thanks for this, have you considered debating another muslim apologist? i know last time went horribly but i would love to see a discussion/debate between you and Abdallah Al Andalusi for example
nah, he can't name 5 things without a creator with proof, and when he tries he will simply name things with a creator. Whereas I can name billions of things and show proof that do have a creator.
There is in built anesthesia. I wish nothing ever died though. we mammals especially have in built anesthesia particularly powerful when on the brink of death from blood loss and exhaustion the most common death for prey animals. I’d argue why did we need to evolve that at all? It only happens when you’ve cross the threshold of death anyway. Like without modern medicine at the point they kick in death is certain.
Alex, I'd be curious about your take on the research and hypothesis of Dr. Donald Hoffman. That we experience reality as a construct of space-time, which he says explains the difficulty in scientifically quantifying experience and consciousness as they exist outside that construct. I would say he would even make a great guest.
The S-rank is the highest grade in the Japanese school system; it comes from "shū" ("excellent", maybe?) and it is normally represented in English as "superb". It became popular in the West via scoring systems on Japanese arcade games, e.g. it's the highest performance you can get on Dance Dance Revolution
Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!...
@@HENTAl69Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!..
And the result of scoring 5-0 or more in the Inazuma Eleven games' competition routes... You probably have no idea what that means, do you? Never mind.
With the greatest compliment possible, I was thinking the American had that Golden Retriever energy. Watching at 1.25 speed, he seemed to be hopped up on gallons of Red Bull. But seriously, no shade whatsoever. Clearly a brilliant person with well-formed reasoning and critical thinking.
That last video is one of my favorites you’ve ever made. Really it’s one of my favorite videos on the topic of religion as a whole. I didn’t know if this sequel was going to happen, so the surprise of it is amazing
My favorite argument is to say: even if theism were true, one could never be justified in *believing* it is true. For whatever evidence or experience you might find convincing, you can never be sure that your experience *doesn't* actually have a natural cause. Imagine some guy appears in your room and claims to be god. Do you believe him? Why should you? How do you know he's not an advanced alien pretending to be a god? From your human perspective, you'd have no way to tell the difference.
The implied consequences of theistic claims make absolute questions like "does God exist" or "did Jesus really rise from the dead" less useful than relative ones like "how can I know what God demands of me" or "is Jesus the only way to salvation." Sure, a man might have done extraordinary things about 2,000 years ago. If that man were the ultimate messenger of the Almighty, why are we only learning about His life through fragmentary texts rather than direct experience? Why can we safely discount anyone who claims to fulfill His destiny as most likely delusional?
In a similar vein I’ve thought about how perception depends on transduction (such as photons to nerve impulses), and how we verify the external stimuli exists versus a delusion created by the brain (such as phantom limb syndrome). If “feeling god’s presence” (such as through prayer) was actually the transduction of some spiritual stimuli, how would we differentiate it from talking to ourselves? In short, we can’t. This realization was the “final straw” for me to become an atheist.
thats interesting but to me its not so much that you could never have good reason to believe it its more that you wouldnt have good reason to claim you KNOW God exists with total certainty which the religious often do
@S.D.323 To believe a proposition is to be *convinced* that it is true. If we can argue that theistic belief is unjustified, then it would follow that dogmatic claims to knowledge are unjustified too. I honestly don't know what it would take to convince me that a god exists. No matter how spectacular the evidence, I couldn't rule out all naturalistic possibilities. What if there's an explanation in 10-dimensional physics? Unless you know *everything* about the natural universe, you can't be sure that a phenomenon *doesn't* have a natural cause. Therefore seeing something super-magical and crazy looking still wouldn't be evidence for anything supernatural.
@@S.D.323 it’s much worse than not achieving certainty. There’s no grounds for granting more than some minimal credence. All one would have is some perception parsimony should have one assume it’s a hallucination as the default.
At 1:38 or so they're talking about morality and emotions. I think I fit the category of people Alex thinks doesn't exist. I hold the belief that factory farming has moral issues. And yet in order to provide for my family, the path I've happened to land on has me working logistics on tens of millions of kilos of meat per year. I agree with the rational arguments against it, by my emotional motivations to my family take over and I do my job regardless of the moral position it puts me in. I need to numb myself to it emotionally to function.
Here's my personal hypothesis, it does need further evidence and I am confident it can be found. "To not believe in a God, is impossible for one by birth and upbringing taught Theism." I'm afraid this might be true:)
On the stone paradox: Alex said omnipotence is the ability to do what's possible. As if what's possible exists outside of and independent of God. Isn't God the maker or originator of the possible and impossible? Is God then bound by what he made impossible or does this impossibility exist independently of him?
Moreover most christians and pastors like Turek on WLC don't put any restrictions on omnipotence whatsoever, so it's more than fair to use the same rules
I think God could be omnipotent in it's own realm but not in the universe. If the universe is fine-tuned, there can be no physical interference at all. It's constrained by it's own Laws and Constants.
I feel like material causality is really weak and falls apart in so many ways, I kinda agree that the questions around evil are the most difficult to attempt to answer.
Totally agree! Determinism and 'free will' don't happily co-exist... Without 'free will', Christianity falls apart..... I find 'free will' a real mind f**k , when I think what 'free will' could possibly 'look' like.....every thought would have to be a 'causeless cause', a 'thought' would have to think itself into existence, with no prior cause...... 'determinism' is my 'go to' in religious discussions....
@@JonHarrington9075 There's a whole influential part of the protestant movement that is based around double predestination - which would be completely consistent with a deterministic world. Look up Calvinism.
@@Messianic-Gentile causality didn’t, and creates the exact same problem for free will. Nor does determinism being violated even help because probabilistic interactions still create no space for free will regardless.
I think the “stone paradox” argument belongs in the E Tier, but something that neither of you touched on is the fact that God’s omnipotence is a feature meant to explain how a seemingly impossible task was completed. Without omnipotence, the things God is credited with look somewhat similar to a squared triangle. So much so, that even in cosmological arguments God ends up being the one thing in existence that doesn’t follow the rules of the arguments.
One wrinkle to the E-tier rock paradox is that we regular humans _can_ make things that we can't lift. So there is some way in which it isn't analogous to drawing a four-sided triangle -- drawing a four-sided triangle is impossible for everyone by its very nature, but making a too-heavy rock is only impossible for God. A satisfying understanding takes at least _a little_ more thought about what's going on.
The rebuttal to that is quite a simple one though. You never actually created anything, as in “creatio ex nihilo”, you simply rearranged matter. But of course we can just rephrase the question to “Can G-d rearrange matter in such a way that he cannot lift it?”
That's not even a wrinkle, and it's completely contingent on the phrasing of the question. You can resolve it by just changing the verbiage. "Can God create an unliftable rock?" That applies equally well to humans. It can also account for the triangle example when we see there is always going to be a single premise (often unstated) and a single question. All triangles have 3 sides. Can a triangle with more than 3 sides be drawn? All rocks are liftable. Can an unliftable rock be created? All questions of this form are asking the exact same thing: can an impossible thing be done?
Regular humans can figure out how to lift something that is too heavy by applying mathematics on the amount of force required to lift something too heavy for an average human to lift. A crane with a pulley becomes a force multiplier to enable a person to lift loads that would usually be too heavy for one person to lift. A four sided triangle or a married bachelor isn't a matter of capability, it is a logical impossibility. Much like asking for a black coffee with cream. The moment you add cream or oat milk to a coffee, it is no longer black. In the Bible, God cannot change, lie, be tempted, tempt others, deny himself, or erase himself out of existence. Those are ontological impossibilities, and just because God's personality doesn't allow him to do it, it doesn't mean he doesn't have the omnipotence to do them.
@@anthonydesimone502 _"You can resolve it by just changing the verbiage."_ Maybe. I'm not sure changing the verbiage gets you the same claim. As I see it, it's not about the liftability of rocks, per se, but the relationship between one's own powers and limits. The references to one's self seem to be central. So I'd think it's appropriate to keep the verbiage but resolve it by realizing that there's nothing troubling for God in this being impossible for God. It was never a requirement that God could; it's just a neat bit of trivia that he can't. Maybe the structure's a bit different, but like your reading we still involve the question "Can an impossible thing be done?" and our answer, just like on your reading, should always be no.
I guess I don't understand "The Modal Argument from Evil" correctly because what I understood sounded more like a F tier argument than any other, haha. I personally find the "Universe Big" argument much more compelling. It's interesting to realize than different arguments are hitting us differently. I'd love to know what a Theist would find more convincing.
Im an atheist and all, but let’s be honest, there is no such a thing as an argument for atheism or theism . Theism ones are just logical biases and mistakes (cosmological argument and “but the world is too perfect” or “but life and the universe had such a small probability of being” make me cringe all the time), but atheist ones are just incomplete. God has a different definition in every religion and is improperly defined even within the same religion . It impossible to prove the non existence of a constantly changing to convenience concept. The only real argument for atheism is that if you believe in something you must have a specific reason to believe in that, and if you want me to believe in that idea, you don’t have to prove it necessarily, but at lesta explain why I should. And since as I said no argument for god has the minimum sense, the default and most logical thing should be atheism
But does that say that logic becomes the all powerful being? When you say atheism or theism must meet the standard of human logical premises in order to be valid, doesn't that say our logic IS the Divine?
A bit reductionist to say that all theist arguments are logical biases. Unless the question that has plagued humanity for 2000 years just needed to be thought about by RUclips user “idk imagine a cool name” in 2024 and it is all solved!!
@@alexanderh2345 the reasonable answer is that when you talk about things that by definition are outside of the comprehension of humans like god or the beginning of time, the only reasonable answer is unreasonable
1:01:42 If God created logic, it seems that something being logically impossible makes little sense. So everything possible seems to make God subservient to logic.
You made me realise that the stone paradox argument actually has a very big implication in regards to god, it shows that god cannot be the ultimate force in existence because logical contradictions restrain him. It shows that either god is illogical or he is not the greatest force in existence, both of them massively downgrading his importance. It's seems that the stone paradox fails it's original mission of disproving god but if you dig deeper there is still value in it.
the stone paradox could be solved simply by saying god is as powerful as he wants to be. He could create a rock so heavy he could not lift theoretically (that if he was in the same state he was in now and lifted it, he could not), but once he actually tried to lift it he could become more powerful. Its also important that not being not able to do something doesn't mean your less powerful. Basically all power that exists in a moment is gods, but he himself can go above that power or add to the total potency of the world. also theres the whole thing that god is not physical. If he became physical then he would be limited, as he was in jesus. Timeless, spaceless in that he didn't need them to exist. By strict logic he made, only we have to abide by it, he doesn't because he exists out of the boundaries he created in the first place.
I kinda view universe big as an opposite effect. Seeing that out of the entire universe, only we here on Earth have known relationships with God makes me feel special
I think the necessity of god is not a property of God but a property of creation. What I mean is that him being “necessary” is just to say that he is that which maintains the existence of creation, and so things cannot remain in existence without him, in the same way a child cannot exist without parents. Now the way in which this is distinct from being logically necessary like the “all bachelors are unmarried” thing is that it is not logically necessary that your specific parents were your progenitors, just that some parents were. We can (theoretically) conceive of a world where you had different parents. In the same way we can conceive that something that isn’t “God” caused the universe (or that the universe didn’t have a cause). But in our particular universe, your particular parents were causally necessary to produce you, God is particularly necessary for the universe to keep existing.
I quite liked the induction based argument, I would’ve put it as high as he wanted to put it. I like how it contrasts against arguments for God using induction in the sense of how beautiful everything is, you can come at it from a counter logical perspective, I make doors for a living
I find the "evil" arguments to be some of the least convincing to me. It just assumes a creator has to be "good" in the first place and it also assumes that it would view "good" the same way we do. At most they just disprove an all loving/benevolent god but it doesnt do much at dismantling the possible existence of a creator or creators of the universe. While it was said this was supposed to he an argument against all religions it felt much more tuned to fit arguments against Christianity.
My argument is I don’t care for heaven or hell or anything, as long as there is a continuation of my consciousness, I’m fine with whatever horrors the hell might bring (not as if our life already one)
Good job not elaborating. Is that why god feeds on death and suffering? Because evil is actually necessary and somehow good? Bullshit. You haven’t seen enough evil then.
