Truth Unites - Atheist and Christian Dialogue on Divine Hiddenness (Justin Schieber and Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

In this video Gavin Ortlund and Justin Schieber of Real Atheology discuss the problem of divine hiddenness. Gavin's first video: https://youtu.be/_d-6UhOS0FE?si=udp6g05pmWYJl_Nd Justin's response: https://youtu.be/jNkCCeij1As?si=8WkC0mSSuYvpzcgb Justin's book: https://www.amazon.com/Atheist-Christian-Walk-into-Bar/dp/1633882438 Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

It doesn't seem to me like God would have any reason to rest content with mere abstract from a distance relationship, when again, love is about drawing near. To me, it's very evident that sometimes the loving thing to do is to be closed to a conscious relationship for a time. When we say God is loving, suddenly we're not even able to apply even the most minimal standards of human love to God. From a Christian perspective and Judaism and Islam as well, there's an afterlife. So this world is not like the goal. The diacronic thrust of love is fitting to this end that basically all of this is preparation. All of this is soul formation.

Your theory of love doesn't have very good explanatory power. Don't just quote Romans 1 in the comments. If you believe in Romans 1, as I do, that God's existence is revealed to creation, we've got to defend that. This is like, I think, the ideal of how these things should be handled, quite frankly. Like, sit down, hash some things out, try to better explain. Hey, everybody. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I'm here with Justin Sheber, who hosts the Real Atheology YouTube channel. It's a great YouTube channel.

And he's also the co-author of the book, An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into a Bar. So I'll put some information about him and that book in the video description, and you can check that out. We're going to have a dialogue on the hiddenness of God. I'm absolutely fascinated in this argument, and it's a really kind of cutting-edge issue in philosophy of religion, so we'll have a great discussion here. So, Justin, thanks for taking the time, and tell us a little bit about your YouTube channel and the kind of work you do there. Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on for this dialogue. Yeah, so real atheology, I kind of founded this number of years ago, where I saw that much of the atheistic argumentation going on online was not the most like philosophically informed and I was really into

philosophy I still in of course and and I thought that the I thought that it was being poorly represented in some circles and so I wanted to at least do some small part toward ameliorating that to trying saying hey look you might think that these arguments are really bad as expressed by certain peoples but you know maybe take a second look to them, a second look at them, maybe consider that there's a philosophically sophisticated case to be made for the view that denies that theism is true. It's kind of weird because it does kind of lock me into a position, right? So there's some, but I kind of toy with different degrees of confidence in that, right? Like I want to be able to say, I want to be able to change it to

real agnosticism if one day that presents itself. As long as you don't lock yourself, into using the word ironic to describe yourself because that is what I've done and now that I'm tempted to respond in ways that are not ironic. It's a good informal system of accountability for me. But I do want to encourage people watching this to check out his YouTube channel because it is fair. It is the well done. And sometimes I think one of the things we were saying a moment ago is lots of online dialogues are performative rather than productive. And I am grateful to be talking with you because I think you're the kind of person where it's easier to have a productive dialogue as opposed to performative where each side is just trying to show that they're right

in subtle ways and that kind of thing. Right, right. Yeah, no, it's insane to you. I've been, well, I was, took a vacation from this stuff for a number of years, but since I've been back, I've been watching a couple of your videos and I really have appreciated the kind of approach that you take to these questions. And so in that way, I think that we're similar to that in that sense. So I'm excited for this conversation as well. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so the backstory to this is I had put out a video a couple of weeks back responding to Alex O'Connor on the problem of divine hiddenness. You also have a series of videos on divine hiddenness and the fifth of them. I think it's the fifth. It's the last most recent one interacts with my video a little bit. And so we want to maybe just orient people to this conversation by introducing them to this

topic. I think this topic is fascinating. I think I said in my initial video, I think this is one of the most pressing challenges against theists right now. But, and well, I'll say this again later, sometimes we don't take it seriously enough, and we're really not. So, in fact, let me say one thing up front. Don't just quote Romans 1 in the comments. If you believe in Romans 1, as I do, that God's existence is revealed to creation. We've got to defend that. So just quoting it is not, helpful it could even be obnoxious at times so that's for people in the comments just you know we want to be helpful and everything we say but anyway let's just introduce this maybe you could just take a minute just give us like a real condensed overview for someone who's not already familiar what basically is the divine hiddenness

problem yeah so the divine hiddenness problem um it's titled a little bit like misleadingly right like so actually this is something that cellenberg comments on that like when we talk about divine hiddenness we're talking about the divine that is hiding, right? But the argument is for a conclusion that there is no divine. And so it's a non-literal sense of divine hiddenness. So he calls it the kind of hiddenness argument. It's kind of a colloquial way to refer to it. But the main thought here is essentially that if, you know, as with any argument that has to deal with God, you ask what might be true if God exists. What may be true if God did not exist? And Schellenberg argues through the nature of love that if a perfectly loving God existed, that would have certain implications, certain epistemic implications as to the kinds of persons that would exist if we were in a world in which God created persons. So Schellenberg argues that the nature of love is such that it's necessarily relational, that it seeks to be in relationship with loved ones. And with a couple of premises, a couple additional premises about how love or about how relationship of the sort that is relevant would require explicit belief in God. That leads us to think that if God existed, has created persons, is perfectly loving that no persons would ever be without belief in God unless they were resisting God. and by resistance, he means kind of putting yourself in different places such that you would not believe in God as a kind of result of your own self-deception.

And so that's the general argument. And so the question is, okay, well, are there persons that are not currently believing God or who have not believed in God in the past, but have done so not as a result of, a kind of resistance to God. Schellenberg thinks that the argument that the answer to this question is yes. I think that the answer to this question is yes. I think there are non-resistant, non-believers. And so then, yeah, the question is, is that consistent with God? Schellenberg's going to say no. And so that's where the kind of dialogue starts there. Great. And we'll define these terms. Maybe that's what we can do next is to find some of these key terms just to orient people so people are clear. Schellenberg is the name of a philosopher who's kind of the leading proponent of this argument.

Now, one of the dynamics so far is my video was in response to Alex O'Connor specifically, but I was engaging Schellenberg a little bit to that end, but I wasn't directly responding to Schellenberg. So for this discussion, what I thought we could do is just drill into Schellenberg's arguments and see such a capable proponent of this argument and just work through some of these premises. And what I'll do is I'll come in, hopefully I'll remember afterwards to do the editing. And I'm going to put up on the screen a syllogism that is one of the, it's not the simplest, but it's one of the slightly less technical ones.

And this can function like a table of contents for us for our discussion. So basically, I just think what we'll do is work through the three premises of this argument. It's the argument is valid in its form. So in order for me to have to reject the conclusion, I got to attack one or more of these premises. and kind of in advance, I'll say, I'm going to lay my cards on the table. And by the way, if I take the, if it was too fast to read that, you can just pause it and go back. I'll put it in the timestamps to where that syllogism is. But in advance, I'd basically just say that premise two is my main concern.

