3:20 - Loke's powerpoint 15:00 - Oppy's ground rules 23:30 - Causal series 27:35 - Causal loops 32:00 - Infinite regress 34:40 - First cause(s) (Loke responds at 41:10) 36:00 - Causal principle 45:24 - Loke's argument in favour of the causal principle 52:00 - Oppy's response 54:35 - Loke's response 55:45 - Oppy starts shaking his head 1:00:25 - Oppy's response + back and forth 1:14:00 - HEATED ( spirited :) 1:20:55 - Oppy compares the two views 1:25:25 - Back to the causal principle 1:27:10 - Theoretic virtues 1:29:50 - Cam's question + back and forth 1:37:40 - If you could have any superpower..? 1:40:45 - Back to the causal principle + necessary existence 2:00:40 - Libertarian free will + beginnings 2:11:00 - Change/Persistence/Cambridge change 2:22:40 - Loke's closing 2:24:20 - Oppy's closing As I was re-watching I figured I'd just timestamp sections for future reference. The debate was a bit messy so it was hard to accurately pin the sections.
Point of clarification for people in the USA. In Australia 'professor' is a substantial academic rank, usually the head of a department and a person who is recognised by his or her peers as a major contributor to a field. In the USA professor is almost anybody who stands at the front of a class. So, USA people, having Oppy on this channel is an immense privilege for us all and an honour for both Cameron and Andrew.
is it possible that even if Loke was "consistent" in your eyes which is a whole other topic at hand...but could he have been consistently wrong? Even the moderator was having a rough time keeping up with Loke's word salad....im curious to know if you actually understood what he said or if your bias simply accepted his words because he threw god into the mix. to me he could have said blahblahjlkhdasflherlkjhadsf GOD! and people would be like "ya that makes sense"
@Sentient.Observer it's not special pleading you goof, Andrew is explicitly arguing for a category that would not require causes (in this case, beginingless entities). God isn't arbitrarily exempted, he is exempted by falling into a category that has been principally distinguished from the one that involves causal dependency. And then Loke's argument is for why the member of the exempted class would be God versus a naturalistic alternative. His entire presentation is about what could exempt something from needing a cause, if you got "special pleading" from that then you need to find something more basic first, because this stuff flew over your head.
@Sentient.Observer if you can argue for why "special universe farting unicorns" would be a good description for the beginningless first cause in Andrew's argument, go ahead. It's clear that you don't know much about this stuff. That's normal. Try to recognize your ignorance and to open your mind a little bit; it might be hard for you to understand, but someone like Andrew is a lot smarter than you and your points are utter crap, which is why Oppy (which is also very smart) doesn't use your mangled misunderstandings as a response. His counter-arguments are very different. There's a reason for all that. You don't know what you're talking about. Chill and try to inform yourself a little.
@Sentient.Observer nice changing subject. From your misinformed charge of special pleading to "Loke hasn't demonstrated the first part, circular causes, etc". Why do you wanna save face? No one knows you here. You know deep down that you are ignorant. You know you've never read a single book defense of the argument you're criticizing. I have explained to you why there is no special pleading, and why your mention of farting unicorns was retarded (I think you caught on to that, which is why you changed the subject), so buzz off already. Next time be a little more careful when trying to criticize academics who know far more about this stuff than you do.
Cameron, chill out, your hair looks fabulous. These great philosophers don't grow hair because they don't have any time for that. Thank you for hosting such a great discussion.
I am so impressed by these philosophical titans that I want to become a philosophical titan by my own. Studying chemistry (master degree now) and in addition to that, I started a seminar about philosophical cosmology (including thoughts about natural theology). I want to dive deeper both in chemistry and philosophy
Yeah I already developed a possible disprove of naturalism based on the problem, that our thoughts should be predetermined by the biochemicals mechainism in our brain and signals from our environment, according to reductionism in the naturalistic worldview. Free will should not exist under these conditions. But I figured out that my argument fails and can be easily refuted by quantummechanic events which are not predetermined and can have influence on our environment. I will write a philosophical essay about my argument. Maybe someone other can handle the refutation and make the argument working.
@@jwatson181 Of course, it may simply be that the same basic principles apply in each debate. Since these principles are fundamental to the process of philosophical argumentation and discourse, it follows logically and necessarily that he [Oppy] will be restating these where his debate opponent contravenes these basic rules of discourse. For what it’s worth I think Oppy’s intro is fundamental to understanding how Loke’s argumentation is fundamentally flawed. Loke seems to think that validity and soundness guarantee his preferred conclusion, ie god, when there multiple options. And of course he is working to a preferred conclusion, based on a book that is itself fundamentally flawed. On another note, I recently had a discussion with Loke on another thread and it quickly became apparent that he has a deeply flawed understanding of physics and zero understanding of how the current scientific thinking (understanding of the evidence) completely circumvent his philosophical assertions. This perfectly highlights the point that Oppy makes that although the syllogism may be valid and can argued to be sound, this bears zero relation to the science and how this shows not just one, but multiple models fit the data without needing to appeal to any god (the noun ‘God’ explains precisely nothing. It’s simply a place holder for ‘I don’t know’). Indeed, mixing god into the mix of science adds unnecessary ‘explanatory’ complexity and so can be rationally dismissed by applying Occam’s razor. Of course, there are also sound philosophical objections to Loke’s arguments, which distill to little more than special pleading. How Loke considers that his ‘proof’ beats the efforts of hundreds of great thinkers in the past and present is frankly staggering and shows that although his reasoning sounds plausible to the unwary, it does not pass muster. Put bluntly, if Loke had proven the existence of the Christian god he would be in line for a Nobel prize and worldwide fame. The fact that this has not happened ought to be a big warning sign that if you think these arguments work, you have not understood how and why these arguments are flawed and fail at the first hurdle.
Around 1 hour and 50 minutes, this comes down to what is more believable. Spontaneous existence or something eternal. I have no idea how someone as smart as Graham Oppy can honestly believe that spontaneous existence is believable.
It seems like a universe necessarily popping into existence would require something beginning-less to make the universe and its expansion necessary. Is Graham saying it necessarily popped into existence out of absolute nothingness? I’m confused because his view seems impossible.
This time I disagree. Oppy seems to be growing this new line of argumentation that essentially says argumentation can't solve anything because they are based on "theory" that is established prior to argument. I usually like Oppy a lot but right now I feel like he is trying to weasel his way out of answering tough objections.
@@rjonesx Ya I guess I’ve stopped watching these kinds of debates that don’t usually involve actual philosophers haha. Nonetheless I think it’s pretty strange and feels condescending (to me at least) to commend Oppy on his manners instead of his actual ideas. But I could definitely understand someone commending his manners if they were previously watching hours of someone like Lawrence Krauss haha
If the debate over the argument against uncaused beginnings confused you, I will try to provide a faithful reconstruction. Loke wished to say that when one has possibilities concerning beginnings, one must appeal to causes to determine the obtaining of certain possibilities as opposed to others. And so, if you come upon a house in the woods, you must appeal to a causal agent-say a lumberjack-to explain why that particular possibility for the lumber of the house was realized rather than another. One might think of Aristotle's analysis of form as a principle of determination and matter as a principle of possibility. And so, if among the things one is committed to are uncaused beginnings, one must explain why that particular possibility is not realized instead of the caused ones. Usually, when seeking explanations of these sorts, we appeal to causes, for causes are difference-makers; their actions determine why some possibilities obtain-and so why incompatible possibilities do not obtain-and their inactions determine why others do not obtain. One might also explain the obtaining and non-obtaining of possibilities by appealing to actual objects and their propetieis; the actual whiteness of my wall, for instance, might explain why it isn't at this very moment blue. (One might imagine that the one sort of explanation reduces to the other, my causal activity as a painter explaining the initial whiteness and the everyone else's causal inaction explaining its persisting whiteness.) This all creates difficulties for the person who is trying to exclude uncaused beginnings. For, on this view, causal activity or inactivity is insufficient to rule out uncaused beginnings. For, on this picture, at least one thing-the cosmos or at least a segment of the cosmos-began to exist without a prior cause. And one obviously cannot appeal to the universe or its properties to explain this. For only that which exists can do explanatory work, and if the explanatory work to be done pertains to a coming into existence, that explanatory work must be done prior to the universe and its coming to acquire its properties. And so, if the universe itself cannot explain this nor can anything distinct from the universe, we are simply left without explanation-a strong reason to dismiss the possibilities of uncaused beginnings altogether. Oppy's reply seemed to be that nothing is needed to do this explanatory work in the first place, for with respect to happenings causally downstream from the initial state of reality, there simply are not such possibilities for uncaused beginnings whose non-occurrence one must account for. It isn't as though there is some causal agent deliberating on whether or not to make a square-circle and then deciding against it. For such metaphysical impossibilities do not lie within the agent's power to bring about. What rules them out is not causal activity or inactivity but the structure of modal space. The same is true of uncaused beginnings causally downstream from reality's initial state. For, on Oppy's view-if I do not misunderstand it-possibilities are generated by something like the evolutionary potentialities latent in reality's initial item(s). And since nothing causally unrelated to this initial item can be said to come about through a process of causal evolution, all concrete reality distinct from the initial state or item is necessarily causally related to it. This conclusion seems to follow from Oppy's views on modality. Loke seems to imagine there is a sense of modality more fundamental than reality's initial item and the various potentialities of this item. That allows him to make sense of possible other initial items or occurrences that do not come about through a process of causal evolution. Oppy, however, rejects such a liberal view of modality and wishes to stick to one on which Loke's questions do not even arise. (Whether any of this is faithful to Oppy or Loke is questionable, but it is how I interpreted their exchange.)
I agree with the interpretation, however the word salad in the debate about debate structure apparently fended off the intimation Loke gave about identifying the causal agent adjunct to the teleology argument through the strong ANTHROPIC principal as Christ Jesus. I would assume proof of that might be the resurrection as a demonstration of control over entropy which would entail control of the space time continuum, identifying the causal singularity as Christ. Prophecy if true, merits scientific analysis as information from our consciousness that runs parallel to the the universe, as information as is recognized by the Shannon information laws, to which Bell's theorem also applied. This makes Lokes argument ridiculously close to a restatement of John's GOSPEL from the prologue, with the miracle recounts giving evidence of Jesus control of the quantum field. If true, Jesus is the observer capable of collapsing the universe expanding at the speed of light i.e. causality into a time dependent function of particles. As the singularity is identical at all points, all Schwartzchild fields are identical, therefore the information from JESUS about Jesus and the universe are identical. Here is a link that gives data from the shroud of Turin, I find it interesting that the resurrection is evidence of control of entropy and the shroud may have the signature of a singularity. Ridiculously coincidental! ruclips.net/video/otIeXKJ-_q4/видео.html
I think it's much simpler then that. Oppy just accepts that the necessary beginning is temporal. Loke says no it's not because it's uncaused which Oopy pointed out was a contradiction because the two options are either finite, or infinite. If it's infinite it's an infinite regress. If it's finite it's not Loke's God. Anything else on Loke's possition is speculative, and adds extra entities that violates parsimony. As opposed to Oppy's view of a necessary beginning whatchamacallit witch is more parsimonious, and only needs to be necessary.
@@spacedoohicky i don't think you understood much at all. where do you think Loke said the necessary beginning Oppy believes in is not temporal because it's uncaused (you worded what you said poorly)?
I wouldn't say Oppy responded to or even understood Loke's objections sufficiently. Your assertion at the end in which you claim that Loke's questions do not even arise to Oppy's view is ridiculous. Cameron and Oppy both didn't understand that Loke was referring to how properties of X are posterior to the existence of X. Oppy kept restating that "The initial state began uncaused because it was necessary" but this necessity and this modal space can only come about when it already exists (properties of X are posterior to their bearers). You stated this here to reconstruct Oppy's view: "What rules them out is not causal activity or inactivity but the structure of modal space" this is a form of causal inactivity. If modal space does not allow X to occur, then modal space is the cause of X not occuring. I would say Loke's refutation would be that modal space could not exist on its own, modal space describes reality - if there is no reality there can be no modal space. Hence, modal space is posterior to the existence of IsOR, thus modal space can not be used to explain why there is the IsOR. Restating this, prior to the IsOR there is non-being, so using modal space to explain why IsOR comes to being is extremely self-refuting.
Yes it is at least if you’re doing something else while listening, though to follow this kind of argument you probably want to focus on it. There is a browser extension for chrome which allows you to change the speed with a keyboard press. Quite useful!
The first event is necessary and does not need a cause, whereas everything else that follows does, Graham. Which means it must then have some specially unique property that everything else that follows does not have, Loke.
The special unique properties: immaterial, unimaginably powerful, spaceless, timeless, and uncaused. Oppy is really describing God without calling it God.
@@angusmacangus3181 Exactly. The definition of a deity = usually outside the metrics of science. We of course get to the "flying spaghetti monster" issue but that's honestly a weak objection
Beautifully stated, James. You've hit on the crux of where Oppy's argument failed. By simply describing a label of T/0 Or T1 doesn't do any explaining. There's bo explanatory power in that. Is like saying "because we know there was a beginning therefore it is simply 'The Beginning', no further explanation needed." But an actual, not just theoretical beginning does imply what you've pointed out here about a force, most likely a being capable and with the sovereign will to kickstart everything. Obfuscating that one crucial logical premise using semantics or math jargon doesn't do anything to change that. I think that is why Loke got so frustrated. As Oppy wouldn't concede that point and Cameron didn't seen to catch it. Oppy then just overpowered him with rhetoric. Sidestepping the logical contradiction.
@@grapheneinsider5461 "There's no explanatory power in that". This is so ironic. "God" is perhaps the least explanatory entity ever proposed. All the properties he supposedly possesses (timeless, spaceless, immaterial) aren't properties, they are negations of properties that to me, are synonymous with non existence. I'll give you an example of the ineptitude of this explanation. If you asked me where trees came from and I said they came from a being who was "treeless". Would this be a good explanation? Would it explain... anything at all? This "less" suffix is equivalent to magic. It's a license to propose anything and everything without being bounded to reality. Proof of this, is your ability to smuggle in the first cause as a being with free will that can "kickstart everything". How can this be, given that every example of a being with free will has a material brain that was formed over 3 billion years of evolution, and we have 0 examples of disembodied minds. The reason you can do this, is because God exists in a timeless, spaceless, immaterial realm, which is a magical realm where anything can happen, and no justification or evidence is required. I have yet to see a single argument for God that actually addressed the issues of exiting in such a realm (such as how does a being do ANYTHING, if time doesn't exist). I the end, it seems that you guys are saying that had Oppy's argument contained God as the necessary entity, you would have been ok with it. This is a problem. A bad argument is a bad argument...
Cameron seems to be a bit partial to Oppy due to their background and history of relationship. Whether he’s doing it consciously or unconsciously I do not know but I hope it didn’t turn Andrew off because I thought he did a tremendous job of articulating his positions.
@@alexp8924 look, I’m in no way married to the kalam so I was just excited to hear an interesting discussion. With that said, Dr. Loke really impressed me and made my belief about the truthfulness of the kalam much much higher. I think if we are being totally fair, at best I think you could say it was a push but it seemed to me Dr. Loke definitely got the better of Oppy in this discussion. Just my thoughts.
@@fujiapple9675 We have different standard of evidence. You can create a theory that appears consistent with reality but the theory is not considered true unless you can demonstrate that it's true. I.e. demonstrate that the entity you are proposing actually exists anywhere outside of your head.
I am so glad Cameron is doing this discussion-format instead of the usual applause-line driven “debates.” Dr. Loke begins at three minutes and 25 seconds and he talks so fast it’s very very efficient. You can get a whole into lesson in 14 minutes. zero successful interruptions. But why yet another discussion of people hashing out Kalam/regress? Dr. Oppy raises a hugely important methodological point around 16 minutes. If that’s all you listen to, five minutes of that would be worthwhile. Good stuff.
@@agnosticmonkey7308 As someone who has the same disease. He has a (likely lifelong) case of RBF (Resting B**** Face). Me, and many others are plagued with this curse, but I enjoy Ed because when he really gets into a conversation you can feel the genuine enjoyment exuding from his person. His words breath excitement every moment he gets to answer a question/defend a point, but he always keeps a stern professional voice. I'm sure you've seen other Christian Apologists get crumbled by rhetoric because they only have a be nice switch, and dont know how to be sharp tongued like a razor. But Feser never lets anyone get away with backhandedness. Hes like a "Super Serious Dad", like when you were little, and you had that one friend whos dad never spoke, and only scowled lol. Those dads always end up being some of the coolest people too haha. But thats the vibe Feser gives me anytime I watch him. Im sure there are people like yourself who see it differently as well, but I thought Id give my view on him lol. Either way, God Bless!
I’m on Loke’s side regarding the success of the Kalam, so I’m not partisan in saying that Loke doesn’t understand Oppy’s point about necessity. Oppy rejects the causal principle. And the reasons Loke adduces in its favor shouldn’t have any force with someone who accepts Oppy’s idiosyncratic view of modality. It’s Oppy’s view of modality that should be at issue.
On the contrary, I understand Oppy’s branching view of modality that all possible worlds share the initial state of the history of the actual world. It is trivially true that such an initial state (First Cause) must be necessary and uncaused, and both Oppy and I can agree that there is such a First Cause (I don’t agree with his view of modality; but suppose I agree for the sake of argument). The KEY QUESTION is what kind of thing can be the initial state that is necessary and uncaused? There are two possibilities:
(1) a First Cause with a beginning (2) a First Cause without a beginning (from which it follows that such a First Cause would also be transcendent, immaterial, has libertarian freedom ie a Creator God, as I explained right at the beginning of the debate)
I argued against (1) using the modus Tollens argument that the kind of thing cannot be something with a beginning, therefore it must be (2) a beginningless First Cause. To reply to my arguments by the repeated assertion that some initial state is necessary begs the question by assuming (1). Oppy would say he is not simply begging the question because (1) is justified by 'his view wins on simplicity given that other virtues are equal (‘parsimonious,’ ‘best tradeoff between simplicity and explanatory power’), which he kept asserting in the debate (you noted this under your Fourth point too). However, I replied during the debate that other virtues are not equal given my Modus Tollens argument. It should be noted that a view that entails a contradiction cannot be true, even if it is simpler. Thus simplicity cannot help his view since his view entails a contradiction as I explained using the Modus Tollens argument, which he didn’t rebut as I explain in my debate (1:40:45 to 1:43:07)and in greater detail here in my debate review with Suan Sonna (ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html : 1:35:41 to 1:40:40).
@@andrewloke7 Thanks for clarification. Both agree that First Cause is necessary and uncaused. Differentiation of views is here (note me if not correct): Oppy regards (1) a First Cause with a beginning--> First cause without Agent ---> material Universe. Loke regards (2) a First Cause without a beginning -->Agent's First Cause ---> Creator God. ----- Modus Tollens is given at 50:17.
@@andrewloke7 Your modus tollens argument falls apart if the probability of a spontaneous creation event is just so low that we only have one example (the "beginning" or expansion of the Universe) that we can point to. It's also possible that such events have happened and the information hasn't reached us yet. Your argument has a foundation of pure speculation that you seem completely blind to.
Correct me if I am wrong but it appears to me that you first need to defend an assertion that libertarian free will is possible - i.e. an action without ANY prior causation. How would this work if this being was completely unchanged? If you accept that a thought can just randomly pop into a god's head without any prior cause then why do you reject universe popping into existence?
I think this notion of “popping into existence” might be confused. One hypothesis for the beginning of the universe is that there was a first time or boundary, before which time did not exist. So there was not some moment in which the universe did not exist, and then some later moment the universe does exist. There is not such a “popping into existence” from non-existence. Similarly, if God exists timelessly, then it’s probably improper to talk about thoughts popping into God’s mind-God is timelessly causing the existence of the universe. It’s not like God existed for a while, and then one moment the intention formed in God’s mind to create the universe. These are my thoughts anyways. I do, however, worry about the possibility of this divine timeless causing of the universe. Also, libertarian theories of free will (for human actions) may permit some causal influence of other factors, and yet say those circumstantial events are not sufficient to cause the agent’s free choice. But for God, it looks like God is supposed to be the sole cause of the existence of the universe.
@@qqqmyes4509 I have to admit that I disagree with bigger part of his premises so this specific point doesn't really matter but I found it interesting that he insisted that god existed in some kind of unchanging state and then at time T (which exists outside of time) decided to create a universe. It's hard for me to imagine being existing in an unchanging state - unchanging, I am guessing implies that it doesn't think any thoughts - and then a thought just randomly pops into his head and this thought coincidentally turns out to be a thought about creating our universe in exactly the way it is right now so he creates a universe. This is just weird, I'd rather accept that universe has a necessary natural uncaused cause, it sounds way simpler.
@@alexp8924 Personally I don’t understand what Loke means by God exists timelessly causally prior to creating the universe, and exists at t=0 when (or perhaps “causally posterior to”) God creates the universe. I don’t think that Loke was saying that God decided at t=0 to create the universe. God’s decision did not occur ‘within the dimension of time’. Perhaps God just exists in a single moment of God-time, where God is continuously doing things, causing something to occur at t=1, t=2020, t=2080. So there is no idea that “pops” into God’s head, it’s an idea that exists in God’s mental state that exists forever (by “forever”, I don’t mean to suggest that there is an infinite duration of time. Sounds confusing.) I think a theist could deny that ideas pop into God’s mind, since that implies that at some prior moment God did not have that idea. But, they may say, God does not exist across some duration of time. Idk though haha. Also, I do not think that the idea to create the universe needs to be “coincidental” or lucky. Since God is supremely virtuous and omniscient (somehow), God would only intend to do something good (due to God’s virtuous character) and would recognize that creating this universe would be good (due to God’s omniscience). So the intention to create this universe comes from God’s nature. However, you might say that God’s having the intention to create this universe still occurs by chance, because the existence of God occurs by chance. And that would be denying the necessity of God’s existence. I think this Loke/Oppy discussion has helped me realize the importance of the distinction between temporal priority and causal priority. That may be helpful for what you’re talking about.
