Truth Unites - Atheist vs. Christian Dialogue (Tom Jump and Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Tom Jump (atheist) and Gavin Ortlund (Christian) have a dialogue on arguments for the existence of God. Check out Tom's YouTube channel  here: https://www.youtube.com/c/tjump Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Gavin, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation with me. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself before we get started? Sure. And last, this is probably the last technical thing is you're frozen again. So I'm going to refresh the page. All right. All right.

The last of the flaws to get hard through. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks for having me. Tom, happy to talk with you. Yeah, I'm a pastor in Southern California. My academic training is in historical theology.

I'm married with four kids. also love doing apologetics. Gosh, that's a brief overview. Cool. I'm an atheist. I run an atheist YouTube channel and talk about reasons to believe in a God. Would you mind tell me some of the reasons you believe there are for belief in a God? And I'd like to tell you my positions on those reasons and hear your thoughts on my position. Sure. Sounds good. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll mention maybe my top four that I kind of boil it down to in my own mind. Maybe I'll just state them all up front and then we can kind of dial back into them however you want to but i would say first of all i think god is the best explanation i know of for the cause of our world for why our world is here

and why anything exists at all secondly for the nature of our world in particular the the fine tuning of the physical constants that make life possible in our universe thirdly for the nature of morality. If I understand your position correctly, and a lot of my approach in this dialogue will be just questions of ignorance trying to get to know you better, because I haven't watched a lot of your videos, but I watched a couple. But I think we'll agree on objective morality, but then we can talk about what's the best explanation for that. I think God is the best explanation for morality being objective. And then lastly, Jesus of Nazareth, I think is best explained his life, is best explained on the hypothesis that there is a god.

There are other reasons too. Some of them are harder to leverage into an argument. So I'd acknowledge that personal experience is a huge factor for me. That's harder to argue from to convince another person from that, but that's definitely a reality for me. None of this I approach is kind of like math, you know, very complicated. But those are four of the testimonies. And I happy to unpack any of those four more fully if you want to,

or, you know, you can press into whichever one you want to, or I can, I can explain them more if you want. Sure. So you mentioned essentially the cosmological argument, teleological argument, moral argument, Jesus, and personal experience. Personal experience is one I don't really go into very much because I think that it's very personal. It's not really like, obviously it's not proof for anybody else. So that wouldn't really be, I wouldn't take any issue with that. But let's go backwards, I guess. Start with Jesus.

Why would Jesus be evidence of a supernatural realm? Okay, yeah, this is a fun one. I find Jesus incredibly compelling. Here we're into sort of history, and basically the idea here is we've got to have some kind of account of Jesus. Who was he? You know, it seems to me that there are a limited number of options. C.S. Lewis did the famous Lord liar or lunatic argument. I think one of the weaknesses of that is there's other categories, one of which would be lunatic. Or no, sorry. Legend. Legend. Thank you. Lord liar, lunatic, legend, because it assumes that Jesus did claim to be God. But as I've looked into that, I actually think that none of those four options is easy, in my opinion. In fact, on all of these arguments, my intuition is that there's not some kind of easy, easy, obvious slam dunk approach. But I think the least difficult option is Lord. I don't think he's a lunatic. I don't think he's a liar. Both of those are very kind of laborious. conclusions to come to, in my opinion. And legend, I don't think is plausible. I mean, you know,

the way I've worked through this is just combing through, you know, engaging with Bart Ehrman and the best that I can find on the other side looking through the literature. I just think that there are good historical reasons, even if one doesn't assume any particular view of the New Testament, just on historical grounds, if you, even if you go with the most radical, skeptical frameworks for what parts of the four Gospels go back to the historical Jesus, you're still left with this core set of claims that seem to me to reflect an awareness of divinity. You know, you look just in the Gospel of Mark, which is often taken to be the earliest dated, for example. You're starting off and right out of the gate, the conflict that drives the

Gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees is set in terms of blasphemy. He claims. to forgive sins. Now, of course, Jesus doesn't go around saying, hey, everybody, God is a Trinity, and I'm the second member of the Trinity. And there's even passages where he conceals his identity. But the way that Jesus functions is with this powerful assumption of divine authority. And in the context of that, he does make claims that I don't know how to make sense of, other than that he's claiming to have divine authority. The initiating, example in the Gospel of Mark, which pretty much all the scholars admit goes back to the historical Jesus, is he forgives sins. The Pharisees assume, he says to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven.

The Pharisees assume, the Pharisees are agitated and say, who can forgive sins but God alone? And Jesus's response to that seems to not say, oh, no, no, no, I'm just announcing that God is forgiven his sins. He says no, so that you know that the son of man has authority. on earth to forgive sins. And then you just trace that threat all the way to the ending of Mark, where he's accused of blasphemy by the Jewish high court leading to his crucifixion. And so basically, I'd say, even if you accept the higher critical standards that want to lop off a lot of the testimony in the Gospels as not going back to the historical Jesus, you're still left, even on the most radical proposal, you're still left with a set of claims that seem

to me to reflect an awareness of divinity. And then we pivot to the question of what's the best explanation of that. And, you know, I don't base everything just on this, but because I'm already, for other reasons, open to the idea of God, I look at Jesus and I say, this is really compelling. This person seems good. This person seems sane. And this person seems to be making a claim. Like, hey, I'm the revelation of the God who created the universe. I'm the answer to the world's problems and so on. I just find that really gripping and really compelling. Yeah. You mentioned that there were more options. I totally agree with you there. And for me, one of the additional options is that he's just a normal human who thought he was God, which I don't think that would count as a delusional.

