Cosmic Skeptic at the ACSJ: "Does The Universe Have a Cause?"

yes well my name is Alex J O'Connor I run a YouTube channel talking about political and educational secularism known as cosmic skeptic I also spend some time talking about the existential debate surrounding God which is kind of what I want to talk about tonight I suppose maybe to start with maybe a show of hands does anybody know who I am or what I do oh wow Wow well this is much more than I thought this is great so um a lot of the things that I've got in this presentation I haven't talked about before so hopefully there's something in it for everybody but I'm excited to hear what you guys think of what I have to say I suppose I should begin briefly by expressing gratitude to well not only the a the a csj but also the wider Californian community whose hospitality is kind of far exceeded my expectations it's it's my first time in the United States yes it's been it's been great in entirely coincidental that I'm here for the 4th of July as well it's been great sort of celebrating the liberation of the 13 colonies from the tyranny of the British I can only hope that there are no hard feelings right perhaps the two hundred and forty-one years is enough of the animosity to die down a person people call it you had the original brexit Yeah right yeah well it's it's relevant because when I was I was on the plane over here 11 hours is a long time and I remember looking around and thinking you know I was wondering how many of the people may be coming over to celebrate the fourth with their family and but at the same time I couldn't help but think that whilst many of us well many of you Americans will be spending this time celebrating the kind of liberation exemplified in the actions of the founders many people will be spending this week as they do most weeks spending most if not all of their time doing the exact antithesis of this as to say that they'll be celebrating their chains and expressing unwavering gratitude to the very authoritarian who enslaves them it's too easy these days it's too easy to sort of bash God and talk about the moral implications of religion but it seems like we've we're beating a dead horse at this point it's been done the books have been written and we've all heard the sort of celestial North Korea before but nothing seems to change and if you ask me the reason for this is because you're not going to convince anybody just by talking about the moral implications of religion in order to change somebody's ability to secularize their politics and education you have to create the wiggle room that allows them to do so what I mean by that is that if you just go around talking about God as an evil dictator nobody cares because it's God he can do what he likes the only way that you're going to change somebody's mind on this is by saying well perhaps this God doesn't even exist and then maybe okay if he doesn't exist maybe that's a good excuse to not allow him to influence my politics so today I wanted to talk about while I've been afforded 30 minutes to talk about what I think is one of the oldest arguments in the book and the reason being that if you speak to anybody of any age with little to no philosophical experience and ask them why perhaps they're an agnostic or a believer you almost invariably be met with the same response and that's something along the lines of this where did it all come from if if there's no cause if there's no God then why is there something rather than nothing why does anything exist at all and if you ask me this is actually a primitive form of a cosmological argument cosmological sin I think that's why Apple charged three thousand dollars for their laptops and cosmological simply means that which pertains to the origin the development of the universe of cosmology so a cosmological argument just talks about where things came from when these arguments were as old as time they date back at least as far as the ancient Greeks and you guys know who that is Aristotle yeah great and he talked about an unmoved mover this is one of the sort of oldest recorded versions of a cosmological argument and but of course Aristotle was a polytheist and he believed in an eternal universe but his works did influence theologians of the future not least this guy this is Thomas Aquinas the 13th century theologian and monk who famously in his unfinished work Summa Theologica presented five famous ways of proving God the first three of which are the ones that we care about the others are equally bad but less relevant and you can see they all sort of basically rely on the same kind of logic if there's movement in the universe there must be a first mover says causes in the universe there must be a first course there must be some kind of non-contingent being otherwise how did anything get here but of course it takes but the logic of a five-year-old to say okay well if everything needs a cause then what caused God a fair question but a few centuries earlier in fact in Islamic theological circles people such as al Kindi and Alpha's Ali we're talking about this very thing and they effectively changed one of the premises instead of saying that everything has a cause now all of a sudden it's that everything that begins to exist has a cause that's the change that they made and that's what gave us what we call the Kalam cosmological argument Kalam simply is the Arabic word to argue or discuss and eventually this has been going around for for many years and one of the reasons that most of us here may have heard of the argument is because of Western philosophers such as this guy this is a mr. sorry mm dr. William Lane Craig who wrote a book in 1979 called the Kalam cosmological argument now and let it not be said that I'm trying to tamper with anybody's premises here I've gone straight to his website reasonable faiths org if that's not an oxymoron if you ever heard one and got the premises for his version of the Kalam cosmological argument which in effect goes as follows premise 1 whatever begins to exist has a cause premise 2 the universe began to exist therefore the conclusion the universe has a cause seems pretty simple in fact almost deceptively simple if you ask me it's one of the reasons why it such as a deductive argument and has lasted for so long we are dealing with an antique here okay so we can't be taking this kind of stuff lightly but that's pretty much the history lesson over I thought I'd fill you in I I sure that many of you are already familiar with the argument starting with Aristotle through al-kindi al-ghazali and Thomas Aquinas William Lane Craig and finally it's ours to play with and play with it we shall sow the premises most people when they see this and they're trying to debunk it they jump straight to the second premise this seems the easiest debunk the reason being is you can simply ask well how do you know how do you know that the universe began to exist now to be sure the Big Bang happened okay we're pretty certain of it at this point but the Big Bang never claimed to be the beginning of everything only the beginning of everything that we know of there's nothing