Pints With Aquinas - 165: 10 BAD arguments for atheism

Episode Date: July 2, 2019

Today I discuss 10 bad arguments for atheism! Enjoy! Also, please consider supporting me on Patreon so I can keep doing all this amazing work --> https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd Three cool things we want to do are: 1. Bring Fr. Gregory Pine on PWA twice a month. 2. Create a PWA app. 3. Record 2 episodes of the MFS every month! Here are the objections I address: 1. Who created God? 2. You’re only a Christian because you were raised one. 3. Flying spaghetti monster / God of the gaps. 4. I don’t have an onus of proof. 5. Science can’t demonstrate God’s existence. 6. Can God create a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it. 7. Christians are hypocrites. 8. Maybe there’s a first cause but that doesn’t prove christianity. 9. The Bible is filled with contradictions. 10. I believe in one less God than you. It’s arrogant for you to think you’re rig SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Yeah, g'day, how you going? Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name's Matt Fradd. In the Summa, Aquinas raises two objections to God's existence. But in today's day and age, we're hearing a bunch of objections to God's existence, and a lot of them are really bad. And so in today's episode of Pints with Aquinas, we're going to look at 10 bad arguments against God. Yes, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today, we want to look at 10 bad arguments against God's existence or 10 objections to dismiss Christianity. Now, you might be wondering why I'm addressing 10 bad arguments.

Shouldn't I be addressing the most sophisticated and difficult objections to answer from the atheist side? Well, there's two reasons I suppose I'm not doing that. Number one, Aquinas addresses in the Summa Theologiae two arguments against God's existence, as many of you know. Essentially, the argument from evil and the argument that the God hypothesis, if you want to put it that way, is superfluous and that we can account for things without appealing to God. Now, it's super interesting, actually, that Aquinas would only come up with two objections because in works, you know, in the Sumer and other of his works, we see a lot more objections. Like, okay, so in my hand, I'm holding De Marlo on evil, okay, by Thomas Aquinas.

I'm going to literally flip this randomly to this page. Okay, here we are. All right, so here's an article. Let's see, question six on human choice. All right, so here are. Let's see. Question six on human choice. All right. So here are, let's see, how many objections does he pose himself? This is crazy. So Aquinas, as some of you who aren't familiar with the Sumer might not know this, but he

usually poses himself objections and then responds to them. So I just opened this up. There's 24 different objections that Aquinas raises against his position before responding to them. 24. And in the Summa, we see sometimes there's as many as 12 objections to the points he wants to make. But when it comes to God's existence, Aquinas can only think of two. And I think that these are probably the most serious ones that are thrown about today, namely the problem of evil. And as I said, the idea that God is superfluous. It's kind of like the God of the gaps fallacy. And we'll get into that later. But basically the idea is like we can

explain this stuff without appealing to God. And I think those are the probably strongest arguments against God's existence. The reason I want to tackle 10 bad objections to God's existence is because even though they are bad and many fallacious, they do tend to rattle people or derail Christians. And I've been really surprised to see this actually. And so that's what I want to do. I just want to respond to 10 of them. Let's see, here are the 10 I want to respond to. And again, some of these shouldn't be called arguments. They might just be objections or maybe questions. Number one, who created God? Number two, you're only a Christian because you were raised one. Number three, I want to address the flying spaghetti monster and God of the gaps. Number four, when the atheist says,

I don't have the onus of proof, you do. Number five, science can't demonstrate God's existence. Number six, can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it? Number seven, Christians are hypocrites. Okay, that's okay. Number eight, maybe there's a first cause, but that doesn't prove Christianity. Number nine, the Bible is filled with contradictions. Number 10, I just believe in one less God than you. Now we could come up with more, but those are the ones I'm going to choose for today's show. But before we jump into the first objection, I want to tell you about some really exciting things we've got going on here at Pints with Aquinas and the Matt Frad Show. Really, like seriously fun. Number one, we are hoping to bring Father Gregory Pine on, kind of part-time on Pints with Aquinas. So every

other episode will be me interviewing him. Many of you have reached out and have thanked me for having introduced you to this amazing, young, brilliant Dominican, Father Gregory Pine. And you have said you've got a lot out of his episodes. So I reached out to him and I said, would you be willing for me to kind of pay you to come on twice a month? And he said, yeah. So we're looking for about 40 more patrons at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd before that can become a reality. So that's going to be really exciting. The next thing we're looking at developing is a Pints with Aquinas app, where we can put all of Aquinas' prayers that you can read, that you can also listen to.

