hotly contested empirical questions in physics about the nature of fields and whatnot [as Pruss points out in his book], etc. It's not clear which probability hit is worse. And so even granting that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability in virtue of that, this doesn't imply that worldviews *not* allowing for such are thereby probabilistically superior. [I know you didn't deny this latter claim; but it needs to be kept in mind, since things aren't as simple as some viewers of the video might take away [e.g., they might mistakenly think 'nice! the probability of causal finitist worldviews has gone up considerably!'].] (Footnote: note that I am not here granting that general principle (and nor am I here denying it); I am supposing it arguendo.)
Hi joe 🙌🏻 Can you make an elaborate video about Causal Finitism , UPD , etc. And it's developments till date so that people like me can actually understand the current state of affairs about this? BTW , Logos has a video on UPD. He argues that it's consistent with Causal Finitism. You should check it out. I think making an elaborate video would be a huge help to so many as the Kalam and Contingency is now kind of dependent on CF
@@Nithin_sp hey my dude! In some sense, I already have done that - see my Kalam playlist, wherein i go through extensively the dialectic surrounding the UPD, causal finitism, and so on. I’m my two responses to Trent Horn from a long while back, for instance, I go through a lot of the dialectic; and the same is true of my recent video with Malpass and Morriston and the subsequent lecture of my own within that video. Finally, I’ll be doing precisely such a thing later on this year in my Kalam series with Stephen Woodford🙂❤️
There's nothing hotly contested about those things you mentioned. For example, the claim "space is infinitely large" could never be empirically justified. You could only say that it's larger than the largest distance you can measure. But, as far as science is concerned, space can never be said to be literally infinite, only large enough that mathematical models where it's considered infinite are a good enough approximation. This is generally the case for claims involving infinity. For more on this, watch Sabine's video "is infinity real?" here on youtube
The critics of causal-finitist aren’t necessarily causal-infinitists, they are just not-necessarily-causal-finitists who thinks it’s silly to rule out infinite chains in general from these arguments. Some of them might even prefer finite theories on other grounds. I might lean that way, I’m honestly not entirely sure. But I do think infinite causal theories are plausibly coherent and might plausibly be real.
I have my own reasons for not believing in infinite causal chains, but idk, either this video was put together poorly, the arguments are actually lacking, or I'm stupid because I don't see the contradictions.
I think the simplest way I saw it explained was that an infinite number of causal events (over an infinite amount of time) cannot have occurred, otherwise we'd have never arrived at the present. It's like saying you reached zero after counting down from infinity. When would you have started? How long did it take? Why didn't you finish yesterday instead of today? It becomes absurd. Potential or conceptual infinity is fun to toss around, but actual infinity is impossible.
I appreciate your well thought out arguments. I feel it's important to understand that Mathematicians have "tamed" infinity a long time ago. For them it's just another tool for understanding. I find it quite possible that philosophical musings on the infinite just founder from different points of view.
Infinity is useful as an abstract tool for understanding hypotheticals (i.e. what would the limit of this function be as it approaches infinity?), but it can't be used in the real physical world. I wouldn't call this "tamed", that seems like a strange way to put it.
@@Pyr0Ben Does the Univers die? (i.e. cease to exist in the far future)? What is the mechanism for the destruction of existence? Provide evidence for this.
@@user-bb3ej3iv9y Sure! I'm sure you're familiar with the law of Entropy (2LoT) that states that in any given system, useable energy always decreases and disorder always decreases (absent specific stipulations). Eventually, every star will fizzle out, all heat will spread out to absolute zero, and all light will run out of energy. This is called the heat death of the universe, and it's inevitable. Theoretically time and space maybe could potentially persist for an eternity, but without useable matter and energy, do you really have a universe? This alone precludes the existence of the universe to the infinite past. If this universe had always existed, the heat death would have happened an eternity ago. If it has always existed, it would quite literally be a miracle.
This is an interesting argument, but it would need a lot more than one or two examples to be convincing. After all, to reject causal infinitism on the basis of this argument, we would have to conclude not just that any given causal chain is likely to be hiding some contradiction, but that it is likely that every infinite causal change hides some contradiction (note the difference in where the quantifier is placed - the latter is a much stronger claim than the former). At this point, I still think it is extremely implausible that any of the more innocuous infinite causal chains (like "A1 was caused by A2 one second earlier, which was caused by A3 one second before that, and so on") lead to contradictions, let alone all of them. In fact, I think that to reject the logical possibility of a chain like that would also require you to reject the logical possibility of arithmetic itself, since that chain I just described is just an ordered list of events with the same ordering as the natural numbers (just replaced the transitive closure of the "was caused by, one second earlier" relation with
Two comments: 1) I don't see how your principle can be called "general". There are literally infinitely many causal chains resulting in contradictions and infinitely many not resulting in contradictions. That you've heard of more of them resulting in contradictions is pretty much irrelevant when there are literally infinitely many of both. You need a quantitative assessment of how many result in contradictions for your principle to be called "general". 2) How is that a contradiction at 6:10? Say the chain is at the interval (1,2]. When the black ball reaches 1, nothing happens (there's no other ball at 1 the way you constructed the chain). At any point after reaching 1, the color of the ball is undefined, because the limit as n goes to infinity of (-1)^n doesn't exist. The ball can't be said to be black and white at the same time.
Just because it allows more room for theism, doesn't mean that theism is more likely, it just means that theism is not contradictory in this singular case. Which if other contradictions still arise, has no bearing on probability. I think that the universe is finite in that it stretches 13.7 billion years. However, that doesn't mean the universe therefore needs a cause. To have a "cause" you'd need to have a change that was caused. The universe is not a change. If time is infinite, then we don't even need to discuss this. If time is finite, then what does it mean to say the universe was caused? The universe didn't come into existence any more than a yard stick at its first inch. To suggest a change, you'd have to say that there was a state of affairs where X=Y and it was followed by X=Z. There was no point in time, where the universe did not exist. Because to have time is to have the universe. It doesn't make sense to say there was "nothing" before the universe because you'd have to say there is nothing nowhere and never. Which is to say nothing doesn't exist. Nothing is not a state of affairs. Even if time is finite, it makes no sense to say the universe was proceeded at all. I often hear apologists say that atheists claim that the universe "came from nothing". Maybe this is true, but I certainly don't believe it came from nothing, nothing is not something from which to come. However, it often appears that apologists are the ones who truly believe this. They believe their God made the universe come from nothing. Their God which is described as "timeless and spaceless", which again, is to say it exists nowhere and never.
