So, yes, I'm finding a way to work magic into the videos. If I'm not going to perform professionally, it'd be nice to put some of those many hours of practice to good use. Originally, I was going to add a cups and balls routine asking what the odds were that there was an elephant under the cup - and then revealing a tiny toy elephant (specifically to make the point that defining terms is important)...but it didn't seem to add much to this video, so I cut it.
Yes, this idea of looking at the world around us and concluding "aha...intelligent design..what else could it be?" blah blah blah is a very common fallacy trap that I guess nearly all of us have fallen into at one time or another, I remember when I was in school back in the 1970's and I was still religious then (I come from a Roman Catholic background) and a teacher who was an Atheist was explaining how scientific observation and research has reasoned how the Universe, Earth and life probably came into existence and evolved, now, one of the first arguments I tried to defend my belief in a God I used was to ask him.. 'how comes everything is so perfect sir?' (my exact words).... to which he responded.... 'what's perfect?'. Certainly got me thinking because we make this automatic assumption that we know what 'perfect' is and actually we don't other than in relation to something that we designate as being not or is less than 'perfect' and as you've often said on your show Matt we haven't exactly got a load of other universes to hand to be able to make a comparison with one that is so called 'perfect' and another that's not Lol. It took me many years later though before I finally conceded that this Atheist teacher was right in as much as there is no logical reason to believe that a God has anything to do with any of the processes that brought about everything as we know it, in light of all the scientific investigation that has been done it's only a reason that is outside of common sense as we understand it that can justify (in itself) believing in God, the Bible etc, namely 'faith' which I don't buy into anymore because if one can have faith in one thing then why not another?, if faith is reality then we can all choose our own tailor made reality, Jesus seems to have shot himself in the foot by saying to people 'your faith has healed you' because what he's saying is it's nothing to do with him it's peoples beliefs that are helping them, you can believe in anything and it'll work the same way if faith is the be all and end all, there is something to be said for positive thinking sure but there's no need for a Deity in that. I guess I fought it for as long as I could though Lol, since then I actually got in contact with the teacher in question and told him that I could now see what he was saying and have accepted it, long before that I had for a short while become a born again Pentecostal Christian and it was during this short period in my life that the intellectual conflict in me was at it's height, I was trying to reconcile what I was supposed to believe written in the Bible with what I knew to be scientific facts and they were just totally incompatible, one had to go so I got rid of the former and accepted the latter as being the best explanation for our reasons for being. Like most Atheists, I'm not sure there's no God, I'm just not convinced that there is and until I am given much better reasons than I have been so far or better still until this God actually comes down from the clouds and says 'hi John...this is your friendly neighborhood God almighty here just to let you know that I am real and I do exist' etc then I'll continue to be an Atheist, there's only two reasons I can think of why a supreme all powerful being doesn't show himself to us to prove his existence, either he's there but doesn't care whether we believe or not....or....he doesn't exist, the first option conflicts with the idea of a "God who loves us so much". The second is the most likely explanation, if it's something else then it's beyond our understanding and an intelligent being ought to know this so it's no good this being moaning up there because we don't understand what he has not given us to understand, it's like the snake in the garden and the forbidden fruit thing, God punished poor ol' Adam and Eve for doing wrong when this God deprived them of the knowledge to understand the right and wrong concept which of course would have forearmed them against any smooth talking serpents, this God sounds like he enjoys creating problems, maybe he got bored being around all those countless zillions of years and thought 'I know...let's have some fun here...I'll create human beings in my image, then I'll give them as little info as possible so that they make a complete mess or everything....oh and throw in a few fallen angels to liven things up even more...then I'll have to find exciting ways of sorting out the mess which I expect them all to thank me for of course...that'll keep me busy and will be fun...yipeeeeeeee' Lol.
Well. Save it for the special edition directors cut DVD along with some of the excess CGI and character development scene cut-outs and alternative endings.
The christian world view fails. It says that consciousness can only come from minds there for a being with a mind ALSO must have created everything. We know that minds and consciousness only come from a thinking healthy human brain, it is a product of a human brain which is a product of the natural world. Also to say that minds come from other minds fail. Thats' like saying heat comes from more heat, water comes from making more water, or that electricity is made by more electricity or that electricity must have existed in the begining in order to make the end product of electricity. This analogy fails at its core lmao.
I think the subtitles ( Closed Captions ) are provided by a RUclips AI program. Matt might have turned them off because of some gobbledygook from the AI.
I go to a catholic school and am taking a philosophy class. The goal of the class is proving that God exists, and we are reading a book called "God: The Oldest Question". It is catholic, so the author believes in evolution. However, he states that consciousness, abiogenesis, and the human eye require intelligent design. This frustrates me, because I know exactly how the eye evolved. The author also uses a biological fine-tuning argument. Apparently if the crust were ten feet thicker life would be impossible. Such blatant falsehoods. Videos like this are very important. I wish more people knew science so that they could see through bad arguments.
When Design proponents start talking about fine-tuning I generally try to turn it around on them. Oh, you think the earth (or the universe) is designed to support life? Isn't it more likely that life is fine-tuned to survive on the planet (or universe) on which it arose? To use Douglas Adams' analogy, the puddle fits the hole, the hole doesn't fit the puddle.
Trying to prove god in the context of religion is futile. If god had been proven, it would rip out the foundation of religion, namely faith. God then would simply become a part of science.
***** And I could humiliate the teacher. The book makes blatantly false claims which are easy to falsify. The teacher is quite smart, but it doesn't change the fact that I personally happen to know exactly how the human eye evolved.
LavenderElephant But I think that the design arguments are powerful and demand (natural) explanation. I don't try to pretend that apparent design doesn't exist. I just know how to explain it without subverting Occam's Razor.
Let's make the die analogy even more simple. You have a standard six-sided die, numbers 1 through 6. You roll the die, achieving a random outcome. Let's see how both atheists(A) and theists(T) answer the following questions.... 1) What are the odds you roll a 1? (A: 1 in 6.) (T: 1 in 6.) _Yay! Agreement._ 2) What are the odds you roll a 7? (A: zero - no chance.) (T: Well, if God wills it...) Theists insist 7's can magically be rolled on a standard six-sided die. Yet we have absolutely no evidence of anything like this ever happening. Matt's video is spot on.
Last paragraph is a strawman. Huge assumption to claim that theist shout 7!! Before talking about rolling 6sided dice, be aware that the 6sided dice was designed. The designer could have designed 8sides dice, or 10 sided dice, etc.
The universe is 10^18 seconds old, and there are 10^82 atoms in the universe. If you multiply these two numbers together, it's still FAR smaller than the denominator of the probability of typing Hamlet randomly, which is over 10^130,000 possibilities. I don't know if the universe can make a watch randomly, but it DARN sure isn't able to make Hamlet randomly, unless it gets many, many orders of magnitude older.
Matt Dillahunty Hey Matt, We spoke in Sacramento after your talk during the one on one. Your advice to myself and my son-in-law have reached into our families and made important differences. You are a wise man and I can't thank you enough. Love your work in general and on your Patreon projects. The background setting is great and your calmness, rational and deep sincerity come across very clearly. I am enjoying them immensely. Nice touch with the card trick and well executed.
Your logic is impeccable and your manner of delineating facts is respectful. Faith is a fear based hope, an insidious infection passed down through immediate indoctrination from birth. The cycle needs to be broken and I applaud your efforts. It is uncomfortable, at best, to acknowledge my eventual, permanent demise, but I would rather suffer the mental anguish of truth, than suffer an ignoble existence of ignorance.
On the chance that you're not joking, it has almost everything to do with how we tend to remember things that are more significant or impactful to us. If the DC is 10 and you roll a 16, you're likely to remember the success and not the number. But when you roll a 1 and stare at that die in horror, dreading the consequences and how they will affect your character, party members, and possibly the whole campaign... It's just far more memorable than that 16 - even if you rolled five 16s that night! May your next important roll be a crit! 😊
This is the first video of yours that I have seen. I am impressed! I like the clarity of your presentation and, yes, the magic was a fun addition, too. As much as I would love to claim that pure intellectual argumentation always succeeds, I have to admit that presentation can help. I will be watching for more of you videos. Thanks.
A couple of things about protein forming, although you hit the best ones, is the assumption all the proteins existed at the beginning. The more there are the higher the odds go. Maybe there were very few at the beginning, which is more likely by the way. Also, it seems to me, it wouldn't matter which proteins were formed first anyway. Evolution works with whats there. The first life may have simply formed with whatever proteins were floating around.
As a teenager, my best friend's church asked me to play trumpet at their Easter sermon. After the service, everyone was milling around outside, and my friend and I heard the pastor say, "Well, in my mind, it's more probable that everything was created by God than other means," and I, being the borderline autistic (not really but some people thought I was) immediately turned to go ask him how he could prove that (assuming that he had something). My friend grabbed my arm and said, "Just let it go. He doesn't have proof." He knew me well.
Hi Matt, thanks for posting these. I really enjoy and learn a lot from them, along with many of your debates and appearances on the Atheist Experience Podcast.
Matt!! Excellent demonstration using the dice n cards as a method of showing imbued outcome and significance! Your usage of logic is addictive and inspiring and i appreciate your videos !
The hard part generally isn't debunking their "arguments". It's that the argument is meant not to explain, but just to be a sufficient cover story, akin to "plausible deniability". For most, anyway, as it seems to me. Which is very different. Demonstrating that their claims are infinitely unlikely, doesn't win that debate: the theist will still take that 1 in infinity chance on faith. Which means we must instead show it's not compatible with any form of faith they can be comfortable with. Basically putting them in the bind where they don't need to accept our view, but they will have to abandon their own. Religion has by necessity perverted reason itself in its children, because it couldn't really survive otherwise. While sometimes we can break those barriers with hard facts, it seems to me often it's much more efficient to turn their own theology against itself, and let them ponder the question while we merely need to shoot down all the red herrings they toss around trying to get out of it.
Matt Dillahunty You might be interested in some technical advice: Once you're seated in front of the camera, count to 10 before starting to speak. You'll appear more settled in. Once you're done talking, count to five before getting up to turn off the camera. Alternately, find something to do once you're done speaking. Like, walking over to something and picking up something. Or, looking up from reading a book, talking, then looking back down at the book. You can cut short the end as much as you like but what you keep might flow better with the next segment. Example: In a park, film yourself walking down a path, walk up to the camera, talk, then walk off. Re-watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos for more ideas. Stick to actions that feel natural, something you would do even if the camera wasn't there.
@@demianhaki7598 No No No You're done! Said in the pirate voice of the true God. When the R'Amen pasta is al dente and ready to be removed from the pot.
what the fuck? so when im on shrooms and think im creating a garden of joy inside a crack in the wall leading to My new universe....im not omnipotent, fuck that guy he said these shrooms were magic, sad face sad face sad face.
as are the possible fucktards i have to argue with in google+ and on youtube, your not making this any easy'r to deal with, my magic universe didnt have any fucktards in it, only beuitifull people, and wondrous stuff and shit, it was all perfect and pure....now its full of possible crap and wank juice, and the fucktarded people i made it to escape from, its now dirty and sullied, my mind feels impure, even good drugs cant help me escape the mutant creationist plague that infects reality, SAD FACE.
3:45 - This isn't entirely true. There is a mathematical significance here, and that's "compressibility." Sequences that are less compressible are considered to be more random. If we assume your top sequence is purely random, then there's no way to describe the sequence other than by listing every card individually. But the bottom sequence, we just say, "all the Spades." That's VERY compressible, and so isn't considered to be very random. After you switch the King of Spades and the Five of Hearts, you've changed it a bit: the top sequence is now more compressible, since you can say "all the Kings" and then each other card individually; the second is less compressible, but still quite a bit: "Ace through Queen of Spades, plus the Five of Hearts." You've made the top sequence less random and the bottom sequence more random. The significance of this is, while you're right that both sequences are equally likely, the KIND of sequence isn't: there are FAR more uncompressible sequences than compressible, which is why we consider the top sequence to be more random. This is actually very important when you go into things like cryptography, where strong random numbers are crucial.