We can put the shows there, different articles. It'll be a really cool one-stop shop app. So that's another thing that we're looking to do. And the third thing I'm really excited about, and this will be down the line, I think, is once we get enough patrons, we want to start doing two Matt Frad Show episodes every month. Right now we do one. So yeah, this month in July, wow, it's this month, I interviewed Dr. Peter Kreeft. Could somebody pinch me? That's amazing. My assistant reached out to me and she said, okay, go in touch with Peter Kreeft. He said he could come, but unfortunately it's on your birthday, which is the 16th of July. And I said, are you kidding? This would be the greatest birthday present ever. Please tell him to come on my birthday. So I didn't tell him it was my

birthday and I'm not going to let him know that because it'll be awkward, but happy birthday to me. I'll also be – this month I've got – oh, yeah, Timothy Gordon, which would be great. He does those videos with Dr. Taylor Marshall. Next month I'm bringing in Father Mike Schmitz. So we have a bunch of guests lined up, and we're releasing these, as I say, once a month right now. And it's been really cool to see my YouTube channel growing by about a thousand new subscribers every month. I just want to kind of present these amazing, intelligent voices to a YouTube audience. And it's been really cool in the comment section. A lot of people have just stumbled across these videos and they disagree strongly or they'll say, I disagree, but this was really well put. Many people have this false

idea that Christianity is essentially intellectually bankrupt. So what a beautiful thing to do to be able to put some of these really intelligent and dynamic voices and faces in front of them. So these are all the work we're doing. Now, I know you probably look at me and you think this is a one-man show. It's just me doing all this, but I actually hire six people and I pay six people a month to do all this work. So I've got someone who's my assistant, someone who runs my social media, someone who does all the filming and editing, someone who does all the thumbnails and the kind of graphic design work. I've got somebody who's sending all of the free stuff to you guys, like the books and the beer steins and things when you become patrons. And so all of this costs money and I'm super glad that I'm doing it. And if you want to help

us reach those goals so that we can do things like have Father Gregory Pine on, do the Matt Fradd show a couple of times a month, get this app going, that'd be amazing. So there you go. Oh, one more thing I'm doing too. I'm commissioning somebody to paint a beautiful picture of Thomas Aquinas throwing a fireball at Richard Dawkins. I know, childish, but super fun. You remember Street Fighter? Oh, you can, with Ryu. Okay. So it's basically on that theme, but you've got Thomas Aquinas. It's going to be so beautiful. It's going to look so great. I'm going to record a couple of videos that respond to Richard Dawkins' pathetic attempt to take down Aquinas' arguments. So if you haven't yet subscribed to my channel on YouTube,

be sure to do that so you don't miss out on any of those things. All right, so let's just jump into this right now. The first bad objection to Christianity, to Christians in general, is this idea that, well, if everything needs to be created, who created God? And this is something you might hear on the playground as a kid, and you might be thinking that people don't really use this objection. Like sophisticated atheists don't actually say that, that I'm just kind of strawmanning this, you know? But actually, I have a bunch of atheist books on my bookshelf. I wrote a little book for Catholic Answers called 20 Answers Atheism. So, you know, I've done a bit

of study on this stuff. And so just look here in front of me. Here are where I have found these folks making this claim, okay? Richard Dawkins does it in The God Delusion, The Who Created God Question. Daniel Dennett does it in Breaking the Spell. Sam Harris in Letters to a Christian Nation. Hawking and Mlodnov do it in The Grand Design. Christopher Hitchens raised this in God is Not Great. Lawrence Krauss did it in A Universe from Nothing. And Stenger did it in God and the Folly of Faith. All right. So that's just to name a few examples. This is extremely prominent, perhaps the most common misconception in regards to what Christians and other theists are arguing. So let's just respond to this really quickly. Christians and other theists have never claimed,

right, no sophisticated philosopher in arguing for the existence of God has said something like everything needs a cause. Because yeah, if everything needs a cause, God is in that realm, I suppose. And so you would say, well, therefore he needs a cause. So that would make sense. The only problem is no sophisticated philosopher has ever made that argument. Rather, theists, Christians, philosophers, theologians have said something like everything which begins to exist needs a cause or anything that is contingent needs to be caused even simultaneously with something that's necessary. Okay. So to put it perhaps a little more provocatively, Christians don't believe that God created everything. Christians believe that God created everything other than himself. Okay. Christians, other theists believe that God is a metaphysically

necessary being, right? The act of being, whose non-existence is impossible. Once you understand what is meant by God, you see why the question, okay, well, who created God is a silly question. Because the answer is, you're essentially asking, well, who created the uncreated creator? That's what you're asking. And you see now why that's silly. That's sort of like asking, if your brother is a bachelor, then what's his wife's name? And you say, look, you do speak English, do you? Bachelor just means unmarried. And God means, right, the uncaused cause. Now, that doesn't prove that there's an uncaused cause, just because we've defined God in that way. But if you're going to try and take Christian arguments and other theistic arguments

seriously, these sort of cosmological arguments, you can't just misunderstand what Christians are saying or intentionally mischaracterize what they're saying. That won't work. So that's the first one there, who created God? That's a silly question to use a quote from Richard Dawkins. Second, sometimes people say you're only a Christian because you were raised one. Now, you, like me, may be involved in the apologetic world, and perhaps you already know what I'm going to say in regards to this. But it is interesting to realize that for the vast majority of people, they don't think deeply about these questions.