Allow me to over-contemplate causal finitism: I believe most of the paradoxes supporting causal finitism can be resolved by developing a more structured view of events and causes. In most of the versions of these paradoxes that I am familiar with (my familiarity being admittedly limited), the events occupy discrete points on the continuous line of time (eg. the instantaneous moment that the grim reaper kills you). However, events are not typically instantaneous. When two billiard balls collide, there is a small time frame wherein the balls compress into each other, then expand out from each other. In light of this, we might propose that all events (or at least those that hold causal power), must occupy a finite amount of time. A mathematical formalism for this would be to demand that events with causal powers occupy open subsets of the line of time (or, more interestingly, the continuous space of states, but let us focus on what is considered in these arguments for causal finitism). Consider the grim reaper paradox. There is certainly a range of time wherein you are "being killed" by a particular reaper. For simplicity, let us assume that this time spans the instant that his sieve makes contact with your throat to the instant it exits the back of your neck. However quickly the reapers performs this action, there is no way (under the configuration suggested in the argument) for the earlier reapers to complete the process before the next begins. Thus, there cannot be a sense in which one reaper alone is responsible for your death. It may still intuitively seem as though there should be a first reaper to begin the strike. This can also be dismissed using a separate principle. Consider two positively charged particles approaching a negatively charged particle, one further away from the negatively charged particle. Does the closer particle push on the negatively charged particle before the further one? Certainly not. Instead, both push on the negatively charged particle at the same time, the closer having a greater force then the further. Likewise, the effect on the sieves on your throat must be such that all of the reaper's sieves have some impact (though trivially small), with those closer having a greater cutting power. All of this is to demonstrate that I do not believe the arguments for causal finitism work even to lower the probability of causal infinitude. Rather, they seem to create confusion by naively applying structure of point events with a countable cardinality to a continuous metaphysical structure.
Here’s the long and short of it: when x depends on y causally, x usually comes after y chronologically. It’s only when you get into weird scenarios like God using His foreknowledge to intentionally bring about a contradiction that we can get the backwards dependencies needed for the paradox to work. So, if we want to say that it’s a general principle that we should be skeptical of future-oriented infinite chains, it seems like this principle has far less support than the principle for skepticism towards infinite regresses.
I’ve never seen any strong version of these. Usually, they’re like “God tells an Angel not to blow the horn unless the Angel the next day won’t”. In which case, I feel the Angel just needs to say “Hey, Angel tomorrow, I’m going to blow the horn. Do you have any issues?” “No, do as the Lord demands”
@@ApologeticsSquared Theists believe in a God with the the appropriate foreknowledge and capabilities, just not the desire to do something like that. Neither atheists nor theists similarly believe in an infinite past chain of grim reapers, so... I think I'd swing the other way. At least from the perspective of a theist who already believes in God, it's only when you get into _even weirder_ scenarios than God using his foreknowledge in unexpected ways, that you find these paradoxes for infinite regresses. It's just that people talk about infinite regress paradoxes a lot, is my impression. Actually that might be a good explanation of why you found an abundance of paradoxes being 'hidden by infinite causal chains'. How many inconsistent stories could we tell about getting into a taxi? Probably infinitely many, but it hasn't had the historical popularity to generate lots of them in the literature.
I think endless futures are ok. Just as there are infinitely many finite numbers, so you can have infinitely many “finite” future events (i.e. events with a finite past). With an infinite past, you not only have an infinite number of “finitely” past events, but also the fact that the “first event” was infinitely many events ago. So I guess the issue with an infinite past is: “how can we have a first event that was infinitely long ago?” But the equivalent question on an infinite future (“how can we have a last event that is infinitely far ahead?”) isn’t a problem, because we’re not claiming there *is* a last event. (It *might* not break things even if there is a “last event” in the infinite future, because nothing is causally dependent on it.)
@@MatthewFearnley I think I can mirror both your points, I'm not seeing a symmetry breaker yet. For the first one it's the same for the past as the future: either way you can number all the events or days with finite numbers stretching away from the present, and you never need get to a number 'infinity'. The infinite quantity of finite numbers is all you need to completely label an infinite past, just like with an infinite future. For your second point, just like you said you aren't claiming there's a last event, I can say (as a proponent of infinite pasts, at least for the sake of argument) that I'm not claiming there's a first event. Also! Could you help me to better see that an infinite past or future isn't synonymous with an endless past or future? :) On the surface it feels contradictory, having an end beyond an infinite stretch of time.
I do wonder if there's another approach here. Say if there were a casual sequence where 1 is the present and its cause is 2 going in the past infinitely. We can see 1 is contingent upon 2, 2 upon 3 and so on. This means every single causal event is contingent, which means the infinite causal sequence would likewise be contingent. But if it is contingent then it could be different, but if we think of how we could make it different we could say change 5 which would make 4,3,2,&1 different... But we can't change 5 without changing 6, and we can't change 6 without changing 7. So as we can see we can't change any one causal event without changing its prior cause. But because there is no first cause, this means that we can't change anything in the causal sequence. Thus we arrive at a contradiction, the infinite causal sequence both can and can't be different. The only potential objection I could see to this is if someone claimed the infinite set can't be different as some sort of brute fact... But given that any finite set of causal events doesn't amount to necessity for the set itself, how could one derive necessity from an infinite set of causal events? And the other problem is if they're already going to appeal to necessity within the infinite set then why not use Occam's razor and just appeal to necessity in the form of a first cause?
You had an argument in the beginning about heights and comparisons. The form of your probabilistic argument could be phrased equally as well for that case. Some theories with heights have contradictions. Therefore any theory of heights should take a probabilistic hit. Does that seem reasonable to you?