to say that our Big Bang wasn't just the death of a prior universal but there's some kind of infinite multiverse or perhaps even one large space-time fabric with localized areas of activity one of which is our universe now what we could do is say well you can't prove that this is the case so the arguments thought is debunked and we can all go home but that would be no fun and so I don't want to focus on premise two we're going to give the theist the the benefit of the doubt here and instead talk about premise one whatever begins to exist has a course now there are a number of glaring issues with this some of which may have already immediately occurred to you but I'll be interested to see if you have any more but the first problem that I have with this is well if you look at the argument firstly one of the reasons it's so persuasive persuasive is because it comes across as a deductive argument that is to say that if you agree with the premises you cannot disagree with the conclusion this is fair to say so we're not going to be able to debunk this by talking about the relationship between the premises and the conclusion but by talking about the premises themselves and although this is a deductive argument it relies upon inductive reasoning now I don't have to spell this out to you but in effect picture yourself if you will on a desert island this island happens to be inhabited by cats now you have no contact with the outside world every cat on the island is black you might be tempted to then conclude that every cat's in existence is black which of course we know is not the case see a perfectly reasonable assumption for this guy to make but we know it's not true so just because everything we've seen beginning to exist has a cause that doesn't necessarily mean that everything that begins to exist has a course but of course this isn't a fatal flaw science is based on induction it has to be and it's just worth bringing up because of the case that it seems to be a deductive argument but really the logic that it's based upon isn't but just with that out of the way the the first most pressing issue that I come across with this argument is what's known as the fallacy of composition you may already be familiar with it in effects the fallacy of composition occurs when you take a characteristic of the constituent parts of a whole and apply that characteristic to the whole itself so as an example picture if you will a brick wall now the constituent parts of the brick wall are of course the bricks now we could be tempted to make the argument every brick in the wall is red therefore the wall is red perfectly sound nothing wrong with that and this is why the fallacy is so seductive because it works some of the time but the fallacy lies in assuming that it works all of the time which it does not for example if we shrink the brick we now might be tempted to say well every brick is small therefore the wall is small right well of course this isn't the case and you can have a very large fool with very small bricks and there are countless examples of this that you can find no Adam is alive therefore nothing made of atoms can be alive obviously this is not the case Bertrand Russell in a famous BBC debate but it this way I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy every man who exists has a mother and it seems to me that your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother but obviously the human race hasn't a mother that's a different logical sphere they every sheep in a herd has a mother but the herd doesn't have a mother itself everything in the universe may have a cause but that doesn't mean that the universe itself has a cause and this is in effect the fallacy of composition the next thing to talk about is causality because this is what the argument relies upon causality is the relation between cause and effect now of course logically we all know that on a timeline cause must always precede effect this is just a law of the universe you cannot have a cause and effect occur at the same time and you certainly can't have a cause occur after its effect and this is what the argument is effectively based upon but there's a problem in this and it's similar to the policy of composition the problem with this is time for something to come before something else we require time the Kalam cosmological argument relies on causality that causes come before effects that the universe must have a cause because the universe is an effect it must have a cause and the cause must come before that effect and if it's before or outside of the universe it must be supernatural and that's pretty godly but the problem is when everything came into existence that includes time in the early 20th century Einstein showed that time and space just two sides at the same coin so if tying came into existence at the Big Bang or the the I mean the the large Big Bang whatever caused the everything to come into existence if we're assuming again that the Big Bang was the beginning of everything because we are giving the theist the benefit of the doubt that would include time so to say that a cause of the universe came before the universe well there was no before the universe perhaps when there's no time causes can occur at the same time or after their effects or maybe causes aren't needed at all again what we're doing if we're saying everything in the universe every effect in the universe has a cause therefore the universe itself has a cause but this again is sort of another form of the fallacy of composition you can't apply the same logic to the universe just because that logic applies to things within the universe itself this is the fallacy of the argument and these are these are interesting points and the reason that I bring these up is because when you're discussing this with somebody you might know that an argument sounds bad you might not quite be able to put your finger on it but you know that something's wrong like the ontological argument a lot of people have a problem with and so it's always good to have some arguments under your belt but the thing is and I sincerely hope that you don't feel I've wasted all of your precious times but it doesn't actually matter everything that I've said so far the causality the composition the fallacy of composition the inductive reasoning it doesn't make a difference and the reason is because there's an even more glaring issue that's staring us right in the face that I ignored for so long until somebody showed it to me and I thought my god how didn't I think of that before and I said my god because old habits die hard the problem is in the first premise again whatever begins to exist has a cause now people don't spend enough time just thinking about what this implies when have you ever seen anything begin to exist well I made a little list examples of things that have been created out of nothing that's what that means firstly of course we have the universe when the universe came into existence it truly did come into existence out of nothing okay because for the universe to be born if there was something before it then that would be encompassed by