Pints With Aquinas - 49.5: Does God Exist? Michael Nugent v William Lane Craig

Episode Date: March 26, 2017

Michael Nugent, chair of Atheist Ireland, debates William Lane Craig, of Reasonable Faith, in University College Cork, Ireland, on March 21, 2017. --- Learn more about William Lane Craig here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/ Learn more about Michael Nugent and Atheist Ireland here: http://atheist.ie/ See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmlcmVye4hM --- 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

Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 49.5. I'm Matt Fradd. You know, I do these.9 in the middle of the regular weekly episodes when I want to showcase something a little different to our regular format. There was just a debate that took place in Ireland between the chair of Atheist Ireland, Michael Nugent, and theistic apologist William Lane Craig. theist island, Michael Nugent, and theistic apologist, William Lane Craig. William Lane Craig is an evangelical apologist. And in my opinion, he is the best debater for the existence of God. And so this is about a two hour debate and it was so good. And so I share it because Pints with Aquinas is really about helping you and I realize the rational basis that undergirds our Christian faith. And, of course, Aquinas is very concerned with arguing for the existence of God. And Craig has five arguments that he shares.

None of them are Aquinas' arguments. Well, there's differences between the arguments Craig gives that are similar to Aquinas' arguments. Well, there's differences between the arguments Craig gives that are similar to Aquinas' arguments. Nevertheless, it'll help you, I think, argue and reason with your friends who might be atheist or agnostic. You can learn more about William Lane Craig at his website, reasonablefaith.com, and I will put a link in the show notes to the video of this debate if you'd like to watch it. God bless and I will still chat with you at our regular time on Tuesday.

So we have two very eminent speakers tonight and I'm going to mention and describe them briefly to you before we pass to our first speaker. Michael Nugent is an Irish writer and activist. He has written, co-written or contributed to many books and to the comedy musical The Eye Keynote, which enjoyed a very extended run and a very popular reception some years back in Ireland. He's chairperson of Atheist Ireland, and he describes Atheist Ireland as an advocacy group for atheism, reason, and ethical secularization. And he's a vocal spokesperson in Ireland and beyond for atheism reason and let's go secular stage he's based in many universities and has shaped policy by speaking to

law-making bodies in Ireland Europe and abroad and he has two websites and both of them are worth looking at I've listened to some of his podcasts there one is simply Mike Mugin calm and the other is www.atheist.ie so anyone interested can follow up. We also have Dr. William Lane Craig who is a research professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology and he's a professor of philosophy

at Houston Baptist University. He runs an organization called Reasonable Faith and again they've got a website too it's called www.reasonablefaith.org. And as well as being author of over 30 books, he's an author, editor of over 30 books, sorry, nearly 200 peer-reviewed academic articles in professional journals of theology and philosophy.

And he's well known for debates all over the world with famous atheists. I can tell you he's debated some of the biggest. I'm sure the names will probably be known to you. And again I should mention that our host tonight, Christians Union, are an interdenominational coalition of different Protestant confessions or on face here and they're mainly interested in how to reach students and young people so this is a very appropriate context for them as well so I'd like to begin now by inviting Bill to come to the podium and speak for the first 20 minutes. Good evening. Let me begin by thanking the Christian Union for inviting me to participate in tonight's debate. Jan and I have visited Ireland decades ago, and so we were very grateful

for the invitation to come back and participate in this event. And I'm also grateful to Mr. Nugent for his willingness to participate. Now in tonight's debate, I'm going to defend two basic contentions. First, there are good reasons to think that theism is true, and second, there are not comparably good reasons to think that atheism is true. Now I'll leave it up to Mr. Nugent to present his arguments for atheism before I respond. In this opening speech, I want to sketch briefly five reasons in favor of God's existence. As a professional philosopher, I'm convinced that God makes sense of a wide range of the data of human experience, including philosophical, scientific, ethical, historical,

and existential considerations. What are some of these data? Well, number one, the origin of the universe. Have you ever asked yourself where the universe came from? Typically, atheists have said that the universe is just eternal and uncaused. But there are powerful philosophical arguments as well as strong scientific evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago. Number one, arguments based upon the impossibility of the existence of an actually infinite number of things. Two, arguments based upon the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition.

Three, evidence from the expansion of the universe, and four, evidence from the second law of thermodynamics. In my published work I've unfolded these four considerations in considerable detail. They show that the past is not infinite, but that the universe, by which I mean all of space-time reality, had an absolute beginning a finite time ago. Fortunately, I needn't go into these arguments tonight since Mr. Newton elsewhere agrees that the universe began to exist. Since something cannot come into being from nothing, the absolute beginning of the universe implies the existence of a transcendent cause of the universe. We can summarize our argument thus far as follows. 1. The universe began to exist. Two, if the universe began to exist, then the universe has a transcendent cause.

Three, therefore the universe has a transcendent cause. Now, Mr. Nugent actually concedes this conclusion, stating that it is, and I quote, actually concedes this conclusion, stating that it is, and I quote, relatively uncontroversial that something caused the universe. But what sort of being was it? Well, from the very nature of the case, as the cause of space and time, this cause must be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial being which created the universe. Moreover, it must arguably be personal as well. As Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne points out, there are two types of causal explanations. Explanations in terms of natural loss and initial conditions, and explanations in terms

of personal agents and their volitions. For example, if I walk into the kitchen and ask Jan, why is the kettle boiling? She might answer, the heat of the flame is being conducted by the copper bottom of the kettle with the water molecules increasing their kinetic energy so that they vibrate so violently that they break the surface tension of the water and are thrown off in the form of steam. Or she might say, I put it on to make a cup of tea. Would you like some? Each is a perfectly legitimate form of explanation. Indeed, in certain contexts, it would be wholly inappropriate to give the one rather than the other. Now, a first state of the universe cannot have a causal explanation in terms of

natural laws operating on initial conditions, since there is no prior physical state. But it can be accounted for in terms of a transcendent personal agent and his volitions, an unembodied mind. And thus we are brought not merely to an uncaused cause of the universe, but to its personal creator. Number two, a life-permitting universe. In recent decades, scientists have been stunned by the discovery that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with a precision and delicacy that literally defy human comprehension. It's important to understand human comprehension. It's important to understand that the term fine-tuned does not mean designed, much less designed for man. The expression is a neutral term used by secular scientists,

which doesn't say anything about what the purpose of the universe is or how the fine-tuning is best explained. Fine-tuning just means that the range of life-permitting values for the fundamental parameters of the universe is extremely narrow. These parameters are of two sorts. First, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants like the gravitational constant. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. Second, in addition to these nature. Second, in addition to these constants, you find certain arbitrary quantities which are just put in as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate. For example, the amount of entropy in the universe. Now, all of these constants and quantities fall into an incomprehensibly narrow range of life-permitting

values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair's breadth, the delicate balance would be destroyed and life would not exist. We now know that life-prohibiting universes are incomprehensibly more probable than any life-permitting universe. Now there are three possible explanations of the extraordinary fine-tuning in the scientific literature, physical necessity, chance, or design. Now, it can't be due to physical necessity, since as we've seen, the constants and quantities are independent of the laws of nature. So, could the fine-tuning be due to chance? The problem here is that the odds that all of the constants and quantities

would fall by chance into the tiny life-permitting range are so infinitesimal that they cannot be reasonably faced. Therefore, the proponents of chance have been forced to recur to a remarkable metaphysical hypothesis, the multiverse. According to this hypothesis, there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered unseen parallel universes, so that by chance alone, finely tuned universes will appear somewhere in the ensemble. There are many problems with the multiverse hypothesis as an explanation of fine tuning, but let me highlight the most important. If our universe were just a random member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing

a very different universe than we do. Roger Penrose, Vox for University, has pressed this objection forcefully. He points out that the odds of our universe's initial low entropy conditions existing by chance alone are one chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. By contrast, the odds of our solar systems coming together suddenly by the random collision of particles is one chance out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 60. This number, says Penrose, is utter chicken feed in comparison to the 10 to the 123. What that means is it is far more likely that we should be observing an orderly patch no larger than our solar system, since a universe like that is so unfathomably more probable

than a finely tuned universe like ours. In fact, the most probable observable universe is one which consists of a single brain, which pops into existence by a random fluctuation with illusory perceptions of the external world. So, if you accept the multiverse hypothesis, you're obligated to believe that you are all that exists, and that this auditorium, your body, the earth, and everything you perceive are illusions of your brain. No sane person believes such a thing. On atheism, therefore, it is highly improbable that there exists a randomly ordered multiverse. With a failure of the multiverse hypothesis, the alternative of chance collapses. Neither physical necessity nor chance provides a good explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe. Therefore, it follows the best explanation is design. Thus the life permitting universe implies the

existence of a designer of the cosmos. Number three, the existence of objective moral values and duties in the world. Our first two arguments give us a creator and designer of the universe, but they don't tell us anything about his moral character. How do we know that he is good? My third argument addresses that question. Premise one states, if God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist. Michael Nugent agrees with this premise.

On his view, morality is just, and I quote, a property of our brains, an evolved trait of social animals that enables us to live together. Just as a troop of baboons exhibit empathy and reciprocity because natural selection has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival, so their primate cousins, Homo sapiens, have evolved similar behavior for the same reason. As a result of sociobiological pressures, there has emerged among Homo sapiens a sort of herd morality that functions well in the perpetuation of our species. that functions well in the perpetuation of our species. But on the atheistic view, there isn't anything that makes this morality objectively binding and true. But that leads us to our second premise, realm of moral values and duties that impose themselves upon us.

