These are excellent videos. I really commend the creators of these high quality interviews delivered with excellent video and audio quality. These are real theological and philosophical discussions. So happy to see these on RUclips. I hope they help others think about these issues.
I dont think The Atheist Experience is supposed to be a good conversation. It's an enjoyable experience for atheists, who often speak with more rhetoric than logic and with great anger
Imagine offering any kind of intellectual respect to an "Experience" which does not provide any kind of argumentation apart from an attempt to mock rethorical.
In the last section the hypothesis is discussed as to whether "God" might be a Platonic non-personal principle of good, out of which the personal Christian God has emerged. Sarah Coakley responds that she disagrees (as would I, as a follower of Christ) but I wondered about her response. I thought that a strong point would have been that "good" is a quality that exists only in relation to personhood. I cannot think of any situation in which good (or evil) can occur in relation to nonpersonal entities. I can easily conceive of good as something that emerges out of personhood. But I find it difficult to conceive of the reverse. Am I missing something? As far as I'm aware, Plato doesn't see my question as a problem. Neither did Sarah Coakley mention it as a problem for that hypothesis. I'm puzzled by that.
Yes, so your question assumes this: saying an object is good is entirely different from saying a person's actions are good, like how "dog" can refer to a constellation or an animal. You seem to be familiar with theistic personalism which is defended by William Lane Craig and others like Alvin Plantinga. My problem with this idea is that it reduces goodness to something you can only prove by feelings, and can only barely put rational effort into. The Moral Argument put forth by common defenders of theistic personalism, if you notice, often argues extensively that we should trust our moral sense as a main premise. This is true, but Aquinas, Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, etc, would disagree that your moral sense is important to proving what is good and bad. In addition, while a sane person could say "this is good," a crazy person might feel the same way about murder, and then how are THEY supposed to act morally if their main mode of understanding what is good comes from their feelings? This all stems from a more modern system of thought that says "either things exist or they do not" where as a Scholastic thinker would say "things can exist to different degrees." In this second way, we see that good is actually interchangeable with "being" in relation to what it's ideal is (not in relation to a perfect Creator). Think about it this way, if evil is the absence of good, and God IS the good, and God is INFINITE then all things would be evil, because all things would lack vast amounts of good. (If God is infinitely loving, and humans are finitely loving, then there would be an infinite lack of goodness in comparison to God, like how 10000000 is infinitely far away from infinity) Humans could not be good even if they tried because they completely lack any possibility of, for example, loving the way God would love, which is the fullness of good (and again, evil is just a lack of good). So therefore the world is not really good under this new view, but for scholastics (like Aquinas and Augustine) good is how a person acts relative to their nature and their capabilities to act. So thus, under the Scholastic view, saying "that triangle is good" to a well-drawn triangle means relatively the same thing as saying "that act of helping your neighbour is good." The triangle is related to an ideal triangle and the human action is related to an ideal HUMAN action. This is the basics of Natural Law. As you maybe can tell, the scholastic philosophers were a lot more common sense and required fewer mental gymnastics (imo). Also, notice how the Moral argument requires you to believe that people and *GOD* hardly ever use the word "good" correctly because we use it in reference to objects and God used it in reference to the universe in Genesis 1, where in Natural Law just about everyone is always correct when they say "that's good"... and God is correct... which is important to being a Christian.
He is the founder and host of Closer To Truth. From which these videos are culled. There’s a website with a vast collection of these. Robert Lawrence Kuhn. He’s one of the best and arguably most gracious interviewers around. One of my favorite people in the public sphere.
Nonsense. Everything is made of atoms and yet we went how long before we had the tools to perceive it. Plenty is happening all the time everywhere that we cannot perceive.
It is obvious to everyone. Religion is the language of an experience and desire everyone has. If you don’t know the concepts then you will have others to fill in, inadequate to the task, but it’s still god that you seek. You seek truth, goodness, love, as such. Not simply one example of those things, but deeper and deeper. That’s what god is by definition. The source. Same thing.
These are excellent videos. I really commend the creators of these high quality interviews delivered with excellent video and audio quality. These are real theological and philosophical discussions. So happy to see these on RUclips. I hope they help others think about these issues.
I agree
This is better than the conversations taking place on The Atheist Experience.
I dont think The Atheist Experience is supposed to be a good conversation. It's an enjoyable experience for atheists, who often speak with more rhetoric than logic and with great anger
That’s not saying much
Imagine offering any kind of intellectual respect to an "Experience" which does not provide any kind of argumentation apart from an attempt to mock rethorical.
@@davidlara993 imagine Jehovah picking you up by the scruff of your neck and drop-kicking your arse into Hell!