They haven't taken a course in philosophy. They may not even know what a logical fallacy is. And so for some of these people, even though they might be very brilliant in their area of expertise, when it comes to things like philosophy and theology, they may simply be a layman. And so they may think that an objection like this is quite sophisticated when in actuality it isn't. And this has driven home to me recently. I was flying home from Steubenville, Ohio just yesterday here to where I live in Atlanta. And I was sitting next to a very pleasant fellow and we struck up a conversation and I began sharing with him what I did. And I was able to share the gospel with him about how I came to Christ and why I believe in God and things like this. And he raised

this objection. Essentially, he didn't accuse me of this, right? But he asked the question, isn't it true that you're a Christian just because you were raised one? Like if you were raised a Muslim, don't you think there's a very high degree of probability that you would be a Muslim? probability that you would be a Muslim. So the reason this is not a good objection is it commits what's called the genetic fallacy. What's that? The genetic fallacy attempts to invalidate a conclusion based on how you arrived at that conclusion. So let's suppose the only reason you thought the earth was spherical, as opposed to flat, was because you saw it in a Superman comic. Okay, that's not a good reason to think the earth is spherical, is it? But would you be wrong? Well, no, you wouldn't be wrong. In other words, just because you don't have good reasons to believe something, it doesn't mean that something is false, right? That would be

like me saying to an atheist, the only reason you're an atheist is because you were raised in, you know, Portland, Oregon or something, to atheist parents. Well, that might be true, but even if it were true, it wouldn't show that atheism were false. Do you see? At best, if you say you're only a Christian because you were raised one, or you are only a Christian because you were raised in a Christian family or in a Christian culture, at best that proves that you don't have good reasons to think Christianity is true, right? It doesn't show that Christianity is false. Again, maybe you don't have good reasons to think God exists, but God could still exist. Maybe you don't have good reasons to think Christianity is the true religion,

but it may still be the case that Christianity is the true religion. So, if we want to disprove Christianity, it's not enough to say, you believe because, we're going to have to examine the arguments and evidences for theism and Christianity. All right. Here's the third objection or argument or parody, I suppose, in this case, and that would be the God of the gaps argument. And that's sort of what the flying spaghetti monster is getting at. And I'll explain what that means in just a moment. But you'll remember that at the beginning of the episode, I said, Aquinas has two arguments against the existence of God. One is the evil in the world. And by the way, we have done episodes

on evil. I'm just looking here. If you go to, let's see, episode 13 on pints with Aquinas, does evil disprove the existence of God? I get into that issue there. And then we also, I interviewed Dr. Eleanor Stump on the problem of evil and suffering. That's episode 131. So again, that's episode 13 and episode 131. Okay. But then the other objection Aquinas raises is the idea that the God hypothesis is superfluous.

Another way of saying this, look, we can account for things without appealing to God. All right. So really what he's addressing here is the God of the gaps fallacy. What's the God of the gaps fallacy? when you appeal to some gap in our knowledge and say, that's God, that's a proof for God. So to use a very trite example, you might say, well, we don't know how thunder works, therefore that's God bowling. We don't know how to explain lightning, so we say that's God getting angry and these things, these sorts of things. But rather, you know, these philosophical arguments that have been proposed throughout the history, you know, and throughout the tradition, people like Aristotle, Plotinus,

Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, and others, that they don't begin with what we don't know and say, therefore God, rather they argue from what we do know about the world and argued for why only God makes sense of it. I want to play for you a five to 10 minute clip in this clip, Trent Horn, who we've had on the show many times before is answering a question on Catholic Answers Live. And the man who calls up basically says what we just brought up there, right? That Christianity is just about explaining gaps in our knowledge. Listen to how this very fascinating conversation plays out. Would you ever be open to any evidence? Would you ever be open to believing in the existence of God

if sufficient evidence could be presented? Yeah, sufficient evidence can be presented to the mass creator of the whole universe. Yeah. What would that evidence, what would it look like? What would that evidence be? Like, what kind of evidence would be sufficient? Well, I mean, it would have to be empirical, it would have to be something you could touch,

feel, prove, anything else, like in the body of science or something like that. Well, but why? Well, what do you mean, why would that have to be the proof? Well, yeah, so you were wondering if God exists. Now, I agree with you, the gods of Greek mythology don't exist, and in fact, 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, he said those gods were just myths, you know, they were stories with human personality traits put to divine characters. But so Aristotle rejected that, but he did believe in something called the prime mover, which would be kind of this unmoved mover, complete active being that explains why a universe like ours exists. So when I talk about

God, I'm not talking about just a character like Zeus or Thor. God is—and I want to make sure you and I, the word God means the same thing—that God is immaterial, eternal, infinite, active being without limits of any kind, so all good, all knowing, or all powerful. So would you agree that that's the God you and I are talking about and wondering whether he exists? Yeah, you're not talking about a God with a beard, with a cane, that's on a cloud. So if God is immaterial and eternal outside space and time, and we're wondering if God exists, you would agree we couldn't find him directly with empirical evidence, like a microscope or a telescope couldn't see him. So actually,

we're gonna have to take this—I want you to hang on, we're gonna come back in the next break. Skylar, are you still here with us? Yeah. Okay, good. So when you and I are saying, does God exist, I want to make sure we're on the same page. God, you know, he's infinite, unlimited act of being, eternal, immaterial, beyond space and time, transcends all of that, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, unchanging, just perfection itself, unlimited. So when I'm talking about God, that's what I mean. And you astutely said we're not talking about a man in the sky with a beard,

did I get you right? Yeah, but you're talking about a God that's not in space and time, but that can interact in space and time. Yes. Yeah, well, a God that is being itself is just existence, and so this God, if something exists, it exists because God sustains it. So space and time exist because God sustains those created realities. So my point is that... But he can change the reality of space and time anytime he wants to. Sure, provided he doesn't contradict himself or anything like that, but yes. So what I would say then is, so this God, you know, God, he's not made of anything, he's not even located within time, but he exists and transcends it. We can't find God directly, right, with a telescope or a microscope, because then whatever we found wouldn't be him.

