Truth Unites - Atheist-Christian Dialogue: The Meaning of Life (Mindshift & Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Gavin Ortlund and Brandon from Mindshift discuss existentialism, objective morality, love, and the meaning of life.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

there's beauty in the finitude of things, that there is an urgency. You keep talking about what Sartra initially saw with this great divorcing from religion, but his conclusion was a radical freedom that equaled a radical responsibility. As he goes on to note how important it is that if we are all we have, all we can do is bear up under that and do well with it and that radical freedom, radical responsibility. It's all the understanding of, yes, it is traumatic to lose it, but it doesn't mean we can't build and now we actually should build and we can and it could look like this or like that. And you get into all these different ideas philosophically. You mentioned, you know, we, we go through this trauma with a loss of a religious framework, but then we can rebuild

from there. So in that rebuilding, some people believe in individual human rights. Some people don't. Are we morally obligated to have societies that affirm individual human rights? Is that morally obligatory? There is a claim of objective morality, but I don't see that acted out in everyday life. I see just as much subjectivity. If I got 100 Christians in a room, I'd get 100 different answers on the abortion debate or trans issues or homosexuality. Again, if there is an objective morality, especially with a promise of a witness of a Holy Spirit action on our heart with wisdom and discernment, that looks even more. problematic to me from a Christian worldview than just being honest that, hey, it, it is not fun to not be

able to say one should always do X, but that there are things we can still ground, not objectively, morality in. Hey, thanks for having me, Brandon. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Yeah. So, you made a video that was atheism is, it's a pretty provocative title, unlivable and detrimental, I think, was the word. And of course, you explain that well and you have some caveats as you go through your video, but that's the topic of our conversation. You said a lot there. You referenced a lot of existentialist thinkers that I love. And I'm really curious how you arrived at some of your conclusions, but before we get into the details, could you maybe just give us a once over of the purpose or intent of that video or your kind of general thesis with this? Sure. Yeah, it is a provocative title. It was

actually devastating was the final adjective there, which is not any better. It's just as just as provocative, I suppose. Yeah, I think my hope is if people watch the video, they will see it's a little bit more of sort of a philosophical and nuanced exploration of those themes and not so much a dogmatic statement, especially shorning those statements of nuance because one of the things we're going to get into here is what do we really mean by meaning, which is what is really being got at unlivable and devastating are two adjectives that come up. But what is really being got at there is meaning. What is the meaning of life? One of the things I say early on that I want to emphasize to right out of the gate is I know there's different kinds of atheism. And actually what I'm talking about really doesn't target some of the rarer kinds of atheism that have more room for the supernatural, for example. And so that's, I'm really targeting what I see most commonly among atheists and less trying to sort of circumscribe around all atheism.

because atheism is such a big category. I mean, it really encompasses a lot of different options. So nonetheless, what leads to it? I mean, it comes from a little bit at a personal angle of just my own exploration and thinking about this at a personal level. And then in seeking to put out the kinds of videos and write the kinds of books that will serve people

and help people on the quest of truth. So from my vantage point as a Christian, there is a pretty decisive contrast between whether there is a creator, God, or not, with respect to the question of meaning. In my exploration of that, I have come to the conclusion that without God, there is a vacuum that is created in terms of the human hearts search for meaning. And so my video is an attempt to sketch that out. I'm drawing a lot from existentialist philosophy.

The biggest influence upon me to that effect is actually Dostoevsky's not. novel, The Brothers Karamata, which I hope we'll talk about. Yeah. But that's actually the book that moved me the most in these ways. And I do regard what I'm teasing out in this video as a theme of that book. I don't want to ramble too long at the beginning. The book, the video is actually related to a chapter of a book I'm writing. So that's a little bit of the backstory as well.

It kind of comes out of that. It's not just like I've just conjured this up out of thin air. And but basically what I'm trying to argue is if you think of a puzzle, A puzzle has meaning because it has a creator. Someone cut the pieces up and then put them in a box and put a picture on the box. And as a metaphor, I'm trying to say, if the world is kind of like that, if there is no creator, if there is no maker, if there is no designer, it's very hard to ground objective meaning.

I'm not making a claim about what we subjectively experience as meaningful, but it's very hard to ground some kind of objective meaning that can be discovered, not merely experienced or invented at a personal level. And I do find that terrifying. I mean, at a personal level, I find that very dreadful. I completely accept that others experience it differently. So the basic claim is, boy, the quip from Dostoevsky, if God does not exist, all things are permitted.

I know that that is wielded very clumsily by many theistic apologists and Christian apologists. But actually, as I 360 degrees, walk all the way around to look at it from every different angle, I think there's some truth to that. And, you know, so that statement from Dostoevsky is one way of sort of getting at this idea, especially with a view to meaning. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot there. And all things that I wanted to get to, you reference a lot of my favorite works, the brothers Karamazov being one, also the myth of Sisyphus, you talk about Nietzsche, you talk about Sartra. Obviously, really for you, you focused on existentialism,

but it's because you made a claim towards the beginning of the video that you thought that the existentialist atheist, if you will, if we're just categorizing, seems to be the most consistent in terms of seeing atheism through to its logical conclusions. And so I kind of want to just back up to why we're even choosing a subcategory of philosophy. I think one disagreement we can start with is because you list several times in your video that atheism is a worldview or that there's different worldviews of atheism. Maybe you can nuance that for us. But my initial issue with the video was that there are so many other kinds of philosophies that people who are just atheist and don't have an atheist worldview, because I don't think that exists, will look at or cling to or take

inspiration from or kind of ground some of their own thoughts in. But to do it just in existentialism seems to me like if I were trying to recap the Christian experience via just the book of lamentations, like there is a real grief and loss that are going on with the existentialist thinkers as they are breaking away from religion essentially kind of for the first time. Not that atheism is a new concept at the 19th or 20th centuries, but it was such a religious world more so than it is now, of course. And I think there's an initial loss of how are we doing this, how do we orchestrate morals in society and meaning and death and all the things that you talk about. But I do think they come up with good conclusions. And then again, I don't think it's the only way of looking at it. You know, you have humanism, you have moral realism, you have all these different things that people or atheist have helped address these issues with.

So, again, it seemed nearsighted to me to focus on existentialism as like that's the consistent one. That's the one we have to deal with when I don't see that necessarily being the case. What's your initial thoughts to that? Yeah. So I don't believe I said, and if I did, I misspoke, I would not say. not intend to say that existentialist atheism is sort of the consistent atheism. What I think I said is the older atheists, and then I listed several examples, many of whom are existentialists, are more consistent than the newer atheists, and I listed several examples.