I'm at the part where Oppy has to keep correcting Loke that he's not referring to priority in terms of time but rather causality. I feel that frustration because it's exactly how the conversation I had with Loke went. Insanely frustrating. The guy is ridiculously one-track-minded. But anyway I'm going to start taking notes as I've listened along with this conversation. 1. It's not clear that if causality is in a loop, then something could cause itself. All one has to do to clean that up is say that no repeated stage can happen within a causal loop until it first passes through a node in that loop which completely resets the causal state. So instead of: A->B->C->A... It's instead: A->B->C->0->A*->B*->C*->... A and A* would share causal priority in terms of index, but passing through 0 insures that no causal artifacts from the first "lap" of the loop remain to influence the next lap of the loop. It would be like going around a race track, but right as you hit the "finish line" which ends one lap and begins another, your vehicle is basically picked up, randomized in terms of position on the track, orientation, and initial speed, and then put back down accordingly such that your position, speed, etc. at the end of one lap doesn't actually influence the same at the beginning of the next one. Note I'm not saying I believe this scheme (although I've defended one that may be interpreted kinda similarly in defense against the Grim Reaper Paradox) but this one caveat one could hold to if they have an intuition that there's something repetitious about causality at a fundamental level but want to dispense with things causing themselves. 2. I agree with Pruss that causal finitism is sufficient to solve paradoxes against an infinite causal sequence. It just turns out that causal finitism actually allows for a beginningless causal sequence, so long as you properly* disperse nodes in any causal graph which completely reset the causal order that come before them. 3. The entire model in which God is changeless until he isn't has never seemed internally consistent to me, because there's two ways to cash it out. i. It's God's first act of changing something about himself which has him cease being changeless. ii. God ceases being changeless and so he can now change other things about himself. i. is at high risk of defining God as a changeless being that changes, which is blatantly contradictory. If God is a changeless being, and this is some fundamental statement about ontology, then anything which God changes God doesn't just make him "stop" being that kind of thing, but rather makes him do exactly what the thing he is, is defined not to do. It would be like describing a triangle, deciding that now the triangle has 4 sides and then saying "well it just stopped being a triangle, nothing wrong with that!" I think a raised eyebrow at this model is at least warranted here. ii. To solve the triangle analogy with i, now we'll say: "We have a triangle, but now we're going to make it not a triangle by adding something to it, and that thing we add to it will make it have 4 sides". So you've unmade the ontology of the thing and procedurally allowed it to be another thing in question prior to violating (what would have been) its ontology. But what that means is that God began to cease being changeless due to the ontological break above. Whatever begins to exist (including ontological states of being) has a cause. The problem is that since the only candidate for such a cause is a changeless thing, such a thing has no causal efficacy to cause anything else, jeopardizing the very causal principle needed by the Kalam in the first place. 4. The semantic problems with the model aside, I've convinced, I think, 3 Christians now that the Kalam model is utterly pagan and it's in their best interest that they stop using it. The physical intuition is fine (emergence of classical spacetime) but the "God is timeless" model underpinning the argument has bad implications for their faith. Changeless beings don't decide to do anything. Simple as. Any protestations about that are just equivocating on "decides" in a way I have no experiential relation to, and thus have no basis to accept. They might as well call it "shmecides". To make a decision about something is to take on reasons or information, and on the basis of those reasons / information alter one's behavior. But a changeless thing alters nothing about their behavior in the presence of any information whatsoever. Aristotle's God, to be changeless, "thinks itself". Christianity wants a God which, prior to the universe, decided to create the universe. But that decision, that desire for a relationship, doesn't come out of a changeless thing. It comes from a deliberative process which happens in metaphysical time, even if not spacetime. And this is made worse by making some observations. Since at no time (physical or metaphysical according to this model) was God ever changeless, one could just say that "God was never changeless" and there would be nothing wrong, even on this model, about that assertion whatsoever. So given the obvious relationship between time and God's "deciding" to do X, juxtaposed with the truism that God was never changeless, it seems pretty obvious that this entire construction doesn't really do much for Christians. 5. Loke claims that if things begin to exist uncaused, it could be the case that universes could pop into being with such rapidity that our universe collides into them, and indeed we ought to have seen such a catastrophe by now. But I don't think that's true under Oppy's model. Just because universe are uncaused doesn't mean there's not an explanation for why, say, only so many universes could exist at once. So long as Oppy thinks that for any initial point, there are some explanatory facts about that point, even if the point isn't caused by something else, then Oppy has all sorts of blocks against that argument. 6. Loke is confused about his own argument at 58:00. What Loke's argument says is: i. If Oppy's initial state begins to exist uncaused, then other things must too (since there's no relevant difference). ii. Other things don't begin to exist uncaused. C. Oppy's initial state doesn't begin to exist uncaused. What Oppy replies with is that his initial state is necessary, and it would be silly for necessary things to be caused, which alone makes for a relevant difference from all other (contingent) things. Loke then at 58:38 tries to claim that his argument shows that Oppy's initial state can't be necessary. But that's not actually in the argument at all! Then Loke tries to claim that Oppy is just "claiming" his initial state is necessary without argument. But Oppy already pointed out earlier, and this is why the ground rules he tried to bring up are important, that he's going into this discussion with preconceived beliefs and a worldview, and he'll only change it if he sees good reason. The fact that Oppy hasn't made an argument to convince Loke is thus irrelevant (The Leibnizian Argument is that argument, if Loke is curious). As Craig himself points out about his Kalam principle, he's justified in continuing to believe it, given the existence of other competing principles, in the absence of defeaters. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. 7. Loke correctly notes that there are lots of logically possible universes and there's no reason any of them couldn't come to be if there's at least one necessary initial state. Yes, he's trivially correct. Under S5, any possibility is necessarily a possibility, so that necessity and all possibilities therein would be build into whatever necessary initial state that Oppy is conceiving of. I don't think it's much of a defeater for Oppy to note that "possibly there are these other universes under my system". comment 1/?
@Real Atheology Thanks! I just finished my second comment if you want a follow up. I'm not a Christian, and whether I'm a theist or not depends on one's definition of theism. Classical theists who don't think that their model relies on God having any sort of "will" would claim my beliefs are minimally sufficient to be one of them. But Classical Theists that do claim that God has something analogous to a will (Thomists for example) probably wouldn't accept my views as properly theistic. So it gets frustrating sometimes lol. I just take the Colbert response at this point. "Bill, I'm whatever you want me to be."
@C "You misunderstand Loke's mindset" Last time I checked, I'm not a psychic, so probably. What's important are his propositions, not his state of mind. "he is conflating the two (time, causality re. priority) rhetorically" No, he accused Oppy of conflating the two when Oppy was clarifying he wasn't. You're confused. "to highlight a perceived necessary or implied conflation in Oppy's t=0-bound/brute necessity construction." Well what is it? You can't just say "well there's a problem, nyah!" and then wander off. That's not how this works. "Often, when we think others are mentally stumbling, we ourselves stumble as a result." OK well when you're implying that I'm stumbling with that statement, you then might be stumbling as a result. I don't know what exactly you expected to accomplish with that quip but I don't think you thought that far ahead.
@@faysalsalhi1193 Again, that depends on your definition of God. If it's a minimal logically necessary being, sure. If it has Libertarian Free Will, then definitely not.
What Andrew is saying around 1:35:00 makes perfect sense, even if it sounds a bit convoluted. Graham is saying that his initial condition of a physical (possibly fine-tuned) universe that is expanding is NECESSARY but he does not seem to be denying that it had a beginning and popped into existence without a cause. He says that CONTINGENT things cannot pop into existence without a cause, but even his very deliberate clarification around 1:25:45, in which he first said that nothing can pop into existence without a cause before going back and adding in the word "contingent", indicates that he thinks NECESSARY things _can_ pop into existence without a cause. The idea that something NECESSARY might pop into existence _at all_ is at odds with what theists mean by the word, but let's set that aside for a moment. What Andrew is saying is that anything about Graham's initial state that would cause it to be identified as "necessary" and differentiate it from any other thing at all could only be true of that initial state _after_ it already exists. That being the case, it is vacuous to appeal the supposed necessity of the initial condition as an explanation for its _beginning_ to exist, and Graham doesn't seem to deny that his initial state began to exist. Graham rightly says that it is not vacuous to appeal to the necessity of something's existence as the reason for it's existence. That is true. However, it _is_ vacuous to appeal to the necessity of something's existence as the reason for it _beginning_ to exist. Andrew's argument successfully shows that such a claim is nonsensical. And I would say it's nonsensical to speak of anything that begins to exist as existing necessarily. It seems to me that what Graham has done here is he has simply identified a complex initial physical state that he thinks is necessary for his theory of reality _subsequent_ to that initial state to make sense, and then he has slapped a "Necessary" label onto that initial state to exempt it from needing a causal explanation while not even denying that it had a beginning to its existence. It seems to be ascribing to the initial state a sort of explanatory necessity with reference to subsequent physical states rather than the metaphysical or logical necessity ascribed to God. This does not seem to me to be at all legitimate. Using this approach there would not seem to be any level of complexity or specificity that would prevent a favored initial state from being labeled "necessary". Everything that needs to be explained can just be lumped into the "initial state" envelope, can be said to have popped into existence without a cause, and the sudden origin of its highly specified existence can be "explained" by some idiosyncratic sort of "necessity". But again, as Andrew's argument shows, such a move is nonsensical, because nothing could possibly differentiate this supposedly necessary initial state from any other state or thing until it already existed and so nothing about it could possibly explain the _beginning_ of its existence.
Graham's attempted response to this just doesn't make any sense. Graham says that the special property of the initial state that allows it, uniquely, to pop into existence uncaused is the property of "necessity". That answers nothing. The initial state simply cannot possess the property of "necessity" unless it already exists. Something that doesn't exist cannot have any properties at all. If it doesn't already exist, it isn't anything. It's nothing. And nothing has no properties. Therefore, a property of "necessity" cannot possibly cause anything to _begin_ to exist, to _come into_ existence, even if it somehow _would_ have the property of "necessity" if it were _already_ in existence.
I don't understand how Cameron is missing this. Oppy isn't saying that his initial state is necessary in the sense that it couldn't fail to exist. He's saying it's necessary in the sense that ONCE IT EXISTS it couldn't be a different way. Not only does he not offer any argument or reason for why we should believe the initial state to be necessary in even that sense (i.e. why it MUST be the way it is and couldn't have been any other way), but he is also appealing to this form of post-existence necessity as an explanation for why the initial state CAME INTO EXISTENCE in the first place. Saying that once something existed it couldn't have been any other way cannot, in principle, explain why or how it came into existence in the first place. You still need some causal explanation for the origin of its existence even if you want to try to assert that in its coming into existence it couldn't have been any different than it was. To use a very simple example, imagine a "red ball". Perhaps we want to ask why the ball is red rather than blue and why the ball is a sphere rather than a cube. The answer might be that a "red ball" couldn't be anything but red and spherical, so it is _necessary_ that the red ball be red and spherical. I'm using this example because it allows these "necessary" properties to be true by definition so that we don't even need to quibble about why they should be viewed as necessary. In this example, being red and being spherical are legitimately necessary properties of the red ball in the same way being male and unmarried are necessary properties of a bachelor. But now imagine that the red ball doesn't actually exist. The fact that the red ball, IF IT EXISTED, would need to be red and spherical and couldn't be any other way cannot possibly result in the red ball popping into existence uncaused. If the red ball _did_ suddenly pop into existence, we couldn't possibly argue that the popping into existence is sufficiently accounted for by fact that the red ball had to be red and spherical. The fact that a thing's properties might have to be exactly what they are and couldn't be any other way can't possibly account for the beginning of its existence. And if it didn't just have properties that were necessarily what they are but additionally had the property of "necessary existence", then it couldn't have failed to exist and there would have been no beginning to its existence in the first place. Attributing the property of "necessary existence" to something that began to exist is nonsensical, but even if we wanted to do such a thing, the property couldn't do the work of supporting the thing's existence until the thing already existed and so couldn't possibly account for how the thing could pop into existence without a cause.
I think the part missing in this discussion that might contextualize oppys view for you is his theory of modality. If you start with that, his conclusion is both metaphysical necessary and logically necessary.
I liked this discussion very much. I do think that at times both sides were sort of unclear. A bit after the one hour mark, I could see what Oppy was trying to say, but unfortunately, I don’t think he articulated his thoughts very well and while I do have similar thoughts which is one reason why I don’t accept the Kalam, I think Oppy was attacking a slightly different point and I think his point ultimately failed. Loke did try to clarify that god was beyond all dimensions and I think Oppy maybe didn’t see how Loke’s view stayed safe with regards to that point(I do think Loke’s view does fail on other parts though). Loke was sort of unclear in other when trying to show how Oppy’s view fails. I also think that his point fails if we want to look at the initial state in a sort of B-theory view. Other than that though, it was still very enjoyable, and besides a few rough moments, I think Loke is very intelligent and I hope that he appears on the channel soon. :)
Why does Cameron cut off Loke (twice!) when he is in the middle of explaining the most crucial point of the debate, which is that appealing to necessity without an explanation can't do any explanatory work in your theory.
You may have missed when Oppy explained that claiming that something happens of necessity isn't a weak explanation for the way something is, rather it's actually an incredibly strong explanation. His example was 2+2=4. He expanded on this to say that some necessary things may be inferred from other necessary things but the explanation will still be one of necessity. So it wasn't so much Locke's crucial point in the debate as it was a crucial misunderstanding about the nature of necessity. Honestly, I thought Cameron did an absolutely excellently job moderating this debate. I'll be the first to call out when he overtakes a debate or makes arguments that aren't being made or what have you but none of that was in evidence tonight. He was in rare form and I hope to see more of this Cameron and less of the aLincolnist interviewer Cameron ;-)
@@Dan_1348 Cameron did just that. He tried to move the conversation along when Loke didn't seem to understand that Oppy wasn't speaking about a temporal before and when Loke kept asking for some reason that a particular event was necessary over any other event which also prevented other events from also having this property of necessity. The answer, Graham had given at least 4 times. Cameron kept the discussion going several times asking Graham to just hypothetically accept a premise and move to libertarian free will. He did great.
The one thing I can add to this discussion is that (as I understand it) in OUR universe at least, it is not possible for an object to remain changeless with regard to properties as spacetime has been expanding since t=0. Thus its coordinates in a 4D spacetime will always be be in flux relative to everything else. It is impossible to say whether this also applies to other polycosmic entities. But in our universe objects gain new properties by virtue of their existence.
Dr. Loke's books are given by title and publisher, and Dr. Oppy's are not. Later Dr. Loke repeats the titles of his books, both published and upcoming. Is this a discussion or a book commercial for Dr. Loke (or both)?
Right, I'd like an explanation of what it means to have a series of causes that aren't temporal. What's the difference between logical and temporal cause and what's the ontology of logical causation? I don't get that.
There is more than one necessary detail for Oppy's system. If he wishes to identify one moment in time as being "initial" and therefore necessary, he also needs to make it necessary that time can only create going forward. Because if this "creative energy" can flow in at least two directions, to the past and to the future, then any moment in time could serve as the initial point. Oppy would be unable to explain why any specific moment would be privileged above any other. Not that this is an insurmountable objection - Oppy could explicitly declare his other metaphysical assertions, one of which would presumably be that creative energy can only flow forward. My personal disagreement is with the idea of a creative energy, but I wanted to make this comment because I think it's an interesting aspect of the debate that there a multiple, necessary details that all must be posited, and how it might break down if things like time and the "creative energy" are altered from the assumed model.
Yes, plus he can't explain fine tuning. Plus he thinks necessity has no explanation. He talks about explanatory virtues, but his model seems to have less explanatory virtues than Loke's model.
@@randomvideoblogs8012 Necessity is actually an explanation, so Oppy succesfully explains fine tuning. If you ask how come there aren't any solutions to x^n+y^n=z^n, for x,y,z,n integers with n>2, (Fermat last theorem) then it seems to me a perfectly good explanation arguing that we can prove that there can't be solution using mathematics, thus it's necessary.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that oppy wants to attribute extension or a point in this timeless state which is contrary to what Loke believes about God and the initial state. After he finally clears this up, oppy just moves on to comparing theories which is odd, the last point in that tangent seemed to lean in loke's favor so why leave it there and then declare his theory was winning? It seems very strange but to my knowledge oppy hasn't given a good reason to think that the theist is committed to either an uncaused beginning for God or an infinite regress. Additionally, I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird. When pressed on this he brought up existing in all possible worlds which is fine but I was under the impression necessary foundation meant "could not fail to exist". Well if an objects existence is "caused" by its necessity alone then how can it have a beginning? I'm sure I'm missing something so if someone who understands oppy's view better wants to respond I'll appreciate that. I'll probably have to watch this again tomorrow for clarification.
I may be interpreting him incorrectly, but this was my understanding of his argument: So there are two possibilities regarding the causal chain of events leading to the generation of the universe: (1) the causal chain has a first event; (2) the causal chain does not have a first event. On (2), we have an infinite causal regress, which would violate causal finitism and thus undermine the soundness of the Kalam. On (1), we have some initial state that doesn't begin to exist and initiates a chain of events that leads to the beginning of the universe without itself being moved to do so. However, Oppy seems to posit that it is possible that there was a natural state of this sort, so the theist needs some symmetry breaker to explain why the initial state in the causal chain is more likely to involve God than it is to simply be a natural state. Otherwise, in the interest of parsimony, we are more justified in accepting the naturalistic explanation than we are in accepting the theistic explanation. In either case (1) or (2), the Kalam seems to be undermined.
There's a lot here to address but I'll take it one at a time. "It seems that a oppy wants to attribute extension or a point in this timeless state which is contrary to what Loke believes about God and the initial state." It's not that Oppy wants to attribute anything to this state, but rather Oppy is trying to ascertain what Loke could intelligibly mean when he says God is in this state. Here's the most simple way of thinking about this. Loke wants to say that God is changeless, sans the universe, because God is outside any dimension containing time while God is changeless. Equivalently, at no point in time (whether physical or metaphysical conception of time) was God ever changeless. My above proposition is 100% true on Loke's view. So what are we to make of it? Loke is in this weird state where he wants God to be changeless in a timeless sense, but he doesn't want to commit to any "extension" which would distinguish it from exactly what I said above which leaves the defender of this model saying things like: God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe. Because Loke was unable to clarify, and Oppy basically heard enough, Oppy (rightly) declared victory. This state of affairs is so unintelligible on its face that, whatever the problems with Oppy's model, so long as it avoids black holes like those above, it's on sure footing from a relative perspective. "It seems very strange but to my knowledge oppy hasn't given a good reason to think that the theist is committed to either an uncaused beginning for God or an infinite regress." Well look, if you object to me characterizing Loke's model as saying "God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe" then what you have to do is nullify the "never changeless" part of the proposition. And you do that by giving it some extension, something like "OK it's not literal spacetime on which we can count God as being changeless, maybe not even metaphysical time, but here's some kind of indexing which minimally re-contextualizes the above proposition". Now once you provide that indexing, Oppy thought maybe causal priority, maybe in a hierarchical cause sense, then saying "God was never changeless" isn't charitable but we now have to ask the question of the index itself. Is it finite or infinite? If it's finite, it has a beginning and then the question is whether the Kalam principle can be extended to metaphysical indices in the way it would have to be here (and I think the answer is yes based on the paradoxes which argue for finitism of some kind). If it's infinite, then there's some infinite index in some way associated, if not with cause directly, certainly with God's "coming to be causal" as he ceases to be changeless. "Additionally, I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird." Hierarchical causation is an easy example of this, see Thomist literature. The universe, on a Thomist model could be without beginning. But it's caused to be the kind of ontological thing that it is due to some hierarchical series terminating in a first member (God). Now a Thomist wouldn't appeal to God's necessity to remove God, but rather his being pure act, but it's like this situation. Point is, making God timeless absolves God from being caught in the Kalam principle, but it doesn't do anything else. "Well if an objects existence is "caused" by its necessity alone then how can it have a beginning?" That's why Oppy clarified. Necessity would be an explanation for something's being without beginning. Something's being without beginning is not an explanation for its necessity (there are Leibnizian and Thomistic reasons for thinking this, making this not an ad hoc argument for an atheistic conclusion).
@@logos8312 Thanks that does help clear up oppy's position a bit. _My above proposition is 100% true on Loke's view. So what are we to make of it? Loke is in this weird state where he wants God to be changeless in a timeless sense, but he doesn't want to commit to any_ _"extension"_ _which would distinguish it from exactly what I said above which leaves the defender of this model saying things like:_ _God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe._ That sentence does sound odd but its also equivalent to "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless _sans_ time". _Because Loke was unable to clarify, and Oppy basically heard enough, Oppy (rightly) declared victory. This state of affairs is so unintelligible on its face that, whatever the problems with Oppy's model, so long as it avoids black holes like those above, it's on sure footing from a relative perspective._ I agree Loke was confused for a large portion of the debate but I still don't see why we need to accept oppy's position and when it finally seemed like Loke definitively responded, oppy just moved on. _Now once you provide that indexing, Oppy thought maybe causal priority, maybe in a hierarchical cause sense, then saying "God was never changeless" isn't charitable but we now have to ask the question of the index itself. Is it finite or infinite? If it's finite, it has a beginning_ In respect to the causal chain I would imagine it would have to be hierarchical as well. However Loke defines beginning in his argument as having _temporal duration_ so I don't see why a finite hierarchical causal history (and therefore a beginning to the a-temporal causal history) means that his causal principle will apply here. _Hierarchical causation is an easy example of this, see Thomist literature. The universe, on a Thomist model could be without beginning. But it's caused to be the kind of ontological thing that it is due to some hierarchical series terminating in a first member (God)._ But this is not an example of what I said: _", I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird."_ It's an example of something without a beginning still having a cause. _Point is, making God timeless absolves God from being caught in the Kalam principle, but it doesn't do anything else._ Well I guess Loke and other KCA proponents would want to argue from timelessness that you need LFW/CCFW in order to create time. I'm fairly skeptical of that which is why that is my usual stopping point with KCA's. _That's why Oppy clarified. Necessity would be an explanation for something's being without beginning. Something's being without beginning is not an explanation for its necessity (there are Leibnizian and Thomistic reasons for thinking this, making this not an ad hoc argument for an atheistic conclusion)._ This makes me think that I may be missing something. I am under the impression that Oppy thinks his necessary initial state _does_ have a beginning. I think Loke's point is that is that it is incoherent to have a necessary thing with a beginning and no cause. I'm tempted to agree with him.
@@joshuaphilip7601 "That sentence does sound odd but its also equivalent to "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless sans time"." Well yes, sans time means absent any points in time. So it would say "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless at no point in time". "Loke was confused for a large portion of the debate but I still don't see why we need to accept oppy's position..." I think Oppy would agree. I think Oppy accepts his explanation, and I think Oppy considers himself successful if he argues that his position is more "simple" than the one it's in direct competition with. But Oppy's position being simpler than one other, Oppy would agree, isn't sufficient grounds that someone "must" accept Oppy's position. "and when it finally seemed like Loke definitively responded, oppy just moved on." hmmm I don't know which part you're referring to. Could you get me a time stamp of the particular response in question? I don't want to say the response wasn't definitive flat out, but at the same time I might be able to try to explain what Oppy might have been thinking if I know the exact part in question. "In respect to the causal chain I would imagine it would have to be hierarchical as well. However Loke defines beginning in his argument as having temporal duration so I don't see why a finite hierarchical causal history (and therefore a beginning to the a-temporal causal history) means that his causal principle will apply here. " Yeah this is one of the controversial moves Oppy made. I think what's going on under the hood there is a "what's so special about time?" question. The intuition someone might hold behind something having in beginning "in time" being caused could be generalized. For example, taking a page out of Craig's book, if causal chains themselves have a first index (could be hierarchical) but nothing causes the first cause or the chain writ large, why don't we see uncaused finite hierarchies of cause all around? Certainly the denial of such a thing might put something like the Aristotelian Proof in jeopardy (Craig probably wouldn't mind since he's not a Thomist) but extending that intuition of "widespread violations" could result in some gnarly stuff (though I'm too tired to come up with a clever thought experiment at the moment). "But this is not an example of what I said: ", I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird." It's an example of something without a beginning still having a cause. " Oh shoot I must have misread your question. Mea culpa on that one. I misread your question and thought you were talking about the question of whether necessity explains something being without beginning or vice versa. Now what I think you're asking about is the idea that Oppy has a "necessary" initial state at "t=0" and yet it is uncaused. My view on this is quite a bit different from Oppy's so it's a bit weird to me as well, but let's see if we can team up, play some devil's advocate and figure it out. I think Oppy's view owes a lot to Leibnizian constructions. The thing owes its necessity to the fact that it's the "first thing" which is the fundamental explanation for all contingent facts on Oppy's view. Oppy also seems to say that every possibility owes to either this world, or some alternative way this world could have been. So in a weird way, what Oppy is constructing here is a minimal S5 construction on all the possible future states of "this world" with (at least) one of those states being actual as time moves forward. Since all the possibilities are, well, possible, S5 would say that necessarily, they are possible. The collection write large then is necessary and since time hasn't yet moved forward, I think this is Oppy's "t=0" initial state, where things really are in suspense as merely possible. So intuitively it's necessary in the Leibnizian sense, analytically it's necessary via S5. Now we can talk about its being uncaused. Well since the "initial state" is, at base, a collection of possibilities for how the world "could be" once time starts moving past 0 (which means Oppy needs to have some schema for how causality and time will also work in there somewhere, which is another potential issue) nothing can cause something "to be possible". Oppy would say "of course it's uncaused, it's necessary". But precisely it's a collection of possible world states that are in suspension in the absence of causal activity which actualizes any one of them and nothing, in principle, could cause a collection of possibilities (which is why S5). The beginning part is interesting and if I had to guess, I think this is probably the lynchpin of Oppy's philosophy, if I had to look for a weakness somewhere. The idea isn't that the collection of possible world states ITSELF began to exist, but rather that time in the world as it is began to exist, at t=0, and the beginning point in time is precisely that initial state in which all that are, are world states suspended as being merely possible. I think that's the best way that Oppy is going to square it. I think what Oppy is going to have to clarify (if he didn't already and I missed it) is that it's not that the initial state "began to exist" but rather "the initial state is the beginning of time". I think that's it. "Well I guess Loke and other KCA proponents would want to argue from timelessness that you need LFW/CCFW in order to create time. I'm fairly skeptical of that which is why that is my usual stopping point with KCA's." Yes, I misspoke. I didn't mean making God timeless does literally nothing else for the model, but rather that making God timeless isn't sufficient to argue anything else about God's ontology, such as his being necessary. It was meant only for that context, but I think you and I share the same suspicion with time and LFW which is one of my reservations about KCA's as well. "This makes me think that I may be missing something. I am under the impression that Oppy thinks his necessary initial state does have a beginning. I think Loke's point is that is that it is incoherent to have a necessary thing with a beginning and no cause. I'm tempted to agree with him." Yeah I thought that too, but after re-listening and thinking more, I think what Oppy means is that the beginning happens at the initial state, or that the initial state is the beginning, but it doesn't "have" a beginning. I think Oppy said that caused things have beginnings, but his initial state is uncaused (because it's necessary) and so it doesn't have a beginning. It just "is" the beginning of the physical world. The physical world has a beginning (the initial state). I don't know if I'm making it better. I'm running on 5 hours of sleep and crashing, so I'ma go to bed before I become completely incoherent.
