Is There A God? A Debate: Graham Oppy and Kenny Pearce
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- Graham Oppy and Kenny Pearce discuss their co-authored debate book, Is There a God?:
www.routledge....
It's part of the Little Debates About Big Questions series, which I co-edit with Tyron Goldschmidt:
www.routledge....
Oppy defends atheism, while Pearce defends theism.
My website: dustincrummett.com
Twitter: / dustin_crummett
Patreon: patreon.com/dustincrummett
Paypal: paypal.me/dust...
My co-authored applied ethics book: www.amazon.com...
This is great. Book purchased. Thanks for hosting. It's always a pleasure to watch Graham Oppy work. This was my first time seeing Kenny Pearce, very sharp guy. Excited to check out the book.
This was great to listen to thanks for hosting!
Wish the host would sit still he looks a nervous wreck
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! A discussion after they did their book together.
I thank Oppy for formalizing this worldview-making picture of the God Debate. While I am persuaded by arguments against god's existence as it stands, it's important to look at why arguments For God's existence fail. And Oppy's picture really does help in this project. I think some of the pointed questions Oppy has asked Pearce here illustrate how positing God makes things more complicated and a tad contradictory, listening to Pearce's response to them. There's always tension in his answers/explanation that seems to not let him get where he wants to go. Even the response to HAD, doesn't have the strength to supersede it and Graham's response to that response.
Oppy didn't argue that arguments for God's existence that work. What he argued was that arguments for and against God's existence are equally persuasive depending on which side of the debate you are. If you ask me, naturalistic explanations for the existence of the universe can't work because necessarily existing causes/grounds for the universe don't exist in the naturalistic explanation as anything they can pick as a candidate doesn't have existence as its property. Naturalism also can't explain the purpose of the universe - the telos or most important explanation according to Aristotle.
@@mathewsamuel1386 Hi Mathew.
I think he's said that he doesn't think arguments on either side ought to persuade a person to change his mind. I disagree with him. The arguments are not balanced on both sides because of the features that are thorough-going in theistic arguments noted by Paul Draper - Understated Evidence , i.e., consciousness in general is evidence for theism but when you look at the kind and features of consciousness we have (embodied, temporal, tightly dependent on the brain) it isn't what we'd expect on theism. And overt reliance on controversial premises, i.e., premises that only a minority of philosophers AND scientists think are true. Most atheistic arguments (problem of evil, divine hiddenness, argument from scale etc.) don't have these problems. So, I don't think the sides are equally balanced regarding both Strength and Persuasiveness (I, myself, was a theist and I was persuaded by a variant of the Problem of Evil), as Oppy seems to think. I'm not sure if that answers your first point. I didn't mean Oppy said that only the theistic arguments fail - he thinks that both sides fail. I disagree with him both regarding the persuasiveness and the strength of the arguments, I don't think they're balanced as he seems to. Hence I wrote "why theistic arguments fail", because I think (some) atheistic arguments succeed while all theistic arguments fail.
To your second point: I don't see how you can infer that from what we know about physics. It seems to be question-begging in my opinion. If you say that God has properties that make us understand why he necessarily exists, how do you know that Oppy's singularity (the naturalistic necessary entity) doesn't have those properties that would make us say, " ah! That's why it necessarily exists!", how do you know? I don't think that you do. If you appeal to experience, that's insufficient because you're stretching experience where it can't yet apply. If I said that the minds we know of through experience are embodied and temporal, so God can't have a mind (he's not embodied and he's atemporal) - you would disagree and say that our experience is limited so we can't make that conclusion. I'm speaking to that same intuition here about the naturalistic singularity. You simply can't assert that it doesn't have properties that would make it so. As Simon Blackburn said, it is simply prejudiced to conclude that God is in good standing when it comes to properties sufficient for existence and that nothing naturalistic could be on that same par.
Secondly, I don't believe that the universe has a purpose, and neither does Oppy. At least a purpose that is objective and independent of our minds. So, there is no 'telos' that the universe has that Oppy and I need to explain, because we think Aristotle's purpose-oriented metaphysics was incorrect. Because my metaphysics (and I assume Oppy's) is heavily informed by Fundamental Physics - which says that the universe is mechanistic and described by patterns as formulated by differential equations but has no goals/desires.