I suppose my reason is more personal than academic: First of all, like pointed out briefly, it is about a God that is 'good' (defined by human life) and usually it is a God that is able to be described with human attributes (like wanting something, deciding something, thinking something, etc.. given the possibility of the opposite being the case. There would be no need for a God to want something if all that is, is through him. We think to predict the future or process the past, a God IS future and past, why would God need to think). Then yes, the problem of evil seems obvious. Here's what I believe: The fundamental way of being is suffering. It is half way starving searching for food in panic, having no real shelter to sleep in peace. For some that is evolutionary history and some live that still this day. In a world like that there is almost infinite good because there is almost infinite redemption. The good is only redemption. In a world that would only have this sense of 'good' and no bad, life would not only be meaningless, you would probably be the one to make it worse, just so that something thrilling happens. I know I am not the first to bring up these points but to me they are so much more crucial than how they have been touched on in the video here! So I guess where I break apart from the few 'the world is great, hippie-believers' is that I say that being at all in totality was always under tension between terror and relieve and the whole spectrum in between. And the miraculous peaceful and relatively safe lives so many people can live nowadays, is only good because at nature it would be terror. God, for me personally is beyond our words so using them is bound to fail but if I would allow myself to do so regardless: God wouldn't prefer humans over birds or bacteria or meteors or atoms. What is up to you is either aiming down, or aiming up. Why I see the problem of evil as in favor for religion (maybe I should have said faith instead) is because I just can't ignore how many times first: I got the shit that I deserved. and second: The people that overcome the horrors they are fighting being the heroes in my life.
@@adryancavar7515 I don't agree with you that life would be meaningless without suffering. There are about a million other things that give life meaning besides overcoming adversity. If that was the only thing that gave meaning to life, then most people would agree which you'll find isn't the case. And even if you think that is what solely makes life meaningful, or interesting an all-powerful God would be capable of creating a universe where there is something other than suffering that inspires us and gives life meaning. Even if you 'got the shit you deserved,' there are countless people in this world that get shit they unequivocally don't deserve, such as being enslaved from birth and dying young. And many if not the majority of people who 'overcome horrors,' would rather not go through them, then act as inspiration porn for people who don't have to actually overcome.
I don't think the problem of evil is a good argument for Atheism, but I ro think it works when talking about a specifically truly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent diety.
S is for shū meaning exemplary. It's widespread in Japan, not just from anime, I believe it's standard use in school grades, for a start. I'm sure this has already been commented, but hey engagement.
@@charliehands5266 I dont remember exactly, cause he said that in an old video they did together, but, based on his views, I believe he is a agnostic atheist.
Honestly, the kalam cosmological argument isn't REALLY an argument for god. It goes Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. While it might _sound_ pedantic to say that because it doesn't contain the word god, it isn't an argument for god. When you look at the argument, it doesn't even get close to what the vast majority of people call god. It isn't personal, it doesn't even _suggest_ a thinking agent. And even if you set that aside, while it might be a valid syllogism, it doesn't seem obvious to me at all that it is also sound. Some people, like WLC, might have attempted to save it by adding to the syllogism, but usually they end up making it obviously not sound, or not valid, in an attempt to make it reference some variant of a personal/intelligent god.
I find it funny that out of all things that theists could use as an example for beauty that can only be the result of a creator are things like trees or sunsets and not literal conscious human beings
What's so funny is that it's true many of these questions were answered past times, even the Bible answers them.. but these doubts are all the same doubts Satan literally places within your mind, and the Bible shows that in Satan's character, there is a demonic hierarchy that is meant to keep us from believing. If we have faith, then these questions would have answers that we can grasp.. but if we remain skeptical forever, we won't see and we stick ourselves in a place where evidence won't matter necessarily.
I feel like the notion that evil is allowed by god to allow for higher order goods is ridiculous. Like hes god supposed to be all powerful and all good shouldnt god have been able to create a world where evil wasnot neccessary to achieve such high order goods? Ir is that not within gods all powerful power?
Perhaps a more interesting version of the stone paradox would be, could an omnipotent and omniscient being create something whose actions it could not perdict?
I honestly believe the stone paradox is one of the single most important arguements for atheists. The reason being is that it limits the ability of God, he can no longer just break logic. Some theists really enjoy playing around with that, sometimes he is limited by logic, sometimes he isn't.
It's a good argument against the Christian God, but not the Jewish or Islamic one. Because in Christianity, it is shown that God can become limited (in human form, needing to drink, eat, go toilet, and can die), making it a logical impossibility, akin to the Omnipotence/Stone Paradox. But in the Jewish and Islamic, they assert that God is always infinite, and that he would not do stuff that is logically inconsistent, as these aren't actually "things" that can be realised, but the actual concept is contradictory.
On religious confusion, I think the strongest illustration of this is that Christians cannot even agree if Christ is in favor or opposed to the state executing people...
Though this is not something i beleive but people do not like to entertain. What i find fascinating is there could be possibly a God where the more it creates the more its power and ability decreases as it puts it into its creation. But gets power back as thing cease to exist. So it sets out the rules but cant enforce them until everything has finished.
I think Divine Hiddeness is the only S-tire. POE & Religious Confusion are just aspects of DH. As a theist myself, DH is the only argument I could feel “stumped” by.
I personally find the modal argument indistinguishable from good fiction. Logically it's possible to conceive Batman defeats Superman. The whole issue is that the imagined possibility is not tethered to reality, therefore it's good fiction.
I think bad god argument is not very good because of beauty of the world. Default counter argument is silly like “he created picturesque things to torture British”. Maybe you can state that ethics and aesthetics are different things, but that doesn’t feel right too
I love this guy's vocabulary and freedom of thought. The way his choice of words match up with his ideas and how simply he can explain concepts makes it clear he doesn't just say things he doesn't really understand just to sound smart. Seems like a very intellectually honest guy as well. Definitely gonna check out his channel.
One of my favorite comments was on a 20 hour video someone said they were just going to watch one more video before bed.😂 Now I wouldn't do a 20 hour video before bed but honestly I might watch this one.
Is it weird to admit that these Cosmic x Majesty videos are a sort of comfort video for me? While I'm sure Alex enjoys talking to his other guests, his conversations with Joe feel much closer to a friend banter as opposed to a debate or an interview. There's an aspect of informality here that I really appreciate.
I think the argument from the scale of the universe is typically a response to the fine tuning argument. Since clearly the majority of the observable universe is hostile to life as we know it, not fine tuned to support it.
There could have at least been a single galaxy, our own galaxy, teeming with intelligent lifeforms like in Star Wars and Star Trek. We don't even get that.
Yes I was surprised they didn’t consider this. This was precisely the way famous atheist Hitchens always used it. It’s a counter to thinking the universe is created for us or with us in mind .
The scale of the universe argument is certainly a real narcissistic one. God created the universe for His glory, not so we can go live in every part of it.
@@christsavesreadromans1096 We can't venture outside of our own solar system, let alone explore the rest if the galaxy, LET ALONE the rest of the universe. I don't see how it is "narcissistic" to want to be able to do more than we can do that way.
There’s only one TINY little problem with what you wrote above, Sir.☝🏼 There has never been, nor will there ever be, even the SLIGHTEST shred of evidence for the existence of the Godhead, that is, a Supreme Person, or Deity.🤓 It is high time for humanity to awaken from all INANE superstitions such as the belief in a Personal God who created the Universe, would you not agree, Slave? 😩
I think you're missing the real point of the "universe big" argument. The point is to get you to question whether your belief in a God who built a world for humans is based on a cognitive bias. Suppose you were isolated tribe of a couple thousand who didn't know about the rest of the world, and you have a whole belief system that depends on a God who created the world for your isolated tribe. When you are made aware of the rest of the world, suddenly it seems less plausible that everything was made for you. You gradually realize that you only thought it was for you because you didn't know about everyone else. Similarly, as people become more aware of the scale of the universe, of other potential worlds with life, of other belief systems about God, of the number of animals in the world, the idea that everything was for you and your community's personal conception of God becomes less and less plausible. I grew up in a Jewish community. This might be mixing some arguments together, bu their idea that there is a God who has a special relationship with the Jewish people is embraced by 0.0001% of human beings who all happen to be Jews. Of course you should question whether that's based on a cognitive bias.
I also think that when someone says that “God created the universe with us in mind”, and you look at the actual universe, it’s like seeing a parent creating a room for a baby to live in, and then making 99,9999% of the room unlivable in a way that if the baby wandered there, they’d die instantly. I’ve seen parents struggle to make a safe and beautiful room, but this is quite the level of incompetence. At some point we might have to wonder if the room is really designed for the baby, or if we accidentally wandered in his tool shed instead and we were actually not even supposed to be here.
A male gamete is like 0.006cm and is meant to scale up to something that is like 175cm. Alex's argument that current planetary beings may be meant to inhabit spaces at an interstellar or intergalactic scale is plausible. Although it is quite an egocentric counter-argument to the big universe argument, it does retain the unlikely possibility that the big universe is meant for humanity.
Okay, but what do you mean by "arguments" and "for" and "atheism" and "tier list?." And it better not have anything to do with drugs or else I'm out of here
Okay but I have a deep philosophical question for you, if your name is capturing Christianity and your worldview is against taking captives, then how do you reconcile the inherent contradiction in your name?
@@billwalton4571 why would Jesus choose disciples who *have* seen him to go forth and spread his gospel, rather than electing to moreso influence people who *haven’t* seen him?
@@JimBobJoeB0b cuz the apostles were specifically trained and taught by him specifically for this mission. cuz they were witnesses of his power, cuz they werent holy people at the beginning. if im not mistaken one of them was even a thief. and they all went thru drastic changes of behavior under him. they were also the first leaders of the church and people at the time followed them cuz they knew they met Jesus personally. tons of reasons why he chose them
Pretty awful argument, because just something is hidden to the senses doesn't mean the effects of the things cannot be felt. Like you can see smoke and ascertain a fire exists despite not seeing it, feel wind and know it exists despite not seeing it, suffer radiation poisoning and know radiation exists without seeing it.
The Problem of Evil is not an argument for Atheism, only an argument against specific religions that promote an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent deity (usually monotheistic religions). It cannot be used against Hinduism or Buddhism for example, and surely any argument that cannot address the 3rd and 4th most popular religions in the world cannot be considered a good argument for Atheism. Perhaps it could possibly be ranked as an S tier argument against Christianity, Islam, and similar (debatable), but as an argument for Atheism I don't understand how it could possibly be ranked S. I would put it in D, if I was being generous.
I think you're being a bit contrarian. Pretty much everything in this video is based on a monotheistic god. Of the 5 major religions in the world, three have a very omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient god, i dont really understand hinduism but im pretty sure it has a bunch of gods, and buddism doesn't have any god(s). Obviously no argument is going to work against all 5, especially not every single other religion out there. The purpose of the problem of evil is clear, and for that purpose it is s tier. not much else to say.
its strange to me when people claim if god revealed himself, it would abolish free will. The original story of satan proclaims he was a whole angel, who knew god, was 2nd to god, was as close to god as you can get. and still chose to go against god. So if god revealed itself, the true sinners, those truly evil, will continue to be evil despite seeing god. the people who truly "just want to sin" will. and those who were non resistant non believers would be saved. simple.
There's also the option of knowing God exists but simply finding him unworthy of worship/obedience. Not out of a desire to 'sin' or be evil, but just like a disappointed child rejecting the authority of their parent.
Exactly, God supposedly showed himself to a bunch of different people, people who are revered by Christians. "If God showed himself to us it would limit our free will" implies that the freedom of Paul, Abraham, Job etc. was limited, which I've never seen anyone argue.
Not only did Judas Iscariot witness the power of Jesus, but was granted miraculous powers of god through Jesus (Luke 9:1-6), and yet he still had free will, choosing to betray Jesus.
@@jelledesmet7086 All the ancient philosophers who thought more deeply asserted this was an impossibility -- to not one the one you are a part of and who made you. Think deeper. You cannot not want that which to you belong.