Correct. You'd have to prove his interactions with space and time. Okay, so we'd have to look at the effect and see if it goes back to a divine cause. So what kind of effect would we, could we find that could only be attributable to an immaterial and eternal being like God? Well, I mean, that's kind of the problem. You would have to eliminate all reasonable of physics and reason, and then come up with something that's internal, which is very hard to do. Well, why can't we just propose the big...let's see, what's the biggest thing we could think of that we would say, well, God would be the only source that could cause that? The biggest thing

I can think of would just be reality. Space, time, matter, and energy, all that exists. If all that exists cannot explain its own existence, which I don't think that it can, then it would logically follow back, there must be a reality that explains its own existence, or that just is existence, and that would be God. Yeah, I mean, I see what you're saying, but just because you don't have the answer to why this is this existence doesn't mean that the logical conclusion is God. Maybe we just don't have the answer to that. No, I would agree with you, but I would say, that's why I asked earlier,

if you were open-minded, what kind of evidence would convince you? Because it seems to me I could present you with any evidence, and you could say, well, we just haven't found the answer yet. So nothing in principle could ever convince you. Well, I mean, I guess in that sense, but, I mean, if I see the smoking gun, I mean, I'm going to believe, in a murderer's hand, I'm going to believe that guy's a murderer. I mean, it has to be pretty substantial evidence

to come to that conclusion, and same with God. I mean, you can't just make a leap of faith about, well, there's a... We can't explain creation, so it has to be a... Right. Which is what... The problem for me is that there is no such

thing that could ever be considered a smoking gun for you. You could always retreat to, well, maybe there's another explanation. I mean, can you think of anything hypothetical where if it happened, you'd say, oh yeah, that definitely shows God exists? I mean, I guess if Noah's Ark popped up, and... I mean, I don't know. I mean, again, I don't know. I guess that's what's hard for me, is when I talk with other atheists, it seems, well, we're ready, we'll change our mind, we want evidence, but if the bar is set so high, then nothing can ever surpass it. So my point being that reality itself—and I'm not saying I don't know what explains reality,

therefore God, I could make an argument. I'll give you a short version of it, then we might have to move on. This one's called the contingency argument for God. It would go like this. Whatever exists has an explanation, either in its own nature or in something else. The universe doesn't explain itself, therefore it's explained by something else that explains itself. The only being that can explain its own existence would be something that is necessary, or just is existence itself, and that's what people call God. And so that's kind of a short argument for the existence of God. What would you think about the universe? Does it require an explanation for itself?

think about the universe? Does it require an explanation for itself? I would say there's an explanation... well, no, I mean, there's an explanation to be had, we just don't have it yet. Okay. But I mean, there are... I think the honest belief that either the universe is... I mean, yeah, if there's a creationist, then there has to be a creationist, or the existence is just unlimited, which could be true also. Even if it is unlimited, we'd still wonder, why is there something rather than nothing? Yeah, it sounds, Skylar, that unless we present a material cause, something you can look at empirically, you will be able to squirrel away from the answer, because it's essentially spiritual and goes beyond the limits of science itself. Am I...? Yeah, correct. You're not gonna find...yeah, if you had a material evidence right now

to convert me to Christianity, I mean, then we would all be Christians, wouldn't we? Well, no, some people may choose not to believe that, because some people have their wills. For example, I can show to many people that eating right and exercising will make them happier and healthier, but not everyone's going to do it, right? Yeah, but you couldn't... yeah, true, I mean, but you couldn't argue that doing that stuff wouldn't make you healthier. Doing what stuff? Oh, no, well, people could accept it, but just not choose to do it. So, but I think there is good evidence. The problem for me is I think it's important for Christians and atheists to sit down and figure out, okay, well, what rules of evidence are we playing with here? And that when Christians put forward an argument,

I just think it's very disingenuous and atheists say, I'm ready to be convinced, and cite maybe a random miracle, as Skyler said, you know, Noah's Ark appearing somewhere, which actually I think aliens or, you know, Richard Branson could come up with that or David Copperfield, but then when Christians put forward all of reality itself needing an explanation, which is infinite, you know, not infinite, but way, way bigger than a paltry miracle on Earth, suddenly, oh, well, science will figure that one out eventually. So I think that's something, this is a conversation Christians and atheists need to have on that subject, or else atheism is completely invulnerable to disproof,

and it's just like the religions it criticizes. All right, a bit of a longer clip there, but I wanted to share the whole thing because I think Trent did a great job at responding to someone who accused Christians of committing the fallacy of God of the gaps. Just, we've mentioned the flying spaghetti monster and it occurred to me that maybe you're not terribly sure what I mean. So here's a bit of a background on that since you may have heard of it. It was first described in a satirical open letter written by a student called Bobby Henderson in 2005. I think it was a student. Either way, he was protesting the Kansas State Board of Education, who had decided to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