At 5:40: _"Quick example... That right there is actually a Contradiction!..._ _And bam you get a contradiction. The point will both be black _*_AND_*_ not black..."_ WHAT?!? How so though?!? According to the logical law of excluded middle that specific point is either black *OR* not black before and even after that _"bam"._ Why should that _"bam"_ make out of an OR an AND? Because you or we cannot tell with certainty, what the number "infinity" is supposed to be - even or odd? That still doesn't make infinity to be both - an even AND odd number. What is going on here? Why? Yeah, we might not be able to tell with certainty, that after that _"bam"_ the point is black with certainty or that point is not black with certainty. But that won't entail, that point to be both black AND not black after that _"bam"._ It's still the case, that the point is either black OR not black after that _"bam"._ We just cannot tell it with certainty, which one is it exactly, since of the insufficient description of this scenario and the number "infinity" to be an even number with certainty or to be an odd number with certainty. What is going on here? OMG - Oh My Goodness.
@@jaskitstepkit7153 And yet you responded to my question any way, even though according to you there supposed to be no answer to that question. So I guess, that there is some answer to my question after all.
@@jaskitstepkit7153 Besides that, how about my actual question here of "How that _"bam"_ is supposed to have made out of an OR an AND?"? Is there an answer to that question of mine and if so, then what is that answer?
Bro, Why does God create people who'd ultimately choose not to believe in Him and thereby being condemned to hell? 🤔 Also, what do you think of the following argument: The Argument from Modality 1. God exists in all possible worlds. 2. The Universe is a contingent thing 3. The Universe does not exist in all possible worlds where God exists. 4. Therefore, the existence of God does not explain the existence of the Universe. 5. The existence of the Universe is explained by God in a contingent state of mind as the Universe only exists in a possible world where God has made the choice to create the Universe. 6. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the Universe is a brute contingency 7. Naturalists could appeal to the existence of the Universe as a brute contingency 8. Therefore, the theistic model is completely insignificant as naturalism provides a simpler explanation.
The infinities themselves are not the cause of contradictions. When specifying relations between things, we use some sort of equations. Sometimes equations have solutions and sometimes they don’t. To completely nail down relations on infinite sets you usually need infinitely many equations. If you have non-compatible equations there are no solutions. That’s the cause of contradictions in general. If you pick equations that play nicely with each other you get no contradiction. For infinite sequences sometimes there are constraints on the limiting boundary conditions. Those just correspond to some equation. So you have to be extra careful. But you can be and if you are there are no contradiction. It’s not about the infinities.
The Grim´s Reaper paradox is not a true paradox. If you accept that a segment can be divided infinitely, the paradox disappears. If you do not accept that a segment can be divided infinitely, the conditions are not met for you to present the scenario where the paradox develops. On the other hand, the universe does not show causal chains. It is a wrong interpretation of causality.
The grim messenger paradox gets around the first concerns. Although i'm not sure what you mean by the universe not having a causal history. Could you please explain?
@@notnpc7965 You say: "The grim messenger paradox gets around the first concerns."! How? You say: "Although i'm not sure what you mean by the universe not having a causal history. Could you please explain?" I am not saying that the universe does not show causality but that in the universe a causal chain cannot be distinguished where each transformation corresponds to only one cause. In each transformation, a number of factors concur simultaneously. It is not a chain where one can follow the sequence of links back to their original anchor. Each transformation is the result of multiple interactions where each factor is also affected by the interaction.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd In the messenger paradox they pass a paper from eternity past and if they receive it without a number they write their number on it.
Three comments: 1)I would have liked if you had written "boolean logic vs probability" since probabilities are part of many logic systems, they are just not part of a boolean logic system. 2)For the paradox with the black/white points in a 2D world, could you give me the name of the paradox? The way you formulated the paradox really does not seem to give you a contradiction and i am not familiar with this paradox in specific. 2)I think you sell your principle a bit short. A better general principle would be to say, that any argument containing any infinite elements should lose some credence. Since in any infinite element it is easy to hide a contradiction. Since god is an infinite being in many many ways (all the omnis), by this principle, our credence in theistic world views should be very low. Point is, that the argument seems to be correct, since it is very easy to hide contradiction in infinities. But it is an double edged sword, since most worldviews contain infinities, some more than others.
I think I can clarify some of that. I don't know what the paradox is called, but essentially you have an infinite number of points in a finite space lined up starting with black on the right side going left. If you move a black point to this line from the left side you can't determine what will change color because they're alternating colors infinitely. Concerning the principle applying to God, there are two reasons why it doesn't. First, God is only infinite in a qualitative sense not a quantitative sense. Omniscience and omnipotence don't imply that God has infinite power or infinite knowledge, just that he has all power and all knowledge. Second, the principle of causal finitism would only apply to infinite sequences, not infinite quantities.
@@chipan9191 I think i understand. Its essentially the question of "is infinity odd or even?" Saying that the omnis only mean that god has "all of" that property leads to some implications you might not want. While it isn't quite apparent with omniscience, i think it is easy to see with omnipotence. Saying that omnipotence means that god has ALL the power, implies that no-one else has any power. In other words nobody could affect any state of affairs. And the moment god would give/lend/etc power to us he would cease to be omnipotent since he no longer would possess ALL the power. This could of course be mitigated by removing free will, but would also put the responsibillity for evil squarely back to god. So no good options here. As far as i have seen, the omnis, no matter how you define them always lead to either contradictions or unfavorable theological conclusions.
@@Finfie yeah, I think there's a misunderstanding concerning what is meant by "all." This isn't to say that there's some pot of power and God just has all of it and no one else has any of it. You could think of power in terms of ability to control, so God's omnipotence would be an ability to control everything in reality. That of course doesn't entail that no one else has any ability to control anything in reality. So this does amount to the modern notion of omnipotence being "the ability to do all tasks."
@@chipan9191 Since my original point was that the principle of infinite sequences can be expanded to anything with infinite elements i thought that your definition of omnipotence simply redefined omnipotence to mean "the exclusive power to affect reality", which is the view some people have of god (islam is big on that one). I am also not quite sure if the "ability to control everything in reality" is actually different enough to get you out of the problems of evil. But setting that aside "the ability to do all tasks", gives you all the original problems with infinities. There are many problems that arise if you have unbound capabilities. Starting with the mundane (Can god create a rock so heavy he cant lift it), to the more abstract paradoxes from set theory for example. Appart from that, one of my favorites is the question, whether god is capable of performing a sin. But this will lead us on a path where we dilute the definition of omnipotence with every arising problem ever more, typically ending in a definition "the abillity to do all tasks that are in the entities nature". And accoring to this definition everybody is omnipotent.