Like, you've heard many atheists say that people who believe in God are delusional because they believe in like an imaginary friend or whatever, right? You've heard that argument? Yes. But most, like no psychologist, no doctor is ever going to consider just a Christian to be delusional because they believe in a God because it's just a normal human belief. And I think the same thing applies here. it is very possible for a person with their brain acting normally, given the correct conditions, to think they had an experience with a supernatural being,

have a supernatural being come to them and tell them some story and that not have them be just delusional because they have this. It's a pretty normal human experience. And in that respect, the fact that Jesus could have thought he was God, but may have been incorrect about that, just may have been something he believed because he thought he had a spiritual experience,

wouldn't make him delusional or a liar. It could have just been a normal human belief, just like people who believe in a God or a normal human belief. So the same trichotomy, quadcotomy, that you present for Jesus, the liar, lunatic, or Lord, would also apply to literally everyone else

who's ever claimed to be God or claimed to have a spiritual experience of a God. And I don't think in any of those cases, I think the correct answer in all of those is probably they just had a normal human experience and were probably confused. So I wouldn't say Jesus was necessarily a lunatic, just like I wouldn't say any Christian was a lunatic

just because they believed in a God. And I wouldn't say he was Lord, because I think it's better explained by natural human psychological phenomenon because there are so many of these cases that happen. And I imagine you would agree with all of the other people who claim to be God or all of the other religions who claim to have personal experiences of a God.

They are probably mistaken. But I don't think you'd ever call them liars or lunatics. And I don't think you'd agree that their God is correct. Right? Right? Well, I would make a distinction between the experience of God and the claim to be God. So you were referencing, you know, people who've had an experience of the divine and that

can just be a normal human experience that they're in error about. Certainly so. And yes, that would be the general category into which a lot of general religious phenomena you put into, though not necessarily all. You could have an account in which, you know, the true God is obliquely being experienced in other religions in various ways and so forth. I would say that it's very different, it seems to me, from experiencing God to being, to claiming to be God. If I say, I experience to God, it seems to me more plausible

to be wrong about that claim than to say, I am God, I made the world, I'm the light of the world, I can forgive your sins, and I'm going to judge every human being at the end of history. Boy, I mean, so tell me how, help me understand how you would interpret Jesus then, because if he's making claims like that, this is more than an experience, a spiritual experience behind that. There's this enormously inflated view of one's own authority. How do you get that and not be a lunatic? Well, again, I don't see any difference between the two. So you've had a spiritual experience, your personal experience of God, right? And so if you had a personal experience of God and he told you that you are his son, I mean, I don't see you believing

that as any different from you believing the personal experience that you did have. So if God himself came to you and told you you are his son and that you have all this authority, then you proselytizing about that experience would be no different from you proselytizing about the experience you did have. So I don't see any difference between Jesus believing he was God and you believing God exists. You both claim to have access to this ultimate authority who's going to judge anything. The only difference is the relationship to that authority, which could presumably only be known from what that authority tells you. So to me, I don't see any fundamental difference between the two, especially because claims to or beliefs of being God are actually relatively common

in humanity, both Donald Trump-esque kinds of just believing you're a God and people who believe their sons of deities. Like we have at least 10,000 references of people who claim to be the son of God, the Jesus, the Jesus' second coming, not even including the other religions, the people who are seen as religiously holy in other religions, Hinduism, reincarnations of gods, all kinds of things. So the fact that people believe that they were God or had some access to the divine is a relatively normal claim for human beings. And you would apply this exact same trichotomy to every single one of them. Are they liars? Well, no, I don't think they're lying. I think they believe what they're saying. Are they lunatics? No, they don't seem to be psychologically

crazy. They are able to hold conversations. They have pretty good logical skills. Are they lords? Well, no, I don't think any of them are actually gods. The fourth option here that I usually accept is that they have normal human brains which make lots of kind of anthropocentric fallacies, these type one, type two errors, where they have these experiences, which are most likely dreams or some other kind of psychological phenomenon, and they interpret those in a way that any rational human being would probably interpret those. And so I think Jesus would be in the same boat here. I don't think he's a liar. I don't think he's a lunatic. I don't think he's Lord, and I don't think he's a legend. I think he has a normal human brain, and human brains operate

in very incorrect ways. We make lots of psychics. psychological mistakes. And so he probably justifiably may have thought he was actually God, because for the same reason that all the other people, the tens of millions of people who thought they were reincarnations of a deity, also thought they were justifiably a God. And they were rational human beings. And so I don't think that this trichotomy presented by C.S. Lewis is actually a good one because there are lots of people who believe this. And none of them would qualify as any of those. They would not qualify as liars. They would not qualify as Lord. And they would not qualify as lunatics. They're all just normal human beings who have psychological flaws. And I think that that is

a far more plausible explanation than any of them likely being actually connected to the supernatural being who created the universe. Okay, just two quick comments. And then we can keep going on this or go to a different argument. First, the difference, you referenced a little, I can't remember what exact number you said, but you referenced a huge number with respect to people who claim to be God. CS Lewis addresses that. The difference is he's in a Jewish comment. He's in a Jewish context. So it's a different definition of the word G-O-D. He's claiming to be the transcendent creator of the universe. That's very different from something happening in a Hindu context. Secondly, I just would stick to my guns. I think it's manifestly clear that claiming to experience

God, it's not the same thing as claiming to be God. Just think of it as a different example. If you claim to experience a ghost, that's a fundamentally different claim to be evaluated differently than if you claim to be a ghost. And you would have take the two claims very differently. If you claim to experience some other entity, you know, it's far more easy to be an error about your own experience of something. When you're claiming to be God, if you're claiming, I made the world, I will judge the world, what kind of spiritual experience would you, would you see behind that that could generate such beliefs that wouldn't rise to the level of lunacy? Well, there could be many.

Like there's many examples of people who said they had past lives or were reincarnations of a God. So they had memories of them being a God, which I imagine would kind of be what Jesus would presumably have also experienced if he thought he was a God. He'd probably have memories of himself being a God or something. And so I don't see that as any different. And the scale of a God, you mentioned, say, being the one God in a Jewish context as opposed to Hinduism, which many gods, that makes absolutely no difference. Because there are many Hindus who claim to be Brahman or the scale. the greatest God or reincarnation of the greatest God, the particular God that you see really wouldn't make a difference.