And so I think the understanding is, okay, if you're just going to appeal to this god to fill in the gaps you don't know how to explain then why can't i just uh appeal to a flying spaghetti monster a lot of problems in that of course i mean like if you just use the kalam argument which you know if you want to say that the universe began to exist and whatever begins to exist has to have a cause of its existence therefore the universe has to have had a cause you can't say the flying spaghetti monster because what is the universe? It's all material space, right? Energy, time, right? That's kind of what it is. And of course, well, a flying spaghetti monster would be material. So it can't be the thing that it's said to have created. And there's a lot of

other reasons that it's obviously a parody and isn't meant to be taken seriously necessarily, but they were trying to bring up a point. Here's a fourth objection. I think we often hear someone will say, I don't have the burden of proof. You do, because you're the one who's making a claim to knowledge. Like you're the one who's saying there's a God. All I'm doing is listening to your arguments and I'm saying, not convinced. Now, this can be quite infuriating because for a couple of reasons. One is if it's very difficult to kind of convince somebody of something they might not necessarily want to be convinced of. And if all I have to do to win is say, no, not convinced, not convinced, you can see why that could get quite frustrating. I want to talk about Russell's teapot here because this kind of gets to the point Bertrand Russell wrote in an article. It was titled, Is There a God? in a magazine back in 1950s or something.

people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a China teapot revolving around about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion, provided I were careful enough to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school,

hesitation to believe in its existence would become the mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the inquisitor in an earlier time. So that's kind of clever, right? So what Russell seems to be saying is there is no evidence for God's existence and you really have the burden of proof here, okay? And you can't just sort of say, well, because I can't disprove it, God therefore exists, right? That's the point there. I can't disprove it, God therefore exists, right? That's the point there. So here's the problem, I think, with that. Look, here's why I think we need to start defining terms. And usually, I think this is, of course, the thing we ought to be doing before we engage in these conversations. You'll notice that's what Lucy and AJ did in my book, Does God Exist? In order to have a fruitful

dialogue about complex, sophisticated things, it's very important that you define terms, all right? What do we mean by atheist? What you define terms. All right. What do we mean by atheist? What do we mean by theist? What do we mean by agnostic, right? Well, if you ask the question, does God exist? There's three basic answers to that question. You could say, yes, God exists. Or you could say, no, God does not exist. Or you could say, I don't know, right? Since there are three ways, general ways of answering that question, it seems appropriate that there ought to be three terms that sort of the people would fit into. So if I say, yes, I'm a theist. If I say theist, meaning from the Greek theos, you know, God,

if I say, no, I'm an atheist, theos, without God, right? Atheist, theos. If I say, I don't know, God. If I say, no, I'm an atheist, without God, right? Atheist, a theos. If I say, I don't know, I'm without knowledge. That's what agnostic means. Yeah. Now notice that to say God does not exist is as much a claim to knowledge as the theist who says God does exist. Whoever makes a claim to knowledge and wants to convince another of that claim has a burden of proof to shoulder. So it's true that the Christian has a burden of proof to shoulder if he wants to convince his non-believing friend that God exists, but it's equally true that if an atheist wants to convince me that God does not exist, then he also has a burden of proof to

shoulder. So I think what's helpful in these kind of back and forth is that we look at the arguments for the existence of God and against the existence of God and see if we can decide upon which ones we find most convincing. Here's another argument that you often hear. Science can't demonstrate God's existence. And we saw a bit of that in the clip with Trent earlier. Now, this is often kind of, people might say something like this. You know, you shouldn't really accept something unless science can show it to be true. Now, the problem with that statement is it's self-referentially incoherent. And let me explain what that means in a second.

But first, what does the word science mean? What do we mean by science? Well, Thomas Aquinas used the word scientia in Latin to mean just sort of the broad pursuit of knowledge, right? An investigation into the world and not just into the world, but into metaphysics as well. Metaphysics was considered a science. This is what the first question. One of the first questions Aquinas addresses in the Summa Theologiae, whether or not theology is a science, and he says it is. But today when we use the word science, we're using it in this kind of modern sense, and we mean a method of investigation that we've invented to discover truths about the natural world. So we come up with a hypothesis,

we conduct an experiment, we draw a conclusion, right? And then we repeat, and then we come to decide certain things about the natural world, right? Science is an incredible tool, but notice that it says nothing about the immaterial, about the metaphysical, about what might or might not be beyond the physical world. All right. So I'm trying to think of an analogy. All right. Suppose you woke up in a room and you had absolutely no memory and it's a dark room. And in front of you, you find a flashlight. And of course you've got no memory. So you don't really know what a flashlight is, but you click this button that's on top of it. and you're able to investigate the dark room.