the universe so this did truly begin to exist out of nothing second oh it's not broken at all that's it that is it the universe there's nothing else now okay sure what about a car you say there's a there's a mini client just on the road from where I live in Oxford England and then cars come into existence all the time there but today really I mean sure a car might come into existence but haven't we really just rearranged a bunch of pre-existing stuff and given it a new name I mean if I rearrange the order of these chairs and call it something else nothing's begun to exist but just rearrange something a car is made by rearranging car parts which obviously I have a very extensive knowledge of your engine windshield washer anyway that's also made out of parts this is these are the parts of an engine and the engine parts break down into metallic atoms and of course atoms break down to subatomic particles but you see the problem here because particles themselves the the atoms that are inside us and inside most of the things that we touch and interact with the heavier ones were created inside stars but those themselves came out of something that was pre-existing so helium was caused by hydrogen just fusing hydrogen itself was fused in the early conditions of the universe when things were hot and dense enough to fuse into atoms and you've gone so far back now that well hey presto you're at the beginning of the universe so the car didn't begin to exist unless by that you mean the beginning of the universe but then that's just encompassed by our list so the universe really is the only thing that has truly begun to exist okay anything that you can think of you may have seen a child being born or a tree being planted it's just a rearrangement of pre-existing matter even when you turn on a light or turn on a heater energy cannot be created or destroyed and another one of Einstein's biggest findings was that energy and matter are the same thing so nothing can be created nothing can begin to exist except for the universe itself as Carl Sagan put it if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe in fact you can actually get his apple pie recipe starting with one universe is your first ingredient preparation time 12 to 20 billion years specifically thirteen point eight of course the point that he's trying to make is that the only thing that really began to exist is the universe everything else is just rearranging another contention which goes hand in hand is the idea of getting something from nothing now when you listen to more experienced theologians people who have had a lot of time in the modern era to listen to the scientific arguments people such as this guy oh sorry got fired didn't he people like Bill O'Reilly I don't understand why just to digress for a minute I mean they put him on the same pedal they get him debating people like Silverman and Dawkins as if they have the same sort of theological experience it's absolutely fantastic but one of the things that it's good for is you get to see what everyday people who aren't interested in this stuff generally and say to these kind of arguments and the main thing that that comes from it is is well how can something come from nothing this is a contention that I hear all the time if something can come from nothing why doesn't it happen all the time okay things can just pop into existence why doesn't the car just appear right here well there's a simple reason for that and the reason is that if you want something to pop into existence out of nothing then you need some nothing to try it out on okay so if a car jumped into existence right here that wouldn't be out of nothing because this is not nothing this is oxygen this is nitrogen this is radiation okay so if you want to try and get something popping into existence out of nothing you need to find some nothing where are you going to find some nothing in the universe well some of you might say why not go into deep space look for a vacuum a true vacuum the problem is even that isn't technically nothing again this is brand-new science but if you read works like a universe from nothing by Lawrence Krauss which is a fantastic book that I recommend to all of you you find interesting nuggets of information and I happen to stumble across this if you removed all of the particles all of the radiation absolutely everything from space and all that remained was nothing that nothing would weigh something what this means is that nothing isn't really nothing so even if you were to find some nothing it wouldn't really be nothing now of course most people including a lot of scientists think that the weight is being caused by something there is still something now that we just can't detect like dark matter but it's besides the point because the point remains that we don't have any nothing okay so how on earth can you possibly say either a that things begin the things that begin to exist have a cause if you've never seen anything begin to exist how can you say that and secondly how can you say things like something from nothing if that can happen why don't it why doesn't it happen all the time if it couldn't maybe it does happen all the time where there's nothing but we don't have any nothing to test it out on and this is what I think is the most glaring issue people don't seem to understand what beginning to exist really means but what are the implications well if we go back to our premises again like I said I'm focusing on premise one and this is basically to conclude but I'm hoping to leave a lot of time for some discussion and conversation because this isn't something that I've really heard many people talk about before perhaps I'm just missing it but I'm hoping that at least some of you haven't thought about this specific argument before so I'm really interested to hear if you have any contentions or anything to add because what it breaks sound to is in the context of the Kalam cosmological argument remember this isn't this isn't a sort of end all argument I'm not here trying to prove you that God does not exist but the Kalam cosmological argument and sort of by extension its sister argument about just where did it all come from which we've all come across at some point perhaps we've even asked it ourself when somebody brings this argument up you can simply prove to them how circular it is in the sense that the premises once you lay them out this is what I recommend for you to do lay out the premises for them and say okay whatever begins to exist has a cause everything that begins to exist has a cause well we've just said that everything that begins to exist that's just the universe the universe is the only thing that's begun to exist right so we say whatever begins to exist well that's just the universe because the universe is whatever begins to exist is the only thing that can because if there was something else before it that would be the universe but the problem is we now have a bit of an issue because if we bring in the other premises premise one the universe has a cause premise two the universe began to exist conclusion therefore the universe has a cause of course