Shane Killian This actually relates quite a bit to the issue, because their answer is basically "God did it." The problem is, "God did it" might SEEM like a form of compression, but it isn't. We can compress the lower sequence of cards to "all 12 Spades." But "God did it: is more akin to describing it as "any 12 cards." While that is an accurate description of the sequence, it isn't a COMPRESSION of the sequence because it can't be DEcompressed. With "all 12 Spades," we can answer questions: is the 5 of Spades in the set? Yes. Is the 7 of Diamonds in the sequence? No. But with "any 12 cards," we can't tell if any particular card is in the sequence or not. We cannot use it to reconstruct the original set of cards like we could with "all 12 Spades." It describes equally well the top sequence of cards, and indeed ANY sequence of 12 cards that might be dealt. In fact, the description tells you nothing, since the only information it contains is that there are 12 cards, which we already knew. They use "God did it" to describe the universe. But if we make a new discovery that shows something we previously believed to be wrong, they just use "God did it" to describe that, too. In fact, "God did it" can be used to describe any possible observation in any possible universe, and so actually carries no information whatsoever. Now, a creationist might say the whole point is THAT God did it, and that's the vital information, but that makes using this "argument from design" a case of Begging The Question: you'd have to first prove that God exists before you can use it, in which case it still doesn't tell you anything at all.
Shane Killian Don't take this as necessarily a negative response but you've sort of committed a "deepity" with your posts. You may be absolutely correct in everything you've pointed out here... but where has all this additional information really taken us? Does the concept of "compressibility", as you have described it here, give anyone some better or more convincing way to point out the absurdity of attempting to use undefined ( and even currently "undefinable") values as legitimate data points in performing odds calculations for the events and claims made by the mathematically illiterate theists attempting to use them to demonstrate their own accuracy or relevance? Can any of what you've said be broken down to have a real effect on those who are convinced they are "proving god with logic"? Even correct information can be so esoteric as to be unusable in situations such as this one. Would you not agree?
BigRalphSmith "Does the concept of "compressibility", as you have described it here, give anyone some better or more convincing way to point out the absurdity of attempting to use undefined ( and even currently "undefinable") values as legitimate data points in performing odds calculations for the events and claims made by the mathematically illiterate theists attempting to use them to demonstrate their own accuracy or relevance?" I think I did just that in my second post. "Can any of what you've said be broken down to have a real effect on those who are convinced they are "proving god with logic"?" No, because they're not actually using logic, just looking for excuses to continue to believe.
Shane Killian "I think I did just that in my second post." If you did, I'm not seeing it. Educate me. Please clarify how this information provides a better way to point out the absurdities mentioned.
BigRalphSmith "Please clarify how this information provides a better way to point out the absurdities mentioned." Because it shows quite clearly that their claim has no predictive value whatsoever. They're saying this nature of the universe can only be explained by a God, when it's actually NOT explained by a God in any way!
Matt, you are an atheist, you do magic and you play MtG as evidenced by your spin down dice. Truly a man of my heart. Hope to be in Austin to watch the show and have dinner with you guys. Great video.
I quite enjoyed the dice and cards illustrations in this to drive home the point. I do have a question though about what you mean when you say proponents of intelligent design "cannot demonstrate that it's even possible" that there exists a supernatural agent which could be causally responsible for the facts they point to in the natural world. What do you mean by 'possible' here? Logical possibility? Seems to me, that, unless one can establish that such a hypothetical agent engenders a contradiction, then it's at least logically possible. That'd be a far cry from showing it's actuality or plausibility, but it seems to me that it's logically possible.. Good video. Cheers, - Ozy
it's impossible to demonstrate the possibility of a supernatural entity to exist because by definition it is untestable by natural means... so no one can assign a number to it
ThePharphis That would just mean that it's impossible to prove it's actuality or the likelihood of it's actuality (ie: it's probability). We may not conclude that something is impossible simply because we can't prove or disprove it or test it. After all, to say that something is logically possible is merely to say that it's not a flat impossibility. - Ozy
Ozymandias Ramses II I know, and I was answering your question. You were questioning what was meant by ID proponents"cannot demonstrate that it's even possible" the existence of a supernatural agent. To demonstrate the possibility of something you need to be able to show a nonzero probability. You don't need to assign a value, but you need to prove it's nonzero. Matt Bell I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Are you suggesting it's possible to demonstrate a supernatural entity's existence? What proposed demonstrations?
The main reason why people argue against evolution is because they're actually arguing against how they think evolution works, and not against how it actually works. That's why we hear stuff like "life from rocks" "men from chimpanzees and why are there still chimpanzees around" and many more. A little education goes a long way.
Creationists in a broad and technical sense right. Earth in general terms is a big rock. The minerals that constitute life are embedded in and on rocks. Rock can have a very general meaning. Is this different from saying life is star stuff? Usually the argument is humans coming from monkeys, associating monkeys with a ugly lower type of life. Technically we come through monkeys, we are in essence sophisticated eukaryotes. Chimpanzees. If one might stretch a bit here definitions, we are chimpanzees, Pan sapiens would be the classification if we were not so high about us being a separate species. I suppose in this case a lot of education gets us no where :)
Once something has already happened, like the universe coming into existence, the probability of it being the way it is is extremely easy to calculate, 1 in 1. For example, while prior to rolling a six-sided die the probability of it landing on any specific number is 1 in 6. However, after the roll, we can look at the die, say it reads "4", and conclude the probability of it being in that state as 1 in 1. There is no point in discussing probabilities of things that already have happened as it has no utility in this regard. Probability is only useful when one is attempting to make a prediction. Observation alone is sufficient to describe things that have already occurred. Things that already exist should be considered as inevitable and inevitable events require no supernatural assistance. Very excellent presentation through and through. Enjoyed both videos thoroughly; wonderful refutations to teleological arguments, both.
Matt, I rally enjoy listening to you, Tracy and Jen on A.I. It would be great to see you here in Orland one day. Keep up the great work, you are awesomeness! Hey to Beth! 😊😊
Imagine you are walking in a room and you see 100 dice on a table and they’re all sixes. Here are some possible explanations for this seemingly improbable scenario: 1. An intelligent person had to meticulously place each die on six (what theists say). 2. The dice were rolled at once and they all landed on 6 on the first roll (how theists describe evolution). 3. Each die was rolled until it came up 6, then the next die was rolled, and so on until all 100 dice are on 6. This is because there’s evidence of a dice roller machine that was programmed to stop once the die landed on 6. (This is more like what evolution actually says; beneficial changes remain and are built upon).
That was insanely articulate and well put. I gave up on the teleological arguments long before I gave up on christianity. It’s odd that these arguments keeps getting passed along as thou they were self evident.
I love that you used a spindown in the dice part, as my mtg playgroup refuses to use them to roll because they essentially have one side that rolls high and one side that rolls low, which throws the odds off. Nice touch!
Hello Matt, I hope you’re doing well. I’m a theist and have enjoyed watching some of your videos. However, I felt that some of your points didn’t quite address the fine-tuning problem, so maybe you or someone else can comment on it. 1. The cards example is commonly used to show that improbable things happen all of the time. You rightly point out that all of those shuffles have a 1 in 600 Billion chance of happening, but that we would likely only attribute significance to something like a shuffle with 13 cards of the same suit. However, this doesn’t seem to be exactly analogous. In each shuffle, you still end up with pretty much the same results macroscopically. The table you’re playing cards on continues to exist, as well as the house and the universe around you. It’s the consequences of one of the “shuffles” of fine-tuning that seems to be demanding of an explanation. It would be more akin to having to get all 13 cards of the same suit, or else the room you’re playing in evaporates. Except in reality, the probabilities in fine-tuning are far greater. 2. I think the fact that physicists call it the “fine-tuning problem” should give credence to the idea that the constants are not necessary. The laws of nature do not determine them, so there isn’t really a reason to believe that they have to be that way. I’ve watched interviews with David Deutsch and Leonard Susskind, and they don’t really take this option seriously. I’m not saying that because scientific authorities say it’s true that therefore it is, but I would take it they’ve got strong evidence to support that position. 3. Per the multiverse being used as an explanation, the problem with this is that there’s no guarantee all of those potential parameters would be realized just because you have a bunch of universes. It seems to me the multiverse would still have to have some "fine tuning" function in order to make sure you've got the right balance of life-permitting and life-prohibbiting universes. David Deutsch, who isn’t a theist, states in his interview with Robert Kuhn that in most universes where conditions are right for life to exist, it’s only just right… meaning it exists and then gets wiped out immediately. Having a planet with creatures that have millions of years to evolve seems only possible if these constants are balanced on a razor’s edge. 4. In regards to making claims about probabilities and supernatural agents, you seem to contradict yourself here. You say we can’t ever say a supernatural thing is likely because we could never calculate the probability of supernatural intervention, but then you go on to say that any naturalistic explanation is more likely than a supernatural one. Wouldn’t this go both ways and show that you couldn’t call a supernatural event unlikely, unless you had knowledge of the likelihoods a God intervened and in what circumstances? If Jesus appeared out of nowhere, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the naturalistic explanations are insufficient compared to the supernatural explanations. We only need to have a grasp of the natural explanations before invoking a supernatural one, which is what a proper version of the fine-tuning argument does. P1. The fine-tuning is either due to necessity, chance, or design. P2. The fine-tuning is not due to necessity or chance. C. Therefore, it is due to design. I don’t see the issue with this argument. If it is not due to necessity or chance, our only viable natural explanations, then concluding it is due to design seems to be reasonable. It’s only because we’ve first eliminated the natural alternatives. 5. At around the 7:30 mark you say we haven’t demonstrated that a supernatural cause is more probable or even possible. Firstly, I don’t think it should be ruled out as impossible a priori. Secondly, we are again back on the probabilities of supernatural things intervening, which I don’t think I need to calculate in order to think that the natural alternatives fail. Let’s say that a God did exist. How would one possible go about calculating the chances of Him doing one thing or something else? If you saw someone who was raised from the dead and heard God say, “I did that,” would you dismiss it because you don’t know the prior probability of a Deity doing such a thing? If your argument was only that I couldn’t calculate the possibility of divine intervention, I’m trekking along with you. However, if this means we can never reasonably deduce from our current evidence that naturalism fails to account for what we see around us, then we are ruling out God a priori. This seems to be assuming God doesn’t exist. Even if both the naturalistic alternatives fail, we are then left with just saying, “Well, I guess we can’t even discuss the possibility of supernatural intervention, because I don’t know the probabilities of such intervention ever taking place.” Forgive me if that’s not what you’re saying, but it certainly sounds that way to me. Fine-tuning is something that physicists and cosmologists at least find worth discussing. Sean Carroll doesn’t think it’s an a priori argument. Most agree that the universe is finely tuned; the question becomes what’s the best explanation for it. Paul Davies said, “The impression of design is overwhelming.” It’s not just theists who are impressed by the precision of the cosmos. I’ll cool it from there. Thank you for being polite in your video. I try my best to be polite too, since I know we’re all just searching for truth in this world of ours. I speak for most theists when I say that we are more prone to listen to what you have to say if you say it respectfully. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks, man!
May I suggest that you get one of those little foam thingies that slip over the microphone to cut down on the wind noise. (I'm being picky lol) Wonderful videos. You have a real knack for explaining these things in a way that's accessible for everyone to understand. Keep up the great work Matt. Looking forward to the next one
Matt, I'd like to commend you on the quality of these videos, you obviously put a lot of effort into them. You've taken time to script and rehearse, then the quality of the audio and video are impeccable making viewing very easy. (Audio is an often over looked aspect on self produced video).
Good video. My personal argument to use is the lottery ticket winner metaphor and apply the small probability of life to the fact that in our milky way alone, there are billoins of planets so theoritically our milky way has at least few hundred planets with some form of life on it. Not alone other milky ways. Suddenly the odds show to be a lot better than they seem at the first glance. All you have to do is look at it from the correct context it is applied to.
No, the odds are not good. There are 10^500,000 possible combinations on a DNA chain and only 10^100 protons in the universe. Billions is only a multiple of 10^9.
@@theboombody That we know of and then there are hundreds of thousands of planetaario in our milkyway alone. Mathematically the probability already approaches 100% essentially, but then facto in other system and it's reasonably guaranteed odds. So the odds are good.
@@Jenkkimie Hundreds of thousands times billions is still less than 10^20. A billion times a billion is not bigger than comprehension or calculation. Whatever the number of planets in the universe there are, it's CERTAINLY less than the number of protons, and that's less than 10^100.
I like teasing Believers by asking them to use the same Calculations to Calculate the existence of God. ( Outside time, Eternally, Complete with Knowledge and Skills . . . . ) I usually get Silence or the good ol' burn in hell reply.