This is roughly how I think about these things. I've recently diverged from philosophy of religion, however, because I just don't find it interesting anymore (I'm also not convinced that it's oriented towards any insight or truth) so you've chosen very late to engage, lol.
@siviwejavu8827 Ok, a few points here. First, the problems of evil, divine hiddennness, etc., don't support atheism. First, you are presuming that God couldn't have a genuine reason for allowing any of those be the state of affairs. E.g., evil could be allowed by him to build human character, endurance and innovation in the same way that a university professor will make you go days and even weeks sleepless to do difficult assignments to build your intellectual muscle. Divine hiddennness might obtain because God wants humans to exercise their free will. Etc. Furthermore, none of these prove that God doesn't exist. At best, you can argue that maybe God doesn't quite fit the description of, say, Abrahamic faiths.
On why Oppy's singularity fails, I'll give you 3 reasons.
1. Either this singularity is stable or it isn't. If it is stable, then it would just remain a singularity and never give rise to anything else. If it is unstable, then it couldn't have even existed in the first place - unless it was part of something originally stable which was subsequently perturbed - in which case the singularity couldn't be the first cause, neither could the thing which was perturbed since the causal power would lie with the source of perturbation, etc.
2. A singularity, by definition, lacks structural features. Accordingly, a singularity can not explain the diversity of structures in the universe or the phenomena that we observe. Phenomena, for example, require mechanisms which, in turn, require structure.
3. Then you've got to ask, a singularity of what and where? Which immediately tells you that a singularity could never be an ontologically prior entity.
About minds and embodiment, I think you just answered your own question when you said I couldn't appeal to experience because it's insufficient. You must apply your own principles, too. You also don't have any evidence that the only material there could be is the stuff of our natural world.
Our universe has no purpose? How do you know that? Science surely can't answer that question. It has the wrong premise for the question of purpose. Science is based on the premise that the universe and the things in it are a sort of machine whose mechanisms could be discovered, described and replicated. So science is not designed to look for purpose in the universe, but to unravel the mechanism behind the functioning of the universe. How can you answer a question you do think about or even equipped to ponder? But one can even argue from scientific data that it is false that the universe is purposeless. Science have found patterns in the universe. So, at the very least, you could argue for an aesthetic purpose to the universe based on those patterns?
It's always pleasure to see oppy's Necessary initial state vs Theism or Classical Theism! great stuff.. Thanks Dustin
Great discussion ...great respect and good manners ....many thanks for upload. Long may these guys continue.
This was a very pleasant and informative debate. Thank you.
Great discussions in this series, thanks for providing this content Dustin.
14:30 "we need kind of a lot more argument". It just seemed funny to me because from my point of view we need lot more observable data and ways to verify it not just arguments.
17:07 "why we should think that god is best conceived as a ground of the created world" it still boils down to definition of god. I don't have problem if you want to name that cause a god but after that people start attributing all kind of properties and attributes to it(talk about 33 minute mark about what is the meaning of the word and what is a thing fits here also. People don't say that god is a reason, they talk about what god is). Why? And what was created and how long ago? Maybe we have a cyclic universe which expands and collapses and starts again. Then how many cycles ago this god started it and how? To me it always seems that people try to argue about start of everything but in actually they argue just about earth and the human life on it.
Listening about religious experience I wondered how I can know if something I experience is religious experience. To me it seems that it is simply decision of a person and there is no any criteria according to which assess these experiences.
58:35 Seems like we should include more mundane experiences of no God as well.
Some candidates:
Feeling of having a secret that no-one except you knows.
Feeling of wanting to thank someone but being struck that there is no-one to thank.
Feeling of your anger subsiding because you realise no-one could have stopped the bad thing.
Feeling of "well no-one could possibly solve this problem'
How is any of these a no-God experience? Especially since they don't explain the source of your mind.