the second premise is pretty much redundant now I don't know about you but this suddenly doesn't seem so convincing it's almost impressively circular that's the thing about it it's it's it's persuasive in the sense that you look at it it looks deductive it looks like it's sound it looks like it makes sense and it seems really simple but when you break it down it's circular its inductive at its philosophical basis and it doesn't actually say anything the universe has a cause therefore the universe has a cause and so this is my version of the Kalam cosmological argument and that's what I have for my presentation but I'm really interested to hear what you have to say so thank you so much for listening it's been absolutely wonderful and I'm ready just to have some discussion a lot of hands up I know bear in mind I'm not an expert I just want a YouTube channel so uh so I've listened to a lot of cosmology cosmologists that there's a Foothill College has a science lecture series six times a year and a couple of the sign the cosmologists have argued made the claim I'm glad you said nothing that's not really nothing that's one thing right the second thing they've said is that there's a theory that black holes popped pop in and out of existence all over in fact even in this room they can with so in other words that's one an example of something that may not have a cause black holes pop in and out of distance in a instant and yet they don't is it is that something that that's well understood scientifically I mean because it sounds like I've heard things like this before that and when you break everything down you you you have sort of a quantum soup and out of that things are just popping all over the place right that's right yeah but we don't fully understand it and if you ask me firstly the thing to say is that if we don't understand it then it can't be used in argument so if somebody tries to bring that up as a contention you can say again well you can't prove that therefore it means nothing but what I'd be interesting to see is the breakdown of that because we don't know where that came from but the likelihood is that I mean I would posit that it's probably got something to do with a breakdown of quantum physics I don't know anything about it you see but it seems that we we don't know so we can't say that there was no cause but sure surely we can we can posit that okay so let's say that we did discover that these things were just popping into existence without a cause right then we could then say yes things do begin to exist without a course and that would help us however if we found out that there was a cause for it well then we could just say oh well okay but this is existing within the universe all of this still applies so either way it seems like the position is still completely tenable and it wouldn't actually help a theist trying to present this argument either way because if you're right or if it if the implications of what you're saying is true and things can pop into existence without a cause well that's our problem solved isn't it as I recall from reading a unison nothing and my quantum physics way back in college is that we have what are called virtual particles that pop in and out of existence quite regularly right and therefore you have events or if you have something coming into existence without a cause I think that's what Lawrence Krauss talks about yes and the quantum indeterminacy when you have nothing you still have these quantum fields which can occasionally with great rarity perhaps according to him cars and universe but the faith emselves are without cause this is yeah this is the thing now somebody might say to that well in essence what what you're saying there is that the universe that could pop into existence out was not necessarily cause but came about through quantum processes that existed before but again if that's the case than the quantum processes before would have been part of existence so if you if your definition of universe and everything that exists then that would encompass it so again it's an interesting point that I'd like to see really uncovered by science because again it's it's the same principle right right but it is cross noted even if you took every other matter out of it energy you still have quantum fields which is what yeah he calls nothing so nothing per se doesn't exist yes well precisely that's that's it for nothing to exist you you've need to be outside of the universe because if you're inside the universe then like you say nothing isn't really nothing again this is in lawrence krauss book so yeah you're right in in the sense that the whatever does exist that we would call nothing isn't really nothing so we can't say that things begin to exist because we couldn't possibly observe that because even if something did pop into existence out of what we perceived to be nothing it's not really nothing and so it wouldn't be the same as whatever caused the universe to come into existence because that would have come into existence out of truly nothing and not nothing by our definition of nothing and that allows for these sort of quantum fields but out of truly nothing that's what I think that's one of Krause's idiosyncrasies I'm not sure of many signs I I didn't know what the content is and that scientifically but again either way it doesn't this it doesn't bolster support for the Kalam cosmological argument but it's certainly an interesting point of conversation I'd love to see it and further uncovered because it would really it would have some interesting answers for the size and it would have some really good implications as to how we can tackle the Kalam cosmological argument but it would only ever help us it would never help the theist if you ask me so I think your ideas are very rebellious so I'd like to read label your talk a rebel without a cause I like it my question is how do you address those people who say some things pop into existence for example your soul or Beethoven's fifth symphony the concepts rather than as for that soul prove to me that the soul exists then we can talk about where it came from right but you're right things like symphonies things like ideas this is one thing that somebody put to me when I first presented this argument they said well what about a thought what about the idea that you've just had here surely that came out of nothing but again it depends how we understand neurology because of course if everything that we are and everything we say and do and think is a result of brain processes and neurons in the brain then ideas all they are are like emotional translations of neurological events and so these things again if they can be fully explained which they can through neurological processes then again we can trace that back right to the origin of the universe gives the atoms that are in your brain started in stars and have ultimately started at the Big Bang and whatever came before it possibly but yeah so ideas the soul all this sort of stuff even things that seem like they came from nothing like light and energy but yeah they do all trace back at least one way or another