Hey, Miles. I just discovered your channel today. This was one of the best interviews of Oppy that I've seen. Thank you. You're asking questions and pushing back in ways that I wished many of his other interviewers had done. I'm a theist, but at the end of the day, I think the fine-tuning argument succumbs to the "so what?" objection. Interestingly, Oppy includes this as more or less a side note to start things off. I don't think the fine-tuning argument gets off the ground without strong background assumptions related to the evidence that life itself is supposed to provide in favor of the existence for God; so, I wind up thinking that fine-tuning needs a side-car to balance it, e.g. with whatever is supposed to support the claim that human life makes God's existence more probable. (As a side note, it was terribly annoying reading some of the comments you received here. Sartre was right about hell, haha. Just kidding.)
Hi Anthony! Thank you for your encouraging words, I appreciate it. What is the 'so what?' objection? I'm curious. What background assumptions are you thinking of here?
@@mileskdonahue75 Suppose you make a valid argument that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of life. The hypothetical objection goes: "Yeah, so what?" You have to be able to infer a connection between the physical parameters and the emergence of life such that this makes the existence of God more likely. The background assumption therefore has to involve a claim like: "Life makes the existence of God likelier because R", and moreover, we could not justifiably give R as a reason in a different case, e.g., "Stars make the existence of God likelier because R." Oppy touches on this early on when he asks: "Could God not have specified the physical parameters of the universe with the intention of producing stars (but not necessarily life)?" The idea is that without assuming an intentional state for an intelligent designer that takes human life as its object, then the universe could have been fine-tuned for anything that actually exists (i.e., stars) while biological life was an accidental outcome of that fine-tuning. If, on the other hand, the fine-tuning argument is going to reduce to a mere probabilistic one, where we say *this particular configuration* is objectively so unlikely that it requires a supernatural explanation, then this really has nothing to do with the existence of life anymore. If all we are saying is "unlikely configuration", then it can be asked: based on what? Without tying the "tuning" to the existence of human life, the claim is weakened to a probability claim about the configuration itself, but we have no reference class. We have no idea whether the value taken by each constant represents an independent event, or if they are dependent, or if they are necessary. We'd need to know something about the distribution of other universes, if there are any. And a priori, I'm not convinced that this is analogous to a situation like the Monty Hall problem or the Sleeping Beauty problem (both of which only feature an evidential update if the players have information that, in our case, is completely lacking). I apologize for the length of this answer.
If torturing someone for fun doesn’t represent perfect morality, then why god does it? Terminal diseases are torture for those suffering from them and their loved ones, why is the reason god put them through that instead of just a non painful way of passing away? Medical science came up with non painful death methods, that god couldn’t? Disease existed long before humans, so this isn’t a result of modern human activity.
The constants are either fixed at natural existence, or they're fixed at God. Remember, God is eternal/timeless (functionally the same for this context), so neither god, nor anything external, had a say in what kind of God we find ourselves living under. If the theist complains that the natural state could have gave us an infinite number of possible physical constants, the atheist can similarly complain that god' could have been infinitely varied. On the necessity hypothesis, both theories bottom out in terms of explanatory virtue. The fine tuning argument for theism assumes both that the universe is fine tuned specifically for life, and that there was a libertarian choice made by a god who was pre-programmed to desire to create life permitting universes. Therefore, the theist is just postulating one additional necessity to explain a later necessity. That adds an additional commitment to theism. Am I missing something?
Hey Miles. I’m a fan of Oppy but you nailed it with the Nicene creed question. His explanation for it seems off. However, as long as it is possible for naturalistic processes to create a formation of stars that spell that out (I.e. probability > 0), I think it is still preferable to pick naturalism despite the presumably absurdly low probability. This is because a low probability event is not enough to rule it out. One has to demonstrate that an alternative is more probable. And there’s some good arguments that may be employed to show that nothing can be more improbable than God’s very existence. His very existence is a sort of event that is comparable to, if not more improbable, than the stars forming nicene creed. We just seem to implicitly and intuitively grant that the existence of a god like agent is apriori more probable than events such as the nicene creed one you mentioned. But why think this?