Do you mean physically see God? Because there are stories in the Bible of God literally appearing to and communicating with human beings, not to mention Jesus Christ being God in the form of a man Do you mean just observing God? Because honestly seeking God and not finding it is the basis for what is generally considered an A- or S-tier atheist argument in Divine Hiddenness Either way you meant it I don’t see what is unreasonable about expecting God to manifestly exist in any way that is actually detectable beyond feelings one gets sitting listening to worship songs or visions they get when on LSD
I actually cant believe this came out the exact microsecond that i finished rewatching the arguments for god video. LIKE THE EXACT SECOND I FINISHED IT THIS JUST POPPED UP. God is real. Final verdict
The stone paradox should be way higher up. They said that the argument doesn't make much sense because it's okay for god to not be able to do something impossible, because it just can't be done. And that's the exact point of the argument, because god is supposedly omnipotent, which means all-powerful. If you restrict god's abilities to only what's possible, what's your definition of possible? Why shouldn't a triangle with 4 sides be creatable? Because geometry and math says so. But isn't god supposed to transcend all that? If you restrict god's power to only what math and science allows, then the whole god argument crumbles since it will inevitably turn out that this so called God can't be anything other than a random Joe because anything else would be impossible. And that is certainly not omnipotent.
Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!...
After being close enough to God that the pain and suffering I went through was worse than when I was without God that I prayed to God to distance himself because I couldn’t handle his holiness I am thoroughly convinced that divine hiddenness is a blessing not only for the unbeliever but to the believer, everyone claims they want to be close to God but his holiness is so bright and pure I don’t think they realize what they’re asking. “But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Luke 12:48 “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
@@japexican007 you prayed to God to distance himself. so.. presumably, EVERYONE in heaven will suffer just by being near god. so it's suffering in heaven and suffering in hell. I give you that it solves problem of evil.. it's just god being everywhere,causing unnecessary suffering. but now you have problem of good. how is anything good possible,when you have omnipresent god that causes suffering by proxy. maybe god is not omni in any way,it was just one of his lies,to threaten believers into submission. meh.
Hey Alex I know you likely won’t see this, however just wanted to say thank you for bringing rise to my atheism I used to be a bit unconfident in my belief or atleast didn’t know how to argue it, But your arguments as well as some others make me feel more heard and understood than my family, I genuinely want to thank you for your content and hope you have a “blessed” day lol, much love and appreciation from the Bible Belt of Florida
You said you weren’t going to address arguments against any particular religion, like Christianity, but I feel like many of these arguments are fundamentally addressing the claims of Abrahamic religion, and particularly Christianity. And fair enough, I suppose, because western philosophy has been conversant with Judeo/Christian/Islamic faiths for centuries. But many of these issues (like the problem of evil and divine hiddenness) almost don’t exist in Vedanta, Buddhist, and Jain philosophy because of the particular metaphysical claims they make. It seems to me that many of the arguments for atheism presented here begin to look quite different when approached from a global perspective.
Yup, the arguments are rife with assumptions about God that come mostly from the Abrahamic faiths. Such as the ideas of perfection, benevolence, omnipresence, and omniscience.
@@im_aleey Indeed. But even if you accept those notions, just adding the ideas of reincarnation and karma completely change what almost all of these arguments look like. What so speak of the concept of cyclical time and the well accepted idea of multiverses in eastern philosophy. I mean, the problem of evil just doesn't have the same bite if you accept that the soul is eternal and subject to the reactions of karma. There are consequences for almost all the other arguments in this video based on those two ideas alone.
@@im_aleeywhich is also why the religious confusion argument is so bad: it's equivocating the word "God" with any very powerful, supernatural being, when really what we want to know is whether a necessary, all powerful, all good God exists.
The idea that God has to allow 'evil' (I much prefer to say "suffering", or "badness": to me, "evil" invokes the supernatural) so that there can be such things as bravery reminds me of the idea that God had to condemn us to being born with Original Sin so that He could give us the gift of salvation. It's like a parent's saying to a child "I had to give you a bloody nose so I could 'kiss it and make it better'."
@@scottm4975it’s almost as if you wouldn’t be able know his plan, yet can still make objective statements about the inherent suffering needed for us to evolve. Do you believe slavery is immoral, why or why not, and what passage in the Bible do you use to justify your opinion? My main point being, you already hold beliefs about morality that cannot be formed by simply reading the Bible, you pick and choose what passages to follow.
Watched the entire thing and thoroughly enjoyed it, what a fantastic guest and conversation! Would absolutely love to see him on again to discuss more of the arguments he references.
Eh, he fell into the usual trap people arguing against the existence of God set for themselves. During the problem of evil, he had that fairly clever argument to get away from having to establish objective morality by saying he was only talking about suffering. The problem is, he's still saying suffering is bad and it is good to avoid suffering. But why? He then fell into hyperbole with "There are countless theories that establish objective morality without God." Really? Countless? Interestingly, applying the same standard applied later in the video, wouldn't the existence of numerous, sometimes contradicting theories of objective morality without God be evidence that a true theory likely doesn't exist?
@@angusmcculloch6653 He's literally about as close to a true agnostic as you can get (he regulairly says his credance for theism is somewhere between 40 and 60 percent). He's also a moral realist (believes in objective morality) however Alex (as I think is mentioned in this video) is an emotivist; so I think the reason he went the problem of suffering route is that while the two of them disagree on the existence of objective evil, they both disagree suffering is deeply unfavorable. As to grounding morality outside of God, within acedemic philosophy this is just as much a goal for the theist as it is the atheist as very few serious philosophers (again including theists) find divine command theory compelling (probably mostly due to the Euthyphro Dilemma). Moral epistomology is a masive subject (as eluded to by MoR when he said there are "countless arguments") and there's alot of arguements that attempt to ground or explain the existence of objective morality without God (MoR has a video that is like 2 hours long that introduces the biggest arguement in the field). I assure you he isn't exaggerating here, this is just a massive can of worms that would quickly fall well beyond the scope of this particular discussion. All things considered, Magesty of Reason is playing extremely fair and he doesn't believe in subjective morality as you seem to think he does. And again, hes literally as much a theist as he is an atheist so hes not favoring any atheist arguements because he favors their conclusion, but rather because he genuinely finds them convincing and well founded.
@@Isaac_L.. Thank you for this detailed, well-thought out response. I don't know that I ever said MoR *is* an atheist, because I didn't know. That's why I worded it as "people arguing against the existence of God" instead of "other atheists," because he was presenting arguments against the existence of God and fell into the same trap others do. I can see where that wording may have been too subtle and led to misunderstanding, so I should say I wasn't calling him *an atheist* and tried to phrase my post so that I didn't call him an atheist. Maybe I'm just being pedantic, but "countless" is an exaggeration. I would prefer "a lot", but I'll concede it's a podcast format, not a paper presentation. However, the main criticism still stands that he deflects defending objective morality, but suffering is bad. Why? That's not to say he personally believes it, but it's a trap that awaits anyone trying to make that argument and he walked into it as well. And, again, the multitude of conflicting theories of objective morality should be strong evidence that no true objective morality exists. That is simply using a same argument against theism--if God is real, there should not be multiple, conflicting accounts. That is a connection I wish they had made, as that makes for an interesting discussion. Thank you again for your serious and well-reasoned response.
@angusmcculloch6653 No problem. I'm glad I was able to help. I'm assuming that he would be more than happy to argue that suffering is bad in one way or another under either a subjective or objective moral framework. One way I suspect he would defend it is by using the psychophysiological response to suffering and stress widely observed across the animal kingdom. Not only did God create an environment/system that induces immense amounts of unnecessary suffering, but he placed creatures in that system that consistently feel immense negative emotion, active panic, and displeasure in proportion to that suffering. If God was all loving and for some reason or another (usually free will if you're a theist) it's essential for suffering to exist, it seems like God would have created the vast majority of creatures to have a very high psychological tolerance to suffering. In other words, a big part of the problem of suffering is the conscious response to suffering. If God was going to make a world with so much suffering, you would think that he would make creatures that broadly have a psychological indifference to suffering as opposed to what we widely observe. I'm sure that MoR would put it more eloquently than that but I'd be willing to bet that he would use an argument along those lines to defend that particular point. As to your other point, I don't think it follows that the existence of contradictory theories about either the content or grounding of morality (I'm not entirely sure which you were referring to here but it doesn't really matter) is good evidence against the existence of objective morality in general. Another big debate within philosophy is pertains to theories of time (externalism vs presentism), but clearly time demonstrably exists. So yeah, I don't think you can use the debate surrounding (especially the grounding of) morality as evidence that it doesn't exist. (Note: to be clear I'm not arguing for moral realism, as I've yet to be convinced by arguments for it; but this is something that's an active area of interest for me since my views deviate heavily from the majority in the field here) As to your other point about moral epistemology and God, I completely agree that it's a significant (and fascinating) problem for theism. If God exists, even if he isn't the source for morality, given omniscience he would know what is morally ideal. Therefore, you'd expect that one could learn about the nature and contents of morality through communion with God yet those who claim to do so routinely make moral claims that are at odds with others that also claim to commune with God (oftentimes these disagreements persist within, not just between, religions). That said, while this is a great piece of evidence against the moral argument or the truth of some individual religions, I don't think it's nearly as strong of evidence against theism in general as the problems of evil or hiddenness or even religious confusion are.
@@Isaac_L.. apolgies that it's taken me a few days to respond. 1. You are probably right that this how he would try to respond to suffering is bad, but the response still assumes someone needs to justify suffering's existence. Why, though? It's what's called in philosophy a vicious infinite regress. Why is suffering bad? Because it hurts. Why is pain bad? Because it's unpleasant. Why is unpleasantness bad? Here you end either in tautology: "Unpleasantness is bad, because it is no pleasing" or the vicious infinite regress continues (i.e. the truth of one statement depends on the truth of the previous statement and we never reach a foundational true statement). Either way, the argument simply doesn't hold. 2. I would agree, but people who argue against the existence of God have to apply this across the board. Either confusion where one might expect unanimity is evidence of a thing's nonexistence or it's not.
Whenever Alex and Joe have a conversation, they seem to cover every box and are so easy to understand. It's so beneficial for anyone new to these arguments.
Seriously though. One of the best arguments against God is that He needs humans to make arguments for His existence. I think that's a subset of divine hiddenness though.
@@therongjr I was thinking more along the lines, if a triomni god exists, he wouldn’t allow people like D’Souza, Craig, Powell, Hamm, Winger, and so many others, speak for him. D’Souza’s recent performance surely deconverted as many Christians as Hitchens ever did.
Arguments for atheism: Prove theism. Until you do it’s not real by default. Anything else is just debunking nonsense. It’s not an argument it’s just pointing out why the claim being made, whatever the point or argument is, is not sufficient to prove theism to any reasonable evidentiary standard.
actually that's a very bad argument whenever a theist would argue that a scientific theory is wrong (theory of evolution for example), then god... that's not working at all so the reverse doesn't work either: the lack of proof or evidence for god doesn't make atheism stand and hold. science does though. science is the most reliable way to get knowledge. god isn't a scientific field of study, therefore science doesn't care about god, so do we.
2:08 Alex, with his immense vocabulary and amazing intellect could think of no better description of a tier list than "it's a big sort of box" 😂 Gotta love the man! Keep up the great content Alex!
Two of the smartest guys on RUclips. Thanks for the interview Alex. It would be awesome if you did an episode with Emerson Green, he’s amazingly intelligent too.
Used to be an atheist, but now I think god may exist, but it's insanity and the height if hubris to think you know ANYTHING about him or his desires. It's funny that since becoming agnostic I've actually become way more against religion. I think faith is fine but religion is evil
Alex makes a great point about how people in Iran or other non Christian countries could be said to be more “Christian” than Christians in the west are in action and heart. He’s right.
Someone made a response to his debate with Jonathan Mclatchie, where he made that geographical argument a couple of years ago, saying essentially the same thing
It's one of a fee things that Jordan Peterson actually gets right. If us western Christians actually acted like what we believe , the world could be a magnificent place for all. Though from my perspective we , and those we know do our part
@@SeanathanCreek I wish we focused more on the 4 gospels in the west. I see a lot of Old Testament teaching. Which is fine but I rarely hear readings from the gospels. We don’t focus enough on Jesus life and his teachings from his mouth as written in the 4 gospels.