That would, from a psychological standpoint, it's essentially luck of the draw, whichever one you identify with most. So in a Jewish context, it makes more sense that they would identify as the greatest God because there only is one God. Whereas in Hinduism, they're going to be a bunch of people who identify with a bunch of different gods because there's a plethora of options there. But if there's only one God, then they'd all just identify with that one God. So the scope of the God here doesn't really make any difference at all.

they're all, if, if, presumably, if they were all psychological phenomenon, then it would make perfect sense that those would be the ones they would identify with. So there would be, from a psychological standpoint. So if we assume these are all just psychological manifestations of our anthropocentric fallacy, then yeah, there's no difference here. Psychologically, they're the exact same. All, both the generation of a belief that you're the ultimate God and a belief that you're a minor God come from the exact same thing in the brain, there's no, there's no

empirical difference psychologically between these two phenomenon. And so if it was purely psychological, there'd be no difference between the two one way or the other. So I don't really see from an empiricist naturalist standpoint why the delineation between a super god and a minor god would make a difference here. Okay. Well, I would disagree. I would say the difference is very relevant to the point at hand because in Jewish thought,

the distinction between that which is God and that which is not God is much thicker and more qualitative than in a Hindu perspective and in most other places in the world and religious thought. So that's very relevant to the claim at hand. Because in the one case, for example, you're claiming to be the infinite person that is distinct from the world. Well, that's a far greater claim than claiming to be a God in the sense of something that is within the world. I don't quite understand the argument you're making there because from psychological perspective, you zap the same part of the brain, you get both.

It's just we know that the part of the brain that generates God beliefs is a part that is reflective on one's own values, like the God helmet, the certain parts of the brain that you can stimulate to cause a belief that there's someone's watching you or that a God belief is, or God is over you or whatever. We know that in the brain that's the same spot, regardless of whether you think it's a super God or a minor God.

So if that part of your brain gets stimulated with an epilepsy or a different kind of a shock or whatever, then it could generate the belief that you're a God versus any kind, whatever kind of God you want to believe in, or a ghost or a spirit, or any kind of anthropocentric fallacy. So from a psychological standpoint,

there's no difference whether you think it's the ultimate God or a minor god. It's still the same psychological phenomenon in the brain. So I don't see what difference that would make exactly. Like I can understand your argument from the perspective that because Jews only believe there was one God and he had higher authority, they would be more credulous about believing

their personal experiences or something. But psychological standpoint, those would be the exact same. It doesn't take more of, I don't know, more of a seizure to think you're the super god rather than a minor god. It's going to be the same kind of electrical signal. Okay. Well, we may just have bumped up into a point of disagreement, but just to reiterate, I would say it is different to claim to be the transcendent creator of the heavens and the earth that is distinct from material reality versus claiming to be like Zeus,

for example. Now, if it's true that the same part of the brain, because they're just metaphysically different kinds of claims, if the same kind of the part of the, the brain is involved in the claim, I am a ghost as I experienced a ghost, that fact alone does not mean they're epistemically equally plausible claims. To claim to be a ghost is a greater error than to claim to have experienced a ghost. The both could be erroneous. Experience is far more fickle than a claim of personal identity. So I would just, I really think it's wrong to say the experience, for me to say I've experienced God is on the same par as Jesus of Nazareth saying, I am God, those just seem to me to be two different claims that would each

need to be evaluated on their own terms. Right, I agree. But I meant claiming that I am Zeus and claiming that I am Yahweh are the same. Those are epistemically the same. Actually, I would say that claiming your Yahweh, a more powerful God would actually be less reasonable because he has more powerful than Zeus does. So my point wasn't about the difference between seeing a ghost versus being a ghost. It was the difference about being Zeus versus being Thor. And in that case,

those are the exact same psychologically. But from an epistemic standpoint, claiming to be Yahweh would be less plausible because Yahweh has more power than Zeus. I would agree. Wait, Yahweh has less power than Zeus, you said? Zeus has less power than Yahweh. Right.

I would agree, that's my point. To claim greater power is a greater claim. Yeah. And I do think you said that the experience of God and the claim to be God are kind of equally claims to be evaluated in the same way. Maybe I miss her. Well, I'd say that, to clarify, the experience of a God wouldn't be, wouldn't make you a lunatic, just like if I thought I met God or I thought I had memories of being a God,

both of those would, neither of those would make me a lunatic. That would eliminate the lunatic category. So you can do both of those things without making you a lunatic. Could you acknowledge that one of them is closer, is one? One of them is a greater error. If lunacy is here and error is here, claiming you experienced God is a little further from lunacy, whereas claiming, I made the heavens and the earth, I will judge every human being. I'm the light of the world.

I'm the bread of life. If you don't have me, you're going to die. Claiming those claims is getting closer to lunacy? No, I would say that from a psychological standpoint in the field of psychology, to be a lunatic, requires a specific set of criteria. just having an experience or memory, whether that memory is from the, because you can have a dream and be in like first person perspective and you can have a dream and be in third person perspective, neither of those make you a lunatic. And so if you have an imagined story where you're in the first person perspective of a God in your dream, or if you have an imagined story where you're in a third person perspective or and God is talking to you, neither of those make you a lunatic. Neither of those are on the lunatic scale. A lunatic is a consistent misrepresentation of reality.

Whereas having a dream or a delusion and then believing that was real wouldn't make you on the lunatic scale. So neither of those would make you a lunatic unless it was a persistent, consistent thing. Like you are in this moment having this delusion of being able to control the universe, but you can't lift a rock or whatever. So neither of those would make you a lunatic just on the face of the experience. Would it help us if we remove the word lunatic out of the equation and just spoke of degrees of error? would you agree that the claim I am God in the Jewish sense of the word God is a greater error than the claim I experienced God? Sure. But the reason I brought that up was because I think C.S. Lewis's argument liar, lunatic, or Lord, that is fundamentally flawed.