Just think, Miles, you could have been a believer in some other religion if you had been born somewhere else in the world, raised by parents of a different belief system. We don't choose our religious beliefs. We are raised into them. It's not like our parents sit us down when about 3 or 4 years and say, "Okay now, here are a dozen of the world's religions and their beliefs. Tell us which one you want us to raise you in."
We certainly choose to remain in our religious beliefs or not, as many deconversion accounts will testify to. So, whatever beliefs I now have are ones that I am responsible for having, at least in some sense. Of course, as with any beliefs, religious or otherwise, we only "choose" them indirectly, by choosing to apprise ourselves of the relevant evidence or not, attempt objective reflection on that evidence or not, etc. But that point applies to all beliefs whatsoever that we hold to.
@@mileskdonahue75 But very few people brought up in a religious belief even consider that "choosing" is even an option. Being surrounded constantly by voices reinforcing those beliefs can have a very strong effect on eliminating such thoughts. If we could support our beliefs with evidence, real evidence, there would only be one religion and faith would not be required.
I don't agree that if "we could support our beliefs with evidence...there would only be one religion and faith." That would only follow if the evidence was so powerful that the right inference to draw was obvious and undeniable (say, in a mathematical proof of some theorem). But just because we don't have that level of evidence doesn't mean we don't have lesser degrees of evidential support for religious belief. The situation is analogous to philosophy as a whole; in general, philosophers try to objectively support their beliefs with careful critical reflection and analysis ('evidence,' broadly construed), but they come to differing conclusions all the time - and that latter fact does nothing to suggest that it's all just preference and subjectivity. The same, I think, can often go for religious belief. Not all the time, but some of the time. And what of all the religious people who never attempt to really think through their worldview objectively and just mindlessly adopt the religion of their childhood? Well, all the worse for them! Their life choices do nothing to suggest that living a different kind of religious life is impossible, or that religious belief in general is false or unjustified.
@@mileskdonahue75 But don't you see the problem? You are arguing in favor of a particular religious view, yet your view would very likely be completely different if you had been raised differently. It's natural to think that _our_ religious views are the correct ones and the others have it all wrong. I remember reading about a survey done years ago in a Christian college. Students were asked something along the lines of "Why do you suppose some people in the world have different religious beliefs?" and their answers were logical and reasonable: "They were raised with such beliefs" etc. But then when they were asked "Why do YOU believe what you believe?" their answers became, "Because it is the Word of God written in Scripture!" etc. In other words, they could see the explanation in others but not themselves.
Sorry to bombard you with comments. That move with the Platonic abstracta to get Oppy to acknowledge the coherence of a truth-maker view of fundamentality was great. 👌
At 15:40 Oppy says that stars spelling out the nicene creed are not a fixed property of the universe, unlike the laws of physics which are (or became at some point in the past) fixed. I think your awesome theistic argument would be immune to his objection if instead of stars spelling out the nicene creed you had, for example, every fundamental particle coming with a label spelling out the nicene creed. Even if we created new particles in a collider, they would also appear with the label. Obviously, the fundamental particles in our universe do not come with any observable labels, but if they did, then you'd have a perfect analogy, since those labels would be a fundamental law of nature. I wonder what Oppy would say to that sort of scenario...