Now, even that, old versus new. I mean, I actually have a video I want to make on old, new, newer. There's, as you say, I mean, I agree with a lot of what you're saying of just atheism is very difficult, as I said at the beginning, to circumscribe around a kind of point. put it in one bucket. It is such a diverse set of different views. But it's not just the existentialist. I mean, I quoted a lot from Nietzsche. He's sometimes listed as an existentialist, but typically, no, he's more, he wouldn't fall in that bucket. Um, Bertrand Russell, you know, he'd be someone who'd be similar with respect to some of the questions I'm facing. He's not really an

existentialist. You know, there's a lot of these 20th century. He's more of a naturalist kind of grounding in science almost. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 20th century philosophers and atheists who would also be characterized by that. So I wouldn't limit it to existentialism. What I would try to, what I tried to say, and I think I said, is here's one eloquent articulation of the emotions of atheism, one way of putting the challenge that is put to human happiness and human meaning from atheism. They're facing a particular question more so than some other atheist traditions do. So they're really putting their finger on something important about the human search for meaning and basically the sense of cosmic

absurdity in the disconnect between the human heart and reality from their vantage point. So I find them eloquent are proponents of, but I wouldn't say it's just the existentialists that are the only ones who are consistent with the point that I'm trying to make or something like that. Lamentations, I mean, that's addressing a very specific episode in the Bible. There's all kinds of things that just never even talks about. So I would see that a little more niche, I guess, within the broader. Yeah, I mean, we can round out the analogy if it makes it simpler.

I think the point I was getting out is similar to the events going on that lead to lamentations and some of the other books that are handling some of the same content there. It is a specific point in history where biblical history here there is a change afoot, right? I think that that's similar. So whether you want to say Old Testament versus New Testament and old atheists versus new atheists, my point is that I think it's a bit of an unfair way to just grab these people. And I, you know, I don't want to get hung up on quotes and you said this exactly. I'm more than willing to hear what you actually feel now. But it did seem to me that the claim was that these people dealt with it. They were willing to look all the way through. You made

several references to being willing to kind of follow it to its end conclusions in a way that maybe the new atheists have not, it's more light, or there's kind of this more bouncy feeling or optimistic positive feeling, but you're not sure that that accurately represents people that have truly come to terms with what the death of God might mean. And so in the same way, I just thought that maybe it was an apt comparison to say, you know, to me, I love the existentialist. You know, just to put this out there, I think, yeah, I've got, I don't know if you can see it in this view, but the main painting behind me is Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill. And I love it because it's the struggle that so many of us go through when we deconvert. We do have this void,

as you mentioned, and I'll agree with that. I have no problem saying that when you spend your whole life or you're part of a community that is so ingrained in religious thought, to lose that basis, what was your grounding is terrifying and existential and these kinds of things. But none of them stayed there and it didn't lead to nihilism like each example whether we're talking about sartre or camus or again nietzsche i know i'm grouping there but they all came out the other end with you know we can we can do this we can create new morals as nietzsche says or we need to have a noble revolt like camus camew gets to at the end of sycifice and the way that it was presented in my opinion of your video was just that you know it led to this unlivable very awful thing when really looked at and you were

using the examples of these existentialist philosophers to point to that. And I think they were just being real in the emotion of what was felt in the loss, but then they worked their way through that. And I just didn't see that second side of it. Do you think that that side exists with them, or you just, you don't accept it? What are your thoughts there? I think the claim that I was making about those who are more consistent with the implications of atheism was just broader than just the atheist. So I think I put older traditions of atheism, and then I see the existentialist as one strand of that. But there's others. It's not just the existentialists that I see in that light. I mean, Nietzsche, you know, he's the one who coined the phrase the death of God. He's very different

from Sartre and Camus and so on and so forth. But to your question here, I mean, so I would say, it seems to me that the void, to use the term that I think came up or vacuum, whatever that term was, that this is more intractable, more permanent than, so lamentations is written after the Babylonian exile. So this is a historical episode that creates this crisis. But then, you know, 100 years later, it's less consequential. From my perspective, what is going on with the death of God is going to last longer and it's going to be a more permanent struggle and readjustment. And so if you go from a worldview in which there's things like heaven and hell, transcendent glory, objective morality, judgment day where there's moral resolution, good and evil get sorted out,

and so on and so forth, that's your framework, and then you lose that. It's a permanent loss. It's something that is going to stay with you. And I think that the existentialists are they, you're right, that they do sort of come up with a game plan, ultimately, in their own distinctive ways. Camus has the, as you say, the noble revolt and the, you know, he's got the last sentence of his book is, one must imagine, Cisiffis happy. He's not collapsing into nihilism. He's not like Nietzsche. He's got a game plan.

He's saying, yeah, here's how you move forward. And Sartre has his own game plan as well. Nonetheless, the game plan has been so decisively altered that I would see the onset of atheism in the modern era as devastating. I think devastating is a good adjective. I think that what is lost there is of such transcendence and such richness and such, significance that it's fair to characterize this as, you know, the emotional impact that someone like Nietzsche is getting at in that famous passage I quoted from the gay science, you know, this sense of all the lights have gone out and everything's going crazy, the emotional impact

of that, I think it's worth really taking that seriously. And I do think that doesn't go away. Atheists would do well then to still really think about that and say, okay, yeah. Well, I agree that people, people in general will. always be concerned with meaning and death and morality and purpose and where we came from why we're here, et cetera. I think these are just human questions. I think where I'm struggling is, of course, as a believer, you have an answer for these. And the answer that was had for so long, even amongst different God beliefs, right? Which I'm curious about, I'm going to ask you something else in a second. But just because there's a group of people that no longer have that same

God belief, and then yes, they're going to deal with these questions, just like the believers will still deal with these questions. You know, again, it just seems to be this little bit of an unfair play because you admit that in modern times, there is a more optimistic view held by a large amount of atheist and that we do seem to be living okay. I don't feel like my life is unlivable. I don't feel like life is devastating at all, even though I have truly looked into the void and dealt with these same issues and contemplations, it seems to me that your conclusion is, well, if those issues still keep popping up, which is another thing you mentioned, that that means something. And I agree, it means that we have this longing, this search for answers. But just to say, well,

God belief has an answer and therefore is more livable or less devastating, I don't know that that's necessarily true. I mean, you have atheists and you're life, I assume you said in the video you love many atheists, just not atheism. Do you think that their life doesn't have meaning, love, purpose, that they're devastated all the time, that they're nihilistic, that they can't find meaning that they can't grapple with death? And if you do, I'm really not trying to make it sound small. I understand many different belief systems, but do you think that, first of all? No, I am making no claims whatsoever with respect to other people's personal experience. So I would, you know, this distinction often comes up about subjective meaning and objective meaning.

So let's suppose to use the metaphor of the puzzle that I'm working on a puzzle, it's got a lot of pieces, and I think that it's just a normal puzzle. But maybe after a super long time of working on, I realize this puzzle has no meaning. None of the pieces, there's not a purpose or a design or a blueprint. It's not following a pattern. The puzzles don't, the pieces don't fit. they're not meant to fit together into a coherent picture. I would not at that point make any claim about how another person would experience the puzzle. They might really enjoy kind of, hey, you know, do your best make of it what you can.