to the beginning of the universe yeah Krauss seems like he starts a University of nothing by talking about the philosophical debate that way did you know inevitably pan out and he recently was on a panel of like five different philosophers talking about this and he seemed to concede that at some point he he believes in the multiverse theory and that when he defines nothing he's talking about no laws no time and they seem to jump on him saying that ah boy you're conceding that beneath you know this is some multiverse that could possibly give birth to the universe and it seems like there's just as a eternal debate about a philosophical idea of nothing hmm and a practical definition yeah nothing and I'm wondering what how you think the multi him conceding that he could accept a multiverse as a possible solution and then at the same time essentially saying nothing he doesn't think that nothing in the way that fill philosophers want it to exist doesn't exist but that he doesn't find that to be an interesting question almost like the why question right yeah well this is this is something about about Krauss that and I never I never quite understood in the sense that he seems to make the point that yeah nothing what we call nothing isn't really nothing but that just surely means that we should change what we refer to there's nothing if the multiverse does exist which I think most scientists nowadays seem to think it does of course there's not really any evidence for it it just seems like a logical conclusion at this point but if that's the case then we completely remove the need for causality because these things can be infinite and then the discussion about nothing doesn't really come into it because if we have an infinite universe we don't need to explain where it came from we don't need to talk about things popping into existence out of nothing because that may have never occurred so with Krauss if you're taking them both at the same time the multiverse idea and the nothing discussion it makes for an interesting philosophical debate about what nothing is but all of a sudden it has absolutely nothing to do with God or a thought or a first mover because you've accepted the multiverse to me only really is interesting if you don't accept the multiverse but also accept and Krauss this idea that nothing isn't really nothing but the thing is if nothing isn't really nothing then why do we call it nothing and if nothing is really nothing then things popping into existence out of truly nothing practical nothing that would be what the universe came from and has no bearing on the philosophical debate about nothing right i I mean I it's it's an interesting line of thought there is a distinction it seems between practical and philosophical nothing but it's just semantics to me that the same thing if you if you say nothing you probably don't mean nothing but if you're talking about nothing in the context of the Kalam cosmological argument then I'm going to stop you and say well that might be what you mean by nothing but not by my definition I got a couple questions the forces are you familiar with Dan Barker's response to the KCA okay and it has to do with him dividing all potential things into either nbe which is not beginning to exist or B E which is beginning to exist okay but what I really wanted to ask you was William Lane Craig jumps from your conclusion to a further conclusion and that is that a personal God exists and I was wondering if you can address the reasoning address and respond to the reasoning he uses to jump from your conclusion to a personal God exists well what reasoning right he and what William Lane Craig will do is he'll say okay the universe needs a course what I'll say this is this is something that actually caught me for awhile and led me to this conclusion in fact was he would say that if there was a cause he he thought that the Kalam cosmological argument meant that there needed to be a cause but then he then further concluded like you say that this cause would of course need to be immaterial it would need to be timeless but also personal and the reason he thought it needed to be personal is because he thought it needs to make a choice because if the cause that exists is infinite which it must be but the effect is finite that is the universe you can't have an infinite cause and a finite effect unless there's some kind of decision by that infinite cause at some point in time to create the universe and I've thought about this for a very long time but then it suddenly I suddenly realized well if we're talking about everything including time again then it doesn't make any sense again there's no choice to be make it's not like an infinite being can make a choice at a point in time if time doesn't exist so you can have an infinite being we can't picture infinity that exists within this universe let alone picturing infinity without time as such a nonsense concept but if it does exist and there's no reason to think that we can't have an infinite cause and a finite effect if you're taking out time and it's something that we couldn't hope to understand and so it's not I never understood how William Lane Craig seems to use it as if he understands he's got this higher level of understanding of infinity and and knows exactly what the implications would be without time but he doesn't even seem to concede of the idea that time would not exist for this timeless being I mean how can you say firstly that this being must be timeless but secondly that it must make a decision at a point in time therefore it's a personal God if you ask me like a lot of what he says it doesn't seem to make much sense at the very best of best of explanations but yeah it doesn't even it doesn't even worry me in the slightest when somebody brings that up because it seems like all they've done is failed to really consider the implications of a timeless being I mean the effect on that being personal but it's a completely perfect to say that if there's a cause it must be personal I mean why does this cause need to care about us why does this cause need to care about earth in particular and now that we understand so much about the vastness of the universe his position is pretty much untenable he's is looking at these romantic views of the ancient philosophers and he's actually very largely influenced by people like al-ghazali and al-kindi in traditional islamic theology but back then nobody had the faintest idea about the vastness of the universe so to try and take that same logic and apply today it's completely foolish I've got like four or more questions queued up so I'll get to you guys as I seen you raise your hands okay I'm thinking of the way that a theist would say they well the Bible says in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth well that would be the beginning of the universe right which means that God must have been there before the universe which means God is supernatural and then I guess if you're trying to discuss things with them without deciding that they have rewritten the language it makes it hard to even have a discussion you know yeah well I mean look