@@Finfie I agree I would have to deal with the problem of evil by relying on some theodicy. I would believe theodicies succeed in at least showing God can have good reason to allow evil, but that's a side issue. On the issue of omnipotence paradox I would just say that's not a task. When you say "can God create a rock that *he* cannot lift?" This implies in the statement God cannot do said task. Since there is no task an omnipotent being can't do, obviously God cannot bring about that circumstance where he can't do something. But since that statement itself is incoherent, it's not a task. Likewise with sin your basically asking "can a morally perfect being sin?" The affirmative of that question is a contradiction so no, but it's not a problem that God cannot bring about contradictions.
Weird way of thinking about contradictions at the end. As something that really can happen, but God is running around stopping from occurring. I see a contradictory description of a world as one where "whatever happens" the description is false. So there is no need to stop anything from happening. All can happen, but the description (if contradictory) is still false. Take the grim reapers. Any grin reaper can swing his scythe, kill Fred, not kill Fred. The only thing that won't happen is that the laidout description of the event is true.
OMG - Oh My Goodness. The statement shown at 1:54 _"It's not the case, that any infinite chains are possible"_ is not the same statement as conveyed at 1:54 _"... So you should reject the possibility of any infinite causal chain to begin with."_ What is so difficult for theists and apologetics to understand about the *square of opposition?!?* It's not the case, that any infinite chains are possible, if and only if some infinite causal chains are not possible or to say, that some infinite causal chains are impossible. Sure. Congratulations on proving such a trivial statement. Now, would you be so kind as to show properly, that any infinite chains are not possible or to say, that any infinite chains are impossible or to say, that it's not the case, that some infinite causal chains are possible? By the way, it's not sufficient to show, that an infinite number of scenarios with infinity entails a logical contradiction, since the set of those scenarios with infinity entailing a logical contradiction might only be a subset of the set of all scenarios with infinity, where there still might be a scenario with infinity, where that scenario doesn't entail any contradictions. It's like someone would show another person an infinite amount of odd numbers and then claim "You see? Here is an infinite number of natural numbers, which are odd. Therefore, all/any natural number is odd." Ahhh... Why, though? Why make such a fallacious *hasty generalization?* How about the following infinite causal chain? infinite past (-∞) → ... → previous egg → previous chicken → egg → chicken → next egg → next chicken → ... → infinite future (+∞) If you show, that there is also a logical contradiction here, then bravo showing that, since that is not apparent at all here.
Yet another argument that can be easily flipped for atheism. 3:05 Once again, we have run into Apologetics Squared's main problem: Conflating probability(as in a likelihood of occurrence) with confidence levels (how confident are we that something happened.) 5:05 Isn't the belief in theism the belief in the most complex existence ? You've just kneecapped the entire point of the video if it's supposed to be for theism because you outlined the principle of occam's razor and then applied it. Sure, the topic is infinite chains, but using the same principle you just outlined that any theistic view of "omni" properties is just vastly moving over to the "atheism is more probable" side. 6:42 Honestly this whole "quantity of worldviews with X statement" is just a dumb way to go about an analysis. Many models explain finite and infinite causal chains. Many of them are not theistic in nature. Just because *you* say that infinite is somehow atheistic, doesn't make it so. Many theistic models hold to infinite/eternal models. Many Christians hold that Heaven/Hell are eternal. Many Hindus believe in Krishna and reincarnation models. That's not even getting into how time actually works and the physics of time and how utterly bad this video represents time to current physics models. This is why people like Sean Carrol get to dunk on theism in debates. You're note even wrong, you're irrelevant and you're going about this without even attempting to make a model to explain how you have reached your conclusion. This is actually worse than flat-earth at this point. At least flat earth has a predictive model and just ignores other evidence to the contrary. Theism doesn't even have that, it just has "well i think causal chains can't be infinite so....point for god!" while just giving zero reason why it is the case.
@LEEK I don't find your reply relevant to my OP but I'll respond anyhow. 1. "How would you truly know" Really weird attempt at evening the playing field here. Is your own position so bad that you have to try and take down novel testable predictions? Seems desperate. This attempt at "how do you know everything isn't a lie" is really silly to me given you are against the scientific method or novel testable predictions supposedly or just having a sound argument. 2. If you're arguing that god can't be observed then you're an atheist. Congrats. 3. Why are you stating empiricism? I never mentioned that. Just seems like a weird strawman and not understanding how the empirical method works either. Like I said, not particularly relevant but I'll address it.
Yes, I do read the title cards! And also, that turtlecorn was adorable. Thank you for addressing these topics that many in the YT-sphere don't. It's a real blessing. Take care!
I love this topic, and I approve of your first three minutes surveying it :) Good job :)
A second problem from recombination theories maybe worth mentioning is the one where it gets you straight to an infinite past being possible, by recombining lots of time segments.
Here is a syllogism. Feedback welcome:
A. Suppose physical reality consists of an ordered sequence of moments (A-Theory of Time)
B. In order for a given moment to happen, the sequence of all prior moments must finish up first. (like how in order to eat a sandwich, making the sandwich must first finish)
C. If physical reality has always existed, then any sequence of prior moments is never-ending and hence never finishes up
D. Therefore, if physical reality has always existed, then no moment could happen. (B & C -> D)
Interesting approach. First I'm thinking about paralleling what you said at ~5:30 with my own general principle against the theist. Perhaps we can say that conceptions of God so frequently turn out to produce contradictions, as you were saying for infinite causal chains. For example if God exists we get the classical question about a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it. Perhaps he could make an unstoppable force hit an immovable object, send people back in time to kill their grandfather or become their own grandfather, etc. Theodicy is a field because reconciling conceptions of God with the existence of suffering is so difficult.
What do you reckon?
The parallel picks up again at 6:40, where I could likewise say that 'all the worldviews which allow for the possibility of [God] take a hit in their probability, due to the general principle derived from all those paradoxes we looked at.'
Nice video!