That does not imply that our moral experience is infallible, but only that it is not wholly delusory. Our apprehension of the moral realm is analogous to our apprehension of the physical realm. Just as in the absence of some defeater we are rational to trust the fallible deliverances of our five senses that there really is a world of physical objects out there, so too in the absence of some defeater we are rational to trust our moral apprehensions. And there is no such defeater. As the philosopher Louise Anthony so nicely puts it, any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises

which are less obvious than the reality of objective moral values themselves. Some things are really wrong. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior. They're truly evil. When Mr. Nugent denounces God for doing certain allegedly immoral acts, he actually bears witness to the truth of this premise. For in the absence of objective moral values and duties, no one can be condemned for doing anything, including God.

But if at least some objective moral values and duties exist, then it follows logically and inescapably that three, therefore God exists. Number four, the historical facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth. The historical person Jesus of Nazareth was by all accounts a remarkable individual. Historians have reached something of a consensus that Jesus came on the scene with an unprecedented sense of divine authority, with the authority to stand and speak in God's place. He claimed that in himself the kingdom of God had come and as visible demonstrations of this fact he carried out a ministry of miracle

working and exorcisms. But the supreme confirmation of his claim was his resurrection from the dead. If Jesus did rise from the dead then it would seem that we have a divine miracle on our hands, and thus evidence for the existence of God. Now, most people would probably think that the majority of historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus. Fact number one, on the Sunday after the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was discovered empty by a group of his women followers. According to Jakob Kramer, an Austrian specialist, by far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb. Fact number two, on separate occasions different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death.

According to the prominent New Testament critic, Gerold Wudemann, it may be taken as historically certain that the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ. These appearances were witnessed not only by believers, but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies. Fact number three, the original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Jews had no belief in a Messiah contrary. Jews had no belief in a Messiah who would be defeated and executed by his enemies, and Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead to glory and immortality before the end of the world. Nevertheless, the original disciples came to

believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief. N.T. Wright, an eminent New Testament scholar, concludes, that is why as a historian I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him. Attempts to explain away these three great facts, like the disciples stole the body or Jesus wasn't really dead, have been universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. The simple fact is that there just is no plausible, naturalistic explanation of these facts. And therefore, it seems to me, the Christian is amply justified in believing that Jesus rose from the dead and was who he claimed to be.

But that entails that God exists. And thus we have a good inductive argument for the existence of God from the resurrection of Jesus. Finally, number five, the personal experience of God. This isn't really an argument for God's existence. Rather, it's the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by personally experiencing him. This was the way that people in the Bible knew God. As Professor John Hick explains, God was known to them as a dynamic will, interacting with their own wills,

a sheer given reality, as inescapably to be reckoned with as destructive storm and life-giving sunshine. To them, God was not an idea adopted by the mind, but an experienced reality that gained significance to their lives. Now, if that is the case, there's a danger that arguments for God could actually distract your attention from God himself. If you're sincerely seeking God, then God will make his

existence evident to you. The Bible promises draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. We mustn't so concentrate on the arguments that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our own heart. For those who listen, God becomes a personal reality in their lives. So in conclusion then, we've seen five good reasons to think that God exists. If Mr. Nugent wants us to believe that God does not exist, then he must first tear down all five of the arguments that I've presented, and then in their place erect a case of his own to show that God does not exist. Unless and until he does that, I think that theism is the more plausible worldview. Thank you very much indeed, Professor Craig.

Thank you indeed for your work, for keeping with him, for a lot of time. I would now like to invite Michael Linton, to present his case. Michael. Thank you. Want to take that down? Good job, Michael. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I'd like to welcome Bill to Ireland. He's a sincere advocate for his beliefs. A week ago I debated an equally sincere Hamza Sources, whose path to Islam was very like Bill's path to Christianity. They were both in school at the time and they both had an experience of faith after a conversation with a classmate and they each committed their lives to spreading the word of God and Allah respectively. Now both Bill and Hamza know that their gods exist because of faith, and they're both using reason to help to lead people to a personal truth that they both know by faith,

and they're both good, sincere people, and at least one of them, if not both, are mistaken. I strongly believe there are no gods, so I'm a strong atheist. I also don't claim to be able to know that there are no gods, so I'm also an agnostic. I'm always happy to say, even on the question of whether it is a god, that I might be mistaken. But at the moment I am as confident that the Christian god does not exist as Christians are that poor does not exist. Does God exist is not merely a technical claim about how the universe came to be. It is also a claim about having moral authority to tell people how to live their

lives and that puts a strong onus of proof and a strong responsibility on people making that claim. I want to suggest tonight, as Bill has somewhat alluded to in his last couple of comments, that essentially we're talking today about whether the Christian God exists. Because for any other God, both Bill and I would simply agree that they don't exist. Our only area of difference is whether the Christian God exists. So how do we evaluate what's most likely to be true? Well, I suggest, unlike Bill's last point, I suggest that faith and personal experience are the worst and least reliable ways of identifying what's true. They result in different people

coming to different beliefs about the same reality. Applying reason to evidence is the most reliable way because it can more reliably result in different people coming to the same beliefs about the same reality. And when we apply reason to reality, I want to suggest tonight that the idea of a God seems implausible, that reality and morality both seem as they would expect them to be if there was no God, and that there is a relentless pattern of natural explanations replacing supernatural explanations. I'm going to start with the idea of the Christian God seeming implausible, obviously to somebody who doesn't already believe in it. That Christians typically believe that their God is a pure mind without a body, perfect and changeless, a first cause beyond time and space, all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good. Well here are 20 reasons why that seems implausible. A pure mind without a body is an invented convenience because we have no evidence that a mind can

exist without a body or a brain or a source of energy and a lot of evidence to suggest that it can't. Even if we explore this inventive convenience, a pure mind without a body might be aware of the existence of matter, but it couldn't interact with that matter, because there would be no mechanism for it to do so. If this God is changeless, then it cannot create anything, because it would have to change in order to do so. Even if you believed that it simply willed matter into existence, which is another inventive if you believed that it simply willed matter into existence, which is another inventive convenience, then that act of will would be a change

within that supposedly changeless mind. But if this mind is perfect, then it couldn't change anyway, because it would either become more perfect, which is impossible, or less perfect, in which case it would no longer be perfect. Even if it could change, it would not want to change, because being perfect, in which case it would no longer be perfect. Even if it could change, it would

not want to change, because being perfect, it would have no desire to do anything. If you respond that it was changeless, but it changed after it created the universe, or when it created the universe, then it is simply false to say that it is changeless. Or could it change back to being changeless? And how would that change happen? If the God is no longer changeless, or beyond time and space, then it may have ceased to exist sometime in the last 14 billion years. If this God is all perfect and all good, then it would have created a perfect universe. At a minimum, a perfect universe would not contain suffering or evil.

If you respond that even a perfect God can only do what is logically possible, then it is logically possible to have a universe without suffering or evil. If you respond that the universe is actually perfect, but we just don't understand how, then why would God have to intervene in this perfect universe through miracles? The youthful dilemma still remains. Does the God command things to be good for arbitrary reasons? Or does it identify things as being good because they correspond to independent standards of goodness? If you respond that God's nature is to be good,

and that gets you off, it doesn't, the dilemma still remains. Is the God's nature good for arbitrary reasons, or is it good because it corresponds to independent standards of goodness? All of the arguments for an all-good God can just as easily be used to support the idea of an all-evil God who gives us free will because it wants us to do evil voluntarily rather than force us to do evil. If this God is all-knowing, then it knows the taste of strawberry yogurt. But if it doesn't have a body or senses, then how can it know the taste of anything? And if you respond to that by saying, well, what it knows is it knows the truth of propositions, then it is not all-knowing, it is less than all-knowing.

If this God is all-knowing, then it knows what we're going to do in the future. But if it knows that, then either we don't have free will, or else the God has consciously created free agents that it knows will do evil. If this God cares about humans on planet Earth, then at a minimum it could have given us all the same information and the same moral messages. And finally, let me remind you that all of this is just exploring hypothetically an invented convenience, which is that there can be such a thing as a pure mind without a body, or a brain, or a source of energy. And you have to justify that before you move on to all of the supposed attributes. And you have to justify it in the actual world of reality, not just in the invented universal discourse of theology.

The second set of arguments that I want to make is that reality looks like we would expect with no God. Here are ten reasons why. Theists believe that this God created the universe out of nothing, but the modern study of physics is based on patterns and not causes, and it only allows us to examine back as far as the Big Bang. We simply don't know what might have happened before that. Our universe, or any number of others, might have begun, or might be eternal. We can't believe that this God created the universe with a purpose, but we don't see the universe moving towards any purpose. What we mostly see is impersonal forces pushing and pulling particles around and mostly moving

towards a state of increasing disorder. Theists believe that this God finds the physical constants of the universe to allow life. But while these constants do allow life, they don't seem to be related to that or indeed any purpose. And in any case, from a theistic point of view, life has nothing to do with physical constants. It's spiritual. It could exist alongside any set of physical constants or even without any physical matter at all. The whole point of theism is that our life is not bound to our physical bodies or physical constants, but is spiritual in nature. Indeed, if you believe that this God is a pure, bodiless mind, and if you also believe that matter cannot come from nothing,

then the most rational theistic conclusion to come to would be that the God has spawned other pure, bodiless minds and that matter itself is an illusion. Theists believe that this God has a special relationship with human beings on planet Earth. But we see a universe that is incredibly wasteful for such an imagined purpose. that is incredibly wasteful for such an imagined purpose. If it exists, this human-focused God has wasted almost all of time and space in its human-focused plan. Our observable universe is 92 billion light-years in diameter and expanding. It has over 100 billion galaxies, each of which has 100 billion stars like our sun.