that Star Wars says a long time mokona galaxy far far away I mean it means nothing and and you're right you often can't get very far with these people if they're completely stuck with their biblical beliefs but this is almost like what I was saying at the beginning of the talk my main reason for doing what I do I don't particularly care if you believe in God or not I mean philosophically speaking it's very interesting and if you're open to have a discussion I'm always willing but really the reason I'm here it's because I am fed up of religion influencing the politics which influences me I'm fed up of people using their religion and shoving it down the throat of children you know in my home country one in three public funded schools are faith schools one in three now that's illegal here but the law is often break broken your National Prayer day for example and you know you wait it's round the corner you'll have much like the UK and it creeps into public affairs and I don't want this to happen that's the reason I do this stuff but you're not gonna get anywhere with it you can talk all you like you'll say well look religion is influencing politics and education and they'll say good so the only way you're going to change anything change their mind on this issue is not by saying that God is evil you're going to do it by talking about this sort of stuff by saying well okay that first line of the Bible in the beginning does that even really make any sense and once you can get them on that then you can start opening a world of possibilities for the moral implications so one counter-argument that I've definitely heard several times which one flaw I've found is that it does assume that there's a God hold on because I forget things okay so it's that we don't see things come from nothing because God made the universe and he is the only one that can make something out of nothing and they also I've heard like people argue that oh well there never was truly nothing and what was there before nothing well there wasn't nothing because God was there and I was just like of course there's a flaw that it does assume that there is a God which is upon itself I was just wondering how you would respond to something like oh yeah that's the first thing I probably say is that it assumes a God but when you're talking with a theist oftentimes most of their rebuttals doest humor God but if the theist is going to ask why is there something rather than nothing then you might just find back well why is there God rather than nothing and this is this pretty much the same thing as saying well what caused God it's sort of throwing it back in their face and it's almost like it's almost me this kind of stuff but if they're bringing up petty arguments you've got to give them petty responses the first what was the first thing you said the first part of the rebuttal I'd go oh right yeah well again but this is the thing if the theist is going to say that we don't see things come from nothing the only thing that really did come from nothing is the universe because God did it well then this argument doesn't make any sense because how can you say that everything that begins to exist has a cause it's the only thing that really did begin to exist was the universe and this your conclusion is that the universe has a cause and starting by saying that the universe has a cause and that causes God isn't getting you anywhere so then what you have is you have a theist who stating a case they're simply saying the universe has a cause because they're saying that which began to exist has a cause what they're really saying is that the universe has a cause so they're just making a statement so then if you point that out to them first then you can say look I don't know if you realize this but that's what you're doing you're just stating an opinion so now can you come up with an argument to back it up and that's when you'll hear the kind of contentions which I try to discuss in the presentation but to that the best thing that you can probably do is point out that they're being circular they're either being circular or they're just not saying anything but it sounds like they're saying something it's like the ontological argument sounds logically sound it sounds like you're saying something but it just doesn't feel right and you know that it's that it's not when you break it down it's not actually saying anything it's just saying I think God exists because I think God exists that's that's what I think that the person who is saying that would be doing but you have to point out to them exactly how it is that they've got from that position to where they are now otherwise they'll just say no no it's an argument you need to prove to them that it's not an argument and then give them the chance to logically defend it and which oftentimes they can't it seems to me that it seems to me that uh you can I don't really personally care about the God argument I don't care if God exists or not but there still speak there's still a need to explain how the universe come to be in a sense that if you imagine the universe as a series of dominoes and one Domino not over another Domino as a series of cosmic facts right then you have a series of dominoes with causal effects but then you can look at the whole universe as a series of dominoes yes but thinking as why this series of dominoes causing one car one time or another fall off you know exactly and not another series of dominoes well that's the that's a weak formulation of the ancient question why should some things of nothing right because you can say why is this whole serious existence of some other series well that that's what that's where we start is this idea that it doesn't seem to make sense why any of this even got going without a god and this domino effect effectively is a good way of talking about this idea that things that seem to begin to exist like a baby being born or a car being made really it's just at the end of a domino effect the traces its roots all the way back to the universe but what you then are left to explain is the finger that pushed the Domino but the thing is who's to say that there needed to be a finger to push the Domino that that's the thing and another thing is it doesn't actually this isn't the reason I didn't talk about this in the Kalam cosmological argument is because it has no relevance but if you're talking about it just in the sense that there needs to be a cause and there's absolutely no reason to suggest that this course would need to be a god and then also you're left with this idea that well we don't actually know that the universe began to exist at all so if you're talking about the Kalam cosmological argument highlights focus on the first premise but if you're just talking about the domino effect and cause and effect then really you can just say well how do you know that there was a first finger how do you know that there was a beginning how do you know that this domino effect doesn't just go back into eternity it's just something that we we can't really talk about until we have better answers for and I don't think we're ever really