Kudos to both for a very interesting and intriguing debate/discussion. Thankfully it was more of the later and the civil personality of the two Dr and the moderator had a lot to to with it, as the format.
This was an awesome debate, I think a few good debates would be David Bentley hart vs oppy and Alexander pruss vs oppy. Those would be really awesome. Then you could do Craig vs oppy on the kalam
Andrew Loke is a machine. He sounds like he is running on the latest CPU and graphics card. Graham is a deep thinker but I think he needs few redbulls for the next debate to get him into gear.
@@RagingBlast2Fan yes you have made a fair comment and good analysis. In boxing they say ' styles makes fights' and this may be similar. In the sense that sometimes two people may not gel enough and it creates added friction in areas where normally there wouldnt be. Graham oppy is a powerful thinker and he has a laid back approach. Perhaps thinking reverse maybe Andrew Loke should have smoked some weed in order to slow him down a bit. That might have helped the dialogue. Either that or give graham a strong stimulant and get those words out of him a bit quicker. Other than that all I can suggest it to listen to Graham in 1.5x speed, that also helps.
I think I agree with Andrew... from what I could manage to pick out of his blistering speech pattern lol I like Oppy because he is SUPER smart and also speaks in a way that I can take time to think the words over in my head before he gets too far ahead.
Some have commented Oppy won while others have commented Loke won. The former conveniently NEGLECTED the fact that Oppy not only claims that universe is necessary but ALSO HAS AN UNCAUSED BEGINNING which entails a contradiction as Loke demonstrated using modus tollens, whereas ‘God’ is necessary & NO BEGINNING and hence no contradiction. So OPPY loses because whatever entails a contradiction cannot be true! The fact that the former missed such an important point which Loke emphasized during the debate shows that they are superficial listeners, no wonder they concluded Oppy won. As superficial listeners do LOL. I would just encourage everyone to check out ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html and read Loke's response to Oppy Malpass and Schmid in the Comments of their youtube review where Loke explains this & other points in greater details. Merry X’mas!
@@tophy9865 tu quoque is a fallacy dude cos it doesnt really answer the objection and loke explained during the debate that his view doesnt suffer from the same problem cos there's a difference between beginning and beginninglessnesss . to find out more check out ruclips.net/video/J6D-O7FrMBo/видео.html for goodness sake; i'm busy now and no time to talk futher bye and merrry xmas
@@tophy9865 of course I did watch oppy's review, tat's why I referenced Loke's video which is a refutation of oppy's review. tu quoque is falalcious in the sense of leaving objection unanswered regardless of whether Loke referenced beginninglessness which show that his view doesnt have same problem. as loke points out during the debate, oppy's claim that loke will appeal to infinite regress or beginning is a failure to consider a timeless state which has no regress and which is causally initially but not a beginning in time so no prob. oppy was 'silenced' with a long pause and went back talking about simplicity which loke went back to refute with modus tollens. check out their debate reviews for more info. bye bye.
"[Some have commented Oppy won. Those] conveniently NEGLECTED the fact that Oppy not only claims that universe is necessary but ALSO HAS AN UNCAUSED BEGINNING which entails a contradiction [...]" You see a problem with uncaused beginning because you are using a different criterion to determine what has causes than Oppy does. He uses the principle: "Every non-initial event has a cause". He also said: "Everything has an explanation". There are two types of events: initials and non-initials. Non-initials' explanations are their causes. And what explain the initial event is that it is necessary. There is no contradiction in this framework. Both agree that there is something that is uncaused. Andrew says it's god, Graham says it's initial events. You only see a contradiction because you are judging it as if Oppy were using the premise "everything that begins to exist has a cause". But that is Kalam's premise, not his. Personally, I would like they to focus more on the examination of the existence of some first cause in it's unchangingless state and it causing something in that state. That conversation was cut short, even though it lasted for hours.
Round 2 suggestion in honour of Loke's upcoming book: Does a first cause and fine tuning imply a God? Would love to see people hash out the gap between a first cause to a libertarian free agent from the perspective of temporal cosmological arguments, haven't seen this done on CC yet.
Time in terms of points is eternal. Time in the sense of what we mean requires a reference to become meaningful. Where Andrew Loke seems confused by is that even if you want to consider before the beginning of our time as timeless, there are still an infinite series of points that are "before" and "after" any events in the realm of God.
I kept underestimating Andrew throughout the discussion, but then he would cause me to rethink his argument at a deeper level to show that he had already taken into consideration Graham's objections. Excellent job by Oppy to humbly reconsider Andrew's argument when he clearly disagreed.
An interesting discussion, but it's hard not to call this one for Oppy. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is deceptively simply, but Oppy managed to tease out just how incoherent the concept of an immaterial, timeless, and spaceless cause is. It was frustrating that Loke didn't seem to understand why the initial state of the universe was different from any following ones. It seems obvious that it's different in not having a preceding state.
@@jackplumbridge2704How is it NOT? How can an "immaterial being" have a mind so complicated to the point where it can cause all of PHYSICAL reality as we know it? It's nonsense. It does not make ANY sense whatsoever.
At 28:40, that was the Kalam argument sound. So yes it has a sound. Solves the question posed. At about 1:20:00 Oppy is pure fire. At 1:59:00 I love Cameron.... "Well it's been two hours" ... Both debaters "let's keep going." lol. Question maybe a theist can help me with. The theist in the video takes the view that god is timeless, changeless, and personal. I don't understand how a thing can be timeless and changeless and also anything like a person. People constantly change, only exist in time, and would just be immovable bodies if frozen in a timeless changeless state. So how can something timeless and changeless also be personal? The properties seem logically incompatible (like a square circle).
@@251rmartin I posted this same question in a theist group on Facebook and the best anyone could muster was that "personal" means God effects persons. Under that definition, gravity would be personal.... A pretty big stretch of what the word personal can mean imho. The other possibility is that only God's essential character is changeless. So God could grt angry but would never change what kind of think would make God angry. I think this kind of weak notion of changeless really would undermine an attempt to use the property for a cosmological argument however.
Ouch. Graham's inquiry about "ground rules" were actually a Trojan Horse to sneak a deadly blow to Andrew's magnum opus. He's essentially saying, "That's a cute syllogism. What's the theory you think it argues for? That's the important part not the premises and the manipulation to a conclusion."
It's a Trojan Horse that kills his own theory rather than mine, for one of his ground rules acknowledges that if x demonstrates a contradiction with y's theory then y's theory fails. Which was precisely what I demonstrated using the modus tollens argument. It should be noted that a view that entails a contradiction cannot be true, even if it is simpler. Thus simplicity cannot help his view since his view entails a contradiction as I explained using the Modus Tollens argument, which he failed to rebut as I explained in my debate (see 1:40:45 to 1:43:07 ) and in greater detail here in my debate review with Suan Sonna (ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html : see 1:35:41 to 1:40:40).
@@andrewloke7 happy to respond in full as I think it's a result of a gross conceptual error. After dinner if the wife permits! However, out of curiosity, what innovation to the argument do you think you bring in your book? From what I've heard it seems like a concatenation of existing arguments and favors Dr. Craig's arguments/formulations over others you discussed.
For goodness's sake! I'm 2 hours in and Oppy just doesn't seem to understand that Loke is trying to say, "things don't have properties until they already exist, so you can't appeal to a property of a thing with a beginning to explain why it began"!! This is why most people would consider the set of "necessary" truths to be a *subset of the set of eternal or beginningless truths* Loke is going too far by saying that eternity *explains* necessity, but it is quite right to say it is a *criterion*
@@anglozombie2485 It begins to exist at T=0, if I understand him correctly. He is against infinite regress and would regard even an unchanging initial state that existed forever backwards as a regress.
@@anglozombie2485 Right, the tricky thing is that having a "beginning" in this context just means not extending backward in an infinite regress. It's not that first there is nothing and then Oppy's initial state begins. Rather, Oppy's initial state already exists at the earliest moment (thus, "initial"). In saying that it has a beginning, we just mean that the initial state is finitely distant from us in the causal order. So it's nonsense to say that the initial state doesn't have a property until it exists. There is no nonexistence to speak of prior to the initial state. There is no prior. The initial state exists initially.
I checked Oppy’s philpaper bio(I think that was the website), and it said that he was a B-theorist, so couldn’t Graham Oppy just say that the initial state exists eternally in the sense that it eternally and tenselessly exists at some initial spatiotemporal location in the “block universe”? I myself am agnostic on a theory of time, but I don’t see why this could be impossible.
@@crabking6884 I appreciate you mentioning that factor. I sometimes have a blind spot for it, since I think B-theory is literally incoherent and requires us to say all sorts of absurd things as we try to speak coherently about it (including, for example, that *everything* exists "eternally" in that same way and nothing ever changes). B-theory probably does rescue someone from Loke's point and from the Kalam in general, but at the cost of incoherence. If someone like Dr. Loke still wanted to defend this, I suppose they could ask "why think that the front edges of all other temporally finite objects need causes, while the rest of their extension doesn't?" Whatever the answer is to that, it will seem quite arbitrary to apply that everywhere except at the front edge of the world itself. Isn't that what Pruss calls the "Taxicab Fallacy"?
Interested in the non-trivial relationship (causal or simply of temporal succession) between states and events - sorry it came into play late in the dialogue.
Indeed, blind stupidity and obstinacy are unstoppable. Loke fails by failing to understand that the ‘special’ condition objection applies equally to his god. This is why Oppy states ‘what’s the cause?!’ in utter frustration at Loke’s stupidity and blindness. Of course, this ignores Loke’s basic lack of knowledge (surprising given that he’s a professor of philosophy) of basic terms, such as necessity (which he is happy to apply to his God, but not what we know to be the case), and ontological priority. He persistently conflated ontological priority with temporal priority a terrible oversight for a professor of philosophy. This really is a schoolboy error and Oppy got understandably frustrated by this basic failure.
That's not funny in the slightest. Do you not realize how that can be interpreted as racist? I don't see how those type of comments are necessary or appropriate.
﴿قُل هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ﴾ [الإخلاص: ١] Say, "He is Allāh, [who is] One, - Saheeh International ﴿اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ﴾ [الإخلاص: ٢] Allāh, the Eternal Refuge. - Saheeh International ﴿لَم يَلِد وَلَم يولَد﴾ [الإخلاص: ٣] He neither begets nor is born, - Saheeh International ﴿وَلَم يَكُن لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ﴾ [الإخلاص: ٤] Nor is there to Him any equivalent." - Saheeh International
I also think the whole concept that there is "causal duration" without temporal duration is incoherent, which is why Loke was struggling to answer without invoking time. If there is a Causal-but-not-temporal order, then describing it as either "a beginning" or a "regress" are both just inappropriate. The cause or causes would just exist timelessly, with no dimension at all along which there even *could be* either regress or point. Now, if you think that even simultaneous causation among such entities is good enough to give duration-style descriptions, then you are further motivated to say there is only one. That should be in _Loke's_ arsenal; not Oppy's. I just think that whole piece of the discussion was frustrating precisely because Oppy was making an incoherent demand, and Loke didn't understand it.
I think there could still be a causal regress even if there was no temporal regress. I mean, assuming that this type of timeless causation is possible (isn’t Loke committed to that?), some timeless causes could depend on the occurrence (?) of other timeless causes. For example, God’s intention to cause this universe might causally depend on God’s having recognizing facts about this universe (and infinitely many others) and God’s having the (virtuous) disposition to want to cause the best universe. If that’s true, that events/causes which are timeless can still depend on the occurrence of (“causally prior”) events, then it seems like we do have some ordering to the set of causes. In which case, if there was an infinite chain of dependence of one timeless cause on another, then there would be a “regress,” and if there was not an infinite chain of causes dependent on another, then there would be a “beginning” or first cause which does not depend on any other causes for its occurrence/existence. I’m new to this stuff so these are just my thoughts.
Given that they are simultaneous, the idea of "beginning" has no resemblance to temporal beginnings. There is nothing dangerous to Loke's position in assuming that the causal "chain" in the timeless state has only one link (indeed, that is exactly what Loke does think).
@@Mentat1231 What do you mean that the causal chain in God’s unchanging state is only one link? Are you suggesting that God’s knowledge about an infinite number of possible universes and God’s forming the intention to create one of them are not distinct things? Distinct causes? Also, can you explain how or when God goes from being changeless to not being changeless?
@@qqqmyes4509 You raise some very good questions. So, first off, neither knowledge nor intentions are causes, and so they wouldn't be links in the chain of causes. Secondly, it doesn't seem to make sense to say of a timeless thing that it "forms" anything, including an intention. It's also important to note that free actions don't have to be preceded by individual acts of will. But, putting all of that aside, and using this as a way to answer your later question as well: God decides to create at the same instant that He acts on it which is the first instant in time. Being omnipotent, there is no delay between His deciding that a thing should happen and its happening. Just a side note: these latter issues are once again about temporal order. I think it's hard to avoid shifting back to that, since the idea of causal order just isn't at issue here. If it were timelessly the case that Super-God sustains God in being (so that Super-God is higher in the causal chain), that wouldn't create any new issues about "beginnings". It would still be true that God created the world at the first instant in time.
@@Mentat1231 I’m sorry, but I don’t understand how God exists timelessly and yet at t=0 God decides to and creates the universe. This sounds incoherent to me. Are you saying that timelessly, God decides to create the universe, which has a beginning at t=0, or are you saying that God exists at t=0 at which God creates the universe? And sorry, but could you explain the idea of being “initially changeless”, and then not? Also, I am skeptical about intentions not being causes, since I think many metaphysicians would disagree (for reasons I’m not sure about, I don’t pretend to know). Or perhaps they are focusing on human actions, not divine actions.
8. Loke claims that an advantage of his view is that God has libertarian free will and so can intelligently choose to, say, fine tune the universe. But there are a myriad of problems with this. First, Libertarian Free Will means you have more stuff to keep track of in the model, making it less simple than Oppy's model. Not only do you have the initial state, you also have something causally prior to that AND all its decision chains to keep track of. i. Changelessness and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (see above). ii. Omniscience and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (How does one decide to do something they know they will do by necessity?) iii. Omnipotence and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (Mill / Jack (based on Bilgrami) pincer) 9. At around 1:04:00 I think Loke blunders a bit. It's not the case that just because everything that begins to exist has a cause, that if something is beginning-less then it is uncaused. This is trivial. Just draw a big circle labeled "things that have causes" and draw a smaller circle in that bigger one labelled "things that begin to exist". The Kalam causal principle is just that picture. You can have things that are in the "things that have causes" circle that aren't also in the little circle, and we immediately get this intuition from Leibnizian Arguments which Oppy owes quite a bit of his worldview to I think. Imagine an infinite chain of contingent facts. The whole chain could be contingent and thus explained outside itself by something necessary. Similarly you can have a beginningless sequence of causal events, but something outside the causal sequence itself is causally responsible for that sequence being there in the first place. Granted this is a slightly different use of "without beginning" than Loke may imply, but the general point still stands. Merely saying that God doesn't begin to exist isn't a get out of jail free card on God's causality writ large, it just excludes God from viciously falling under his own Kalam principle. What's going to solve this is the fact that God is necessary, and necessary things aren't the kinds of things that do or even can have causes. Oppy is right here. 10. At 1:07:00 I feel bad for the frustration Oppy is about to go through here given my own experience with Loke. Oppy is going to "rightly" argue that if God goes from changeless to changing, then insofar as those are to distinct ontological states for God, this implies some kind of duration (even if not temporal in the spacetime sense). When I brought this up with Loke, I measured it as a metaphysical indexing of all the times God could have decided to cease being changeless and chose not to. Nothing about time is implied by such a decision index, and we know the index is nontrivial since there is at least one decision (the Libertarian Free Will decision on Loke's model) where God could have decided to cease being changeless and did so. The existence of one decision in which God acted in favor, means there must possibly have been other instances in which God could have acted in similar kind but did not, and so he "remained" changeless. This sequence would be finite or infinite. If it's infinite, there's an infinite thing, violating one of the premises of the Kalam. If it's finite, then it has a first member, a "causal beginning". The game Oppy is playing here is to force the extension of the Kalam principle of "beginning" from just talking about spacetime, to any indexed metaphysical set. Indeed many of the paradoxes one would use to force a "beginning" to prove the nonexistence of infinites don't rely on time at all. I think this is a fair move. But if you don't like that move, we can just make another Leibnizian play. God's ceasing being changeless and creating the universe is either contingent or necessary. If it's necessary, it basically shares his own ontological status, putting Aseity in check (along with raising deep questions about how God "necessarily must" act due to his "Libertarian Free Will"). Most Christians would opt to go with the former. They can conceive of God never having created the universe at all. But if this is so, this can be cashed out one of two ways. i. There are an infinite number of "cease being changeless decisions" in God's changeless state in which God never affirms ceasing being changeless. ii. There just aren't any "cease being changeless decisions" in God whatsoever, the thought never even "changelessly crosses his mind". The former again yields an infinite sequence so the Kalam proponent would have to reject that. The latter means the whole indexed sequence of these decisions is itself contingent. In the same way one can imagine God never entertained this decision at all, the fact that he does so, and only a finite number of times, means there's either a Leibnizian explanation, or extending this to Kalam, a "deciding cause" for God's beginning (in index) to entertain these decisions "at all". And that's key, this is again not a temporal beginning but a Leibnizian bundled "beginning of the chain writ large". 11. 1:16:00 How many times is Loke going to accuse Oppy of saying that God is temporally prior, even though Oppy has gone through great pains to say otherwise? I'm getting mad flashbacks. 12. Loke is saying that if time is a continuum of points, this yields either the Grim Reaper paradox or the paradox of motion. Both are false. The Grim Reaper Paradox is mathematically constructible (and I've done it in response to one of the RR Kalam debate videos) without any particular consideration of time, and that's because time isn't the thing powering the paradox, but the infinite index of reapers. The paradox of motion is dismissed so long as any causal events in time (such as motion) are measurable (in the sense of Real Analysis). But again it's worth noting that Oppy using "points" here is just a euphemism for "index in a causal chain". 13. 1:28:40 "I certainly succeeded as long as my words didn't misfire". That's probably the most sassy I've ever heard Oppy be in one of these discussion and I'm loving it. 14. "Any properties that differentiate the initial state from the other things, will be shared as soon as those other things exist" Andrew, are you saying that everything that exists now, necessarily exists? Because given what Oppy has sad, that's what you'll be committing yourself to. You don't want to do that. 15. Loke had to be reminded what Oppy said about 1 minute ago at about 1:48:00. This is what happens when someone is listening only for a weakness to knock something down, rather than listening in order to truly understand someone's position. Loke is a person who listens only insofar as he waits to talk. It's why he kept saying Oppy was saying things were temporal, even in the middle of a sentence where Oppy was explaining that wasn't what he was saying. I can feel Oppy's frustration through the screen. 16. Loke claims he explains that no "special property" can exist because it can't "do the work" 1:54:00 and that's like the 5th time he claimed to explain it. I didn't hear an explanation that Oppy didn't address already. But I'm sure, given my experience with Loke, that he's going to claim that he explained why it can't work 7 more times before this conversation is over. 17. The reason for God's being metaphysically necessary can't be that God is beginning-less. This is absurd on its face. If you want to invoke the Kalam principle then you can say: 1.Necessary things are not caused. 2. All things with beginnings are caused. C. So if a thing is necessary, then it is without beginning. i.e. Under the Kalam principle, God is beginning-less because he is necessary. You cannot go the other way around. Let's try. 1. Let X be without beginning. 2. X could be caused or uncaused since all we know is that things that begin are caused, but we know nothing about beginning-less things. 3. If X is caused then X is not metaphysically necessary. C. X could be without beginning and still fail to be metaphysically necessary. I.e. it's not the case that being beginning-less would be an explanation for a thing's necessity. This is really simple stuff here. I'm surprised he's making such a basic mistake. Now they're talking about objects and events and I'm not finding this part of the discussion very interesting so I think I'll close it here. Comment 2/2
@@FoxintheKnow86 It was on the Unbelievable channel. Loke was debating Malpass. I commented, Loke actually responded. I'll see if I can pull up the link later.
@@logos8312 cool. I think i had a few comments on that video myself. Not sure if I was making much sense, but I felt Loke was fairly dismissive and repetitive.
@@johnabad866 Several ways. Hierarchical causation: Suppose that we take extremely literally, for sake of argument, the law of thermodynamics which states that matter can never be created nor destroyed. One can still think that the motions which make up the molecules which make up stuff, even timeless stuff are caused. For more on this kind of causation, see Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof. Ontological Causation: Even if a thing happens to exist "forever" one could still conceive of it failing to exist, however they could still conceive of its essence, forming the essence / existence distinction. Whatever the cause of a thing's essence instantiated into existence, that cause would be the case whether or not the thing began to exist, because it's the kind of cause which is simultaneous to it in any instance of its being. See Ed Feser's Thomistic Proof Composition: Even if a thing never begins to exist, it can be caused to be by the forming of its parts, and, indeed, the forming of its parts to make the kind of thing that it is (rather than some other, or nothing at all) is a kind of cause which doesn't hinge on whether or not a thing actually began to be composed. See Ed Feser's Neoplatonic Proof. Abstracta: Many Christians believe that abstracta like mathematical objects do not begin to exist, but nonetheless are caused into being via the mind of God. See Ed Feser's Augustinian Proof. I've chosen particularly Christian kinds of causation which are independent from beginnings for a reason - so one couldn't accuse me of making the claim that such causation "could" exist purely as an ad hoc maneuver in favor of atheism. Not only are these kinds of causation fluent in some Christian arguments, but indeed an atheist, with some time and imagination, conjure up a model of their own perhaps. Point is, logically speaking, necessity explains a being's lacking a beginning, but a being can lack a beginning and still be in some way causally dependent on something else.