@@mileskdonahue75 yes, and I think that a strengthened version of an awesome cosmological argument which puts the nicene creed directly into the fundamental laws of physics can help demonstrate that he would have to simply state "it is a brute necessity that a nicene creed appears on fundamental particles". And I think this shows that stating "once you've reached necessity, there is nothing more to explain" is a cop-out. To me, the question really is: what credence do atheism and theism assign to the nicene creed appearing on fundamental particles? This is much much less expected on atheism, so we could say this evidence would disprove atheism relative to theism. Remember also, that Oppy defended elsewhere a view that the causal history of the universe can be traced back to an "Original Necessary Item", which isn't too far from theism. If he were to trace the origin of the law of nicene creed on fundamental particles to this Original Necessary Item, then it seems to me that he ought to identify this Item with God. If he somehow argues his way out of making this identification by some esoteric contrual of what constitutes simplicity or by appeals to "brute neccesity is the end of explanation", then his argument must be deeply flawed and is just a trick of some sort rather than a satisfying position.
@@mileskdonahue75 Perhaps I agree with Oppy that ultimately it will be a matter of personal judgement, but I somehow feel like I find brute contingencies much simpler than brute necessities. I feel like an explanation "this thing happened as a result of brute contingency i.e. it could have happened but it didn't have to have happened" is a far more modest than saying "this thing happened out of brute necessity i.e. it not only happened because it could have happened, but also it could not have happened otherwise". I feel like most people in everyday situations would find the latter type of statements epistemically more difficult to make, because you not only need to prove possibility but also necessity. As far as epistemic statements go, this is uncontroversial. "Possible" is always more modest than "necessary". The question really is about whether this transfers to ontological statements. It would seem Oppy disagrees that it does. I think I agree, but ultimately I think it doesn't matter, because I think our minds are completely bound to the epistemic realm. Even when we talk about necessary truths, we almost always consider our own cognitive weaknesses, which leads us to assign non-binary credences. For example, if you ask someone on the street "is the number 27464737 divisible by 7, they will say 'maybe', and someone else could comment "there is 1/7 chance that it is". But obviously ontoligically, there is no "maybe" or "chance" here. That number is not divisible by seven and that fact is necessary. It serves to illustrate that our minds always by default resort to epistemic thinking. We can't escape it. Ultimately, we fundamentally operate on emotions such as "surprise" (when we expected a wide range of possibilities, but a very narrow outcome happened, this leads to feelings of positive reward whose ultimate role is to narrow our range of expectations, leading to high confidence) and "disappointment" (which occurs when something occurred outside of our narrow range of expectations, which leads to negative reward, whose role is to widen our range of expectations which can lead to anxiety if we have to widen it so much that we become overwhelmed). And we always will think emotionally. That doesn't mean we are irrational. These emotions are perfectly rational as far as optimal learning strategies go (you widen an narrow your expectations appropriately to the observed outcomes and eventually your expectations match the true range of possibilities. That's a state of competence). They are, however, completely tied to the epistemic realm. Which is why I think the real question should be "is fine-tuning more surprising on atheism than on theism?" the answer is "yes" (no matter what your modal theory is). Therefore, a rational seeker should decrease their credence/confidence in atheism and increase their credence/confidence in theism. I think I cannot adopt Oppy's preference for brute necessities without going into so much cognitive dissonance with epistemic way of thinking about everything.
Exactly how does someone become the world’s “leading” atheist? Who is the world’s “leading Christian”? The title alone shows a complete lack of comprehension of what atheism is, as well as a profound level of philosophical ignorance. It may however prove useful in getting clicks/views, so there is that.
I think what would be a better descirption of Oppy is that he is currently quite popular and has good arguments, even William Lane Craig says he is "scary smart" and ranks him among the most formidable atheists in terms of debating skills.
Yeah, how can you be a "leader" of not being convinced of there being a God? Maybe he is a leader of being able to explain why a Gods existence is not a likely proposition.
@@fredroberts8275that still doesn’t answer the question. So, who’s the world’s leading theist? Who’s the world’s leading vegan? I can think of quite a few famous atheists, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais… just of those three, who’s ranked higher? Because I guess they’re all second rate compared to this guy, but now I really wanna know who’s number two! Please explain!