@Dgujg Agreed as some don't notice that it is greek-romsn literature and Mark was thrown in the dumpster by Luke and Mathew which considered each other to be wrong. John considered all to be totally wrong and made up his own story.
Unfortunately I don't have 2.5h time right now and the list in itself is actually a bit absurd. There's only one argument that's enough: religious nonsense is not convincing enough. (Just dropping a like and comment, possibly listening this later on, when I have time.)
@14:07 - Alex's interpretation of "survival of the fittest" as "the death and destruction of the weak" is a simplistic and misleading view of natural selection. The phrase "survival of the fittest," originally coined by Herbert Spencer and later used by Charles Darwin, does not imply a brutal elimination of the weak but rather the differential survival and reproduction of organisms based on their traits. Firstly, the notion that natural selection "relies upon the death and destruction of the weak" is a misunderstanding. Natural selection operates through the differential reproductive success of individuals. This means that those individuals who possess advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to the next generation. It does not necessitate the active destruction of the weak but rather a greater likelihood of survival and reproduction for those better adapted to their environment. Secondly, the idea of "survival of the fittest" can be seen as a tautology if interpreted as "survival of those who survive." However, this interpretation misses the key aspect of fitness in an evolutionary context. Fitness refers to an organism's reproductive success and its contribution to the gene pool of the next generation. It is about how well an organism's traits enable it to thrive in its environment, reproduce, and pass on its genes. Additionally, Alex seems to misunderstand the core argument of Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene." (which is odd, as Dawkins has been a guest...I wonder if Alex has read it?) Dawkins emphasizes that the primary unit of selection is the gene, not the individual organism. Genes that are successful in promoting their own replication are those that persist over generations. This perspective shifts the focus from individual organisms to the genetic level, highlighting that traits beneficial to gene replication are those selected for over time.
If only the fit survive, the weak must die. You mention “differential survival”, this is what he is talking about. The fit survive, the weak don’t. I don’t think your objections are relevant, “the destruction of the weak” logically follows from “the survival of the fittest” (provided that you assume it means survival of ONLY the fittest, which in this context it does), in the same way that “only those who get 50% on the exam will pass the topic” means that “those who get LESS than 50% on the exam will fail the topic”
@@LukeNAndo No, that isn't correct, the premise that "only the fit survive" is simply not true. Differential survival implies that some individuals are _more likely_ to survive and reproduce than others, but this does not mean that all "weak" individuals _must die_ for evolution to occur. Moreover, it's crucial to understand that in terms of evolution, the primary unit of selection is the gene, not the individual. All individuals ultimately die; there is no survival for them. The only entities that truly survive are genes. Natural selection is about the relative reproductive success of genes, not a binary outcome of survival versus destruction of individuals. Couple this with the fact that ther are many "weak" genes that persist in populations either because they are linked to other advantageous traits or because the environment is not exerting strong selective pressure against them. The notion that natural selection necessitates the destruction of all weak individuals, or "weak" genes oversimplifies the complexity of evolutionary processes. It's about the _relative success_ and proliferation of genes, and plenty of "weak" genes continue to exist within the gene pool. Furthermore, the notions of "weakness" and "fitness" are contextual to an environment that itself is in flux. The earliest ancestors of eutherian mammals were small, rat-like creatures. Pre-KT impact, these ancestors would not have been considered the "fittest" or "best adapted" compared to the dominant dinosaurs. Yet, the massive environmental changes caused by the KT impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and allowed these small mammals to thrive and evolve into the diverse array of placental mammals we see today, including humans.
For the religious confusion segment: It would cost God literally nothing to completely resolve ALL doctrinal dispites to every person, no matter how small. He is supposedly infinitely powerful. Better than resolving them all when asked, he could do it pre-emptively. Instead, he used fallible men to write a consfusing mess of a book in languages that would die shortly after with no way to verify any of its claims.
@@christsavesreadromans1096you just lied it’s not obvious which religion is true because none of them have evidence that’s why it’s called a belief and not a science because science is fact belief is ideal
@christsavesreadromans1096 no matter which religion you say here, at least 2/3rds of all people are going to disagree with you, and that's without even going into denominations and specifics.
@@Luciferthekingofpurgitory No, its very obvious which religion is the correct one. The Catholic faith has more miracles than any other faith combined. People just don't like the rules so they'd rather be a Buddhist or atheist, or anything that sounds nice and frees one from the expectation of a future judgement.
1:55:00 I think that islamic fellow you have had a debate with( I know him for years but forgot the name ) when he was telling you that p and q are not necessarily derived from one another I think he could use this type of an example if he was a better prepared to debate and not to pontificate :)
I can't help thinking of the kid who wrote in a paper for school that the Ancient Egyptians built pyramids and went on to explain that a pyramid is "a triangular cube".
Theists: God has to stay hidden, he can't be obvious to us or it would take away our free will Also Theists: Look at the trees! _Obviously_ God has to exist!
To believe in his existence he gave you reasons but he isn't visible to you all the time cuz he doesn't want to restrict your freedom I mean imagine your seeing your mother staring at you all the time since you were born you would've done nothing from what you did right?
@@nam-r1f I still know my mother exists. I have seen her. She didn't vanish after I was born and expect me to discover her existence through obscure evidence that is more reasonably explained by other things. If one believes God exists with His attributes, then God _is_ watching you all the time, and a believer thinks this: how is their freedom not restricted?
@@Rogstin first of all he didn't vanish, read more about Jesus and you determine yourself ,secondly who said that the universe and nature works supernaturally by God? Nowhere in the Bible says that not even when performing miracles beacuse i know he was using the nature he created to perform them, there's nothing wrong with that ,also God gave you reason to how everything is working so you can learn from it to develop your mind and brain and do things yourself , so God created universe and nature and added laws to how its working now, Fully understanding how a machine works doesnt make it have no creator
@@Rogstin if you know your mom is watching you all the time is different from seeing her watching you all the time ,also imagine a starfish trying to understand a human, thats a smaller example for how we are trying to understand God
@@nam-r1fdid the freedom of Joan of Arc get restricted? Did the freedom of Moses get restricted. It definitely wasn’t restricted for Adam and Eve and they watched God Create them. What exactly are you trying to argue if not an inconsistent point?
Divine hiddenness is checkmate imo, maybe not in disproving Gods existence, but certainly in proving that the creator of the universe doesn’t care about having a genuine relationship with me. The more philosophical arguments for or against Gods existence miss the point imo. If you resort to philosophical arguments to prove you have a girlfriend instead of just, idk, having her just show up, people are going to doubt the existence of said girlfriend, no matter how well reasoned your arguments are
From a logical standpoint, there is no reason that a god must be omni- anything. Therefore, the PoE is an S-tier argument against any religion (like Christianity) that requires an omni- god, but is D-tier (C-tier at best) against deism/theism in general.
A non-omni god is just a very very strong human/creature, might as well be an alien with force powers and nothing more, by a certain point of view, such a creature has very few reasons to be called god and expecially there would be no reason to worship him.
@@TonyLambregts Because the term was not invented for the abrahamic god, look at the god of ovids creation myth, he is unknown and powerful but not omni in any way. Still he is the cause of everything but chaos and his kind(the other gods) in this myth
I disagree, as long as we're talking about creationism, because a creator of the universe logically should be omnipotent in regards to its creation, because it's necessarily all-powerful. Maybe you could argue that its control is somehow overtaken by development, or something, but it just seems clunky and certainly you would struggle to find any kind of theist that approaches the problem of evil this way.
@@luphoria Why should a creator of the universe be omnipotent? There is no logical reason why a being that can create a universe must be omnipotent. Being able to create a universe is pittance in comparison to what an omnipotent being can do. I can create a metal spring, but that doesn't mean I can control every individual atom in that spring.
Just watched the whole thing basically in one sitting. Would love to see more collabs like this with Joe, be they about atheist arguments, theist arguments or any other topic in philosophy!
Check out Joe’s channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCvWRKmcplBTYQS49AVGsLgw
thanks for this, have you considered debating another muslim apologist? i know last time went horribly but i would love to see a discussion/debate between you and Abdallah Al Andalusi for example
nah, he can't name 5 things without a creator with proof, and when he tries he will simply name things with a creator. Whereas I can name billions of things and show proof that do have a creator.
There is in built anesthesia. I wish nothing ever died though. we mammals especially have in built anesthesia particularly powerful when on the brink of death from blood loss and exhaustion the most common death for prey animals. I’d argue why did we need to evolve that at all? It only happens when you’ve cross the threshold of death anyway. Like without modern medicine at the point they kick in death is certain.
Not getting molested by priests should be high up the list!
Alex, I'd be curious about your take on the research and hypothesis of Dr. Donald Hoffman.
That we experience reality as a construct of space-time, which he says explains the difficulty in scientifically quantifying experience and consciousness as they exist outside that construct. I would say he would even make a great guest.
The S-rank is the highest grade in the Japanese school system; it comes from "shū" ("excellent", maybe?) and it is normally represented in English as "superb". It became popular in the West via scoring systems on Japanese arcade games, e.g. it's the highest performance you can get on Dance Dance Revolution
I like the ironic God tier.
S STANDS FOR SPITFIRE
Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!...
@@HENTAl69Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!..
And the result of scoring 5-0 or more in the Inazuma Eleven games' competition routes... You probably have no idea what that means, do you? Never mind.
I love the dynamic of a laid back Brit and a high energy American in a deep philosophical discussion.
on the nose lmao !
I enjoy watching Alex's slight code switching to match the energy.
We're not laid back we're disappointed.
Depressed you mean? @@moriahgamesdev
With the greatest compliment possible, I was thinking the American had that Golden Retriever energy. Watching at 1.25 speed, he seemed to be hopped up on gallons of Red Bull. But seriously, no shade whatsoever. Clearly a brilliant person with well-formed reasoning and critical thinking.
This was a fun one. More of this, please! Also, it's nice to see you laugh/smile more often, Alex.
please stop arguing guys
Why
LMAOO
NEVER!!
Nah, brain plagues from the desert ought to be treated.
My dads fighting; it really takes me back to childhood.
That last video is one of my favorites you’ve ever made. Really it’s one of my favorite videos on the topic of religion as a whole. I didn’t know if this sequel was going to happen, so the surprise of it is amazing
I just saw the title and got so excited. Alex's old video with Joe Schmid on this is one of my favorites on the entire channel. Can't wait to watch!
My favorite argument is to say: even if theism were true, one could never be justified in *believing* it is true. For whatever evidence or experience you might find convincing, you can never be sure that your experience *doesn't* actually have a natural cause.
Imagine some guy appears in your room and claims to be god. Do you believe him? Why should you? How do you know he's not an advanced alien pretending to be a god? From your human perspective, you'd have no way to tell the difference.
The implied consequences of theistic claims make absolute questions like "does God exist" or "did Jesus really rise from the dead" less useful than relative ones like "how can I know what God demands of me" or "is Jesus the only way to salvation." Sure, a man might have done extraordinary things about 2,000 years ago. If that man were the ultimate messenger of the Almighty, why are we only learning about His life through fragmentary texts rather than direct experience? Why can we safely discount anyone who claims to fulfill His destiny as most likely delusional?
In a similar vein I’ve thought about how perception depends on transduction (such as photons to nerve impulses), and how we verify the external stimuli exists versus a delusion created by the brain (such as phantom limb syndrome). If “feeling god’s presence” (such as through prayer) was actually the transduction of some spiritual stimuli, how would we differentiate it from talking to ourselves? In short, we can’t. This realization was the “final straw” for me to become an atheist.
thats interesting but to me its not so much that you could never have good reason to believe it its more that you wouldnt have good reason to claim you KNOW God exists with total certainty which the religious often do
@S.D.323 To believe a proposition is to be *convinced* that it is true. If we can argue that theistic belief is unjustified, then it would follow that dogmatic claims to knowledge are unjustified too.