I don't know what their experience will be. The claim at that point is, I am not, from what I can see, I am not seeing any objective meaning here. I'm not seeing any meaning that is external and that we can discover. So that's the issue on the table here. I am not making any claims about what people experience. I think most, honestly, most religious and non-religious people in our culture, just as one who lives in the United States, probably don't really think about religious questions a whole lot and probably don't feel as much their absence as people in other cultures did. Our lives are so, you know, our lives are so saturated with busyness, with technology, with distractions and diversions. I think those

questions come up, but not acutely every day. I think most human beings, this is just my anecdotal sense, most human beings walking around probably aren't like having a crisis if they don't believe in God. So I think that can happen. I think that does happen sometimes. But I'm not making a claim about those subjective experiences. It's more the objective. Is it out there? And The basic idea is exceedingly simple for me in terms of how it can be put, is if you don't have a puzzle maker, then the puzzle pieces, you're going to struggle to know how, you know, do the puzzle pieces, are they meant to fit together?

So that's where the question of God is so huge. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I do understand what you're saying, and I appreciate the clarification that it's not on an individual level, that it's just conceptually at large here and the difference between objective and subjective meaning. And you use the puzzle analogy in the video,

and it's something I wanted to talk about anyways. I think that where I struggle with it is it seems to be presupposing that it is indeed a puzzle, that there is a specific picture that is supposed to exist, and we have these pieces that would need to add up to that picture at large, and by calling it at a puzzle with how we think about puzzles, then yes, when you have mismatched pieces, oh, they can't go together, you can't arrive there. But an atheist position with no God, and thus no objective, you know, the total picture, or objective meaning. Because I have no problem saying, yeah, there's no objective meaning

in an atheist belief or lack thereof. But a better analogy to me then is that there's art supplies everywhere and you are creating and you can absolutely connect things and make a consistent, livable experience for yourself and for others and still arrive at what you feel about suffering and meaning and purpose and morals without having someone have to tell you this is what the picture is supposed to look like at the end, which I think is such a main difference, obviously, between our systems is that you think there has to be or that it is less than without. And I just don't see that. I mean, Dan Barker gives the famous, it's a little bit too quippy for my liking, but I think it illustrates a good point, saying that without God there's no objective meaning is like saying,

well, whose slave will I be then if there's no master? And I know that puts it. There's a negative connotation there I don't love. I get that. But I do think that it just shows like there's a whole different view set that I don't see the benefit or implicit betterness of objective meaning it being handed down to me that ultimately does still give options for subjectivity, by the way, versus, okay, we're here. We didn't choose to be here. We're part of this experience of what it is to be human and have this psyche in mind and abilities and putting that together.

Yes, it might be distressing for others, just like God belief is distressing for people. We can talk about, you know, Brothers Care Mazov here in a minute. But what do you think about that in reframing the analogy where we're not already confined from the onset? Yeah. I'm happy to jettison the puzzle metaphor if it's not serving a purpose or it's not helpful or distracting in some way. I also would push against the master slave metaphor because I don't think that brings in the right emotional connotations for how I would envision the relation to the creator. but let's so maybe setting both of them aside just for the moment we we we I don't think we will disagree as much as people might expect here on this first point because if you're saying there's no objective meaning then I mean we kind of agree and on that point and then it's like okay we're talking about basically how good is subjective meaning how livable how does it work and that kind of thing which is a I think a far less disagreement I mean it's actually somewhat of a difficult question to sort through because we're sort of working through are perceptions of things and our different experiences. I think two issues that weigh upon me

that make subjective meaning, I got to be honest, I find it devastating. So two of the reasons, one would be death and one would be the realm of morality. So I think the question of morality and objective morality is a whole separate question, but it does have some interesting threads that connect to meaning. And I think by the very same sort of mental readjustment, that, again, at least, at least, say, Sartra, for example, is going to say life has no objective meaning. He's going to say morality, to quote him, his metaphor is like art. We are painting. We are building.

We are constructing. There is no objective morality. Now, I'm, you know, I almost hesitate to go into that because I know that's very controversial among contemporary atheists and lots of people want to say no to objective meaning, but yes, to objective morality. and so on and so forth, so we can talk this through. But just to explain a little bit why I'm looking at it the way I am and seeing all that is at stake is I think by the very same movement, we lose any sense of meaning if the puzzle pieces don't have sort of a blueprint.

I do see the same for the moral realm. And the evolutionary debunking arguments, I do experience them to be pretty devastating of just, if our moral instincts are reductively explained by evolution, I find it very difficult to know, are they trustworthy at all? If there is an objective morality, how do we know we got,

we stumbled upon it, that the evolutionary process went the right way that we got there. I find that devastating. I'm a father of five young kids. I remember what it felt like holding my first child in my arms, 2013.

It was a powerful experience. I've had a couple experiences like this in my life where you feel a sense of transcendence with love. You feel a sense of this, like, the deepest thing in my life is that this matters. I don't know much, but if I know anything, I know that this feeling of love is important. It matters. It's telling me something significant.

And when I look down the road at at least a naturalistic, atheistic worldview, again, I know there are some other species of atheism out there, but since we've demarcated to agree that we don't see an objective meaning, I actually don't see a way to have any sort of robust appreciation of love as having a kind of anything outside of our, biology within that worldview. I actually feel like my heart has been pulled out of my chest and I have had the deepest things inside me, love and justice. My conscience and my sense that love matters have just been vitiated. And the reason is they're just reductively explained. What explains why I like sugar is the exact same as what explains those. And they have no abiding significance. They have no transcendent referent outside of our biology? I totally understand what you're saying. I mean, I think that this is just a debate

as old as time. And I get that it's emotionally unsatisfying. I can admit that. I don't go as far as devastating, though. Having something that is emotionally unsatisfying, do I wish that we could all say objectively this is here and this is here? I actually don't know. I think there's pros and cons to both, but I understand especially coming from... Sorry to interrupt, I was just curious. You do unpack that because I'd be curious to know your views on the morality issue. How do you see that? Do you see it as objective? Yeah, I think it's, I don't agree with like the Sam Harris types or even I do love a lot of like Derek is a pair fit who tries to ground morality outside of God as well. And I think that they offer up some really interesting insights. And I don't know exactly where I've landed. I typically say that I have no problem

again conceding that morality is subjective. I get that if there is not somewhere we can point to, I don't see good evidence. Even with Sam Harris' moral landscape, I would disagree with him there. I don't see. I understand the framework. I could even use the word grounded. I just wouldn't use the word objective. I think we can ground a lot of things morally by looking at suffering and well-being. The need to say that it exists somewhere bigger and outside of us, I think doesn't do as much for, and for many people, by the ways, I've had these conversations now for years with atheists on that it just seems to be something that almost more people who have the God beliefs still are saying must matter.