Cameron, you titled this debate, “Is the kalam sound?” But, Oppy right off the bat indicated that he wasn’t interested in talking about soundness or arguments at all. It seems you should discover such ground rules before the debates starts. It seems easy enough to ask both parties if they are in agreement that the debate will discuss “Is the kalam sound?” If so, then great, if not, then you need to set the ground rules and topic beforehand.
Sound for whom? Whether the Kalam is sound is largely dependent on the worldview (Theism/Naturalism) you hold. So, unless you want to make the case that naturalists or theists are unreasonable in holding the worldviews they do (which is different to merely disagreeing with them), then there is not much point of discussing the soundness of the Kalam. Both groups will be reasonable in their acceptance or rejection of the soundness of the Kalam. So, like Oppy, I think more emphasis should be placed on comparing theories to see which theory comes out on top.
@@jessicalk1016 You may be right. But, the debate was titled as a discussion of the soundness of the kalam. Loke intended to do that and Oppy never intended to discuss it. So, my point is that the moderator should get both participants to agree on exactly what they will discuss. Preferably beforehand so the debate can be titled appropriately.
I think Oppy is over-stating the difference between giving arguments and comparing "theories" (i.e. worldviews). If, for example, Loke's Causal Principle follows from some premises or observations which Oppy would agree with, then Oppy is implicitly committed to the Causal Principle and he'll have to either find a way to reject the things he previously held which led to the CP or else give up his view about the beginning. That's all the arguments are designed to do: get you to realize that, given some facts that you accept, you are implicitly committed to things which in turn undermine your view on something else.
Did Graham actually say that his 'necessary initial state' began to exist? It seemed that Loke kept on claiming that this was part of it and attacking it but I'm not sure if Graham ever actually said this.
I'd say yes. It does depend what is meant by "begin to exist." Loke takes "begin to exist" to mean extending finitely into the past. Oppy agrees in this discussion that the causal order is not an infinite regress or a loop, which indicates that there is some initial state/cause/event finitely distant from us in the causal chain. So in that sense Oppy's initial state began to exist. It has an earliest moment finitely far away from us (t=0). But it didn't begin to exist in the way that other things in our day to day life begin to exist, e.g. something that exists now and not yesterday. There is no history before the initial state, since it is initial. Thus the discussion of causal principles: can something "begin to exist" in this sense without a cause. Oppy says yes, since none of the examples given for Loke's principle actually undermine the relevant difference between initial and non-initial items.
@@RanchElder Watching it again now and I wonder why Loke's God concept doesn't have 'an earliest moment finitely far away from us' as regardless of whether you mean 'moment' in time or in the causal sequence, it would seem that the earliest/first moment is when the first change in time or causality occurs and it doesn't really make sense to refer to something existing separate from or before time or causal order as Loke seems to want to do. So I guess I need to clarify if 'extending finitely into the past' means; (1) Extends finitely into an infinite past, or (2) Extends finitely into a finite past I think on Graham's view there is no 'infinite past' so it wouldn't make sense to apply that characterisation to his view. But if we use the second characterisation it would seem that both Graham's 'initial state' and Loke's 'God model' already exist at the first moment (in time or the causal chain) so it doesn't seem to separate them.
@@nickmorris2250 Your second characterization seems correct. I agree that it's hard to make sense of Loke's view. The timeless, changeless being suddenly changes and enters time. The notion of a timeless disembodied mind being more plausible than an initially existing spacetime surface just doesn't track for me.
@@RanchElder thanks for the clarification, may answer why does initial reality begin to exist under Oppy's view ? Like t=0 means time doesn't exist, then what causes to exist ?
I don't think Oppy or Cam understood Loke's point about there needing to be something to differentiate the necessary first state from other things, and that this isimpossible prior to the first state existing. I was getting frustrated along with Loke as they, from my perspective, kept failing to see what he was saying. But then again maybe Oppy's just so brilliant that I don't get what he's saying.
Relevance? It's not a relevant objection because the two theories in question both take the initial conditions as necessary: one assumes that God's proclivities and nature are arbitrarily necessary and the other assumes the initial state of nature is arbitrarily necessary. Multiverse Loke tried to insist on some relevance through the fine tuning argument but in actuality the appropriate inference is the multi-verse because, according to Loke, there can be no arbitrary set of initial conditions that only gives rise to one possible outcome over another. Well, if that's true (and this is Loke's own assumption), then there would not be, in fact, a single universe but instead every possible combination of universes, ergo, a multiverse. Instead, he tries to say that God must exist to set the initial conditions. It doesn't make sense because his argument should lead him to conclude there is an unseen multiverse, not that naturalism is false. (Loke also made the mistake of saying this modus ponens argument works because we observe no multiverse therefore there is no multiverse, which is a non-sequitur for obvious reasons [multiverse is not observable with our current technology and may be inaccessible in principle]). Ignorance and Fine Tuning And the actual appropriate statement to make is that we simply don't know why the initial conditions were what they were, which is why the fine tuning argument doesn't work in the first place. We have no idea if the universe is, in fact, trying out every possibility, or if there is some other principle at work which would explain things, or if there is even a "seemingly absurd" situation in which some arbitrary set of conditions is, in fact, necessary for reasons beyond our comprehensions, or perhaps for no reason at all. The point is we are in a state of ignorance which does not justify making inferences of the kind theists make, or to rule out other possibilities. God's Tuning If at the end of it you still reject a naturalist universe you are back at square one because you have to explain why God is tuned the way he is. There will definitely be no explanation for this so I don't know why this is supposed to get us anywhere. Moreover I don't see how you could say that God is simpler and less ad hoc than a multiverse because the ability to create a multiverse (an attribute nobody would deny God would have, I think) is more complex than an actual multiverse itself because it presupposes more postulates than a multiverse does. A multiverse says that we must postulate there are X number of universes and that's all that exists; a theistic God who can create a multiverse is postulated to have X abilities, as well as the quality of existence, as well as whatever other qualities you wish to arbitrarily assign to God.
@@superdog797 ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes?wprov=sfla1 ... Atheism is like that fable ... Theism is like the Fox dreaming that is eating the Grapes and after waking up, trying to convince the other animals that the Grapes tasted delicious ....
@@firstnamesurname6550 I understand your analogy and think it is clever but of course will sour on it because in the analogy likens God to the grapes, which actually exist in the fable but are just out of reach, whereas an atheist doesn't think the grapes actually exist. At any rate, I suspect the reality is that the fox exists, the grapes exist, and our dreams exist, but most conceptions of God that people hold do not exist. Either way it's all just suspicions we have - I just don't like it when people push their suspicions as facts.
@@superdog797 Well, I don't have any sort of issues about any sort of real or imaginary hierarchy of beingness that state that there could be other entities exponentially superior to my self .... and I am not as arrogant to put myself and my experiences as The Measurement Stick for determining what must be Real for All the Possible Entities that had come/comes/ will come into existence... Particularly, I don't tend to gravitate towards Humanistic Philosophies .... Mankind as a whole could be just a contingent artifact in a System that doesn't need Humans in it but has the potential for producing those artifacts ... Not as arrogant to deny exponentially Superior Entities than me but arrogant enough to discard All Mankind as something essential for Overall Existence .... 😂 ... ( My Ancestors, Mom & Dad would show me their middle finger by It ... 😂 ... but nobody cares, except - maybe - my master overlords ... ) In fact, I was expecting your kind of answer to the comment ... and this brings me a cool idea ... to publish the answer of those responding to me before they answer the comments ... then, after they write the answer/response/post-comment ... I will submit them to a page where I previously wrote their answer ...
Great video. I dont think doctor Loke is particularly good in the debate, but I will buy his book. It feels to me he may be better in writing. Doctor Oppy is brilliant, but he seems a little bit frustrated along the conversation. Thanks for this wonderful content.
I have a few thoughts on this debate. First, Oppy and Loke both gave lame answers to the "which superpower would you choose?" Question. Second, I think that Loke is a bad debater. He presents a scripted argument (nothing wrong with that), Oppy takes him off script, Loke responds by repeating a part of his script. It's like trying to win a game a tag when you're on a train and your opponent is in a helicopter.
I am not an intellectual by any means. I have been an atheist for 50years or thereabouts. I have great respect for great thinkers like Oppy and Loke. These interactions can sometimes be interesting. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause ". Except "god". Special pleading? Self refuting? I don't know how the Universe began but I am not going to jump to "god did it ". I don't know and AFAIK neither does anyone else.
@@jerryoconnor-ps8bb Let me repeat this again. Loke did not say God has a beginning. He didn't say, "everything that exists has a cause". He said, "everything that *begins* has a cause". This is also the same causal principle that Graham Oppy accepts which is, "all non initial things that begin to exist have a cause". These philosophical debates are too complicated for you. It's better for you to go watch simplistic new atheist videos where all you hear is your side and confirmation bias.
Just continue in your delusions. No one has ever provided sufficient evidence for the existence of any of the multitude of proposed gods. So I look forward to see you get the Nobel Prize. Good luck with that.
@@generichuman_ No its called circular reasoning🤦🏻♂️ , whats annoying is typical atheist unwarranted pretentiousness like yours stemming from the Dunning-Kruger effect
A Chicken hatches from an egg as it's necessary for a chicken to do so, and it's necessary for a chicken because chickens hatch from eggs. The first part is sufficient, the second is redundant because there's no need to explain why it's necessary for a chicken to hatch from an egg for it to be a chicken. Here it's implied that it couldn't be a chicken if it didn't hatch from an egg.
@@MrKlousse i dont think the analogy is correct. in the second part of the analogy "because chickens hatch from eggs" it implies that the actual discussed topic (the universe) has only one way of being created, that being the necessity of its initial nature having the property of being able to come into existence out of nothing. i dont think that is rational but thats another story.
@@profs2981 It's not pretentiousness, it's frustration from having to deal with the same bad arguments over and over again. It's unbelievable to me that people can't see what Oppy was doing. He was using the argument from necessity (the one that Christians like to use all the time) and showing how it can equally be used for a non supernatural origin. It's a bad circular argument, and that's the point, if Loke can see the reason why it doesn't work in Oppy's case, then he should be able to see why it won't work in his own argument. I also find it interesting that Theists are sensitive to the nuances of this argument, and are able to see the flaw, but not the flaw of proposing a disembodied intelligent mind that exists outside of time and is changeless, but is also free and somehow makes decisions. Give me one argument for God that isn't either circular, an example of special pleading, a misapplication of parochial intuitions, or a simple assertion, then we can talk...
Cameron's channel has a lot of really great debates. This debate was not one of them. The phrase "dumpster fire" comes to mind. Dr. Oppy was, as usual, thoughtful and clear and compelling. However, Dr. Loke never seemed to grasp what Oppy was saying and the conversation suffered because of it. Truthfully, I would have preferred to hear Cameron engage with Oppy rather than Dr. Loke.
Hey Cameron, I know you’re busy but I have been bugged for a while about a debate between Lawrence Krause and John Lennox since I saw it a few years ago. Several parts got to me, but Krauss says at one point something to the affect of “scientist don’t ask why, only how.” How would you answer that?
@@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns Poor guy got slapped around because He's too nice. Krauss talked over him the entire time. It was not a debate because Krauss would not allow a back-and-forth.
Im an atheist and belive that every time oppy has been on CC ha has come out on top. But I think this is due to exactly the reason oppy speaks about in the beginning. Arguments could really only be held in a worldview so everytime two people clash about a argument coming from different worldviews the arguments is more or less pointless. This is due to the fact that everyone argues from their worldview. So I don't think there is any reason to think he will become a theist anytime soon. :) interesting debates non the less
@@Nr1Sgt You do realize the irony of your reply, right? Oppy's very participation in this debate, and your reply to my post, betrays this view that arguments from two different worldviews are "more or less pointless." If they are pointless, why do atheists even have debates? If arguments can't help anyone of a different worldview arrive at truth, then there should be no debates, ever.
@J w You're saying atheists but I think you're meaning almost all people. That said, many of the atheists coming here probably don't fit your characterization.
@J w theists tend to be theists because they don't bother to think outside of the religion they were born into. Not because of any intellectual exercise.
@J w just about all theists were born into the religion that they follow. That is why when we look at a world map we can guess the persons religion fairly reliable. Religion is an extension of culture its not based on any truths of reality. Converts make up a very small percentage of any given religion. If I had to guess most of those theists you mentioned likely grew up in a culture that was Christian. Religion is just an extension of culture. Its why everyone around the world comes to the same conclusion that facts about the world like 2+2=4 but when it comes to culture and religion they are divided by boarders. God lives outside of reality but religion and culture are intertwined.
The gimmick of saying anything that “begins” to exist references everything in our experience. We don’t know if the universe began to exist or not, only that at one point the universe was so small and dense our math doesn’t work. But if experience is the reason for the argument, one could say; Everything for which a cause has been determined has been from a natural phenomenon.
They would argue that we have no "evidence" that the universe has a beginning, but that evidence and science is not the only way we can know things. Science as a method can only lead to knowledge if a bunch of metaphysical and epistemological assertions are taken to be true, for example. One could argue that there is no conclusive evidence that it is even physically possible to inspect the origins of the universe. Reason could be the only tool we have to investigate it. Actually, the notion that science could even investigate the origin of the universe is kind of a metaphysical statement.
@@Alkis05 : Science assumes nothing. Everything is falsifiable so our "best understanding" should always be changing. Conclusions based on factual errors are not sound no matter how philosophically sophisticated you are.
@@lrvogt1257 Of course science assumes somethings. It assumes the world is regular and governed by descriptive laws. That the rules of inference work. That knowledge is worth pursuing. That knowledge ultimately comes from experience. Those are just out the top of my head. There maybe more.
@@Alkis05 : I think it's more accurate to say that science accepts certain facts as more probable than others based on observation and testing. That knowledge is worth pursuing isn't an objective fact but a broadly held opinion. Experience can be valuable but it can be misinterpreted. Ask Penn & Teller.
@@lrvogt1257 You conveniently didn't respond to the claim that science has as premise that the universe has patterns and that it can be described through physical laws. That is an assumption. Without it, there would be no point in the idea of "Reproducible experiments" for example. Without that, there is no peer review. Without both, there is no science. Since you can't use science to prove the foundations of science, which puts that notion about reality squarely on the domain of metaphysics. Look, I don't like it either. I would be glad if there was a way for science to put its own foundations to the test. But logic just doesn't work that way. If you are interested in explore if you are indeed wrong about "science making no assumptions", I recommend you to study or revisit the basics of philosophy of science.
Wait a second. Why does Oppy qualify around 1:25:45 that it's impossible for any CONTINGENT thing to pop into existence without a cause? Something NECESSARY wouldn't pop into existence at all, because it's existence would be... necessary. And yet, that seems to be exactly what he's asserting about his supposedly necessary initial state: That it has a beginning and pops into existence without a cause because its necessary. Huh?
Poor Andrew, special pleading until he was bleeding. Oppy sliced him to bits. WLC won't debate Kalam with Oppy because he would bleed too. The Kalam is just indefensible, at least WLC is wise enough to avoid it and go for the 'maths' discussion which had more grounds for philosophical agreement.
what a bad faith comment, do you genuinely think craig is simply scared of debating oppy?? you sound like the typical layman atheist, this would be like me saying oppy wouldn't debate pruss because pruss would shred oppy.. professional philosophers are beyond such childish nonsense
Amazing discussion! I think Andrew made more convincing arguements. But neither Cameroon nor oppy couldn't comprehend that. Oppy took it away from being highly syllogistic/ philosophical. He don't answer many complicated questions Andrew put forward. However, it was The most intellectual debate I ever watched on the topic, both performed well.
Loke is more educated than me, so it’s probably hubris of me, but it seems to me like he doesn’t understand modality if he thinks God’s existing at all times or being indestructible or not depending on anything else for its existence means that God’s existence is necessary-that it could not have been the case that God did not exist altogether. At least, it is confusing for him to claim God is necessary without explaining what he (unconventionally) means by “necessary” until two hours into the debate and only because Oppy challenged him about it. Also, it is surprising that Loke did not begin this discussion by briefly explaining causation. I know it is hard to give a philosophical account for causation, but he could have at least tried (Oppy helped him with this). My attempt would be “it’s a basic ontological relation where some object or event brings about, or produces, or makes probable another event’s occurrence”. Or, we might understand “A causes B” as “had A not occurred, then B would not have occurred”. Nonetheless, he did not do a good job of defining his terms, especially for how fundamental the notion of causation is for his argument. Honestly I don’t think Loke provides his argument in a clear, precise way that can be well understood, and it’s hard to assess the argument’s cogency. For example, slide at 2:17:55, the premises are way too hard to clearly understand. I still don’t even understand the concept of “initially changeless”. And he talks about “the capacity to prevent itself from changing”, but I don’t even know if that makes sense.
I agree with you, it was extremely confusing to me when he said "so on my view there is an explanation for why God exist uncaused and the way it is, why God exist necessarily" at 1:02:50. If something is necessary, then it exists no matter what. If there would be some reason for its existence, it wouldn't be necessary. In my view, providing a reason for necessity betrays a confusion about the term. So in the end, I think I have to agree with Oppy about which property does the work -- it is the necessity. I think the necessity, not the beginninglessness, does the work, because you can have a contingent beginningless (by Loke's definition) being and you can have a necessary being that has a beginning. To make God work as an initial item, Loke had to appeal to "not being contingent on anything" and Oppy has pointed that out.
I like this Oppy. Go to the offensive and push harder on the assumptions. All of the metaphorical language around theism is just an excuse to dodge tough questions. Time to dispense with that nonsense. At the same time, it takes a special kind of courage to box with Oppy so I massively commend Loke, despite my perception that he failed to disconfirm Oppy's position.
@C how about you steelman Oppy's position. If you can do that effectively I'll steelman Loke. If you're not able or willing, then move on and direct your unbridled vitriol elsewhere. Thanks.
2:07:30 Why does the fact that something is initially changeless mean that it must be able to prevent itself from changing? I have no idea what Loke is getting at here.
That is not exactly what the argument says. This portion of the argument is examining the conditions for it to be possible for some first cause to cause something from a state of changelessness. From this state of changelessness it has to prevent itself from changing, otherwise it wouldn't be initially changeless, because we are talking about the initial event here. If it is not changeless here, it wouldn't be beginningless. And if it has a beginning, it has already been established at this point of the argument, that it could not be the first cause. That is the 10.2 point in the slide.
3:20 - Loke's powerpoint
15:00 - Oppy's ground rules
23:30 - Causal series
27:35 - Causal loops
32:00 - Infinite regress
34:40 - First cause(s) (Loke responds at 41:10)
36:00 - Causal principle
45:24 - Loke's argument in favour of the causal principle
52:00 - Oppy's response
54:35 - Loke's response
55:45 - Oppy starts shaking his head
1:00:25 - Oppy's response + back and forth
1:14:00 - HEATED ( spirited :)
1:20:55 - Oppy compares the two views
1:25:25 - Back to the causal principle
1:27:10 - Theoretic virtues
1:29:50 - Cam's question + back and forth
1:37:40 - If you could have any superpower..?
1:40:45 - Back to the causal principle + necessary existence
2:00:40 - Libertarian free will + beginnings
2:11:00 - Change/Persistence/Cambridge change
2:22:40 - Loke's closing
2:24:20 - Oppy's closing
As I was re-watching I figured I'd just timestamp sections for future reference. The debate was a bit messy so it was hard to accurately pin the sections.
awesome, thank you
The debate was more like tied to me I really don't see a winner they we're both great debates
*Debaters*
@Elephant Philosophy You planning on doing a review?
👁👄👁
Cam, thank you for this debate. This was absolutely one of the best conversations about this topic, ever.
I LOVE how seriously Oppy took the superhero question! Lol. That was adorable.
This we agree about :)
Odd thought, would libertarian free will be the ultimate power?
@@Babycakex Would it FEEL much different to being a determined creature with the illusion of freewill?
This is one intense discussion and I love it. Thanks for this, Cameron!
This was fantastic. Grats Cameron for setting this truly epic discussion up between these two wonderful people.
Yes, it was "epic" and GRAND! I truly enjoyed this one!
I like how oppy actually takes his time to process the argument at 1 hr 20 mins.
Point of clarification for people in the USA. In Australia 'professor' is a substantial academic rank, usually the head of a department and a person who is recognised by his or her peers as a major contributor to a field. In the USA professor is almost anybody who stands at the front of a class. So, USA people, having Oppy on this channel is an immense privilege for us all and an honour for both Cameron and Andrew.
I personally found Dr. Loke to be both philosophically compelling and consistent! Such a delightful discussion.
is it possible that even if Loke was "consistent" in your eyes which is a whole other topic at hand...but could he have been consistently wrong? Even the moderator was having a rough time keeping up with Loke's word salad....im curious to know if you actually understood what he said or if your bias simply accepted his words because he threw god into the mix. to me he could have said blahblahjlkhdasflherlkjhadsf GOD! and people would be like "ya that makes sense"
@Sentient.Observer it's not special pleading you goof, Andrew is explicitly arguing for a category that would not require causes (in this case, beginingless entities). God isn't arbitrarily exempted, he is exempted by falling into a category that has been principally distinguished from the one that involves causal dependency. And then Loke's argument is for why the member of the exempted class would be God versus a naturalistic alternative. His entire presentation is about what could exempt something from needing a cause, if you got "special pleading" from that then you need to find something more basic first, because this stuff flew over your head.
@Sentient.Observer if you can argue for why "special universe farting unicorns" would be a good description for the beginningless first cause in Andrew's argument, go ahead.
It's clear that you don't know much about this stuff. That's normal. Try to recognize your ignorance and to open your mind a little bit; it might be hard for you to understand, but someone like Andrew is a lot smarter than you and your points are utter crap, which is why Oppy (which is also very smart) doesn't use your mangled misunderstandings as a response. His counter-arguments are very different. There's a reason for all that.
You don't know what you're talking about. Chill and try to inform yourself a little.
@Sentient.Observer nice changing subject. From your misinformed charge of special pleading to "Loke hasn't demonstrated the first part, circular causes, etc". Why do you wanna save face? No one knows you here.
You know deep down that you are ignorant. You know you've never read a single book defense of the argument you're criticizing. I have explained to you why there is no special pleading, and why your mention of farting unicorns was retarded (I think you caught on to that, which is why you changed the subject), so buzz off already. Next time be a little more careful when trying to criticize academics who know far more about this stuff than you do.
@Bohrmaschine not you.....the christs courtroom dude
Cameron, chill out, your hair looks fabulous. These great philosophers don't grow hair because they don't have any time for that. Thank you for hosting such a great discussion.
Yes. The hair is perfectly fine the way it is LOL.
My first time watching Loke and I’m impressed! What a gent, give oppy a run for his money!
I am so impressed by these philosophical titans that I want to become a philosophical titan by my own. Studying chemistry (master degree now) and in addition to that, I started a seminar about philosophical cosmology (including thoughts about natural theology). I want to dive deeper both in chemistry and philosophy
Go on, you might be the modern Thomas Aquinas and come up with some new proofs for God.
Yeah I already developed a possible disprove of naturalism based on the problem, that our thoughts should be predetermined by the biochemicals mechainism in our brain and signals from our environment, according to reductionism in the naturalistic worldview. Free will should not exist under these conditions.
But I figured out that my argument fails and can be easily refuted by quantummechanic events which are not predetermined and can have influence on our environment.
I will write a philosophical essay about my argument. Maybe someone other can handle the refutation and make the argument working.
@@herbertcharlesbrown1949 have you seen Edward Feser arguing for the immateriality of the mind?