Because you can have an experience of being a God or you can have an experience of a God. And neither of those things make you a lunatic. So you can reject that any person who claims to be God, whether it's Yahweh or Zeus, they can, they're not liars because they have this. experience. They're not lunatics because they're not on the scale of having lunacy of a consistent misrepresentations of reality in all these ways. And they're not lords. So you can reject all three of those for every single person who's ever claimed to be God. So the reason I brought that up was because CS Lewis's trichotomy is incorrect because you can have these experiences and not be a lunatic, not be a liar, and not be a lord for everybody who's ever had these experiences.

Right. I understand the qualification you're trying to make. And then I would agree that the argument as it's formulated isn't finally successful because of what we mentioned about the legend category. To some extent, we're getting into semantics here with the term lunatic is why I was proposing that, because if we take that term off the table and talk about degrees of error, you could reformulate the argument without getting into the technicalities of what does the word lunatic precisely mean to say, well, is that option then, that degree of error less plausible than the Lord category? And I just kind of come back to, you know, I find Jesus impressive. I find him, just there's something about him that is quite startling and you know um i suppose we're almost half

that way almost halfway did so maybe we want to get to some of the other arguments too but i would sum up my comments by saying whether you call it lunacy or not to me it's at the very least not an easy alternative to say oh he just had a religious experience like so many other people did that's why he made these claims the claims at hand are so gargantuan i would say unrivaled i would say no one made the precise claims that Jesus of Nazareth, Nazareth made. And so I would say to accept that there was an erroneous religious experience behind those claims, whether you call it lunacy or not, it starts to push into a degree of error that to me, I would say is more implausible from where I'm looking at it than Lord. I understand that my presuppositions affect that, because I'm already open to God showing

up in history on other grounds. At the very least, I'd say, it's not an easy option. I don't know. I'd be curious if you admit that. Oh yeah, sure. I'd say from an epistemic standpoint, claiming you are God who can do 10 things versus you are God that can do one thing obviously would be a higher burden of proof and you have to provide more evidence for that for sure. So I definitely would agree to that point. But yeah, as you mentioned, this was my specific qualification of what I think is a problem with C.S. Lewis's variation. But yes, I would agree that claiming that you are an all-powerful being who created everything would be different than claiming you are Zeus who could control lightning or something. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Well, this is, this is good. We're making a little bit of

progress here. I'd be curious, if you don't mind me asking you, of the other three arguments, what do you make of those? Which do you think is the strongest? Or do you think they're all equally weak? Which do you think is the weakest? Which do you think is the strongest? I think the weakest would probably be the teleological argument. So the fine-tuning argument is interesting because it says that of all the different ways, the physical constants of the universe could be, there's only a very small combination that would produce life or anything like life. And so if we look at the universe in the way that it's kind of like finding a dice with a million sides and there's one red side and it's landed on the red side,

you're like, well, that's strange. Why would we see this? The problem is that there's three ways to accomplish that. One is, or there's two ways, necessity or chance. And design is just a kind of necessity. so it's really not a third option. But it leads back to this problem of like, if it's true that there's infinitely many ways the universe could be or just a large number and only a small percent can create life, well, then there's a, if it was designed,

let's just assume it was designed. What caused the designer to be the way it is such that it would create this universe as opposed to any of the other options on the dice, like who designed the designer? If, for example, there could be as many designers as there are possible universe. It's maybe there's a designer who only wanted unicorns, or maybe there's a designer who only wanted

black holes, or maybe there's a designer who only wanted hydrogen atoms. So for each of the possible variations of the universe, there's a designer who could have wanted that universe. So who designed the designer to make him create this particular kind of a universe? And so then the argument is self-defeating because just as the vast amount of possibilities there are for the universe demands an explanation, the vast amount of possibilities for for a designer also demands an explanation. Okay, interesting.

Well, the first thing you said there about how design is another form of necessity, I cannot see that no matter how I would look, what angle I'd look at that from. But let's leave that aside. Let me address, maybe this might be useful too. So this touches on the first argument as well. These are the most common responses I hear to these arguments. Who, what, you know, who, if everything needs a cause, who caught, what caused God? So what's the cause of the first cause?

and if the evidence points to design, which I think it is just astonishing, the precision of the physical constants of our universe that makes our universe life permitting. I think if anybody, I almost, I don't want to say it too strong, but I'd say it personally, I find it very striking.

And I'd say, so the most common response, this is who designed the designer. I just don't think those arguments work at all. The whole point of these arguments is to gesture back to an uncaused first cause. Okay, so with regard, let's just speak to the causation point first. This is the most, you see this stock and trade response in all of the major atheist thinkers from Lawrence Krauss back through the, you know, the new atheist, everybody. If everything needs a cause, what cost God?

The problem is it just misunderstands the theist claim. The definition of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition is an uncaused entity. Now, you can totally just deny there is any uncaused. cause or what Aristotle called an unmoved mover. You can deny that. But if you ask what caused it, it simply shows you haven't understood the thing in question yet. By definition, it's an uncaused ontologically distinct. The whole point is as we look back through the threat of causation, we're looking, we're noticing our world doesn't seem to be self-explanatory. So we're tracing back to say, what is the explanation, both for the fact of its existence and the nature of its existence.

The fact that it's here, and the fact that it seems so exquisitely well ordered. And so we're threading our way back. The whole point is we need to bump up into some kind of primal reality, some kind of first cause. Otherwise, everything is just arbitrary. And you can say, well, that primal reality, that uncaused first cause isn't God, or you can say there is no first cause. You know, there's all kinds of options you can take, but the what caused God objection, I never think really actually targets. the actual proposal at hand here. So I'm curious what you make of that. I mean, I don't know if you would, would you affirm a first cause or something that generated the universe, something that

stands antecedent to the Big Bang? Sure. I mean, my view is naturalistic pantheism, so I think that, yeah, there's a fundamental force. But that's, to use your own phrasing, that's kind of missing the point of the argument. So the point of the argument here is that if we see something like the universe and assume the universe has a billion variables. And there's a billion variables and we would just, why can't we just say, well, the billion variables in the universe are uncaused? They're necessary things. And you want to say, well, no, no, no, no. That needs to be caused because there are a billion variables.

