Pints With Aquinas - 66: Why Ricky Gervais is wrong about God, knowledge, science, and religion, with Trent Horn

Episode Date: July 25, 2017

In this episode of Pints With Aquinas I allow Trent to respond to some comments Ricky Gervais made recently in an interview he had with Stephen Colbert about God, atheism, and religion. We also talk about Trent's new book which you can (and should!) get here: http://shop.catholic.com/why-we-re-catholic-our-reasons-for-faith-hope-and-love.html 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

Pints with Aquinas depends on your support. If you're an awesome person and want to prove it, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and there you can learn how to support the show for as little as $2 a month. Every dollar helps, and we are grateful for your support. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 66. I'm Matt Fradd. Today, I will be chatting with Trent Horn and allowing him to rebut an interview that Ricky Gervais did with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. In it, Ricky makes several points in favor of atheism, or so he thinks, and in this podcast, we'll have Trent respond to them. G'day, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I would normally pull

up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. But today I want to have Trent Horn, good friend of mine, from Catholic Answers. We used to work together. Trent is one of the best Catholic apologists out there today. Brilliant, smart. It's infuriating, to be honest with you. And today I want to have him respond, as I said in the beginning, some comments that Ricky Gervais made in favor of atheism on The Late Show.

But I've got a cool thing going on this week, a cool giveaway. Trent just wrote a fantastic book, which we'll talk about at the beginning of this podcast, called Why We're Catholic, Our Reasons for Faith, Hope and Love. He sent me a PDF review copy before this was published, and it's really impressive. It's like the only book I can think of that's worth giving to a colleague, to a stranger at the gym, or to a family member. And I'm going to be giving away three copies this week. That's right, three free copies, regardless of where you are. So, how do you enter the drawing? I hear you ask. Well, here is how. I would like to invite you to

tweet or Instagram something. Tweet or Instagram something with the hashtag Pints with Aquinas. And the most creative advertisement for this fantastic podcast, Burns with Aquinas, the top three will win. Okay, so maybe you want to take a photo of you listening to this podcast. Maybe you've got the book, Pints with Aquinas. You want to take a photo of that with you. I don't know, whatever you want to do, get creative with it. Maybe you want to make some kind of fun meme of Pints with Aquinas, like refuting Dawkins or something on on Twitter or Instagram, upload something with that hashtag, and I will select the three most creative advertisements, as it were, for this podcast by next week. And then I'll contact you, you can give me your mailing address,

and then Trent will send you a free copy of his book. Does that sound good? Of course it does. So here we go. Enjoy the show. Trentius Hornius. No, we're not going to start that way. We're not going to start that way. Trent Horn, how are you? I'm doing well. It's very good to have you on the Pints with Aquinas. It's good to be here. Always glad to talk about great theological subjects or any subjects with you, Mr. Fratt. Thank you. Well, before we have you respond to Ricky Gervais, who's a very funny actor, but not a terrific philosopher. Not his fault. People can't be experts in everything, I suppose.

But before we do that, I wanted to draw attention to the new book you have. Do you call it a book or a booklet? This would be a bona fide book. It's a little over 200 pages. It's called Why We're Catholic. Oh, yeah, that's definitely a book. Sorry about that. Yeah. Oh, no, that's fine. But I created it so that you could give it away and buy it in bulk like you would with a booklet. So it's readable and fairly inexpensive to buy in bulk like a booklet, but it is lengthy and hefty enough as a book to answer lots of different questions that people have. Well, you sent me the PDF. I think that's why I didn't get an idea of the size of it. And I went through it really quickly and it was excellent. I think,

and you probably had this problem as well, which is why you wrote the book. You know, if I bump into somebody at the gym and we start getting to talk about Catholicism, or if I want to give something to a family friend, like what is it that I give them? I could give them Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth, which is a very short booklet that Catholic Answers came out with, but that's really aimed at a Protestant. It doesn't sort of get into the theistic stuff and what am I going to give them? And when I read this, I honestly, you asked me to endorse the book and it really wasn't hard having to do it. I was like, finally, like this is a book that I wouldn't be ashamed to give to somebody because, you know, it's concise and it's convincing and