It's really actually the first two premises in this particular version of the argument. So I'm not going to dispute premise three, which is the one about non-resistant non-belief. I still think it might be useful for us to talk about that a little bit because I think the degree of non-resistant non-belief is relevant to the emotional impact of the argument in real life, but it's not my area of dispute. I think what we'll get into here. And even premise one can sometimes be restated in a way that I wouldn't have any problem with it. So the main issues are with premise two. It's kind of just with the wording of premise one and this wording. So basically, we're going to get into the nature of divine love is kind of where we'll go. But we'll just work

through these premises to drill into the argument a little bit here. What else do I want to say by way of introduction? Why don't we define some of the terms? So we can kind of go back and forth and just work together. I actually think, you know, and this is another cautionary note for theists watching, it's easy to dismiss one of these premises too quickly. Even up to this afternoon, reading back through Schellenberg's book, I realized I need to be, some of these terms are tricky.

And it's easy for us to dismiss them too. So we've got to read how Schellenberg is meaning these terms. So let's be careful and not dismiss these premises too quickly. So we let's, I'll put up on the screen premise one. If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person. So maybe we can start by just defining personal relationship. What does Schellenberg mean by that?

Do you want to start off on that one? And I can say a few things too. Yeah. So my personal relationship here, Schellenberg means, um, a, conscious and reciprocal relationship that is positively meaningful in allowing for deep sharing. So he's talking about like a personal relationship in the sense that like a person is substantively interacting with another person, knowingly so, such that they can recognize benefits or they can recognize they can have communications where they recognize like a discrete

piece of information and then give something back in a reciprocal way. like there's a give and take, you know, relationships are a two-way street. That's how kind of Schellenberg wants to talk about personal relationships. And so that's what he means by when he, in that premise. That's good. And I'll just highlight as I read through, Schellenberg's written this argument in different ways over the years. So you kind of have to pull from some of the different things. But the word conscious is an important one.

He talks about a personal relationship is one that is conscious. uses that term, at least in the 2015 book. He talks about it as a reciprocal and explicit and mutually fulfilling. You use the words deep sharing. So that's just helpful to kind of get the target straight as we're at the start here because that's that will be relevant later. A finite person, as I read it, that just means anybody who is capable of that kind of relationship with God. Yeah. So interestingly, so like there is an additional detail in there like finite person, Yeah, he's referring to, you know, created persons, essentially, right? Any person that isn't God.

And then he's going to, he's going to want to say he's going to limit it to the finite persons that are capable of relationship with God. So these are not like, I mean, if you have like an infant, right, who's not capable of like, he doesn't even have a like a theory of mind, right? They can't like think of other persons as distinct from themselves or having. their own interests and things like that. So like an infant without like the capacity for theory of mind would not fall into this argument. That would be a separate, you know, maybe there's an interesting argument to be made there, but, you know, that would be a separate thing. Schellenberg wants to just focus on those people from the time at which they acquire the cognitive capacity to enter a relationship with God and to like participate in one essentially. Right. Okay.

Now, the third, three other words we should define. One is the word open. This is a tricky one. And again, theists could get tripped up here. Let me just clarify, because I can imagine, this is my first thought process is, well, Satan in Christian theology, is a finite person. He's finite and he's personal. So surely you're not saying that God has to always be open to a relationship knocking on Satan's door,

you know, expecting a relationship with Satan. but that's this is this would be where you know careful attention to how schellenberg is defining these things is important so in the 2015 book um you hold this up in case anybody wants to buy this i think if someone's wanting to get into this this probably would be the best book would you agree with that this is a good the best yeah yeah no i think yeah this book is uh it's written for a wider audience than um and then if you're looking for a more like rigorous explication of the argument that that hidden divinity and religious belief book that you mentioned this one here that's got his like most up-to-date most rigorous formation of the argument that was the other book i was just going to reference as well

this is the one i was reading over the weekend so oh yeah yeah yeah that's fantastic but just to so again we're warding off misunderstandings with the terms here uh schellenberg says openness is compatible with God allowing creatures to close the door to relationship themselves and shut themselves off from God. So that addresses the Satan worry. He's not saying God has to constantly be knocking on Satan's door and saying, you know, stop closing yourself off. It's not, it's actually a modest premise here. Now, I still think this word open is a little ambiguous because where people's minds go with open, You know, it, I don't know, it might run a foul. But I think what Schellenberg is basically saying to try to cut to the chase here, I think he's talking about basically God will ensure that someone is capable of believing in him if they desire to do so.

That's how I basically construe it. How do you read that? So it's not, so I wouldn't say it's the capability of believing in God. Schellenberg's going to want to say that at least from the, from the moment that. someone acquires the capacities to believe in God, that they will believe in God. And that just it will be the case that at that very moment at which they acquire those capacities, you know, boom, now they believe in God. Now from there, they may come to, you know, have a desire to not be in a relationship with God or to be in a position that's incompatible with such a relationship.

And so, you know, God is not going to force himself on anyone. So you have to allow that someone might freely use their decision to enter a relationship with God. You might, you have to allow that they might use their free decision to kind of like ignore and try and suppress the beliefs that they already had about God, right? Because they already believe that he exists. So they're going to try and, you know, kind of put themselves in a position where they cannot see the existence of God because they want nothing to do with him or something. So there's going to be a desire component there. There's going to be an action component where they actually do things to try and resist.

So it's essentially the only way that you wouldn't believe in God, according to Schellenberg, if a perfectly loving God exists, is by engaging in self-deceptive activities to kind of, you know, push down the belief in God that you used to have. Right. I think the key here is that God's not on this premise and that construal open, God's not going to make it impossible for someone who is desiring God, seeking God, et cetera, to find God. So just to read, it will be impossible for creatures who haven't made it impossible themselves through their own God obscuring resistance of the divine to participate in relationship with God. If they want to, they will be able to do so simply by trying to do so. And another clarification is he says that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

easy. He's not saying it'll, you know, it could be difficult, but it will be possible. The next thing we should define is the word always. Because the premise in this formulation is not, if a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is generally open to personal relationship with any finite person, but always open. And this is why I can't agree to this premise. Yeah, yeah, I figured. Sign off on everything but premise too, but because that just simplifies it. But I actually have a concern here as well, which I'll get into it just a moment. But for now, I could just read just to be clear on what he means by that. He basically says, if it is hard to see why consistent openness should be built into our idea of God's unsurpassable love,

then it may be worthwhile contemplating a bit the most obviously loving people in our experience. For such people, loving parents, siblings, friends, teachers, consistent openness is to be. taken quite for granted. I probably shouldn't read so much because it's going to make people's eyes glaze over. But that'll be the last thing I read. But I mean, he's a beautiful writer. So, you know, yeah. So what, do you want to say anything about this word always? Because I just want to flag that for people's attention because that's important. So I mean, yeah. So I mean, we're not one thing to keep in mind, right? We're not talking about any any kind of person. We're talking about a God whose will is instantiated at the moment that he wants it to be, right?

So if God loves another person, assuming they're non-resistant, God is going to not do anything himself. He's going to do anything required in order to make it the case that that person is in a position to be able to attempt to enter into a relationship with God by trying, right? And again, like you said, you know, this does not mean that they're going to be let into the gate right away. They might have to do a whole bunch of things, prove themselves in various ways in order to enter a relationship with God. But the point is that they need to believe before they can even get to that point where they can be like, hmm, maybe I want to enter a relationship with God, right? They need to make that kind of informed choice to kind of step across that line.