As you said, something about the precise precision of the universe or something is what causes you to do. The physical constants. Yeah. Yeah. So there's so many physical constants and they can be so many different ways. So you have like a million variables and they can all be different numbers. And if any of them were different, there would be no life. And that's the reason you think it was.

cost or you think it needs an explanation because there's so many different possibilities, right? Is that a fair? That there's three options for the precise fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe, design, necessity, or chance. And I think design is a superior and less arbitrary explanation than the other two. So the reason you think is design is because there's lots of variables. Let's say, let's say a thousand. There's a thousand variables and they could all be in different ways.

And that alone, just that fact that there are 1,000 variables and they could all be different. No, no, no, no, not the mere fact of variables. And it's unimaginably vast numbers, not thousands. Well, I'm just giving it a number so it's easy to talk about. Okay. All right. So they say we've got a thousand. No, it's not the fact that there's a thousand variables.

It's of all the ones it could have been among those variables. It's the one that enables us to be here to talk about it. Right. So that's just the thousand variables is that encapsulates that explanation. So there's a thousand variables. they could all be different, and the fact that they're this way calls for an explanation or something like that, right? It needs to be explained on some hypothesis or another.

It could be necessity. It could be chance or it could be design. Those to me seem to be the main options, and design seems to me to be superior than the other two. Right. And so the question is, why is design more reasonable than necessity? It's not that it's more reasonable. said, I don't see any grounds for necessity. I don't know, and I don't think most of the philosophers on the other side go that route. That's very rarely argued. What would be the necessity for the

physical constants being what they are? We can easily imagine a universe in which they're not what they are. Why would they be necessary to exist in the precise way that they do? Right. And so this is where the argument comes in. The argument comes in and saying, just as you can imagine all of the physical constants being different, I can imagine God being different. in just as many or more ways. So the problem is that, yes, there are a thousand, we're just going to say a thousand just to make it easy to talk about. Thousand physical constants, we can imagine them all being different.

So the fact that they're this way needs an explanation. God has equally as many variables. God has also has a thousand variables. And they can also all be different in different ways. Why is God this way as opposed to a different way? So the same argument seems to work for both. Okay, I see what you're arguing. Yeah, okay, that's interesting.

I don't think the universe and God, are on parallel terms with respect to this claim. I don't agree that there are, there's a thousand variables or whatever number we choose for how God could be. My understanding of God is an infinitely simple and metaphysically necessary person or being. So I don't think that there's all these different ways that God could be. If one did hold that view of God, then one would have to posit, you know, what are those different ways that God could be?

I'm not accustomed to thinking like that myself. Well, yeah, that's why I mentioned. I mean, I think in the sort of classical Judeo-Christian race. Well, that's why I mentioned, like, there could be a God who wanted only unicorns, or God who only wanted hydrant atoms, or a God who only wanted black holes. Each of these would be one of the variable ways God could be. So you can imagine, just as you can imagine a universe with the different laws, you can imagine a God with different desires.

He could desire a universe with just puppies. This is what's all puppies everywhere. And so, equally, God could be equally as variable as the universe could be. He has, why did God have the desire to make humans? humans. Why did God have the desire to make Jesus? Why did God have the desire to do X, Y, Z? And even to say, well, he could have had a different desire and there'd be a different God. So it's equally as easy to imagine a different kind of a God as it is to imagine a different kind of a universe. Yeah, I still would disagree that God and the universe aren't parallel terms like

that. I appreciate the fact that we're approaching our understanding of God from a different angle. So that's probably playing into the disagreement here. What would you make of what I said, I mean, do you rely on the, when it comes to the cosmological argument with causation, would you say, would you use the same way of reasoning with regard to that argument? I don't, no, I don't think so. Would you, okay, so do you think that? One second, I wanted to ask, so my question would be why. Why do you think the God and the universe are on different scales here?

Why is it different to imagine that God could have a thousand ways of being, or what makes it more likely that there's only one way God could be, or a small number of ways God could be. Because that seems to me there's no reason to assume that there's only a few ways God could be. Or one, yeah. So the definition of God is, as I mentioned, an infinitely simple and metaphysically necessary being.

So I don't think God in the universe are on parallel terms with respect to explaining their nature because the universe is contingent. It's very particular. One of the curiosities that springs naturally out of the human heart is, why is it here? You know, I'll never forget reading through Stephen Hawking's book, a brief history of time, and he gets to that famous climactic passage at the end. And I know he

changed his views and his way of looking at this later in his life, where he says, the question that we all wonder about when we're, you know, the question that the ancient philosophers would say, all philosophy starts with this question of why does the universe bother go to the bother of existing? What are we all doing here? Now, the reason that question is generated for the universe is because it's contingent. It's not a necessary being. and the physical constants of the universe are not necessary. Something is necessary if it cannot fail to exist, if it exists in every possible world. Now, the classic Judeo-Christian conception of God is both simple and necessary.

He cannot fail to exist. He cannot even be conceived not to exist. He exists in every possible world. So that's going to require a different set of explanations than contingent reality. Now, again, you can deny that there's a necessary being. You can say that doesn't exist. but that's what is understood by the word God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Sure, but that seems to be begging the question.

So why would it be more reasonable to say God's 1,000 variables are the necessary ones and the universe is 1,000 variables are not necessary. Why can't we just say? Because it seems to me they're both equally candidates for the necessary being. Why would God be the necessary being be more likely than saying the universe is the necessary being? Because from my perspective, they both have 1,000 variables. all of the thousand variables can be very easily to imagine differently. Why would we think that the God being the necessary thousand is more plausible than saying the universe is the necessary thousand?

Right. Yes. Okay. This gets into what I was trying to explain a moment ago, and that is that the universe is a contingent thing. We can imagine it not being here. Well, that seems to be begging the question, because I can imagine God not being here too. So I don't see, like, how do you assess? How do you prove the universe is contingent? God is necessary and not the other way around. Because it seems like all of the evidence you're presenting works equally as well to show God is contingent. I can imagine God not being here. I do. I'm an atheist.