If we look at the benefits we get from evolution and design, it is quite obvious that knowing about evolution, we can breed better horses for racing, sheep for better wool, medicine for humans due to knowing how humans evolved. Knowing about design gives only the preachers the advante of gaining more money, other than comfort (which is in deed important but cures nothing) the best way to procedd is to get rid of religions. Personal beliefs are fine, but this organised religion benefits noone but the churches and their leaders.
Is that a Magic The Gathering die? Pretty awesome. Love all your stuff Matt, I always look to your content when trying to find the strongest and most succinct version of an argument.
The trouble with the first card argument (2 minutes in) is that there are 13! possible ways in which all 13 spades can be dealt, so the probability of being dealt all spades is 13! ÷ 52!, which works out to 6 227 020 800 in 635 013 559 600, closer to 1%.
The whole odds-based argument confounds me. Even if they COULD make a valid calculation showing life or the universe were very improbable, the fact that they cannot demonstrate it to be impossible means their effort is entirely pointless. I mean, if it is possible for you to die of a lightning strike, saying it is improbable doesn't change the FACT that it is still possible. So all they are doing is demonstrating mathematically that it IS in FACT possible for the universe or life to come about by natural means (if they can make a valid mathematical assessment). What they would actually NEED to do is to show that it is not only improbable, but IMPOSSIBLE for life to arise by natural means or the universe to have the configuration necessary to be BARELY compatible with life. Anything else they demonstrate is an argument AGAINST the idea of a necessary creator because it demonstrates the possibility, albeit small, of a natural causation. That is, it doesn't matter if it is small. It happened... we are here talking about it. Thus the 'improbable' could have actually occurred. Someone WILL win the lottery if there is ANY chance that someone COULD win the lottery. We know the universe and life exist, so if there is ANY chance that it could have come about by natural means, it COULD HAVE come about by natural means. If we then examine the absence of evidence for any supernatural means, we can be confident to conclude the universe came about by natural means, even if improbable. But, of course, as Matt points out, they cannot even begin to form a proper assessment necessary to calculate the actual probability given the absence of data necessary to complete any such equation. I am just saying that even if they COULD, they would just be hurting their case if the probability found is NON ZERO.
I was thinking about this the other day. Depending on your point of view, everything can be seen as having 100% odds of occurring OR as being incredibly unlikely. I mean if you know everything about an event before it occurs, down to the smallest detail, then you know the odds of it happening the way it does is 1/1. Alternatively you can just as rightly say that everything from a roll of a die to the flip of a coin is infinitesimally unlikely to occur the way it does BY looking down to the smallest detail and calculating the odds of every individual atom ending up exactly where it does. At the end of the day, past events ALWAYS have 100% chance of occurring, because statistical analysis works through contrast to demonstrate context, and there is only ever one past. To even BEGIN to describe the odds of, say, the universe being created "by chance" (whatever that means) requires some sort of contrast as well. You need to compare it happening with other instances of it happening differently in order to build an actual statistical model. How many universes were created both by chance and by other means? With that data you can THEN determine how probable a naturalistic universe is. But even that is asinine, as we don't determine what happened based on what was likely. We do it by observing what the evidence tells us actually HAPPENED. Statistics can sometimes help point us in the right direction, but sometimes it's the one in a million events (like an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs) that creates the events we are explaining. Ultimately it always comes down to the same thing. You use statistics to evaluable PROBABILITIES. You use EVIDENCE to evaluate FACTS.
The idea just came to me, that the argument from order for design, is so appealing, because it can infer order and design in our personal lifes, even when they seem to be caotic and filled with unexplained horrible experiences for so many people. It is related to the argument for the exisence of evil i guess and has a strong emotional appeal to theist.
About the Fine Tuning as the absolute proof of a Mind. *The fine-tuning argument* The argument goes like this: The fine-tuning of the universe to support life is either due to law, chance or design It is not due to law or chance Therefore, the fine-tuning is due to design What does it meaning to be fine-tuned for life? Here are the facts on the fine-tuning: Life has certain minimal requirements; long-term stable source of energy, a large number of different chemical elements, an element that can serve as a hub for joining together other elements into compounds, etc. In order to meet these minimal requirements, the physical constants, (such as the gravitational constant), and the ratios between physical constants, need to be withing a narrow range of values in order to support the minimal requirements for life of any kind. Slight changes to any of the physical constants, or to the rations between the constants, will result in a universe inhospitable to life. The range of possible ranges over 70 orders of magnitude. The constants are selected by whoever creates the universe. They are not determined by physical laws. And the extreme probabilities involved required put the fine-tuning beyond the reach of chance. Although each individual selection of constants and ratios is as unlikely as any other selection, the vast majority of these possibilities do not support the minimal requirements of life of any kind. (In the same way as any hand of 5 cards that is dealt is as likely as any other, but you are overwhelmingly likely NOT to get a royal flush. In our case, a royal flush is a life-permitting universe). *Examples of finely-tuned constants* Here are a couple of examples of the fine-tuning. Craig only gave one example in the debate and didn’t explain how changes to the constant would affect the minimal requirements for life. But Bradley does explain it, and he is a professional research scientist, so he is speaking about things he worked in his polymer research lab. (He was the director) a) The strong force: (the force that binds nucleons (= protons and neutrons) together in nucleus, by means of meson exchange) if the strong force constant were 2% stronger, there would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no hydrogen containing compounds. This is because the single proton in hydrogen would want to stick to something else so badly that there would be no hydrogen left! if the strong force constant were 5% weaker, there would be no stable stars, few (if any) elements besides hydrogen. This is because you would be able to build up the nuclei of the heavier elements, which contain more than 1 proton. So, whether you adjust the strong force up or down, you lose stars than can serve as long-term sources of stable energy, or you lose chemical diversity, which is necessary to make beings that can perform the minimal requirements of living beings. (see below) b) The conversion of beryllium to carbon, and carbon to oxygen Life requires carbon in order to serve as the hub for complex molecules, but it also requires oxygen in order to create water. Carbon is like the hub wheel in a tinker toy set: you can bind other elements together to more complicated molecules (e.g. - “carbon-based life), but the bonds are not so tight that they can’t be broken down again later to make something else. The carbon resonance level is determined by two constants: the strong force and electromagnetic force. If you mess with these forces even slightly, you either lose the carbon or the oxygen. Either way, you’ve got no life of any conceivable kind. *Is the fine-tuning real?* Yes, it’s real and it is conceded by the top-rank of atheist physicists. Let me give you a citation from the best one of all, Martin Rees. Martin Rees is an atheist and a qualified astronomer. He wrote a book called “Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe”, (Basic Books: 2001). In it, he discusses 6 numbers that need to be fine-tuned in order to have a life-permitting universe. Rees writes here: These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? There are some atheists who deny the fine-tuning, but these atheists are in firm opposition to the progress of science. The more science has progressed, the more constants, ratios and quantities we have discovered that need to be fine-tuned. Science is going in a theistic direction. Next, let’s see how atheists try to account for the fine-tuning, on atheism. *Atheistic responses to the fine-tuning argument* There are two common responses among atheists to this argument. The first is to speculate that there are actually an infinite number of other universes that are not fine-tuned, (i.e. - the gambler’s fallacy). All these other universes don’t support life. We just happen to be in the one universe is fine-tuned for life. The problem is that there is no way of directly observing these other universes and no independent evidence that they exist. Here is an excerpt from an article in Discover magazine, (which is hostile to theism and Christianity). discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator The second response by atheists is that the human observers that exist today, 14 billion years after the universe was created out of nothing, actually caused the fine-tuning. This solution would mean that although humans did not exist at the time the of the big bang, they are going to be able to reach back in time at some point in the future and manually fine-tune the universe. Here is an excerpt from and article in the New Scientist, (which is hostile to theism and Christianity). www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026852.500-why-its-not-as-simple-as-god-vs-the-multiverse.html So, there are two choices for atheists. Either an infinite number of unobservable universes that are not fine-tuned, or humans go back in time at some future point and fine-tune the beginning of the universe, billions of years in the past. That we are here by chance is meaningful. We are either here by intention or not, if not then by definition we are here by chance. What we have is evidence for fine-tuning. You don’t dispute that. What you dispute is what the evidence means. There are only two possibilities: chance or not chance, if not chance then we are here by intention. You have to ask yourself which of the two, given the evidence we have, is more plausible. Intention is clearly more plausible due to analogous reasoning. There is no reason to believe that fine-tuning is the result of chance. The only reason why people believe that it’s just a coincidence is because they wish to believe it. 1. like causes like effects 2. the effect of fine-tuning is caused by intelligence 3. Therefore, I think there is not enough evidence to choose between chance or intelligence.
I think you missed the entire point of this video but I'll set that little fact aside. You still must be able to demonstrate that this intelligence exist. Is this a supernatural intelligence? Do we have any examples of this intelligence? What are the odds that this intelligence actually exist?
@@chloebatchelor1018 You still must be able to demonstrate that this luck exist. Is this a supernatural luck that creates universes? Do we have any examples of this luck? What are the odds that this luck actually exist?
This was great! I've been asking for years how is it that we know our universe (and its supposedly "finely-tuned" constants) isn't the only possible one. Even many physicists still assume that postulating multiple universes is a reasonable way around a problem that they made up in the first place. With only one universe as a sample this question is premature and impossible to answer; there are certainly more productive areas awaiting research than this one. I also love how creationists bleat endlessly about "the first cell," assuming that cells were the first living things. It reveals their deep ignorance about the entire subject better than all their other misconceptions put together, if you ask me, and should be brought up early in any debate to save time and aggravation later.
nice points, i would also like to add that as long as the odds are not zero, we can perfectly imagine an infinite (in space) universe. i the odds of life occuring on a particular planet in 1 billion years is, say, 1 in bazillion, then we can simply observe a bazillion planets for a billion years and at least one of them will probably have life on it by the end.
"They're taking an incredible improbability, declaring it a virtual impossibility..." ...then giving it a good strong cup of really *hot* tea, and... ...hang on.
I went to visit my friend across town. It took 2 hours to drive there and arrived at 2:34. Wow what are the odds of me getting there at exactly 2:34? All the traffic lights were perfectly timed. I didn't get into any accidents and didn't have a flat. There must be at least 172 parameters that must be just right for me to get there at exactly 2:34. The odds are 1! I got there, it's done. Now if I go back in time and ask what are the odd, well that's different, it extremely small. These guys are so ignorant.
So the Odds that one would receive a junk hand of thirteen cards with no importance is the same as getting all one suit, the junk hands odds are 1 in 635,013,559,600, which is the same as getting a hand with all the same suit.
My observations on two of the popular common arguments that are math and logic errors. Fine tuning falsehood: What if we didn't have the knowledge of how to calculate the value of Pi? We would simply have to measure the diameter and circumference of circles and examine the ratios. One might conclude that the value of Pi is finetuned. We don't have enough knowledge to determine whether the fundamental constants can be computed so we can't conclude they must be variable and building upon that premise conclude an agent tuned the value. Infinite outcomes guarantee falsehood: If you roll a standard six sided die an infinite number of times the odds of a seven coming up is zero. We know all the possible outcomes and can determine the odds. When we do not know the details of how many possible ways the components of a Big Bang can be arranged, we cannot assume there are an infinite number. There might be only one, or some other finite number, we are unaware of. We cannot conclude a certainty of something occurring simply by asserting and inserting infinity into the odds calculation. I realize this would be more appropriate to have been posted in part 1, but I see others bring up these topics so I figured I'd post this here to add to the discussion.
Another fallacy is a root assumption of logic issue. Binary Logic Fallacy: Our models of logic generally assume Reality behaves in binarily opposite states of either True/False, On/Off etc. Quantum Mechanics is revealing that this assumption may not be an accurate model of Reality. Things may exist in multiple states of superposition. Things may simply be in more states other than Exist/Not Exist. QuasiExist may need to be factored into our logical arguments as well in order to adequately describe Reality. I am not qualified to argue this point but I figured I'd offer it to those that are. Is this concept something that is dealt with in higher education logic classes? I took Logic 101 but it isn't my primary area of interest. I do find it interesting.