@@Darksaga28 No, I just made my own philosophical thoughts and discussed them with others
@@herbertcharlesbrown1949 you should check that out, interesting stuff. Also inspiring philosophy has a series on this
Haven't watched this yet. Graham had better say "orthodoxly conceived monotheistic God" at least 25 times in this debate.
I laughed much harder at this comment than was reasonable. :)
I don’t think he said it.
We need Craig vs Oppy on Kalam...it Will be epic!
It would be laughably one sided
Oppy would demolish Craig on that. Loke is much better a defender of the Kalam than WLC
@@natikfire low bar bill
@@natikfire Craig destroyed Oppy on the philosophy of mathematics with ease.
@@TBOTSSwhat make you write that?😂
What a great example of civil and erudite philosophical discussion. Great to see how real philosophers work! Thanks Cameron!
Oppy’s initial comments is a very interesting reflection on the purpose of arguments.
The philosopher way of saying "I'm not going to play in your sandbox. If you want to play I'm over here."
No! It was what you see in every debate. Oppy is sounding senile.
In that case, you seem to watch better quality debates than I 🤣
@@jwatson181 Of course, it may simply be that the same basic principles apply in each debate. Since these principles are fundamental to the process of philosophical argumentation and discourse, it follows logically and necessarily that he [Oppy] will be restating these where his debate opponent contravenes these basic rules of discourse. For what it’s worth I think Oppy’s intro is fundamental to understanding how Loke’s argumentation is fundamentally flawed. Loke seems to think that validity and soundness guarantee his preferred conclusion, ie god, when there multiple options. And of course he is working to a preferred conclusion, based on a book that is itself fundamentally flawed.
On another note, I recently had a discussion with Loke on another thread and it quickly became apparent that he has a deeply flawed understanding of physics and zero understanding of how the current scientific thinking (understanding of the evidence) completely circumvent his philosophical assertions. This perfectly highlights the point that Oppy makes that although the syllogism may be valid and can argued to be sound, this bears zero relation to the science and how this shows not just one, but multiple models fit the data without needing to appeal to any god (the noun ‘God’ explains precisely nothing. It’s simply a place holder for ‘I don’t know’). Indeed, mixing god into the mix of science adds unnecessary ‘explanatory’ complexity and so can be rationally dismissed by applying Occam’s razor.
Of course, there are also sound philosophical objections to Loke’s arguments, which distill to little more than special pleading. How Loke considers that his ‘proof’ beats the efforts of hundreds of great thinkers in the past and present is frankly staggering and shows that although his reasoning sounds plausible to the unwary, it does not pass muster. Put bluntly, if Loke had proven the existence of the Christian god he would be in line for a Nobel prize and worldwide fame. The fact that this has not happened ought to be a big warning sign that if you think these arguments work, you have not understood how and why these arguments are flawed and fail at the first hurdle.
@@plasticvision6355
Oppy can't even have a debate if his worldview is correct
I like Dr. Andrew Loke's presentation, very clear.
Thanks Cameron for hosting such a great conversation.
Yes, it was certainly an INFORMATIVE conversation!
Around 1 hour and 50 minutes, this comes down to what is more believable. Spontaneous existence or something eternal. I have no idea how someone as smart as Graham Oppy can honestly believe that spontaneous existence is believable.
It seems like a universe necessarily popping into existence would require something beginning-less to make the universe and its expansion necessary. Is Graham saying it necessarily popped into existence out of absolute nothingness? I’m confused because his view seems impossible.
Because Oppy doesn’t believe in spontaneous existence…
I don't think Andrew was ready for this forensic examination of his thesis..
@J w As many as you I suppose.
@J w No need to be that hard on yourself..
I'm not Christian but am grateful for these discussions. I learn a lot each time. Especially from Oppy.
WLC - "Loke, I am your father."
Yes.
GENIUS
THANK YOU FOR THIS COMENT, YOU SIR AVOID MY SUICIDE
@@danielarruda7413 Hope you're doing okay Daniel
@@danielarruda7413 Haha. I feel bad for laughing.
only half way through and already been BIG BLESSED by this conversation. thank you cam and ty to the speakers
I was blessed by this insightful conversation, as well.
Religion is so cringe. 😂
@@TheTruthKiwi can't all be as cool as you are
Really love how humble and calm Oppy is.
Lmao you aint had to do Oppy like that mane
This time I disagree. Oppy seems to be growing this new line of argumentation that essentially says argumentation can't solve anything because they are based on "theory" that is established prior to argument. I usually like Oppy a lot but right now I feel like he is trying to weasel his way out of answering tough objections.
This seems pretty backhanded. “How humble”, instead of how smart. Most academic philosophers will have a similar calm, respectful, “humble” attitude.
@@qqqmyes4509 you haven't seen a lot of these debates have you? Oppy has a special quality to his debate
@@rjonesx Ya I guess I’ve stopped watching these kinds of debates that don’t usually involve actual philosophers haha. Nonetheless I think it’s pretty strange and feels condescending (to me at least) to commend Oppy on his manners instead of his actual ideas. But I could definitely understand someone commending his manners if they were previously watching hours of someone like Lawrence Krauss haha
If the debate over the argument against uncaused beginnings confused you, I will try to provide a faithful reconstruction.
Loke wished to say that when one has possibilities concerning beginnings, one must appeal to causes to determine the obtaining of certain possibilities as opposed to others. And so, if you come upon a house in the woods, you must appeal to a causal agent-say a lumberjack-to explain why that particular possibility for the lumber of the house was realized rather than another. One might think of Aristotle's analysis of form as a principle of determination and matter as a principle of possibility. And so, if among the things one is committed to are uncaused beginnings, one must explain why that particular possibility is not realized instead of the caused ones.
Usually, when seeking explanations of these sorts, we appeal to causes, for causes are difference-makers; their actions determine why some possibilities obtain-and so why incompatible possibilities do not obtain-and their inactions determine why others do not obtain. One might also explain the obtaining and non-obtaining of possibilities by appealing to actual objects and their propetieis; the actual whiteness of my wall, for instance, might explain why it isn't at this very moment blue. (One might imagine that the one sort of explanation reduces to the other, my causal activity as a painter explaining the initial whiteness and the everyone else's causal inaction explaining its persisting whiteness.)
This all creates difficulties for the person who is trying to exclude uncaused beginnings. For, on this view, causal activity or inactivity is insufficient to rule out uncaused beginnings. For, on this picture, at least one thing-the cosmos or at least a segment of the cosmos-began to exist without a prior cause. And one obviously cannot appeal to the universe or its properties to explain this. For only that which exists can do explanatory work, and if the explanatory work to be done pertains to a coming into existence, that explanatory work must be done prior to the universe and its coming to acquire its properties. And so, if the universe itself cannot explain this nor can anything distinct from the universe, we are simply left without explanation-a strong reason to dismiss the possibilities of uncaused beginnings altogether.
Oppy's reply seemed to be that nothing is needed to do this explanatory work in the first place, for with respect to happenings causally downstream from the initial state of reality, there simply are not such possibilities for uncaused beginnings whose non-occurrence one must account for. It isn't as though there is some causal agent deliberating on whether or not to make a square-circle and then deciding against it. For such metaphysical impossibilities do not lie within the agent's power to bring about. What rules them out is not causal activity or inactivity but the structure of modal space. The same is true of uncaused beginnings causally downstream from reality's initial state. For, on Oppy's view-if I do not misunderstand it-possibilities are generated by something like the evolutionary potentialities latent in reality's initial item(s). And since nothing causally unrelated to this initial item can be said to come about through a process of causal evolution, all concrete reality distinct from the initial state or item is necessarily causally related to it. This conclusion seems to follow from Oppy's views on modality. Loke seems to imagine there is a sense of modality more fundamental than reality's initial item and the various potentialities of this item. That allows him to make sense of possible other initial items or occurrences that do not come about through a process of causal evolution. Oppy, however, rejects such a liberal view of modality and wishes to stick to one on which Loke's questions do not even arise.
(Whether any of this is faithful to Oppy or Loke is questionable, but it is how I interpreted their exchange.)
I agree with the interpretation, however the word salad in the debate about debate structure apparently fended off the intimation Loke gave about identifying the causal agent adjunct to the teleology argument through the strong ANTHROPIC principal as Christ Jesus. I would assume proof of that might be the resurrection as a demonstration of control over entropy which would entail control of the space time continuum, identifying the causal singularity as Christ. Prophecy if true, merits scientific analysis as information from our consciousness that runs parallel to the the universe, as information as is recognized by the Shannon information laws, to which Bell's theorem also applied. This makes Lokes argument ridiculously close to a restatement of John's GOSPEL from the prologue, with the miracle recounts giving evidence of Jesus control of the quantum field. If true, Jesus is the observer capable of collapsing the universe expanding at the speed of light i.e. causality into a time dependent function of particles. As the singularity is identical at all points, all Schwartzchild fields are identical, therefore the information from JESUS about Jesus and the universe are identical.
Here is a link that gives data from the shroud of Turin, I find it interesting that the resurrection is evidence of control of entropy and the shroud may have the signature of a singularity. Ridiculously coincidental! ruclips.net/video/otIeXKJ-_q4/видео.html
I think it's much simpler then that. Oppy just accepts that the necessary beginning is temporal. Loke says no it's not because it's uncaused which Oopy pointed out was a contradiction because the two options are either finite, or infinite. If it's infinite it's an infinite regress. If it's finite it's not Loke's God. Anything else on Loke's possition is speculative, and adds extra entities that violates parsimony. As opposed to Oppy's view of a necessary beginning whatchamacallit witch is more parsimonious, and only needs to be necessary.
Doesn’t work imply some kind of change? so how can work/change be achieved by a changeless state/entity/being? 🤔
@@spacedoohicky i don't think you understood much at all. where do you think Loke said the necessary beginning Oppy believes in is not temporal because it's uncaused (you worded what you said poorly)?
I wouldn't say Oppy responded to or even understood Loke's objections sufficiently. Your assertion at the end in which you claim that Loke's questions do not even arise to Oppy's view is ridiculous. Cameron and Oppy both didn't understand that Loke was referring to how properties of X are posterior to the existence of X. Oppy kept restating that "The initial state began uncaused because it was necessary" but this necessity and this modal space can only come about when it already exists (properties of X are posterior to their bearers). You stated this here to reconstruct Oppy's view: "What rules them out is not causal activity or inactivity but the structure of modal space" this is a form of causal inactivity. If modal space does not allow X to occur, then modal space is the cause of X not occuring. I would say Loke's refutation would be that modal space could not exist on its own, modal space describes reality - if there is no reality there can be no modal space. Hence, modal space is posterior to the existence of IsOR, thus modal space can not be used to explain why there is the IsOR. Restating this, prior to the IsOR there is non-being, so using modal space to explain why IsOR comes to being is extremely self-refuting.
This is an example of how these debates should go. Hats off to both guys. Hard to find good coherent arguments like this anymore. Thanks guys.
Good lord this is too much to keep up with. I have it set to 0.75 speed for Loke’s fast talking, and I’m still overwhelmed😂
Dr. Loke talks too fast. Dr. Opy talks too slow. On average they're talking at the right speed.
Just switch between 0.75x and 1.25x =p
Yes, they sort of balance each other out LOL.
@@HyperFocusMarshmallow Well, that's a bit cumbersome, don't you think :-)
Yes it is at least if you’re doing something else while listening, though to follow this kind of argument you probably want to focus on it. There is a browser extension for chrome which allows you to change the speed with a keyboard press. Quite useful!
And it is difficult to get the sound level right as Loke talks loudly and Oppy talks very quietly at times
The first event is necessary and does not need a cause, whereas everything else that follows does, Graham. Which means it must then have some specially unique property that everything else that follows does not have, Loke.
Yes, EXACTLY, James!
The special unique properties: immaterial, unimaginably powerful, spaceless, timeless, and uncaused. Oppy is really describing God without calling it God.
@@angusmacangus3181 Exactly. The definition of a deity = usually outside the metrics of science. We of course get to the "flying spaghetti monster" issue but that's honestly a weak objection
Beautifully stated, James. You've hit on the crux of where Oppy's argument failed. By simply describing a label of T/0 Or T1 doesn't do any explaining. There's bo explanatory power in that. Is like saying "because we know there was a beginning therefore it is simply 'The Beginning', no further explanation needed." But an actual, not just theoretical beginning does imply what you've pointed out here about a force, most likely a being capable and with the sovereign will to kickstart everything.
Obfuscating that one crucial logical premise using semantics or math jargon doesn't do anything to change that.
I think that is why Loke got so frustrated. As Oppy wouldn't concede that point and Cameron didn't seen to catch it. Oppy then just overpowered him with rhetoric. Sidestepping the logical contradiction.
@@grapheneinsider5461 "There's no explanatory power in that". This is so ironic. "God" is perhaps the least explanatory entity ever proposed. All the properties he supposedly possesses (timeless, spaceless, immaterial) aren't properties, they are negations of properties that to me, are synonymous with non existence. I'll give you an example of the ineptitude of this explanation. If you asked me where trees came from and I said they came from a being who was "treeless". Would this be a good explanation? Would it explain... anything at all? This "less" suffix is equivalent to magic. It's a license to propose anything and everything without being bounded to reality. Proof of this, is your ability to smuggle in the first cause as a being with free will that can "kickstart everything". How can this be, given that every example of a being with free will has a material brain that was formed over 3 billion years of evolution, and we have 0 examples of disembodied minds. The reason you can do this, is because God exists in a timeless, spaceless, immaterial realm, which is a magical realm where anything can happen, and no justification or evidence is required. I have yet to see a single argument for God that actually addressed the issues of exiting in such a realm (such as how does a being do ANYTHING, if time doesn't exist). I the end, it seems that you guys are saying that had Oppy's argument contained God as the necessary entity, you would have been ok with it. This is a problem. A bad argument is a bad argument...
Cameron seems to be a bit partial to Oppy due to their background and history of relationship. Whether he’s doing it consciously or unconsciously I do not know but I hope it didn’t turn Andrew off because I thought he did a tremendous job of articulating his positions.
I think Cameron tried defending Kalam and realised that it's rather impossible, so he was helping Andrew to fail as well :D
@@alexp8924 look, I’m in no way married to the kalam so I was just excited to hear an interesting discussion. With that said, Dr. Loke really impressed me and made my belief about the truthfulness of the kalam much much higher. I think if we are being totally fair, at best I think you could say it was a push but it seemed to me Dr. Loke definitely got the better of Oppy in this discussion. Just my thoughts.
@@alexp8924 the claim that defending the Kalam is rather impossible is one of the silliest things I have read on the internet.
@@fujiapple9675 We have different standard of evidence. You can create a theory that appears consistent with reality but the theory is not considered true unless you can demonstrate that it's true. I.e. demonstrate that the entity you are proposing actually exists anywhere outside of your head.
watch andrew loke follow up after the debate he does a pretty good job defending it there
WLC: Well done, i am proud of you Loke my child.
Al Ghazali: you've done well William.
I am so glad Cameron is doing this discussion-format instead of the usual applause-line driven “debates.”
Dr. Loke begins at three minutes and 25 seconds and he talks so fast it’s very very efficient. You can get a whole into lesson in 14 minutes. zero successful interruptions.
But why yet another discussion of people hashing out Kalam/regress? Dr. Oppy raises a hugely important methodological point around 16 minutes. If that’s all you listen to, five minutes of that would be worthwhile.
Good stuff.
This was a great discussion! I hope there’s another one in the future!
Graham Oppy is quickly becoming my favorite atheist philosopher, I think Rasmussen is my favorite Christian one.
your name fits perfectly lol
(not meant in a bad way lol)
Oppy atheist and Feser Theist for me
Giovanni Daza Feser always seems frustrated to me, even when he's talking to theists, I am not sure why.
@@agnosticmonkey7308 As someone who has the same disease. He has a (likely lifelong) case of RBF (Resting B**** Face). Me, and many others are plagued with this curse, but I enjoy Ed because when he really gets into a conversation you can feel the genuine enjoyment exuding from his person. His words breath excitement every moment he gets to answer a question/defend a point, but he always keeps a stern professional voice. I'm sure you've seen other Christian Apologists get crumbled by rhetoric because they only have a be nice switch, and dont know how to be sharp tongued like a razor. But Feser never lets anyone get away with backhandedness. Hes like a "Super Serious Dad", like when you were little, and you had that one friend whos dad never spoke, and only scowled lol. Those dads always end up being some of the coolest people too haha. But thats the vibe Feser gives me anytime I watch him. Im sure there are people like yourself who see it differently as well, but I thought Id give my view on him lol. Either way, God Bless!
I’m on Loke’s side regarding the success of the Kalam, so I’m not partisan in saying that Loke doesn’t understand Oppy’s point about necessity. Oppy rejects the causal principle. And the reasons Loke adduces in its favor shouldn’t have any force with someone who accepts Oppy’s idiosyncratic view of modality. It’s Oppy’s view of modality that should be at issue.
On the contrary, I understand Oppy’s branching view of modality that all possible worlds share the initial state of the history of the actual world. It is trivially true that such an initial state (First Cause) must be necessary and uncaused, and both Oppy and I can agree that there is such a First Cause (I don’t agree with his view of modality; but suppose I agree for the sake of argument). The KEY QUESTION is what kind of thing can be the initial state that is necessary and uncaused? There are two possibilities:
(1) a First Cause with a beginning
(2) a First Cause without a beginning (from which it follows that such a First Cause would also be transcendent, immaterial, has libertarian freedom ie a Creator God, as I explained right at the beginning of the debate)
I argued against (1) using the modus Tollens argument that the kind of thing cannot be something with a beginning, therefore it must be (2) a beginningless First Cause.
To reply to my arguments by the repeated assertion that some initial state is necessary begs the question by assuming (1). Oppy would say he is not simply begging the question because (1) is justified by 'his view wins on simplicity given that other virtues are equal (‘parsimonious,’ ‘best tradeoff between simplicity and explanatory power’), which he kept asserting in the debate (you noted this under your Fourth point too). However, I replied during the debate that other virtues are not equal given my Modus Tollens argument. It should be noted that a view that entails a contradiction cannot be true, even if it is simpler. Thus simplicity cannot help his view since his view entails a contradiction as I explained using the Modus Tollens argument, which he didn’t rebut as I explain in my debate (1:40:45 to 1:43:07)and in greater detail here in my debate review with Suan Sonna (ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html : 1:35:41 to 1:40:40).
@@andrewloke7 Thanks for clarification. Both agree that First Cause is necessary and uncaused. Differentiation of views is here (note me if not correct):
Oppy regards (1) a First Cause with a beginning--> First cause without Agent ---> material Universe.
Loke regards (2) a First Cause without a beginning -->Agent's First Cause ---> Creator God.
-----
Modus Tollens is given at 50:17.
@@andrewloke7 Energy fits the bill for a 'first cause' since, energy cannot be created.
How does energy then turn into matter?
@@andrewloke7 Your modus tollens argument falls apart if the probability of a spontaneous creation event is just so low that we only have one example (the "beginning" or expansion of the Universe) that we can point to. It's also possible that such events have happened and the information hasn't reached us yet. Your argument has a foundation of pure speculation that you seem completely blind to.
Correct me if I am wrong but it appears to me that you first need to defend an assertion that libertarian free will is possible - i.e. an action without ANY prior causation. How would this work if this being was completely unchanged? If you accept that a thought can just randomly pop into a god's head without any prior cause then why do you reject universe popping into existence?
I think this notion of “popping into existence” might be confused. One hypothesis for the beginning of the universe is that there was a first time or boundary, before which time did not exist. So there was not some moment in which the universe did not exist, and then some later moment the universe does exist. There is not such a “popping into existence” from non-existence. Similarly, if God exists timelessly, then it’s probably improper to talk about thoughts popping into God’s mind-God is timelessly causing the existence of the universe. It’s not like God existed for a while, and then one moment the intention formed in God’s mind to create the universe.
These are my thoughts anyways. I do, however, worry about the possibility of this divine timeless causing of the universe.
Also, libertarian theories of free will (for human actions) may permit some causal influence of other factors, and yet say those circumstantial events are not sufficient to cause the agent’s free choice. But for God, it looks like God is supposed to be the sole cause of the existence of the universe.
@@qqqmyes4509 I have to admit that I disagree with bigger part of his premises so this specific point doesn't really matter but I found it interesting that he insisted that god existed in some kind of unchanging state and then at time T (which exists outside of time) decided to create a universe. It's hard for me to imagine being existing in an unchanging state - unchanging, I am guessing implies that it doesn't think any thoughts - and then a thought just randomly pops into his head and this thought coincidentally turns out to be a thought about creating our universe in exactly the way it is right now so he creates a universe. This is just weird, I'd rather accept that universe has a necessary natural uncaused cause, it sounds way simpler.
@@alexp8924 Personally I don’t understand what Loke means by God exists timelessly causally prior to creating the universe, and exists at t=0 when (or perhaps “causally posterior to”) God creates the universe. I don’t think that Loke was saying that God decided at t=0 to create the universe. God’s decision did not occur ‘within the dimension of time’.
Perhaps God just exists in a single moment of God-time, where God is continuously doing things, causing something to occur at t=1, t=2020, t=2080. So there is no idea that “pops” into God’s head, it’s an idea that exists in God’s mental state that exists forever (by “forever”, I don’t mean to suggest that there is an infinite duration of time. Sounds confusing.) I think a theist could deny that ideas pop into God’s mind, since that implies that at some prior moment God did not have that idea. But, they may say, God does not exist across some duration of time. Idk though haha.
Also, I do not think that the idea to create the universe needs to be “coincidental” or lucky. Since God is supremely virtuous and omniscient (somehow), God would only intend to do something good (due to God’s virtuous character) and would recognize that creating this universe would be good (due to God’s omniscience). So the intention to create this universe comes from God’s nature.
However, you might say that God’s having the intention to create this universe still occurs by chance, because the existence of God occurs by chance. And that would be denying the necessity of God’s existence.
I think this Loke/Oppy discussion has helped me realize the importance of the distinction between temporal priority and causal priority. That may be helpful for what you’re talking about.
@@alexp8924 Yes, well said. Tjump makes this same point in his debates, too.
@ReligionDebate I do. What kind of rhetorical question is that? It adds nothing but scorn and addresses no points, ideas, or arguments.
I'm at the part where Oppy has to keep correcting Loke that he's not referring to priority in terms of time but rather causality. I feel that frustration because it's exactly how the conversation I had with Loke went. Insanely frustrating. The guy is ridiculously one-track-minded.
But anyway I'm going to start taking notes as I've listened along with this conversation.
1. It's not clear that if causality is in a loop, then something could cause itself. All one has to do to clean that up is say that no repeated stage can happen within a causal loop until it first passes through a node in that loop which completely resets the causal state. So instead of:
A->B->C->A...
It's instead:
A->B->C->0->A*->B*->C*->...
A and A* would share causal priority in terms of index, but passing through 0 insures that no causal artifacts from the first "lap" of the loop remain to influence the next lap of the loop. It would be like going around a race track, but right as you hit the "finish line" which ends one lap and begins another, your vehicle is basically picked up, randomized in terms of position on the track, orientation, and initial speed, and then put back down accordingly such that your position, speed, etc. at the end of one lap doesn't actually influence the same at the beginning of the next one.
Note I'm not saying I believe this scheme (although I've defended one that may be interpreted kinda similarly in defense against the Grim Reaper Paradox) but this one caveat one could hold to if they have an intuition that there's something repetitious about causality at a fundamental level but want to dispense with things causing themselves.
2. I agree with Pruss that causal finitism is sufficient to solve paradoxes against an infinite causal sequence. It just turns out that causal finitism actually allows for a beginningless causal sequence, so long as you properly* disperse nodes in any causal graph which completely reset the causal order that come before them.