I honestly don't know what it would take to convince me that a god exists. No matter how spectacular the evidence, I couldn't rule out all naturalistic possibilities. What if there's an explanation in 10-dimensional physics? Unless you know *everything* about the natural universe, you can't be sure that a phenomenon *doesn't* have a natural cause. Therefore seeing something super-magical and crazy looking still wouldn't be evidence for anything supernatural.
@@S.D.323 it’s much worse than not achieving certainty. There’s no grounds for granting more than some minimal credence. All one would have is some perception parsimony should have one assume it’s a hallucination as the default.
At 1:38 or so they're talking about morality and emotions. I think I fit the category of people Alex thinks doesn't exist. I hold the belief that factory farming has moral issues. And yet in order to provide for my family, the path I've happened to land on has me working logistics on tens of millions of kilos of meat per year.
I agree with the rational arguments against it, by my emotional motivations to my family take over and I do my job regardless of the moral position it puts me in. I need to numb myself to it emotionally to function.
Here's my personal hypothesis, it does need further evidence and I am confident it can be found. "To not believe in a God, is impossible for one by birth and upbringing taught Theism." I'm afraid this might be true:)
On the stone paradox: Alex said omnipotence is the ability to do what's possible. As if what's possible exists outside of and independent of God. Isn't God the maker or originator of the possible and impossible? Is God then bound by what he made impossible or does this impossibility exist independently of him?
It works two ways. If God can lift that rock then it's be possible by definition.
The only way to be sure is to ask God for a demonstration.
Moreover most christians and pastors like Turek on WLC don't put any restrictions on omnipotence whatsoever, so it's more than fair to use the same rules
I think God could be omnipotent in it's own realm but not in the universe. If the universe is fine-tuned, there can be no physical interference at all. It's constrained by it's own Laws and Constants.
@@briansmith3791
You'd rather invent a new realm than admit the God claim is inconsistent.
I feel like material causality is really weak and falls apart in so many ways, I kinda agree that the questions around evil are the most difficult to attempt to answer.
kinda disappointed determinism didn’t even make the list. my boy determinism is underrated af
Totally agree!
Determinism and 'free will' don't happily co-exist...
Without 'free will', Christianity falls apart.....
I find 'free will' a real mind f**k , when I think what 'free will' could possibly 'look' like.....every thought would have to be a 'causeless cause', a 'thought' would have to think itself into existence, with no prior cause......
'determinism' is my 'go to' in religious discussions....
Determinism lost all credibility when we discovered the quantum realm
@@JonHarrington9075 There's a whole influential part of the protestant movement that is based around double predestination - which would be completely consistent with a deterministic world. Look up Calvinism.
@@Messianic-Gentile causality didn’t, and creates the exact same problem for free will.
Nor does determinism being violated even help because probabilistic interactions still create no space for free will regardless.
@@Emperorhirohito19272 the mind acts before physical causality. Before the paint goes on the canvas, the painting exists as an idea.
If only politicians could speak so respectfully to eachother when they disagree.
I think the “stone paradox” argument belongs in the E Tier, but something that neither of you touched on is the fact that God’s omnipotence is a feature meant to explain how a seemingly impossible task was completed. Without omnipotence, the things God is credited with look somewhat similar to a squared triangle. So much so, that even in cosmological arguments God ends up being the one thing in existence that doesn’t follow the rules of the arguments.
One wrinkle to the E-tier rock paradox is that we regular humans _can_ make things that we can't lift. So there is some way in which it isn't analogous to drawing a four-sided triangle -- drawing a four-sided triangle is impossible for everyone by its very nature, but making a too-heavy rock is only impossible for God. A satisfying understanding takes at least _a little_ more thought about what's going on.
The rebuttal to that is quite a simple one though. You never actually created anything, as in “creatio ex nihilo”, you simply rearranged matter.
But of course we can just rephrase the question to “Can G-d rearrange matter in such a way that he cannot lift it?”
That's not even a wrinkle, and it's completely contingent on the phrasing of the question.
You can resolve it by just changing the verbiage. "Can God create an unliftable rock?" That applies equally well to humans. It can also account for the triangle example when we see there is always going to be a single premise (often unstated) and a single question.
All triangles have 3 sides.
Can a triangle with more than 3 sides be drawn?
All rocks are liftable.
Can an unliftable rock be created?
All questions of this form are asking the exact same thing: can an impossible thing be done?
*_Is_*_ making a too-heavy rock impossible for god?_
Regular humans can figure out how to lift something that is too heavy by applying mathematics on the amount of force required to lift something too heavy for an average human to lift. A crane with a pulley becomes a force multiplier to enable a person to lift loads that would usually be too heavy for one person to lift.
A four sided triangle or a married bachelor isn't a matter of capability, it is a logical impossibility. Much like asking for a black coffee with cream. The moment you add cream or oat milk to a coffee, it is no longer black. In the Bible, God cannot change, lie, be tempted, tempt others, deny himself, or erase himself out of existence. Those are ontological impossibilities, and just because God's personality doesn't allow him to do it, it doesn't mean he doesn't have the omnipotence to do them.
@@anthonydesimone502 _"You can resolve it by just changing the verbiage."_
Maybe. I'm not sure changing the verbiage gets you the same claim. As I see it, it's not about the liftability of rocks, per se, but the relationship between one's own powers and limits. The references to one's self seem to be central. So I'd think it's appropriate to keep the verbiage but resolve it by realizing that there's nothing troubling for God in this being impossible for God. It was never a requirement that God could; it's just a neat bit of trivia that he can't.
Maybe the structure's a bit different, but like your reading we still involve the question "Can an impossible thing be done?" and our answer, just like on your reading, should always be no.
THIS WAS VERY INTERESTING STUFF. THANK YOU BOTH
I guess I don't understand "The Modal Argument from Evil" correctly because what I understood sounded more like a F tier argument than any other, haha. I personally find the "Universe Big" argument much more compelling. It's interesting to realize than different arguments are hitting us differently. I'd love to know what a Theist would find more convincing.
Im an atheist and all, but let’s be honest, there is no such a thing as an argument for atheism or theism . Theism ones are just logical biases and mistakes (cosmological argument and “but the world is too perfect” or “but life and the universe had such a small probability of being” make me cringe all the time), but atheist ones are just incomplete. God has a different definition in every religion and is improperly defined even within the same religion . It impossible to prove the non existence of a constantly changing to convenience concept.
The only real argument for atheism is that if you believe in something you must have a specific reason to believe in that, and if you want me to believe in that idea, you don’t have to prove it necessarily, but at lesta explain why I should. And since as I said no argument for god has the minimum sense, the default and most logical thing should be atheism
But does that say that logic becomes the all powerful being? When you say atheism or theism must meet the standard of human logical premises in order to be valid, doesn't that say our logic IS the Divine?
A bit reductionist to say that all theist arguments are logical biases.
Unless the question that has plagued humanity for 2000 years just needed to be thought about by RUclips user “idk imagine a cool name” in 2024 and it is all solved!!
So you cringe at the cosmological argument, yet I get the feeling you don’t have a reasonable explanation for it.
@@alexanderh2345 the reasonable answer is that when you talk about things that by definition are outside of the comprehension of humans like god or the beginning of time, the only reasonable answer is unreasonable
@@clearancecustoms that’s the exact reason I believe god arguments (theist and non) are all fluff
Why does he look like (tobey Maguire) spiderman.
1:01:42 If God created logic, it seems that something being logically impossible makes little sense. So everything possible seems to make God subservient to logic.
As a big video game nerd, I enjoyed the Wii conversation :P
You made me realise that the stone paradox argument actually has a very big implication in regards to god, it shows that god cannot be the ultimate force in existence because logical contradictions restrain him. It shows that either god is illogical or he is not the greatest force in existence, both of them massively downgrading his importance. It's seems that the stone paradox fails it's original mission of disproving god but if you dig deeper there is still value in it.
it disproves Omni and shows it is utterly stupid
the stone paradox could be solved simply by saying god is as powerful as he wants to be. He could create a rock so heavy he could not lift theoretically (that if he was in the same state he was in now and lifted it, he could not), but once he actually tried to lift it he could become more powerful. Its also important that not being not able to do something doesn't mean your less powerful. Basically all power that exists in a moment is gods, but he himself can go above that power or add to the total potency of the world.
also theres the whole thing that god is not physical. If he became physical then he would be limited, as he was in jesus. Timeless, spaceless in that he didn't need them to exist.
By strict logic he made, only we have to abide by it, he doesn't because he exists out of the boundaries he created in the first place.
I kinda view universe big as an opposite effect. Seeing that out of the entire universe, only we here on Earth have known relationships with God makes me feel special
I think the necessity of god is not a property of God but a property of creation. What I mean is that him being “necessary” is just to say that he is that which maintains the existence of creation, and so things cannot remain in existence without him, in the same way a child cannot exist without parents. Now the way in which this is distinct from being logically necessary like the “all bachelors are unmarried” thing is that it is not logically necessary that your specific parents were your progenitors, just that some parents were. We can (theoretically) conceive of a world where you had different parents. In the same way we can conceive that something that isn’t “God” caused the universe (or that the universe didn’t have a cause). But in our particular universe, your particular parents were causally necessary to produce you, God is particularly necessary for the universe to keep existing.
I remember atheism meaning a lot to me in my 20’s. Now in my mid 30’s, i don’t care as much but I am very anti a certain “praise be onto” religion.
I quite liked the induction based argument, I would’ve put it as high as he wanted to put it. I like how it contrasts against arguments for God using induction in the sense of how beautiful everything is, you can come at it from a counter logical perspective, I make doors for a living
I find the "evil" arguments to be some of the least convincing to me. It just assumes a creator has to be "good" in the first place and it also assumes that it would view "good" the same way we do. At most they just disprove an all loving/benevolent god but it doesnt do much at dismantling the possible existence of a creator or creators of the universe. While it was said this was supposed to he an argument against all religions it felt much more tuned to fit arguments against Christianity.
Isn't the best argument a lack of evidence
My argument is I don’t care for heaven or hell or anything, as long as there is a continuation of my consciousness, I’m fine with whatever horrors the hell might bring (not as if our life already one)
For me the problem of evil is the best argument in favor for religion. I personally would put it in F tier for atheism
Good job not elaborating. Is that why god feeds on death and suffering? Because evil is actually necessary and somehow good? Bullshit. You haven’t seen enough evil then.
Can i hear why you think this? For certain religions i can see why this woukd help so I'm curious if that's your reason?
thats absurd
I suppose my reason is more personal than academic:
First of all, like pointed out briefly, it is about a God that is 'good' (defined by human life) and usually it is a God that is able to be described with human attributes (like wanting something, deciding something, thinking something, etc.. given the possibility of the opposite being the case. There would be no need for a God to want something if all that is, is through him. We think to predict the future or process the past, a God IS future and past, why would God need to think). Then yes, the problem of evil seems obvious. Here's what I believe:
The fundamental way of being is suffering. It is half way starving searching for food in panic, having no real shelter to sleep in peace. For some that is evolutionary history and some live that still this day. In a world like that there is almost infinite good because there is almost infinite redemption. The good is only redemption. In a world that would only have this sense of 'good' and no bad, life would not only be meaningless, you would probably be the one to make it worse, just so that something thrilling happens. I know I am not the first to bring up these points but to me they are so much more crucial than how they have been touched on in the video here!
So I guess where I break apart from the few 'the world is great, hippie-believers' is that I say that being at all in totality was always under tension between terror and relieve and the whole spectrum in between. And the miraculous peaceful and relatively safe lives so many people can live nowadays, is only good because at nature it would be terror.
God, for me personally is beyond our words so using them is bound to fail but if I would allow myself to do so regardless: God wouldn't prefer humans over birds or bacteria or meteors or atoms. What is up to you is either aiming down, or aiming up.
Why I see the problem of evil as in favor for religion (maybe I should have said faith instead) is because I just can't ignore how many times first: I got the shit that I deserved. and second: The people that overcome the horrors they are fighting being the heroes in my life.
@@adryancavar7515 I don't agree with you that life would be meaningless without suffering. There are about a million other things that give life meaning besides overcoming adversity. If that was the only thing that gave meaning to life, then most people would agree which you'll find isn't the case.