So how is it, how is that what evidence do you have to show that God isn't contingent and that the universe is contingent? What is the difference between the two? Yeah. Well, they're fundamentally different kinds of claims. I mean, of course, either can be denied. I'm not saying no one can actually say the sentence,

God doesn't exist and sincerely believe that. But the claim of what is purported by that word is a necessary being. Now, I don't know too many philosophers who claim that the universe is a necessary being. You do see that from time to time, but that's not the majority view. The majority view among skeptical philosophers is to go to the multiverse theory and then appeal to the anthropic principle so that you've got either an infinite person behind the world or an infinite number of worlds and we just happen to live in the right one. But I guess I would press you to say, what makes you think the universe is necessary?

If you do think that, I think I heard that, but I might have misheard. Yeah, so the vast majority of theories in physics is that there is a fundamental force, which is necessary. In string theory, it's, there's a different kind of force. But I'm just clumping all of that together, including the multiverse, into just the universe here. So all physicists think that there is a fundamental, necessary, natural thing of some kind. That's all, every one of the models says this. And so they don't, they all say that you don't need a God. Like, the explanation in physics of the Big Bang is God isn't even on the table.

They're all naturalistic forces of some kind that are necessary forces. And usually, you're right, they refer to those as different things, string theory, the multiverse, any kind of debor, boom, quantum wave, whatever. But they don't, but all of those are just natural universe stuff. So we can say in physics, the consensus in physics, everybody in physics, like 90-something percent given the last poll, think that the fundamental necessary thing is a force of nature. a natural force of nature that has nothing to do with the God. And so it seems to me all of those are better theories of the necessary thing than God.

Okay. What is this poll you're referencing that you said 90% of physicists believe that the fundamental necessary? Because it's as good that we, if I'm summarizing accurately here, we agree that there's a need for something necessary, a primal necessity indistinct from contingent reality. I grant that. I like the necessary thing. It's not required. There's all, there are infinite regression models too, but I, but just for the sake of the argument, we can grant that there's a necessary thing. The poll is the fundamental attitudes towards physics. It's a poll in a big physics journal. I haven't saved if you want to consent it to you. Well, because initially you said all, yes, I would like to see it. Initially you said all, because I would disagree. I don't think 90% of physicists agree that there's, that there's, that there's, uh, some physical or something necessary that's, that's, I can't remember. how you worded it. Right. So I'm complying the different language from physics and theology. Like they don't use the term necessary because it's not a thing. It's like saying a fluffelophagus. A fluffagophagus. It's just a made up term in a certain ideology. So necessary, in the context

of physics, the term necessary is just a made up term by theologians. It's not a real thing in philosophy or physics. But they do think there is a thing which can't be changed, which is a fundamental thing in physics, which underlines everything else, which would fit your definition. of necessary more or less. So they think that, yes, there is a natural thing. It is a field in physics. And that there is nothing. It was uncreated.

There's nothing before that. It is the ultimate thing. So it would be necessary from the theological perspective. The paper is called a fundamental attitude towards physics. It is in, I forget what the paper is. But yeah, I can definitely send it to you. Yeah, because when I engage in the literature on this, I wouldn't put the figure at that.

But I think what plagues the discussion is the, Theologians and philosophers use the word necessary in one sense, and scientists often use it in a different sense, just like we use other terms like nothing. We use the term nothing differently, and that plagues these discussions somewhat. But I would ask, I mean, so, okay, so on your view, is there, what is it like a quantum field or something like that? What would you say is that necessary reality that starts the chain of causation? Yes, something like quantum field. I posted a link in the chat thingy. It's called a

scroll up the top. Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, a snapshot of fundamental foundational attitudes towards quantum mechanics. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take it out. My suspicion is that part of what plagues the statistics on a thing like that is, again, equivocation. I'm not blaming the scientists just now. I'm just saying

there's different definitions of the words that are at play in the discussion, and that causes a problem. I mean, so if I, Let me summarize, you tell me if you think this is a correct summary, both you and I would agree that the chain of causation goes back to something necessary. Sure. For you, it's a quantum field or something like that. Yes, and that is the consensus in physics.

You can just Google the William and Craig, Sean Carroll debate. He explicitly says this, God is not even in, is not a category of a potential explanation anywhere in physics or quantum mechanics. It's not accepted. They do accept that there is something fun. the middle and it's quantum field. Well, again, I would disagree with the idea that they do that. I think it's a disputed question, and many cosmologists and physicists would acknowledge that it's not within the field, it's not within the purview of that field to actually pronounce

upon God. Because my proposal would say, let there be a zillion quantum fields. Those are not necessary. And it's a historically eccentric way of thinking to slap on the adjective necessary to a a quantum field because it is a contingent reality. So I would say, so to summarize, I would say we both believe in a chain of causation going back to something that's necessary. The reason I think that whether that goes to a quantum field as well behind the universe or not, ultimately that it terminates in God, and that's a better proposal, in my opinion, is because I think it's better

to have a personal first cause and it's better to have a simple first cause. And God is infinitely simple I think Occam's razor favors that. And I think a personal first cause just makes more sense. You know, I don't know if you'd accept the distinction between event causation and agent causation, but I think to bring about a new state of affairs, such as we see with space time coming into being at the Big Bang. And I know that there will be different views on how to word that exactly. It seems to me to make far more sense to be a personal act, a volitional act. And it's far more intuitive to me, existentially as well as intellectually, to think that

the personal doesn't derive from the impersonal and the universe contains persons like you and me. So we both agree that the chain of causation goes back to something necessary. My view could accommodate any number of quantum fields, but I just wouldn't see them as the actual first. I would say they go back. You have to get back further than that. And I think part of what I would be curious to understand your perspective better would just be, why would a quantum field be necessary? Is that really a better candidate than God?

I think a personal and simple candidate makes the best candidate for the first cons. Yeah, absolutely. So the three things you brought up there is, one, it's simple. To me, a God who is creator of the universe is more complex than everything it could potentially create. So that would go against a God hypothesis.