And it's like, yes, I understand that it's neuro things happening in my brain to the same degree of, you know, what chemical is released when I eat chocolate that when I feel love, which is what you're alluding to there. And that that maybe is diminished then if I can't say that love is some objective, beautiful source coming from a greater inspiration of awe and all power. I just disagree because I still feel that love just like I still feel like my life has meaning, just like I still feel moral, that I'm not just going out and raping and pillaging. I'm able to still live. I don't have to have the most emotionally satisfying answer because to me what's more emotionally unsatisfying is trying to

believe something that I just am not convinced of to be true because it offers unanswer when I don't believe it to be the answer. And that is, that to me is actually more devastating. So I know we're crossing past each other here, but that to me is so much more devastating than saying, I don't know. But I do know I love and I do know I care and I do know I have morals and I do know that my life has purpose. And I think that, you know, a lot of the thinkers that you've kind of dismissed in, and not totally dismissed, but are saying maybe haven't been as consistent as the old atheist, you know, people like Susan Wolf who has this beautiful articulation of where she gets meaning and purpose from. And it's when something she loves meets something of virtue.

So for me, you know, of course you cannot agree with this, but like this channel, something I love is thinking about philosophy and history and theology and its implications. But also I care deeply about people that have gone through what I went through a deconversion where it's hard and where there's these existential questions and where there's pushback from believers and their severed connections. And so I find great meaning as one example of many doing this channel under Susan Wolf's prescription there. And I don't think that that means it's objective or anything. I just think it means it doesn't have to be. I still have these things. So I know I'm rambling here for a second, but one of the things that does bug me most about kind of the Christian apologetic point of,

well, it's not objective, so therefore it's less than. I just don't see it because I love my kids the same way you love your kids. And I want there to be well-being in the world the same way you do. We just are, you know, to me, if I don't believe that your God is true, I believe you're subjectively placing all of this as well. So it's not like, oh, you have objective and I have subjective. It's, oh, it's all subjective, but you with your subjectivity have rooted it here and called it objective. And so I think that's, I know it took a minute to get out, but I think that's how I would explain my viewpoint. Yeah, no, I hear you and I, so it sounds like, I guess one thing I could start with is a clarification of the intent of my video where I may not have been as clear as I could

have been. And that is that, and this is actually 98% directed towards some of the comments on that video. I don't know if you ever get comments in your video. I didn't look at the comments on your video. So, you know, what's the idea? They were fine. I mean, I, I do. But I just realized, oh, I could have made this clearer at the front end that the goal of that video was not to argue, and I know you, you know this probably, not to argue that atheism isn't true. So it's just to try to arouse the implications and arouse the attention. So when I think about apologetics, I think about the good, the true, the beautiful. One of my big themes is we've got to talk about all three. I've learned a lot from Pascal and his old idea that we're two.

We use diversions to distract ourselves from ultimate questions. And so one of the things I think is valuable is just to think about what's at stake. And so the goal of that video wasn't. So when I'm doing like apologetics, which I know there's lots of bad ways that we Christians do apologetics. But at the end of the day, I still want to try to defend my beliefs and just try to do it better if I can. And even I fall short at times, I'm sure. But when I do it, I try to do a both-hand approach. And so I'm trying to, you know, I'll come in with a fine-tuning argument or a contingency

argument as well as talking about these emotional things because I recognize the emotional things don't go the full route. I will say also another sort of quasi-concession. You mentioned I think Susan Wolfe. I'm not familiar with her. I try to read, I really find it fascinating to read contemporary philosophy. So I try to read broadly, but there's plenty of atheists out there that I've not yet read. When I make this contrast between the older atheists and the newer atheists, I am aware there's plenty of exceptions in both camps. I'm kind of speaking a little broadly there at some of the more iconic figures. So I think I made the contrast between Nietzsche and Sam Harris and his book, The Moral Landscape is on my mind. It sounds like we

kind of have some agreements about Sam Harris. I think the one point that maybe I could comment on is you mentioned that you kind of acknowledge there's a sense of diminishment if love is just rooted in our biology. And yet it's kind of like, well, that doesn't, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you were saying this doesn't necessarily, I don't necessarily see that that's this great problem that it's being made out to be something like this. I think the reason I mentioned the death and morality together is, to me, there are a one-two punch that really, speaking from my own experience is very powerful in combination, because if you think about it, so I think, if I really think through the implications of, let's say it's the kind of atheism in which, as we're talking,

love is reducible to biology. So love ultimately really is nothing more than our brain chemistry reacting certain ways. Our animal ancestors passed on their genes with greater likelihood if they had these experiences, they evolved over time. There's nothing outside of our biology that love has reference to. The reason I do find it devastating and not merely diminishing is several things, but one of them is coordinating it with death. I do struggle to see how there is any, I do struggle to see how it's anything other than devastating to think through.

Okay, love, basically, it's this experience we have. It doesn't really map on to anything transcendent. And then ultimately, it's all just kind of grind to a halt. And the temporariness of all that is human is very significant. Sartre said once you've lost eternity, it doesn't matter whether you have five minutes or a, I can't remember his other time, but it was a much longer scale of time. I resonate with that. To me, it's like writing a poem in ink that's going to vanish in five minutes.

No matter how beautiful this poem is that I'm writing, the poem isn't going to stay. So it robs something fundamental. It takes away something that is at the heart of the human experience, of love and morality. And that's the other piece of this is justice and the desire. for good to defeat evil, the desire, the sense that there's something meaningful, beyond just a biological reaction in your brain to the struggle between good and evil. I could unpack, I want to be sensitive not to go on and along. I could unpack that a little more, but let me pause and see if you want to jump in on anything

I've said thus far. Well, see, this is why I wanted a three-hour conversation. So we are just for the viewers. We're limited today to an hour, so we're moving quick. And all of this, on both sides, I'm sure we would. love to unpack more for sure. I would love to speak to some of the things you said there, because we haven't really talked about death yet. And to be clear, I was conceding that I understand from the believer standpoint that things like love and morals are diminished. I actually don't

think in general, knowing that it's rooted in biology is diminishing. I think my particular love of music is also rooted in biology, but the feeling and the effect that it has on me, where I can still have a sense of awe and wonder, which I do not think is regulated to the realm of the supernatural. You know, it doesn't take anything away from like, oh, there's no heavenly composer, therefore music isn't as sweet. Like, so I do think that, you know, you and I might not be able to agree there, but I just wanted to kind of set that standard there. Secondly, in terms of like this infinite verse finite and, you know, your example of the poem, I think is, is great. You don't think that there's any value then in the five minutes of creating something that hasn't existed

before and having it for yourself for a minute, even if it does flutter away, that that moment didn't matter unless there's almost like this other unconnected infinity coming after. And I know I'm asking you a question. So hold there for a second. But when we talk about things like love, not mattering as much if there's not an afterlife, which is even kind of the quote from the brothers Kermazov, it's paired. It's not just that without God, it's without God and totality or infinity, whatever word he uses there, there's an and. So he's grouping it together as well. In some of it, I know there's like 12 instances and it's

sometimes it's a question, sometimes it's a sentence, we'll get to it. But like an example I have is my love for my wife. Under a Christian worldview, that's a good thing and it's given by God. But, and you'll have to tell me if you think differently about heaven, I know that you know about my heaven video and I had my conversation with Trent Horn about it. And he told me that it wouldn't be an issue for my wife in heaven that I'm not there because it was a disordered hierarchy of purpose and love that, you know, was only for this plane, but in that realm, in heaven, in the infinity we will have. We weren't going to be married in heaven anyways. And there are higher ordered goods and all of these things. And you don't have to defend Trent's point or heaven in general. But I'm just saying that

even in a Christian belief, that would not still exist in the next life. so therefore doesn't that make it as meaningless as the five-minute poem? And so for you to answer the question that I'm asking, I think it's even with an afterlife of sorts, and that's only assuming the good afterlife for people, not the consequence, doesn't that also make so much of what happens here utterly meaningless or just us subjectively finding meaning, entertainment, love, et cetera, why we're here? How do you parse that out? That's a good question.