We don't know how far our universe extends beyond the observable region. We don't know whether it is spatially finite or infinite, or if other universes exist that exist completely outside of it. Our observable universe is almost 14 billion years old. Life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago. Human life began about 200,000 years ago. The Abrahamic God supposedly revealed himself to human beings about 4,000 years ago. That's 4,000 years out of 14 billion years. For context, the Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees once compared the lifespan of our Sun to a human being walking across America from New York to

California he said that on that scale all of recorded human history would be four or five steps somewhere in the middle of Kansas which of professor Reeves thought it is hardly the apex of the journey. Please believe that this God created human life as more special than other life. But we know that we are just one evolved species and unmanaged. There have been 5 billion species on Earth. 99% of them are extinct. Humans are one of the remaining 50 million species that currently share this tiny planet. We cannot live outside of the planet without the aid of technology. On the planet, we can only live on a small part of the planet's surface.

The part that we can live on has earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis. We can die within seconds of being deprived of oxygen or for any other number of reasons. We can believe things and we can do things that are counterproductive to our survival. And those of us who do the fewest things that are counterproductive to our survival are the ones who survive.

We have, however, evolved a capacity to apply reason to evidence. And that enables us to understand more about how the universe operates naturally. We can design models of reality to help us to understand how actual reality might work. And this provides us with actual reality might work. And this provides us with fantastically reliable predictions about reality, particularly when contrasted to the utter unreliability of theistic beliefs. And this is enabling us to gradually move beyond earlier beliefs about supernatural agency. Whatever the specific mechanisms might be involved, human life is as we would expect it to look if there was no God, if there was natural evolution.

Yet with astounding self-importance and grandiosity, many humans still believe that we, alone on our planet, alone in our galaxy and alone in our galaxy, and alone in the universe, are the only living beings with God-given immortal souls. I want to move on now to the issue of morality. And I'm going to suggest that morality is also as we would expect it to be if there was no God. Again, here are ten reasons why. Firstly, what do I mean by morality? An outcome is bad, and I believe objectively so, if it harms a sentient being, and an action is objectively wrong if the agent unjustly harms the sentient being. In any given situation, it can be easy or

difficult to know what the right or wrong thing to do is. Now if there was an all-knowing, all-perfect, all-good God that was the source of morality and that cared about human beings on planet Earth, at a minimum you would expect that he would be able to give us all the same moral message. And we would see throughout different parts of the world and different parts of history, everybody having the same sense of morality. If there was no God, what we would expect to see is that different sets of people at different times

and at different places in the world would be involving different sets of morality, different modes of morality, and that is indeed what we do see. So in parallel to applying reason to the evidence of reality in order to try to understand what is objectively true about reality we can also try to apply reason to the evidence of our behaviour to try to understand what is true about morality.

And it is simply false to suggest that we need the assistance of a God to do that. There are many approaches to moral philosophy that do not invoke God's. I'm going to give you one plausible model. Morality has evolved in the brains of social animals, including humans, because both cooperation and competition are useful to survival. When parents look after their children, those children are more likely to grow up. When tribes cooperate in looking for food, those tribes are more likely to survive. And so genes for caring for children and genes for cooperating tend to be passed on from generation to generation and become

more common. Now we see three phases of morality among social animals. The first phase is empathy and compassion. The second phase is cooperation and reciprocity. And the third phase is understanding fairness and justice. And many non-human animals will exhibit these types of morality. There was bydd anifeiliaid nesaf yn arwain y mathau hyn o moraeth. Roedd ymdrin ymdrin lle byddai rhai yn annu bwyd os oeddent wedi gweld eu bod yn ystod y bwyd, roedd unrhyw rhai yn cael eu eletrocutio. Mae hynny'n sôn am moraeth dynol, mae gennym ymdrin fel hynny. Mae ymdrin arall lle roedd yn cael bwyd os oeddent wedi rhoi token i mewn i'r slot. Roedd rhai bwyd yn gallu ddysgu ei fod yn ei ddysgu. Byddai bwyd arall yn cy monkey would take their token, put it in the slot, and when the food comes out,

give the food to the monkey that couldn't figure out the mechanism. But aside from that, humans and some other animals have a greater capacity for more nuanced morality because we have a greater capacity for reason. We can know that something is wrong because we can understand that it causes unjustified harm. So our sentience and our consciousness and our ability to reason give us a special role in sharing our lives with those who we share our lives on this planet, in that our behaviour has consequences for other living beings, but does not give us a special place in the universe

as a whole. Now I subscribe to a variation of John Rawls' social contract theory of morality. And what that is, essentially, is how would a perfectly rational set of people design principles of justice for a society if we don't know in advance what position we would hold in that society. We don't know whether we'd be rich or poor, we don't know in advance what position we would hold in that society. We don't know whether we'd be rich or poor, we don't know whether we'd be male or female, we don't know whether we'd be healthy or sick. And that veil of ignorance forces us to be impartial and to develop just, universally just principles. Now my personal addition to that theory is that we also should not know what species we would be. Because I believe that one of the greatest injustices in our world, morally, is how we treat non-human animals.

Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals and up to a trillion fish. And these sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience and our slaughter of them is an ongoing moral atrocity. In any given circumstance, it's already hard enough to understand and figure out what the right balance is between empathy and compassion and cooperation and reciprocity and fairness and justice. But religion corrupts this already difficult process by adding in imagined supposedly supernatural commands that are unrelated to the requirements of morality. And so you see verse 24-2 of the

Quran saying flog adulterers a hundred times each and do not let your compassion stop you because clearly there were some early Muslims who realized that this punishment was disproportionate and immoral and so they had to be told and do not let their compassion stop you. And you get Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel in the Bible where the Christian God repeatedly commands the Israelites to attack the cities of other tribes and to show them no compassion and to completely destroy them, putting to death man, woman, child and infant and leaving nothing alive that breathes. And you get otherwise good people like Bill here,

who I genuinely respect as a good person, defending this act of slaughter because of his religious belief on the grounds that it is good because God commanded it, even though it would have been bad if God had not commanded it, including defending the slaughter of innocent children on the basis that they would go straight to heaven. Not only is belief in a God not needed for morality, but belief in a God can actively corrupt our natural morality,

even in the mind of an obviously good man like Bill. I'll address Bill's opening arguments in my next contribution. And Bill, I know I've given you a lot to respond to here. I would like you to respond to as much as you can. But while you're doing so, can you please prioritise responding to these

questions. Is it possible that you might be mistaken that the Christian God exists? If so, what evidence would convince you? And I'm happy to say I might be mistaken about my belief in it. How do you justify the supposed existence of a pure mind without a body when there is no evidence that such a thing can exist? And by what mechanism could such a thing create and interact with matter? Is it logically possible to have a universe without suffering or evil? Why is God's nature good? Is it good for arbitrary reasons or because it corresponds to independent standards of goodness? How do you justify as objectively moral the Christian

God repeatedly ordering the Israelites to slaughter children and infants of other tribes? And to summarise my overview, is there a God? I don't know. Bill doesn't know, none of us know. What's the most reliable way of finding out? I suggest that faith and personal experience are the least reliable and that applying evidence or reason to evidence is the most reliable. When we apply reason to evidence, we notice that the idea of a God is implausible, we notice that reality and morality are as we would expect them to be if there was no God, and we also notice that natural explanations are relentlessly replacing supernatural explanations.

And while there are still some questions that we still don't understand the answers to, I suggest on the basis of that relentless flow of natural explanations replacing supernatural cwestiynau nad ydym yn deall eu hadroddiadau i, byddwn i'n argymell, ar y bôn o'r ffurf hwyr o ddisgyblion naturiol, yn cymryd un o'r ddynion hwnnw, a dim yn ddibynnol yn y cyfeiriad gwahanol, bod yn fwy o ddibynnol na ddim, hyd yn oed wrth i ni gael ymddiriedaeth i'r wlad, i'w credu bod ddim yn dda. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Steve. My comments that are on my Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts, I'm getting some comments in like this is going on. And I like the one that says, will be there and another questioner says how will this be decided?

How will the winner be determined? A lightning bolt? We now move on to the first stage of the rebuttals and I'd like to invite Professor Craig and he has 11 minutes for this stage of the flow. Thank you. You'll recall that in my opening speech I said I would be defending two major contentions in tonight's debate. First, that there are good reasons to think that God exists, and secondly, there are not comparably good reasons to think that atheism is true. In his opening speech, Mr. Newton presented at least five atheistic arguments. Number one, he said there's no evidence that a mind might exist without a body. I have two points of response. First, we are acquainted with ourselves as immaterial persons.

with ourselves as immaterial persons. Reductive materialism doesn't work because mental properties are not identical with physical properties. For example, the brain is not jubilant or sad. Epiphenomenalism, that is the view that the physical brain has mental properties, is incompatible with self-identity over time, intentional states thinking about things with freedom of the will and with mental causation. So it seems to me that the best view of ourselves is some sort of dualist interactionism. We are free agents who cause effects in our body. We are material selves but secondly I've given arguments in my opening speech for the existence of a transcendent personal creator and designer of

the universe and source of objective moral values those arguments require that there be a transcendent, immaterial mind, and so that demonstrates the existence of such a thing. Number two, he says that if God is changeless, then it would be impossible for him to interact with the world. I agree with that, and the changelessness of God is not an article of the Christian faith. I myself don't believe in God's changelessness. Number three, he said, if God is omniscient, it precludes human freedom. I spent seven years studying the relationship between divine foreknowledge and human freedom, and the argument for theological fatalism is simply logically fallacious. To say that necessarily because God foreknows X,

X will happen, and that God foreknows X, therefore necessarily X will happen, commits a fallacy in modal logic. So if he's going to defend fatalism, he needs to show us how his reasoning doesn't commit that logical error. Fourth, he says, what about all the evil in the world? Isn't that inconsistent with God's existence? Not at all. The atheist has an enormous burden of proof to show that it is

logically impossible that God could have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world, and no atheist has ever been able to carry that burden of proof. And for that reason, the logical problem of evil is today recognized as bankrupt by both theists and atheists alike. Paul Draper, a prominent atheist philosopher, says logical arguments from evil are a dying, dead, breathing. Even an omnipotent and omniscient being might be forced to allow evil for the sake of obtaining some important good. So the atheist has not been able to sustain the burden of proof showing the logical impossibility of the coexistence of God and evil. Finally, Mr. Nugent says that God's existence is less probable given certain facts in the

world such as the vastness of the universe, the rarity of human life, the suffering of life and so on. Now I simply disagree with that probability assessment, but even if I were to concede that these facts would be more probable on atheism than on theism, it doesn't follow logically from that that atheism is therefore more probable than theism. That represents a logical leap that ignores crucial factors in how probabilities are calculated. and how probabilities are calculated. If the prior probability of theism is high, that is to say if there are good arguments for God's existence, then the improbabilities alleged by Mr. Nugent are simply swamped. So the question is, are there good arguments for theism?