And even if you think that is what solely makes life meaningful, or interesting an all-powerful God would be capable of creating a universe where there is something other than suffering that inspires us and gives life meaning.
Even if you 'got the shit you deserved,' there are countless people in this world that get shit they unequivocally don't deserve, such as being enslaved from birth and dying young. And many if not the majority of people who 'overcome horrors,' would rather not go through them, then act as inspiration porn for people who don't have to actually overcome.
I don't think the problem of evil is a good argument for Atheism, but I ro think it works when talking about a specifically truly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent diety.
S is for shū meaning exemplary. It's widespread in Japan, not just from anime, I believe it's standard use in school grades, for a start.
I'm sure this has already been commented, but hey engagement.
This duo is chaotic, a super chill atheist and a super hyped agnostic hahah 💕
It's impossible to be just agnostic. Is he an agnostic atheist or agnostic theist?
@@charliehands5266 I dont remember exactly, cause he said that in an old video they did together, but, based on his views, I believe he is a agnostic atheist.
I enjoy these discussions immensely
Honestly, the kalam cosmological argument isn't REALLY an argument for god. It goes
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
While it might _sound_ pedantic to say that because it doesn't contain the word god, it isn't an argument for god. When you look at the argument, it doesn't even get close to what the vast majority of people call god. It isn't personal, it doesn't even _suggest_ a thinking agent. And even if you set that aside, while it might be a valid syllogism, it doesn't seem obvious to me at all that it is also sound.
Some people, like WLC, might have attempted to save it by adding to the syllogism, but usually they end up making it obviously not sound, or not valid, in an attempt to make it reference some variant of a personal/intelligent god.
I find it funny that out of all things that theists could use as an example for beauty that can only be the result of a creator are things like trees or sunsets and not literal conscious human beings
What's so funny is that it's true many of these questions were answered past times, even the Bible answers them.. but these doubts are all the same doubts Satan literally places within your mind, and the Bible shows that in Satan's character, there is a demonic hierarchy that is meant to keep us from believing. If we have faith, then these questions would have answers that we can grasp.. but if we remain skeptical forever, we won't see and we stick ourselves in a place where evidence won't matter necessarily.
I feel like the notion that evil is allowed by god to allow for higher order goods is ridiculous. Like hes god supposed to be all powerful and all good shouldnt god have been able to create a world where evil wasnot neccessary to achieve such high order goods?
Ir is that not within gods all powerful power?
Perhaps a more interesting version of the stone paradox would be, could an omnipotent and omniscient being create something whose actions it could not perdict?
7 tiers for 9 arguments seems like overkill, you may as well just rank them instead
I honestly believe the stone paradox is one of the single most important arguements for atheists. The reason being is that it limits the ability of God, he can no longer just break logic. Some theists really enjoy playing around with that, sometimes he is limited by logic, sometimes he isn't.
It's a good argument against the Christian God, but not the Jewish or Islamic one. Because in Christianity, it is shown that God can become limited (in human form, needing to drink, eat, go toilet, and can die), making it a logical impossibility, akin to the Omnipotence/Stone Paradox. But in the Jewish and Islamic, they assert that God is always infinite, and that he would not do stuff that is logically inconsistent, as these aren't actually "things" that can be realised, but the actual concept is contradictory.
On religious confusion, I think the strongest illustration of this is that Christians cannot even agree if Christ is in favor or opposed to the state executing people...
This was great.
For the material causality argument, I definitely see it the same way Alex does
Though this is not something i beleive but people do not like to entertain. What i find fascinating is there could be possibly a God where the more it creates the more its power and ability decreases as it puts it into its creation. But gets power back as thing cease to exist. So it sets out the rules but cant enforce them until everything has finished.
I think Divine Hiddeness is the only S-tire. POE & Religious Confusion are just aspects of DH. As a theist myself, DH is the only argument I could feel “stumped” by.
Amazing Show!
I personally find the modal argument indistinguishable from good fiction. Logically it's possible to conceive Batman defeats Superman. The whole issue is that the imagined possibility is not tethered to reality, therefore it's good fiction.
I think bad god argument is not very good because of beauty of the world. Default counter argument is silly like “he created picturesque things to torture British”. Maybe you can state that ethics and aesthetics are different things, but that doesn’t feel right too
Skim read the notification and thought it said “Arguments For Antisemitism Tier List” and got VERY confused 😂
He should do that.
@@annanysingh9188 not until he does the racial tier list.
That would be very interesting.
Where would current events and the Talmud rank?
It would be a good one aswell
(1) Bagels? Overrated
I love this guy's vocabulary and freedom of thought. The way his choice of words match up with his ideas and how simply he can explain concepts makes it clear he doesn't just say things he doesn't really understand just to sound smart. Seems like a very intellectually honest guy as well. Definitely gonna check out his channel.
Yeah, the opposite of Jordon Peterson in a way.
Oh man… a 2 and a half hour video notification at 1:30am 💀I’m cooked
One of my favorite comments was on a 20 hour video someone said they were just going to watch one more video before bed.😂 Now I wouldn't do a 20 hour video before bed but honestly I might watch this one.
Go to sleep. You will thank yourself in the future :)
Adelaide
no better time! so much uninterrupted time on ur hand
@@setharnaud7869 😱
i love it when alex’s videos are longer than the first hunger games movie
Thank you for this 😂
Is it weird to admit that these Cosmic x Majesty videos are a sort of comfort video for me? While I'm sure Alex enjoys talking to his other guests, his conversations with Joe feel much closer to a friend banter as opposed to a debate or an interview. There's an aspect of informality here that I really appreciate.
Me too that's for sure
Totally agreed. Their energy levels also match very well in my opinion, with Joe being upbeat and high paced and Alex more calm and collected.
no, it's not weird
I think the argument from the scale of the universe is typically a response to the fine tuning argument. Since clearly the majority of the observable universe is hostile to life as we know it, not fine tuned to support it.
I've actually never seen it used in that context, but that is an interesting point.
There could have at least been a single galaxy, our own galaxy, teeming with intelligent lifeforms like in Star Wars and Star Trek. We don't even get that.
Yes I was surprised they didn’t consider this. This was precisely the way famous atheist Hitchens always used it. It’s a counter to thinking the universe is created for us or with us in mind .
The scale of the universe argument is certainly a real narcissistic one. God created the universe for His glory, not so we can go live in every part of it.
@@christsavesreadromans1096
We can't venture outside of our own solar system, let alone explore the rest if the galaxy, LET ALONE the rest of the universe. I don't see how it is "narcissistic" to want to be able to do more than we can do that way.
"1 more video before bed"
the video: 12 hours long
"Just one more spoonful of ice cream"
*Pulls out a comically large spoon*
Literallyyyyy
1 more game before bed
Said 20 more times
@@theberry6734or
*Pulls out Final Fantasy 6*
Thank God for Alex.
There’s only one TINY little problem with what you wrote above, Sir.☝🏼
There has never been, nor will there ever be, even the SLIGHTEST shred of evidence for the existence of the Godhead, that is, a Supreme Person, or Deity.🤓
It is high time for humanity to awaken from all INANE superstitions such as the belief in a Personal God who created the Universe, would you not agree, Slave? 😩
@@whatisthetruth5726he’s joking lol
@@whatisthetruth5726are you acoustic?
@@pigeh 🎸 😂
Haha. Yes. Thank God for him.
I think you're missing the real point of the "universe big" argument. The point is to get you to question whether your belief in a God who built a world for humans is based on a cognitive bias. Suppose you were isolated tribe of a couple thousand who didn't know about the rest of the world, and you have a whole belief system that depends on a God who created the world for your isolated tribe. When you are made aware of the rest of the world, suddenly it seems less plausible that everything was made for you. You gradually realize that you only thought it was for you because you didn't know about everyone else. Similarly, as people become more aware of the scale of the universe, of other potential worlds with life, of other belief systems about God, of the number of animals in the world, the idea that everything was for you and your community's personal conception of God becomes less and less plausible. I grew up in a Jewish community. This might be mixing some arguments together, bu their idea that there is a God who has a special relationship with the Jewish people is embraced by 0.0001% of human beings who all happen to be Jews. Of course you should question whether that's based on a cognitive bias.
I also think that when someone says that “God created the universe with us in mind”, and you look at the actual universe, it’s like seeing a parent creating a room for a baby to live in, and then making 99,9999% of the room unlivable in a way that if the baby wandered there, they’d die instantly.
I’ve seen parents struggle to make a safe and beautiful room, but this is quite the level of incompetence.
At some point we might have to wonder if the room is really designed for the baby, or if we accidentally wandered in his tool shed instead and we were actually not even supposed to be here.
A male gamete is like 0.006cm and is meant to scale up to something that is like 175cm. Alex's argument that current planetary beings may be meant to inhabit spaces at an interstellar or intergalactic scale is plausible. Although it is quite an egocentric counter-argument to the big universe argument, it does retain the unlikely possibility that the big universe is meant for humanity.
Almost one-third of the world are Christians and it continues to grow especially in Africa and in Asia.
Terrible argument.
@@ZoneTelevision *doesn't elaborate*
Okay, but what do you mean by "arguments" and "for" and "atheism" and "tier list?." And it better not have anything to do with drugs or else I'm out of here
Did you just create the unholy abomination that is Peter Peterson?
look if you just take some crack then you will get it
Lol the Peterson effect is still comical.
alex has taken advantage of my good nature sir!
That seemed like a blend of Peterson and Hitch's brother.
This was a great episode, thanks Joe and Alex!
Okay but I have a deep philosophical question for you, if your name is capturing Christianity and your worldview is against taking captives, then how do you reconcile the inherent contradiction in your name?
@@thetheatreguy9853questions aren't arguments
@@adrianheath3854 I didn't say it was an argument I said it was a question. And I was also just being cheeky LOL
@@adrianheath3854 bro is fuming 🤣
@theaterbro you cheeky bastard
Hiddeness is S tier for sure. If you've never heard of a god, your first questions would be "Where is he? Show it to me. Where's your proof?"
but Jesus said to believe without seeing, so he has chosen to remain invisible for now
@@billwalton4571 why would Jesus choose disciples who *have* seen him to go forth and spread his gospel, rather than electing to moreso influence people who *haven’t* seen him?
@@JimBobJoeB0b he does what he wants
@@JimBobJoeB0b cuz the apostles were specifically trained and taught by him specifically for this mission. cuz they were witnesses of his power, cuz they werent holy people at the beginning. if im not mistaken one of them was even a thief. and they all went thru drastic changes of behavior under him. they were also the first leaders of the church and people at the time followed them cuz they knew they met Jesus personally. tons of reasons why he chose them
Pretty awful argument, because just something is hidden to the senses doesn't mean the effects of the things cannot be felt. Like you can see smoke and ascertain a fire exists despite not seeing it, feel wind and know it exists despite not seeing it, suffer radiation poisoning and know radiation exists without seeing it.
The Problem of Evil is not an argument for Atheism, only an argument against specific religions that promote an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent deity (usually monotheistic religions). It cannot be used against Hinduism or Buddhism for example, and surely any argument that cannot address the 3rd and 4th most popular religions in the world cannot be considered a good argument for Atheism.
Perhaps it could possibly be ranked as an S tier argument against Christianity, Islam, and similar (debatable), but as an argument for Atheism I don't understand how it could possibly be ranked S. I would put it in D, if I was being generous.
He said IF God is the omni list. I'm not sure Buddhism has god/s?
certain forms of Hinduism believe in an omnipotent omnibenevolent god though
I think you're being a bit contrarian. Pretty much everything in this video is based on a monotheistic god. Of the 5 major religions in the world, three have a very omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient god, i dont really understand hinduism but im pretty sure it has a bunch of gods, and buddism doesn't have any god(s). Obviously no argument is going to work against all 5, especially not every single other religion out there.
The purpose of the problem of evil is clear, and for that purpose it is s tier. not much else to say.
Many Buddhists are atheists.
Buddhism does not have a god
its strange to me when people claim if god revealed himself, it would abolish free will. The original story of satan proclaims he was a whole angel, who knew god, was 2nd to god, was as close to god as you can get. and still chose to go against god. So if god revealed itself, the true sinners, those truly evil, will continue to be evil despite seeing god. the people who truly "just want to sin" will. and those who were non resistant non believers would be saved. simple.