I have always struggled with Oppy's view of necessity. He wants to say necessary X means "~X is impossible" and "X is inexplicable". I agree with the first, but I am very skeptical about the second claim. It seems to me that something can be necessary for a reason. To your point, Miles, if God creates a fine-tuned universe necessarily, it still seems like it is possible to explain the universe according to God, else I am going to find it hard to understand what the distinction is between God and anything God causes to be the case. Also, there was a notion the Scholastics had, a distinction between absolute and suppositional necessity. Aquinas says the world is suppositionally necessary, not absolutely necessary, and only God is absolutely necessary. The idea goes something like: a posteriori, if the universe is actual, and the universe is created by God, then the universe is necessary (but a priori the universe is not necessary). Cheers.
I think you've captured the point I was making as well: clearly some state of affairs can obtain necessarily but still admit of an explanation for why it obtains. Moral facts are one, and fine-tuning facts could easily be another. And I don't think Oppy successfully demonstrated otherwise.
Secondly, if God created the universe in such a way that the stars spelled out the Nicene creed, that would mean God himself would have attributes built in or fine tuned to result in that scenario. But why prefer that over simply assuming that there is a naturalistic scenario fine tuned to create that star formation? It’s fine tuning either way but the latter is simpler. All of these examples seem counter intuitive only because in the natural course of events, when we infer design, we always have apriori evidence that those agents already exist (such as humans, etc). Without this evidence, we cannot apply our common sense intuitions. We don’t already know apriori that any agents exist except humans and other animals
I agree on a theoretical level that if theism were less intrinsically probable than the likelihood of the stars all spelling out, "God exists," through random quantum fluctuations (the naturalistic hypothesis), then we would not be justified in inferring theism even in the face of awesome theistic evidence. But why think theism is so disastrously improbable? I don't see why we should think that if God fine-tuned the universe, then "God himself would have attributes built in or fine-tuned to result in that scenario." Why think that? More fundamentally, would does it even mean to say that some feature of God is "fine-tuned"? Indeed, if one can have a model of the multiverse that explains fine-tuning but is not itself finely tuned, then it follows automatically that it is possible for a hypothesis to explain something exceedingly improbable without itself being highly improbable. Why not God? It would then fall to you to give us a reason to think that in God's case, unlike a multiverse, He would have to be just as improbable/fine-tuned as universe He was called upon to explain. But I don't see any reason to think that.
@@mileskdonahue75 but the burden is on the theist to show that God’s existence (note: not God’s life creating motives) is not intrinsically/disastrously improbable. Note that what we’re interested in is the probability of God existing AND God deciding to create that particular star formation. The combined probability of this can easily be seen to be very improbable especially given the complexity of God. What’s more complex? A computer program trying to emulate god and all His actions, or a program fine tuning the universe to create the Nicene creed? We’re talking about a Being who knows everything and can do anything. Once phrased in this way, the latter seems less complex
@@mileskdonahue75 secondly, your response seems to implicitly accept that the multiverse is somehow not improbable either. Why think that? Just because one can’t think of obvious ways to fine tune a certain thing, doesn’t mean it’s not improbable. One can imagine an infinite number of other logically possible “realities”, no matter what reality we’re looking at. It’s part of the reason why the very definition of probability is subjective and open to interpretation. You can always choose your sample space.
Since atheism isn't an organized religion, there is no world leader of it, so I'd love for you to explain how Dr Graham Oppy was able to convince you of that fact.
Could be because Graham Oppy is a merited analytical philosopher known for his interests in philosophical arguments on the existence of god. Also makes a short and sweet video title.
Great convo
I am loving your interviews! There are lots of channel similar but your way to handle the conversations is really nice. Thank you!
Thank you for the encouragement! Much appreciated.