Well, that takes us back to my first contention, where I present five reasons on behalf of God's existence. First, the origin of the universe. All that Mr. Nugent said in response to this argument is that scientists don't know what there was before the universe. Well, science doesn't deal in certainties, but scientists do have a pretty good idea of what there was before the Big Bang, namely, nothing. There wasn't anything prior to the Big Bang because the Big Bang represents the origin of space and time themselves. Moreover, the philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past show that the universe had an absolute beginning. And thus we have good

grounds for thinking that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since something cannot come out of nothing, there must therefore be a transcendent cause of the universe, and you remember Professor Swinburne's argument as to why this is plausibly a personal creator. this is plausibly a personal creator. Number two, a life-permitting universe. Here Mr. Nugent says that life could exist without fine-tuning. Well, yes, if you believe in the existence of God, you could have a miraculous creation of life. But the point is that in any universe governed by our laws of nature, life cannot exist without the fine-tuning of these constants and quantities. And he needs to explain to us, if he denies design is the best explanation, what is the best explanation for why these constants and quantities all fall into this infinitesimal life permitting range. Chance, the multiverse, physical necessity,

none of those explanations are as good as design. Thirdly, the moral argument for God's existence. Here Mr. Nugent, I think, is deeply inconsistent. On the one hand, he says that morality is evolved because we are social animals. Now, if he uses that in his argument to say that there are no objective moral values, that is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy, which is trying to invalidate a point of view by showing how someone came to hold that point of view. He needs to show that in holding to his atheism, that he would be consistent in saying that there are objective values. Now, he responds, well, the euthyphro dilemma shows that God cannot be the source of moral values and duties.

Not at all. The euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma. God's nature is what Plato called the good, and it expresses itself to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties. It makes no sense to ask, what if God's nature were different, because these are essential properties of God. He is essentially loving, kind, fair, compassionate, and so forth. And therefore, our moral duties are constituted by his commandments and those are not arbitrary but rooted in the

essential nature of God himself. Mr. Nugent then responds that God could be evil, not if this moral argument is correct. Evil is a privation of goodness. Evil has no positive ontological status. It is the absence of goodness. So even if there were an evil supernatural being, there must still exist a higher God, a higher good God, which this lesser being fails to live up to, fails to approximate the standards of the absolute standard of goodness. So you can't say that the ultimate explanatory source of morality is evil rather than good.

Mr. Nugent says killing animals is an injustice. What's odd about this is it is precisely his atheism that justifies this sort of behavior toward animals. Listen to what Joel Marks, a naturalist, says. He says that there was one thing I knew in this entire universe, it was that some things are morally wrong. It is wrong to toss chicks alive and conscious into a meat grinder, as happens in the egg industry. It is wrong to scorn

homosexuals and deny them civil rights. It is wrong to massacre people in death camps. I knew in all my soul, with all my conviction, that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. But suddenly I knew it no more. I was not really skeptical or agnostic about it. I had come to believe and still believe that these things are not wrong. I used to think that animal agriculture was wrong. Now I will call a spade a spade and declare simply that I very much dislike it and want it to stop. I am simply no longer in the business of trying to derive an ought from an is. The point is that without God to serve as the absolute standard of good and evil, right and wrong, you are lost in moral relativism, and you are landed precisely in the sort of injustice that Mr. Nugent recoils from. In fact, when he condemns God for commanding things like

the Israeli army to expel the Canaanites from the land, in order to condemn God for that, there must exist some objective standard of right and wrong, good and evil, because on his view, there really isn't anything the matter with genocide. Steven Pinker of Harvard University asks, if the distinction between right and wrong is a product of brain wiring, like Mr. Nugent believes, how can you argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong rather than just distasteful to us? Well, you can't, and that's what Joel Marks came to see. They're not really wrong on a naturalistic view. They're just distasteful.

What then is the problem with the Old Testament command? Well, the problem would have to be that there's some inconsistency between God's being all good and his issuing that command. But I've shown and argued that there is no such inconsistency. I showed this in question of the week number 16 on our website, and no one has yet tried to refute that demonstration. If Mr. Nugent wants to do more than make emotional appeals and rhetorical ploys, he needs to come to grips with that argument. We heard nothing about the resurrection of Jesus, for which we have solid historical information. As for the experience of God, I would deny that the Islamic God is true because there are good defeaters of Islam, good rational objections to it, but I do not think, and we have not heard,

comparable objections to Christian theism that would make me think that my Christian experience is delusory. Thank you very much indeed. I'd like to invite Michael to promote the first proposal. And just to remind you, we have two further exchanges from two speakers, and that will be a short break. Thank you. I said before, I think that Bill is an intelligent and sincere Christian apologist. He defines apologetics as making a case for the truth of Christianity.

And he approaches it like a barrister in a court case, and he's very good at that. However, like any good barrister, he will sometimes engage in home team refereeing, which is applying greater scepticism to ideas that he opposes than he does to ideas that he supports. Now that's exactly what you would want your barrister to do but it's not what you would want your judge to do. And this contribution I'm going to address some of Bill's arguments, not only here but also some of the key arguments that he makes in his books and websites. The Kalam argument is Bill's rhai o'r argwymnau allweddol y mae'n ei wneud yn ei llyfrau a'i wefan.

Yn ymwneud â'r argwymnau Calama, mae'n argwymnau allweddol. Rwyf wedi newid ychydig yn fwy o fwy o hynny. Roedd rhai rai o hynny, ond roeddwn i'n cytuno. Roeddwn i'n meddwl ar un stafell fod yn rhywfaint anhygoel meddwl bod y dyniaeth wedi cael ei achosi. Rwy'n meddwl efallai, ond rwy'n fwy agored ar hynny nawr had a cause. I still think possibly, but I'm more open on that now having studied more into the quantum physics of the beginning of whatever the expansion of the universe was. But let's take the calamity which I hope you're familiar with, that everything

begins to exist as a cause, the universe begins to exist and therefore the universe has a cause. I think that the first of those is kind of questionable because when we say that everything begins to exist in the context of people and planets and tables and chairs, we're essentially talking about particles that already exist being rearranged where nothing new is actually coming into existence. New particles are being rearranged into new patterns and is actually coming into existence. New particles are being rearranged into new patterns, and we're calling part of those new patterns a table or a chair or a planet. And when we go on to the question of the universe began to exist, again, we

just don't know the answer. Our physics only brings us back to the Big Bang. Maybe it began to exist, maybe it's eternal, we don't know. I used to think that it probably did. I now don't know. But the conclusion, and this is the key thing about Kalamda, the conclusion that therefore the universe of the cause, whether it's true or not, doesn't follow from those two premises. Because there is an equivocation about the meaning of the phrase beginning to exist. Let's look at a parallel syllogism which I call the Calam papal movement argument. Premise one, bishops can only move diagonally. Premise two, the Pope is the Bishop of Rome. Conclusion, therefore the Pope can only move diagonally. Premise 2, the Pope is the Bishop of Rome.

Conclusion, therefore the Pope can only move diagonally. Now clearly we can see the flaw in that immediately. But in Premise 1 the word Bishop means bishops on a chess set. In Premise 2 the word Bishop means bishop in the Catholic Church. Now similarly in the Calamari, the Premise 1 begins to exist, means particles that are already in existence being rearranged into new patterns. But in premise two, begins to exist means particles that never existed coming into existence out of nothing. Now

Bill has previously acknowledged that problem using the concept of our totalian material and efficient causes in that this table here or that table there would have a material cause, which is the wood and the metal and the nails, and an efficient cause, which is the carpenter who put them together. But Bill has accepted that having a creation for nothing may seem implausible

because it doesn't have a material cause, but he says that it's even more implausible to have something that has neither a material nor an efficient cause. But surely that's an argument for neither being true. But the key thing is that his proposed pure bodiless mind is not even a probable or plausible efficient cause because there's no good reason to take that

it exists. And the point that Bill made there about we ourselves have our own consciousness, that's because we have bodies. When our bodies die, our consciousness goes away and we're essentially aware that that's happening. So what it comes back to is, you know, we don't know the answer to this question. And it's not a satisfactory response to not knowing the answer, to invent an answer, say that that answer is also the source of human morality, and then tell us that we have to lead our lives in a certain way because of that. There are several papers that are, one particular paper that's cited in support of the idea that the universe had a cause by Bordiguth and Vilenkin.

And that particular paper, I think, is a lot more nuanced than some people believe. What they are essentially talking about is not whether the universe had a beginning but whether the expansion phase of the universe had a beginning the two main authors that are publicly talking about this issue which is Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin both have different opinions on it they both say that it's about the expansion of the universe. Alan Gould says he suspects the universe didn't have a beginning. Alexander Valentin suspects that the universe did have a beginning. But the paper itself doesn't talk about the universe having a beginning.