***** I asked Matt about this and he pointed out that probability and outcome are not the same. An outcome either happens or it doesn't. It is either possible or not. The probability of an outcome tells you the distribution of outcomes. A single outcome tells you only that this outcome was possible but nothing about the probability of it occurring. If a die is rolled and comes up 1, you only know of one outcome but nothing about the rest of the die. Is it a 6 sided die, a 20 sided die, a 2 sided die? You also know nothing about the markings on the die. Are there more than one side marked with 1? We know Reality at the Quantum level is probabilistic because the same experiment repeated over and over has a distribution of outcomes that is well defined with high accuracy. What we don't know is the distribution of outcomes that are less likely to occur than the number of tests performed. How I apply this to my daily decisions is to examine the probability distribution of specific outcomes and examine the models Science uses to describe the phenomenon. Then weigh the risk/benefit of the probable outcomes with likelihood at a certain level that I am willing to accept. For example: I have been alive over 50 years about every 24 hours there is a day/night cycle. I can say with certainty that within the last 18000+ days the Sun has always come up. Furthermore, in human history there have been no reliable accounts of the Sun not coming up. So I can safely predict the chances of the Sun coming up tomorrow as beyond 99.99995% certainty (1 day in the last 6000 years). Buying a lifetime of batteries to power my flashlights, in the event the Sun never comes up again, would be irrational. For the supernatural proposition: I could justifiably use the above as an analogy with supernatural events and safely live my life assuming they are extremely unlikely and may never occur.
My thoughts on Dillahunty’s thoughts: Dillahunty: “We have imbued meaning to 13 spades” Me: A universe that survives, versus all other hypothetical universes that do not, automatically has significance. By default. Unless one argues that a universe that survives is the same as countless others that do not survive - and that's a bad argument. Dillahunty: How do they know that this isn’t in fact, the only possible universe? Me: How do we know that there is no giant spaghetti monster somewhere in the universe controlling our lives? Dillahunty: We don’t know enough about the universe to know what other universes are possible. Me: We can probably never know everything about everything to make an assessment. We therefore have to weigh possibilities. And the possibility of fine-tuning of the big bang, on basis of blind chance is in the order of one in 10^100. Likelihood of intelligence, by default, is therefore much higher. Dillahunty: What if we live in one of the countless multiverses? Me: One can always raise the “what if” argument. For example, what if there is a spaghetti monster? There is no evidence of a multiverse. How is invoking multiverse different from invoking god? Dillahunty: How can you say that a supernatural cause is more probable than a natural one? Me: A natural cause has a chance of 1 in 10^100. THAT is the answer. Dillahunty: What about protein molecule? Me: The probability is very, very small. The rest of the odds point to intelligence at some level. More on this further down. Dillahunty: Improbability does not mean impossibility. Me: Right, it does not. But it surely makes the design argument that much more plausible. Dillahunty: Theists are asserting evolution did not happen. Me: While evolution is a separate discussion, it’s worth pointing out that TOE has yet to show the probabilistic path of formation of proteins, formation of DNA, beginning of life. Blind evolution may explain survival of birds with larger beaks vs. smaller beaks, etc. - but not more complex formations. Dillahunty: What about countless events in the primordial soup: Me: There have not been enough interactions to form complex proteins. And a protein molecule forming in the soup does not achieve much. A lot more coordination is needed for emergence of life. There’s not enough time, not enough material, not enough events. It’s math, it’s science. More on that point: One of the leading theories on formation of complex chemicals required to support life suggests that these compounds were formed one some other planet, and somehow got transported to earth. If one reads between the lines, it's tacit admission of the failure of the "countless events in the primordial soup" argument.
"Me: A universe that survives, versus all other hypothetical universes that do not, automatically has significance. By default. Unless one argues that a universe that survives is the same as countless others that do not survive - and that's a bad argument." 100% wrong. You assume it automatically has significance because you are here to observe it. And you are here to observe it because it happens to have the properties that allow life to exist in small parts. You do not know if there are others, or if the fundamental laws of physics could be different. You have made a very bad argument. "Me: How do we know that there is no giant spaghetti monster somewhere in the universe controlling our lives?" We don't. That's the point. "Me: We can probably never know everything about everything to make an assessment. We therefore have to weigh possibilities. And the possibility of fine-tuning of the big bang, on basis of blind chance is in the order of one in 10^100. Likelihood of intelligence, by default, is therefore much higher." You cannot calculate the odds of anything without knowing the number of possible outcomes and the number of possible positive chances. He spelled this out in the video man. Come on. This is just math. "Me: One can always raise the “what if” argument. For example, what if there is a spaghetti monster? There is no evidence of a multiverse. How is invoking multiverse different from invoking god?" The multiverse is a sound hypothesis. But not proven yet. And it's just as proven as any deity existing, so you are making the same fallacy you are complaining about. "Me: A natural cause has a chance of 1 in 10^100. THAT is the answer." See above and take a fucking statistics class. And I am done. You are making such piss poor arguments that I am done wasting my time.
For all their talk of slim probabilities making things impossible, I wonder if ID proponents could say what the threshold probability is where things become possible.
Human thought is definitely not random. The universe has less than 10^250 protons in it, and it's less than 10^250 milliseconds old. But the odds of generating a book like Hamlet by randomly typing on a keyboard are less than 1 out of 10^100,000. Imagine the odds of generating an entire library.
"The universe is constantly getting more disorderly" Isaac assimov, "In the game of Energy and Thermodynamics you can even break even" Smithsonian Institution Journal,
On the face of it your arguments can seem onerous for the Theist or Christian. However, there are other perspectives on this question. When evaluating the question of origins, we usually start with the actual entity in question and ask the legitimate question of "what can account for this?" Then science explores the explanatory power of a number of proposed candidates. Leaving mathematics out of it, does anything science has observed or attempted experimentally lend credence to the hypothesis that anything with the minimum necessary attributes we find in life could be assembled with the known laws of physics and chemistry without any guiding process that might be attributable to intelligence? Yes "they are working on it", but so far the increases in science's understanding in the mechanics of physics and chemistry have led to greater and greater difficulties in accounting for what we see in reality. Yet, what we do see is intelligent minds utilising high levels of planning and technology, able to build molecules one atom at a time. Not by chance in a "primordial soup" but in multi-million dollar equipped laboratories. Whether this is evidence for God is a question of personal evaluation, but what is obvious, is that if a being with the attributes of the common understanding of God WOULD provide the prerequisites for the advent of life.
Steve, I read your comment three times and even looked up some of the words you used. I'm not a dumb man but for the life of me I can't understand a single thing you are trying to say here. Could you reword the question? I'm curious as to what you are trying to say.
A small technical note : The wind hitting the mic. when recording outside is a little bit disturbing and even distracting. Maybe the blue screen technique is not that bad after all. Other than that, great vid.
Blue screen?!? Please! Matt, Kees den Heijer want's you to get a better windscreen for your mic or choose less breezy days on which to record.. Keep up the great work!
But what does it even mean by we were created in Gods image cause God is I thought to be formless, timeless, outside of the universe as they described but then the old testament says God walked among us at one time. The mental gymnastics they go through is crazy, I'm just glad I was able to get away myself after being raised in it for my first 30 years of life and can now actually see things from all angles instead of wearing my God glasses!!
Just a comment on one of Matt's denials, here. When we try to see how many possible formulations the Universe might have taken, and then appeal to how few of those would support life, Matt says for all we know a universe would have to be very much like this one, so all those others aren't even possible. The problem with this is that even if all universes would have to be like this one, it is still remarkable that 'the physical rules' dictate that fact, and that such universes are capable of bearing life. I think it is meaningful to consider all imaginable universes, and to see how few among those would sustain life. Similar point when Matt talks about chemical evolution. It could be that the laws of physics render it quite probable that the required complex proteins (or whatever) would naturally evolve by chemical means. Even if that is a fact, it is still remarkable that the laws of physics should have been that way.
It’s only remarkable if you presuppose a specific goal, but unremarkable otherwise. Billions upon billions of chemical reactions happen all the time throughout the universe and the fact that some of the molecules generated are organic is only remarkable to us as we imbue those occurrences with importance, but that’s about it. Of course that we humans would value the chemical processes that gave rise to us more than others. But that’s almost a tautology: we find the things that are important to us to be remarkable.
I don't consider "This universe might be the only possble universe" to be a valid response. If it is true that a slight change in physical constants makes life impossible, then it is reasonable to expect a reason why the physical constants happen to be what they are. If your reason is simply "They could not have been otherwise", then it's reasonable to expect a reason why the only possible configuration just happens to be one in which life is possible. You're still back where you started.
I enjoy these videos quite a bit. Not just the subject, but I really enjoy the quality of the video and audio, as well as the background you choose and how you frame yourself and the background. Do you employ the rule of thirds or the rule of phi? Thanks!
Matt is asserting that the primordial soup is a series of many simultaneous experiments. But isn't it is more likely a series of many experiments going on over a series of different times until one or more successful outcome?
This was excellent. Other resources on this topic: *The System* video with Darren Brown on RUclips. *The Improbability Principle* by David Hand. *The Black Swan* by Nassim Taleb discusses the *problem of hidden evidence*. *Thinking: Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman documents his research into cognitive biases, including those that make probability non-intuitive for most people.
Pertaining to your last statement in the video, "Ask them what are the odds of god existing." I've often found that creationists duck around that kind of thing by saying, "I didn't say anything about god," when it's obvious that's what they're talking about.
True and a point that should have been addressed. I've been focused on this from the point of view of apologetics and it was a mistake to emphasize apologetics if I'm specifically addressing ID claims (which are apologetics in a lab coat). In response to the "I didn't say anything about god", I'd say - Oh, yes, I know you didn't say that and maybe you don't even mean "god" or "a god"...so what are the actual odds for your proposed solution to the improbability you're claiming, and how did you calculate it. And, by the way, what would you call your proposed solution?
I taught scientists said random mutation and the one with most favorable composition for it's environment survives or takes over. So chance i think is a rely real thing.
So, yes, I'm finding a way to work magic into the videos. If I'm not going to perform professionally, it'd be nice to put some of those many hours of practice to good use.
Originally, I was going to add a cups and balls routine asking what the odds were that there was an elephant under the cup - and then revealing a tiny toy elephant (specifically to make the point that defining terms is important)...but it didn't seem to add much to this video, so I cut it.
show-off.
Yes, this idea of looking at the world around us and concluding "aha...intelligent design..what else could it be?" blah blah blah is a very common fallacy trap that I guess nearly all of us have fallen into at one time or another, I remember when I was in school back in the 1970's and I was still religious then (I come from a Roman Catholic background) and a teacher who was an Atheist was explaining how scientific observation and research has reasoned how the Universe, Earth and life probably came into existence and evolved, now, one of the first arguments I tried to defend my belief in a God I used was to ask him.. 'how comes everything is so perfect sir?' (my exact words).... to which he responded.... 'what's perfect?'.
Certainly got me thinking because we make this automatic assumption that we know what 'perfect' is and actually we don't other than in relation to something that we designate as being not or is less than 'perfect' and as you've often said on your show Matt we haven't exactly got a load of other universes to hand to be able to make a comparison with one that is so called 'perfect' and another that's not Lol.
It took me many years later though before I finally conceded that this Atheist teacher was right in as much as there is no logical reason to believe that a God has anything to do with any of the processes that brought about everything as we know it, in light of all the scientific investigation that has been done it's only a reason that is outside of common sense as we understand it that can justify (in itself) believing in God, the Bible etc, namely 'faith' which I don't buy into anymore because if one can have faith in one thing then why not another?, if faith is reality then we can all choose our own tailor made reality, Jesus seems to have shot himself in the foot by saying to people 'your faith has healed you' because what he's saying is it's nothing to do with him it's peoples beliefs that are helping them, you can believe in anything and it'll work the same way if faith is the be all and end all, there is something to be said for positive thinking sure but there's no need for a Deity in that.
I guess I fought it for as long as I could though Lol, since then I actually got in contact with the teacher in question and told him that I could now see what he was saying and have accepted it, long before that I had for a short while become a born again Pentecostal Christian and it was during this short period in my life that the intellectual conflict in me was at it's height, I was trying to reconcile what I was supposed to believe written in the Bible with what I knew to be scientific facts and they were just totally incompatible, one had to go so I got rid of the former and accepted the latter as being the best explanation for our reasons for being.