And so God leaves it open to them to make that first decision and to kind of decide how, that will unfold from there. But once it begins, you know, God can put them through whatever, you know, hoops of fire he needs to in order to get them to the kind of place where he thinks they need to be, where their proper orientation with regard to the relationship where it should be. Right. So, so could we summarize, is this fair to you? To summarize, say, God always ensures that a person is capable of having a personal relationship with God. Is that a fair abstraction for more than a person? That's, yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah. Okay. Last thing is just non-resistant non-belief because this is such a big thing. You had a helpful point where you were in your response video saying we have to make clear the causal relationship here. That is that is what is the cause of the lack of belief. So do you want to just say anything about that or about how we want to make sure we get this definition, right? Yeah. So kind of how I was saying earlier, where the only way that a person would not be in possession of belief,

when they have the capacity for it, is their own, like, it has to be from their end of the spectrum, right? They're the ones that would have to deny it. They'd have to be engaged in self-deception. So the point here being that, like, a non-resistant non-believer in the relevant sense, the sense that's relevant to the argument is a person who doesn't believe in God. And this could be someone who is an atheist. This could be someone who identifies as an agnostic. this could be someone who's never even heard of the concept of God. So they have to meet that condition. But then there's another condition that says that their non-belief is just not the result of their resistance to God.

As in, it's not the result of a resistance to God, I should say. So you could have non-belief like, you know, ancient peoples that you kind of mentioned in your video where like they don't, you know, if they don't have the concept of God, the cause of their non-belief is their ignorance of the concept, their kind of theological ignorance. It is not the case that they, that their non-belief is the cause of like a self-deception on their part, right? So, yeah, those, the non-belief part and then the actual cause of the non-believe, like what's the origin of that? Those are two necessary components for that definition of non-resistant non-belief. Okay, cool. Okay, so I hope people have hung with us through that because that's all really important just to be clear, you know, about what we're talking about.

Because, again, I do think people glide over the specifics of this sometimes. And it's a very subtle argument in the language. And so we've got to be very careful with this. So definitions aside, maybe what I could do is just lay out where I think we can kind of drill down into where we're going to probably disagree about the argument. Because I would say, and then I'll give you a chance to respond to. this, but basically, and this ties in a little bit to what I was saying in my initial video about the expectations of divine love thesis, which is my first thesis in that video. Basically, as I read them, premise one and two, premise one, because of that word always,

are making claims about the nature of divine love that we are not in a position to know, and I think we have some good reasons to be suspicious of. And in saying that, I'm not just giving a blanket appeal for humility. It's more the claim that premises one and two don't really ever get off the ground because they're just claiming something that we couldn't possibly know. And just two reasons for that. One would be the nature of God and the second would be the nature of love. With the nature of God, so Schellenberg, this is one of the issues that comes up to a lot,

is kind of which kind of God is in view here. So he specifies the kind of God he is thinking of. is the personal God of traditional theism. So we might think, you know, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, similar conceptions of God that are in those religions very broadly. It's a little bit ambiguous exactly where you draw the boundaries there. But I would basically say the idea that God will always ensure that finite creatures are capable of having a conscious relationship with him isn't a historic Jewish-Christian or Muslim idea. I would see it as more of a modern Western conception of the nature of divine love. I would say, so this comes, you'll have to be patient with me when I'm talking like a theologian,

because all my background theology comes in here. But, you know, in the Christian tradition, for example, divine love and divine transcendence are held in tension with each other. And they're both kind of seen as mutually informing each other. Whereas with Schellenberg, my worry is he's kind of using divine love. as a kind of hermeneutical grid for God. And so basically, there's just not enough divine transcendence here, I would say. You know, divine transcendence is this idea that God is high and lofty, the passage in Isaiah that says, my ways are not your ways.

We can't fully understand God. You know, actually, the word hiddenness is very much related to the whole idea of transcendence, that, you know, that we're not always going to see what God is doing and that kind of thing. And so the upshot of all that is. is in classical theology, divine love is defined more commonly as simply to will the good of creatures. And that's different from ensuring that they will be capable of a conscious reciprocal relationship. Those are two different things. So the worry here is that, you know, basically we're kind of building up.

We're kind of extrapolating from very modern Western intuitions about the nature of divine love and how God should function. And I would say imposing a set of expectations upon what an infinite being will do, whereas I would say there's just no way we could know that. God's love, because of the uniqueness of God, the uniqueness of our relationship with God, I would say, how could we know that divine love is ensuring the possibility of a conscious relationship rather than willing the good of creatures? Right, right. But let me, I'll pause there and let you interact with that, so nothing gets too lost here. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a number of issues there, right? So on the one hand, when it comes to, like, doing philosophy, right? Like, that's going to be a different kind of project than doing theology. So on the one hand, there's no reason we should be surprised that the nature of, of, um, God in, you know, established religious ideas, there's no reason we should be surprised that those concepts, that those particular concepts are going to have to make room for the fact that not

everyone believes in God, right? So, I mean, I totally agree with you there, right? You're going to have scripture that says, you know, I mean, well, you're going to have, you're going to have to make room for the fact, the empirical fact that there are people that I don't believe in God, right? The question that Schellenberg is asking is a different kind of question. He's asking simply what would be the case if a God existed who was perfectly loving, right? And by perfectly loving, we're going to be talking about, we're going to want to kind of extrapolate what we mean when we use the word love generally. Love generally involves, as you said, wishing the good of the other, but that's not all it involves, right? There's always going to be another component to love, which is to draw close to them, to be in relationship with them. I love my wife, but I don't, it's not as though, you know, I love my wife and I want what's best for her, but I also want to be in like an intimate relationship with her. I want to be spending time with her. I want to be in

in communication with her. If I were to learn tomorrow that someone else could potentially make her, you know, give her a little bit more enjoyment out of life, I wouldn't like just step away. You know what I mean? Like part of my loving her and an essential part of it is my wanting to be like closely tied to her in reciprocal, meaningful relationship. So it's not just about a kind of instrument. mentalist approach to getting someone a good life. It's about something deeper than that. And I think that the deepest aspect of love, love, the emphasis of love, I think, is that relational component. The instrumental portion that we talk about, that, you know, wanting what's best for them, that's also a good thing. But that takes place within the context of the relationship, I think. So it might be that

we just have like a different conception of love here. I think that a very good case can be made for that love is more than just wishing the good. It also must entail kind of a, like I said, a personal aspect to it, a personal relating aspect. That very fair, and this is a good chance for us to clarify things a little bit too, because I wouldn't want to set. I guess the definition, willing the good of creatures is a shorthand definition. A lot is packed in there. That would include in Christian theology relationship with God. That would include the beatific vision, seeing the essence of God. That would include union with the divine nature. That would include all of that. So that is definitely on the table. What I'm meaning to contrast is not, you know, willing the good versus

personal relationship, but willing the good versus Schellenberg's definition of divine love, which is to ensure that every finite creature is capable of a is always capable of a conscious relationship. That is a very specific definition of divine love. And I'm just, I guess the concern is the desire here is not just to make room for, you know, explaining how someone might not believe or something like that. The concern is that that's a very modern and Western construal of divine love, I think. I don't think that's really in the tradition very much. So when we're doing conceptual analysis about the nature of love, the nature of God's love, and what a perfectly loving God would do. We're relying on certain intuitions we have about the nature of love, certain observations we have of