I agree with you that this can be overstated and that there, is value in that which is fleeting and temporary. So I don't mean to say that there is no value of any kind in the five-minute poem, nor that a 10-minute poem wouldn't be better, you know, so you can enjoy the poem for 10 minutes. Great. Awesome. I think, though, the reason the question, Camus uses the word absurd, it's a technical term, though, but he's trying to get at this sense of mismatch between the human heart and our setting and what we long for and what is out there. I think we all have the sense that love and justice matter in a way that is fundamentally undermined if you lose also that enduring component. So for example, to take love, for example,

if we really think it through that when I am loving another person, it is just my brain. Actually, it is a kind of illusion because to the extent that I feel, that this is significant. It is my brain chemistry acting upon me in the way that like a rich dessert is acting upon my brain. And there are reasons why we evolved in such a way that a dessert affects us like this. With morality, I would say that in a strictly naturalistic framework, it is both illusion and accident. So, for example, we could have evolved such that our closest, relationships would be ones in which it is morally obligatory to slaughter each other at a certain point. Rather, that's what happens in the animal kingdom a lot. So Charles Darwin himself talked

about this, and then the literature, these are called Darwinian counterfactuals. It's this idea that basically, just like many other animals, there's all kinds of things we just consider absolutely disgusting, horrifying. I don't even want to mention them. A lot of them are in the insect realm, but it's like that could have, we could have evolved to see that as noble and good. And I would say that it's, oh boy, I have to say strongly, I guess I think it's way more than just diminishing to make that adjustment. I think

it's very difficult to actually I understand what you're saying of, yeah, it doesn't take away the momentary experience. You can still enjoy music even if there's no musician in heaven. Right there and then you can do so. But what I also feel is that most of us have a sense that it can't be just that, and if it is just

that, then I think it does feel as devastating as the existential noted because if you lose any sense of enduring value to love and morality, I mean, you put the contrast like this, either there's a judgment day or there isn't. If there is a judgment day, then it matters in a way that is basic and fundamental whether you lived your life as a dictator who slaughtered people or whether you lived your life like a saint who built hospitals. It matters in a way that will literally ripple on forever. Without the idea of a judgment day, it honestly will only matter for a short amount of time.

It still matters for that amount of time, but then it just stops. Now, you can say, yes, in that second alternative, I still appreciate the finite value of that. I'm not denying that. But I also am insisting that there's a pretty fundamental difference between those two. And that it's not wrong when the existentialists are coming along saying, hey, like Sartra saying, once you've lost eternity, whether it's five minutes or five million years, makes no difference is what he says, because the loss is literally infinite. I do say that is devastating, and I do say that if justice and love are reducible to biology like that, yeah, the differences,

I would say it's not just diminishing. I would say the differences are quite literally infinite in their implications so far as I can see. Yeah, I mean, I do understand where you're coming from. I just, I disagree. And maybe I can give you some food for thought or some different analogies here to help. And one thing we haven't really talked about yet is death and justice, which I do want to. What I didn't want to do that I think I might lean into a little bit is some of the comparison than with the Christian worldview, because I think that you've let us there. Like, okay, if there is a judgment day, then these things do ripple through eternity. But there's so many ways I want to talk about this. Let's say, this is true for me.

I just disagree with the righteousness or the judgment, which I know sounds absurd to you, but I do. I don't see that the slaughtering of all of these people as the example you gave would somehow be better if that person, when they get to judgment, goes to hell. Or they've accepted Jesus as their Savior and now they go to paradise where many of their victims didn't have a chance to know or thought differently, believe differently, whatever. And now they're in hell. That doesn't feel like justice to me.

know that gets us into a whole new realm of the conversation, and I'm not trying to put you in a spot where you need to defend it right now. But I'm saying with understandings like that, problems of evil, problems of suffering, problems with hell, et cetera, it doesn't then become the solution to the atheist who has those ideas, that it sounds like when you just say it, like, oh, if God exists, then isn't it better? If there is an ultimate sense of justice at the end, you know, then that makes up for some of these things. I just fundamentally disagree. In fact, almost to the opposite completely where there's beauty in the finitude of things, that there is an urgency.

You keep talking about what Sartra initially saw with this great divorcing from religion, but his conclusion was a radical freedom that equalled a radical responsibility. As he goes on to note how important it is that if we are all we have, all we can do is bear up under that and do well with it, and that radical freedom, radical responsibility. responsibility. That's what I see in the noble revolt from Camus. That's what I see in any why gets you through any suffering with Nietzsche. It's all the understanding of, yes, it is traumatic to lose it, but it doesn't mean we can't build and now we actually should build and we can and it could look like this or like that. And you get into all these different ideas philosophically. But I think that

before you can say that a judgment day matters or makes things better because it, sometimes for some of us fits this desire we have. I don't even see that desire is necessarily beneficial. And without opening a can of worms, I'll speak for one more minute. But to help you understand my point of view here, I am a determinist. I don't believe in free will. And so I do believe that most of us in most regards are products of our time and place and a thousand happenstances that came before us. And so though I don't like when someone causes harm, and I think there should be consequence. My goal into that consequence would be rehabilitation, or at least you're being removed from causing more harm. But it's still with an understanding of that person being subject to things

that were probably awful for them and passing it along. And yes, we need to stop it. We still need the responsibility of that. But to me, that changes my sense of justice, just like it changed my sense of like prison reform. Like it, punishment seems so small to me. Hell then seems so small to me if it doesn't allow at all for rehabilitation, and it is truly this vengeance, which I think has a much more incorrectly negative associated term. So just quickly, like you threw a kitchen sink, I threw a kitchen sink. We're all trying to do it so fast. But those are some of like my initial thoughts where I just can't get on board with even that being a better solution. Your comments about punishment, I think I'm going to just hit the pause on that and not respond

to that at all or first. But I could mention, I think C.S. Louis, has some at least interesting thoughts about sort of punishment versus remedial healing type behavior as the which is actually fairer and better for a wrongdoer. And so if somebody wants to sort through that, I think he's at least worth engaging with. He probably does a better job than other Christians at trying to explain how punishment isn't maybe as cruel as it might seem. I'm not saying he's right, but I just want to reference that. I think on the main points you said, I'm tracking with your thought process, I think. Maybe a question I could ask is about moral obligation. So the idea that it really is, you really ought not to do some things,

even if it's not conducive to your well-being one way or the other, like, so if I say you ought to brush your teeth, the reason for that is so you don't get cavities and have bad teeth and so forth. But if I say you ought not to steal from your neighbor when you need more money to pay your taxes, that's a different rationale for the appeal. So that's what I'm getting at with the word with the phrase moral obligation. To my mind, the loss, that's one aspect of morality I find very difficult to ground in a strictly naturalistic worldview, which is one species of atheism. And I would say, I would say that is devastating. So like, for example, you mentioned, you know, we go through this trauma with a loss of a religious framework, but then we can rebuild from there.