Suppose we accept that general principle, and suppose that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability. We mustn't forget, though, the whole panoply of hits to the probability of worldviews *not* allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains in virtue of that very denial. E.g., they'll arguably be led into necessarily discrete views of time and space, spaces necessarily finite in extent, pasts necessarily finite in extent, will have to take a stance about hotly contested empirical questions in physics about the nature of fields and whatnot [as Pruss points out in his book], etc. It's not clear which probability hit is worse. And so even granting that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability in virtue of that, this doesn't imply that worldviews *not* allowing for such are thereby probabilistically superior. [I know you didn't deny this latter claim; but it needs to be kept in mind, since things aren't as simple as some viewers of the video might take away [e.g., they might mistakenly think 'nice! the probability of causal finitist worldviews has gone up considerably!'].] (Footnote: note that I am not here granting that general principle (and nor am I here denying it); I am supposing it arguendo.)
Hi joe 🙌🏻 Can you make an elaborate video about Causal Finitism , UPD , etc. And it's developments till date so that people like me can actually understand the current state of affairs about this? BTW , Logos has a video on UPD. He argues that it's consistent with Causal Finitism. You should check it out. I think making an elaborate video would be a huge help to so many as the Kalam and Contingency is now kind of dependent on CF
@@Nithin_sp hey my dude! In some sense, I already have done that - see my Kalam playlist, wherein i go through extensively the dialectic surrounding the UPD, causal finitism, and so on. I’m my two responses to Trent Horn from a long while back, for instance, I go through a lot of the dialectic; and the same is true of my recent video with Malpass and Morriston and the subsequent lecture of my own within that video. Finally, I’ll be doing precisely such a thing later on this year in my Kalam series with Stephen Woodford🙂❤️
@@MajestyofReason Great! You're the most underrated TH-camr I know of ❤️
Everyone back here in India loves you! 😁
@@Nithin_sp much, much love❤️
There's nothing hotly contested about those things you mentioned. For example, the claim "space is infinitely large" could never be empirically justified. You could only say that it's larger than the largest distance you can measure. But, as far as science is concerned, space can never be said to be literally infinite, only large enough that mathematical models where it's considered infinite are a good enough approximation. This is generally the case for claims involving infinity. For more on this, watch Sabine's video "is infinity real?" here on youtube
The critics of causal-finitist aren’t necessarily causal-infinitists, they are just not-necessarily-causal-finitists who thinks it’s silly to rule out infinite chains in general from these arguments.
Some of them might even prefer finite theories on other grounds. I might lean that way, I’m honestly not entirely sure. But I do think infinite causal theories are plausibly coherent and might plausibly be real.
I have my own reasons for not believing in infinite causal chains, but idk, either this video was put together poorly, the arguments are actually lacking, or I'm stupid because I don't see the contradictions.
I think the simplest way I saw it explained was that an infinite number of causal events (over an infinite amount of time) cannot have occurred, otherwise we'd have never arrived at the present. It's like saying you reached zero after counting down from infinity. When would you have started? How long did it take? Why didn't you finish yesterday instead of today? It becomes absurd. Potential or conceptual infinity is fun to toss around, but actual infinity is impossible.
God : Kalam argument and causal finitism are inevitable !!!
lol
I appreciate your well thought out arguments.
I feel it's important to understand that Mathematicians have "tamed" infinity a long time ago. For them it's just another tool for understanding.
I find it quite possible that philosophical musings on the infinite just founder from different points of view.
Infinity is useful as an abstract tool for understanding hypotheticals (i.e. what would the limit of this function be as it approaches infinity?), but it can't be used in the real physical world. I wouldn't call this "tamed", that seems like a strange way to put it.
@@Pyr0Ben Does the Univers die? (i.e. cease to exist in the far future)? What is the mechanism for the destruction of existence? Provide evidence for this.
@@user-bb3ej3iv9y Sure! I'm sure you're familiar with the law of Entropy (2LoT) that states that in any given system, useable energy always decreases and disorder always decreases (absent specific stipulations). Eventually, every star will fizzle out, all heat will spread out to absolute zero, and all light will run out of energy. This is called the heat death of the universe, and it's inevitable. Theoretically time and space maybe could potentially persist for an eternity, but without useable matter and energy, do you really have a universe?
This alone precludes the existence of the universe to the infinite past. If this universe had always existed, the heat death would have happened an eternity ago. If it has always existed, it would quite literally be a miracle.
This is an interesting argument, but it would need a lot more than one or two examples to be convincing. After all, to reject causal infinitism on the basis of this argument, we would have to conclude not just that any given causal chain is likely to be hiding some contradiction, but that it is likely that every infinite causal change hides some contradiction (note the difference in where the quantifier is placed - the latter is a much stronger claim than the former). At this point, I still think it is extremely implausible that any of the more innocuous infinite causal chains (like "A1 was caused by A2 one second earlier, which was caused by A3 one second before that, and so on") lead to contradictions, let alone all of them. In fact, I think that to reject the logical possibility of a chain like that would also require you to reject the logical possibility of arithmetic itself, since that chain I just described is just an ordered list of events with the same ordering as the natural numbers (just replaced the transitive closure of the "was caused by, one second earlier" relation with
Discover your truth face on Capturing Christianity livestream was epic !!!
Glad you enjoyed! :)
Wait, when???? I want to see that.
Two comments:
1) I don't see how your principle can be called "general". There are literally infinitely many causal chains resulting in contradictions and infinitely many not resulting in contradictions. That you've heard of more of them resulting in contradictions is pretty much irrelevant when there are literally infinitely many of both. You need a quantitative assessment of how many result in contradictions for your principle to be called "general".
2) How is that a contradiction at 6:10? Say the chain is at the interval (1,2]. When the black ball reaches 1, nothing happens (there's no other ball at 1 the way you constructed the chain). At any point after reaching 1, the color of the ball is undefined, because the limit as n goes to infinity of (-1)^n doesn't exist. The ball can't be said to be black and white at the same time.
Just because it allows more room for theism, doesn't mean that theism is more likely, it just means that theism is not contradictory in this singular case. Which if other contradictions still arise, has no bearing on probability. I think that the universe is finite in that it stretches 13.7 billion years. However, that doesn't mean the universe therefore needs a cause. To have a "cause" you'd need to have a change that was caused. The universe is not a change. If time is infinite, then we don't even need to discuss this. If time is finite, then what does it mean to say the universe was caused? The universe didn't come into existence any more than a yard stick at its first inch. To suggest a change, you'd have to say that there was a state of affairs where X=Y and it was followed by X=Z. There was no point in time, where the universe did not exist. Because to have time is to have the universe. It doesn't make sense to say there was "nothing" before the universe because you'd have to say there is nothing nowhere and never. Which is to say nothing doesn't exist. Nothing is not a state of affairs. Even if time is finite, it makes no sense to say the universe was proceeded at all. I often hear apologists say that atheists claim that the universe "came from nothing". Maybe this is true, but I certainly don't believe it came from nothing, nothing is not something from which to come. However, it often appears that apologists are the ones who truly believe this. They believe their God made the universe come from nothing. Their God which is described as "timeless and spaceless", which again, is to say it exists nowhere and never.