other relationships, and in the extrapolation up from those intuitions and observations, we could be imposing certain things upon God that, you know, how do we know that our intuitions are correct? Different people have different intuitions about what divine love will do. And I think that that's a perfectly fair point to make. Like, what Schellenberg is doing is he's, you know, he's exploring this notion of love. And before he gets to applying it to God, he wants to kind of trace out the contours of what it means to love another person, right? So in every case, the highest forms of love that we know about, you know, setting aside, you know, kind of bracketing the God question. right we're going to be looking at like okay think about like the love of a parent for a child the love of

you know between spouses the love between siblings right like these are the kinds of highest forms of love and then we can ask ourselves a question okay what what does that entail you could you might say that like it entails that we're always going to do like the best things possible for everyone you know we're constantly giving gifts to each other, right? But that would be too strong, I think. That doesn't really capture what we mean by love. Love is more complex than that, you know? And so you can keep kind of like cutting down, making it more minimal, like just minimizing your definition further and further and further until you get to like the most bare minimum concept of love or the bare minimum entailments of love, I should say.

And when you do that, you get to not necessarily that you even seek relationship out with that person, mere openness to relationship. You know what I mean? So like it's important to see how minimal Schellenberg is actually being with this. Now, the always portion, you might, you might think, well, that's, you know, that's, that's a bit much, right? There's, there's too much being said here. But again, that just falls out of the fact that we're talking about an omnipotent being whose will, necessarily will become the case the moment he wills it, right? So that's the always, I think, isn't particularly bold.

I think it just takes God seriously is what it does. But the, again, the notion of love is very minimal. We're just talking about an openness. This is consistent with kind of sitting back and not even really doing anything yourself to enact the relationship. This is consistent with that even. And that seems to me like such a minimal bare bones conception of love that like if you don't want to apply that to God, then I worry that love isn't the right word. You know what I mean?

Like maybe there's another word that we can use like, you know, like a schlove or something, right? That would apply to God that is like so fundamentally different from how we use that word in every other conversation. you know what I mean so that's kind of where he's going with that like he wants to take that concept seriously but he also wants to minimize it to the most possible like to the most minimal degree possible so it seems it's so to me it does it seems like a modest claim about what love entails I would want to say that love entails more but I think that like the argument is is fine as stated but yeah I guess I guess what would you think about that Yeah, I think the two words that I would see that I would locate as saying this isn't a minimal claim are the word, the first the word always. And then second, the words, this is why we had to define these terms is the word conscious, which is one of the terms. I think you use the word knowingly, which comes in with the idea of personal relationship. I don't think, I mean, how could we know that the most loving thing to do? certainly if we're thinking of just the minimal, you know, duty, is that always making a conscious

relationship possible. So here's, maybe I could give some metaphors, because these help my mind in terms of just, you know, conceptualizing how it might be the case that sometimes maybe God making himself unavailable for a time could be the most loving thing that he could possibly do. And this gets into kind of I probably threw off when earlier I used the word diachronic for this, but this is this idea of, you know, love is of a diacronic nature, a dynamic nature. It's oriented onto a goal. It's not this just static, permanent reality. It exists in a kind of drama. And so it seems to me that's very possible that God that, you know, and again, I would say this is more the historic way of thinking. This idea that God must always ensure that people are capable of a conscious relationship with him, I mean, that

might seem like a minimal expectation for us today, but that's not even been on the table for most theists in this tradition that Schellenberg is targeting, I think. Because, you know, so like some examples would be, let's suppose in my video, I used the example of old man Marley in Home Alone. And now, this doesn't really map on exactly because, but it may just introduce the possibility of the idea that you might, just the narrative element to this, that you might, you know, so in the movie Home Alone, Kevin is afraid of this character. And he thinks he's an evil character. He doesn't really have. a relationship with him, but then eventually he realizes he's a good character. Now, that doesn't map on exactly for various reasons to what we're talking about right now. So here's a different analogy.

Suppose that a freshman in high school falls in love with a girl, another freshman at their high school wants to date her, wants to have a relationship with her, but he realizes we're both only 15, I can't drive yet, we're both kind of immature, we're both going to be in high school for four years together. Maybe the wisest strategy, like in the show, the office, Jim and Pam are, you know, friends for a long time and then they have a romance. So he's like, maybe the wisest strategies, just don't force this and just kind of see how it falls out. And so their freshman year, they don't have any relationship at all. Their sophomore year, they become acquaintances. Their junior year, they have a class together. And so it's kind of natural that it falls

out that they build a friendship and then he asks her out in their senior year and happily ever after from that point that decision for the duration of that freshman year is not unloving because it has a purpose another example could be a now i know these don't map on exactly but what i'm trying to gesture towards here is what i try to get at with this word diachronic that love you know to say i got always has to ensure a conscious relationship i would just i don't know how to how we could possibly know whether that's true. What if God has something more in store for us that is actually better served by this kind of dramatic process like that romance relationship or the other example would be a counselor

relationship where someone is referred to them and they refuse to meet with that person because they know enough about them from the referral that it wouldn't be good for them. For various reasons, it would actually be unloving to accept that person as a patient or to have any kind of relationship with them. The patient knows who they are for some reason. You know, we can imagine lots of circumstances like this where it might not be in their best interests. Maybe they're going to get overattached or something like this.

So the counselor is closed to relationship for a time until it is possible to have that relationship. So these are kind of metaphors that are very limited and kind of clunky, but they're trying to kind of gesture toward this. I guess the concerns I feel about the assumptions that I feel are being put upon how divine love has to function. Because even in our world, we see that love is this very dynamic process. And sometimes, sometimes a conscious relationship, a knowing relationship isn't always ideal at every moment.

So those are some metaphors that maybe can kick us forward here. Let me let you interact with that. So, yeah, I guess going back to the first of the two analogies that you gave, you have like these kind of, you know, these young kids in love, right? And they know that they've got four years of high school to go. And so, you know, what's the rush, right? Now, are we, are we stipulating that these individuals love each other then? Or are they just kind of like, they're like vaguely interested in each other? Maybe they find each other attractive or whatever. Yeah, they love. He falls in love. He falls in love. But he's, but he's not ensuring a conscious,

relationship yet. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, so I would say, so these two people are aware of each other, right? So there is a conscious relationship going on there. They know each other. They interact. It's a, you know, maybe it's like a loose friendship to some degree. Now, what it isn't is it's a romantic. Let me just clarify. Freshman year, no relationship whatsoever. She doesn't know he exists. Sophomore year acquaintances, junior year friends senior year dating sorry if that was unclear sorry so I'm gonna get the timeline wrong but like so freshman year they they don't believe each other exists they don't they're not aware of each other's existence freshman year he loves her she doesn't know who he is gotcha okay so he loves her I guess I don't know what love means if if he loves her but he's

not even like trying to attempt some kind of conscious interaction with her like is the like he just he he he he saw her across the room and he like falls in love with her and like he doesn't feel at all interested in wanting to relate to her even at a surfacey friendship level he's interested he just knows I'm only 15 it's if I force it it's it's more likely to go successfully if I don't force it if I kind of wait for the right time right now we're only 15 that's kind of young we got time we got four years um why force it you know that freshman year is he being unloving there i would say no that's just you know sometimes love is open to a process that you won't always be ensuring a conscious relationship right away

yeah i mean i guess i don't yeah i mean i guess we're going to just disagree on that because i think that like if this kid loves this girl he might not you know like as you said he's not going to force it he's not going to like walk up there and like you know ask her to the dance or something like by golly, you know, the first movie makes, right? He's going to go up there. He's going to say, hey, what's your name? My name is this, blah, blah, blah. They're going to start a real kind of surfacy acquaintance level relationship.