Like most Atheists, I'm not sure there's no God, I'm just not convinced that there is and until I am given much better reasons than I have been so far or better still until this God actually comes down from the clouds and says 'hi John...this is your friendly neighborhood God almighty here just to let you know that I am real and I do exist' etc then I'll continue to be an Atheist, there's only two reasons I can think of why a supreme all powerful being doesn't show himself to us to prove his existence, either he's there but doesn't care whether we believe or not....or....he doesn't exist, the first option conflicts with the idea of a "God who loves us so much".
The second is the most likely explanation, if it's something else then it's beyond our understanding and an intelligent being ought to know this so it's no good this being moaning up there because we don't understand what he has not given us to understand, it's like the snake in the garden and the forbidden fruit thing, God punished poor ol' Adam and Eve for doing wrong when this God deprived them of the knowledge to understand the right and wrong concept which of course would have forearmed them against any smooth talking serpents, this God sounds like he enjoys creating problems, maybe he got bored being around all those countless zillions of years and thought 'I know...let's have some fun here...I'll create human beings in my image, then I'll give them as little info as possible so that they make a complete mess or everything....oh and throw in a few fallen angels to liven things up even more...then I'll have to find exciting ways of sorting out the mess which I expect them all to thank me for of course...that'll keep me busy and will be fun...yipeeeeeeee' Lol.
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Well. Save it for the special edition directors cut DVD along with some of the excess CGI and character development scene cut-outs and alternative endings.
The christian world view fails.
It says that consciousness can only come from minds there for a being with a mind ALSO must have created everything.
We know that minds and consciousness only come from a thinking healthy human brain, it is a product of a human brain which is a product of the natural world.
Also to say that minds come from other minds fail.
Thats' like saying heat comes from more heat, water comes from making more water, or that electricity is made by more electricity or that electricity must have existed in the begining in order to make the end product of electricity.
This analogy fails at its core lmao.
Can you kindly please add English subtitles to your videos so that Deaf atheists have access to learn from your presentations? Thanks!
I strongly second that, and it's quite easy to fo.
6 years and still no subtitles
@@harman1957 Exactly... so much for kindness.
I think the subtitles ( Closed Captions ) are provided by a RUclips AI program.
Matt might have turned them off because of some gobbledygook from the AI.
@@aslmastertutor1670 Yet, his videos from over four years ago have subtitles. So much for kindness, right?
I go to a catholic school and am taking a philosophy class. The goal of the class is proving that God exists, and we are reading a book called "God: The Oldest Question". It is catholic, so the author believes in evolution. However, he states that consciousness, abiogenesis, and the human eye require intelligent design. This frustrates me, because I know exactly how the eye evolved. The author also uses a biological fine-tuning argument. Apparently if the crust were ten feet thicker life would be impossible. Such blatant falsehoods.
Videos like this are very important. I wish more people knew science so that they could see through bad arguments.
Logic bless you, I'd get kicked out of that class so fast
When Design proponents start talking about fine-tuning I generally try to turn it around on them. Oh, you think the earth (or the universe) is designed to support life? Isn't it more likely that life is fine-tuned to survive on the planet (or universe) on which it arose? To use Douglas Adams' analogy, the puddle fits the hole, the hole doesn't fit the puddle.
Trying to prove god in the context of religion is futile. If god had been proven, it would rip out the foundation of religion, namely faith. God then would simply become a part of science.
***** And I could humiliate the teacher. The book makes blatantly false claims which are easy to falsify. The teacher is quite smart, but it doesn't change the fact that I personally happen to know exactly how the human eye evolved.
LavenderElephant But I think that the design arguments are powerful and demand (natural) explanation. I don't try to pretend that apparent design doesn't exist. I just know how to explain it without subverting Occam's Razor.
Let's make the die analogy even more simple. You have a standard six-sided die, numbers 1 through 6. You roll the die, achieving a random outcome. Let's see how both atheists(A) and theists(T) answer the following questions....
1) What are the odds you roll a 1? (A: 1 in 6.) (T: 1 in 6.) _Yay! Agreement._
2) What are the odds you roll a 7? (A: zero - no chance.) (T: Well, if God wills it...)
Theists insist 7's can magically be rolled on a standard six-sided die. Yet we have absolutely no evidence of anything like this ever happening. Matt's video is spot on.
Love this!
Last paragraph is a strawman. Huge assumption to claim that theist shout 7!!
Before talking about rolling 6sided dice, be aware that the 6sided dice was designed. The designer could have designed 8sides dice, or 10 sided dice, etc.
The universe is 10^18 seconds old, and there are 10^82 atoms in the universe. If you multiply these two numbers together, it's still FAR smaller than the denominator of the probability of typing Hamlet randomly, which is over 10^130,000 possibilities. I don't know if the universe can make a watch randomly, but it DARN sure isn't able to make Hamlet randomly, unless it gets many, many orders of magnitude older.
3 minutes in and I already love this video. Great work, Matt!
Cant believe this is from 9 yrs ago! I was stumped by this argument from creationists - thank you! :)
Matt Dillahunty great job explaining the issue.
yeah but he makes a lame argument for not going vegan. I heard that in one of their podcasts a few years ago.
Matt Dillahunty Hey Matt, We spoke in Sacramento after your talk during the one on one. Your advice to myself and my son-in-law have reached into our families and made important differences. You are a wise man and I can't thank you enough.
Love your work in general and on your Patreon projects. The background setting is great and your calmness, rational and deep sincerity come across very clearly. I am enjoying them immensely. Nice touch with the card trick and well executed.
Is it sad that I got raw, unbridled glee at realizing Matt has D&D dice...?
That's Magic the Gathering
Your logic is impeccable and your manner of delineating facts is respectful. Faith is a fear based hope, an insidious infection passed down through immediate indoctrination from birth. The cycle needs to be broken and I applaud your efforts. It is uncomfortable, at best, to acknowledge my eventual, permanent demise, but I would rather suffer the mental anguish of truth, than suffer an ignoble existence of ignorance.
The odds of rolling a 1 during a game of D&D seems to be higher. More research must be done!
Haa!
True that
Get some nihilistic dice!
All outcomes are meaningless, so you can decide what you want your character's "roll" to be.
Six years later and this comment is still winning the internet.
On the chance that you're not joking, it has almost everything to do with how we tend to remember things that are more significant or impactful to us. If the DC is 10 and you roll a 16, you're likely to remember the success and not the number. But when you roll a 1 and stare at that die in horror, dreading the consequences and how they will affect your character, party members, and possibly the whole campaign...
It's just far more memorable than that 16 - even if you rolled five 16s that night!
May your next important roll be a crit! 😊
This is the first video of yours that I have seen. I am impressed! I like the clarity of your presentation and, yes, the magic was a fun addition, too. As much as I would love to claim that pure intellectual argumentation always succeeds, I have to admit that presentation can help. I will be watching for more of you videos. Thanks.
I loved this! This was extremely well done and well put, and really made me think about some great points.
A couple of things about protein forming, although you hit the best ones, is the assumption all the proteins existed at the beginning. The more there are the higher the odds go. Maybe there were very few at the beginning, which is more likely by the way.
Also, it seems to me, it wouldn't matter which proteins were formed first anyway. Evolution works with whats there. The first life may have simply formed with whatever proteins were floating around.
As a teenager, my best friend's church asked me to play trumpet at their Easter sermon. After the service, everyone was milling around outside, and my friend and I heard the pastor say, "Well, in my mind, it's more probable that everything was created by God than other means," and I, being the borderline autistic (not really but some people thought I was) immediately turned to go ask him how he could prove that (assuming that he had something). My friend grabbed my arm and said, "Just let it go. He doesn't have proof." He knew me well.
@tlalocw Fair exchange Gabriel. You blew your trumpet, and the patsy blew his.
Hi Matt, thanks for posting these. I really enjoy and learn a lot from them, along with many of your debates and appearances on the Atheist Experience Podcast.
I really enjoyed this video Matt, thank you very much for the work it took. Thumbed, favorited, and subscribed.
Sweet! I didn't realize this had been released! What a treat! Thanks Matt!
Great series, Matt.
Matt!! Excellent demonstration using the dice n cards as a method of showing imbued outcome and significance! Your usage of logic is addictive and inspiring and i appreciate your videos !
The hard part generally isn't debunking their "arguments". It's that the argument is meant not to explain, but just to be a sufficient cover story, akin to "plausible deniability". For most, anyway, as it seems to me.
Which is very different. Demonstrating that their claims are infinitely unlikely, doesn't win that debate: the theist will still take that 1 in infinity chance on faith. Which means we must instead show it's not compatible with any form of faith they can be comfortable with. Basically putting them in the bind where they don't need to accept our view, but they will have to abandon their own.
Religion has by necessity perverted reason itself in its children, because it couldn't really survive otherwise. While sometimes we can break those barriers with hard facts, it seems to me often it's much more efficient to turn their own theology against itself, and let them ponder the question while we merely need to shoot down all the red herrings they toss around trying to get out of it.
Matt Dillahunty You might be interested in some technical advice: Once you're seated in front of the camera, count to 10 before starting to speak. You'll appear more settled in. Once you're done talking, count to five before getting up to turn off the camera. Alternately, find something to do once you're done speaking. Like, walking over to something and picking up something. Or, looking up from reading a book, talking, then looking back down at the book. You can cut short the end as much as you like but what you keep might flow better with the next segment. Example: In a park, film yourself walking down a path, walk up to the camera, talk, then walk off. Re-watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos for more ideas. Stick to actions that feel natural, something you would do even if the camera wasn't there.
I wish Matt were a god.
Even if he messed it up, you know he would at least intend well and educate everyone.
+Kait Sith You never know what people get up to once they are in power :-P
@@demianhaki7598 No No No You're done! Said in the pirate voice of the true God. When the R'Amen pasta is al dente and ready to be removed from the pot.
This is by far the best argument i have seen against fine tuning.
Using probabilities to argue that a supernatural entity was necessary to create the universe brings into serious question any claim of omnipotence.
what the fuck? so when im on shrooms and think im creating a garden of joy inside a crack in the wall leading to My new universe....im not omnipotent, fuck that guy he said these shrooms were magic, sad face sad face sad face.
tersse b
That would be a different universe with different laws :)
i still have a sad face, i thought my univers had magic, now it just has possible magic, its not the same.
tersse b
But those possibilities are endless......
as are the possible fucktards i have to argue with in google+ and on youtube, your not making this any easy'r to deal with, my magic universe didnt have any fucktards in it, only beuitifull people, and wondrous stuff and shit, it was all perfect and pure....now its full of possible crap and wank juice, and the fucktarded people i made it to escape from, its now dirty and sullied, my mind feels impure, even good drugs cant help me escape the mutant creationist plague that infects reality, SAD FACE.
Great stuff Matt. Love your bringing magic into the explanations. Watching your videos here in Australia.
3:45 - This isn't entirely true. There is a mathematical significance here, and that's "compressibility." Sequences that are less compressible are considered to be more random. If we assume your top sequence is purely random, then there's no way to describe the sequence other than by listing every card individually. But the bottom sequence, we just say, "all the Spades." That's VERY compressible, and so isn't considered to be very random.
After you switch the King of Spades and the Five of Hearts, you've changed it a bit: the top sequence is now more compressible, since you can say "all the Kings" and then each other card individually; the second is less compressible, but still quite a bit: "Ace through Queen of Spades, plus the Five of Hearts." You've made the top sequence less random and the bottom sequence more random.
The significance of this is, while you're right that both sequences are equally likely, the KIND of sequence isn't: there are FAR more uncompressible sequences than compressible, which is why we consider the top sequence to be more random.
This is actually very important when you go into things like cryptography, where strong random numbers are crucial.
Shane Killian This actually relates quite a bit to the issue, because their answer is basically "God did it." The problem is, "God did it" might SEEM like a form of compression, but it isn't.
We can compress the lower sequence of cards to "all 12 Spades." But "God did it: is more akin to describing it as "any 12 cards." While that is an accurate description of the sequence, it isn't a COMPRESSION of the sequence because it can't be DEcompressed. With "all 12 Spades," we can answer questions: is the 5 of Spades in the set? Yes. Is the 7 of Diamonds in the sequence? No. But with "any 12 cards," we can't tell if any particular card is in the sequence or not. We cannot use it to reconstruct the original set of cards like we could with "all 12 Spades." It describes equally well the top sequence of cards, and indeed ANY sequence of 12 cards that might be dealt.
In fact, the description tells you nothing, since the only information it contains is that there are 12 cards, which we already knew.