@@Autobotmatt428 I don't find many of the apologists all that good. I did, however, enjoy Penrose and Craig and Blackmore and Peterson.
She's amazing
She's my boo
I think she is the best guest Robert has ever had.
She is so dam smart!
This is quite fascinating. Coakley is a fine and quite gracious thinker.
3:55 "For me, a really st... (shouldn't put it so bluntly) insuperable"
In the last section the hypothesis is discussed as to whether "God" might be a Platonic non-personal principle of good, out of which the personal Christian God has emerged. Sarah Coakley responds that she disagrees (as would I, as a follower of Christ) but I wondered about her response. I thought that a strong point would have been that "good" is a quality that exists only in relation to personhood. I cannot think of any situation in which good (or evil) can occur in relation to nonpersonal entities. I can easily conceive of good as something that emerges out of personhood. But I find it difficult to conceive of the reverse. Am I missing something? As far as I'm aware, Plato doesn't see my question as a problem. Neither did Sarah Coakley mention it as a problem for that hypothesis. I'm puzzled by that.
Um Wow. It gives me great joy to come across a question that i absolutely dont understand.
An excellent question, and one I'd love to hear discussed by Coakley.
I agree, Conrad. Funnily enough I think the sceptic interviewer puts her right !
Yes, so your question assumes this: saying an object is good is entirely different from saying a person's actions are good, like how "dog" can refer to a constellation or an animal.
You seem to be familiar with theistic personalism which is defended by William Lane Craig and others like Alvin Plantinga. My problem with this idea is that it reduces goodness to something you can only prove by feelings, and can only barely put rational effort into. The Moral Argument put forth by common defenders of theistic personalism, if you notice, often argues extensively that we should trust our moral sense as a main premise. This is true, but Aquinas, Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, etc, would disagree that your moral sense is important to proving what is good and bad. In addition, while a sane person could say "this is good," a crazy person might feel the same way about murder, and then how are THEY supposed to act morally if their main mode of understanding what is good comes from their feelings?
This all stems from a more modern system of thought that says "either things exist or they do not" where as a Scholastic thinker would say "things can exist to different degrees." In this second way, we see that good is actually interchangeable with "being" in relation to what it's ideal is (not in relation to a perfect Creator). Think about it this way, if evil is the absence of good, and God IS the good, and God is INFINITE then all things would be evil, because all things would lack vast amounts of good. (If God is infinitely loving, and humans are finitely loving, then there would be an infinite lack of goodness in comparison to God, like how 10000000 is infinitely far away from infinity) Humans could not be good even if they tried because they completely lack any possibility of, for example, loving the way God would love, which is the fullness of good (and again, evil is just a lack of good). So therefore the world is not really good under this new view, but for scholastics (like Aquinas and Augustine) good is how a person acts relative to their nature and their capabilities to act. So thus, under the Scholastic view, saying "that triangle is good" to a well-drawn triangle means relatively the same thing as saying "that act of helping your neighbour is good." The triangle is related to an ideal triangle and the human action is related to an ideal HUMAN action.
This is the basics of Natural Law. As you maybe can tell, the scholastic philosophers were a lot more common sense and required fewer mental gymnastics (imo). Also, notice how the Moral argument requires you to believe that people and *GOD* hardly ever use the word "good" correctly because we use it in reference to objects and God used it in reference to the universe in Genesis 1, where in Natural Law just about everyone is always correct when they say "that's good"... and God is correct... which is important to being a Christian.
Good stuff!!!
For humans , God is within you,maybe not without.
I would like to hear her opinion of Advaita Vedanta.
sarah coakley...more like sarah well-spoak-ley
Okay... I am glad, as a married man, that I never met her in person. I would have likely fallen in love immediately...
Lol
I'm a lesbian and I'm VERY in love with her. She's so smart and cool.
I see Prime Minister Theresa May and Sarah must be from the same part of England. They both have similar accents and facial expressions.
It has more to do with age, class and education than with geography.
Who is the guy? I see him everywhere.
He is the founder and host of Closer To Truth. From which these videos are culled. There’s a website with a vast collection of these. Robert Lawrence Kuhn. He’s one of the best and arguably most gracious interviewers around. One of my favorite people in the public sphere.
"Shot thru with god"if that were true it would be obvious to everyone, which it most definitely isn't.
Nonsense.
Everything is made of atoms and yet we went how long before we had the tools to perceive it.
Plenty is happening all the time everywhere that we cannot perceive.
It is obvious to everyone. Religion is the language of an experience and desire everyone has. If you don’t know the concepts then you will have others to fill in, inadequate to the task, but it’s still god that you seek. You seek truth, goodness, love, as such. Not simply one example of those things, but deeper and deeper. That’s what god is by definition. The source. Same thing.