Seems like Pearce is starting with god and then describing a world that requires god, rather than trying to deal with what is and understand that.
That is presupp apologetics which he clearly is not one. What he is saying is that the naturalist has no good answers to explain the causal history of the universe. God is a good candidate for being that necessary being instead of the universe so it makes sense to endorse that view over naturalism.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf well, yeah. Naturalism doesn't just make up an imaginary solution. Naturalism derives its explanation from what can be substantiated and rejects those that can't. A little more challenging.
@@pbradgarrison Yeah I question the jump to a supernatural answer as well, but if you are like graham and say first part of universe is necessary. I don’t think that works. Most physicists agree initial parts of universe are contingent too. I think a cumulative case like throwing in arguments against multiverse and for fine-tuning could make case for God more probable than not. Swineburne methodology.
The crucial factor here is that contriving explanations from mere imagination never gives you anything but a story. Naturalism is a completely different category and when it comes to origin issues has reached its limit.
We don't have the apparatus to use the naturalistic methodology past that limit. Making up anthropocentric stories does not transcend our limits. It just entertains us.
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf A sure sign of a person who has no good argument for their opinion is when they waste their time talking about someone else’s opinion. If he had any good arguments for his opinion, there would be no reason to talk about anything else.😜
Really appreciate this video.
Thank you for this
Amazing!!!
Thanks!
Pearce's account of grounding sounds like Emergence. If that is what he's saying here, then there are interesting implications that could come out of this. I think of it analogously to emergence in philosophy of mind.
“Emergence” is philosophy speak for “it just happens dude and we can’t give a good materialist explanation for it”
1.75x - 2x
Nice!
Many thanks. V. helpful
Seems to me that Pearce is pointing out that humans intuit that ordered wholes (like his "History") need explanation. He then tries to justify this using the cumbersome scholastic metaphysical world which justified formal holism. But this latter was based upon Aristotelian science.
But, for instance, modern science has shown that essences are just not that clear-cut. Rather they are interwoven, across the sciences.
In such a global, environmentalist culture, scholasticism is as equally inappropriate as Oppy's reductionism.
I don't really follow: where does Kenny rely on scholasticism or Aristotelian science? How is a "global, environmentalist culture" relevant?
@@dustin.crummett He justifies the intuition that the totality of physical causation needs explanation, upon the scholastic idea that a "real" (not nominal) definition of a concrete thing need not imply existence. (Hence Kenny can argue that, where such a definition applies to a brute, non-autonomous, fact, it can be seen to have a greater, non-naturalist, dependence).
This "essence" (distinct from existence) in turn was built upon the Aristotelean idea that individual physical things (especially Prime Substances) could be fully intelligible without reference to their environment. Hence Kenny's description that defining water as H20 means you "know what it is".
Modern science has shown that all intelligible unities are intrinsically relative, functional and inter-woven across the layers of physics, chemistry, biology, life sciences, environmental science and cosmology.
Mr Oppy dismantles Mr Pearce's arguements and uses 1 word for every 50 used by Pearce. Oppy's razor is sharper than Occams
Give one example of Pearce's argument which Oppy dismantled and in what way Oppy did this.
Another rhetorical question.
Yikes this was terrible. Need someone a lot more pointed and persistent to get past all that rambly obfuscation Kenny has going on. I'm interested in how he would respond when pressed, he just ran away instead.
They keep saying theism provides an explanation for something, but the main failure of theism is that it fails to explain anything.
Circular reasoning
You need to defined than what is an explanation for you.
@yadurajdas532
God is an assertion, not an explanation. In order for God to be an explanation you would first have to demonstrate that God exists in order to be able to explain anything at all before God can be the explanation for anything specific, and that’s where the problem lies. Theists haven’t even gotten past step 0 in using God as an explanation for anything because no theist has demonstrated God’s existence in order for God to then explain anything else. The reason that the naturalist has a head start here is because, insofar as we can know anything, we know that the natural world exists in some capacity
@@yadurajdas532how is it circular?
@@yadurajdas532not really. there isnt that many definitions of "explanation" that it needs to be clarified further.