You get to see what's on the floor, what colors the walls are, what's in the corners, and so on. This is very useful. That's like science. It can discover truths about the rooms in which you are, that therefore there's nothing beyond the room in which you are, that would clearly exceed the method of investigation or the flashlight's ability. So when you say you shouldn't accept something unless science can show it to be true, this is also, as I say, self-refuting. Because that is a claim to knowledge, right? If I say to you, you shouldn't accept something unless science can show it to be true, that's a claim to knowledge. Well, given the criteria, science should be able to show that that's true, but it can't. When I say you shouldn't accept something unless it can be shown

true by science, that's a philosophical axiom, which I'm beginning with. It's not something I arrive at after a method of investigation. So really, it's self-refuting. It isn't science so much as it is scientism. And it's, as we've seen, I think, self-refuting. Okay, number five. I remember being asked this in Ireland. Oh, sorry, not number five, number six. I remember being asked this in Ireland, and it threw me off. This is years ago before I'd really studied philosophy. Someone asked, can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it? Or maybe you've heard different versions of this. Can God create a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it? You know, these sorts of things.

Because I felt stumped, and maybe you have too. Can God create a rock so heavy he can't eat it, you know, these sorts of things. Because I felt stumped, and maybe you have too, you know, can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it? And if I say, yes, he can, well, then I'm showing that there's something God can't do. He can't lift it. Or if I say, well, no, he can always lift it, then I'm showing that he's incapable of creating a rock heavy enough for him not to be able to lift, do you see? Well, this is a false dilemma. And again, I mentioned at the start of this episode that these are bad objections to God's existence. But as I said, these are still kind of responses, objections, quips, even parodies that can derail a Christian. And that's why I want to respond to them. So to respond to this question, I think what's important is that the first thing we ought to do

is ask the kind of interlocutor, the person we're chatting with, what do you think a Christian means when he says that God is all powerful? Because that's what he's questioning, right? That's the whole point of this little line. Now, often people will say, well, God can do everything. That's what you mean. Like, God can do everything. And that's true, right? Christians do believe that, but a contradiction isn't something, right? Also, God cannot do that which contradicts his nature. God cannot lie, etc. So, a contradiction isn't something. So, God can't do what is logically impossible because what is logically impossible is not anything. Like even the most talented artist cannot draw a square circle, you know, because a square circle is a contradiction. Because a square circle is a contradiction.

So when you say, can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift? What you're asking is, can God, who is infinite in power, create something that he can't lift? So what you're asking is, can God create something that's more than infinite in weight? But you see that right there, More than infinite is a sort of nonsense combination of words. So I think you could say that the question doesn't really make sense when you kind of examine it. Just because you begin a sentence with can God, it doesn't mean that the sentence will be coherent. If I say to you, or if you say to me, you know, can God book, guitar, cards, glasses, computer? I'm just saying whatever I'm looking at right now. You know, the answer isn't really yes or no. That's not a great question. Try again. So,

yeah, I think that's how I'd respond to that one. All right, let's look at the next one. All right, number seven, Christians are hypocrites, therefore God doesn't exist. It's clearly a non sequitur, right? The conclusion does not follow at all. But this is something that's often said in one way or another. comedian, Billy Connolly. And he was asked whether or not he believed in God. And he started shaking his head, no, right? And the interviewer said, well, why not? And he comically started lifting his fist up and down as if he was stabbing somebody and said, you shall not kill, you know? And so his point in that, everybody laughed, the point was that Christians are hypocrites, right? And you hear this from other people. Yeah, I don't go to church. Why don't you go to church? Well, because I just think Christians are hypocrites. Like, look at the news, you know, like, look at the scandals. But of course, just because people

are bad, it doesn't mean the things they believe are false. Say that again. Just because people are bad, it doesn't mean the things they believe are false. Say that again. Just because people are bad, it doesn't mean the things they believe are false. This would be a version of the ad hominem fallacy where you reject what somebody believes because of who they are. And it doesn't work because bad people might hold true beliefs. It's not like everything Hitler believed was false, right? Just because he was bad, right? So just because Christians are bad, it doesn't follow that God doesn't exist, right? And this is true too today, like in the Catholic church, where we have all of this rot and scandal coming forth. And we're going to be addressing this over the next two weeks here on Pints with Aquinas. Be sure to stick around. In the first interview,

I'm going to be interviewing a sister, Mary Madeline Todd, about the current crisis in the church. And my goodness, does she offer some incredibly wise strategies, suggestions on what we ought to be doing. And then the next week, I'm going to look at what Aquinas has to say about correcting priests and bishops. He actually addresses that. So we'll get to that, you know, but I mean, we see all this scandal and I think the temptation is like, if this was the true church, like if this is really the church that Christ established, this wouldn't be happening. But of course, if you use that sort of litmus test for the true religion in old Testament times, you would have missed the true religion because God's leaders were often

bad people or had done bad things. Moses was a murderer. Rahab was a prostitute. David was an adulterer and a murderer. He had the husband of the wife he slept with killed. So in that sense, he's a murderer. So you would have missed the true religion. Just because people are bad, it doesn't follow that what they believe is false. All right, let's look at another one here. Number eight, maybe there's a first cause, but that doesn't prove Christianity is true. And this is something Richard Dawkins said in The God Delusion, where he tried to respond unsuccessfully to Aquinas' five ways. And one of the things he says, I don't have it in front of me, so here's my translation.