3. The entire model in which God is changeless until he isn't has never seemed internally consistent to me, because there's two ways to cash it out.
i. It's God's first act of changing something about himself which has him cease being changeless.
ii. God ceases being changeless and so he can now change other things about himself.
i. is at high risk of defining God as a changeless being that changes, which is blatantly contradictory. If God is a changeless being, and this is some fundamental statement about ontology, then anything which God changes God doesn't just make him "stop" being that kind of thing, but rather makes him do exactly what the thing he is, is defined not to do. It would be like describing a triangle, deciding that now the triangle has 4 sides and then saying "well it just stopped being a triangle, nothing wrong with that!" I think a raised eyebrow at this model is at least warranted here.
ii. To solve the triangle analogy with i, now we'll say: "We have a triangle, but now we're going to make it not a triangle by adding something to it, and that thing we add to it will make it have 4 sides". So you've unmade the ontology of the thing and procedurally allowed it to be another thing in question prior to violating (what would have been) its ontology. But what that means is that God began to cease being changeless due to the ontological break above. Whatever begins to exist (including ontological states of being) has a cause. The problem is that since the only candidate for such a cause is a changeless thing, such a thing has no causal efficacy to cause anything else, jeopardizing the very causal principle needed by the Kalam in the first place.
4. The semantic problems with the model aside, I've convinced, I think, 3 Christians now that the Kalam model is utterly pagan and it's in their best interest that they stop using it. The physical intuition is fine (emergence of classical spacetime) but the "God is timeless" model underpinning the argument has bad implications for their faith. Changeless beings don't decide to do anything. Simple as. Any protestations about that are just equivocating on "decides" in a way I have no experiential relation to, and thus have no basis to accept. They might as well call it "shmecides". To make a decision about something is to take on reasons or information, and on the basis of those reasons / information alter one's behavior. But a changeless thing alters nothing about their behavior in the presence of any information whatsoever. Aristotle's God, to be changeless, "thinks itself".
Christianity wants a God which, prior to the universe, decided to create the universe. But that decision, that desire for a relationship, doesn't come out of a changeless thing. It comes from a deliberative process which happens in metaphysical time, even if not spacetime. And this is made worse by making some observations.
Since at no time (physical or metaphysical according to this model) was God ever changeless, one could just say that "God was never changeless" and there would be nothing wrong, even on this model, about that assertion whatsoever. So given the obvious relationship between time and God's "deciding" to do X, juxtaposed with the truism that God was never changeless, it seems pretty obvious that this entire construction doesn't really do much for Christians.
5. Loke claims that if things begin to exist uncaused, it could be the case that universes could pop into being with such rapidity that our universe collides into them, and indeed we ought to have seen such a catastrophe by now. But I don't think that's true under Oppy's model. Just because universe are uncaused doesn't mean there's not an explanation for why, say, only so many universes could exist at once. So long as Oppy thinks that for any initial point, there are some explanatory facts about that point, even if the point isn't caused by something else, then Oppy has all sorts of blocks against that argument.
6. Loke is confused about his own argument at 58:00. What Loke's argument says is:
i. If Oppy's initial state begins to exist uncaused, then other things must too (since there's no relevant difference).
ii. Other things don't begin to exist uncaused.
C. Oppy's initial state doesn't begin to exist uncaused.
What Oppy replies with is that his initial state is necessary, and it would be silly for necessary things to be caused, which alone makes for a relevant difference from all other (contingent) things.
Loke then at 58:38 tries to claim that his argument shows that Oppy's initial state can't be necessary. But that's not actually in the argument at all! Then Loke tries to claim that Oppy is just "claiming" his initial state is necessary without argument. But Oppy already pointed out earlier, and this is why the ground rules he tried to bring up are important, that he's going into this discussion with preconceived beliefs and a worldview, and he'll only change it if he sees good reason. The fact that Oppy hasn't made an argument to convince Loke is thus irrelevant (The Leibnizian Argument is that argument, if Loke is curious). As Craig himself points out about his Kalam principle, he's justified in continuing to believe it, given the existence of other competing principles, in the absence of defeaters. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
7. Loke correctly notes that there are lots of logically possible universes and there's no reason any of them couldn't come to be if there's at least one necessary initial state. Yes, he's trivially correct. Under S5, any possibility is necessarily a possibility, so that necessity and all possibilities therein would be build into whatever necessary initial state that Oppy is conceiving of. I don't think it's much of a defeater for Oppy to note that "possibly there are these other universes under my system".
comment 1/?
@Real Atheology Thanks! I just finished my second comment if you want a follow up. I'm not a Christian, and whether I'm a theist or not depends on one's definition of theism. Classical theists who don't think that their model relies on God having any sort of "will" would claim my beliefs are minimally sufficient to be one of them. But Classical Theists that do claim that God has something analogous to a will (Thomists for example) probably wouldn't accept my views as properly theistic. So it gets frustrating sometimes lol. I just take the Colbert response at this point. "Bill, I'm whatever you want me to be."
@@logos8312 do you believe in god or something analogous to god lol
@C "You misunderstand Loke's mindset"
Last time I checked, I'm not a psychic, so probably. What's important are his propositions, not his state of mind.
"he is conflating the two (time, causality re. priority) rhetorically"
No, he accused Oppy of conflating the two when Oppy was clarifying he wasn't. You're confused.
"to highlight a perceived necessary or implied conflation in Oppy's t=0-bound/brute necessity construction."
Well what is it? You can't just say "well there's a problem, nyah!" and then wander off. That's not how this works.
"Often, when we think others are mentally stumbling, we ourselves stumble as a result."
OK well when you're implying that I'm stumbling with that statement, you then might be stumbling as a result. I don't know what exactly you expected to accomplish with that quip but I don't think you thought that far ahead.
@@faysalsalhi1193 Again, that depends on your definition of God.
If it's a minimal logically necessary being, sure.
If it has Libertarian Free Will, then definitely not.
@@logos8312 damn it ur so smart I was hoping u were some kind of theist😂
This is definitely the most spirited I've ever seen Oppy haha
Andrew and Graham part 2 !!🙏
God bless Dr. Loke.
This debate, brought to you by the word 'right'.
What Andrew is saying around 1:35:00 makes perfect sense, even if it sounds a bit convoluted.
Graham is saying that his initial condition of a physical (possibly fine-tuned) universe that is expanding is NECESSARY but he does not seem to be denying that it had a beginning and popped into existence without a cause. He says that CONTINGENT things cannot pop into existence without a cause, but even his very deliberate clarification around 1:25:45, in which he first said that nothing can pop into existence without a cause before going back and adding in the word "contingent", indicates that he thinks NECESSARY things _can_ pop into existence without a cause.
The idea that something NECESSARY might pop into existence _at all_ is at odds with what theists mean by the word, but let's set that aside for a moment. What Andrew is saying is that anything about Graham's initial state that would cause it to be identified as "necessary" and differentiate it from any other thing at all could only be true of that initial state _after_ it already exists. That being the case, it is vacuous to appeal the supposed necessity of the initial condition as an explanation for its _beginning_ to exist, and Graham doesn't seem to deny that his initial state began to exist. Graham rightly says that it is not vacuous to appeal to the necessity of something's existence as the reason for it's existence. That is true. However, it _is_ vacuous to appeal to the necessity of something's existence as the reason for it _beginning_ to exist. Andrew's argument successfully shows that such a claim is nonsensical. And I would say it's nonsensical to speak of anything that begins to exist as existing necessarily.
It seems to me that what Graham has done here is he has simply identified a complex initial physical state that he thinks is necessary for his theory of reality _subsequent_ to that initial state to make sense, and then he has slapped a "Necessary" label onto that initial state to exempt it from needing a causal explanation while not even denying that it had a beginning to its existence. It seems to be ascribing to the initial state a sort of explanatory necessity with reference to subsequent physical states rather than the metaphysical or logical necessity ascribed to God. This does not seem to me to be at all legitimate. Using this approach there would not seem to be any level of complexity or specificity that would prevent a favored initial state from being labeled "necessary". Everything that needs to be explained can just be lumped into the "initial state" envelope, can be said to have popped into existence without a cause, and the sudden origin of its highly specified existence can be "explained" by some idiosyncratic sort of "necessity". But again, as Andrew's argument shows, such a move is nonsensical, because nothing could possibly differentiate this supposedly necessary initial state from any other state or thing until it already existed and so nothing about it could possibly explain the _beginning_ of its existence.
Graham's attempted response to this just doesn't make any sense. Graham says that the special property of the initial state that allows it, uniquely, to pop into existence uncaused is the property of "necessity". That answers nothing. The initial state simply cannot possess the property of "necessity" unless it already exists. Something that doesn't exist cannot have any properties at all. If it doesn't already exist, it isn't anything. It's nothing. And nothing has no properties. Therefore, a property of "necessity" cannot possibly cause anything to _begin_ to exist, to _come into_ existence, even if it somehow _would_ have the property of "necessity" if it were _already_ in existence.
I don't understand how Cameron is missing this. Oppy isn't saying that his initial state is necessary in the sense that it couldn't fail to exist. He's saying it's necessary in the sense that ONCE IT EXISTS it couldn't be a different way. Not only does he not offer any argument or reason for why we should believe the initial state to be necessary in even that sense (i.e. why it MUST be the way it is and couldn't have been any other way), but he is also appealing to this form of post-existence necessity as an explanation for why the initial state CAME INTO EXISTENCE in the first place. Saying that once something existed it couldn't have been any other way cannot, in principle, explain why or how it came into existence in the first place. You still need some causal explanation for the origin of its existence even if you want to try to assert that in its coming into existence it couldn't have been any different than it was.
To use a very simple example, imagine a "red ball". Perhaps we want to ask why the ball is red rather than blue and why the ball is a sphere rather than a cube. The answer might be that a "red ball" couldn't be anything but red and spherical, so it is _necessary_ that the red ball be red and spherical. I'm using this example because it allows these "necessary" properties to be true by definition so that we don't even need to quibble about why they should be viewed as necessary. In this example, being red and being spherical are legitimately necessary properties of the red ball in the same way being male and unmarried are necessary properties of a bachelor. But now imagine that the red ball doesn't actually exist. The fact that the red ball, IF IT EXISTED, would need to be red and spherical and couldn't be any other way cannot possibly result in the red ball popping into existence uncaused. If the red ball _did_ suddenly pop into existence, we couldn't possibly argue that the popping into existence is sufficiently accounted for by fact that the red ball had to be red and spherical. The fact that a thing's properties might have to be exactly what they are and couldn't be any other way can't possibly account for the beginning of its existence. And if it didn't just have properties that were necessarily what they are but additionally had the property of "necessary existence", then it couldn't have failed to exist and there would have been no beginning to its existence in the first place. Attributing the property of "necessary existence" to something that began to exist is nonsensical, but even if we wanted to do such a thing, the property couldn't do the work of supporting the thing's existence until the thing already existed and so couldn't possibly account for how the thing could pop into existence without a cause.
I think the part missing in this discussion that might contextualize oppys view for you is his theory of modality. If you start with that, his conclusion is both metaphysical necessary and logically necessary.
@@hekskeyAndrew Loke already tore Oppy apart in his book Kalam and Teleological Arguments Reconsidered (2022 Palgrave Macmillan)
@@giftedtheos I mean, probably because he's evidently incapable of understanding Oppy and so either intentionally or unintentionally straw man him lol
One of my favorite discussions. Cameron did a great job moderating too
Great discussion! Mr. Loke really began to shine after the brief break/superhero question. I was incredibly impressed!
Loke is PHENOMENAL!
You can’t use the word “changeless” without committing yourself to a “duration”
BEST
DEBATE
EVER
Please organise a part two
I liked this discussion very much. I do think that at times both sides were sort of unclear. A bit after the one hour mark, I could see what Oppy was trying to say, but unfortunately, I don’t think he articulated his thoughts very well and while I do have similar thoughts which is one reason why I don’t accept the Kalam, I think Oppy was attacking a slightly different point and I think his point ultimately failed. Loke did try to clarify that god was beyond all dimensions and I think Oppy maybe didn’t see how Loke’s view stayed safe with regards to that point(I do think Loke’s view does fail on other parts though). Loke was sort of unclear in other when trying to show how Oppy’s view fails. I also think that his point fails if we want to look at the initial state in a sort of B-theory view. Other than that though, it was still very enjoyable, and besides a few rough moments, I think Loke is very intelligent and I hope that he appears on the channel soon. :)
Why does Cameron cut off Loke (twice!) when he is in the middle of explaining the most crucial point of the debate, which is that appealing to necessity without an explanation can't do any explanatory work in your theory.
You may have missed when Oppy explained that claiming that something happens of necessity isn't a weak explanation for the way something is, rather it's actually an incredibly strong explanation. His example was 2+2=4. He expanded on this to say that some necessary things may be inferred from other necessary things but the explanation will still be one of necessity. So it wasn't so much Locke's crucial point in the debate as it was a crucial misunderstanding about the nature of necessity. Honestly, I thought Cameron did an absolutely excellently job moderating this debate. I'll be the first to call out when he overtakes a debate or makes arguments that aren't being made or what have you but none of that was in evidence tonight. He was in rare form and I hope to see more of this Cameron and less of the aLincolnist interviewer Cameron ;-)
@@Dan_1348 Cameron did just that. He tried to move the conversation along when Loke didn't seem to understand that Oppy wasn't speaking about a temporal before and when Loke kept asking for some reason that a particular event was necessary over any other event which also prevented other events from also having this property of necessity. The answer, Graham had given at least 4 times. Cameron kept the discussion going several times asking Graham to just hypothetically accept a premise and move to libertarian free will. He did great.
@@anitkythera4125 Can you point to a time marker of this?
@@tihomirvrbanec9537 this was four months ago... I've no idea but maybe scrubbing to when Cameron is speaking will narrow it down?
@@anitkythera4125 Found it 01:53:00
The one thing I can add to this discussion is that (as I understand it) in OUR universe at least, it is not possible for an object to remain changeless with regard to properties as spacetime has been expanding since t=0. Thus its coordinates in a 4D spacetime will always be be in flux relative to everything else. It is impossible to say whether this also applies to other polycosmic entities. But in our universe objects gain new properties by virtue of their existence.
Great job Andrew!
Dr. Loke's books are given by title and publisher, and Dr. Oppy's are not. Later Dr. Loke repeats the titles of his books, both published and upcoming. Is this a discussion or a book commercial for Dr. Loke (or both)?
Cameron should do an explain like I'm 5 version for this debate similar to the math debate. I could certainly use one!
I think he did, didn't he?
I think he did
I mean for this debate
Right, I'd like an explanation of what it means to have a series of causes that aren't temporal. What's the difference between logical and temporal cause and what's the ontology of logical causation? I don't get that.
@@barry.anderberg You can have a cup be the cause of the waters shape without it having to be temporally prior for example.
There is more than one necessary detail for Oppy's system. If he wishes to identify one moment in time as being "initial" and therefore necessary, he also needs to make it necessary that time can only create going forward. Because if this "creative energy" can flow in at least two directions, to the past and to the future, then any moment in time could serve as the initial point. Oppy would be unable to explain why any specific moment would be privileged above any other.
Not that this is an insurmountable objection - Oppy could explicitly declare his other metaphysical assertions, one of which would presumably be that creative energy can only flow forward. My personal disagreement is with the idea of a creative energy, but I wanted to make this comment because I think it's an interesting aspect of the debate that there a multiple, necessary details that all must be posited, and how it might break down if things like time and the "creative energy" are altered from the assumed model.
Yes, plus he can't explain fine tuning. Plus he thinks necessity has no explanation. He talks about explanatory virtues, but his model seems to have less explanatory virtues than Loke's model.
@@randomvideoblogs8012 Necessity is actually an explanation, so Oppy succesfully explains fine tuning. If you ask how come there aren't any solutions to x^n+y^n=z^n, for x,y,z,n integers with n>2, (Fermat last theorem) then it seems to me a perfectly good explanation arguing that we can prove that there can't be solution using mathematics, thus it's necessary.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that oppy wants to attribute extension or a point in this timeless state which is contrary to what Loke believes about God and the initial state. After he finally clears this up, oppy just moves on to comparing theories which is odd, the last point in that tangent seemed to lean in loke's favor so why leave it there and then declare his theory was winning? It seems very strange but to my knowledge oppy hasn't given a good reason to think that the theist is committed to either an uncaused beginning for God or an infinite regress. Additionally, I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird. When pressed on this he brought up existing in all possible worlds which is fine but I was under the impression necessary foundation meant "could not fail to exist". Well if an objects existence is "caused" by its necessity alone then how can it have a beginning? I'm sure I'm missing something so if someone who understands oppy's view better wants to respond I'll appreciate that. I'll probably have to watch this again tomorrow for clarification.
I may be interpreting him incorrectly, but this was my understanding of his argument:
So there are two possibilities regarding the causal chain of events leading to the generation of the universe: (1) the causal chain has a first event; (2) the causal chain does not have a first event. On (2), we have an infinite causal regress, which would violate causal finitism and thus undermine the soundness of the Kalam. On (1), we have some initial state that doesn't begin to exist and initiates a chain of events that leads to the beginning of the universe without itself being moved to do so. However, Oppy seems to posit that it is possible that there was a natural state of this sort, so the theist needs some symmetry breaker to explain why the initial state in the causal chain is more likely to involve God than it is to simply be a natural state. Otherwise, in the interest of parsimony, we are more justified in accepting the naturalistic explanation than we are in accepting the theistic explanation. In either case (1) or (2), the Kalam seems to be undermined.
There's a lot here to address but I'll take it one at a time.
"It seems that a oppy wants to attribute extension or a point in this timeless state which is contrary to what Loke believes about God and the initial state."
It's not that Oppy wants to attribute anything to this state, but rather Oppy is trying to ascertain what Loke could intelligibly mean when he says God is in this state. Here's the most simple way of thinking about this. Loke wants to say that God is changeless, sans the universe, because God is outside any dimension containing time while God is changeless.
Equivalently, at no point in time (whether physical or metaphysical conception of time) was God ever changeless.
My above proposition is 100% true on Loke's view. So what are we to make of it? Loke is in this weird state where he wants God to be changeless in a timeless sense, but he doesn't want to commit to any "extension" which would distinguish it from exactly what I said above which leaves the defender of this model saying things like:
God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe.
Because Loke was unable to clarify, and Oppy basically heard enough, Oppy (rightly) declared victory. This state of affairs is so unintelligible on its face that, whatever the problems with Oppy's model, so long as it avoids black holes like those above, it's on sure footing from a relative perspective.
"It seems very strange but to my knowledge oppy hasn't given a good reason to think that the theist is committed to either an uncaused beginning for God or an infinite regress."
Well look, if you object to me characterizing Loke's model as saying "God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe" then what you have to do is nullify the "never changeless" part of the proposition. And you do that by giving it some extension, something like "OK it's not literal spacetime on which we can count God as being changeless, maybe not even metaphysical time, but here's some kind of indexing which minimally re-contextualizes the above proposition".
Now once you provide that indexing, Oppy thought maybe causal priority, maybe in a hierarchical cause sense, then saying "God was never changeless" isn't charitable but we now have to ask the question of the index itself. Is it finite or infinite? If it's finite, it has a beginning and then the question is whether the Kalam principle can be extended to metaphysical indices in the way it would have to be here (and I think the answer is yes based on the paradoxes which argue for finitism of some kind). If it's infinite, then there's some infinite index in some way associated, if not with cause directly, certainly with God's "coming to be causal" as he ceases to be changeless.
"Additionally, I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird."
Hierarchical causation is an easy example of this, see Thomist literature. The universe, on a Thomist model could be without beginning. But it's caused to be the kind of ontological thing that it is due to some hierarchical series terminating in a first member (God). Now a Thomist wouldn't appeal to God's necessity to remove God, but rather his being pure act, but it's like this situation. Point is, making God timeless absolves God from being caught in the Kalam principle, but it doesn't do anything else.
"Well if an objects existence is "caused" by its necessity alone then how can it have a beginning?"
That's why Oppy clarified. Necessity would be an explanation for something's being without beginning. Something's being without beginning is not an explanation for its necessity (there are Leibnizian and Thomistic reasons for thinking this, making this not an ad hoc argument for an atheistic conclusion).
@@logos8312 Thanks that does help clear up oppy's position a bit.
_My above proposition is 100% true on Loke's view. So what are we to make of it? Loke is in this weird state where he wants God to be changeless in a timeless sense, but he doesn't want to commit to any_ _"extension"_ _which would distinguish it from exactly what I said above which leaves the defender of this model saying things like:_
_God, who was never changeless, was changeless sans the universe._
That sentence does sound odd but its also equivalent to "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless _sans_ time".
_Because Loke was unable to clarify, and Oppy basically heard enough, Oppy (rightly) declared victory. This state of affairs is so unintelligible on its face that, whatever the problems with Oppy's model, so long as it avoids black holes like those above, it's on sure footing from a relative perspective._
I agree Loke was confused for a large portion of the debate but I still don't see why we need to accept oppy's position and when it finally seemed like Loke definitively responded, oppy just moved on.
_Now once you provide that indexing, Oppy thought maybe causal priority, maybe in a hierarchical cause sense, then saying "God was never changeless" isn't charitable but we now have to ask the question of the index itself. Is it finite or infinite? If it's finite, it has a beginning_
In respect to the causal chain I would imagine it would have to be hierarchical as well. However Loke defines beginning in his argument as having _temporal duration_ so I don't see why a finite hierarchical causal history (and therefore a beginning to the a-temporal causal history) means that his causal principle will apply here.
_Hierarchical causation is an easy example of this, see Thomist literature. The universe, on a Thomist model could be without beginning. But it's caused to be the kind of ontological thing that it is due to some hierarchical series terminating in a first member (God)._
But this is not an example of what I said: _", I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird."_ It's an example of something without a beginning still having a cause.
_Point is, making God timeless absolves God from being caught in the Kalam principle, but it doesn't do anything else._
Well I guess Loke and other KCA proponents would want to argue from timelessness that you need LFW/CCFW in order to create time. I'm fairly skeptical of that which is why that is my usual stopping point with KCA's.
_That's why Oppy clarified. Necessity would be an explanation for something's being without beginning. Something's being without beginning is not an explanation for its necessity (there are Leibnizian and Thomistic reasons for thinking this, making this not an ad hoc argument for an atheistic conclusion)._
This makes me think that I may be missing something. I am under the impression that Oppy thinks his necessary initial state _does_ have a beginning. I think Loke's point is that is that it is incoherent to have a necessary thing with a beginning and no cause. I'm tempted to agree with him.
@Real Atheology Thanks I'll give it a read.
@@joshuaphilip7601 "That sentence does sound odd but its also equivalent to "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless sans time"."
Well yes, sans time means absent any points in time. So it would say "At no point in time was God changeless, he was changeless at no point in time".
"Loke was confused for a large portion of the debate but I still don't see why we need to accept oppy's position..."
I think Oppy would agree. I think Oppy accepts his explanation, and I think Oppy considers himself successful if he argues that his position is more "simple" than the one it's in direct competition with. But Oppy's position being simpler than one other, Oppy would agree, isn't sufficient grounds that someone "must" accept Oppy's position.
"and when it finally seemed like Loke definitively responded, oppy just moved on."
hmmm I don't know which part you're referring to. Could you get me a time stamp of the particular response in question? I don't want to say the response wasn't definitive flat out, but at the same time I might be able to try to explain what Oppy might have been thinking if I know the exact part in question.
"In respect to the causal chain I would imagine it would have to be hierarchical as well. However Loke defines beginning in his argument as having temporal duration so I don't see why a finite hierarchical causal history (and therefore a beginning to the a-temporal causal history) means that his causal principle will apply here.