They use "God did it" to describe the universe. But if we make a new discovery that shows something we previously believed to be wrong, they just use "God did it" to describe that, too. In fact, "God did it" can be used to describe any possible observation in any possible universe, and so actually carries no information whatsoever.
Now, a creationist might say the whole point is THAT God did it, and that's the vital information, but that makes using this "argument from design" a case of Begging The Question: you'd have to first prove that God exists before you can use it, in which case it still doesn't tell you anything at all.
Shane Killian
Don't take this as necessarily a negative response but you've sort of committed a "deepity" with your posts. You may be absolutely correct in everything you've pointed out here... but where has all this additional information really taken us? Does the concept of "compressibility", as you have described it here, give anyone some better or more convincing way to point out the absurdity of attempting to use undefined ( and even currently "undefinable") values as legitimate data points in performing odds calculations for the events and claims made by the mathematically illiterate theists attempting to use them to demonstrate their own accuracy or relevance?
Can any of what you've said be broken down to have a real effect on those who are convinced they are "proving god with logic"?
Even correct information can be so esoteric as to be unusable in situations such as this one. Would you not agree?
BigRalphSmith "Does the concept of "compressibility", as you have described it here, give anyone some better or more convincing way to point out the absurdity of attempting to use undefined ( and even currently "undefinable") values as legitimate data points in performing odds calculations for the events and claims made by the mathematically illiterate theists attempting to use them to demonstrate their own accuracy or relevance?" I think I did just that in my second post.
"Can any of what you've said be broken down to have a real effect on those who are convinced they are "proving god with logic"?" No, because they're not actually using logic, just looking for excuses to continue to believe.
Shane Killian "I think I did just that in my second post."
If you did, I'm not seeing it. Educate me. Please clarify how this information provides a better way to point out the absurdities mentioned.
BigRalphSmith "Please clarify how this information provides a better way to point out the absurdities mentioned." Because it shows quite clearly that their claim has no predictive value whatsoever. They're saying this nature of the universe can only be explained by a God, when it's actually NOT explained by a God in any way!
Matt, you are an atheist, you do magic and you play MtG as evidenced by your spin down dice. Truly a man of my heart. Hope to be in Austin to watch the show and have dinner with you guys. Great video.
Loved the many sided dice analogy :)
Excellent!
Great stuff. Loving these videos so far. I also dig the fact you got a "billions and billions" in there!
I quite enjoyed the dice and cards illustrations in this to drive home the point.
I do have a question though about what you mean when you say proponents of intelligent design "cannot demonstrate that it's even possible" that there exists a supernatural agent which could be causally responsible for the facts they point to in the natural world. What do you mean by 'possible' here? Logical possibility?
Seems to me, that, unless one can establish that such a hypothetical agent engenders a contradiction, then it's at least logically possible. That'd be a far cry from showing it's actuality or plausibility, but it seems to me that it's logically possible..
Good video.
Cheers,
- Ozy
it's impossible to demonstrate the possibility of a supernatural entity to exist because by definition it is untestable by natural means... so no one can assign a number to it
ThePharphis
That would just mean that it's impossible to prove it's actuality or the likelihood of it's actuality (ie: it's probability). We may not conclude that something is impossible simply because we can't prove or disprove it or test it. After all, to say that something is logically possible is merely to say that it's not a flat impossibility.
- Ozy
Ozymandias Ramses II I know, and I was answering your question.
You were questioning what was meant by
ID proponents"cannot demonstrate that it's even possible" the existence of a supernatural agent.
To demonstrate the possibility of something you need to be able to show a nonzero probability. You don't need to assign a value, but you need to prove it's nonzero.
Matt Bell I'm not sure what you're saying, here. Are you suggesting it's possible to demonstrate a supernatural entity's existence? What proposed demonstrations?
Ozymandias Ramses II Not only is it logically possible, it is logically necessary, as well as ontologically necessary. You too Matt Dillahunty
I didn't make the argument, Matt Bell. Actually I did with Ozy.
Just came across this video - instantly subscribed to the channel. Great content and delivery. :)
The main reason why people argue against evolution is because they're actually arguing against how they think evolution works, and not against how it actually works. That's why we hear stuff like "life from rocks" "men from chimpanzees and why are there still chimpanzees around" and many more. A little education goes a long way.
Creationists in a broad and technical sense right. Earth in general terms is a big rock. The minerals that constitute life are embedded in and on rocks. Rock can have a very general meaning. Is this different from saying life is star stuff?
Usually the argument is humans coming from monkeys, associating monkeys with a ugly lower type of life. Technically we come through monkeys, we are in essence sophisticated eukaryotes.
Chimpanzees. If one might stretch a bit here definitions, we are chimpanzees, Pan sapiens would be the classification if we were not so high about us being a separate species.
I suppose in this case a lot of education gets us no where :)
Once something has already happened, like the universe coming into existence, the probability of it being the way it is is extremely easy to calculate, 1 in 1.
For example, while prior to rolling a six-sided die the probability of it landing on any specific number is 1 in 6. However, after the roll, we can look at the die, say it reads "4", and conclude the probability of it being in that state as 1 in 1.
There is no point in discussing probabilities of things that already have happened as it has no utility in this regard. Probability is only useful when one is attempting to make a prediction. Observation alone is sufficient to describe things that have already occurred. Things that already exist should be considered as inevitable and inevitable events require no supernatural assistance.
Very excellent presentation through and through. Enjoyed both videos thoroughly; wonderful refutations to teleological arguments, both.
I saw this and thought Tracie Harris was going pop out from behind a tree.
Matt, I rally enjoy listening to you, Tracy and Jen on A.I. It would be great to see you here in Orland one day. Keep up the great work, you are awesomeness! Hey to Beth! 😊😊
Hey, Magic the Gathering!! I love that game! cough, cough, I mean, Great video!
Imagine you are walking in a room and you see 100 dice on a table and they’re all sixes.
Here are some possible explanations for this seemingly improbable scenario:
1. An intelligent person had to meticulously place each die on six (what theists say).
2. The dice were rolled at once and they all landed on 6 on the first roll (how theists describe evolution).
3. Each die was rolled until it came up 6, then the next die was rolled, and so on until all 100 dice are on 6. This is because there’s evidence of a dice roller machine that was programmed to stop once the die landed on 6. (This is more like what evolution actually says; beneficial changes remain and are built upon).
PROGRAMMED dice roller machine is key there.
Fantastic video. Love Tracie's dice analogy too
That was insanely articulate and well put. I gave up on the teleological arguments long before I gave up on christianity. It’s odd that these arguments keeps getting passed along as thou they were self evident.
I love that you used a spindown in the dice part, as my mtg playgroup refuses to use them to roll because they essentially have one side that rolls high and one side that rolls low, which throws the odds off. Nice touch!
Thank you so much, Matt!
Good health to you! ❤
Hello Matt,
I hope you’re doing well. I’m a theist and have enjoyed watching some of your videos. However, I felt that some of your points didn’t quite address the fine-tuning problem, so maybe you or someone else can comment on it.
1. The cards example is commonly used to show that improbable things happen all of the time. You rightly point out that all of those shuffles have a 1 in 600 Billion chance of happening, but that we would likely only attribute significance to something like a shuffle with 13 cards of the same suit. However, this doesn’t seem to be exactly analogous. In each shuffle, you still end up with pretty much the same results macroscopically. The table you’re playing cards on continues to exist, as well as the house and the universe around you. It’s the consequences of one of the “shuffles” of fine-tuning that seems to be demanding of an explanation. It would be more akin to having to get all 13 cards of the same suit, or else the room you’re playing in evaporates. Except in reality, the probabilities in fine-tuning are far greater.
2. I think the fact that physicists call it the “fine-tuning problem” should give credence to the idea that the constants are not necessary. The laws of nature do not determine them, so there isn’t really a reason to believe that they have to be that way. I’ve watched interviews with David Deutsch and Leonard Susskind, and they don’t really take this option seriously. I’m not saying that because scientific authorities say it’s true that therefore it is, but I would take it they’ve got strong evidence to support that position.
3. Per the multiverse being used as an explanation, the problem with this is that there’s no guarantee all of those potential parameters would be realized just because you have a bunch of universes. It seems to me the multiverse would still have to have some "fine tuning" function in order to make sure you've got the right balance of life-permitting and life-prohibbiting universes. David Deutsch, who isn’t a theist, states in his interview with Robert Kuhn that in most universes where conditions are right for life to exist, it’s only just right… meaning it exists and then gets wiped out immediately. Having a planet with creatures that have millions of years to evolve seems only possible if these constants are balanced on a razor’s edge.
4. In regards to making claims about probabilities and supernatural agents, you seem to contradict yourself here. You say we can’t ever say a supernatural thing is likely because we could never calculate the probability of supernatural intervention, but then you go on to say that any naturalistic explanation is more likely than a supernatural one. Wouldn’t this go both ways and show that you couldn’t call a supernatural event unlikely, unless you had knowledge of the likelihoods a God intervened and in what circumstances? If Jesus appeared out of nowhere, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the naturalistic explanations are insufficient compared to the supernatural explanations. We only need to have a grasp of the natural explanations before invoking a supernatural one, which is what a proper version of the fine-tuning argument does.
P1. The fine-tuning is either due to necessity, chance, or design.
P2. The fine-tuning is not due to necessity or chance.
C. Therefore, it is due to design.
I don’t see the issue with this argument. If it is not due to necessity or chance, our only viable natural explanations, then concluding it is due to design seems to be reasonable. It’s only because we’ve first eliminated the natural alternatives.
5. At around the 7:30 mark you say we haven’t demonstrated that a supernatural cause is more probable or even possible. Firstly, I don’t think it should be ruled out as impossible a priori. Secondly, we are again back on the probabilities of supernatural things intervening, which I don’t think I need to calculate in order to think that the natural alternatives fail. Let’s say that a God did exist. How would one possible go about calculating the chances of Him doing one thing or something else? If you saw someone who was raised from the dead and heard God say, “I did that,” would you dismiss it because you don’t know the prior probability of a Deity doing such a thing? If your argument was only that I couldn’t calculate the possibility of divine intervention, I’m trekking along with you. However, if this means we can never reasonably deduce from our current evidence that naturalism fails to account for what we see around us, then we are ruling out God a priori. This seems to be assuming God doesn’t exist. Even if both the naturalistic alternatives fail, we are then left with just saying, “Well, I guess we can’t even discuss the possibility of supernatural intervention, because I don’t know the probabilities of such intervention ever taking place.” Forgive me if that’s not what you’re saying, but it certainly sounds that way to me.
Fine-tuning is something that physicists and cosmologists at least find worth discussing. Sean Carroll doesn’t think it’s an a priori argument. Most agree that the universe is finely tuned; the question becomes what’s the best explanation for it. Paul Davies said, “The impression of design is overwhelming.” It’s not just theists who are impressed by the precision of the cosmos.
I’ll cool it from there. Thank you for being polite in your video. I try my best to be polite too, since I know we’re all just searching for truth in this world of ours. I speak for most theists when I say that we are more prone to listen to what you have to say if you say it respectfully. I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks, man!
yay!! Been waiting for part 2, nicely done
May I suggest that you get one of those little foam thingies that slip over the microphone to cut down on the wind noise. (I'm being picky lol)
Wonderful videos. You have a real knack for explaining these things in a way that's accessible for everyone to understand. Keep up the great work Matt. Looking forward to the next one
Matt, I'd like to commend you on the quality of these videos, you obviously put a lot of effort into them. You've taken time to script and rehearse, then the quality of the audio and video are impeccable making viewing very easy. (Audio is an often over looked aspect on self produced video).
Good video. My personal argument to use is the lottery ticket winner metaphor and apply the small probability of life to the fact that in our milky way alone, there are billoins of planets so theoritically our milky way has at least few hundred planets with some form of life on it. Not alone other milky ways. Suddenly the odds show to be a lot better than they seem at the first glance. All you have to do is look at it from the correct context it is applied to.
No, the odds are not good. There are 10^500,000 possible combinations on a DNA chain and only 10^100 protons in the universe. Billions is only a multiple of 10^9.
@@theboombody That we know of and then there are hundreds of thousands of planetaario in our milkyway alone. Mathematically the probability already approaches 100% essentially, but then facto in other system and it's reasonably guaranteed odds. So the odds are good.
@@Jenkkimie Hundreds of thousands times billions is still less than 10^20. A billion times a billion is not bigger than comprehension or calculation. Whatever the number of planets in the universe there are, it's CERTAINLY less than the number of protons, and that's less than 10^100.