It talks about the expansion of the universe having a beginning. The teleological argument, again we're down to a physical necessity, chance or design. Again, that's kind of questionable because I hope you noticed what Bill did there, that he applied great scepticism to the two options that he disliked and then effectively gave a free pass by default to the remaining option that he liked because it's the only one left. First of all, we don't know whether it's the only one left. First of all we don't know whether it's the only option left and secondly as I've said before intelligent design by a god is the oddest of the options for fine-tuning physical constants because from a theistic perspective a god wouldn't need to fine-tune physical constants and from a scientific perspective when Sean

a scientific perspective when Sean Carroll debated Bill, he's a cosmologist, he argued that with different parameters, other forms of life might exist, that physicists may end up revising their understanding of the parameters, and that even if you think the parameters are fine-tuned, some of them would be massively over-tuned for the purpose of life. And the multiverse idea, I'll go into the multiverse idea in my next conversation, but there is data from the most recent thing, which is the Plan Commission, to suggest that it's fatal models of inflation that would lead to a multiverse. I want to move on to the moral argument, because it's key. It doesn't flow from the others.

Here's another parallel syllogism, which I call the morality from creation argument. Premise one, the universe might have begun to exist. Premise two, the universe might have had a cause. Conclusion, therefore, you can't write condoms. There's no connection between those things, even if you believe that a God exists. So you need to justify the unrelated claim that the cause of the universe, whatever it may be, if it exists, cares about what we do. And the premises that Bill uses effectively

start by self-defining that God is the source of morality. If you don't start by accepting that God is the source of morality, then the syllogism doesn't work. I could just as easily argue that if the morality quirk does not exist, then objective morality doesn't exist. It doesn't make it true. But I haven't done that. What I have done is I've given a plausible scenario for objective morality without invoking dogs involving a combination of evolutionary factors and the ability to reason articulated through a vegan variation of Rawls' social contract theory. Now the moral philosopher Shelley Kagan put a similar argument to Bill when he debated morality with him. And Bill's response was that such a scenario doesn't give our actions any eternal cosmic significance.

And Shelley Kagan responded, and I agree, that that doesn't mean that our actions have no significance. Actions can have significance without having eternal cosmic significance. And Bill replied that that seemed hopeless to him. And Shelley replied, and I agree, well it doesn't seem hopeless to me. And even if it did seem hopeless to all of us, that still wouldn't make it false. And finally there are several questions about the Christian moral argument. Two have already asked. Here's another question that Shelley Kagan raised that I think is quite interesting.

If the point of moral duties on the cosmic scale is that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished for eternity, then how is it just that people who lead morally evil lives can escape their eternal punishment by simply repenting on their deathbed? I want to now move on to some examples,

finally, for this part, some examples of Bill's home team refereeing. On his website and in his books, he applies greater scepticism to ideas he opposes than to ideas that he supports, which is understandable if you're trying to prove something that you're already convinced of the truth of. But his overall case depends on the cumulative effect of all of the arguments, and so that's

weakened if the arguments for some points undermine the arguments for others. On his website, Bill was asked why his theistic arguments seem to depend on contradictory metaphysical systems. And Bill replied that he deliberately crafts his arguments to not depend on any metaphysical system so that they can be accepted by people of varying metaphysical outlooks because that broadens their appeal and makes them more immune to refutation. If so, that places advocacy for an existing belief ahead of searching for the truth. When opposing physical necessity as a response to the question of fine-tuning, Bill says that this is a radical position put forward without any proof. Yet when defending design, he says that God is a pure mind without a body, which is a radical position put forward without any proof. When opposing the multiverse as a response to the question of fine-tuning,

Bill says that the proposed mechanisms for generating a multiverse are vague, and the multiverse may itself require fine-tuning, which would start the problem all over again. Yet when defending intelligent design and asked who designed the designer, Bill says that in order to recognise an explanation as the best, you don't need to have an explanation of the designer, or of the explanation, so whether the designer has an explanation can simply be left an open question for future inquiry. Now, none of what I have said makes any of Bill's specific conclusions false, but it is a reason to be cautious about the overall case that he makes. And I will address in my next contribution the idea that faith is ultimately

what Bill believes in the Christian God and that without that faith no one meant to believe in the objective there. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Mike and again thanks to both speakers for keeping to a short time table. We have two further seven-minute contributions from each of the two speakers during a short break and you have a chance to ask your questions so could I call again

on Bill please for his last seven-minute proposal. Thank you. Thank you. So are we going to have those arguments displayed as being left. Thank you. Before looking again at those five reasons I gave on behalf of God's existence, let's review Mr. Nugent's case for atheism. He simply reiterated his argument that there cannot be an uninvited consciousness or mind, but he didn't refute my point that neither reductive materialism nor non-reductive materialism gives a plausible account of the mind-body relation.

He needs to do that if he's going to carry his point. Secondly, remember, I said that my arguments prove the existence of such an unembodied mind or being and so he needs to refute those arguments. He then dropped his arguments about divine immutability, the incompatibility of omniscience with human freedom, the problem of evil, and whether or not the vastness of the universe and so forth is more probable on atheism than on theism. So let's go back then to those five arguments that I offered on behalf of premise or contention one,

that there are good arguments to think that theism is true. First the origin of the universe. Now Mr. Newsham accuses me of committing equivocation with regard to the phrase begins to exist. I plead not guilty. to the phrase begins to exist. I plead not guilty. When I say begins to exist, I use the following definition. X begins to exist at T if and only if X exists at T and there is no time T' earlier than T at which X exists. That is an intuitive and univocal definition of

that concept that holds throughout the argument. He says, but scientists don't know what there was before the beginning. Nearly reiterating his former assertion, I explained that there's nothing before the beginning because it is the beginning of space and time itself. He says, well, but the Borg-Guth-Vilenkin theorem only implies that the current expansion began to exist, not the cosmos. This is simply false. Alexander Vilenkin, in his book Many Worlds in One, states,

it is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe. They have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. In the fall of 2015, the Lincoln made even stronger statement. of 2015, Vilenkin made an even stronger statement. We have no

viable models of an eternal universe. The board booth Vilenkin theorem gives reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed. Thus, I think we have excellent evidence to think that the universe had an absolute beginning

and since something cannot come out of nothing, there must be a transcendent cause, and I've already argued, using Professor Swinburne's argument, for the personhood of that cause. This argument alone gives us grounds for rejecting atheism this evening. If this were the only argument I carried, it would succeed in showing that atheism is false. Secondly, what about a life-permitting universe? Here, Mr. Nugent again simply reiterated that God could miraculously create life without fine-tuning. Granted, but that's irrelevant, that doesn't speak to the issue of the fact that for any universe governed by our laws of nature, these constants and quantities must be exquisitely fine-tuned in order for life to exist,

non-miraculously, without violating the laws of nature. And so the question is, what's the best explanation of this? Chance? Physical necessity, design. It seems to me that design is the far more plausible explanation. He says, well, with regard to the multiverse, you can just leave it an open question. That wasn't the objection I posed to the multiverse

in this debate, which was the problem that we ought to be observing a much different universe if we are just a random member of a multiverse in this debate, which was the problem that we ought to be observing a much different universe if we are just a random member of a multiverse. Remember the idea of a single brain is the most simple, observable universe that could exist, and that's what we ought to be observing or thinking if we think that a multiverse explains the fine-tuning. As for the moral argument for God's existence, here he appeals to Shelley Kagan and the debate that I had with him. What Kagan holds to is a very different view than Mr. Nugent's. Kagan says that what is right and wrong is what would

be determined by a perfectly rational committee of people. The problem with that is that it just begs the question by assuming that a perfectly rational person couldn't be a naturalist like Mr. Nugent, who is a nihilist and doesn't believe there are any objective moral values. So this is part of the same incoherence. Mr. Nugent wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to hold the moral values are simply the spin-offs of biological evolution and social conditioning, and yet he wants to exhibit moral outrage and injustice. An immorality is done, and you can't do both. You need to have an absolute transcendent standard for right and wrong beyond sociocultural mores

in order to judge what is good and what is evil. And I think that there is no reason to deny our moral experience in this regard. Remember, as I said, any argument for moral skepticism is going to be based on premises that are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves. John Healy, who is the president of Amnesty International, wrote in a fundraising letter, I am writing to you today because I think you share my profound belief that there are indeed some moral absolutes. When it comes to torture, to government-sanctioned murder, to disappearances,

there are no lesser evils. These are outrages against all of us. So if you agree with me that there are at least some objective morals and duties, then you should agree that God exists. The resurrection of Jesus has gone undiscussed in tonight's debate. Remember we saw that the majority of historians accept the three fundamental facts that undergird the inference to Jesus' resurrection, and that is why I am a Christian theist, rather than a Muslim or a Jew. Finally, the experience of God. Again, he dropped the point in his last speech.

I pointed out that unlike Christian experience, I think there are good defeaters of Islamic religion that make it less rational. And therefore I think that the Christian is entirely within his rights to trust his personal experience of God, unless and until the atheist is able to show that he's suffering from some psychological delusion, which Mr. Newton certainly hasn't done tonight.