There's also the option of knowing God exists but simply finding him unworthy of worship/obedience. Not out of a desire to 'sin' or be evil, but just like a disappointed child rejecting the authority of their parent.
Exactly, God supposedly showed himself to a bunch of different people, people who are revered by Christians. "If God showed himself to us it would limit our free will" implies that the freedom of Paul, Abraham, Job etc. was limited, which I've never seen anyone argue.
Not only did Judas Iscariot witness the power of Jesus, but was granted miraculous powers of god through Jesus (Luke 9:1-6), and yet he still had free will, choosing to betray Jesus.
@@jelledesmet7086 All the ancient philosophers who thought more deeply asserted this was an impossibility -- to not one the one you are a part of and who made you. Think deeper. You cannot not want that which to you belong.
He also supposedly does. Various Old Testament characters knew god personally, where did their free will go?
F Tier shoudl be: "I can't see God, therefore no God"
Do you mean physically see God? Because there are stories in the Bible of God literally appearing to and communicating with human beings, not to mention Jesus Christ being God in the form of a man
Do you mean just observing God? Because honestly seeking God and not finding it is the basis for what is generally considered an A- or S-tier atheist argument in Divine Hiddenness
Either way you meant it I don’t see what is unreasonable about expecting God to manifestly exist in any way that is actually detectable beyond feelings one gets sitting listening to worship songs or visions they get when on LSD
I loved the first one and am very excited for this part 2!
Good to see you here.
Yo it's MindShift!
It’s the man himself
Joe should stop by more often
Zendaya would dump him
No he should not
You can always watch him on his own channel.
The vibe in this video is so lovely
I agree 😮 and it makes sense
I actually cant believe this came out the exact microsecond that i finished rewatching the arguments for god video. LIKE THE EXACT SECOND I FINISHED IT THIS JUST POPPED UP. God is real. Final verdict
lmao
And He especially cares about you.
exact same thing happened to me lmao and that video is like 2 years old
Was that synchronicity, an argument for a metaphysics beyond materialism or merely coincidence? U decide 😅
HALLELUJAH 😮😊
Love it when joes the on the channel it like watching alex talk to his American doppleganger
The stone paradox should be way higher up. They said that the argument doesn't make much sense because it's okay for god to not be able to do something impossible, because it just can't be done. And that's the exact point of the argument, because god is supposedly omnipotent, which means all-powerful. If you restrict god's abilities to only what's possible, what's your definition of possible? Why shouldn't a triangle with 4 sides be creatable? Because geometry and math says so. But isn't god supposed to transcend all that? If you restrict god's power to only what math and science allows, then the whole god argument crumbles since it will inevitably turn out that this so called God can't be anything other than a random Joe because anything else would be impossible. And that is certainly not omnipotent.
Every Christian apologist is a walking argument for divine hiddenness.
Anyone says an empty cult where this worst genretion has trapped and had to be judge by God for betrayed Gif for the nothing empty atheism gives to their lives? Lier as any Goddenier. What a cult!...
After being close enough to God that the pain and suffering I went through was worse than when I was without God that I prayed to God to distance himself because I couldn’t handle his holiness I am thoroughly convinced that divine hiddenness is a blessing not only for the unbeliever but to the believer, everyone claims they want to be close to God but his holiness is so bright and pure I don’t think they realize what they’re asking.
“But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”
Luke 12:48
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
Exactly. How could I ever respect a god that needed pasty white middle aged overweight men with prostate problems to do all of his fighting for him.
@@japexican007 lmao bruh
@@japexican007 you prayed to God to distance himself.
so.. presumably, EVERYONE in heaven will suffer just by being near god.
so it's suffering in heaven and suffering in hell.
I give you that it solves problem of evil.. it's just god being everywhere,causing unnecessary suffering.
but now you have problem of good.
how is anything good possible,when you have omnipresent god that causes suffering by proxy.
maybe god is not omni in any way,it was just one of his lies,to threaten believers into submission.
meh.
Hey Alex I know you likely won’t see this, however just wanted to say thank you for bringing rise to my atheism I used to be a bit unconfident in my belief or atleast didn’t know how to argue it, But your arguments as well as some others make me feel more heard and understood than my family, I genuinely want to thank you for your content and hope you have a “blessed” day lol, much love and appreciation from the Bible Belt of Florida
You said you weren’t going to address arguments against any particular religion, like Christianity, but I feel like many of these arguments are fundamentally addressing the claims of Abrahamic religion, and particularly Christianity. And fair enough, I suppose, because western philosophy has been conversant with Judeo/Christian/Islamic faiths for centuries. But many of these issues (like the problem of evil and divine hiddenness) almost don’t exist in Vedanta, Buddhist, and Jain philosophy because of the particular metaphysical claims they make. It seems to me that many of the arguments for atheism presented here begin to look quite different when approached from a global perspective.
Yup, the arguments are rife with assumptions about God that come mostly from the Abrahamic faiths.
Such as the ideas of perfection, benevolence, omnipresence, and omniscience.
@@im_aleey Indeed. But even if you accept those notions, just adding the ideas of reincarnation and karma completely change what almost all of these arguments look like. What so speak of the concept of cyclical time and the well accepted idea of multiverses in eastern philosophy. I mean, the problem of evil just doesn't have the same bite if you accept that the soul is eternal and subject to the reactions of karma. There are consequences for almost all the other arguments in this video based on those two ideas alone.
@@im_aleeywhich is also why the religious confusion argument is so bad: it's equivocating the word "God" with any very powerful, supernatural being, when really what we want to know is whether a necessary, all powerful, all good God exists.
The idea that God has to allow 'evil' (I much prefer to say "suffering", or "badness": to me, "evil" invokes the supernatural) so that there can be such things as bravery reminds me of the idea that God had to condemn us to being born with Original Sin so that He could give us the gift of salvation. It's like a parent's saying to a child "I had to give you a bloody nose so I could 'kiss it and make it better'."
Look into Islamic worldview, it makes much more sense.
It’s almost as if you don’t understand what God has planned
Let’s at least theorize: you think if you were in Adam’s shoes you’d have made the right choice concerning the forbidden tree?
@@scottm4975it’s almost as if you wouldn’t be able know his plan, yet can still make objective statements about the inherent suffering needed for us to evolve. Do you believe slavery is immoral, why or why not, and what passage in the Bible do you use to justify your opinion? My main point being, you already hold beliefs about morality that cannot be formed by simply reading the Bible, you pick and choose what passages to follow.
“You are born sick, and commanded to be well.”
-Christopher Hitchens
Watched the entire thing and thoroughly enjoyed it, what a fantastic guest and conversation! Would absolutely love to see him on again to discuss more of the arguments he references.
Eh, he fell into the usual trap people arguing against the existence of God set for themselves. During the problem of evil, he had that fairly clever argument to get away from having to establish objective morality by saying he was only talking about suffering. The problem is, he's still saying suffering is bad and it is good to avoid suffering. But why?
He then fell into hyperbole with "There are countless theories that establish objective morality without God." Really? Countless? Interestingly, applying the same standard applied later in the video, wouldn't the existence of numerous, sometimes contradicting theories of objective morality without God be evidence that a true theory likely doesn't exist?
@@angusmcculloch6653 He's literally about as close to a true agnostic as you can get (he regulairly says his credance for theism is somewhere between 40 and 60 percent). He's also a moral realist (believes in objective morality) however Alex (as I think is mentioned in this video) is an emotivist; so I think the reason he went the problem of suffering route is that while the two of them disagree on the existence of objective evil, they both disagree suffering is deeply unfavorable.
As to grounding morality outside of God, within acedemic philosophy this is just as much a goal for the theist as it is the atheist as very few serious philosophers (again including theists) find divine command theory compelling (probably mostly due to the Euthyphro Dilemma). Moral epistomology is a masive subject (as eluded to by MoR when he said there are "countless arguments") and there's alot of arguements that attempt to ground or explain the existence of objective morality without God (MoR has a video that is like 2 hours long that introduces the biggest arguement in the field). I assure you he isn't exaggerating here, this is just a massive can of worms that would quickly fall well beyond the scope of this particular discussion.
All things considered, Magesty of Reason is playing extremely fair and he doesn't believe in subjective morality as you seem to think he does. And again, hes literally as much a theist as he is an atheist so hes not favoring any atheist arguements because he favors their conclusion, but rather because he genuinely finds them convincing and well founded.
@@Isaac_L.. Thank you for this detailed, well-thought out response.
I don't know that I ever said MoR *is* an atheist, because I didn't know. That's why I worded it as "people arguing against the existence of God" instead of "other atheists," because he was presenting arguments against the existence of God and fell into the same trap others do. I can see where that wording may have been too subtle and led to misunderstanding, so I should say I wasn't calling him *an atheist* and tried to phrase my post so that I didn't call him an atheist.
Maybe I'm just being pedantic, but "countless" is an exaggeration. I would prefer "a lot", but I'll concede it's a podcast format, not a paper presentation. However, the main criticism still stands that he deflects defending objective morality, but suffering is bad. Why? That's not to say he personally believes it, but it's a trap that awaits anyone trying to make that argument and he walked into it as well.
And, again, the multitude of conflicting theories of objective morality should be strong evidence that no true objective morality exists. That is simply using a same argument against theism--if God is real, there should not be multiple, conflicting accounts. That is a connection I wish they had made, as that makes for an interesting discussion.
Thank you again for your serious and well-reasoned response.
@angusmcculloch6653 No problem. I'm glad I was able to help.
I'm assuming that he would be more than happy to argue that suffering is bad in one way or another under either a subjective or objective moral framework. One way I suspect he would defend it is by using the psychophysiological response to suffering and stress widely observed across the animal kingdom. Not only did God create an environment/system that induces immense amounts of unnecessary suffering, but he placed creatures in that system that consistently feel immense negative emotion, active panic, and displeasure in proportion to that suffering. If God was all loving and for some reason or another (usually free will if you're a theist) it's essential for suffering to exist, it seems like God would have created the vast majority of creatures to have a very high psychological tolerance to suffering. In other words, a big part of the problem of suffering is the conscious response to suffering. If God was going to make a world with so much suffering, you would think that he would make creatures that broadly have a psychological indifference to suffering as opposed to what we widely observe. I'm sure that MoR would put it more eloquently than that but I'd be willing to bet that he would use an argument along those lines to defend that particular point.
As to your other point, I don't think it follows that the existence of contradictory theories about either the content or grounding of morality (I'm not entirely sure which you were referring to here but it doesn't really matter) is good evidence against the existence of objective morality in general. Another big debate within philosophy is pertains to theories of time (externalism vs presentism), but clearly time demonstrably exists. So yeah, I don't think you can use the debate surrounding (especially the grounding of) morality as evidence that it doesn't exist. (Note: to be clear I'm not arguing for moral realism, as I've yet to be convinced by arguments for it; but this is something that's an active area of interest for me since my views deviate heavily from the majority in the field here)
As to your other point about moral epistemology and God, I completely agree that it's a significant (and fascinating) problem for theism. If God exists, even if he isn't the source for morality, given omniscience he would know what is morally ideal. Therefore, you'd expect that one could learn about the nature and contents of morality through communion with God yet those who claim to do so routinely make moral claims that are at odds with others that also claim to commune with God (oftentimes these disagreements persist within, not just between, religions). That said, while this is a great piece of evidence against the moral argument or the truth of some individual religions, I don't think it's nearly as strong of evidence against theism in general as the problems of evil or hiddenness or even religious confusion are.
@@Isaac_L.. apolgies that it's taken me a few days to respond.
1. You are probably right that this how he would try to respond to suffering is bad, but the response still assumes someone needs to justify suffering's existence. Why, though? It's what's called in philosophy a vicious infinite regress. Why is suffering bad? Because it hurts. Why is pain bad? Because it's unpleasant. Why is unpleasantness bad? Here you end either in tautology: "Unpleasantness is bad, because it is no pleasing" or the vicious infinite regress continues (i.e. the truth of one statement depends on the truth of the previous statement and we never reach a foundational true statement). Either way, the argument simply doesn't hold.