You know, like, even if I grant, you know, that there's some sort of first cause, you still haven't proved to me that this first cause answers prayers or like cares how we have sex or in what position. I think that was more Christopher Hitchens who said that sort of thing. But this is a cumulative case that one has to make in arguing for Christianity. Like Christianity is not a simple religion. Christianity is not a simple religion. It's a sophisticated set of doctrines that are coherent and are not irrational. So it's no good to assume that if Christianity is true, it must be super simple, so explain it to me. And sometimes Christianity is true, we try to explain it in a simple way. God exists and he loves you, and you separate yourself from him, and so he sent his son to die for you so you can be reconciled, so you can go to heaven, right?

Like that's true, but there's a lot of questions one might have after a presentation on the gospel like that. And there's a lot of sophisticated answers to these sorts of things, right? So one of my critiques, if you've listened to my episodes on Richard Dawkins's, you know, if you've listened to my episodes on Richard Dawkins' impotent supposed refutation of Aquinas' five ways is, he apparently didn't turn the page, right? So, because like in the first part of the Summa question two, article three, Aquinas is addressing whether or not God exists, okay? But if you turn the page, he then starts to argue for why God is intelligent, all powerful, all knowing. Just because all of this can't be argued in one syllogism, it doesn't at all mean that it's not true. I mean, if it is true that there is a first cause, well, then it becomes a whole lot more likely that God exists.

And if God exists, it becomes a whole lot more likely that he would have revealed himself in a particular way to certain people, right? Isn't that true? And so I think that's kind of what we want to do. We want to take arguments one at a time and not be led down a kind of a red herring, you know, by a red herring. So a red herring is a fallacy. A red herring is a fish. And I guess what they used to do when they were training dogs is they would hook these dead fish up to a chain and they would drag it across the path of a bloodhound or a dog's quarry to see whether or not the dog was trained well enough to stay on the quarry and not be led astray by the scent of

the dead fish. And so often what happens is a Christian will say, well, I think God exists. I think God is a first cause. I think in order to explain contingent being, it has to be contingent upon something. I think that something is a necessary being and so on. And they might say, well, okay, well, even if that's right, it doesn't show that Christianity is true. And at that point, it can be very tempting to start making arguments for Christianity. And I think a more wise move would be to say, okay, well, maybe that's, I think you're right, you might say. You're right. It could be the case that there is a first cause and Christianity is false. But let's not rush to Christianity. Let's just see if we can

agree whether we have good reasons for a first cause. Once we've agreed with that, then we might be able to move on. Okay. So I think a ninth objection is the idea that the Bible is filled with contradictions. This is something that people throw out. It's very easy to throw out. It's kind of like a shotgun fallacy. And what that means is I throw a bunch of objections at you that you cannot possibly respond to in the time available. And so therefore it looks like I've won. in the time available. And so therefore it looks like I've won. And so very often what atheists will do is they'll come up with a series of supposed contradictions, throw them out at you. I mean, you may not even know how to respond, but even if you did, you wouldn't have the time to respond. And so it seems like all the evidence is on their side. But there's some really great

books out there. Trent Horn wrote a book called Hard Sayings, which I'd highly recommend you get. It's from Catholic Answers Press, where he addresses most, if not all that you can think of and that I can think of, of the supposed contradictions in sacred scripture and shows why they are indeed not contradictions. Yeah. But here's the problem, right? The problem sort of like with the whole, you know, Christians are hypocrites, therefore God doesn't exist. It's a non-sequitur, right? So if I'm trying to talk about the existence of God and you say to me, I don't believe in God because the Bible is filled with contradictions, that's not a proof that God doesn't exist. And again, to bring it up for the third time in my book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas, which you can get, and I can sign it for you if you become a patron for 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash my

friend. So we address this, right? We address this issue. AJ and Lucy are chatting. And one of the first things AJ says to Lucy is like, I don't believe in Christianity. It's a joke. Haven't you read the Old Testament? God is like this benevolent bully. And in the New Testament, he's a peace-loving hippie. All right. So the problem with this is, of course, it's a non sequitur. And by that, I mean this. Let's say the Bible is false. Does that prove that God doesn't exist? No, it doesn't. But very often, this is what the protagonist, the person you're engaging with is trying to say. Like I was in Minnesota, I gave a talk, someone came up after the talk and said, I don't believe in God.