it's charitable. So, thank you for this contribution. Oh, no problem. I mean, I've seen this need so much over the past few years. I'll go and speak and people will come up to me and say, do you have a book I can give my son who's an atheist now or my husband who's interested in becoming Catholic? And you never know where these people come from. They might be atheists, they could be Protestants, you know, generic non-religious type person. They may even be a Catholic who doesn't practice anymore because they disagree with a church teaching like purgatory or hell or contraception or abortion or whatever it might be. So how do you write a book that you can give to any of these people that addresses all these different concerns, and also addresses it in a gracious tone. Because some books that defend the Catholic faith, they're really written for Catholics who are fairly Orthodox, so they can have kind of a

triumphalist, even a kind of sneering tone, condescending tone, and then that's not great to give it to someone who's not Catholic. And I made very sure this book did not do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's excellent. How much can people buy them for? You can get them in packs of 20 for $60. So that comes out to $3 a book. So you can just buy a box of 20 of them for $60. And I know people who do this for parishes, for youth groups. I know a guy who buys them, he leaves them in the backseat of taxi cabs and Ubers for people to just start flipping through. So that's, I think, a great deal for bulk distribution. Definitely. I don't know about you, but as an author myself, I always love being able to give my book to somebody because it always makes it extra special. They sort of do a double take and

like, really, you wrote this? And so it must be especially cool for you to have a pile of these books that you give to taxi drivers and waiters and whoever else. Oh, absolutely. Whenever I meet visitors in my home or I'm out and about, I tell people I'm an author and if they have an interest in this book, even if they're not Catholic, especially if they're not Catholic, I love being able to say, hey, here's a copy. Go ahead. I'll sign it for you and go ahead, go off and read it. Let me know what you think of it. Yeah. Maybe the only thing more awkward than just like a book on Catholic apologetics is a book on porn, which I have given to several of my non-religious friends at the gym who decided

to start up a conversation with me about the sort of work I do. So, yeah. But as you say, they asked and they're kind of flattered anyway. And so, yeah, it's Yeah, but as you say, they asked, and they kind of flattered anyway, and so it's very cool. Cool. Absolutely. Thanks very much. Well, today we want to talk about Ricky Gervais, and this was a YouTube video that came out a few months back now, but right now it has nearly 4 million views, and it has 52,187 likes and not even 2,000 dislikes. And I don't know about you, Trent, but when I first saw this clip, you know, Ricky's a likable guy.

And I know that this is more for entertainment than an actual, you know, academic back and forth. I'm sure Stephen Colbert prepped him with the questions and wants to make, you know, Gervais look good. But it was pretty sophomoric, don't you think? I'm not sure why the audience was getting excited over what he was saying. Well, I think they were getting excited to see a prominent atheist put forward what, for many of them, seemed like compelling arguments that they only hear in internet comment boxes. And now here, you get to hear them thrown back and forth. You can basically, I think there's a lot of excitement that the level of debate on the show

between Gervais and Colbert was about on the par what you see an average Christian, even a fairly well-read Christian versus an average atheist in these comment boxes, throwing around what could be called tropes or common arguments or pieces of rhetoric. And it's unfortunate because I think some people watching this may have taken away the idea that atheism has a lot of this evidence and it's really putting these fatal stabs into the existence of God or belief in God. And that's simply not the case. I do give Colbert a lot of credit, and I think he did make some salient points in the interview.

But, of course, I, as an apologist, probably would have answered things a little differently. And to be fair to Gervais, this is a talk show. It's not like a debate where each person gets 20 minutes. And so it is going to be soundbite-ish. So I'm certainly not pretending this is all Gervais would have to say on the topic. But I did want you, give you the opportunity to respond to some of the points he made. The first point that was made,

which I'm pretty sure went past a lot of people, was the whole why is there something rather than nothing? Ricky Gervais, why is there something instead of nothing? That makes no sense at all. That's to answer my question.