Personal beings are not simple. Nothing about them is simple. How do you mean the word complex there? A variation. of its possible states. Okay. And just, as you, I'm sure know, theologically, the classical view of God is that that's not God. God is infinitely simple. There's only one way he could possibly be.

Well, that's Aquinas' view. It's not actually the classical view. But even if we just granted that's the classical view, intuitively... Who in pre-modern times doesn't hold that view in the... No, no, so I'm saying like the conception of simple was something added in by Aquinas and Anselman, those guys. It did not come before those. was not something prior to...

Oh, sure, did it. I'm very, very familiar with the history on this. But the point here is that saying God is simple is like saying the creator of this cup is simpler than this cup. Like, clearly no, that's false. That's obviously false. A God who could create infinitely many universes is by definition not simpler than any particular universe it could create.

So philosophically, what? Philosophically the idea of a creator God who could, can create infinitely many things with infinitely many power can by definition not be simpler than any of the things it particularly creates. So if something has infinite power, it must necessarily be as complex as the potential uses of the power. Okay. What it's at stake there is how we define simplicity. And I would just stick to my guns and reiterate my disagreement and my concern with your sketch of the history, as though Anselman Aquinas introduced divine simplicity. I've published on that. I've done a survey of the church father.

on divine simplicity. It is the standard view. I mean, you can say that they're wrong, but you can't say Augustine didn't believe in divine simplicity. Oh, yeah, he did, but it didn't, it didn't come from the apostles. That's not a thing. So, but the point, as I mentioned before, the different claim than Anselman Aquinas. You said it didn't, it came into an asylum and a course. Yeah, and Augustine. I'm happy to grant those guys, but it didn't come from like the original Christianity or Judaism anywhere in that. That would be a different claim. We need to get into that. there are some early Jewish sources who do, and it's as early as second, third century. But anyway, the historical record may be beyond this discussion. So that's fine. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to press you

too much, but. Totally fine. But yeah, so the one thing I do want to push on is that this idea of simple, nowhere in philosophy is it accepted that you can call it a certain an ontology of a single ontology that can create everything and it is by definition simple. That seems to be a theologian's way of begging the question to simply define simplicity in a way that they want to define it to try and exclude alternative theories. So that doesn't really seem to be a good criterion, especially if it's powerful enough to create infinitely many universes, that can't be simple by any intuitive definition of the word simple.

But more importantly, you brought up that a personal, with our personal agents in the universe, and therefore it must have been explained by a personal being, well, it seems to be a composition division fallacy. Like, there are lots of parts of the universe. We have stars, we have oceans, we have particles. It isn't logical to say that. Well, look, because there's a star in the universe, whatever created the universe must be a star.

Like, clearly not. It could be comprised of something else that builds stars. Likewise, we know that brains and personal agents are a result of different kinds of physical interactions in the universe. So whatever created brains and personal agents doesn't need to be an agent any more than it needs to be a star. It could just be something that produces these things, a simpler part that produces this complex personhood. Why would you think that because, because, there are persons in the universe, that the agent needs to be a person rather than a star. I would agree with the second point you made there.

It's not the claim, the idea here is not that, oh, anything that's instantiated in the universe, the cause of the universe must be that thing particularly. But on the first point, I would say the power to create composite things does not determine whether the creator is then composite versus simple. It has to do with that entity's metaphysical composition. And the fact that one could create composite things does not mean one itself is composite. Again, one can deny that there's a simple God. And lots of people do and say that's an incoherent concept, including many theists.

But that's the claim on the table. So to say, well, he's creating composite things, therefore he would have to be composite. I wouldn't agree with that inference. But I do, gosh, it would be fun if we could get to the moral argument too at some point here, but I don't want to redirect too abruptly. Oh yeah, sure, that would be fine. We have like eight minutes left if you think that's enough time, sure. Okay.

Well, I'd just be curious because this is an area where this one hits home at a very poignant level because when I've struggled with doubt and question my faith and things, I mean, I look down the road at that and I feel the consequences are pretty strong in terms of this whole area of morality. But I appreciate the fact that you affirm objective morality if I understand. Yep. And so I just love to learn. and a little more of your perspective on how you understand that and where what you think

grounds that and the way I could frame the question is seems to me that the moral law is different from physical laws in that it's prescriptive not just descriptive it says what things ought to do not just what they are and so I'm curious where does the on your view where does the physical universe generate this moral law where does the ought come from out of the is how do you understand that. I don't think there are any aughts in morality. I think morality is a law of physics just like gravity. It is essentially a fundamental nature in describing interactions in reality. And then we apply the aughts and the prescriptions based on our interpretation, just like we apply colors to a light spectrum. So just like in physics, the consensus in philosophy is that morality is objective.

Even most philosophers, 70% are atheists. And about 67% of philosophers believe in moral realism, objective morality. 15% are theists, very, very small numbers. It's not really, it's not something that's taken seriously, but the vast majority think, yeah, there's objective morality, even though they're all atheists. And there's lots of different theories of what that might be, but they don't, God isn't really one of the big ones, because it doesn't solve any of the problems or do anything in the field. Like the reason why the moral, I'm a moral naturalist is the version of morality I subscribe to. Moral naturalism. Yeah, I'm a moral naturalism is the view of morality I subscribe to.

You can find there's a page on the Stanford Encyclopedia philosophy about moral naturalism if you want to read more about it. The reason this is a better explanation than a God is because in the field of philosophy and ethics, there are very specific questions that you have to answer if you want to have a model of morality, Kind of like in physics, you have to answer what is the energy density of the microwave background radiation, what is the, how much energy is in the vacuum space. Like there are specific physical questions, and if you can't answer those questions, it's not a serious model in physics. The same thing applies to morality. You have to be able to answer, it has to correspond to our moral intuitions, it has to explain moral progress, it has to answer the moral dilemmas and the philosophical paradoxes. So it has to do those four things to even count as a serious model of objective morality.