So in that rebuilding, some people believe in individual human rights. Some people don't. Should, are we morally obligated to have societies that affirm individual human rights? is that morally obligatory? I'm curious how you'd answer that. If I were an atheist, I would be very hard-pressed to know how to really say to the person who doesn't believe in individual human rights,

you're wrong to not believe in them. I could say I don't like that. I don't think that's best, but I don't see where this sense of moral obligation comes in in that framework. It's another one of those areas where I see the loss, And I'm not trying to compare it to, I understand you're saying we don't want to compare it too quickly to Christianity. I think it's part of the conversation, though, because you are saying there is something offered that's better. And one question I'd have for you, and I will answer your moral questions here too, but just so it's on the table for us to discuss is, you know, even having an answer versus having the answer or even something that seems more livable to you as opposed to equaling truth.

Like at what point does truth come in? but we can table that and just stick on like the practicality of the belief or non-belief. So did you want me to just speak to the moral point or I'm sorry, I kind of cut you off there? Well, I feel bad that I don't have as much time as we both would like. So I'm happy for you to decide. You can either answer that or I can answer your question, whatever you prefer. I agree. And not to use this term again.

It is emotionally unsatisfying not to get to say this is the way it ought to be. I understand the human dilemma. I'm with you on all of it. I just also don't think that we get that from a Christian worldview. So I think that's something to contend with. There is a claim of objective morality, but I don't see that acted out in everyday life. I see just as much subjectivity. If I got 100 Christians in a room, I'd get 100 different answers on the abortion debate or trans issues or homosexuality or the death penalty or prison reform.

Like, again, if there is an objective morality, especially with a promise of, a witness of a Holy Spirit action on our heart with wisdom and discernment, that looks even more problematic to me from a Christian worldview than just being honest that, to my degree, being honest that, hey, it is not fun to not be able to say one should always do X, but that there are things we can still ground, not objectively, morality in. And to me, my understanding of morality now past belief is that it's a skill. It's a skill that has allowed us to coexist, to live in community, to evolve. Even if you want to get evolutionary with it and talk about from a selfish perspective, you need no go no further than that, that I don't want people doing this to me. So I don't want to

live in a society that will reward when that happens. And thus, I need to be part of that society that also abides by those laws and in accordance of trying to have well-being amongst as many people as possible from kind of a utilitarianism point of view that maybe there should be a collected agreement of what laws we dictate under and people that, yeah, to some degree, like I understand there's not that objective sense of this is how you tell people, but we do do that. We create, just like in my opinion, Christians have created a code or a rule or a law, and we ground it in what we can, empathy or selfishness. I think they go hand in hand, actually, to a certain degree in this matter, and Christians are grounding it in a claim of there being a higher

presence that actually gave it to them and wrote it on their heart. And I don't see them that different. I think it's, it sucks to a degree that it is indeed subjective, but it is so for everybody. And until the Christian worldview actually put forward immutable set of laws that were agreed upon, like, I don't even see there being a benefit in the claim that, that Christianity or religion or God belief offers an objective morality. So those are my question. quick thoughts on it. And I know it's pulling from two strings. I'm trying to answer you, but I'm also saying why it failed for me as a believer. Because I was a believer for 30 years. I don't know how much you know about me. I'm married to a believer. So this is part of my everyday life.

I'm very aware. But yeah, it's just emotionally unsatisfying, but it doesn't change the truth of it. And so all we can do is under what I perceive to be the correct truth, do the best we can. And a lot of great modern philosophers and even ancient philosophers have put forward really good reasons for what we still owe each other and why morality is a skill and has a purpose to play and how we've come to those conclusions. Let me just, and I'm, let's go 10 minutes longer than what I initially said, because I think this is a really good conversation. One thing I'd like to say is maybe what we could do is take Christianity off the table for a second because that is a more localized specific option than what is initially framed with my video of atheism. I think whether

or not Christians have shared agreements about morality or something like that. It's kind of a second step or third step or more. The first step is if God exists. Now, one thing I want to say is whether or not theists even all agree about morality, I do regard that as a completely different question as to whether morality itself is objective. And I feel really strongly about this because I see this come up over and over again, and I do think there's a misunderstanding that often comes up here where we are talking about the ontology of morality. We're not talking about its epistemology, how it is known. It's sociology, how it develops in societies. All of that is totally a separate question. It's relevant. It's interesting. But the question is, what is there out there to ground

good and evil? And even if all, even if every theist in the world had a completely different moral framework, that wouldn't invalidate whether theism grounds morality and gives an ontological framework for that. So I would say when someone, you know, I've been mistreated in my life at times, not as bad as some others, but I know what it feels like when that sense of violation. Somebody mistreats you. I think we all know what that feels like. When that happens, there's a question that comes up, and that is, what am I feeling here?

What am I experiencing? Is that anything more than the way sugar affects my brain? is there anything out there? Is there something that gives a sort of robust skeletal structure to good and evil from which we can then argue and at least do our best to figure it out? And so your question of what at what point does truth come in? What is interesting to me as a Christian is to think about that feeling of violation of moral violation and the anger, the injustice, the sense of indignation. You know, somebody vandalizes my car or something like this. I'm going to feel a certain way about that. what that's like. We don't feel like moral relativists in that moment. We really feel like this is wrong. You should not do that. A feeling of obligation comes up. When I'm holding my son back in 2013,

and I feel this way about all my kids, a feeling happens. Now, when truth comes in is when I say, can I trust that feeling? Is it basically my brain tricking me? Because I think Michael Ruse and the others who talk about this are right when they say there is a sense of an illusory nature to these experiences from a strictly evolutionary framework. They're there to help us survive, but they're not actually, the feeling they deliver doesn't map on to anything outside of that biological triggering in our brain. So the question that comes up is, are those experiences, moral violation, the transcendent feeling of love, could they be windows into truth? Are they tricks? Are they illusions, or are they revelations? And I would say, I've come to see them as revelatory.

which is one of the greatest reliefs and points of happiness in my life that I don't have to be at cross-purposes with my deep intuitions about love and about beauty. And I don't have airtight arguments, but I do have some arguments that I at least make it rational to believe that there's also truth to the idea of the supernatural. And I mentioned the contingency and fine-tuning arguments. I think these are pretty good. I honestly do. I think they're pretty good arguments. They're not airtight. They don't, especially the contingency one is so abstract.