It seems to me that if he doesn't at least do that, what does it even mean to say that he loves her? He's going to want to draw close to her to some levels, some kind of even most surfacy level. And then once he feels confident that like, oh, she's properly oriented toward this relationship as well, maybe they kick it up a notch. Maybe now they go to friendship. Maybe after a few years, where they kind of gain some independence or something, maybe they enter into a romantic relationship after each of them has kind of confirmed each other's respect in the friendship, in the friendship domain, right? But again, I think if one loves another person and they're aware of them across the room and they don't even want to seek closeness with them,

and maybe we are just using different kinds of love. Well, maybe I can, I'll clarify one more time, but I don't want to beat a dead horse here with this analogy. And it might be, I thought of these analogies quickly. They may not be the best analogies, but they're just trying to make a very simple point. But the analogy is this, that he does get to the acquaintance stage in his sophomore year. He's not waiting forever and ever. He does desire relationship. It's just a principled strategy that the best pathway to a good relationship is to take your time,

because I'm only 15 right now and, you know, various factors. We could change the analogy, but I, to me, that point is very reasonable that, again, the expectation that love will always at all times ensure the possibility of conscious relationship. I just, you know, whether we use that analogy or the counselor, I just think, to me, it's very evident that sometimes the loving thing to do is to be closed to a conscious relationship for a time. And, you know, we could come up with maybe else. analogies or we could go to the counselor analogy but I just it's not that one doesn't desire a relationship it's that at at every time it will not be possible to have the conscious relationship so

go ahead well yeah and I was just gonna say like you know the the every time that's that's only really going to apply when we're talking when we're using a premise that involves god right so when we're talking about like human finite persons of course we can't ensure that every moment that we love someone, they are always going to be aware of a conscious relationship, right? So let me kind of let me put out an analogy here just to kind of fit this idea. So let's say that, so sometimes in our relationships with people, sometimes like parents or whatever, maybe they're dealing with a child who has like a drug addiction or something, right? And so like it's been forwarded that like possibly these parents are in a position.

such that what the most loving thing for them to do is to kind of cut ties with the child, you know, kick them out of the house. Maybe they feel as though they are, what's the word, enabling their addiction, right? And so ultimately it's bad for them. It's bad for the child. So the loving thing to do is for them to say, hey, look, you're done. You know, you're cut off, right? So I want to draw a difference. I want to draw a distinction between that kind of approach, which I think, is perfectly reasonable. If a parent has a child who's struggling from addiction and they've tried everything and it's just it's not working and that child is like risking their own safety and health and, you know, various different things. It's not unreasonable, I think, to cut things off with that

person with their child. And I think that that can be the loving thing to do. I would totally agree. I want to draw a distinction between that and doing that same. thing, but then faking your death. Now, this sounds a bit wild, right? But it's important to the analogy. So when we are in relationship with people, sometimes experientially, they're very distant from us. And so, like, when a parent kicks their child out of the house because of some bad behavior or something, they still know each other. They still know that, like, hey, potentially, if I get my stuff together. Maybe, you know, they will, you know, if I make some relational overtures again, maybe they'll bring me back in once I've reformed, you know, that's, that's really the ultimate

method of doing something like this, of kicking your child out of the house is like some kind of reformative attempt, right? Like maybe they, when they hit rock bottom, that's the one they'll know that they need to get their stuff together, right? So I want to draw a distinction between that kind of reforming approach and a separate approach, which would be, I, want my child to get out of the house and I want them to no longer believe that I exist by faking my death and have that news get to them. Right. So imagine a mother who has a child who's struggling with an addiction that she kicks her out of the house and then she moves across the country and she fakes her death and makes sure that information gets to the parent gets to the child. And so that child,

from their perspective now, their parent does not exist, their relationship is over. The question is which one of those two stories is consistent with loving. I would say that the first one is consistent with being loving, because while you are putting a massive experiential barrier in the relationship, you're not ending the relationship, right? There's always the possibility that like, oh, if they get their stuff together, they grow, they reform. themselves, they can bring that relationship again. Relationships are complex things. A lot of the time, those narratives, the drama that you speak of, a lot of times that's what adds value to our relationship. Now, the second type, I want to say that that's not loving. And I think most people would agree that if a parent fakes their death and, you know, wants their child to believe that relationship is over, period, and that there's no chance to enter back into it, that that's not a loving parent.

And I want to say that like these analogies put on God, we would have to say that God is something other than loving. Maybe he's good in some way, but he's just not loving in the way that that word actually carries meaning among humans. Yeah. I'm with you on with air. I mean, I think that's a good metaphor to make a distinction there between two different ways this could play out. And I would agree the faking your own death thing, that's tough to reconcile with love. There'd have to be some really bizarre circumstance or something like that to try to understand. understand that. But I think Schellenberg's premises require more than what we're distinguishing between there because, again, the word always and the desire for conscious, the idea that God, a perfectly loving God, will always ensure that a person is capable of a conscious relationship. Again, I just can't see how we could possibly know that. Because the fact, you know, so with the word always, we're saying,

that means because it's God and he's perfect. That's why it's always. always, but just because it's a perfect love and a divine love doesn't mean there couldn't be this temporal aspect where for seasons of time, a person actually wouldn't benefit from a conscious relationship with God. So, you know, I don't know, I don't mean to be the dead horse here. I'm just not seeing how we could know whether that, that, again, the always and conscious, how we could know whether that's true or not. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think that it has to follow from like an understanding. of love. And I think that if your understanding of love precludes that, I have to, my position on this is that it's going to be that if you don't agree with that, then what you think of love is, your theory of love is doesn't have very good explanatory power, I guess is what I would say. I think that if, that if you frame love in the sense of being something that wishes the good for the other that seeks to draw close to the other and that does this because not only because it's a good thing for the participants like they get they get benefits from entering this relationship

but also because it's good in and of itself right like it's it's like good in itself the nature of a relationship that this is what follows from love and yeah i mean i guess at the end of the day, we're probably just working with different concepts of love. And there's only so much that can be said to kind of like try and draw you to my conclusion, right? Yeah, right. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's it is going to be a matter of disagreement on that. But I think that there are good arguments and good kind of intuition pumps to kind of draw people to my side. But, you know. Yeah. Well, and that this is why I love talking with you is that, you know, the goal is always just to drill in and kind of clarify and sharpen the edges of where the disagreement lies.