Thank you very much Professor Craig. Both speakers will of course have a final wrap up of five minutes each later in the proceedings. But could I now ask Mike to extend a minute for the module. Thank you, so I've asked Bill several questions. The first one is, is it possible you might be mistaken that the Christian God exists? I haven't got an answer to that yet. I hope we'll be getting around to it in the summary. How do you justify the supposed existence of a pure mind without a body when there's no evidence that such a thing can exist? And by what mechanism could such a

thing create and interact with matter? Now Bill referred to ourselves and our own identity, which seems to be separate from our body. But we have bodies. Without our bodies, we wouldn't have that evolved thing. It is an emerging property from the fact that we have physical properties, although we don't yet understand how it happens. How does it evolve? How can non-conscious atoms display consciousness? Well, how can non-wet atoms display wetness? It's an emergent property that we still have to understand the nature of but it's not

particularly problematic in principle. I asked is it logically to have a universe without suffering and evil? Bill replied it's not logically impossible. That wasn't the question I asked. Is it logically possible? If it's logically possible then a perfect God should be able to do it. He said that evil is merely the deprivation of good. Yeah, but if you have the evil God,

then you can say that good is merely the deprivation of evil. It's just a personal choice, whichever one you prefer. There's no stronger argument for a good God than there is for an evil God. I asked why is God's nature good? Is it good for arbitrary reasons, or is it good because it corresponds to a dependent standard of goodness? It seems to me that God's nature is the good. But that was essentially the answer to the previous question, which was why does God command,

or does God command things to be good? It's not the answer to the question, why is God's nature good? Still need an answer to that. How do we justify as objectively moral yn y gwestiwn. Pam mae'r ddynion duw yn dda? Mae angen ateb i hynny. Sut ydych chi'n ei ddatblygu fel morolololol bod y dynion duw yn cael ei ddynu yn dda ar y dynion ddynol i ddynu plant a phobl arall? Rydych chi'n gweld nad oedd Bill yn dweud bod hynny'n ddewis. Mae'n dal i edrych ar ddyluniad pam bod Bill yn credu bod yn iawn, morally good, under theism, to slaughter

children and infants. And another question that I asked, that I hope Bill will get around to answering in the summation, is how is it that people can lead morally good lives, can escape their eternal punishment, by simply repenting on their deathbeds. Now there was some talk about the Bordy-Good-Vilenkin paper which is quite critical to some of these debates and what Bill is repeatedly saying is that that shows that there was a beginning to the universe.

Now it doesn't. Bill quotes a quote by Alexander Vilenkin who is one of the authors of the paper and that quote is accurate, it is what Alexander Belenkin said. But here's the actual paper and the only reference in the actual paper

to the phrase beginning of the universe or the concept of beginning of the universe is when it's referring to a past boundary of the inflation region the inflating region of space-time and what the paper says is what can lie beyond this boundary? Several possibilities have been discussed,

one being that the boundary of the inflating region corresponds to the beginning of the universe in a quantum nucleation event. That's all it says. One possibility that is being discussed. Now, Alan Guth has expressed his belief that he believes it probably doesn't have a beginning and he believes that it's eternal.

Alexander Belenkin, Bill is right, Alexander Belenkin has said he believes that it does have a beginning. He leans more towards it probably being a beginning. But he's been more nuanced than that quote and that quote precedes these other quotes by Alexander de Lenkin that I'm going to

say. In 2010 he was asked does it mean that the universe is beginning? He said no but it proves that the expansion of the universe is beginning. He also said in a follow up email during that exchange I would say that the short answer is yes if you're willing to get into subtleties then the the answer is no, comma, but, dot, dot, dot. He still thinks the answer is probably yes, and I'm not disputing that. His co-author thinks the answer is probably no. But significantly for the Kalam argument, Alexander Belenkin also said, I would now like to take issue with the first

part of the Kalam argument. Modern physics can describe the emergence of the universe as a physical process that does not require a cause. What causes the universe to pop out of nothing? No cause is needed. If you have a radioactive atom, it will decay and quantum mechanics give the decay probability in a given interval of time, say a minute. There is no reason why the atom decayed at this particular moment and not another. The process is completely random. No cause is needed for the quantum creation of the universe. Now the key thing here in terms of these overall arguments

is that Bill cannot have it both ways. He cannot quote Vilenkin over his co-author in terms of the idea that the universe probably had a beginning in terms of his premise 2 in Calam, and yet reject the same analysis by the same scientist in terms of premise 1 of his argument that there must have been a cause. Finally, in terms of the morality, Bill seemed to suggest, or in fact if I remember correctly, did suggest that my position is different to Shelley Cagan's. It's not. I did say essentially the same thing, that I do believe in a variation of the social contract theory that John Rawls put forward, that it's perfectly rational people. That's a thought experiment, it's not real obviously, but if perfectly rational people were to analyse through this veil of ignorance what would be the universally just principles for a society

that they would want to live in if they didn't know what position they would have within that society, then that would give you something that is objectively good and bad, objectively right and wrong because it will be independent of any individual person's belief because it would be based on pure reason. Now obviously each person would interpret it subjectively because that's all that we can do with anything but it's only one of many theories in moral philosophy that don't involve gods. It's simply false to say that you need a god to understand morality. There are many ways to do it.

And I simply reject the idea of the burden of proof that Bill is placing on what he collectively calls the atheist. Because I think that it's the other way around. I think that we know that there is a natural world. We all agree on that. And it is the theist that is adding an extra dimension that is in dispute. And so the onus of proof lies on the theist and not on the atheist.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Michael, thank you for your patience collectively. At this stage I'd like to thank both speakers in fact for a very recent and inspiring and intelligent and courteous debate, not always the case in this particular contested area. We have a short break now of about four minutes and what I'm going to say is that in terms of questions, we'd like you either to tweet your question, if you have one, to Uncover Cork, at Uncover Cork is the address on Twitter, or else to write it out in a good old-fashioned piece of paper. And please say what your question is and which speaker you want to address to.

What is your question and who is it from? Thank you. We're just going to proceed. So first of all, the two final or closing statements. we're just going to proceed so first of all to the two final closing statements could I invite Bill to start

please let's review one final time those two contentions that I said I would defend tonight. Have we seen any good arguments for the conclusion God does not exist? I think the only serious argument that we've seen on behalf of atheism is that there cannot be an unembodied mind. But as I pointed out, we are familiar with ourselves as immaterial agents, and such phenomena

as mental causation, intentionality, identity over time, and freedom of the will cannot be explained on either reductive materialism or non-reductive materialism. So I think a dualist interactionist view of mind and body is the best, and that in no way requires that there must be a body for there to be a mind. If the mind is a substance, there could be an unembodied mind that exists

on its own. And in fact, in my arguments for theism, I've given arguments that there is such a mind. First, the argument from the origin of the universe. Here I think Mr. Nugent is simply not adequately familiar with the Bohr-Guth-Volinkin theorem for its implications. When Vilenkin talks about there being a boundary in the past, what he says is that that boundary is either the beginning of the universe, or if there is something on the other side of it, it is the era which will be described by the yet-to-be-discovered quantum theory of gravity.

In that case, that is the beginning of the universe. But in either case, the universe began to exist. So how does Professor Galenkin, who is not a theist, explain the origin of the universe from nothing. In his article in 2015, in Inference Magazine, he says what causes the universe to come out of nothing? No cause is needed. It just pops into being on cause from nothing. Now how does he justify that? Well what he says is that the positive energy associated with matter is exactly balanced by the negative energy associated with gravity, and therefore on balance the sum of the energy in the universe is zero, and therefore there doesn't need to be any cause that the universe is coming into being. Now with all due respect, this is sort of like a bad joke. It's like saying if your assets are exactly balanced by your debits, then your sum total

net worth is zero, and therefore there doesn't need to be any cause in your financial situation. As Christopher Isham, who is Britain's leading quantum cosmologist, points out, there still needs to be ontic seeding to create the positive and negative energy in the first place. So I think that the best explanation for the origin of the universe, as I've argued, is a personal, timeless, changeless, causeless being who created the universe.

Secondly, what about the life permitting universe? Again, Mr. Newton has refused to defend either physical necessity or chance as the best explanation. Design gives a perspicuous explanation of the fine tuning. As for the moral argument, he points out that there are many theories that are non-theistic about moral values, he points out that there are many theories that are non-theistic about moral values.

Right, and they all tend to just presuppose or start with the assumption of the intrinsic value of human beings. But it's precisely on atheism that that is called into question. Why think that this herd morality evolved by this primate species on this planet is objectively binary true. What explains what is right and wrong, the atheist has no answer. So if you do believe that there are some objective moral values, for example, if you think it's objectively wrong for priests to sexually abuse little boys and then try to cover it up, then

you recognize there are at least some objective moral values and duties and you should agree then that God exists. The resurrection of Jesus has gone undiscussed in tonight's debate sadly because this is the justification for Christian theism. Finally, as for the experience of God, if I can just close on a personal note, I myself wasn't raised in a church-going family, but when I became a teenager, I began to ask the big questions in life.

Why am I here? What is the meaning of my existence? And I began to read the New Testament, and as I did so I was absolutely captivated by the person of Jesus of Nazareth there was a wisdom and an authenticity about this man's life and teaching that I had never encountered before and I knew I couldn't reject him well after about six months of the most intense soul-se searching I've ever been through,

I just came to the end of my rope and I cried out to God and experienced a kind of spiritual rebirth in my life in which God became a living reality to me, a reality that I've walked with now for over 40 years. And I believe this is a reality that you can find if you too will search for him with all your mind with all your heart do what I did pick up a New Testament and ask yourself could this really be true could there really be a God who loves me and sent his son to die for me I believe it could change your life just as it changed mine very much indeed professor Craig and for his final five minutes I invite Mike to the bench thank you

I invite my participant. Thank you. Okay, my opening contribution I'll get 20 reasons why the idea of God seems implausible, including that a pure mind without a body is an inventive convenience, that there is no mechanism for interacting with matter, that it cannot be perfect and changeless beyond time or space

and cannot be all perfect, all knowing, all perfect, all knowing, all powerful and all good. I gave ten reasons why reality seems as we would expect it to be with no God, including that if there was a God, we would expect to see a human life being central to a proportionate universe. Instead, we see an impersonal universe of a hundred billion galaxies. I gave ten reasons why morality seems as we would expect it to be

now God, including that if there was a God that we would expect to see everybody getting the same moral message, but instead we see different moral messages evolving throughout history and geography. I gave a plausible scenario for objective morality without

invoking gods. In my second contribution, I countered some of Bill's main arguments with regard to Calama who said that both premises are questionable and that even if both were true the conclusion would not follow from them because they rely on different meanings and the phrase begins to exist. Also I suggested that Bill uses a selective interpretation of the arguments that he uses, the scientific arguments that he uses, the Bolster's second premise, and that the truth is that we do not know whether the universe had a beginning, and even if it had a beginning, that still wouldn't rescue the flawed logic of the Kalam argument.