2. I would agree, but people who argue against the existence of God have to apply this across the board. Either confusion where one might expect unanimity is evidence of a thing's nonexistence or it's not.
Alex x Joe content is by far my favorite! I find I learn so much from these types of videos! Hope you two continue to make great content
0:33 Right out the gate: "We're gonna *resurrect* it!" Nice! Very punny!!😂
Whenever Alex and Joe have a conversation, they seem to cover every box and are so easy to understand. It's so beneficial for anyone new to these arguments.
There ought to be only one item in the S-Tier: Religious Apologists.
There is only one argument in the S-Tier. Therefor we ought to always use that argument.
Seriously though. One of the best arguments against God is that He needs humans to make arguments for His existence. I think that's a subset of divine hiddenness though.
@@therongjr I was thinking more along the lines, if a triomni god exists, he wouldn’t allow people like D’Souza, Craig, Powell, Hamm, Winger, and so many others, speak for him. D’Souza’s recent performance surely deconverted as many Christians as Hitchens ever did.
@@basildrawsas a Christian I think this is genuinely a good point 😂
Every religious person you disagree with is an agent of satan, there, problem solved.
Arguments for atheism:
Prove theism. Until you do it’s not real by default.
Anything else is just debunking nonsense. It’s not an argument it’s just pointing out why the claim being made, whatever the point or argument is, is not sufficient to prove theism to any reasonable evidentiary standard.
What?
@@antinumchrum9440burden of proof is on the theist
actually that's a very bad argument
whenever a theist would argue that a scientific theory is wrong (theory of evolution for example), then god...
that's not working at all
so the reverse doesn't work either: the lack of proof or evidence for god doesn't make atheism stand and hold.
science does though.
science is the most reliable way to get knowledge.
god isn't a scientific field of study, therefore science doesn't care about god, so do we.
@@josephgorodnitskiy4461 I must have been sleep deprived, I didn't understand what he was saying.
2:08 Alex, with his immense vocabulary and amazing intellect could think of no better description of a tier list than "it's a big sort of box" 😂
Gotta love the man! Keep up the great content Alex!
Two of the smartest guys on RUclips. Thanks for the interview Alex. It would be awesome if you did an episode with Emerson Green, he’s amazingly intelligent too.
Used to be an atheist, but now I think god may exist, but it's insanity and the height if hubris to think you know ANYTHING about him or his desires. It's funny that since becoming agnostic I've actually become way more against religion. I think faith is fine but religion is evil
That's not hubris at all, we can know with certainty certain things about God, namely His eternal nature, His justice, etc.
@@christsavesreadromans1096
How is that, exactly? I want a detailed answer.
Joe is Awesome! Amazing guest! I've learned a ton from the Majesty of Reason.
Alex makes a great point about how people in Iran or other non Christian countries could be said to be more “Christian” than Christians in the west are in action and heart. He’s right.
Someone made a response to his debate with Jonathan Mclatchie, where he made that geographical argument a couple of years ago, saying essentially the same thing
It's one of a fee things that Jordan Peterson actually gets right. If us western Christians actually acted like what we believe , the world could be a magnificent place for all. Though from my perspective we , and those we know do our part
@@SeanathanCreek I wish we focused more on the 4 gospels in the west. I see a lot of Old Testament teaching. Which is fine but I rarely hear readings from the gospels. We don’t focus enough on Jesus life and his teachings from his mouth as written in the 4 gospels.
@Dgujg Agreed as some don't notice that it is greek-romsn literature and Mark was thrown in the dumpster by Luke and Mathew which considered each other to be wrong. John considered all to be totally wrong and made up his own story.
One of my friends has become Chritian but does not admit since it is dangerous for him.
Unfortunately I don't have 2.5h time right now and the list in itself is actually a bit absurd. There's only one argument that's enough: religious nonsense is not convincing enough.
(Just dropping a like and comment, possibly listening this later on, when I have time.)
@14:07 - Alex's interpretation of "survival of the fittest" as "the death and destruction of the weak" is a simplistic and misleading view of natural selection. The phrase "survival of the fittest," originally coined by Herbert Spencer and later used by Charles Darwin, does not imply a brutal elimination of the weak but rather the differential survival and reproduction of organisms based on their traits.
Firstly, the notion that natural selection "relies upon the death and destruction of the weak" is a misunderstanding. Natural selection operates through the differential reproductive success of individuals. This means that those individuals who possess advantageous traits are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those traits on to the next generation. It does not necessitate the active destruction of the weak but rather a greater likelihood of survival and reproduction for those better adapted to their environment.
Secondly, the idea of "survival of the fittest" can be seen as a tautology if interpreted as "survival of those who survive." However, this interpretation misses the key aspect of fitness in an evolutionary context. Fitness refers to an organism's reproductive success and its contribution to the gene pool of the next generation. It is about how well an organism's traits enable it to thrive in its environment, reproduce, and pass on its genes.
Additionally, Alex seems to misunderstand the core argument of Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene." (which is odd, as Dawkins has been a guest...I wonder if Alex has read it?) Dawkins emphasizes that the primary unit of selection is the gene, not the individual organism. Genes that are successful in promoting their own replication are those that persist over generations. This perspective shifts the focus from individual organisms to the genetic level, highlighting that traits beneficial to gene replication are those selected for over time.
If only the fit survive, the weak must die. You mention “differential survival”, this is what he is talking about. The fit survive, the weak don’t.
I don’t think your objections are relevant, “the destruction of the weak” logically follows from “the survival of the fittest” (provided that you assume it means survival of ONLY the fittest, which in this context it does), in the same way that “only those who get 50% on the exam will pass the topic” means that “those who get LESS than 50% on the exam will fail the topic”
@@LukeNAndo No, that isn't correct, the premise that "only the fit survive" is simply not true. Differential survival implies that some individuals are _more likely_ to survive and reproduce than others, but this does not mean that all "weak" individuals _must die_ for evolution to occur. Moreover, it's crucial to understand that in terms of evolution, the primary unit of selection is the gene, not the individual. All individuals ultimately die; there is no survival for them. The only entities that truly survive are genes.
Natural selection is about the relative reproductive success of genes, not a binary outcome of survival versus destruction of individuals.
Couple this with the fact that ther are many "weak" genes that persist in populations either because they are linked to other advantageous traits or because the environment is not exerting strong selective pressure against them. The notion that natural selection necessitates the destruction of all weak individuals, or "weak" genes oversimplifies the complexity of evolutionary processes. It's about the _relative success_ and proliferation of genes, and plenty of "weak" genes continue to exist within the gene pool.
Furthermore, the notions of "weakness" and "fitness" are contextual to an environment that itself is in flux. The earliest ancestors of eutherian mammals were small, rat-like creatures. Pre-KT impact, these ancestors would not have been considered the "fittest" or "best adapted" compared to the dominant dinosaurs. Yet, the massive environmental changes caused by the KT impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and allowed these small mammals to thrive and evolve into the diverse array of placental mammals we see today, including humans.
I mean it doesnt really impact his point either wah
For the religious confusion segment:
It would cost God literally nothing to completely resolve ALL doctrinal dispites to every person, no matter how small. He is supposedly infinitely powerful. Better than resolving them all when asked, he could do it pre-emptively. Instead, he used fallible men to write a consfusing mess of a book in languages that would die shortly after with no way to verify any of its claims.
It's obvious which religion is the correct one already, people just don't like it because they dislike the what God commands.
@@christsavesreadromans1096you just lied it’s not obvious which religion is true because none of them have evidence that’s why it’s called a belief and not a science because science is fact belief is ideal
@christsavesreadromans1096 no matter which religion you say here, at least 2/3rds of all people are going to disagree with you, and that's without even going into denominations and specifics.
@@Luciferthekingofpurgitory No, its very obvious which religion is the correct one. The Catholic faith has more miracles than any other faith combined. People just don't like the rules so they'd rather be a Buddhist or atheist, or anything that sounds nice and frees one from the expectation of a future judgement.
@@rmtsapphire0 Ok? and their denominations are false and were founded by men. Whereas the catholic church has been here since the time of Christ.
love this long form philosophy bro content alex bring joe back for more !
Good conversation, but Joe's so cute it's hard to focus.
Joe? Joe? Come on. They are both adorable.
I watched all 12 hours of joes video, I think he does an excellent job.
1:55:00 I think that islamic fellow you have had a debate with( I know him for years but forgot the name ) when he was telling you that p and q are not necessarily derived from one another I think he could use this type of an example if he was a better prepared to debate and not to pontificate :)
I can't help thinking of the kid who wrote in a paper for school that the Ancient Egyptians built pyramids and went on to explain that a pyramid is "a triangular cube".
A cone with more edges?
Alex should spend a bit more time with physicists to hone his physics-based arguments
fortunately, the theists he debates know even less about physics
Theists: God has to stay hidden, he can't be obvious to us or it would take away our free will
Also Theists: Look at the trees! _Obviously_ God has to exist!
To believe in his existence he gave you reasons but he isn't visible to you all the time cuz he doesn't want to restrict your freedom I mean imagine your seeing your mother staring at you all the time since you were born you would've done nothing from what you did right?
@@nam-r1f I still know my mother exists. I have seen her. She didn't vanish after I was born and expect me to discover her existence through obscure evidence that is more reasonably explained by other things.
If one believes God exists with His attributes, then God _is_ watching you all the time, and a believer thinks this: how is their freedom not restricted?
@@Rogstin first of all he didn't vanish, read more about Jesus and you determine yourself ,secondly who said that the universe and nature works supernaturally by God? Nowhere in the Bible says that not even when performing miracles beacuse i know he was using the nature he created to perform them, there's nothing wrong with that ,also God gave you reason to how everything is working so you can learn from it to develop your mind and brain and do things yourself , so God created universe and nature and added laws to how its working now,
Fully understanding how a machine works doesnt make it have no creator
@@Rogstin if you know your mom is watching you all the time is different from seeing her watching you all the time ,also imagine a starfish trying to understand a human, thats a smaller example for how we are trying to understand God
@@nam-r1fdid the freedom of Joan of Arc get restricted? Did the freedom of Moses get restricted. It definitely wasn’t restricted for Adam and Eve and they watched God Create them. What exactly are you trying to argue if not an inconsistent point?
Alex said: “I hope it was fun, and I hope people enjoyed it“
Answer: was fun, did enjoy it.
Divine hiddenness is checkmate imo, maybe not in disproving Gods existence, but certainly in proving that the creator of the universe doesn’t care about having a genuine relationship with me. The more philosophical arguments for or against Gods existence miss the point imo. If you resort to philosophical arguments to prove you have a girlfriend instead of just, idk, having her just show up, people are going to doubt the existence of said girlfriend, no matter how well reasoned your arguments are
From a logical standpoint, there is no reason that a god must be omni- anything. Therefore, the PoE is an S-tier argument against any religion (like Christianity) that requires an omni- god, but is D-tier (C-tier at best) against deism/theism in general.
But why then call it God? Perhaps its a polytheist argument that limit the ability of individual gods.
A non-omni god is just a very very strong human/creature, might as well be an alien with force powers and nothing more, by a certain point of view, such a creature has very few reasons to be called god and expecially there would be no reason to worship him.
@@TonyLambregts Because the term was not invented for the abrahamic god, look at the god of ovids creation myth, he is unknown and powerful but not omni in any way. Still he is the cause of everything but chaos and his kind(the other gods) in this myth
I disagree, as long as we're talking about creationism, because a creator of the universe logically should be omnipotent in regards to its creation, because it's necessarily all-powerful. Maybe you could argue that its control is somehow overtaken by development, or something, but it just seems clunky and certainly you would struggle to find any kind of theist that approaches the problem of evil this way.
@@luphoria Why should a creator of the universe be omnipotent? There is no logical reason why a being that can create a universe must be omnipotent. Being able to create a universe is pittance in comparison to what an omnipotent being can do. I can create a metal spring, but that doesn't mean I can control every individual atom in that spring.
Just watched the whole thing basically in one sitting. Would love to see more collabs like this with Joe, be they about atheist arguments, theist arguments or any other topic in philosophy!