And it's so, you know, I'm assuming as we go, we'll just, but that's fine. We just kind of drill into where we're seeing it differently. Maybe a thing just to extend this, before we get to the next premise, just to extend this one step further is another thing. At least we should be good to draw attention to is with the idea of a conscious relationship, you know, part of the idea of Christianity and actually Judaism and Islam to some extent, too, would be that we have a relationship with God at a dimmer level through conscience. one of Schellenberg's ideas is that you have to, you can't even get off the ground in a relationship with someone if you don't believe they exist. And I can see that in how he's looking at it from, this is again, is where the concern is of extrapolating from a relationship with a finite person to draw conclusions about a relationship with an infinite person without sufficient appreciation

of the difference between relating to a finite person and relating to an infinite person. And I would say actually it's different when we're talking about an infinite invisible creator. You know, if he does exist, it's kind of like I like using the metaphor of an author and a story. So it's like, you know, if Hamlet is in a relationship with Shakespeare, you know, that relationship is going to be qualitatively different than his relationship with the other characters in the play. And so the belief that Shakespeare exists, I would say is less, it plays out differently. in his relationship to Shakespeare, then it will be for the other characters in the play, because he's sort of relating to Shakespeare in this omnipresent way. We're like everything he does, he's swimming in the mind of Shakespeare.

Similarly, we would say that at the level of conscience, we are all in relationship with God, even if it's not consciously thought of as God. So when we experience our conscience, we would say we're touching against something that does have a relationship to God that is affecting our relationship with God, that may be preparing us for further, more conscious steps of relationship with God. But I guess this is where there is this concern about this idea that you have to believe someone exists to have a relationship with them. And it's, I guess, again, the worry is kind of extrapolating from the finite up to the infinite without an appreciation that this is, this is kind of a very unique kind of relationship that

we have with God. And we can't just kind of, you know, extend from the finite realm to the infinite without an appreciation of that difference. Again, it's like Hamlet saying, well, you can't have a relationship with Shakespeare unless you believe the Shakespeare exists. Kind of. That would be important for relating to Shakespeare in some ways, but in other ways, everything he does is a part of his relationship with Shakespeare. So I guess that's, again, just a concern in terms of the uniqueness of God and the worry of kind of extrapolating up from other relationships and other experiences of love up to this qualitatively unique relationship.

So that's another thing. I guess I just want to throw out on the table and see if you want to interact with that or push back or have any comments about that. Yeah. I mean, I guess if it were the case that, well, I guess what I would say is if someone does not, so let's say like, you know, how we talked about, if someone is not yet capable of a personal relationship, right? So they are like an infant, a infant without a theory of mind yet or something, right? I could see how like some, you know, maybe for those persons, this kind of, those individuals may be this kind of, kind of non-explicit relationship with God might be called for. but I would say again, at least in so far as God creates persons that have the capacity for relationship, given that relationship, conscious, explicit relationship with God is so, it is their, it is that which they have their greatest good, right?

I mean, God didn't need to create persons, right? God could have created nothing. God could have created just, you know, a landscape of some sort. But God, if in worlds where God exists and has created persons, it seems to me like that tells us what God is, what God is interested in doing in that world. And so you kind of put it this way. Like I entered a relationship with someone. And so like my wife, right, when I started, when we started dating, my decision to start dating her, focuses my future moves, my future behavior, the future goods that I will pursue, right?

I'm no longer going to be, you know, being flirty with other women and things like this, right? Like, that's just, it's not, I don't see that as a limit. I see that as a focus, right? That's just my, by my entering that relationship, I have kind of flagged what my goal. goals are then moving forward, right? And that happens all the time in life, right, where a decision kind of focuses future decisions from there on. I'm going to say that if God creates persons capable of explicit and meaningful relationship and whose good is best found in relationship with God, then the kinds of goods that God is going to seek are going to be relationship compatible goods from then forward. so it doesn't seem to me like God would have any reason to rest content with mere abstract from a distance relationship when again love is about drawing near right is essentially about drawing near and willing the good of the other person and so what good what what what best hits

those two checks those two boxes other than an explicit conscious personal relationship with God yeah I'm I'm really with you and a lot of what you're saying there. And I think I want to read the quote from this book if I can find the page. So this is the one you held up earlier. Yeah. And it's the yeah, it is

the article was if anybody wants to get this book, the article is by Michael Ray and then the one right after that on John of the Cross by Sarah Coakley. He's a very clear writer. And she is, she has a sentence here. This was kind of emotionally

powerful for me to read this if I can find the right spot here. But basically to set it up, okay, here it is. I think I found it. She's what I appreciate about this essay. So in agreement with what you were just saying that, yeah, it's not, certainly God's not going to be content with just an abstract, distant kind of relationship that's not fully conscious. You know, again, and this is in agreement with some of your comments that from a Christian perspective, the ultimate goal is union with God, being absorbed into union with God. And, you know, God. So it's the most intimate kind of relationship possible. So that's the ultimate goal. But the possibility then is that the kind of process along the way is not inconsistent with love unto that end. Again, because of the kind of diacronic purpose of love. Now, what I appreciate it about Cochley is she's saying that she can understand how that can feel a little bit dying the death of a thousand qualifications and a little bit ad hoc. And like, how do you know that? But she said, and I, she had this sentence. I'll just throw it up. and then see what you think about this. She said, if we are, because she's explicating John of the

Cross, this fascinating mystical theologian who talked about the dark night of the soul. And so she's drawing implications from that idea to this whole topic. She says, if we are to truly understand the nature of God's love for his creation, and especially for sentient and intellectual humans made in his image, we must at least allow the possibility that he desires from us something more intellectually profound, more personally and affectively, pervasive and indeed more morally demanding than a speedy and reassuring demonstration of his mere existence. So that came to my mind, because to clarify that the idea here is not that God doesn't desire this kind of like maximally intimate relationship with us to be sure the scripture uses marital

imagery to describe, you know, God's love for his people. But the idea is that it's just against Schellenberg's premises that maybe this whole thing is a little more complicated than being, us being able to know that God will always ensure that, you know, at every step along the way, we can have a conscious relationship with God. Maybe to get to that extreme pinnacle relationship doesn't require constant, you know, always capacity for conscious relationship. Maybe, maybe the travail of the conscience we're going through in this world, we will have some dark nights of the soul. You know, when Schellenberg talks about the dark night of the soul. He says that could apply in the context of a relationship, but not before a relationship

really starts. And again, I'm thinking, how do we know? You know, how could someone know that? But I feel badly that I'm kind of talking a lot here. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I guess I mean, I do want to say, so when Schenberg is saying that, you know, he's open to these relationships, It's not as though what Schoenlberg is saying is that so long as someone's not resistant, God is going to be like in your face, buddy buddying with you, you know, skipping off to the playground together. That's not the picture. And so some of this might be kind of eliciting these kinds of imagery. Because again, we talked about how it could be quite difficult, right? So belief that God exists.