With regards to fine-tuning, I said that Bill has just assumed that there are only three explanations, byddai hynny ddim yn achub y ffoddlogaeth ffoddol o'r adroddiad Calam. O ran ymgyrchu, fe wnes i ddweud bod Bill wedi ystyried ei bod yna dim ond dri ddewisiadau, ac wedi ymwneud â sceptisrwydd mawr i'r dau optynnau y mae'n ei ddysgu ac wedyn yn effeithiol yn rhoi'r pas ffoddol i'r un y mae'n ei hoffi. Ac fe wnes i hefyd ystyried y persbectif gwyddonol a gafodd ei gyflwyno gan Sean Carroll pan oedd yn ymdrinio â Bill. O ran yr adroddiad morol, fe dweudodd y prif gweddill y cwestiwn gan ddechrau'n dda o'r ffordd o ddechrau'r deunydd fel fwrdd o moraeth, ac mae'r canlyniad yn unig os ydych chi'n cydnabod y ddeffiniad cychwyn. Fe wnes i ystyried y trafodaeth o Bill gyda Charlie Kagan, lle roedd y penderfyniad o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o'i ddweud o' not grounded in God was ultimately that it just seemed to go to be hopeless. And I showed how like a good barrister, he engages in home team refereeing,

applying greater scepticism to arguments he opposes than to arguments he supports. And I said that's exactly what you would want your barrister to do. And if you're a Christian, he's an excellent person for arguing why Christianity is true. But it's not what you would want your judge to do, and I hope that that's the capacity in which you are here tonight. Now, none of this makes any of his arguments false. It's just a reason that he's cautious about them. I asked Bill several questions. One, but I haven't got an answer yet.

Is it possible that he might have been mistaken? that I haven't got an answer to yet, is it possible that you might be mistaken? In terms of justifying as objectively moral the Christian God, the peace and the order of the Israelites, the slaughtered children and infants of other tribes, I still haven't got an answer to that one. Hopefully it might come up in the questions.

How is it just that people who believe morally evil lies can escape their eternal punishment by simply repenting on their deathbed. Again, hopefully that might come up in these questions. With regard to the Bordeaux-Vilenkin theory, Bill suggests that I don't understand it and that I'm misquoting it. Actually, I literally quoted it. I held up the paper and quoted the sentence from it. I'll give people copies of it afterwards

if they want copies. Go to the original source. Don't just go to one quote from Alexander Vilenkin who has made several quotes which show his evolving view on the matter. Now Bill suggests that Alexander Vilenkin's view of the universe coming into nothing is a joke, as if Alexander Vilenkin was Joe Gatto, one of the practical jokers being told to pretend to be a cosmologist. That is not the case. I can guarantee you Alexander Vilenkin knows more about quantum physics than either Bill or me. And if we're going to look for credible answers, I would suggest that we go to people who are openly saying, we don't know, we're going to look for credible answers, I would suggest that we go to people who are openly saying, we don't know, we're trying to figure it out,

we don't yet know. And when we come to answers that will be provisional and always open to revision when we get further evidence. I want to finally touch on the Jesus thing, because you're right, Bill, I didn't actually discuss that. Again, that comes down to whether you start by believing Jesus is the Son of God. If you don't, the Bible is an unreliable source. If you do believe it, the Bible is not only reliable, but it is inerrant.

But if you are looking at it from a perspective of not starting with that belief, then what you see is the story of an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who gradually evolves into part of a newly created God and whose relationship with the supposed Jewish God shifts from the resurrection in the writings of Paul, which is chronologically the first writings, to his baptism by John the Baptist in Mark, which is the first of the Gospels,

to his birth in Matthew and Luke, and to the beginning of everything in John. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks to the wonders of the internet who asked me this question. Dying to know the answer to this burning issue. If you post it soon, I'm going to read the results on the bus home. Can't wait to hear. So even in New York, they're listening. Anyway, we now come to the stage where we have questions from yourselves here in the audience. Now unfortunately, the next microphone appears not to be working so I'm going to have to be slightly awkward here and ask our two speakers to join me at the microphone here.

And I will ask, I'll go from one to the other with these questions and each will have a chance to respond and then the other to comment. So sorry if this is slightly awkward particularly our two speakers, but otherwise you wouldn't hear them and the people next door would hear nothing at all. So my first question is for you, Michael, and it says, when evolved morality conflicts between different brains, how do we judge why it's good? What circular recourse to another evolved moral value? Okay, well, what I'm suggesting is that morality is, initially, the early stage of morality among social animals, which is empathy and compassion and cooperation and reciprocity,

evolved on the basis of just being social animals. Then when we develop the ability to reason, ac ymddygiad a chymdeithas a chydweithredaeth a rhysgroswch yn dyfu ar y seiliedig o fod yn anifeiliaid cymdeithasol, yna pan fyddwn ni'n datblygu'r gallu i feddwl, yna gallwn ni symud ymlaen i ddeall y cynulleidfaoedd fel gwirionedd a ddyfodol sy'n dod o'n gallu i'w feddwl. Ac os ydych chi'n ei ddychmygu am nifer o bobl yn defnyddio gwirionedd puol i geisio cyd-destun hypothesise a number of people using pure reason to try to identify a universal moral code that is based on a society that they don't know what role they would play within, therefore they are impartial because they can't pick what's best for them personally. But that is the closest that you can get. It's not perfect, but that is the closest that you can get to something that is objective in the context that it is independent of any individual's mind

because it's based on the idea of applying pure reason. Thank you, Michael. And then Phil, do you have a response? I think that Michael's views on this are deeply incoherent. On the one hand, he seems to want to say that morality is just a property of our brain wiring, from which it follows that if you rewound the film of human evolution and shot it over again, a very different sort of creature might have evolved with a very different set of moral values, and it would

be an example of speciesism to say, my values are objective and true and yours are not. But now he also seems to want to say that reason can discover what actually are the objective moral values and duties regardless of how we evolve. But then I said that begs the question, as we saw with Shelley Kagan, it just assumes that all rational persons cannot be moral nihilists. And we know that's not true. People like Joel Marks, whom I've quoted as well as many others, deny that there are objective and no values of duty. So I just don't see any basis for this assumption

apart from theism. Thank you. Moving on to a question for you again, Dr. Craig. When given the opportunity upon issuing the Ten Commandments, why does God omit torture, child abuse, and slavery? In order to have a moral code that is applicable

to a wide range of situations, it has to be said in generalities. So, what God tells us is, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then you need to apply this in specific circumstances where, for example, torturing another person for fun would be not to love your neighbor as yourself. So the very nature of giving a moral code that includes only ten succinct commandments

means that there needs to be a good deal of application of what are quite general principles. The Ten Commandments are one of the worst set of moral instructions that you can imagine. Half of them are about worshipping this creator and the others are telling you to do something or you'll be stoned to death and if you look at them they're essentially about protecting the position

of the adult males of a particular tribe in a particular time where the creator of the universe has told them if you kill those people over there if you follow my rules I'll help you to kill those people over there and take their land. It's an appalling set of moral rules. And if you look at the things that God says he will do to you, if you don't obey him, including eating your own children, it's just appalling.

My favourite, by the way, is he tells you, if you don't obey them, that he will make you flee even when nobody is chasing you. All right. The next one is for you as well, Michael. If someone commits an evil act against me, should I forgive them? If you answer yes, then why? It depends on the act.

No, generally, I think... I think... Well, do you forgive the person or do you forgive the act? I mean, I personally think that individuals are capable of revising their moral values over time subjectively and trying to bring their subjective moral values into line with what is the objective morality that would arise from the Rawlsian social contract. And by the way, in terms of speciesism, I'm not speciesism, I'm the exact opposite. I think the Rawls contract should include

not knowing what species they would be. Forgiveness is a Christian virtue. Forgiveness means to release from an attitude of bitterness or resentment or vengefulness

toward the person who has wronged you. It does not mean condoning the wrong that was done, saying it's all right. You can still regard the act as evil and wrong, and yet give up your attitude of vengeance, resentfulness, and bitterness toward that. And in fact, you'll be better off if you do, because you will then free yourself from your emotional bondage to your offender if you forgive rather than harboring bitterness and resentment which will tie you forever to that person who has offended you. Thank you. Next one for you is about the Roman crucifixion of

criminals also included the unceremonial disposal of the bodies in the desert. What evidence is there for Jesus being an exception for this outside of the vigorous of Cain's? Yes, the author of the question is misinformed. Romans, the Roman procurators, that is to say of Palestine, during wartime disposed of the bodies in the way that was suggested, but during peacetime, such as when Pontius Pilate was prefect, bodies were given over to the Jewish Sanhedrists,

the temple leadership in Jerusalem, out of sensibility for Jewish concerns about proper burial. And we know that this happened because we actually have archaeological remains of a crucified victim who still has the crucifixion spike driven through the ossified bones of his ankles. And in order for that to be the case, these bones must have been collected and preserved in some sort of a Jewish ossuary or bone box. And so this is what was typically done even with the bodies of condemned criminals. For Jews, proper burial was extremely important and so they would take the

bodies of persons and then after the flesh had decayed, they would gather the bones into ossuaries where they would be preserved in tombs until the resurrection at the end of the world. This would include even criminals and malefactors as is archaeologically proven. I think this shows one of the problems of religion, which is that religion is ultimately about how we should live our lives. It is

about morality as well as reality. And what these sacred texts do is they force people to spend a lot of their intellectual energy trying to reconcile what we may know now with things that may or may not have happened and been written down