Hey, Miles. I just discovered your channel today. This was one of the best interviews of Oppy that I've seen. Thank you. You're asking questions and pushing back in ways that I wished many of his other interviewers had done. I'm a theist, but at the end of the day, I think the fine-tuning argument succumbs to the "so what?" objection. Interestingly, Oppy includes this as more or less a side note to start things off. I don't think the fine-tuning argument gets off the ground without strong background assumptions related to the evidence that life itself is supposed to provide in favor of the existence for God; so, I wind up thinking that fine-tuning needs a side-car to balance it, e.g. with whatever is supposed to support the claim that human life makes God's existence more probable. (As a side note, it was terribly annoying reading some of the comments you received here. Sartre was right about hell, haha. Just kidding.)
Hi Anthony! Thank you for your encouraging words, I appreciate it. What is the 'so what?' objection? I'm curious. What background assumptions are you thinking of here?
@@mileskdonahue75 Suppose you make a valid argument that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of life. The hypothetical objection goes: "Yeah, so what?" You have to be able to infer a connection between the physical parameters and the emergence of life such that this makes the existence of God more likely. The background assumption therefore has to involve a claim like: "Life makes the existence of God likelier because R", and moreover, we could not justifiably give R as a reason in a different case, e.g., "Stars make the existence of God likelier because R." Oppy touches on this early on when he asks: "Could God not have specified the physical parameters of the universe with the intention of producing stars (but not necessarily life)?"
The idea is that without assuming an intentional state for an intelligent designer that takes human life as its object, then the universe could have been fine-tuned for anything that actually exists (i.e., stars) while biological life was an accidental outcome of that fine-tuning. If, on the other hand, the fine-tuning argument is going to reduce to a mere probabilistic one, where we say *this particular configuration* is objectively so unlikely that it requires a supernatural explanation, then this really has nothing to do with the existence of life anymore.
If all we are saying is "unlikely configuration", then it can be asked: based on what? Without tying the "tuning" to the existence of human life, the claim is weakened to a probability claim about the configuration itself, but we have no reference class. We have no idea whether the value taken by each constant represents an independent event, or if they are dependent, or if they are necessary. We'd need to know something about the distribution of other universes, if there are any. And a priori, I'm not convinced that this is analogous to a situation like the Monty Hall problem or the Sleeping Beauty problem (both of which only feature an evidential update if the players have information that, in our case, is completely lacking). I apologize for the length of this answer.
If torturing someone for fun doesn’t represent perfect morality, then why god does it? Terminal diseases are torture for those suffering from them and their loved ones, why is the reason god put them through that instead of just a non painful way of passing away? Medical science came up with non painful death methods, that god couldn’t? Disease existed long before humans, so this isn’t a result of modern human activity.
The constants are either fixed at natural existence, or they're fixed at God. Remember, God is eternal/timeless (functionally the same for this context), so neither god, nor anything external, had a say in what kind of God we find ourselves living under. If the theist complains that the natural state could have gave us an infinite number of possible physical constants, the atheist can similarly complain that god' could have been infinitely varied. On the necessity hypothesis, both theories bottom out in terms of explanatory virtue. The fine tuning argument for theism assumes both that the universe is fine tuned specifically for life, and that there was a libertarian choice made by a god who was pre-programmed to desire to create life permitting universes. Therefore, the theist is just postulating one additional necessity to explain a later necessity. That adds an additional commitment to theism. Am I missing something?
Hey Miles. I’m a fan of Oppy but you nailed it with the Nicene creed question. His explanation for it seems off. However, as long as it is possible for naturalistic processes to create a formation of stars that spell that out (I.e. probability > 0), I think it is still preferable to pick naturalism despite the presumably absurdly low probability. This is because a low probability event is not enough to rule it out. One has to demonstrate that an alternative is more probable. And there’s some good arguments that may be employed to show that nothing can be more improbable than God’s very existence. His very existence is a sort of event that is comparable to, if not more improbable, than the stars forming nicene creed. We just seem to implicitly and intuitively grant that the existence of a god like agent is apriori more probable than events such as the nicene creed one you mentioned. But why think this?