That's not the two choices. No, but the choice is I'm giving you I'm the host. Well, I don't... You want to concede the debate? Why is there something instead of nothing? Hold on. What do you mean, out of nothing? Why is there something instead of why is there nothing? Why does the universe exist at all? Why is there something?

But surely the big question is not why but how well why is it it's almost like gervais either didn't understand that question or wanted to quickly go to the you know kalam argument that's usually put forth instead did you did you notice that yes i did i i remember in the show he specifically said, well, why does the universe exist? What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? And he says, well, those are just nonsense questions. They're silly questions that we don't even need to answer.

The why doesn't matter, only the how. If science figures out how things occur, that's all that matters. But that's silly. In my book, Answering Atheism, I remember I quote Derek Parfit, the late analytic philosopher, one of the most important philosophers in the latter part of the 20th century. And Parfit said the question, you know, he says that there could have been nothing, that it's amazing when we see there are atoms and planets and stars and galaxies. And so the question, why is there something rather than nothing, is a profound one worth asking. Not just so, how did the universe come to be, but why is it there is something rather than nothing?

And ultimately that ends at, what is the explanation for that? Is it purely a natural explanation? It can't be, though, if we're talking about the explanation of nature itself. There's ultimately going to have to be no explanation or a supernatural explanation. And then he spoke a little bit about the fact that he was an atheist, and then he kind of talked a little bit about what atheist and agnostic means. This is the thing, right? So I'm an agnostic atheist, technically. Agnostics, it means no one knows whether there's a God. So everyone's technically agnostic.

We don't know. That's true. So an agnostic atheist is someone who doesn't know there's a God or not, as no one does. So you're not convicted of your atheism. Well, I am. I'm not sure. No, I am, because atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a God. Atheism isn't a belief system. So this is atheism in, that classically, historically,

atheism is the denial or the rejection of the existence of God. So, a theist says the answer to the question, does God exist, is yes. An atheist says the answer to the question is no. And an agnostic says the answer to the question is, I don't know. And basically, Gervais wanted to redefine atheism, and many atheists do this, to say atheism is just a lack of belief in God. So an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God, and if you're an agnostic atheist, you don't know there is no God, you just lack a belief. But that's not very interesting to say, well, I lack a belief in God. Well, why do you lack a belief in God? Is it because you just haven't bothered to think about it very much? Or you're incapable of forming such a belief, like if you're an infant

or an animal? That's not interesting for a worldview. I want to know, the entity God, does God exist? Yes, no, or I don't know. And most atheists who don't give an argument to say he doesn't exist, they should admit they're agnostics and say, well, I don't know if there's a God or not. I currently don't believe in one. I'm not convinced by the arguments for God. That's fine. Just say, I don't know. You're not convinced by the arguments. And let's talk about the arguments and why you're not convinced by them. Yeah. Another thing he said is this, everyone's an agnostic because ultimately we don't know. is this. Everyone's an agnostic, because ultimately we don't know. And that seems to put the theist into a position of wanting to appear modest, right? And to say, well, I guess you're right. Yeah, at the end of the day, none of us know. How would you respond to that?

How does he know all of us don't know? That's essentially how I would turn it back around. And you'd also have to zero in on what do you mean by knowledge? I think sometimes people say, well, you can only know something if you have 100% absolute certainty, a mathematical proof, things like this. But knowledge at a basic level is justified true belief. We just have justification. I mean, if somebody tells you their name is Bob, do you have 100% mathematical proof their first name is Bob? Maybe their middle name is Robert, and they go by Bob. You know, we have different levels of confidence, but we say pretty clearly that we know certain things. Many historical facts, for example, are not known with 100%