Allow me to over-contemplate causal finitism:
I believe most of the paradoxes supporting causal finitism can be resolved by developing a more structured view of events and causes. In most of the versions of these paradoxes that I am familiar with (my familiarity being admittedly limited), the events occupy discrete points on the continuous line of time (eg. the instantaneous moment that the grim reaper kills you). However, events are not typically instantaneous. When two billiard balls collide, there is a small time frame wherein the balls compress into each other, then expand out from each other. In light of this, we might propose that all events (or at least those that hold causal power), must occupy a finite amount of time. A mathematical formalism for this would be to demand that events with causal powers occupy open subsets of the line of time (or, more interestingly, the continuous space of states, but let us focus on what is considered in these arguments for causal finitism).
Consider the grim reaper paradox. There is certainly a range of time wherein you are "being killed" by a particular reaper. For simplicity, let us assume that this time spans the instant that his sieve makes contact with your throat to the instant it exits the back of your neck. However quickly the reapers performs this action, there is no way (under the configuration suggested in the argument) for the earlier reapers to complete the process before the next begins. Thus, there cannot be a sense in which one reaper alone is responsible for your death.
It may still intuitively seem as though there should be a first reaper to begin the strike. This can also be dismissed using a separate principle. Consider two positively charged particles approaching a negatively charged particle, one further away from the negatively charged particle. Does the closer particle push on the negatively charged particle before the further one? Certainly not. Instead, both push on the negatively charged particle at the same time, the closer having a greater force then the further. Likewise, the effect on the sieves on your throat must be such that all of the reaper's sieves have some impact (though trivially small), with those closer having a greater cutting power.
All of this is to demonstrate that I do not believe the arguments for causal finitism work even to lower the probability of causal infinitude. Rather, they seem to create confusion by naively applying structure of point events with a countable cardinality to a continuous metaphysical structure.
Yes I read the card square
:D
In response to your title….don’t tell me what to do.
What's your take on endless future paradoxes? How would you resolve it without destroying Orthodox Christianity or discarding Casual Finitism?
Here’s the long and short of it: when x depends on y causally, x usually comes after y chronologically. It’s only when you get into weird scenarios like God using His foreknowledge to intentionally bring about a contradiction that we can get the backwards dependencies needed for the paradox to work. So, if we want to say that it’s a general principle that we should be skeptical of future-oriented infinite chains, it seems like this principle has far less support than the principle for skepticism towards infinite regresses.
I’ve never seen any strong version of these. Usually, they’re like “God tells an Angel not to blow the horn unless the Angel the next day won’t”. In which case, I feel the Angel just needs to say “Hey, Angel tomorrow, I’m going to blow the horn. Do you have any issues?” “No, do as the Lord demands”
@@ApologeticsSquared Theists believe in a God with the the appropriate foreknowledge and capabilities, just not the desire to do something like that. Neither atheists nor theists similarly believe in an infinite past chain of grim reapers, so... I think I'd swing the other way. At least from the perspective of a theist who already believes in God, it's only when you get into _even weirder_ scenarios than God using his foreknowledge in unexpected ways, that you find these paradoxes for infinite regresses. It's just that people talk about infinite regress paradoxes a lot, is my impression.
Actually that might be a good explanation of why you found an abundance of paradoxes being 'hidden by infinite causal chains'. How many inconsistent stories could we tell about getting into a taxi? Probably infinitely many, but it hasn't had the historical popularity to generate lots of them in the literature.
I think endless futures are ok.
Just as there are infinitely many finite numbers, so you can have infinitely many “finite” future events (i.e. events with a finite past).
With an infinite past, you not only have an infinite number of “finitely” past events, but also the fact that the “first event” was infinitely many events ago.
So I guess the issue with an infinite past is: “how can we have a first event that was infinitely long ago?”
But the equivalent question on an infinite future (“how can we have a last event that is infinitely far ahead?”) isn’t a problem, because we’re not claiming there *is* a last event.
(It *might* not break things even if there is a “last event” in the infinite future, because nothing is causally dependent on it.)
@@MatthewFearnley I think I can mirror both your points, I'm not seeing a symmetry breaker yet. For the first one it's the same for the past as the future: either way you can number all the events or days with finite numbers stretching away from the present, and you never need get to a number 'infinity'. The infinite quantity of finite numbers is all you need to completely label an infinite past, just like with an infinite future.
For your second point, just like you said you aren't claiming there's a last event, I can say (as a proponent of infinite pasts, at least for the sake of argument) that I'm not claiming there's a first event.
Also! Could you help me to better see that an infinite past or future isn't synonymous with an endless past or future? :)
On the surface it feels contradictory, having an end beyond an infinite stretch of time.
I do wonder if there's another approach here. Say if there were a casual sequence where 1 is the present and its cause is 2 going in the past infinitely. We can see 1 is contingent upon 2, 2 upon 3 and so on. This means every single causal event is contingent, which means the infinite causal sequence would likewise be contingent. But if it is contingent then it could be different, but if we think of how we could make it different we could say change 5 which would make 4,3,2,&1 different... But we can't change 5 without changing 6, and we can't change 6 without changing 7. So as we can see we can't change any one causal event without changing its prior cause. But because there is no first cause, this means that we can't change anything in the causal sequence. Thus we arrive at a contradiction, the infinite causal sequence both can and can't be different.
The only potential objection I could see to this is if someone claimed the infinite set can't be different as some sort of brute fact... But given that any finite set of causal events doesn't amount to necessity for the set itself, how could one derive necessity from an infinite set of causal events? And the other problem is if they're already going to appeal to necessity within the infinite set then why not use Occam's razor and just appeal to necessity in the form of a first cause?
Great one , A² ❤️ Now , can you tweak EAAN?