Belief is, there's nothing there, right? Like belief is a very modest thing, right? He's simply ensuring belief. Now, the kind of relationship can vary vastly, right? So you could believe in God, but have him feel incredibly distant for a good decade and feel, like, tortured and depressed and feel terrible about it. but yet you're still in a relationship in the sense that you're quite distant from God, but yet you believe that God exists. And in the same way that like, you know, you, when you, when your friends go on vacation, right,

like you're in a relationship with them. The fact that they went on vacation doesn't end that. You still believe that they exist. Their fact that they went on vacation does not end the fact that you believe they exist. the point being there that like these relationships are varied things as you mentioned right and so the question is okay well if if there's a reason that God would withhold belief we already talked about how within love there's going to be a bias toward openness toward to a relationship but let's say but let's leave open to this idea that you know as she

says that there might be some reason God might have to withhold belief. Well, okay, what might that reason be? And is that reason, does that reason really require a lack of belief in the person? I'd say most of the, I mean, at least all the ones that I'm aware, they don't require that. so the best kind of relationship a person can be in with God, there's nothing that God could be seeking that is going to be inconsistent with that, it seems to me. So while I like want to entertain the conceptual space for that, it doesn't seem like it's there because any good that God is going to chase after in cold, like in tandem with a relationship with his loved ones is going to be something that's compatible.

with it. I mean, I don't know of any goods that wouldn't be compatible with his loved ones also holding belief in being in a position, again, not necessarily being a relationship, but being in a position to choose a relationship with God. Fair enough, and I really appreciate hearing your comments there. Those comments that you made there are a little bit more the kinds of things I was trying to address in my initial video with some of the Pascal and Kirkergaard passages. What I've have been people who are theists who are watching our conversation now might feel like I'm being a little too limited on the technicalities, but I kind of wanted to be a little bit more back at the beginning of these two premises, because I would say, again, you know, if you get, if to me the

argument, just my honest feeling about it is the argument as an abductive argument has tremendous emotional power. And that's where, but I think there's some answers, you know, and I think there's some countervailing considerations as well that ultimately inclined me to think believing in God is very rationally plausible, and then ultimately my experience, you know, takes it from plausible to where I've existentially committed my life to it. But it's powerful. I can see it. I can see the power of it. I'm not saying there's nothing here, but as a deductive argument, you know, I just don't think these first two premises, because as I was hearing you talk a moment ago, it's, you know, there's inferences being made about God. Well, maybe this could

happen, but, but, you know, again, I just don't know how with the restriction, of always and the requirement of the relationship being a conscious one. I mean, because from a Christian perspective and Judaism and Islam as well, there's an afterlife. So this world is not like the goal. The diacronic thrust of love is fitting to this end that basically all of this is preparation. All of this is soul formation. So I just don't know how we could know for sure as a deductive argument that God couldn't have times where it is the loving thing to do to be closed to a conscious relationship with creatures. I mean, one of the things on my heart is the 85% statistic I mentioned, there are people who say,

you know, and those would be the resistant people. But then, and maybe this is, we can get into the non-resistant thing to finish off here, we're in a second, because this will come in where it's hard to gauge, like, where do we know what is resistance and what isn't resistance? but I guess my I'll give you the last word on these first two premises premises I guess just my kind of general feeling is I think they go too far in making claims about because of the nature of the divine as a qualitatively unique kind of relationship that we have and because of the nature of love as a dynamic process I think they go too far and overreaching and the claims they make and the set of expectations they place upon how a loving God will function and that's why I am ultimately. unspersuaded while still feeling the force of the argument abductively, but just feeling that the deductively, I don't think the first premises get off the ground. But let me give you the last word, because I know you're looking at it differently, and I'll be happy to hear your thoughts, and then we can go to

non-resistant stuff. Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously we've gone back and forth on this, but like, just to kind of hit up a couple points that I would want to make are just that, like, if the worry is the always, we got to remember that we're talking about it. unmitant being that at every moment can cause his will to be willed and cause the content of his will to, you know, to become. And so it doesn't, so. Whereas always those kinds of expectations when talking about like, you know, messy human, human love, I understand like that that always is simply not going to be applicable. But again, with an omnipotent being so long, as he wants a, wants at least to be open to a relationship, he's going to make that person capable of entering one. As for love, there's a risk here, I think, using theological language like this, if we can't use the words how they mean, how we use them in human language, there's a risk that if if god truly is all other to a degree such that we can't use the words

or that the words lose their meaning then i mean you know schellenberg goes goes all out to try and like be really careful about what we mean by the word love one worry is that the theological language loses its meaning when we say that um jerry is loving to Maya, there's some meaning that attaches to that statement. There's some new information that we learn about Jerry by the attribution of love. When we say that God is loving, suddenly we're not even able to apply even the most minimal standards of human love to God. That's my worry. This is this kind of theological language. If we go so other so as to, so as our language kind of empties itself of content, then it might be that God is loving, but that that proposition doesn't actually

contain any new information other than God is, period. So, I mean, that's where my kind of final worry is that, like, if we're going to insist on God being so otherly, such as our language kind of falls apart in our ability to describe God, then we are kind of losing our ability to say anything about God. also we're losing our ability to say much about like what God would do in certain circumstances, what was what would likely be the case if God existed. And so this can kind of bleed into other aspects of our theology, it seems to me. So I do think that there needs to be kind of a balance to be one needs to kind of strike a balance there, I think. And it's not clear that there's going to be a balance that you're going to be able to avoid the implications of what love means in the standard sense while at the same time carrying the transcendence to a degree to divorce from the content of what love means in normal language but that's you know at this point I made already so it's kind of like you know we're going

to disagree on what the word means essentially at the end of the day totally fair and I I guess I do just want to very quickly clarify if that's okay, just because I wouldn't want us to leave with if there is a misunderstanding. I do want to be clear that, I mean, I hold a pretty traditional view of language, a theological language that we can speak of God as loving, that is analogical, but it's not a complete mystery. I don't think we're completely in the dark as to what divine love is. I'm not trying to say we have no conception of it or it doesn't mean anything. I only tailored those comments to the premises in Schellenberg's argument, that that, that's, you know, that. that it we can't go so far as to say we know always in conscience conscious that god god that divine love means he's always going to enable people to have conscious relationship with him though that it's just to

that extent that I wanted to stricure the nature of divine love let me ask you another question if that's okay and that's uh on non-resistant non-belief um i don't challenge this premise so it's not really at issue here with the argument, but I do think it might just be worth canvassing this because the overall effect of the argument on people is touched by how we construe this precisely. And I think, you know, in my video, I've kind of already gone through my concerns here, so nothing too new, but just to say, I think the concern is if people would, I guess I worry the quantity of non-resistant non-belief, I think can be overestimated. And I think that because, but I'm not saying there's none.