I understand if people don't like that argument. But the fine-tuning one, man, alive, that one is tough to get around. It's a pretty good argument that there's something. It doesn't prove God per se, but it's like, hey, it's not crazy to think that there's something that stands behind the physical realm that sort of intended it to be here, and that's why it's so incredibly intricate and precise and so forth. So I have additional arguments that get the truth, but I experience those arguments with a sense of relief because they enable me to not look at my feeling of injustice, at my car vandalized,

my feeling of love, and I don't have to look at those and be suspicious that it's just my brain chemistry tricking me. I can say, actually, the sense that there is something of abiding significance to this outside of my biology might actually be a clue rather than a trick. The problem I have with, I do understand what you're saying. I'm trying to hear you very clearly. It does feel like there's these leaps that do happen in these kinds of conversations from, well, first, is it practical? Second, how do I feel about it? If how I feel about it is unsatisfactory to me, does that mean that potentially there's more?

Oh, and then look, there are these good arguments for God, and that gets us to a God. And then I've got my specific arguments to get to my deity of choice. And I'm not saying that what you're doing is necessarily, you know, incorrect in these jumps. but I do feel like evaluating them each on their own changes the conversation drastically. And that's why I keep using the word emotionally unsatisfying because I think it's the counter to, well, I feel so deeply with this awe or this emotion or this love. And I would hate for it to just be neurons firing or oxytocin releasing some chemical makeup that it is reduced to. And so therefore, you know, you mentioned the Blaise Pascal quote about,

could you say it for me one more time? I forget the exact word. You referenced it a few times in your video. You know, I quote Pascal so much that I forget which one. Oh, you said it even in this conversation. Yeah, just having diversions. Yeah. And I actually see those diversions to be when you're faced with the reality of what you can't know or what it looks like it is, that it is just biology and that that seems unsatisfying. We create the diversions to not deal with those tough feelings. See, again, I think we go past each other here. because I think that jumping to God believe, and even if you have good arguments, and I would disagree about fine-tuning and contingency being good arguments, but even if you really are convinced of those, it doesn't all of a sudden just give permission to have looked for a diversion in the first place because something didn't feel good or right, or something seems to be at odds

with, you know, what you mentioned earlier, like your heart versus the reality of the situation. So I understand, and I'm agnostic at a large degree, if these deep emotions and awe and love and things like this that are, feel transcendent end up being rooted in something bigger, great. In terms of the specific God claims, that's where my atheism kicks in, and I see reasons why they're falsifiable. And so that doesn't do it for me. And since deism at large isn't provable either or negatable, then it's just like, well, let me stick with what I do know and not keep trying to jump just, because I don't know feels so bad. And I really believe that that's so much of what these arguments are because when we look at atheists and we look at more atheist societies and we see that they are living well and that it's, you know, they are capable of still raising children and being moral and

living and loving, which I know you've agreed with. I don't, I don't see the problem. And I feel like it's only a problem created by believers to reinforce belief, if not even sometimes, and I'm not accusing you of doing this, fear mongering a bit so that people don't leave. If you do, it's unlivable. It's horrible, like it gets reduced down to biology. Like these things are framed in a way where I think that's why we have the existential as dread because we're leaving something that always told us that. As opposed to, I've talked with so many people that didn't have my experience, that were raised atheistic, that never had a particular God belief.

And they don't struggle with that to the same degree. Of course, they still wonder about meaning and purpose and like, does anything happen after we die. But to a large degree, when you poll people, even religious, I'll throw one more stat out And then we can talk about this. But there was a Pew research stat that just came out. And it was an open-ended question this time. And it was, what gives your life meaning? And only 15%, this blew my mind, but only 15% of believers.

And I know you're just hearing a stat. Due diligence, everyone check. I'll put a link to it. But 15% of people in the U.S. listed religion or God or faith or anything like that. For the vast majority, it was family, friends, work, connection, et cetera. And then in less religious countries, it was down under 5% where people put that. So obviously, people to me are able to find meaning.

And you would say, yes, of course, but it's not objective. And that reduces it. But they don't see it that way. That's what they're claiming is. They're meaning. They have purpose in the same way you feel you do and love in the same way you do. So getting into like the, well, where does it stem from really? I think is only a problem for believers by believers to a certain degree.

So I just wanted to kind of get that point of view out. there because I think that it plays into it a lot but sorry for the diatribe okay all good no problem um your comment about sort of leaps in my thinking is probably more a reflection of how I unfolded my last set of comments than how I in my actual life have come to these conclusions sure you know so um and I think there's a slight delay so if I ever either interrupt or awkwardly pause before I talk it's because of the technology too um but so I yeah I think um because as I experienced that I would say it's a two-pronged approach that I actually think is somewhat harmonious, where on the one hand, I actually think in certain conditions our deep intuitions can have epistemic value. And that's

controversial within epistemology, but that's a view I could take. But then I would say that works. So in other words, like my moral intuitions. But I would say that works in tandem with these other arguments, which I know aren't our focus here, so I won't go into them. But I do think there's some pretty good reasons that make theism really plausible. But But to speak to the main point that we're talking about now, you know, you've used the word unsatisfying, emotionally unsatisfying, whereas I use the stronger term devastating. I think devastating is definitely a stronger adjective than unsatisfying. So, you know, and then in your most recent comments there, you were unfolding some concerns

about sort of this is something believers can almost sort of exaggerate and make into a matter of fear-mongering and so on and so forth. Let me just explain why I disagree and see what you think about this. I wonder if to some extent our ability to even talk about this in such a dispassionate, objective way is a function of the privilege of living in the 21st century in such a prosperous society. Because without most of human history, we would have lived in constant fear that the neighboring clan is going to come over, rape our women, steal our children, and make them slaves, slaughter us, make us into slaves, just completely butcher us and do whatever they want and do the worst of what human nature can do.

And if we lose the ability to say that is you are obligated not to do that, you should not do that. It is wrong. It actually matters that you not do that. If we lose the ability to say there is actual genuine moral obligation, that is not, to me, that is absolutely devastating. I mean, to be honest, I worry that not seeing it as devastating may be a function of we don't live in that fear. and we don't have to face that battle as much. Because if there is no obligation against such behavior, then, I mean, okay, we can talk about sort of having some sense of love and so forth in the moment.