@@theboombody And yet you don't even need 10^100 that the existance of life is 99,999...% guaranteed. Even though your claim is false as well.
These people must be the biggest proponents of "simulation hypothesis"
I like teasing Believers by asking them to use the same Calculations to Calculate the existence of God.
( Outside time, Eternally, Complete with Knowledge and Skills . . . . )
I usually get Silence or the good ol' burn in hell reply.
If we look at the benefits we get from evolution and design, it is quite obvious that knowing about evolution, we can breed better horses for racing, sheep for better wool, medicine for humans due to knowing how humans evolved. Knowing about design gives only the preachers the advante of gaining more money, other than comfort (which is in deed important but cures nothing) the best way to procedd is to get rid of religions. Personal beliefs are fine, but this organised religion benefits noone but the churches and their leaders.
Former drug addicts have benefitted from religion too.
@@theboombody Nope, former drug addicts have changed one addiction from another, if you want to call that a benefit is up to you.
I'm loving this!
I'll be linking to your videos with iron chariots wiki when explaining to people why they are wrong with these common arguments
Is that a Magic The Gathering die? Pretty awesome. Love all your stuff Matt, I always look to your content when trying to find the strongest and most succinct version of an argument.
Nice, non-confrontational video Matt. Big fan of your style!
pyxxel
...says the couch potato typing on a slimy keyboard...
The trouble with the first card argument (2 minutes in) is that there are 13! possible ways in which all 13 spades can be dealt, so the probability of being dealt all spades is 13! ÷ 52!, which works out to 6 227 020 800 in 635 013 559 600, closer to 1%.
The whole odds-based argument confounds me. Even if they COULD make a valid calculation showing life or the universe were very improbable, the fact that they cannot demonstrate it to be impossible means their effort is entirely pointless. I mean, if it is possible for you to die of a lightning strike, saying it is improbable doesn't change the FACT that it is still possible.
So all they are doing is demonstrating mathematically that it IS in FACT possible for the universe or life to come about by natural means (if they can make a valid mathematical assessment).
What they would actually NEED to do is to show that it is not only improbable, but IMPOSSIBLE for life to arise by natural means or the universe to have the configuration necessary to be BARELY compatible with life. Anything else they demonstrate is an argument AGAINST the idea of a necessary creator because it demonstrates the possibility, albeit small, of a natural causation.
That is, it doesn't matter if it is small. It happened... we are here talking about it. Thus the 'improbable' could have actually occurred. Someone WILL win the lottery if there is ANY chance that someone COULD win the lottery. We know the universe and life exist, so if there is ANY chance that it could have come about by natural means, it COULD HAVE come about by natural means. If we then examine the absence of evidence for any supernatural means, we can be confident to conclude the universe came about by natural means, even if improbable.
But, of course, as Matt points out, they cannot even begin to form a proper assessment necessary to calculate the actual probability given the absence of data necessary to complete any such equation. I am just saying that even if they COULD, they would just be hurting their case if the probability found is NON ZERO.
I was thinking about this the other day. Depending on your point of view, everything can be seen as having 100% odds of occurring OR as being incredibly unlikely. I mean if you know everything about an event before it occurs, down to the smallest detail, then you know the odds of it happening the way it does is 1/1. Alternatively you can just as rightly say that everything from a roll of a die to the flip of a coin is infinitesimally unlikely to occur the way it does BY looking down to the smallest detail and calculating the odds of every individual atom ending up exactly where it does. At the end of the day, past events ALWAYS have 100% chance of occurring, because statistical analysis works through contrast to demonstrate context, and there is only ever one past.
To even BEGIN to describe the odds of, say, the universe being created "by chance" (whatever that means) requires some sort of contrast as well. You need to compare it happening with other instances of it happening differently in order to build an actual statistical model. How many universes were created both by chance and by other means? With that data you can THEN determine how probable a naturalistic universe is. But even that is asinine, as we don't determine what happened based on what was likely. We do it by observing what the evidence tells us actually HAPPENED. Statistics can sometimes help point us in the right direction, but sometimes it's the one in a million events (like an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs) that creates the events we are explaining.
Ultimately it always comes down to the same thing. You use statistics to evaluable PROBABILITIES. You use EVIDENCE to evaluate FACTS.
The idea just came to me, that the argument from order for design, is so appealing, because it can infer order and design in our personal lifes, even when they seem to be caotic and filled with unexplained horrible experiences for so many people. It is related to the argument for the exisence of evil i guess and has a strong emotional appeal to theist.
About the Fine Tuning as the absolute proof of a Mind.
*The fine-tuning argument*
The argument goes like this:
The fine-tuning of the universe to support life is either due to law, chance or design
It is not due to law or chance
Therefore, the fine-tuning is due to design
What does it meaning to be fine-tuned for life?
Here are the facts on the fine-tuning:
Life has certain minimal requirements;
long-term stable source of energy, a large number of different chemical elements, an element that can serve as a hub for joining together other elements into compounds, etc.
In order to meet these minimal requirements, the physical constants, (such as the gravitational constant), and the ratios between physical constants, need to be withing a narrow range of values in order to support the minimal requirements for life of any kind.
Slight changes to any of the physical constants, or to the rations between the constants, will result in a universe inhospitable to life.
The range of possible ranges over 70 orders of magnitude.
The constants are selected by whoever creates the universe. They are not determined by physical laws. And the extreme probabilities involved required put the fine-tuning beyond the reach of chance.
Although each individual selection of constants and ratios is as unlikely as any other selection, the vast majority of these possibilities do not support the minimal requirements of life of any kind. (In the same way as any hand of 5 cards that is dealt is as likely as any other, but you are overwhelmingly likely NOT to get a royal flush. In our case, a royal flush is a life-permitting universe).
*Examples of finely-tuned constants*
Here are a couple of examples of the fine-tuning. Craig only gave one example in the debate and didn’t explain how changes to the constant would affect the minimal requirements for life. But Bradley does explain it, and he is a professional research scientist, so he is speaking about things he worked in his polymer research lab. (He was the director)
a) The strong force: (the force that binds nucleons (= protons and neutrons) together in nucleus, by means of meson exchange)
if the strong force constant were 2% stronger, there would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no hydrogen containing compounds. This is because the single proton in hydrogen would want to stick to something else so badly that there would be no hydrogen left!
if the strong force constant were 5% weaker, there would be no stable stars, few (if any) elements besides hydrogen. This is because you would be able to build up the nuclei of the heavier elements, which contain more than 1 proton.
So, whether you adjust the strong force up or down, you lose stars than can serve as long-term sources of stable energy, or you lose chemical diversity, which is necessary to make beings that can perform the minimal requirements of living beings. (see below)
b) The conversion of beryllium to carbon, and carbon to oxygen
Life requires carbon in order to serve as the hub for complex molecules, but it also requires oxygen in order to create water.
Carbon is like the hub wheel in a tinker toy set: you can bind other elements together to more complicated molecules (e.g. - “carbon-based life), but the bonds are not so tight that they can’t be broken down again later to make something else.
The carbon resonance level is determined by two constants: the strong force and electromagnetic force.
If you mess with these forces even slightly, you either lose the carbon or the oxygen.
Either way, you’ve got no life of any conceivable kind.
*Is the fine-tuning real?*
Yes, it’s real and it is conceded by the top-rank of atheist physicists. Let me give you a citation from the best one of all, Martin Rees. Martin Rees is an atheist and a qualified astronomer. He wrote a book called “Just Six Numbers:
The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe”, (Basic Books: 2001). In it, he discusses 6 numbers that need to be fine-tuned in order to have a life-permitting universe.
Rees writes here:
These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence?
Or is it the providence of a benign Creator?
There are some atheists who deny the fine-tuning, but these atheists are in firm opposition to the progress of science. The more science has progressed, the more constants, ratios and quantities we have discovered that need to be fine-tuned. Science is going in a theistic direction. Next, let’s see how atheists try to account for the fine-tuning, on atheism.
*Atheistic responses to the fine-tuning argument*
There are two common responses among atheists to this argument.
The first is to speculate that there are actually an infinite number of other universes that are not fine-tuned, (i.e. - the gambler’s fallacy). All these other universes don’t support life. We just happen to be in the one universe is fine-tuned for life. The problem is that there is no way of directly observing these other universes and no independent evidence that they exist.
Here is an excerpt from an article in Discover magazine, (which is hostile to theism and Christianity).
discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator
The second response by atheists is that the human observers that exist today, 14 billion years after the universe was created out of nothing, actually caused the fine-tuning. This solution would mean that although humans did not exist at the time the of the big bang, they are going to be able to reach back in time at some point in the future and manually fine-tune the universe.
Here is an excerpt from and article in the New Scientist, (which is hostile to theism and Christianity).
www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026852.500-why-its-not-as-simple-as-god-vs-the-multiverse.html
So, there are two choices for atheists. Either an infinite number of unobservable universes that are not fine-tuned, or humans go back in time at some future point and fine-tune the beginning of the universe, billions of years in the past.
That we are here by chance is meaningful. We are either here by intention or not, if not then by definition we are here by chance.
What we have is evidence for fine-tuning. You don’t dispute that. What you dispute is what the evidence means. There are only two possibilities: chance or not chance, if not chance then we are here by intention. You have to ask yourself which of the two, given the evidence we have, is more plausible. Intention is clearly more plausible due to analogous reasoning. There is no reason to believe that fine-tuning is the result of chance. The only reason why people believe that it’s just a coincidence is because they wish to believe it.
1. like causes like effects
2. the effect of fine-tuning is caused by intelligence
3. Therefore, I think there is not enough evidence to choose between chance or intelligence.
I think you missed the entire point of this video but I'll set that little fact aside.
You still must be able to demonstrate that this intelligence exist. Is this a supernatural intelligence? Do we have any examples of this intelligence? What are the odds that this intelligence actually exist?
@@chloebatchelor1018 You still must be able to demonstrate that this luck exist. Is this a supernatural luck that creates universes? Do we have any examples of this luck? What are the odds that this luck actually exist?
@@MsJimFit your didn't answer my question.
If a natural explanation is possible, the explanation is natural.
Matt, mind the correct focal length for portrait and distance to camera.
This was great! I've been asking for years how is it that we know our universe (and its supposedly "finely-tuned" constants) isn't the only possible one. Even many physicists still assume that postulating multiple universes is a reasonable way around a problem that they made up in the first place. With only one universe as a sample this question is premature and impossible to answer; there are certainly more productive areas awaiting research than this one.
I also love how creationists bleat endlessly about "the first cell," assuming that cells were the first living things. It reveals their deep ignorance about the entire subject better than all their other misconceptions put together, if you ask me, and should be brought up early in any debate to save time and aggravation later.
Love you Matt you are insanely good at explaining things thank you so much
Nice Erdnase "three-way" cut. Nice Push through shuffle.
Most agreeable. Well articulated and great examples!
As a professional magician of over 20 years, this is incredibly beautiful.
I love that a Magic M12 is your d20 in this video.
Such a great video. Thanks Matt!
nice points, i would also like to add that as long as the odds are not zero, we can perfectly imagine an infinite (in space) universe. i the odds of life occuring on a particular planet in 1 billion years is, say, 1 in bazillion, then we can simply observe a bazillion planets for a billion years and at least one of them will probably have life on it by the end.
"They're taking an incredible improbability, declaring it a virtual impossibility..."
...then giving it a good strong cup of really *hot* tea, and...
...hang on.
Matt Dillahunty You should add "edited by" in the credits. It requires a significant amount of work and talent.
I have to agree. it doesn't really matter what the odds are if they are neither 0 nor 100%.
I went to visit my friend across town. It took 2 hours to drive there and arrived at 2:34. Wow what are the odds of me getting there at exactly 2:34? All the traffic lights were perfectly timed. I didn't get into any accidents and didn't have a flat. There must be at least 172 parameters that must be just right for me to get there at exactly 2:34.
The odds are 1! I got there, it's done. Now if I go back in time and ask what are the odd, well that's different, it extremely small.
These guys are so ignorant.
So the Odds that one would receive a junk hand of thirteen cards with no importance is the same as getting all one suit, the junk hands odds are 1 in 635,013,559,600, which is the same as getting a hand with all the same suit.
The card trick was a nice touch.
My observations on two of the popular common arguments that are math and logic errors.