I mean, how could I possibly know that, you know? But the quantity of it, I worry being overestimated because it is ultimately a claim about someone's state of mind. And it just seems to me that I guess caution is in order before we make like a strong claim about whether there is non-resistant non-belief in any particular circumstance or instance, including even frankly our own hearts at times. And I talked to my video about times where for us believers, those of us on this side of it, you know, we get to go through a fluctuating process where we can see kind of multiple things going on at once and all of that. So, but I guess maybe just to have it be a productive conversation on this, is there anything you'd like to cover here in terms of where we

could sharpen our perspectives? I'm not, I'm yielding the premise to you. So it's not necessarily something we need to spend a ton of time on. But I know you watched my first video and I don't know if there's anything you want to work through here. No, I think, I think, I think a lot of the points that you make in your first video on this, I think are perfectly fine. I think that, you know, I'm certainly willing to entertain the idea that there are, I mean, some people speak as though all people who claim to not believe in God are non-resistant, right? I think that that would be clearly an overstep. So I think that that's quite obviously the case. that there are going to be some people who

whose non-belief exists and it is the result of a kind of resistance to God. Like maybe they don't maybe for whatever reason they don't have a

they don't feel attracted to the idea of God, you know? And maybe this is because they have been brought up in like abusive things. theological contexts, you know what I mean? Like, or abusive religious contexts. Um, sometimes that happens, right? And sometimes people, um, lose their faith because of some thing the church has done, like some abuse that the church has done, right? And I mean,

everyone knows the stories, right? Like that you don't have to rehash them. But like, the point being that like, uh, that kind of resistance, if, if that's resistance, right, that kind of resistance, hard to really blame someone for, you know what I mean, in that case. So I don't even want to necessarily, so obviously I endorse the idea that there are non-resistant non-believers, but I also would step shy of the notion that all resistant persons, that it is somehow their fault in that they are undeserving of a relationship with God. A lot of times people are just not making the right distinctions. And so they, for whatever reason, they infer from abusive church to know God, right? That's clearly a poor inference, but it's hard to be super clear thinking when you're

going through something so traumatic. So, but like as for non-risk and non-belief more generally, I think that the most obvious case that can be made is like early humans. Like I think that that's just the clearest example of this. I think also subscribers to other non-theistic religions. So these are people who like who feel as though they have a connection with the ultimate, but that is just that the ultimate is not a person. So they have like this deep spirituality, this deep humility about whatever force is out there, but they just don't see it as a person.

And they grew up in a cultural context in which that was the given. They were never really, they never really thought seriously about the concept of God because they've never, you know, much like many people in the West don't think seriously about the concept of like reincarnation or something. It's just not on their radar. And so it's not the resistance that's causing that. It's a kind of like, it's a cultural context. And it's not something that they are particularly blameworthy for. It's just like, you know, you only have so much time in the day to investigate different ideas. And so I think there are, there's a.

like a number of different categories of different persons that can kind of fit more or less plausibly into this category. But yeah, I mean, I think, of course, there are some, but I think it's, I'm also willing to entertain the idea that like not everyone who is identified as one is necessarily going to be one. So. Sure, sure, sure. And I want to say one thing to support you on this in a second. I think if we were to kind of canvas this more and really drill down into it, we'd probably get into this question of do you have to what to what extent does your knowledge of god your conscious knowledge of god need to be developed in order to have to have enough knowledge of him to be resistant and and that's where you know we need to get in and kind of work through that because again with this idea of

conscience you know one of the things we would want to say is it's possible to be in resistance to god without really be thinking of of god in your mind um but i know that that that would be something we'd have to kind of work through. And I think you made some good pushbacks on that, if I remember in your video. So we'd have to talk that through. But one thing I want to say in support of you is just, you know, it is unhelpful, and this is a caution on my side of things, when theists are too quick to throw out a judgment of resistance and to impugn resistance to a particular person or class of people. And so, you know, we really need that. We can do great damage, or we can just be obnoxious to people in making that assumption too quickly. And I would say as a more general

comment on this entire topic, if there's ever something, I mean, right up there almost with the problem of evil mainly, if there's ever something that should require a level of humanity and compassion and the way we work it through, it should be this. And it is appalling when people who believe in a God of infinite love don't display that love in the way they, you know, conduct these conversations. And that is a source of grief for me. But maybe all. ask you just one last question and that's I've really enjoyed this discussion I think we were just working through and kind of chipping away at things and I would love to just kind of keep thinking about all this with you and with others and kind of keep working on it and see this as a larger project of

discussion and dialogue from your vantage point what can atheists or other whatever other word you might want to throw in there and religious believers especially like as we think about YouTube one of my great values is I'd love my YouTube channel to be just a positive force in the world, even just intellectually as we learn how to do dialogue with others. I've actually learned a lot already just about how assumptions I've made about atheists, like the moral argument. You know, at times I spoke to glibly at times, and you realize, oh, I've got to be more careful. From your vantage point, what are things that we can do that will help the atheist

believer dialogue on YouTube that can help? Because I know that's a value for you, and I respect that about you. Oh, geez. Save the hardest question for last. Right, right. So you had mentioned just a little bit ago about how, you know, it can be frustrating for you to see, you know, people on your side of things. Too quickly dismiss claims of like non-resistant non-belief, I think is kind of what you were saying. in that like how could you possibly know this right but you know on my side you have the kind of

opposite problem where people can say oh you know theism is by definition irrational or you know when you could never know really what epistemic position they're in which would be required for you to make a statement about rationality right or that like faith is pretending to know things you don't know, right? Like, this is a common claim. These are not helpful. They're as unhelpful as it is said by on your side, as it is said by, you know, the kind of mirror claim on my side. And so calling those out for what they are, I think can be useful. But, yeah, certainly approaching kind of like how we did today, right? Like, where you're just like, hey, uh, you know, you had a genuine curiosity about the, the argument. You put out a video. I, I added some what I thought were corrections. And then you

wanted to have the dialogue. And so like, this is like, I think the ideal of how these things should be handled to quite frankly. Like if someone points out a, someone puts out an argument, someone, uh, you know, writes a reply and then like, okay, sit down, hash some things out, try to better explain. Like, I certainly have a better understanding of what your concerns are with the argument than I did before we started this conversation. And I think that I would like to hope that you have a better understanding of the argument as well, or at least the moves trying to motivate the various premises of the argument than before we started the conversation. So, I mean, at the end of the day, we're just trying to better understand and find out what the heck is true. So hopefully this is helpful to someone. Absolutely.

And I love what you said about, you know, not staying away from the talking points. Another thing, or simplistic talking points, another thing, too, that is related to that is just less scorn for others. You know, there's a lot of scorn in both directions, you know, just this attitude of, oh, the idiots over there, you know. And that actually, actually, a lot of these issues are really complicated and intelligent people can disagree. and that's where more humility is good. So anyway, Justin, I've really enjoyed the dialogue. Let's keep talking and keep up the great work. And, you know, we can keep, whether it's on this topic or other things,

I'd love to stay in touch with you. And I'll put a link to your YouTube channel in your book in the video description. People can check out those things. What's the next video coming out on your channel? Do you haven't planned yet? No. I actually might be doing a deep dive on the Howard Snyder paper, actually, next. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's kind of where I'm kind of camping out at the moment. So I think it's one of the more

interesting objections. And a lot of the analogies he uses are kind of along similar lines of what you were suggesting earlier. Right. And there's a lot of like, there's a lot of rich, um, landscape there to kind of explore. So yeah, looking forward to it. I will watch that video with great interest for people watching along. That's an essay in this book, which is, is pretty good and influenced me a lot as, as people who read it will know. And then the other book that I, people have asked about, Michael Ray has a book called The Hiddenness of God.

I've yet to read that one. He really emphasizes divine transcendence. So he does have kind of a little bit of a different approach. But then this one is the other one I recommend to people. Divine hiddenness, new essays. And it's edited by Daniel Howard Snyder. But as always with these multi-author ones, you know, it's a little hit and miss.

But the one on Kirkregard in here I learned a lot from, so there's some great things in there. so people who are interested in this can i've got the PDF of that i don't have the solid book yeah yeah yeah good stuff yeah well uh thanks again justin and everybody for watching thanks for watching and we'll see you next time