That's not enough. To have a functioning society, I think there needs to be a more robust sense of morality. So, I mean, I don't know. Would you agree that it is, that there is no, it is not, there is no moral obligation? against that kind of clan-like behavior. Can you see how an adjective like devastating can come in as we envision this kind of prospect? I promise you I'm not trying to do what aboutism or anything like that, but it is part of my actual answer because I left one and I'm here now and part of the leaving was for this reason

that you're bringing up just in the opposite direction. when I I do think it's important to be able to understand that these things, that there are bad things. And I want as many people to agree that those things are bad. I want that. I don't have an objective grounding to give them. I think I have many cases that can still be made and have been made about why we should. The problem is, is that I never have seen deism, theism, a particular Abrahamic faith, that it's grounded in that and then it doesn't exist.

you know, not to get into it, but Yahweh commands his clan to attack other clans and wipe them out. And you will say, yes, but there was this ultimate purpose or, you know, he might make it right. He gets to be the arbiter of those things. Understood. But every theistic society who puts their God, giving them the special permission when it changes, means that we still result in having these things. And I think it's actually a much harder moral hill to climb to constantly try to say whose God is right, whose God is real, which version of that God or that God belief is the correct one in terms of how we should act or how we should treat each other, which does go back to my earlier point about if it's not actually practically better in the claim of God belief to give objective morals, then I don't see us needing to jump that barrier of truth to me or of emotional significance to say, well, like, yeah, I mean, if you believe in God, you can say this is bad, but then you can also be the person that does it and justify it. And I understand where we'll

disagree on that and that we technically have five minutes left, even on our extended schedule. But to me, that is the answer, is that, hey, they're both hard moral hills to climb. You have to still get people to agree saying that if the whole world was Christian, there would be no war, anything like that. And not that you're saying that, but I don't see any version of of an objective morality playing out where those things no longer happen, or where it's said that they're always bad. Because for every single moral issue, I can think of multiple times that Yahweh has commanded it or did it himself, speaking again to the Christian belief, but we could do that for other

gods and other belief systems. And that's more unsatisfying and more devastating to me. So I don't really know how to answer that for you. Yeah. I appreciate your comment. I would say that, again, the distinction I made earlier between, and I know you're aware of this, but the ontological versus sort of the sociological, so you were talking about practically what is better, I do want to pull these two things as distinct.

I know you might say they're related, but you could be a theist and just not be a Christian then, and that would be a solution to this. So these are two separate questions of is there an ontological ground for good and evil? is that clan that comes and rapes, pillages, plunders, etc. Are they morally obligated not to do that? That is a distinct question from whether it's practically better to believe in God. So they're both important questions, but they're distinct. And a person could say, go ahead.

Sorry, I do think they're linked in such a way where it is hard to just say, well, like, okay, but I'm just talking ontologically. There would first have to be proof to me that there's some kind of objective morality instead of just saying, oh, no, there would need to be an order that we could get, you know, aught from is and things like this. Like, I think it's put in the cart before the horse, or we could just say a chicken and egg situation where I think we're both kind of going from a different angle. I do 100% hear you. I just think that it is not divorced of its consequences or lack of evidence by way of practicality. Could there be an objective morality that exists and

then subjectively everyone breaks it. Yes. But it's not even matter of people subjectively breaking it. It's them subjectively not even being able to agree what that objective stance is. And if you if you can't, and this is more than just there's different Christian denominations. This is fundamentally humans have never all agreed at one time in any way. There's nothing to point to in any system of belief or even deism at large that what the standard is. So in lieu of there being able to be something we can point to for that objective standard, going a step further to where does it ontologically begin, it seems totally unnecessary in that regard. Well, I agree with you that these different, let's think of them as links in a chain or something like this.

They are connected. So the ontological questions are going to be connected to, say, the sociological. But I also think they are sufficiently distinct. We have to take them one at a time because you could be a, a theist, for example, and say, but I'm not an adherent to one particular religion. And you just have to face that question first. I think where, and then you brought up questions of truth. What I would put the focus here is if someone wants to be able to say, if they are living

in such a way where they're saying, you are morally obligated not to do this, which I think is how we all live day to day. if you're willing to say that, then you need to have some, you need to be aware, this is where the word inconsistency would come up, is you need to be aware that there needs to be some kind of ontological framework for that. Otherwise, we get into the evolutionary debunking arguments. So then where does the deist point to? So that you said a deist can at least still say it. They can still say that there's a grounded objective morality. So when they say- Same place as a the theist. Well, I wouldn't defend deism. I would just defend a more generic theism. But either

way, it'd be the same thing. It would be the words from the Declaration of independence endowed by their creator. Certain inalienable rights. See, if you have a belief that there's a creator who endows us, who basically says at the moment of conception for every single person, that person has rights. They have value that distinguishes them qualitatively from the other physical matter around them. You have a worldview in which you have a basis for saying this image bearer of God has been endowed with certain rights. Now, that could be right or wrong. That's one way to ground how I think most of us live day to day. Even though it is disagreed upon, whether it is disagreed upon by people doesn't mean it's not objective. People disagree upon, you know,

physics and math and all kinds of things. But it's subjective then. If you're just saying everyone gets to say they have a creator, my kid can say he has a creator and it's me and I gave him a code. And that doesn't mean, though, that it's objective or that it's ontologically based. It means we've gone one step higher. You know, in many deistic societies, there's creators of creators and I know you're I'm just saying I don't think that answers it at all I think at some point you have to say what is the code and specifically where it came from which is making a claim and to me those claims that have been made seem to be either inconsistent themselves or falsifiable which is why I am much more comfortable way down at the bottom saying I don't know I see it as a

skill that evolved with us and I would love for there to be something more but there's not so so I'm not just going to pretend and I'm not going to guess and I know we're a minute over and neither one of us wants to be done and we have so much more we want to say and not leave the other I will give you the last thought here if you want to kind of close out for us though yeah okay okay okay okay I'm okay okay so I'm going to stay on by all means but I you know I know you have to go so I do need to run unfortunately I do need to run unfortunately but I okay so I'll say several things first of all the issues we've gotten into here are too important and too interesting to for for any of our viewers or either you or me to feel as though we've sort of concluded things. So therefore, I do hope we can continue conversation about these things because I think I think we're sort of we've broached a lot, but there's much more to explore here. I guess I would just say, I mean, I won't be able to remember everything you just said there at the end. I do feel pretty strongly about disambiguating the ontological question from epistemological and sociological questions. I really don't.

I would have some disagreements with some of the things you said about that, but I do agree we need to answer each question in turn. I guess my final comment could be as a Christian. So, you know, in maybe 30 or 45 seconds here briefly, I'm not a Christian because I have everything figured out because I understand all these questions or something like that. It's the worldview that makes the most sense to me in terms of my experiences and in terms of just what makes sense of the world. So what makes sense of my own life, but also just how you explain? You know, I mentioned fine-tuning earlier, lots of features of our world that seem to make more sense if there is a sort of intelligent creator. But I think with regard to the moral plane, I am comforted and nourished and relieved when I consider theism with regard to the questions we're addressing about morality and also meaning, because you have an ontological ground in the character of God. You also have a sense of moral hope that goodwill defeat evil.

I do think the differences between the two are devastating. And I do think that ontological question comes first before we get to how we figure it out. And then third question, how do we do it? I do think the first thing to figure out is, is it there at all? And what are we dealing? What is there to figure out and then to put into practice? So, yeah, I'll just say, as a Christian, I am nourished and comforted by the way this worldview, which I believe to be true on other grounds, comes in and delivers the good.

that I feel like I can live off of and it isn't devastating. I do feel devastated about some of the other alternatives, but my air conditioning just kicked on, which means a probably good time for me to wrap it up. But I've enjoyed the dialogue, and I think we need to keep talking about all this. Yeah, agreed. Thanks for being on, Gavin.

We'll definitely do a part two, and it's hard to stop it. I'm going to do it. I'm just going to shut it down. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll talk soon.