"
Yeah this is one of the controversial moves Oppy made. I think what's going on under the hood there is a "what's so special about time?" question. The intuition someone might hold behind something having in beginning "in time" being caused could be generalized. For example, taking a page out of Craig's book, if causal chains themselves have a first index (could be hierarchical) but nothing causes the first cause or the chain writ large, why don't we see uncaused finite hierarchies of cause all around? Certainly the denial of such a thing might put something like the Aristotelian Proof in jeopardy (Craig probably wouldn't mind since he's not a Thomist) but extending that intuition of "widespread violations" could result in some gnarly stuff (though I'm too tired to come up with a clever thought experiment at the moment).
"But this is not an example of what I said: ", I find the concept of a necessary thing having a beginning but being uncaused to be very weird." It's an example of something without a beginning still having a cause.
"
Oh shoot I must have misread your question. Mea culpa on that one. I misread your question and thought you were talking about the question of whether necessity explains something being without beginning or vice versa. Now what I think you're asking about is the idea that Oppy has a "necessary" initial state at "t=0" and yet it is uncaused. My view on this is quite a bit different from Oppy's so it's a bit weird to me as well, but let's see if we can team up, play some devil's advocate and figure it out.
I think Oppy's view owes a lot to Leibnizian constructions. The thing owes its necessity to the fact that it's the "first thing" which is the fundamental explanation for all contingent facts on Oppy's view. Oppy also seems to say that every possibility owes to either this world, or some alternative way this world could have been. So in a weird way, what Oppy is constructing here is a minimal S5 construction on all the possible future states of "this world" with (at least) one of those states being actual as time moves forward. Since all the possibilities are, well, possible, S5 would say that necessarily, they are possible. The collection write large then is necessary and since time hasn't yet moved forward, I think this is Oppy's "t=0" initial state, where things really are in suspense as merely possible.
So intuitively it's necessary in the Leibnizian sense, analytically it's necessary via S5. Now we can talk about its being uncaused. Well since the "initial state" is, at base, a collection of possibilities for how the world "could be" once time starts moving past 0 (which means Oppy needs to have some schema for how causality and time will also work in there somewhere, which is another potential issue) nothing can cause something "to be possible". Oppy would say "of course it's uncaused, it's necessary". But precisely it's a collection of possible world states that are in suspension in the absence of causal activity which actualizes any one of them and nothing, in principle, could cause a collection of possibilities (which is why S5).
The beginning part is interesting and if I had to guess, I think this is probably the lynchpin of Oppy's philosophy, if I had to look for a weakness somewhere. The idea isn't that the collection of possible world states ITSELF began to exist, but rather that time in the world as it is began to exist, at t=0, and the beginning point in time is precisely that initial state in which all that are, are world states suspended as being merely possible. I think that's the best way that Oppy is going to square it. I think what Oppy is going to have to clarify (if he didn't already and I missed it) is that it's not that the initial state "began to exist" but rather "the initial state is the beginning of time". I think that's it.
"Well I guess Loke and other KCA proponents would want to argue from timelessness that you need LFW/CCFW in order to create time. I'm fairly skeptical of that which is why that is my usual stopping point with KCA's."
Yes, I misspoke. I didn't mean making God timeless does literally nothing else for the model, but rather that making God timeless isn't sufficient to argue anything else about God's ontology, such as his being necessary. It was meant only for that context, but I think you and I share the same suspicion with time and LFW which is one of my reservations about KCA's as well.
"This makes me think that I may be missing something. I am under the impression that Oppy thinks his necessary initial state does have a beginning. I think Loke's point is that is that it is incoherent to have a necessary thing with a beginning and no cause. I'm tempted to agree with him."
Yeah I thought that too, but after re-listening and thinking more, I think what Oppy means is that the beginning happens at the initial state, or that the initial state is the beginning, but it doesn't "have" a beginning. I think Oppy said that caused things have beginnings, but his initial state is uncaused (because it's necessary) and so it doesn't have a beginning. It just "is" the beginning of the physical world. The physical world has a beginning (the initial state). I don't know if I'm making it better. I'm running on 5 hours of sleep and crashing, so I'ma go to bed before I become completely incoherent.
Kudos to both for a very interesting and intriguing debate/discussion. Thankfully it was more of the later and the civil personality of the two Dr and the moderator had a lot to to with it, as the format.
This was an awesome debate, I think a few good debates would be David Bentley hart vs oppy and Alexander pruss vs oppy. Those would be really awesome. Then you could do Craig vs oppy on the kalam
oppy isnt the only one out there lol
Wish Graham had lifted his camera. Not the only time he does this.
Andrew Loke is a machine. He sounds like he is running on the latest CPU and graphics card. Graham is a deep thinker but I think he needs few redbulls for the next debate to get him into gear.
@@RagingBlast2Fan yes you have made a fair comment and good analysis.
In boxing they say ' styles makes fights' and this may be similar. In the sense that sometimes two people may not gel enough and it creates added friction in areas where normally there wouldnt be. Graham oppy is a powerful thinker and he has a laid back approach. Perhaps thinking reverse maybe Andrew Loke should have smoked some weed in order to slow him down a bit. That might have helped the dialogue. Either that or give graham a strong stimulant and get those words out of him a bit quicker. Other than that all I can suggest it to listen to Graham in 1.5x speed, that also helps.
He always sounds like he's trying to do a gish gallop to me.
I would appreciate Cameron if you moderated more and didn't try to guide the conversation.
I think I agree with Andrew... from what I could manage to pick out of his blistering speech pattern lol I like Oppy because he is SUPER smart and also speaks in a way that I can take time to think the words over in my head before he gets too far ahead.
Andrew loke is brilliant,putting up with interruptions and the crass digression
On the contrary, Oppy is brilliant at dissecting out the stupid in Loke’s argument and exposing it for what it is.
Some have commented Oppy won while others have commented Loke won. The former conveniently NEGLECTED the fact that Oppy not only claims that universe is necessary but ALSO HAS AN UNCAUSED BEGINNING which entails a contradiction as Loke demonstrated using modus tollens, whereas ‘God’ is necessary & NO BEGINNING and hence no contradiction. So OPPY loses because whatever entails a contradiction cannot be true! The fact that the former missed such an important point which Loke emphasized during the debate shows that they are superficial listeners, no wonder they concluded Oppy won. As superficial listeners do LOL. I would just encourage everyone to check out ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html and read Loke's response to Oppy Malpass and Schmid in the Comments of their youtube review where Loke explains this & other points in greater details. Merry X’mas!
@@tophy9865 Oppy responded by foot stomping LOL check out loke's latest video ruclips.net/video/J6D-O7FrMBo/видео.html
@@tophy9865 tu quoque is a fallacy dude cos it doesnt really answer the objection and loke explained during the debate that his view doesnt suffer from the same problem cos there's a difference between beginning and beginninglessnesss . to find out more check out ruclips.net/video/J6D-O7FrMBo/видео.html for goodness sake; i'm busy now and no time to talk futher bye and merrry xmas
@@tophy9865 of course I did watch oppy's review, tat's why I referenced Loke's video which is a refutation of oppy's review. tu quoque is falalcious in the sense of leaving objection unanswered regardless of whether Loke referenced beginninglessness which show that his view doesnt have same problem. as loke points out during the debate, oppy's claim that loke will appeal to infinite regress or beginning is a failure to consider a timeless state which has no regress and which is causally initially but not a beginning in time so no prob. oppy was 'silenced' with a long pause and went back talking about simplicity which loke went back to refute with modus tollens. check out their debate reviews for more info. bye bye.
"[Some have commented Oppy won. Those] conveniently NEGLECTED the fact that Oppy not only claims that universe is necessary but ALSO HAS AN UNCAUSED BEGINNING which entails a contradiction [...]"
You see a problem with uncaused beginning because you are using a different criterion to determine what has causes than Oppy does. He uses the principle: "Every non-initial event has a cause". He also said: "Everything has an explanation". There are two types of events: initials and non-initials. Non-initials' explanations are their causes. And what explain the initial event is that it is necessary. There is no contradiction in this framework. Both agree that there is something that is uncaused. Andrew says it's god, Graham says it's initial events.
You only see a contradiction because you are judging it as if Oppy were using the premise "everything that begins to exist has a cause". But that is Kalam's premise, not his.
Personally, I would like they to focus more on the examination of the existence of some first cause in it's unchangingless state and it causing something in that state. That conversation was cut short, even though it lasted for hours.
This actually starts at 3:25.
round 2 plz
Round 2 suggestion in honour of Loke's upcoming book: Does a first cause and fine tuning imply a God?
Would love to see people hash out the gap between a first cause to a libertarian free agent from the perspective of temporal cosmological arguments, haven't seen this done on CC yet.
Time in terms of points is eternal. Time in the sense of what we mean requires a reference to become meaningful. Where Andrew Loke seems confused by is that even if you want to consider before the beginning of our time as timeless, there are still an infinite series of points that are "before" and "after" any events in the realm of God.
While I know the Kalam is not sound, I thought Oppy did a good job of demonstrating why.
I kept underestimating Andrew throughout the discussion, but then he would cause me to rethink his argument at a deeper level to show that he had already taken into consideration Graham's objections. Excellent job by Oppy to humbly reconsider Andrew's argument when he clearly disagreed.
An interesting discussion, but it's hard not to call this one for Oppy. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is deceptively simply, but Oppy managed to tease out just how incoherent the concept of an immaterial, timeless, and spaceless cause is. It was frustrating that Loke didn't seem to understand why the initial state of the universe was different from any following ones. It seems obvious that it's different in not having a preceding state.
How is it incoherent?
@@jackplumbridge2704How is it NOT? How can an "immaterial being" have a mind so complicated to the point where it can cause all of PHYSICAL reality as we know it? It's nonsense. It does not make ANY sense whatsoever.
At 28:40, that was the Kalam argument sound. So yes it has a sound. Solves the question posed.
At about 1:20:00 Oppy is pure fire.
At 1:59:00 I love Cameron.... "Well it's been two hours" ... Both debaters "let's keep going." lol.
Question maybe a theist can help me with. The theist in the video takes the view that god is timeless, changeless, and personal. I don't understand how a thing can be timeless and changeless and also anything like a person. People constantly change, only exist in time, and would just be immovable bodies if frozen in a timeless changeless state. So how can something timeless and changeless also be personal? The properties seem logically incompatible (like a square circle).
@@251rmartin I posted this same question in a theist group on Facebook and the best anyone could muster was that "personal" means God effects persons. Under that definition, gravity would be personal.... A pretty big stretch of what the word personal can mean imho.
The other possibility is that only God's essential character is changeless. So God could grt angry but would never change what kind of think would make God angry. I think this kind of weak notion of changeless really would undermine an attempt to use the property for a cosmological argument however.
Ouch. Graham's inquiry about "ground rules" were actually a Trojan Horse to sneak a deadly blow to Andrew's magnum opus. He's essentially saying, "That's a cute syllogism. What's the theory you think it argues for? That's the important part not the premises and the manipulation to a conclusion."
It's a Trojan Horse that kills his own theory rather than mine, for one of his ground rules acknowledges that if x demonstrates a contradiction with y's theory then y's theory fails. Which was precisely what I demonstrated using the modus tollens argument. It should be noted that a view that entails a contradiction cannot be true, even if it is simpler. Thus simplicity cannot help his view since his view entails a contradiction as I explained using the Modus Tollens argument, which he failed to rebut as I explained in my debate (see 1:40:45 to 1:43:07 ) and in greater detail here in my debate review with Suan Sonna (ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html : see 1:35:41 to 1:40:40).
@@andrewloke7 happy to respond in full as I think it's a result of a gross conceptual error. After dinner if the wife permits! However, out of curiosity, what innovation to the argument do you think you bring in your book? From what I've heard it seems like a concatenation of existing arguments and favors Dr. Craig's arguments/formulations over others you discussed.
Host a discussion between Craig and Oppy about the evidence for God!
For goodness's sake! I'm 2 hours in and Oppy just doesn't seem to understand that Loke is trying to say, "things don't have properties until they already exist, so you can't appeal to a property of a thing with a beginning to explain why it began"!! This is why most people would consider the set of "necessary" truths to be a *subset of the set of eternal or beginningless truths*
Loke is going too far by saying that eternity *explains* necessity, but it is quite right to say it is a *criterion*
does graham initial necessary state have a beginning though or has it always been there?
@@anglozombie2485
It begins to exist at T=0, if I understand him correctly. He is against infinite regress and would regard even an unchanging initial state that existed forever backwards as a regress.
@@anglozombie2485 Right, the tricky thing is that having a "beginning" in this context just means not extending backward in an infinite regress. It's not that first there is nothing and then Oppy's initial state begins. Rather, Oppy's initial state already exists at the earliest moment (thus, "initial"). In saying that it has a beginning, we just mean that the initial state is finitely distant from us in the causal order.
So it's nonsense to say that the initial state doesn't have a property until it exists. There is no nonexistence to speak of prior to the initial state. There is no prior. The initial state exists initially.
I checked Oppy’s philpaper bio(I think that was the website), and it said that he was a B-theorist, so couldn’t Graham Oppy just say that the initial state exists eternally in the sense that it eternally and tenselessly exists at some initial spatiotemporal location in the “block universe”? I myself am agnostic on a theory of time, but I don’t see why this could be impossible.
@@crabking6884
I appreciate you mentioning that factor. I sometimes have a blind spot for it, since I think B-theory is literally incoherent and requires us to say all sorts of absurd things as we try to speak coherently about it (including, for example, that *everything* exists "eternally" in that same way and nothing ever changes).
B-theory probably does rescue someone from Loke's point and from the Kalam in general, but at the cost of incoherence.
If someone like Dr. Loke still wanted to defend this, I suppose they could ask "why think that the front edges of all other temporally finite objects need causes, while the rest of their extension doesn't?" Whatever the answer is to that, it will seem quite arbitrary to apply that everywhere except at the front edge of the world itself. Isn't that what Pruss calls the "Taxicab Fallacy"?
Interested in the non-trivial relationship (causal or simply of temporal succession) between states and events - sorry it came into play late in the dialogue.
Forget about the kalam argument. This debate shows what happens when the unstoppable force called Loke meets the immovable object called Oppy.
Indeed, blind stupidity and obstinacy are unstoppable. Loke fails by failing to understand that the ‘special’ condition objection applies equally to his god. This is why Oppy states ‘what’s the cause?!’ in utter frustration at Loke’s stupidity and blindness.
Of course, this ignores Loke’s basic lack of knowledge (surprising given that he’s a professor of philosophy) of basic terms, such as necessity (which he is happy to apply to his God, but not what we know to be the case), and ontological priority. He persistently conflated ontological priority with temporal priority a terrible oversight for a professor of philosophy. This really is a schoolboy error and Oppy got understandably frustrated by this basic failure.
@@plasticvision6355 You have an open parenthesis there. Sorry, as a programmer with OCD I just had to get that out of my system.
@@Alkis05 Mia culpa!! To be honest I’m of a similar mind to you, - although not a programmer - and just had to correct the omission when you told me!
I really appreciate this video.
Loke runs on high octane race fuel.
he looks like hes on meth but i know hes not....hes an asian on redbull....and maybe cocaine
That's not funny in the slightest. Do you not realize how that can be interpreted as racist? I don't see how those type of comments are necessary or appropriate.
@@fujiapple9675 Grow up
@@DingleberryPie it seems you're the one who needs to grow up after a childish comment on a serious debate forum.
@@fujiapple9675 Get a life
﴿قُل هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ﴾ [الإخلاص: ١]
Say, "He is Allāh, [who is] One,
- Saheeh International
﴿اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ﴾ [الإخلاص: ٢]
Allāh, the Eternal Refuge.
- Saheeh International
﴿لَم يَلِد وَلَم يولَد﴾ [الإخلاص: ٣]
He neither begets nor is born,
- Saheeh International
﴿وَلَم يَكُن لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ﴾ [الإخلاص: ٤]
Nor is there to Him any equivalent."
- Saheeh International
I also think the whole concept that there is "causal duration" without temporal duration is incoherent, which is why Loke was struggling to answer without invoking time. If there is a Causal-but-not-temporal order, then describing it as either "a beginning" or a "regress" are both just inappropriate. The cause or causes would just exist timelessly, with no dimension at all along which there even *could be* either regress or point. Now, if you think that even simultaneous causation among such entities is good enough to give duration-style descriptions, then you are further motivated to say there is only one. That should be in _Loke's_ arsenal; not Oppy's. I just think that whole piece of the discussion was frustrating precisely because Oppy was making an incoherent demand, and Loke didn't understand it.
I think there could still be a causal regress even if there was no temporal regress. I mean, assuming that this type of timeless causation is possible (isn’t Loke committed to that?), some timeless causes could depend on the occurrence (?) of other timeless causes. For example, God’s intention to cause this universe might causally depend on God’s having recognizing facts about this universe (and infinitely many others) and God’s having the (virtuous) disposition to want to cause the best universe. If that’s true, that events/causes which are timeless can still depend on the occurrence of (“causally prior”) events, then it seems like we do have some ordering to the set of causes. In which case, if there was an infinite chain of dependence of one timeless cause on another, then there would be a “regress,” and if there was not an infinite chain of causes dependent on another, then there would be a “beginning” or first cause which does not depend on any other causes for its occurrence/existence.
I’m new to this stuff so these are just my thoughts.
Given that they are simultaneous, the idea of "beginning" has no resemblance to temporal beginnings. There is nothing dangerous to Loke's position in assuming that the causal "chain" in the timeless state has only one link (indeed, that is exactly what Loke does think).
@@Mentat1231 What do you mean that the causal chain in God’s unchanging state is only one link? Are you suggesting that God’s knowledge about an infinite number of possible universes and God’s forming the intention to create one of them are not distinct things? Distinct causes?
Also, can you explain how or when God goes from being changeless to not being changeless?
@@qqqmyes4509
You raise some very good questions. So, first off, neither knowledge nor intentions are causes, and so they wouldn't be links in the chain of causes.
Secondly, it doesn't seem to make sense to say of a timeless thing that it "forms" anything, including an intention. It's also important to note that free actions don't have to be preceded by individual acts of will. But, putting all of that aside, and using this as a way to answer your later question as well: God decides to create at the same instant that He acts on it which is the first instant in time. Being omnipotent, there is no delay between His deciding that a thing should happen and its happening.
Just a side note: these latter issues are once again about temporal order. I think it's hard to avoid shifting back to that, since the idea of causal order just isn't at issue here. If it were timelessly the case that Super-God sustains God in being (so that Super-God is higher in the causal chain), that wouldn't create any new issues about "beginnings". It would still be true that God created the world at the first instant in time.
@@Mentat1231 I’m sorry, but I don’t understand how God exists timelessly and yet at t=0 God decides to and creates the universe. This sounds incoherent to me. Are you saying that timelessly, God decides to create the universe, which has a beginning at t=0, or are you saying that God exists at t=0 at which God creates the universe?
And sorry, but could you explain the idea of being “initially changeless”, and then not?
Also, I am skeptical about intentions not being causes, since I think many metaphysicians would disagree (for reasons I’m not sure about, I don’t pretend to know). Or perhaps they are focusing on human actions, not divine actions.
51:50 cameron makes my dream come true
8. Loke claims that an advantage of his view is that God has libertarian free will and so can intelligently choose to, say, fine tune the universe. But there are a myriad of problems with this. First, Libertarian Free Will means you have more stuff to keep track of in the model, making it less simple than Oppy's model. Not only do you have the initial state, you also have something causally prior to that AND all its decision chains to keep track of.
i. Changelessness and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (see above).
ii. Omniscience and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (How does one decide to do something they know they will do by necessity?)
iii. Omnipotence and Libertarian Free Will are at odds (Mill / Jack (based on Bilgrami) pincer)
9. At around 1:04:00 I think Loke blunders a bit.
It's not the case that just because everything that begins to exist has a cause, that if something is beginning-less then it is uncaused. This is trivial. Just draw a big circle labeled "things that have causes" and draw a smaller circle in that bigger one labelled "things that begin to exist". The Kalam causal principle is just that picture. You can have things that are in the "things that have causes" circle that aren't also in the little circle, and we immediately get this intuition from Leibnizian Arguments which Oppy owes quite a bit of his worldview to I think. Imagine an infinite chain of contingent facts. The whole chain could be contingent and thus explained outside itself by something necessary.
Similarly you can have a beginningless sequence of causal events, but something outside the causal sequence itself is causally responsible for that sequence being there in the first place. Granted this is a slightly different use of "without beginning" than Loke may imply, but the general point still stands. Merely saying that God doesn't begin to exist isn't a get out of jail free card on God's causality writ large, it just excludes God from viciously falling under his own Kalam principle. What's going to solve this is the fact that God is necessary, and necessary things aren't the kinds of things that do or even can have causes. Oppy is right here.
10. At 1:07:00 I feel bad for the frustration Oppy is about to go through here given my own experience with Loke.
Oppy is going to "rightly" argue that if God goes from changeless to changing, then insofar as those are to distinct ontological states for God, this implies some kind of duration (even if not temporal in the spacetime sense). When I brought this up with Loke, I measured it as a metaphysical indexing of all the times God could have decided to cease being changeless and chose not to. Nothing about time is implied by such a decision index, and we know the index is nontrivial since there is at least one decision (the Libertarian Free Will decision on Loke's model) where God could have decided to cease being changeless and did so. The existence of one decision in which God acted in favor, means there must possibly have been other instances in which God could have acted in similar kind but did not, and so he "remained" changeless.
This sequence would be finite or infinite. If it's infinite, there's an infinite thing, violating one of the premises of the Kalam. If it's finite, then it has a first member, a "causal beginning". The game Oppy is playing here is to force the extension of the Kalam principle of "beginning" from just talking about spacetime, to any indexed metaphysical set. Indeed many of the paradoxes one would use to force a "beginning" to prove the nonexistence of infinites don't rely on time at all. I think this is a fair move. But if you don't like that move, we can just make another Leibnizian play.
God's ceasing being changeless and creating the universe is either contingent or necessary. If it's necessary, it basically shares his own ontological status, putting Aseity in check (along with raising deep questions about how God "necessarily must" act due to his "Libertarian Free Will"). Most Christians would opt to go with the former. They can conceive of God never having created the universe at all. But if this is so, this can be cashed out one of two ways.
i. There are an infinite number of "cease being changeless decisions" in God's changeless state in which God never affirms ceasing being changeless.
ii. There just aren't any "cease being changeless decisions" in God whatsoever, the thought never even "changelessly crosses his mind".
The former again yields an infinite sequence so the Kalam proponent would have to reject that. The latter means the whole indexed sequence of these decisions is itself contingent. In the same way one can imagine God never entertained this decision at all, the fact that he does so, and only a finite number of times, means there's either a Leibnizian explanation, or extending this to Kalam, a "deciding cause" for God's beginning (in index) to entertain these decisions "at all". And that's key, this is again not a temporal beginning but a Leibnizian bundled "beginning of the chain writ large".
11. 1:16:00
How many times is Loke going to accuse Oppy of saying that God is temporally prior, even though Oppy has gone through great pains to say otherwise? I'm getting mad flashbacks.
12. Loke is saying that if time is a continuum of points, this yields either the Grim Reaper paradox or the paradox of motion. Both are false. The Grim Reaper Paradox is mathematically constructible (and I've done it in response to one of the RR Kalam debate videos) without any particular consideration of time, and that's because time isn't the thing powering the paradox, but the infinite index of reapers. The paradox of motion is dismissed so long as any causal events in time (such as motion) are measurable (in the sense of Real Analysis). But again it's worth noting that Oppy using "points" here is just a euphemism for "index in a causal chain".
13. 1:28:40
"I certainly succeeded as long as my words didn't misfire". That's probably the most sassy I've ever heard Oppy be in one of these discussion and I'm loving it.