Yep
Nah, we don't really need the infinite causal chain to be logical, we can just say "the infinite causal chain works in mysterious ways"
Alternatively one can use something like the Eternal Society Argument. (I talk about that on my own channel in Vlog Episode 17.)
7:18 Thanks for the clarification. I would have missed that otherwise. Lol.
Great video!
1377271 is composite and thus not prime; it's divisible by 7
You had an argument in the beginning about heights and comparisons.
The form of your probabilistic argument could be phrased equally as well for that case. Some theories with heights have contradictions. Therefore any theory of heights should take a probabilistic hit.
Does that seem reasonable to you?
Causal finitism is consistent with a God, but also with a lot of other things we imagine. Which imaginary thing is it?
WOw that was good
Of course we read the title cards! =D
At 5:40: _"Quick example... That right there is actually a Contradiction!..._
_And bam you get a contradiction. The point will both be black _*_AND_*_ not black..."_
WHAT?!? How so though?!?
According to the logical law of excluded middle that specific point is either black *OR* not black before and even after that _"bam"._
Why should that _"bam"_ make out of an OR an AND? Because you or we cannot tell with certainty, what the number "infinity" is supposed to be - even or odd?
That still doesn't make infinity to be both - an even AND odd number.
What is going on here? Why?
Yeah, we might not be able to tell with certainty, that after that _"bam"_ the point is black with certainty or that point is not black with certainty.
But that won't entail, that point to be both black AND not black after that _"bam"._
It's still the case, that the point is either black OR not black after that _"bam"._ We just cannot tell it with certainty, which one is it exactly, since of the insufficient description of this scenario and the number "infinity" to be an even number with certainty or to be an odd number with certainty.
What is going on here? OMG - Oh My Goodness.
Infinity is NOT a number. There's no answer to this question.
@@jaskitstepkit7153 And yet you responded to my question any way, even though according to you there supposed to be no answer to that question. So I guess, that there is some answer to my question after all.
@@jaskitstepkit7153 Besides that, how about my actual question here of "How that _"bam"_ is supposed to have made out of an OR an AND?"?
Is there an answer to that question of mine and if so, then what is that answer?
Do I understand the video at all? Nope not even close
Do I like apologetics? Yep yes I do
Therefore I stay and nod my head in ignorance 😂
Me who didn't read the title card: the answer to your question is no.
Bro, Why does God create people who'd ultimately choose not to believe in Him and thereby being condemned to hell? 🤔
Also, what do you think of the following argument:
The Argument from Modality
1. God exists in all possible worlds.
2. The Universe is a contingent thing
3. The Universe does not exist in all possible worlds where God exists.
4. Therefore, the existence of God does not explain the existence of the Universe.
5. The existence of the Universe is explained by God in a contingent state of mind as the Universe only exists in a possible world where God has made the choice to create the Universe.
6. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the Universe is a brute contingency
7. Naturalists could appeal to the existence of the Universe as a brute contingency
8. Therefore, the theistic model is completely insignificant as naturalism provides a simpler explanation.
The infinities themselves are not the cause of contradictions. When specifying relations between things, we use some sort of equations. Sometimes equations have solutions and sometimes they don’t. To completely nail down relations on infinite sets you usually need infinitely many equations. If you have non-compatible equations there are no solutions. That’s the cause of contradictions in general. If you pick equations that play nicely with each other you get no contradiction. For infinite sequences sometimes there are constraints on the limiting boundary conditions. Those just correspond to some equation. So you have to be extra careful. But you can be and if you are there are no contradiction. It’s not about the infinities.
The Grim´s Reaper paradox is not a true paradox.
If you accept that a segment can be divided infinitely, the paradox disappears.
If you do not accept that a segment can be divided infinitely, the conditions are not met for you to present the scenario where the paradox develops.
On the other hand, the universe does not show causal chains. It is a wrong interpretation of causality.
The grim messenger paradox gets around the first concerns. Although i'm not sure what you mean by the universe not having a causal history. Could you please explain?
@@notnpc7965 You say: "The grim messenger paradox gets around the first concerns."! How?
You say: "Although i'm not sure what you mean by the universe not having a causal history. Could you please explain?"
I am not saying that the universe does not show causality but that in the universe a causal chain cannot be distinguished where each transformation corresponds to only one cause. In each transformation, a number of factors concur simultaneously. It is not a chain where one can follow the sequence of links back to their original anchor. Each transformation is the result of multiple interactions where each factor is also affected by the interaction.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd The grim messenger paradox doesn't divide a finite segment infinitely.
@@notnpc7965 Yep. The period of time between 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock is divided infinitely. Which version are you referring to?
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd In the messenger paradox they pass a paper from eternity past and if they receive it without a number they write their number on it.
My metaphysical failsafe is physics. I don't see the resemblance to God.
hularious
Three comments:
1)I would have liked if you had written "boolean logic vs probability" since probabilities are part of many logic systems, they are just not part of a boolean logic system.
2)For the paradox with the black/white points in a 2D world, could you give me the name of the paradox? The way you formulated the paradox really does not seem to give you a contradiction and i am not familiar with this paradox in specific.
2)I think you sell your principle a bit short. A better general principle would be to say, that any argument containing any infinite elements should lose some credence. Since in any infinite element it is easy to hide a contradiction. Since god is an infinite being in many many ways (all the omnis), by this principle, our credence in theistic world views should be very low. Point is, that the argument seems to be correct, since it is very easy to hide contradiction in infinities. But it is an double edged sword, since most worldviews contain infinities, some more than others.
I think I can clarify some of that. I don't know what the paradox is called, but essentially you have an infinite number of points in a finite space lined up starting with black on the right side going left. If you move a black point to this line from the left side you can't determine what will change color because they're alternating colors infinitely.
Concerning the principle applying to God, there are two reasons why it doesn't. First, God is only infinite in a qualitative sense not a quantitative sense. Omniscience and omnipotence don't imply that God has infinite power or infinite knowledge, just that he has all power and all knowledge. Second, the principle of causal finitism would only apply to infinite sequences, not infinite quantities.
@@chipan9191 I think i understand. Its essentially the question of "is infinity odd or even?"