Just think, Miles, you could have been a believer in some other religion if you had been born somewhere else in the world, raised by parents of a different belief system. We don't choose our religious beliefs. We are raised into them. It's not like our parents sit us down when about 3 or 4 years and say, "Okay now, here are a dozen of the world's religions and their beliefs. Tell us which one you want us to raise you in."
We certainly choose to remain in our religious beliefs or not, as many deconversion accounts will testify to. So, whatever beliefs I now have are ones that I am responsible for having, at least in some sense. Of course, as with any beliefs, religious or otherwise, we only "choose" them indirectly, by choosing to apprise ourselves of the relevant evidence or not, attempt objective reflection on that evidence or not, etc. But that point applies to all beliefs whatsoever that we hold to.
That's true about atheism too. Those who are born in atheistic societies are more likely to be atheists. So that argument is not special or decisive.
@@mileskdonahue75 But very few people brought up in a religious belief even consider that "choosing" is even an option. Being surrounded constantly by voices reinforcing those beliefs can have a very strong effect on eliminating such thoughts. If we could support our beliefs with evidence, real evidence, there would only be one religion and faith would not be required.
I don't agree that if "we could support our beliefs with evidence...there would only be one religion and faith." That would only follow if the evidence was so powerful that the right inference to draw was obvious and undeniable (say, in a mathematical proof of some theorem). But just because we don't have that level of evidence doesn't mean we don't have lesser degrees of evidential support for religious belief. The situation is analogous to philosophy as a whole; in general, philosophers try to objectively support their beliefs with careful critical reflection and analysis ('evidence,' broadly construed), but they come to differing conclusions all the time - and that latter fact does nothing to suggest that it's all just preference and subjectivity. The same, I think, can often go for religious belief. Not all the time, but some of the time. And what of all the religious people who never attempt to really think through their worldview objectively and just mindlessly adopt the religion of their childhood? Well, all the worse for them! Their life choices do nothing to suggest that living a different kind of religious life is impossible, or that religious belief in general is false or unjustified.
@@mileskdonahue75 But don't you see the problem? You are arguing in favor of a particular religious view, yet your view would very likely be completely different if you had been raised differently. It's natural to think that _our_ religious views are the correct ones and the others have it all wrong. I remember reading about a survey done years ago in a Christian college. Students were asked something along the lines of "Why do you suppose some people in the world have different religious beliefs?" and their answers were logical and reasonable: "They were raised with such beliefs" etc. But then when they were asked "Why do YOU believe what you believe?" their answers became, "Because it is the Word of God written in Scripture!" etc. In other words, they could see the explanation in others but not themselves.
Sorry to bombard you with comments. That move with the Platonic abstracta to get Oppy to acknowledge the coherence of a truth-maker view of fundamentality was great. 👌
At 15:40 Oppy says that stars spelling out the nicene creed are not a fixed property of the universe, unlike the laws of physics which are (or became at some point in the past) fixed.
I think your awesome theistic argument would be immune to his objection if instead of stars spelling out the nicene creed you had, for example, every fundamental particle coming with a label spelling out the nicene creed. Even if we created new particles in a collider, they would also appear with the label. Obviously, the fundamental particles in our universe do not come with any observable labels, but if they did, then you'd have a perfect analogy, since those labels would be a fundamental law of nature.
I wonder what Oppy would say to that sort of scenario...
I think you're quite right, that's a good point. I do still think that Oppy's objection is guilty of overkill, but I'll need to reflect on it more.
@@mileskdonahue75 yes, and I think that a strengthened version of an awesome cosmological argument which puts the nicene creed directly into the fundamental laws of physics can help demonstrate that he would have to simply state "it is a brute necessity that a nicene creed appears on fundamental particles". And I think this shows that stating "once you've reached necessity, there is nothing more to explain" is a cop-out.
To me, the question really is: what credence do atheism and theism assign to the nicene creed appearing on fundamental particles? This is much much less expected on atheism, so we could say this evidence would disprove atheism relative to theism.