And the God hypothesis doesn't do that. but there are lots of models that do do that. They're specifically designed in order to try and answer these questions. And that's why the naturalistic models are better here. I think it's, again, I think it's just a law of, an undiscovered law of physics. I don't think you need aughts. There are many models that don't have, that aughts are an emergent property of how humans interpret the law and aren't like fundamental there.

So I think that one of the best ways to explain it is that morality, it can't be changed. Like, we can't like just change it in any way we want, right? We can't just like, I'm going to change this. it's something that imposes on all of us that is not subjective. It's not contingent on opinions or things. And all commands, all laws that we know about that are human laws are all subjective. They can be changed. We can do whatever we want with them.

And so the evidence is that if morality is unchanging, the only other things that are unchanging are laws of physics. So it makes more sense that it's going to be more like a law of physics than a command because commands are all subjective necessarily, whereas laws of physics are unchanging, and that's what we see in objective morality that it's unchanging. It's a thing that's always there. So it makes more sense to say morality is like a law of physics than a command or a subjective

thing because those are changing. Okay. So I'm still, I don't, not fully tracking on why you said something about how there's not, you don't affirm oughts in morality. I mean, so as I look at things, the laws of physics describe what is, the laws of morality describe what we ought to do. Maybe you'd use different terminology there. Help me track with what, what do you think morality is, if not what we ought to do? Yeah, I think morality is a description of essentially what the best of all possible worlds would look like. It is the pinnacle

of perfection, more or less. No shoulds. The shoulds are something we apply to try and move towards that, but there isn't like a should anywhere in morality. It's just description of the best of all possible worlds, more or less. So ought we to pursue the best of all possible worlds? From our subjective perspective, yes, but that isn't contingent on the objective truth of the matter. So it's like morality is, is this moral? Yes. The a ought doesn't make a difference. You don't need an ought there.

Whether you add an ought anywhere in that statement is irrelevant. This is moral and this is immoral, independent of whether or not we ought to do or not do anything. Interesting. All right. Well, I probably need to chew on that a little more and try to wrap my brain around that. that's an interesting way to think. So would you say that the objective laws of morality are connected to anything physical? Yes.

I think it's a physical law just like gravity. There is a field. There is an actual moral field in the universe, like gravity, like a space-time field. Okay. Where, if anywhere, do you think it comes from? What is its ground? I think it's a part of the necessary fundamental laws of nature. So I think it is a part of the necessary thing.

Interesting. Okay. Well, it sounds as though we both curiously have points where we would agree on some kind of fundamental necessity, because if I understand correctly, you would agree that there's a fundamental necessity that operates with respect to the causation of the universe and the morality of the universe. So that's interesting. And I would, as I look at things, God is that. And to describe God as personal and as metaphysically simple actually is a superior way to think than some kind of impersonal necessity because anything short of that which is a necessary and simple being would itself need explanations to be working back in the chain of causation. But anyway, I'm just trying to summarize kind of where we agree and where we disagree, at least as I'm listening to you. Yeah, sure. I would totally agree with everything you said there. I would just think the difference is that in my view, the explanation of what reality is should be based off things that we can differentiate imagination from reality. So we need to be able to show that this category or idea that we've presented isn't just an imaginary thing that we've made up and it is correspondent to reality.

Whereas things like the definition of simple seem to be just something we've made up. There's no, that doesn't exist in physics. There's nothing that can correspond in that ontologically simple kind of a definition. There's no physical laws that instantiate that simplicity. and the personhood seems to be completely based on brains. We have no examples of any kind of consciousness outside of brains, and there's nothing in physics that would demand that some consciousness would actually exist. All of it is explained by purely physical forces.

Again, that's the consensus in all of physics and philosophy that the vast majority are naturalists and materialists. So it seems like the better explanation here of what caused the universe, what caused morality, is one that is a combination of things that can be demonstrated to not be imagined. And when you add in imaginary properties that have no evidence in the field, physics, philosophy, whichever field you want to go with, then that is a bad hypothesis. Like if I add unicorns to the field of physics, it's a bad theory.

So if you add anything that doesn't have any kind of referent to show it's not imaginary, then it's a bad theory, which is why I think a better explanation of the necessary thing and morality is a combination of principles, particles, and laws that we can demonstrate are not just imaginary things. Yeah. And I don't agree with the way you're summarizing the argument and the way it makes the inference to God because, well, we've already been sort of been through that. One quick thing is we're nearing the end of time. Did you say, if I hear you rightly, you said that the vast majority of philosophers are naturalists?

Yes. I would not agree with that. They're atheists, not naturalists. I would not agree with that either. I mean, depends on how vast. 70%. Oh, well, 70%. To you, 70% is vast majority?

I'd say that's just a slight majority. In the context of philosophy where they know when, like most disagreements in philosophy are usually split evenly like 30, 30, 30, 50, 50, 20, 2020, 2020. In one of the things they agree on most, more than anything else, like top five things they agree on most is atheism. Like that's like up there on a really high agreement thingy. And I'm using the Phil Surveys paper 2020 as the evidence for that one. I also have that paper saved if you want to look at it.

Yeah, yeah, I'll take a look because the figures I've seen are even different than the 70% figure, but I don't have off the top of my head a certain knowledge of that exact number. But still, I mean, one of the things that's interesting throughout the late 20th century is there is a resurgence of theism and academic philosophy. But anyway, I know we're near the end of time here. I really enjoyed this and we'd love to talk again some time. Next time I'll try to ask you more questions about your perspective, your arguments for your point of view. Yeah, absolutely. I posted the link to the Phil surveys in the chat if you want to check that. Thanks again for coming on.

I really appreciate you taking the time to have a conversation. Really enjoyed chatting with you. And I definitely love to talk again, especially more about the Jesus thing that we didn't get to go into as much. Okay, yeah. Hey, sounds great. Thanks a lot, Tom. Thanks.

Talk to you later. Bye. Okay. Bye-bye. You just close out of the screen if you want. That's fine. Okay. All right.

See you later. See you.