Fine tuning falsehood: What if we didn't have the knowledge of how to calculate the value of Pi? We would simply have to measure the diameter and circumference of circles and examine the ratios. One might conclude that the value of Pi is finetuned. We don't have enough knowledge to determine whether the fundamental constants can be computed so we can't conclude they must be variable and building upon that premise conclude an agent tuned the value.
Infinite outcomes guarantee falsehood: If you roll a standard six sided die an infinite number of times the odds of a seven coming up is zero. We know all the possible outcomes and can determine the odds. When we do not know the details of how many possible ways the components of a Big Bang can be arranged, we cannot assume there are an infinite number. There might be only one, or some other finite number, we are unaware of. We cannot conclude a certainty of something occurring simply by asserting and inserting infinity into the odds calculation.
I realize this would be more appropriate to have been posted in part 1, but I see others bring up these topics so I figured I'd post this here to add to the discussion.
Another fallacy is a root assumption of logic issue.
Binary Logic Fallacy: Our models of logic generally assume Reality behaves in binarily opposite states of either True/False, On/Off etc. Quantum Mechanics is revealing that this assumption may not be an accurate model of Reality. Things may exist in multiple states of superposition. Things may simply be in more states other than Exist/Not Exist. QuasiExist may need to be factored into our logical arguments as well in order to adequately describe Reality.
I am not qualified to argue this point but I figured I'd offer it to those that are. Is this concept something that is dealt with in higher education logic classes? I took Logic 101 but it isn't my primary area of interest. I do find it interesting.
***** I asked Matt about this and he pointed out that probability and outcome are not the same.
An outcome either happens or it doesn't. It is either possible or not. The probability of an outcome tells you the distribution of outcomes. A single outcome tells you only that this outcome was possible but nothing about the probability of it occurring. If a die is rolled and comes up 1, you only know of one outcome but nothing about the rest of the die. Is it a 6 sided die, a 20 sided die, a 2 sided die? You also know nothing about the markings on the die. Are there more than one side marked with 1?
We know Reality at the Quantum level is probabilistic because the same experiment repeated over and over has a distribution of outcomes that is well defined with high accuracy. What we don't know is the distribution of outcomes that are less likely to occur than the number of tests performed.
How I apply this to my daily decisions is to examine the probability distribution of specific outcomes and examine the models Science uses to describe the phenomenon. Then weigh the risk/benefit of the probable outcomes with likelihood at a certain level that I am willing to accept.
For example: I have been alive over 50 years about every 24 hours there is a day/night cycle. I can say with certainty that within the last 18000+ days the Sun has always come up. Furthermore, in human history there have been no reliable accounts of the Sun not coming up. So I can safely predict the chances of the Sun coming up tomorrow as beyond 99.99995% certainty (1 day in the last 6000 years). Buying a lifetime of batteries to power my flashlights, in the event the Sun never comes up again, would be irrational.
For the supernatural proposition: I could justifiably use the above as an analogy with supernatural events and safely live my life assuming they are extremely unlikely and may never occur.
My thoughts on Dillahunty’s thoughts:
Dillahunty: “We have imbued meaning to 13 spades”
Me: A universe that survives, versus all other hypothetical universes that do not, automatically has significance. By default. Unless one argues that a universe that survives is the same as countless others that do not survive - and that's a bad argument.
Dillahunty: How do they know that this isn’t in fact, the only possible universe?
Me: How do we know that there is no giant spaghetti monster somewhere in the universe controlling our lives?
Dillahunty: We don’t know enough about the universe to know what other universes are possible.
Me: We can probably never know everything about everything to make an assessment. We therefore have to weigh possibilities. And the possibility of fine-tuning of the big bang, on basis of blind chance is in the order of one in 10^100. Likelihood of intelligence, by default, is therefore much higher.
Dillahunty: What if we live in one of the countless multiverses?
Me: One can always raise the “what if” argument. For example, what if there is a spaghetti monster? There is no evidence of a multiverse. How is invoking multiverse different from invoking god?
Dillahunty: How can you say that a supernatural cause is more probable than a natural one?
Me: A natural cause has a chance of 1 in 10^100. THAT is the answer.
Dillahunty: What about protein molecule?
Me: The probability is very, very small. The rest of the odds point to intelligence at some level. More on this further down.
Dillahunty: Improbability does not mean impossibility.
Me: Right, it does not. But it surely makes the design argument that much more plausible.
Dillahunty: Theists are asserting evolution did not happen.
Me: While evolution is a separate discussion, it’s worth pointing out that TOE has yet to show the probabilistic path of formation of proteins, formation of DNA, beginning of life. Blind evolution may explain survival of birds with larger beaks vs. smaller beaks, etc. - but not more complex formations.
Dillahunty: What about countless events in the primordial soup:
Me: There have not been enough interactions to form complex proteins. And a protein molecule forming in the soup does not achieve much. A lot more coordination is needed for emergence of life. There’s not enough time, not enough material, not enough events. It’s math, it’s science. More on that point: One of the leading theories on formation of complex chemicals required to support life suggests that these compounds were formed one some other planet, and somehow got transported to earth. If one reads between the lines, it's tacit admission of the failure of the "countless events in the primordial soup" argument.
"Me: A universe that survives, versus all other hypothetical universes that do not, automatically has significance. By default. Unless one argues that a universe that survives is the same as countless others that do not survive - and that's a bad argument."
100% wrong. You assume it automatically has significance because you are here to observe it. And you are here to observe it because it happens to have the properties that allow life to exist in small parts. You do not know if there are others, or if the fundamental laws of physics could be different. You have made a very bad argument.
"Me: How do we know that there is no giant spaghetti monster somewhere in the universe controlling our lives?"
We don't. That's the point.
"Me: We can probably never know everything about everything to make an assessment. We therefore have to weigh possibilities. And the possibility of fine-tuning of the big bang, on basis of blind chance is in the order of one in 10^100. Likelihood of intelligence, by default, is therefore much higher."
You cannot calculate the odds of anything without knowing the number of possible outcomes and the number of possible positive chances. He spelled this out in the video man. Come on. This is just math.
"Me: One can always raise the “what if” argument. For example, what if there is a spaghetti monster? There is no evidence of a multiverse. How is invoking multiverse different from invoking god?"
The multiverse is a sound hypothesis. But not proven yet. And it's just as proven as any deity existing, so you are making the same fallacy you are complaining about.
"Me: A natural cause has a chance of 1 in 10^100. THAT is the answer."
See above and take a fucking statistics class.
And I am done. You are making such piss poor arguments that I am done wasting my time.
For all their talk of slim probabilities making things impossible, I wonder if ID proponents could say what the threshold probability is where things become possible.
I asked a creationist a similar question of "how much of our DNA has to be junk before you would believe evolution?" Of course, I never got an answer.
Human thought is definitely not random. The universe has less than 10^250 protons in it, and it's less than 10^250 milliseconds old. But the odds of generating a book like Hamlet by randomly typing on a keyboard are less than 1 out of 10^100,000. Imagine the odds of generating an entire library.
Brilliant Matt, Thanks!
"The universe is constantly getting more disorderly"
Isaac assimov, "In the game of Energy and Thermodynamics you can even break even"
Smithsonian Institution Journal,
Loved it, Matt! Thank you.
On the face of it your arguments can seem onerous for the Theist or Christian. However, there are other perspectives on this question.
When evaluating the question of origins, we usually start with the actual entity in question and ask the legitimate question of "what can account for this?" Then science explores the explanatory power of a number of proposed candidates. Leaving mathematics out of it, does anything science has observed or attempted experimentally lend credence to the hypothesis that anything with the minimum necessary attributes we find in life could be assembled with the known laws of physics and chemistry without any guiding process that might be attributable to intelligence?
Yes "they are working on it", but so far the increases in science's understanding in the mechanics of physics and chemistry have led to greater and greater difficulties in accounting for what we see in reality.
Yet, what we do see is intelligent minds utilising high levels of planning and technology, able to build molecules one atom at a time. Not by chance in a "primordial soup" but in multi-million dollar equipped laboratories.
Whether this is evidence for God is a question of personal evaluation, but what is obvious, is that if a being with the attributes of the common understanding of God WOULD provide the prerequisites for the advent of life.
Steve, I read your comment three times and even looked up some of the words you used. I'm not a dumb man but for the life of me I can't understand a single thing you are trying to say here. Could you reword the question? I'm curious as to what you are trying to say.
A small technical note : The wind hitting the mic. when recording outside is a little bit disturbing and even distracting. Maybe the blue screen technique is not that bad after all. Other than that, great vid.
Blue screen?!? Please!
Matt, Kees den Heijer want's you to get a better windscreen for your mic or choose less breezy days on which to record..
Keep up the great work!
the number of possible hands is way more* ( 52*51*50*...*40 would be way more than that number ) amazing video by the way gave me great insight
But what does it even mean by we were created in Gods image cause God is I thought to be formless, timeless, outside of the universe as they described but then the old testament says God walked among us at one time. The mental gymnastics they go through is crazy, I'm just glad I was able to get away myself after being raised in it for my first 30 years of life and can now actually see things from all angles instead of wearing my God glasses!!
Just a comment on one of Matt's denials, here. When we try to see how many possible formulations the Universe might have taken, and then appeal to how few of those would support life, Matt says for all we know a universe would have to be very much like this one, so all those others aren't even possible. The problem with this is that even if all universes would have to be like this one, it is still remarkable that 'the physical rules' dictate that fact, and that such universes are capable of bearing life. I think it is meaningful to consider all imaginable universes, and to see how few among those would sustain life.
Similar point when Matt talks about chemical evolution. It could be that the laws of physics render it quite probable that the required complex proteins (or whatever) would naturally evolve by chemical means. Even if that is a fact, it is still remarkable that the laws of physics should have been that way.
It’s only remarkable if you presuppose a specific goal, but unremarkable otherwise. Billions upon billions of chemical reactions happen all the time throughout the universe and the fact that some of the molecules generated are organic is only remarkable to us as we imbue those occurrences with importance, but that’s about it. Of course that we humans would value the chemical processes that gave rise to us more than others. But that’s almost a tautology: we find the things that are important to us to be remarkable.
I don't consider "This universe might be the only possble universe" to be a valid response. If it is true that a slight change in physical constants makes life impossible, then it is reasonable to expect a reason why the physical constants happen to be what they are. If your reason is simply "They could not have been otherwise", then it's reasonable to expect a reason why the only possible configuration just happens to be one in which life is possible. You're still back where you started.
Happy Halloween Matt!
I enjoy these videos quite a bit. Not just the subject, but I really enjoy the quality of the video and audio, as well as the background you choose and how you frame yourself and the background. Do you employ the rule of thirds or the rule of phi? Thanks!
Matt is asserting that the primordial soup is a series of many simultaneous experiments. But isn't it is more likely a series of many experiments going on over a series of different times until one or more successful outcome?
Do the math
If I roll a die and get a 1, then after that I ask, what's the probability I got a 1? It's 1, I already got a 1. It's done.
This was excellent. Other resources on this topic:
*The System* video with Darren Brown on RUclips.
*The Improbability Principle* by David Hand.
*The Black Swan* by Nassim Taleb discusses the *problem of hidden evidence*.
*Thinking: Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman documents his research into cognitive biases, including those that make probability non-intuitive for most people.
Pertaining to your last statement in the video, "Ask them what are the odds of god existing." I've often found that creationists duck around that kind of thing by saying, "I didn't say anything about god," when it's obvious that's what they're talking about.
True and a point that should have been addressed. I've been focused on this from the point of view of apologetics and it was a mistake to emphasize apologetics if I'm specifically addressing ID claims (which are apologetics in a lab coat).
In response to the "I didn't say anything about god", I'd say - Oh, yes, I know you didn't say that and maybe you don't even mean "god" or "a god"...so what are the actual odds for your proposed solution to the improbability you're claiming, and how did you calculate it.
And, by the way, what would you call your proposed solution?
More landscapes please
While getting the winning lottery ticket is very unlikely, the existence of the winning ticket is inevitable, and WE ARE IT. some thing had to be us.
nice , i like that card example
MyKinney Falls State Park sure looks quite nice.
I taught scientists said random mutation and the one with most favorable composition for it's environment survives or takes over. So chance i think is a rely real thing.
God is monke. When we evolved we strayed further from God. Therefore, we must return to monke.
You should have listened to John and Zane and done the rubber band trick! Now I'm really curious.