Remember also, that Oppy defended elsewhere a view that the causal history of the universe can be traced back to an "Original Necessary Item", which isn't too far from theism. If he were to trace the origin of the law of nicene creed on fundamental particles to this Original Necessary Item, then it seems to me that he ought to identify this Item with God. If he somehow argues his way out of making this identification by some esoteric contrual of what constitutes simplicity or by appeals to "brute neccesity is the end of explanation", then his argument must be deeply flawed and is just a trick of some sort rather than a satisfying position.
@@tymmiara5967 Hear, hear! This is a quality analysis.
@@mileskdonahue75 Perhaps I agree with Oppy that ultimately it will be a matter of personal judgement, but I somehow feel like I find brute contingencies much simpler than brute necessities.
I feel like an explanation "this thing happened as a result of brute contingency i.e. it could have happened but it didn't have to have happened" is a far more modest than saying "this thing happened out of brute necessity i.e. it not only happened because it could have happened, but also it could not have happened otherwise".
I feel like most people in everyday situations would find the latter type of statements epistemically more difficult to make, because you not only need to prove possibility but also necessity.
As far as epistemic statements go, this is uncontroversial. "Possible" is always more modest than "necessary".
The question really is about whether this transfers to ontological statements. It would seem Oppy disagrees that it does.
I think I agree, but ultimately I think it doesn't matter, because I think our minds are completely bound to the epistemic realm. Even when we talk about necessary truths, we almost always consider our own cognitive weaknesses, which leads us to assign non-binary credences.
For example, if you ask someone on the street "is the number 27464737 divisible by 7, they will say 'maybe', and someone else could comment "there is 1/7 chance that it is". But obviously ontoligically, there is no "maybe" or "chance" here. That number is not divisible by seven and that fact is necessary. It serves to illustrate that our minds always by default resort to epistemic thinking. We can't escape it.
Ultimately, we fundamentally operate on emotions such as "surprise" (when we expected a wide range of possibilities, but a very narrow outcome happened, this leads to feelings of positive reward whose ultimate role is to narrow our range of expectations, leading to high confidence) and "disappointment" (which occurs when something occurred outside of our narrow range of expectations, which leads to negative reward, whose role is to widen our range of expectations which can lead to anxiety if we have to widen it so much that we become overwhelmed).
And we always will think emotionally. That doesn't mean we are irrational. These emotions are perfectly rational as far as optimal learning strategies go (you widen an narrow your expectations appropriately to the observed outcomes and eventually your expectations match the true range of possibilities. That's a state of competence). They are, however, completely tied to the epistemic realm.
Which is why I think the real question should be "is fine-tuning more surprising on atheism than on theism?" the answer is "yes" (no matter what your modal theory is). Therefore, a rational seeker should decrease their credence/confidence in atheism and increase their credence/confidence in theism.
I think I cannot adopt Oppy's preference for brute necessities without going into so much cognitive dissonance with epistemic way of thinking about everything.
Why do we have a bottom-up view of Dr. Graham Oppy? 😅😅
Exactly how does someone become the world’s “leading” atheist? Who is the world’s “leading Christian”?
The title alone shows a complete lack of comprehension of what atheism is, as well as a profound level of philosophical ignorance.
It may however prove useful in getting clicks/views, so there is that.
I think what would be a better descirption of Oppy is that he is currently quite popular and has good arguments, even William Lane Craig says he is "scary smart" and ranks him among the most formidable atheists in terms of debating skills.
Yeah, how can you be a "leader" of not being convinced of there being a God? Maybe he is a leader of being able to explain why a Gods existence is not a likely proposition.
By being one of the most notable and important philosophers of religion currently operating and with massive influence on various arguments?
This is the one haha
@@fredroberts8275that still doesn’t answer the question. So, who’s the world’s leading theist? Who’s the world’s leading vegan?