Saying that the omnis only mean that god has "all of" that property leads to some implications you might not want. While it isn't quite apparent with omniscience, i think it is easy to see with omnipotence. Saying that omnipotence means that god has ALL the power, implies that no-one else has any power. In other words nobody could affect any state of affairs. And the moment god would give/lend/etc power to us he would cease to be omnipotent since he no longer would possess ALL the power. This could of course be mitigated by removing free will, but would also put the responsibillity for evil squarely back to god. So no good options here. As far as i have seen, the omnis, no matter how you define them always lead to either contradictions or unfavorable theological conclusions.
@@Finfie yeah, I think there's a misunderstanding concerning what is meant by "all." This isn't to say that there's some pot of power and God just has all of it and no one else has any of it. You could think of power in terms of ability to control, so God's omnipotence would be an ability to control everything in reality. That of course doesn't entail that no one else has any ability to control anything in reality. So this does amount to the modern notion of omnipotence being "the ability to do all tasks."
@@chipan9191 Since my original point was that the principle of infinite sequences can be expanded to anything with infinite elements i thought that your definition of omnipotence simply redefined omnipotence to mean "the exclusive power to affect reality", which is the view some people have of god (islam is big on that one). I am also not quite sure if the "ability to control everything in reality" is actually different enough to get you out of the problems of evil.
But setting that aside "the ability to do all tasks", gives you all the original problems with infinities. There are many problems that arise if you have unbound capabilities. Starting with the mundane (Can god create a rock so heavy he cant lift it), to the more abstract paradoxes from set theory for example. Appart from that, one of my favorites is the question, whether god is capable of performing a sin.
But this will lead us on a path where we dilute the definition of omnipotence with every arising problem ever more, typically ending in a definition "the abillity to do all tasks that are in the entities nature". And accoring to this definition everybody is omnipotent.
@@Finfie I agree I would have to deal with the problem of evil by relying on some theodicy. I would believe theodicies succeed in at least showing God can have good reason to allow evil, but that's a side issue.
On the issue of omnipotence paradox I would just say that's not a task. When you say "can God create a rock that *he* cannot lift?" This implies in the statement God cannot do said task. Since there is no task an omnipotent being can't do, obviously God cannot bring about that circumstance where he can't do something. But since that statement itself is incoherent, it's not a task. Likewise with sin your basically asking "can a morally perfect being sin?" The affirmative of that question is a contradiction so no, but it's not a problem that God cannot bring about contradictions.
Weird way of thinking about contradictions at the end. As something that really can happen, but God is running around stopping from occurring.
I see a contradictory description of a world as one where "whatever happens" the description is false. So there is no need to stop anything from happening. All can happen, but the description (if contradictory) is still false.
Take the grim reapers. Any grin reaper can swing his scythe, kill Fred, not kill Fred.
The only thing that won't happen is that the laidout description of the event is true.
OMG - Oh My Goodness.
The statement shown at 1:54 _"It's not the case, that any infinite chains are possible"_ is not the same statement as conveyed at 1:54 _"... So you should reject the possibility of any infinite causal chain to begin with."_
What is so difficult for theists and apologetics to understand about the *square of opposition?!?*
It's not the case, that any infinite chains are possible, if and only if some infinite causal chains are not possible or to say, that some infinite causal chains are impossible.
Sure. Congratulations on proving such a trivial statement.
Now, would you be so kind as to show properly, that any infinite chains are not possible or to say, that any infinite chains are impossible or to say, that it's not the case, that some infinite causal chains are possible?
By the way, it's not sufficient to show, that an infinite number of scenarios with infinity entails a logical contradiction, since the set of those scenarios with infinity entailing a logical contradiction might only be a subset of the set of all scenarios with infinity, where there still might be a scenario with infinity, where that scenario doesn't entail any contradictions.
It's like someone would show another person an infinite amount of odd numbers and then claim "You see? Here is an infinite number of natural numbers, which are odd. Therefore, all/any natural number is odd." Ahhh... Why, though? Why make such a fallacious *hasty generalization?*
How about the following infinite causal chain?
infinite past (-∞) → ... → previous egg → previous chicken → egg → chicken → next egg → next chicken → ... → infinite future (+∞)
If you show, that there is also a logical contradiction here, then bravo showing that, since that is not apparent at all here.
The recombination principle is junk.
*depending on exactly which form you put it in of course. But I’ll stick out my neck…
0:25 “Looks like God”. Yes if God looks like a dot with an arrow coming out of it. That’s usually how I think of him.
Yet another argument that can be easily flipped for atheism.
3:05 Once again, we have run into Apologetics Squared's main problem: Conflating probability(as in a likelihood of occurrence) with confidence levels (how confident are we that something happened.)
5:05 Isn't the belief in theism the belief in the most complex existence ? You've just kneecapped the entire point of the video if it's supposed to be for theism because you outlined the principle of occam's razor and then applied it. Sure, the topic is infinite chains, but using the same principle you just outlined that any theistic view of "omni" properties is just vastly moving over to the "atheism is more probable" side.
6:42 Honestly this whole "quantity of worldviews with X statement" is just a dumb way to go about an analysis.
Many models explain finite and infinite causal chains. Many of them are not theistic in nature.
Just because *you* say that infinite is somehow atheistic, doesn't make it so. Many theistic models hold to infinite/eternal models. Many Christians hold that Heaven/Hell are eternal. Many Hindus believe in Krishna and reincarnation models.
That's not even getting into how time actually works and the physics of time and how utterly bad this video represents time to current physics models.
This is why people like Sean Carrol get to dunk on theism in debates. You're note even wrong, you're irrelevant and you're going about this without even attempting to make a model to explain how you have reached your conclusion.
This is actually worse than flat-earth at this point. At least flat earth has a predictive model and just ignores other evidence to the contrary.
Theism doesn't even have that, it just has "well i think causal chains can't be infinite so....point for god!" while just giving zero reason why it is the case.
@LEEK I don't find your reply relevant to my OP but I'll respond anyhow.
1. "How would you truly know"
Really weird attempt at evening the playing field here. Is your own position so bad that you have to try and take down novel testable predictions? Seems desperate.
This attempt at "how do you know everything isn't a lie" is really silly to me given you are against the scientific method or novel testable predictions supposedly or just having a sound argument.
2. If you're arguing that god can't be observed then you're an atheist. Congrats.
3. Why are you stating empiricism? I never mentioned that. Just seems like a weird strawman and not understanding how the empirical method works either.
Like I said, not particularly relevant but I'll address it.