going to get them so we're left in this agnostic phase we let with we left sort of not knowing how to talk about this second so we have to kind of focus on the first but if you think there needs to be an explanation for how the universe came into being then so be it and I wish you all the best and luck in finding one but if somebody comes to you claiming that they know and that the cause is God and they know that that God is male and that he had a son and that if you don't abide anything you're going to hell will I tell that well you know what I tell that person to do hi [Music] where do you see yourself in five or six years from now because I know that you started from scratch in YouTube making videos but what I noticed is that some of the eight years pages on YouTube or social media because the taste the taste arguments are never gonna change I mean you still have the same four or five arguments all the time you got the creationist you guys the cosmological argument you got the fine-tuning argument they never know we're gonna kind of change where science is always moving forward so what it seems to me that whereas the taste the taste are always going to be the same sometimes 80s get stuck in YouTube for example do you have the maintain the amazing atheist example which is it's now rebranded to TJ it is not even the amazing atheist anymore if you find it on YouTube so he jumped from he jumps from arguing with pays to sausage Asik Warriors or political comments some sort of yes so that type of content so what I'm asking you is do you see yourself getting bored of debunking tazed right and the second question is where do you where's your stand on social issues right well oh this is great I didn't think I get the opportunity to talk about myself and to answer your question yeah I don't think the arguments are going anywhere and they are the same arguments like you say the arguments that we have now the things I'm discussing in this presentation they have been discussed for thousands of years maybe longer the thing that we can do is we can reshape the way that we present them okay so there's a generation of people who have never heard these arguments before and they'll hear them from the very people you're talking about and unless there are people out there who are still debunking this kind of stuff people will be persuaded by it I mean when was the last time that you met the average person who had you know just finished reading the works of Plato you know these people sure they're still around and you can still study them but they're not in the public consciousness as much as they used to be so for me as long as it's not it's not a case of whether I want to continue talking about this stuff is due to the opposition want to continue talking about this stuff and opposition is probably a bad word but you see what I'm saying and and as long as they're talking about it you know I'll be around to tell them why they're wrong or why I think they're wrong and it almost seems counterintuitive because of course if I succeeded in my mission of convincing everybody of my position then I'd be out of a job but I suppose that just goes to show how much I think it's worth it and you you do see particularly on YouTube people and switching because they do run out of things to talk about but the reason that I think that happens is because a lot of the time with YouTube well someone will do is they'll start up your YouTube channel though they'll see a video that they don't like and that they'll they'll set up your YouTube channel they'll respond to it and all sudden they get a bunch of views and I think oh great okay I should do this they dive into it and they say all they have to say they talk about their cosmological and teleological arguments they took Pascal's wager all of these sort of the fine-tuning and then they've sort of run out and they don't know where to go and the reason this happens is because these people aren't philosophers right they're just people who you started a YouTube channel and in fact in my start that YouTube channel and think all this is going so well I don't need to go to university I don't need to I can drop out of education because I can just do this for the rest of my life and I think that's always why they run out of ideas because they think that they they have safety in the sense that they have a large audience doesn't matter what talking about these people oh these people are gonna listen to me so when they run out of ideas on atheism they start talking about social issues no problem fine it's not what I want to do so for me I'm not going to say yeah I have a YouTube channel that's going pretty well that's great I'm set I'm just going to keep talking like that no no I'm just I'm still a person who's in education I'm gonna go to university I'm gonna study this stuff and I do you channel on the side so hopefully I won't run out of things to talk about but if I do run out of things to talk about then I'll stop talking that's it that's the thing people want to carry on talking and they're rehashing the same stuff over and over again and they're doing it because they need to make money or they they need to keep their popularity up now once I'm done I'm done so I I'm not going to go on to talk about and social issues in the future for me it's like it's almost too much again to hear my because social issues to such a broad spectrum what the one thing I will say on that is that it's almost an assumption if you meet someone who's an atheist that everyone thinks they're a massive liberal definitely going to be pro-choice definitely going to be anti-gun definitely going to vote Democrat but this is this is a bit of a well this isn't the case you know you shouldn't assume people social positions just because of their religious beliefs it seems a bit counterintuitive to do so but perhaps I can speak to you after and after this and I can happily fill you in on my social positions on things and but it's not something I'm gonna probably be talking about on the YouTube channel great so we're gonna do like one or two more questions and then are you okay hanging around oh absolutely yeah all right so you can definitely talk to him one-on-one after if I miss you so one comment I would wanted to make is that you're twisting the definition of the word to exist because everybody understands that a person begins to exist when it is born or at least is conceived so but then what does it mean to exist sure it is to become a configuration of matter that deserves a new name and then all the cosmological argument is the universe exists because we think it deserves a name and because is us wanting to to name it's all yeah I think I see what you're saying in the sense that a car or a child does begin to exist because it is a new concept it's a new thing that we that we apply it you know why would we give it a new name if it wasn't something new that began to exist and sure what I'm doing when I'm talking about beginning to exist what I mean by that is something genuinely beginning to exist out of nothing now that might not be what existence really means but in the context