14. "Any properties that differentiate the initial state from the other things, will be shared as soon as those other things exist"
Andrew, are you saying that everything that exists now, necessarily exists? Because given what Oppy has sad, that's what you'll be committing yourself to. You don't want to do that.
15. Loke had to be reminded what Oppy said about 1 minute ago at about 1:48:00. This is what happens when someone is listening only for a weakness to knock something down, rather than listening in order to truly understand someone's position. Loke is a person who listens only insofar as he waits to talk. It's why he kept saying Oppy was saying things were temporal, even in the middle of a sentence where Oppy was explaining that wasn't what he was saying. I can feel Oppy's frustration through the screen.
16. Loke claims he explains that no "special property" can exist because it can't "do the work" 1:54:00 and that's like the 5th time he claimed to explain it. I didn't hear an explanation that Oppy didn't address already. But I'm sure, given my experience with Loke, that he's going to claim that he explained why it can't work 7 more times before this conversation is over.
17. The reason for God's being metaphysically necessary can't be that God is beginning-less. This is absurd on its face. If you want to invoke the Kalam principle then you can say:
1.Necessary things are not caused.
2. All things with beginnings are caused.
C. So if a thing is necessary, then it is without beginning.
i.e. Under the Kalam principle, God is beginning-less because he is necessary. You cannot go the other way around. Let's try.
1. Let X be without beginning.
2. X could be caused or uncaused since all we know is that things that begin are caused, but we know nothing about beginning-less things.
3. If X is caused then X is not metaphysically necessary.
C. X could be without beginning and still fail to be metaphysically necessary.
I.e. it's not the case that being beginning-less would be an explanation for a thing's necessity. This is really simple stuff here. I'm surprised he's making such a basic mistake.
Now they're talking about objects and events and I'm not finding this part of the discussion very interesting so I think I'll close it here. Comment 2/2
Great comment. Any link to your prior discussion with Loke?
How can something without beginning be caused?
@@FoxintheKnow86 It was on the Unbelievable channel. Loke was debating Malpass. I commented, Loke actually responded. I'll see if I can pull up the link later.
@@logos8312 cool. I think i had a few comments on that video myself. Not sure if I was making much sense, but I felt Loke was fairly dismissive and repetitive.
@@johnabad866 Several ways.
Hierarchical causation:
Suppose that we take extremely literally, for sake of argument, the law of thermodynamics which states that matter can never be created nor destroyed. One can still think that the motions which make up the molecules which make up stuff, even timeless stuff are caused. For more on this kind of causation, see Ed Feser's Aristotelian Proof.
Ontological Causation:
Even if a thing happens to exist "forever" one could still conceive of it failing to exist, however they could still conceive of its essence, forming the essence / existence distinction. Whatever the cause of a thing's essence instantiated into existence, that cause would be the case whether or not the thing began to exist, because it's the kind of cause which is simultaneous to it in any instance of its being. See Ed Feser's Thomistic Proof
Composition:
Even if a thing never begins to exist, it can be caused to be by the forming of its parts, and, indeed, the forming of its parts to make the kind of thing that it is (rather than some other, or nothing at all) is a kind of cause which doesn't hinge on whether or not a thing actually began to be composed. See Ed Feser's Neoplatonic Proof.
Abstracta:
Many Christians believe that abstracta like mathematical objects do not begin to exist, but nonetheless are caused into being via the mind of God. See Ed Feser's Augustinian Proof.
I've chosen particularly Christian kinds of causation which are independent from beginnings for a reason - so one couldn't accuse me of making the claim that such causation "could" exist purely as an ad hoc maneuver in favor of atheism. Not only are these kinds of causation fluent in some Christian arguments, but indeed an atheist, with some time and imagination, conjure up a model of their own perhaps.
Point is, logically speaking, necessity explains a being's lacking a beginning, but a being can lack a beginning and still be in some way causally dependent on something else.
Cameron, you titled this debate, “Is the kalam sound?” But, Oppy right off the bat indicated that he wasn’t interested in talking about soundness or arguments at all. It seems you should discover such ground rules before the debates starts. It seems easy enough to ask both parties if they are in agreement that the debate will discuss “Is the kalam sound?” If so, then great, if not, then you need to set the ground rules and topic beforehand.
Sound for whom? Whether the Kalam is sound is largely dependent on the worldview (Theism/Naturalism) you hold. So, unless you want to make the case that naturalists or theists are unreasonable in holding the worldviews they do (which is different to merely disagreeing with them), then there is not much point of discussing the soundness of the Kalam. Both groups will be reasonable in their acceptance or rejection of the soundness of the Kalam. So, like Oppy, I think more emphasis should be placed on comparing theories to see which theory comes out on top.
@@jessicalk1016 You may be right. But, the debate was titled as a discussion of the soundness of the kalam. Loke intended to do that and Oppy never intended to discuss it. So, my point is that the moderator should get both participants to agree on exactly what they will discuss. Preferably beforehand so the debate can be titled appropriately.
the argument commits at least 3 logical fallacies, i don't know why oppy even wasted his time on this
@@Contagious93812 What are the three fallacies?
@@davidpdiaz Fallacy of composition, equivocation error, special pleading, just off the top of my head.
I think Oppy is over-stating the difference between giving arguments and comparing "theories" (i.e. worldviews). If, for example, Loke's Causal Principle follows from some premises or observations which Oppy would agree with, then Oppy is implicitly committed to the Causal Principle and he'll have to either find a way to reject the things he previously held which led to the CP or else give up his view about the beginning. That's all the arguments are designed to do: get you to realize that, given some facts that you accept, you are implicitly committed to things which in turn undermine your view on something else.
Did Graham actually say that his 'necessary initial state' began to exist? It seemed that Loke kept on claiming that this was part of it and attacking it but I'm not sure if Graham ever actually said this.
I'd say yes. It does depend what is meant by "begin to exist." Loke takes "begin to exist" to mean extending finitely into the past.
Oppy agrees in this discussion that the causal order is not an infinite regress or a loop, which indicates that there is some initial state/cause/event finitely distant from us in the causal chain. So in that sense Oppy's initial state began to exist. It has an earliest moment finitely far away from us (t=0). But it didn't begin to exist in the way that other things in our day to day life begin to exist, e.g. something that exists now and not yesterday. There is no history before the initial state, since it is initial. Thus the discussion of causal principles: can something "begin to exist" in this sense without a cause. Oppy says yes, since none of the examples given for Loke's principle actually undermine the relevant difference between initial and non-initial items.
@@RanchElder Great, thanks for that explanation... it starts to fall into place more now.
@@RanchElder Watching it again now and I wonder why Loke's God concept doesn't have 'an earliest moment finitely far away from us' as regardless of whether you mean 'moment' in time or in the causal sequence, it would seem that the earliest/first moment is when the first change in time or causality occurs and it doesn't really make sense to refer to something existing separate from or before time or causal order as Loke seems to want to do.
So I guess I need to clarify if 'extending finitely into the past' means;
(1) Extends finitely into an infinite past, or
(2) Extends finitely into a finite past
I think on Graham's view there is no 'infinite past' so it wouldn't make sense to apply that characterisation to his view. But if we use the second characterisation it would seem that both Graham's 'initial state' and Loke's 'God model' already exist at the first moment (in time or the causal chain) so it doesn't seem to separate them.
@@nickmorris2250 Your second characterization seems correct. I agree that it's hard to make sense of Loke's view. The timeless, changeless being suddenly changes and enters time. The notion of a timeless disembodied mind being more plausible than an initially existing spacetime surface just doesn't track for me.
@@RanchElder thanks for the clarification, may answer why does initial reality begin to exist under Oppy's view ? Like t=0 means time doesn't exist, then what causes to exist ?
I don't think Oppy or Cam understood Loke's point about there needing to be something to differentiate the necessary first state from other things, and that this isimpossible prior to the first state existing. I was getting frustrated along with Loke as they, from my perspective, kept failing to see what he was saying. But then again maybe Oppy's just so brilliant that I don't get what he's saying.
Relevance?
It's not a relevant objection because the two theories in question both take the initial conditions as necessary: one assumes that God's proclivities and nature are arbitrarily necessary and the other assumes the initial state of nature is arbitrarily necessary.
Multiverse
Loke tried to insist on some relevance through the fine tuning argument but in actuality the appropriate inference is the multi-verse because, according to Loke, there can be no arbitrary set of initial conditions that only gives rise to one possible outcome over another. Well, if that's true (and this is Loke's own assumption), then there would not be, in fact, a single universe but instead every possible combination of universes, ergo, a multiverse. Instead, he tries to say that God must exist to set the initial conditions. It doesn't make sense because his argument should lead him to conclude there is an unseen multiverse, not that naturalism is false. (Loke also made the mistake of saying this modus ponens argument works because we observe no multiverse therefore there is no multiverse, which is a non-sequitur for obvious reasons [multiverse is not observable with our current technology and may be inaccessible in principle]).
Ignorance and Fine Tuning
And the actual appropriate statement to make is that we simply don't know why the initial conditions were what they were, which is why the fine tuning argument doesn't work in the first place. We have no idea if the universe is, in fact, trying out every possibility, or if there is some other principle at work which would explain things, or if there is even a "seemingly absurd" situation in which some arbitrary set of conditions is, in fact, necessary for reasons beyond our comprehensions, or perhaps for no reason at all. The point is we are in a state of ignorance which does not justify making inferences of the kind theists make, or to rule out other possibilities.
God's Tuning
If at the end of it you still reject a naturalist universe you are back at square one because you have to explain why God is tuned the way he is. There will definitely be no explanation for this so I don't know why this is supposed to get us anywhere. Moreover I don't see how you could say that God is simpler and less ad hoc than a multiverse because the ability to create a multiverse (an attribute nobody would deny God would have, I think) is more complex than an actual multiverse itself because it presupposes more postulates than a multiverse does. A multiverse says that we must postulate there are X number of universes and that's all that exists; a theistic God who can create a multiverse is postulated to have X abilities, as well as the quality of existence, as well as whatever other qualities you wish to arbitrarily assign to God.
@@superdog797
... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes?wprov=sfla1 ...
Atheism is like that fable ...
Theism is like the Fox dreaming that is eating the Grapes and after waking up, trying to convince the other animals that the Grapes tasted delicious ....
@@firstnamesurname6550 I understand your analogy and think it is clever but of course will sour on it because in the analogy likens God to the grapes, which actually exist in the fable but are just out of reach, whereas an atheist doesn't think the grapes actually exist. At any rate, I suspect the reality is that the fox exists, the grapes exist, and our dreams exist, but most conceptions of God that people hold do not exist. Either way it's all just suspicions we have - I just don't like it when people push their suspicions as facts.
@@superdog797 Well, I don't have any sort of issues about any sort of real or imaginary hierarchy of beingness that state that there could be other entities exponentially superior to my self .... and I am not as arrogant to put myself and my experiences as The Measurement Stick for determining what must be Real for All the Possible Entities that had come/comes/ will come into existence...
Particularly, I don't tend to gravitate towards Humanistic Philosophies .... Mankind as a whole could be just a contingent artifact in a System that doesn't need Humans in it but has the potential for producing those artifacts ...
Not as arrogant to deny exponentially Superior Entities than me but arrogant enough to discard All Mankind as something essential for Overall Existence .... 😂 ... ( My Ancestors, Mom & Dad would show me their middle finger by It ... 😂 ... but nobody cares, except - maybe - my master overlords ... )
In fact, I was expecting your kind of answer to the comment ... and this brings me a cool idea ... to publish the answer of those responding to me before they answer the comments ...
then, after they write the answer/response/post-comment ... I will submit them to a page where I previously wrote their answer ...
There is no such "prior to the initial state existing." The initial state exists initially.
Great video. I dont think doctor Loke is particularly good in the debate, but I will buy his book. It feels to me he may be better in writing. Doctor Oppy is brilliant, but he seems a little bit frustrated along the conversation.
Thanks for this wonderful content.
I have a few thoughts on this debate. First, Oppy and Loke both gave lame answers to the "which superpower would you choose?" Question. Second, I think that Loke is a bad debater. He presents a scripted argument (nothing wrong with that), Oppy takes him off script, Loke responds by repeating a part of his script. It's like trying to win a game a tag when you're on a train and your opponent is in a helicopter.
I am not an intellectual by any means. I have been an atheist for 50years or thereabouts. I have great respect for great thinkers like Oppy and Loke. These interactions can sometimes be interesting. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause ". Except "god". Special pleading? Self refuting? I don't know how the Universe began but I am not going to jump to "god did it ". I don't know and AFAIK neither does anyone else.
Loke didn't say that God has a beginning.
@@Insane_ForJesus That's his position and that of all theists. Or are you inferring that your "god" had a beginning?
@@jerryoconnor-ps8bb Let me repeat this again. Loke did not say God has a beginning. He didn't say, "everything that exists has a cause". He said, "everything that *begins* has a cause". This is also the same causal principle that Graham Oppy accepts which is, "all non initial things that begin to exist have a cause".
These philosophical debates are too complicated for you. It's better for you to go watch simplistic new atheist videos where all you hear is your side and confirmation bias.
@@Insane_ForJesus You condescending pos 😄😄😄
Just continue in your delusions. No one has ever provided sufficient evidence for the existence of any of the multitude of proposed gods. So I look forward to see you get the Nobel Prize. Good luck with that.
It seems like Oppy is saying "it is this way because its necessary and its necessary because it is this way"
Ya, he's basically throwing every Christian's bad argument for God back in his face. Annoying isn't it?
@@generichuman_ No its called circular reasoning🤦🏻♂️ , whats annoying is typical atheist unwarranted pretentiousness like yours stemming from the Dunning-Kruger effect
A Chicken hatches from an egg as it's necessary for a chicken to do so, and it's necessary for a chicken because chickens hatch from eggs.
The first part is sufficient, the second is redundant because there's no need to explain why it's necessary for a chicken to hatch from an egg for it to be a chicken.
Here it's implied that it couldn't be a chicken if it didn't hatch from an egg.
@@MrKlousse i dont think the analogy is correct. in the second part of the analogy "because chickens hatch from eggs" it implies that the actual discussed topic (the universe) has only one way of being created, that being the necessity of its initial nature having the property of being able to come into existence out of nothing. i dont think that is rational but thats another story.
@@profs2981 It's not pretentiousness, it's frustration from having to deal with the same bad arguments over and over again. It's unbelievable to me that people can't see what Oppy was doing. He was using the argument from necessity (the one that Christians like to use all the time) and showing how it can equally be used for a non supernatural origin. It's a bad circular argument, and that's the point, if Loke can see the reason why it doesn't work in Oppy's case, then he should be able to see why it won't work in his own argument. I also find it interesting that Theists are sensitive to the nuances of this argument, and are able to see the flaw, but not the flaw of proposing a disembodied intelligent mind that exists outside of time and is changeless, but is also free and somehow makes decisions. Give me one argument for God that isn't either circular, an example of special pleading, a misapplication of parochial intuitions, or a simple assertion, then we can talk...
I would like to see WLC debating Oppy on the kalam. Can you make it happen Cameron?
Cameron's channel has a lot of really great debates. This debate was not one of them. The phrase "dumpster fire" comes to mind. Dr. Oppy was, as usual, thoughtful and clear and compelling. However, Dr. Loke never seemed to grasp what Oppy was saying and the conversation suffered because of it. Truthfully, I would have preferred to hear Cameron engage with Oppy rather than Dr. Loke.
Hey Cameron, I know you’re busy but I have been bugged for a while about a debate between Lawrence Krause and John Lennox since I saw it a few years ago. Several parts got to me, but Krauss says at one point something to the affect of “scientist don’t ask why, only how.” How would you answer that?
There’s more to human knowledge than what some scientists have deemed worthy questions or not
Lennox isn’t the best choice for that debate IMO, sorry to say
@@robertbutchko5066 That makes sense. Especially the "why am I studying this instead of that" part.
@@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns Poor guy got slapped around because He's too nice. Krauss talked over him the entire time. It was not a debate because Krauss would not allow a back-and-forth.
go to another video and ask that stupid question, it's not relevant to a video with two serious philosophers.
This was good. I think Oppy just might become a theist.
Im an atheist and belive that every time oppy has been on CC ha has come out on top. But I think this is due to exactly the reason oppy speaks about in the beginning. Arguments could really only be held in a worldview so everytime two people clash about a argument coming from different worldviews the arguments is more or less pointless. This is due to the fact that everyone argues from their worldview. So I don't think there is any reason to think he will become a theist anytime soon. :) interesting debates non the less
@@Nr1Sgt You do realize the irony of your reply, right? Oppy's very participation in this debate, and your reply to my post, betrays this view that arguments from two different worldviews are "more or less pointless." If they are pointless, why do atheists even have debates? If arguments can't help anyone of a different worldview arrive at truth, then there should be no debates, ever.
@J w You're saying atheists but I think you're meaning almost all people. That said, many of the atheists coming here probably don't fit your characterization.
@J w theists tend to be theists because they don't bother to think outside of the religion they were born into. Not because of any intellectual exercise.
@J w just about all theists were born into the religion that they follow. That is why when we look at a world map we can guess the persons religion fairly reliable. Religion is an extension of culture its not based on any truths of reality. Converts make up a very small percentage of any given religion. If I had to guess most of those theists you mentioned likely grew up in a culture that was Christian.
Religion is just an extension of culture. Its why everyone around the world comes to the same conclusion that facts about the world like 2+2=4 but when it comes to culture and religion they are divided by boarders. God lives outside of reality but religion and culture are intertwined.
The gimmick of saying anything that “begins” to exist references everything in our experience. We don’t know if the universe began to exist or not, only that at one point the universe was so small and dense our math doesn’t work. But if experience is the reason for the argument, one could say; Everything for which a cause has been determined has been from a natural phenomenon.
They would argue that we have no "evidence" that the universe has a beginning, but that evidence and science is not the only way we can know things. Science as a method can only lead to knowledge if a bunch of metaphysical and epistemological assertions are taken to be true, for example. One could argue that there is no conclusive evidence that it is even physically possible to inspect the origins of the universe. Reason could be the only tool we have to investigate it.
Actually, the notion that science could even investigate the origin of the universe is kind of a metaphysical statement.
@@Alkis05 : Science assumes nothing. Everything is falsifiable so our "best understanding" should always be changing.
Conclusions based on factual errors are not sound no matter how philosophically sophisticated you are.
@@lrvogt1257 Of course science assumes somethings. It assumes the world is regular and governed by descriptive laws. That the rules of inference work. That knowledge is worth pursuing. That knowledge ultimately comes from experience. Those are just out the top of my head. There maybe more.
@@Alkis05 : I think it's more accurate to say that science accepts certain facts as more probable than others based on observation and testing.
That knowledge is worth pursuing isn't an objective fact but a broadly held opinion.
Experience can be valuable but it can be misinterpreted. Ask Penn & Teller.
@@lrvogt1257 You conveniently didn't respond to the claim that science has as premise that the universe has patterns and that it can be described through physical laws. That is an assumption. Without it, there would be no point in the idea of "Reproducible experiments" for example. Without that, there is no peer review. Without both, there is no science.
Since you can't use science to prove the foundations of science, which puts that notion about reality squarely on the domain of metaphysics.
Look, I don't like it either. I would be glad if there was a way for science to put its own foundations to the test. But logic just doesn't work that way. If you are interested in explore if you are indeed wrong about "science making no assumptions", I recommend you to study or revisit the basics of philosophy of science.
it's a like a debate between an adult (Oppy) and a child (Loke)
Wait a second. Why does Oppy qualify around 1:25:45 that it's impossible for any CONTINGENT thing to pop into existence without a cause? Something NECESSARY wouldn't pop into existence at all, because it's existence would be... necessary. And yet, that seems to be exactly what he's asserting about his supposedly necessary initial state: That it has a beginning and pops into existence without a cause because its necessary. Huh?
Poor Andrew, special pleading until he was bleeding. Oppy sliced him to bits. WLC won't debate Kalam with Oppy because he would bleed too. The Kalam is just indefensible, at least WLC is wise enough to avoid it and go for the 'maths' discussion which had more grounds for philosophical agreement.
what a bad faith comment, do you genuinely think craig is simply scared of debating oppy?? you sound like the typical layman atheist, this would be like me saying oppy wouldn't debate pruss because pruss would shred oppy.. professional philosophers are beyond such childish nonsense
Amazing discussion! I think Andrew made more convincing arguements. But neither Cameroon nor oppy couldn't comprehend that. Oppy took it away from being highly syllogistic/ philosophical. He don't answer many complicated questions Andrew put forward. However, it was The most intellectual debate I ever watched on the topic, both performed well.
Loke Debate review:
ruclips.net/video/CDS-loZv8k8/видео.html
Suan Sonna is the GOAT of young apologists.
Loke is more educated than me, so it’s probably hubris of me, but it seems to me like he doesn’t understand modality if he thinks God’s existing at all times or being indestructible or not depending on anything else for its existence means that God’s existence is necessary-that it could not have been the case that God did not exist altogether. At least, it is confusing for him to claim God is necessary without explaining what he (unconventionally) means by “necessary” until two hours into the debate and only because Oppy challenged him about it.
Also, it is surprising that Loke did not begin this discussion by briefly explaining causation. I know it is hard to give a philosophical account for causation, but he could have at least tried (Oppy helped him with this). My attempt would be “it’s a basic ontological relation where some object or event brings about, or produces, or makes probable another event’s occurrence”. Or, we might understand “A causes B” as “had A not occurred, then B would not have occurred”. Nonetheless, he did not do a good job of defining his terms, especially for how fundamental the notion of causation is for his argument.
Honestly I don’t think Loke provides his argument in a clear, precise way that can be well understood, and it’s hard to assess the argument’s cogency. For example, slide at 2:17:55, the premises are way too hard to clearly understand. I still don’t even understand the concept of “initially changeless”. And he talks about “the capacity to prevent itself from changing”, but I don’t even know if that makes sense.
I agree with you, it was extremely confusing to me when he said "so on my view there is an explanation for why God exist uncaused and the way it is, why God exist necessarily"
at
1:02:50. If something is necessary, then it exists no matter what. If there would be some reason for its existence, it wouldn't be necessary. In my view, providing a reason for necessity betrays a confusion about the term.
So in the end, I think I have to agree with Oppy about which property does the work -- it is the necessity. I think the necessity, not the beginninglessness, does the work, because you can have a contingent beginningless (by Loke's definition) being and you can have a necessary being that has a beginning. To make God work as an initial item, Loke had to appeal to "not being contingent on anything" and Oppy has pointed that out.
I like this Oppy. Go to the offensive and push harder on the assumptions. All of the metaphorical language around theism is just an excuse to dodge tough questions. Time to dispense with that nonsense. At the same time, it takes a special kind of courage to box with Oppy so I massively commend Loke, despite my perception that he failed to disconfirm Oppy's position.
@C how about you steelman Oppy's position. If you can do that effectively I'll steelman Loke. If you're not able or willing, then move on and direct your unbridled vitriol elsewhere. Thanks.
@@HumblyQuestioning Are you "Question Asker"?
@@20july1944 close enough 😉
@@HumblyQuestioning Are you the same asshole, or not?
Either way is fine. Are you imitating him?
@@HumblyQuestioning What IS Oppy's position? What IS his cosmogony? It seems incoherent/vaporous.
2:07:30 Why does the fact that something is initially changeless mean that it must be able to prevent itself from changing? I have no idea what Loke is getting at here.
That is not exactly what the argument says. This portion of the argument is examining the conditions for it to be possible for some first cause to cause something from a state of changelessness. From this state of changelessness it has to prevent itself from changing, otherwise it wouldn't be initially changeless, because we are talking about the initial event here. If it is not changeless here, it wouldn't be beginningless. And if it has a beginning, it has already been established at this point of the argument, that it could not be the first cause.
That is the 10.2 point in the slide.