certainty, but we still know them because there's more evidence in favor of it than against it. So, I would say I know God exists because I believe it, it's true, and I have good reasons to believe that. You may disagree with those reasons, that's fine. So, it's interesting when he says, well, none of us know. Well, he's moving beyond the agnostic position. He's saying he knows none of the arguments for the existence of God work. And that's a claim. That's a claim. And so, if you claim that, yeah, they are refuted, people who say they work are wrong, well, suddenly, if you're going to make that claim, then tell me what's wrong with the arguments and why they fail. You've

assumed a burden of proof there. Another thing he says is this. So you believe in one God, I assume. In three persons, but go ahead. Okay. So you believe. Okay. So, but there are about 3,000 to choose from that have been, you know, people who believe in one God. I've done some reading, yeah.

Okay. So basically, you believe in, you deny one less god than I do. You don't believe in 2,999 gods, and I don't believe in just one more. Right. Yeah, the idea is, well, we're all atheists. You know, you don't believe in Thor, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, the flying spaghetti monster. You don't believe in billions of deities. I just believe in one less deity than you.

And this argument fails because the god that Christians believe in isn't just one god among many other mythological deities. We believe in the infinite god of classical theism who created all things. Many of these other mythological deities are limited in power, can be killed or destroyed. They're not really God at all. They're God in name only. If I had to succinctly go against this objection, what I would say is this. Just because there are many candidates that fail to fill an office doesn't mean there isn't a correct candidate. Or just because there's many suspects who did not commit a crime doesn't mean there's a true

suspect. That'd be like saying, well, there's a murder victim. We think John Smith did it. The prosecutor thinks John Smith killed the guy. Yeah, but he also thinks billions of other people didn't do it. I'm saying nobody killed the guy. It's an accident. I believe in one less murderer than you do. Well, no, that doesn't work because by saying that there are now zero agents or zero suspects, it's more improbable to say this all happened by chance without an agent being involved. The same for the universe to say, well, nobody brought it into existence from nothing. That doesn't answer anything at all. So, to go back to, just because there's many candidates like, you know, Zeus can't be God, Thor can't be God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster can't because they're limited, finite, immoral,

doesn't mean there is not one correct candidate. In fact, in ancient Greece, Aristotle taught that gods like Zeus were myths, but he said, no, there is a true God who is infinite in being, and he is the prime mover that keeps everything in existence. So, yeah, this is, it's just not a very good argument. I've heard apologist Randall Rouser use this analogy. He said, this, you know, one less God than you objection is like a bachelor saying to a married man, you're a bachelor with respect to every other woman out there, I just go one step further. The point is, no, there is a huge difference between being married and not married, and it is that specific woman.

Pete Right. And the key to drive home is that the deity that Christians believe in, if you say you believe in God, the God we believe in is not just what we don't randomly select one deity out of billions to arbitrarily believe in. If that were the case, the objection might have some force. Just like in a criminal case, you reach the guilty verdict by randomly selecting one citizen and saying that he did it and ignoring everybody else. But of course, in a criminal case, you say, no, there's evidence for John Smith that only applies to Smith and not to anyone else, and we would say there is evidence for the god of classical theism or the god of Christianity that does not apply to any of these other deities. I see. Yeah, that's a great analogy. Finally, let's talk about this science wins objection where he says this. If we take something

like any fiction and any holy book and any other fiction and destroyed it, okay, in a thousand years time, that wouldn't come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, right, and every fact and destroyed them all, in a thousand years, they'd all be back because all the same tests would be the same result. That's good. Yeah. And that's the, this is the strangest argument I heard out of the interview, which is, well, you shouldn't believe in something if people can't rediscover it in the future. So the idea is if you destroyed science textbooks, people would discover Newton's three laws of motion a thousand years from now, you know, if we rise from the

ashes of the apocalypse. They'll discover it, they just might name it, you know, Bob's three laws of motion, but it'll be the same truth. Whereas, you know, you wouldn't get the same religious books necessarily. A few problems with this. Number one, and a Facebook commenter actually pointed this out to me, if many of the arguments for the existence of God would come back, that if humanity came back, you would say, well, something can't come from nothing, there must be a deity who brought everything into existence, an uncaused cause. So many of the arguments for the existence of God would return, the first cause and design arguments, people would naturally come to know that, just as they would come to know