of this argument that's how it's being used so the person bringing out this argument is saying if everything has a cause sorry if everything that begins to exist has a cause the universe must have a cause and they're saying the Yuma the universe must have a cause because it begins to exist out of nothing and so the first premise that they're using to back that up must use the same definition of beginning to exist now in other situations you might change what you mean by beginning to exist sorry yes you mean as in they're committing yes hmm well what you need to do is you need to work on the definition of the person you're arguing against because again as a theist it's very rare unless you're like an anti theist making an active claim it's very rare that you're the one putting a position forward so what you need to do is if somebody puts an argument like this document and this everything begins to exist then you say well hang on what do you mean by that because either you mean and that it begins to exist out of nothing in which case well that yeah that doesn't make any sense because you've never seen that happening or you don't and then you why would you then you're committing the fallacy of composition then you're committing the equivocation fallacy you can't then apply that to the universe so you need to work with their definition and that's what I'm trying to do but even if they say that their definition is different and you're still gonna be off to a running start I think okay last question I'm curious to know if you were raised atheist what was their religion in your household right and well the first thing I don't think anybody's raised atheists I think people are just raised it religiously people are raised correctly you might say and I I was raised as a Roman Catholic I'm quite grateful for it actually I think if I hadn't have gone to Catholic school and given the opportunity to be exposed to Catholicism at its height so shall we say it slows I'm a Sylvia Roman Catholic because you can often tell when somebody if somebody is a Roman Catholic or any other denomination of Christianity or any other religion one of the reasons that might be is because they haven't fully analyzed their religion they've just been brought up in it they've been told it's what's true and they've they've run with it so the fact that I was able to be taught this stuff in detail because I was brought up religious almost made me an atheist which is which is quite bizarre but so yeah I don't resent the fact that I was brought up religious but one of the reasons for that is because although I was brought up religious it wasn't steadfast by any means it was really really relaxed and we went to church most of the time you know I asked a lot of questions in re religion education especially for RS here but it was just it was just a case of of asking questions I I became an atheist not because of some sort of event that took place and I suddenly realized that God didn't exist it was just over time I think it was probably around the time I actually started disbelieving in Santa Claus as it happens and I just I just stopped believing in it but I was raised was raised Catholic the one thing that I do have to say for it I've made a video on this this is the reason people often say well okay you were raised a Catholic so what does it matter you know you became an atheist you can still think yourself who cares right well no because sometimes I will be sat on my bus I'll be looking out of a window in traffic I'll be minding my own business and all of a sudden just out of nowhere whoa I'm an apostate I'm going to hell I'm going to suffer and then I'm out of it and for a minute there's some reason it just comes back all the stories that you thought of as a child yet your teachers only told you that you need saving they didn't teach you the bad stuff but the kids going to ask if I need saving what do I need saving from so you get on Google and you see the pictures of Hell and you see the pictures of Satan's and that stays with you it really does it's there it just does and so yeah I may be an atheist but the psychological effect that it had on me I still resent and like I say I didn't grow up in a steadfast religious community I grew up where it was pretty common relaxed so for someone who's brought up where it was instilled in them and there was no other answer I can't imagine the psychological effects that I must have on a person so yeah I was brought up religious and I don't resent it in the sense that I still turned out an atheist but I do resent it in the in the sense that they left me with psychological effects not nearly as bad as some people have it you know I'm not trying to have some kind of soft story here but it's one of the reasons that that I do what I do because I wasn't just born in well I was born in atheist everyone's born in atheist but I wasn't just sort of always been an atheist and I just started getting interested and thought that it would be interesting to talk about the stuff philosophically I know what it's what it's like to be told something and really believe it to be true and what it takes to be convinced otherwise and that's why I do what I do so I think one of the reasons that I do this is because I was brought up religious but I'd be happy to talk to you more about it answer any specific questions you have about my upbringing but it was just a pretty typical Catholic upbringing as is a lot of the UK because the UK is officially a Christian country it's odd the UK is very secular but officially Christian America is constitutionally secular that very religious it's it's weird but it's just the way things go and but because of my upbringing because I know what it can do to people and what it's done to my friends and my friends who were Jehovah's Witnesses for instance and I don't know if many people know but I had no idea just how bad it was that you speak to some of those people and then you know you look me in the eye and tell me that we don't need to do something about this I mean seriously it's it's if you don't know much about and the the bad effect of religion psychologically speaking look into X Jehovah's Witnesses listen to some of their stories and you'll see why I decided to start doing what I'm doing and making my sort of small smash splash into the into the community all right let's give Alison of the round of applause thank you thank you very much

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 165,493

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, talk, california, san jose, atheist, kalam, kalam cosmological, cosmological argument, philosophy, first cause, causality, fallacy of composition, Bertrand Russell, Al Kindi, Al Ghazali, cause and effect, religion, sanjoseatheists, ACSJ

Id: 7JibSTglpnU

Length: 57min 0sec (3420 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Tulanol]

Frankly it’s irrelevant anyway even if it were true it doesn’t get you to a god. It gets you to the universe had a cause and we don’t know that.

We figure these things out with science not by guessing

[u/ReddBert]

Recommended! Thanks OP!

....