Excelent debate! Thank you for this content. The book was even more excelent! Btw, Dr. Pearce was right.
He wasn’t right about a supposed ’god’ existing so, what was he supposedly ’right’ about?
The religious guy is not arguing for theism, he's arguing for deism. A belief in god is unrelsted to a belief in religion or a religion. It's a question of fact not faith. You'd look for god in observation and science.
You brought Islam within your discussion. Do you have any plan to bring any Islamic scholar for a discussion?
It wouldn't make a difference. Islamic arguments are just as bad.
@@Ploskkky
Read Qur'an sincerely first then pass your judgement.
It's shocking what the religious indoctrination can do to our brains and the extent some people go in order to rationalize their beliefs in gods.
As Low Bar Bill once said:
"When I first heard the message of the Gospel as a non-Christian high school student, that my sins could be forgiven by God, that God *loved me, he loved Bill Craig,* and that I could come to know him and experience *eternal life* with God, I thought to myself (and I'm not kidding) I thought if there is just one chance in a million that this is true it's worth believing. So my attitude toward this is just the opposite of Kyle's. Far from raising the bar or the epistemic standard that Christianity must meet to be believed, I lower it." - William Lane Craig
It is rational , did u come to learn or troll?
@@pabloandres06183 If it were rational to believe in an invisible being with miraculous powers who can be used to explain everything one does not know and with whom you can communicate but only in one direction, one would expect intelligent people to realize the existence of such a being through good reasons. Not through indoctrination, not through the need to belong to a group, not to appease the fear of death or the idea of unrepairable injustices, and so on.
Not rational. Believing in people walking on water simply because someone said so, as Christians do, or believing that people split the moon in two because someone said so, as Muslims do, is about as far from rational as you can get.
Reason has nothing to do with that business.
The belief in gods is purely irrational and is based on emotional dependencies and self-identity, as Low Bar Bill clearly exemplifies. That's what it boils down to. There are no reasons but rationalizations.
Don't you realize how defensive your comment was? That's not a coincidence, it's a psychological defense mechanism. I'll bet you haven't even read the holy book of the religion you believe in.
@@vejeke I believe in Jesus via tradition. The Catholic church was began by Peter, chief disciple.
I would have believed in a God because of creation. A rational belief.
@@koppite9600 IF it was a “rational belief”(an oxymoron if there ever was one), then you could show the evidence and logical steps you used to arrive at that conclusion. The fact that nobody has ever managed to do that shows that belief is not rational at all.
@@FourDeuce01 beliefs just have to be supported, it is the nature of beliefs. It is not far from gambling. Believing there's no God is also a gamble.
Many atheists despise the topic when they shouldn't.
Where would look to find God ?
brazil
@@JohnSmith-bq6nfcom certeza!
@@JohnSmith-bq6nf kkkk
Go to the mall.
I heard he works at The Gap.
;)
Pray to Jesus Christ, genuinely ask him to reveal himself in your life.
Still waiting for any theist to prove a god exists.😈
Not sure why they set up the debate as theism versus naturalism. The real debate is theism versus reality.
Debate with Pearce🤣
@@juanfelipearteaga9022 He can’t prove any god exists either.😜
@@FourDeuce01 he just has to support his belief, and that's it. No proving needed.
@@koppite9600 Too bad he can’t actually support his belief. All he can do is try.🤡
@@FourDeuce01 thats only your opinion! You also believe God doesn't exist.
God is conceptually impossible.
How so?
🙄
You even talking about God proves your statement is illogical!
HAHAHAHA🤡
Impossible is an absurd concept for God.
This is why philosophy of religion is a waste of time.
i'll save you the trouble of watching: religion is okay as far as it goes, if it keeps people from being psychopaths, then great.
also:
religion is okay as far as it goes, but it creates psychopaths, so best lets forget it.
The video is about whether God exists, not armchair speculation about the sociological effects of religion.
Who are you calling an armchair? That’s very rude, and sofa from the truth
@@diskgrinderyou think the other guy is not being rude