And I said, why not? And he said that the Bible's filled with contradictions. And so I said, okay, for the sake of argument, let's say I agree. I don't, but just for the sake of argument, let's say I agree. How does that prove that God doesn't exist? I said to him, that would be like saying, you know, this account of alien abduction is false. It's filled with contradictions. That does not prove that aliens don't exist. All it proves is this person's account of having encountered aliens is false. Right? So taking things one step at a time can be really helpful. Here's the 10th objection, right? Dawkins has said this. I think Ricky Gervais has said this. It's basically the idea that like, I just believe

in one less God than you. So really, you know, we're both atheists, right? I'm an atheist in respect to all gods, the atheist will say. You're an atheist with respect to every God humanity has postulated. I just go one step further, says the atheist. I'm consistent, right? Now, there's a number of problems with this. Let's point out two. First, and this is an example given by Trent Horn. He says, okay, just because there are counterfeit gods, it doesn't prove that there isn't a real god.

Any more than counterfeit money proves that there is no real money. Just because there's monopoly money and all sorts of other fake types of money in games and so forth, it doesn't show. Suppose this person said, I believe all money is counterfeit. I just go one step further. Well, that doesn't work. I mean, maybe it's the case that many just go one step further. Like, you know, well, that doesn't work. I mean, maybe it's the case that many of these gods are false, but there is still a God. You know what I'm saying? So that would be the first problem. The second problem is when you say to me,

you're an atheist with respect to every other God humanity has postulated, that's not actually true, because an atheist is someone who denies the existence of God. And as I deny, you know, existence of God. And as I deny, you know, the deity of say Thor or Zeus, it's not like I'm an atheist while I'm denying their divinity because while I deny their divinity, I am a theist. I do believe in the one true God. So that's not going to work. All right. So there are 10 bad arguments for God's existence. I hope that was a help for you. It's been a tremendous challenge doing these episodes of late. I have to say, one of the reasons is we have so many listeners. We get hundreds of thousands of downloads here at Pints with Aquinas. And some of you have just jumped on board. Some of you have been

listening forever. Some of you are interested in the metaphysical stuff. Some of you are interested in kind of more the pastoral approach. So I'm trying to give you a different spattering of different things. And so I hope that this has been a helpful episode. I want to just kind of reiterate what I said earlier in this podcast, three awesome things that I want to get done, which are all going to cost me a lot of money, right? The first is to bring Father Gregory Pine, that's the least amount of money, of course, but he's going to come on every other episode. So we're really going to dig into the Sumer and what Aquinas has to say on certain things. He's just a brilliant dude and he can go places that I just simply cannot go. And so I

really, truly believe that that is going to be a blessing to you and to your friends and loved ones. So we need about 40 patrons more right now. So go be a patron, patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. You see all the free stuff I give you in return. One of the free things you'll get by the way is, oh, this is really exciting. We do these post-show wrap-up videos of the Matt Fradd show. So I just interviewed Stephanie Gray last month and then we kept the cameras recording for another 15 minutes. It was really cool. We just chatted and had a lot of fun. This month, I'm interviewing Dr. Peter Kreeft. And so we'll do the same thing. And so you as a patron will get access to these private videos that no one else will see. You'll get signed

copies of my book. You'll get a Pints with Aquinas beer stein if you give more. You can have access to these private video small groups. You'll see all the stuff that I give you, but that's another reason to start supporting. But here's the second thing we want to do. We want to create an app for Pints with Aquinas where you can have access to his prayers. So you can listen to his prayers. It'll be a free app, right? So you can just open it up. You can read the prayers. Apps are kind of costly, right? Believe it or not. So this is something I want to do and planning on doing once we get a certain amount of patrons. And then thirdly, if the good father wants it, I would like to start doing more than one episode of the Matt Fradd Show a month. I would like to do, say, two a month. There are so

many amazing people out there that I want to interview and want to kind of put before people. It's such a blessing to me when people come up to me and they say, you know, I just listened to Joe Rogan and all those people, and I didn't realize that there was intelligent, well-produced videos like yours. And when I found them, I kind of quit Netflix. I started watching these, and I've been so edified by them. And so that's just been tremendously edifying for me to hear. So, again, if you want to be part of this, because I don't have any big, major donors. I just have people who are giving monthly. Go to pints, sorry, go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. You can give to me there.

Or if you hate Patreon and just want to give to me directly, you won't have the same Patreon experience as everyone else. But I know some people like feel really strongly about this. I don't want to give through Patreon, but still want to support my work. You can go to pints with Aquinas.com slash donate. It's really simple. And I know it's just 10 bucks a month for you, whatever, 20 bucks a month, you know, but it means so much, so much to us. And it really allows us to continue this work. So thank you so much. God bless you. Now, next week, we are going to do a two-part series, as I say, on the church scandals. So if you haven't yet subscribed to Pints with Aquinas, be sure to do that. So you'll see these when they come out. My hope is to deal with these issues

without holding back and yet not without charity and gentleness. So I think you're going to find them very refreshing to some of the yelling that's going on in different corners of the internet. So subscribe to Pines with Aquinas. And if you haven't yet, be sure to review us on iTunes. Give us a five-star rating if you can. I know it's just a couple of clicks for you, but again, it means a lot for us. And it means that more and more people are going to be exposed to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic faith. And so that would be tremendously helpful as well. Alrighty. God bless you. Have a good day. I hope you're well. Good stuff. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.. I'm going to survive. I'm going to survive Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? And I would give my whole life to carry you.