2,000 years ago or x,000 years ago, which is largely irrelevant to the question of how the universe came about or how we should live our lives. It is why Bill also and in fact I won't give out respect for Bill because of this

it is why Bill defends the divine command theory in terms of the killing of infants, because it is in the Bible, and Bill believes that the Bible is inerrant. There's any number of ways that Bill wasn't sincere that he could twist his way out of that, but he doesn't. He stands by it. And so I do respect him for that,

but I do think that it shows the problem of placing so much emphasis on these texts that were written thousands of years ago by people who were doing their best at the time, but who just were doing what they were doing then. Thanks, Michael. The next one is for you as well, an interesting one coming up. Dostoevsky's character, Ivan Kamarazov, stated that if God does not exist then everything is permitted. Why does Mr Nugent fail to accept that in atheism binding objective moral standards simply cannot exist? Well, I just outlined the exact opposite. First of all, firstly,, they can. Secondly, it is that, I mean, we're now quoting a fictional character about another fictional character. But that it is with God that anything is permitted. Because it is when you allow yourself to free yourself from the requirement of matching your beliefs to the best evidence of reality that you can then essentially say,

anything can happen because God said so, and I can do anything because God said so, including slaughtering infants. Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is a brilliant expose of the unlivability of atheism. The principal character in the novel says that there is no God, he's an atheist, and therefore all things are permitted. And his brother, believing this, murders their father as a result. And Ivan Kermitsov suffers mental collapse because he cannot live with the consequences of his own atheism. And I

think we've seen that same inconsistency tonight with Michael Nugent. He on the one hand wants to affirm that moral values are just these socio-biological spin-offs of social animals evolving with reciprocity and empathy, and yet he wants to affirm desperately moral values and duties that would condemn injustices and moral atrocities. And you can't have it both ways, as Dostoyevsky, I think, so poignantly showed in his novel. If you haven't read it, by all means do so. Thank you very much. Here's another one for you, Bill. Your fifth proof for the evidence of a God, the personal experience of one, is this not invalidated by experiences of beliefs in other

gods? An excellent question. That fifth reason is not an argument for God's existence. On the contrary, it's the claim that you can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments simply by having a personal experience of God. Philosophers call beliefs like this properly basic beliefs. They are grounded in experience, but they aren't arguments from experience. It's very similar to our belief in the reality of the world of physical objects around us. You are justified in believing what your senses tell you, that there is a world of physical objects out there. is a world of physical objects out there. But if that were an argument, you see, you'd be vulnerable to the skeptic who says, how can you prove that you're not a body lying in the matrix,

wired up with tubes and electrodes, inhabiting a virtual reality? He would be unanswerable. Rather, it's the claim that in the absence of some overriding defeater of my experience, I am rational to believe what my experience tells me. My senses tell me there is a world of objective physical objects around me, and I'm justified in believing that unless and until I have an overriding defeater.

Similarly, God is real to me. He's real in my experience. I'm perfectly rational in believing that unless and until I'm given a defeater for that belief. Now in the case of, for example, Islam, I believe there are good defeaters for Islam. I studied Islam as my side area of specialization at the University of Munich in my doctoral studies. And the Quran is historically, demonstrably unreliable. The problems related to the historical Muhammad are monumental compared to those related

to the historical Jesus. And so I think there are good defeaters of Islamic beliefs, but I do not think there are comparable defeaters of my Christian belief. Okay, I'm going to combine this with something Bill said in the last one because they actually fit in and when Bill attributed for some reason desperation to my beliefs, I think the implication was that atheists are desperate to prove that there is no God. I'm quite comfortable with my beliefs and I have no interest whatsoever

in proving that there's no God. My late wife died of cancer. I would love to be able to Mae fy nghyd-bifyn yn cael cancer. Byddaf yn hoffi cael ei weld eto. Rwyf wedi treulio fy nghymorth o hyd yn oed yn ymgyrchu ar brydau o ran yr IRA a'r Parliadau Neuolol yn Iwerddon, o ran anghymorthau o ddiogelwch yn y deyrnod Iwerddon a'r ardal, ac o ran ymddygiadau o ran seculaidd a sefydliadau deithiol. Byddaf yn hapus os oedd yna un dyn all-bwysig, un dyn all-daful, all-good being that was going to ensure that everyone could see each other again and that there was going to be eternal justice. Nothing would make me happier.

But that's not where the evidence is leading me. And I have to follow the evidence where the evidence is leading me if I'm going to be true to rationality and true to myself. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Here's another one. Here's another one for you. to be true to rationality and truth myself thank you thanks michael if our sense of morality is evolving how can you characterize it as objective surely it would be the opposite subject to our present understanding well no because there is an objective reality let's take a reality first there is an objective reality. Let's take a reality beliefs into line with the objective reality.

We never actually get there, but we can move closer and closer in the scientific method in terms of reality is the best way to do so. Similarly with morality, in the same way as you can apply reason to the evidence of reality to try to best understand what's happening, you can apply reason to our behaviour to try to best understand what's happening, you can apply reason to our behaviour to try to best understand what would be objectively, rationally speaking, the best world for every sentient being, which could be designed by rational people who don't know what role they would play within that world, including in my view what species they would be.

And that provides a rational version of objective reality, and then we all have subjective interpretations of that that may or may not correspond to it. I think there's considerable confusion over what is the objective reality we're talking about here. On the naturalistic atheistic view, it is objectively true that our brains have been wired by evolution to have this sort of herd morality that is characteristic of social animals. But the point is that that isn't normative. It's not binding. There's no reason to think that that is true. If you rewound the film of evolution and shot it again, then very different sets of values and duties might have evolved, and none of these would be normative.

So they are objective in the sense that it is true that evolution has programmed us to believe certain things, but they are not objective in the sense that they are normative, binding, invalid, independent of human opinion. Thank you. One more question for you, William. Why do you think the moral question of killing animals is absent from Christianity and most religions? The Jains, of course, are an exception.

Why do I think that the killing of animals is not part of most religious codes? I have no idea. I'm a philosopher, not a sociologist or a student of comparative religions. a sociologist or a student of comparative religions. I assume that, for example, in Old Testament Judaism, there was nothing thought to be wrong about eating meat. They weren't vegetarians. And it's up to your personal conscience, I think, today, whether or not you want to be a vegetarian or not. That's a personal ethical choice.

Maybe we've got some common ground here. Yeah, well, except in biblical times, it's not just their personal opinion. It's also the gods' opinion. The gods seem to delight in having animals burnt for his entertainment. And even in his Jesus form, he was sending demons into herds of pigs and sending them over cliffs.

So there clearly is a... If you believe that, as most atheists do, because if you accept the theory of evolution, you are more likely to recognise that we are one of many species that share this planet and that non-human animals have the same value as we have, they were not put here for our benefit by some imaginary creator, then if you have that perspective

then you will have a very, very different view and you won't see it as simply subjective as to whether we should slaughter billions and trillions of sentient beings for our convenience. And one final question. Is that how it's okay?

I think we have to wrap it then. A discussion for Bill, but I think it's equally aimed at both of you. How does life on other planets affect fate? Bill, for me. Let me just say, I was horrified at that last answer. Did you hear what he said? Non-human animals have the same value as human beings. Rats, flies, mosquitoes, these have the same moral value as human beings. human beings, well, that is consistent atheism, isn't it? That, namely, they have no moral value. So if you find that, as I do, morally abhorrent,

then I think that gives tremendous reason for rejecting this atheistic view of reality. Now, what was the question? As I say, the fine-tuning argument does not assert that the universe was made for human beings. What it says is that in order to be life-permitting, the constants and quantities must fall into this infinitesimal range of values. And that's consistent with there being intelligent life scattered throughout the cosmos that God has created. There's no problem at all with that.

These other life forms that they exist are thankfully, I think, widely separated from us given the record of human beings and getting along with other peoples. given the record of human beings in getting along with other peoples. But whether they're out there or not is immaterial to me as a theist. There's no part of the fine-tuning argument to think that human beings are the reason for the design of the universe. Okay, well I hope you noticed that Bill has shifted from his first answer about animals, which is they didn't realize back then that it was wrong, and that it's subjective today. Rwy'n gobeithio y bydd yn gweld y bydd Bill wedi newid o'i gyflawniad cyntaf am dynion, sy'n dweud nad oeddent yn sylweddoli yn ôl iddo fod yn anghywir, ac mae'n bwysig heddiw, i'w gweld fel rhyfeddol bod yn debyg ei fod yn credu

y byddwn ni'n dweud bod dynion ddim yn gyffredinol o'r un gwerth. Dyna'r gwahaniaeth o gynulleidfa rhwng ni, a'r hyn sy'n cael ei gyflawni mewn dullau gwahanol i'r moraeth. Ynghylch y planedau eraill, eto, pwy sy'n gwybod a yw bywyd ar y planedau eraill, which is grounded in our different approaches to morality. With regard to the other planets, again, who knows whether there's life on other planets, who knows whether there are other universes. We've been through this before, nobody knows, we're still trying to figure it out.

All that I'm saying is that if there is, then I presume Jesus would be very busy travelling around the universe, getting crucified everywhere that he goes. Okay, before I have an act to Peter to say a few words on behalf of the organisers, I'd like to say first of all on my own behalf, and I think yours, this will be one of the most interesting evenings I've spent in a very long time. I have rarely seen as wrapped an audience. I think any of us who teach on this campus would be very pleased to have people listening for this long. I don't know why some of you are laughing. In any event, I think it was a most challenging and interesting evening. I think the questions were interesting and I think in all cases you got very full and

challenging answers from our two speakers. So I would like you to join me in thanking Dr. Bill Craig and Michael Nugent for a very, very interesting evening. Alright, for those of you who made it all of the way to the end of the debate, well done. I hope you enjoyed it.

I certainly did. God bless you and a big shout out and a thank you to everyone who is supporting Pines with Aquinas on Patreon. I know I say this week after week, but, you know, it costs money to do this show and a lot of time. And so I just wanted to let you know that I'm really appreciative of all of your support. You can go to pineswithaquinas.com and click the Patreon banner. And that's how you can learn how to support the show and learn about some of the thank you gifts I give you in return. All right, guys. God bless.

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you To carry you you