I can think of quite a few famous atheists, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais… just of those three, who’s ranked higher? Because I guess they’re all second rate compared to this guy, but now I really wanna know who’s number two! Please explain!
I have always struggled with Oppy's view of necessity. He wants to say necessary X means "~X is impossible" and "X is inexplicable". I agree with the first, but I am very skeptical about the second claim. It seems to me that something can be necessary for a reason. To your point, Miles, if God creates a fine-tuned universe necessarily, it still seems like it is possible to explain the universe according to God, else I am going to find it hard to understand what the distinction is between God and anything God causes to be the case. Also, there was a notion the Scholastics had, a distinction between absolute and suppositional necessity. Aquinas says the world is suppositionally necessary, not absolutely necessary, and only God is absolutely necessary. The idea goes something like: a posteriori, if the universe is actual, and the universe is created by God, then the universe is necessary (but a priori the universe is not necessary). Cheers.
I think you've captured the point I was making as well: clearly some state of affairs can obtain necessarily but still admit of an explanation for why it obtains. Moral facts are one, and fine-tuning facts could easily be another. And I don't think Oppy successfully demonstrated otherwise.
Secondly, if God created the universe in such a way that the stars spelled out the Nicene creed, that would mean God himself would have attributes built in or fine tuned to result in that scenario. But why prefer that over simply assuming that there is a naturalistic scenario fine tuned to create that star formation? It’s fine tuning either way but the latter is simpler. All of these examples seem counter intuitive only because in the natural course of events, when we infer design, we always have apriori evidence that those agents already exist (such as humans, etc). Without this evidence, we cannot apply our common sense intuitions. We don’t already know apriori that any agents exist except humans and other animals
I agree on a theoretical level that if theism were less intrinsically probable than the likelihood of the stars all spelling out, "God exists," through random quantum fluctuations (the naturalistic hypothesis), then we would not be justified in inferring theism even in the face of awesome theistic evidence. But why think theism is so disastrously improbable? I don't see why we should think that if God fine-tuned the universe, then "God himself would have attributes built in or fine-tuned to result in that scenario." Why think that? More fundamentally, would does it even mean to say that some feature of God is "fine-tuned"? Indeed, if one can have a model of the multiverse that explains fine-tuning but is not itself finely tuned, then it follows automatically that it is possible for a hypothesis to explain something exceedingly improbable without itself being highly improbable. Why not God? It would then fall to you to give us a reason to think that in God's case, unlike a multiverse, He would have to be just as improbable/fine-tuned as universe He was called upon to explain. But I don't see any reason to think that.
@@mileskdonahue75 but the burden is on the theist to show that God’s existence (note: not God’s life creating motives) is not intrinsically/disastrously improbable. Note that what we’re interested in is the probability of God existing AND God deciding to create that particular star formation. The combined probability of this can easily be seen to be very improbable especially given the complexity of God. What’s more complex? A computer program trying to emulate god and all His actions, or a program fine tuning the universe to create the Nicene creed? We’re talking about a Being who knows everything and can do anything. Once phrased in this way, the latter seems less complex
@@mileskdonahue75 secondly, your response seems to implicitly accept that the multiverse is somehow not improbable either. Why think that? Just because one can’t think of obvious ways to fine tune a certain thing, doesn’t mean it’s not improbable. One can imagine an infinite number of other logically possible “realities”, no matter what reality we’re looking at. It’s part of the reason why the very definition of probability is subjective and open to interpretation. You can always choose your sample space.
Since atheism isn't an organized religion, there is no world leader of it, so I'd love for you to explain how Dr Graham Oppy was able to convince you of that fact.
academia's leading doesn't mean he is a leader of any sort it simply means he's well respected in academic circles
Could be because Graham Oppy is a merited analytical philosopher known for his interests in philosophical arguments on the existence of god.
Also makes a short and sweet video title.
World leading atheist?😂 cool discussion though
Yeah, he believes in God even less than ME! LOL.
My bad 😅