other philosophical and scientific truths. Second, the fatal flaw in this argument is that there are truths, things that are true, even if they were never rediscovered in the future. And a prime example of that would be facts of history. That what Gervais says in historical books, you know, these historical books, they would never come back. These religious books, these holy books would not come back. Right, but neither would history books. There are many facts of history that would be lost if that were the case. But those facts were still true. One example

I gave when I wrote a blog on this a while back is that if you destroyed all of the media tapes and all the records of Ricky Gervais, you know, I wouldn't be able to prove 10,000 years from now that the statement Ricky Gervais was a famous comedian in the 21st century, I couldn't prove it's true, but it would still be true. So the facts about history, even if they can't be rediscovered in the future, in this scenario that Gervais gives us, doesn't mean that they're not true. Facts related to, let's say, the existence of Jesus, even. That many non-religious people will admit at least Jesus existed, but then who was he? And you would do a historical investigation to discover who he was. And finally, this argument Gervais makes that, well, 10,000 years from now, you'll get science books back,

but you won't get holy books back, that assumes God does not exist and one of these religions is not true. Because if there were some kind of worldwide calamity, if God did exist, perhaps he would deposit revelation again to ensure a continuity of faith. The objection itself assumes what it's trying to prove, that holy books don't record any divine interactions with history. Excellent. Well, that's a real great response to Ricky Gervais. Thanks so much, Trent. I want to kind of wrap up by just asking you to suggest to our listeners, right, they want to educate themselves more on this topic of atheism, but it can be really daunting, you know. What would you say? Where should they go? What should they read? A lot of different resources are out there for you to learn about the subject of atheism. A great website you could go to is strangenotions.com, run by our friend Brandon Bocht. He

has a great website where he interacts with atheists. Many people who believe in God comment on there, and he has lots of great articles on arguments for and against the existence of God. If you want to start out with light reading material, I would recommend either the first few chapters of my book, Why We're Catholic. I talk about the existence and nature of God in the chapters, I believe it's chapters 3 through 5. In that book, also, I would recommend Matt Fradd's book, 20 Answers Atheism, to get a nice introduction to the topic. And then if you want to go in-depth, I'd recommend my book on the subject, Answering Atheism, which is available from Catholic Answers Press. What I love about your book, Trent, is after every chapter, you have a very short Socratic dialogue between an atheist and a Christian to sort of sum up the points you made in that chapter. I can't recommend this book highly enough. You know, I'm sure there are people out there,

Trent, I'm sure you'd be the first to agree that have studied this topic perhaps in much more length than you, but I can't think of a better kind of holistic book to respond to this question for the layman that would really equip him than your book. So, yeah, if you haven't got Answering Atheism, you know, be sure to go out and get that. All right. Well, thanks very much for your time. Thank you very much, Mr. Fred. Anytime. Glad to be here. Cheers. Thanks very much for tuning into this week's episode of Pints with Aquinas. If you're new to the show, be sure to go check out our past catalog of questions. Unlike other podcasts that deal with questions of the day, I hope that this podcast deals with questions that are always relevant, questions that Aquinas

dealt with in the Summa Theologiae, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and others of his works. Also, if you like what you've heard today and you want to support good Catholic podcasting, please go to pintswithaquinas.com and click support. There you can support the show for as little as $2 a month. And to the degree in which you give to me monthly, I give stuff back to you. So if you give two bucks a month, you get access to an ever-growing library of exclusive interviews I do with philosophers, theologians, etc. If you give more, you get books and stickers, all sorts of stuff. So again, please go check that out because your support's greatly appreciated. Pintswithaquinas.com and click support. God bless you and chat with give my whole life to carry you, to carry you, to carry you, to carry you, to carry you.