DEBATE: God's Existence - Trent Horn Vs. Alex O'Connor (@CosmicSkeptic)

all right g'day g'day and welcome to pints with aquinas my name is matt fradd this is the very first debate we're hosting on this channel um which i'm really excited about we'd like to actually host monthly debates here like this one between trent and alex so if you like that idea do us a favor and support the channel by subscribing i just found out that we have our second debate locked and loaded and you don't know who that is yet but at the end of this debate i'm going to announce what that is about before we pull up alex and trent i want to say um big thank you to our the guys over at the catholic woodworker for helping to support this show um so maybe you're out there and you're an atheist and after this debate once you become a catholic you can go that's me being playful of course but who knows you can go over to catholicwoodworker.com take advantage of these beautiful rosaries i don't like the rosaries that are too big because they kind of like bruise you when you sit down but most rosaries are super dainty but these are just beautiful very sacred looking very manly so go check him out the catholic woodworker he actually supports me on patreon awesome guy family business the catholicwoodworker.com is a place you want to go to get the best rosaries imaginable catholicwoodworker.com all right let's pull up alex and trent hello alex and trent hello matt how's it going it's going well why don't we begin uh just i want to have the two of you introduce yourselves maybe a minute each and then i'll lay out the format for today's debate why don't you start trent sure well my name is trent horn i'm a staff apologist at catholic answers i have master's degrees in theology philosophy and bioethics and i've authored nine books and at catholic answers i explain and defend the catholic faith i also host my own podcast called the council of trent and if you're catholic you'll get the pun or at least if you're well-educated you'll get the pun uh c-o-u-n-s-l of course uh if you want to check that out you can see it on itunes council of trent or you can support it at trendhornpodcast.com uh i'm married to my lovely wife laura i have two wonderful little boys at home and a third on the way in september thanks very much trent alex uh my name is alex i'm a youtuber as much as i hate that label but i'm also studying for a degree in philosophy and theology at st john's college oxford university um i think these days people tend to introduce me more as a vegan advocate than a philosopher of religion but that's kind of old old hat to me it's what i've been doing for the longest time and it's been a while since i've done one of these debates but um yeah i'm not married uh i don't have any children but i'm here for the ride and i'm looking forward to it it's great to have both of you i am obviously being a catholic myself i you know agree with trent but i admire trent i admire you alex uh you do a great job uh explaining your position so it's really an honor to have both of you on the show all right why don't we begin i just want to let everybody know the format of today's debate and then we'll jump right into it we're gonna have opening statements 15 minutes each then we'll have first rebuttals seven minutes each then second rebuttals which will take four minutes then we'll have cross-examination for 12 minutes and um then we'll have audience questions so if you're watching live here on youtube be sure to stick around because we're going to be taking your questions and when we do get a question each person gets two minutes to answer a question addressed to them and then their opponent will get one minute to respond and then we will wrap up with closing statements of five minutes each i have a timer right here and so i'll be timing them you're welcome of course to time yourself but why don't we begin with you trent correct sure you're okay that's good we'll start with 15 minutes i'll let you know um three two and go sure uh well matt before we start actually could you okay everyone know that the topic of the debate thank you that's probably a good idea my understanding is that we are going to be debating uh veganism trent i don't know if you knew that but that no we're gonna be debating i believe god's existence so trent is going to be making the positive case and then i believe and you can correct me if i'm wrong alex that you'll be critiquing that case perhaps that's more accurate than saying you'll be making a case for atheism but feel free to interject that that's about right although i'm trying to make things a little bit more interesting that so then we'll see all right yeah have i forgotten anything else i don't think so did i mention that i'm vegan he's a vegan apparently all right so how about so trent are you ready start whenever you like okay well i'd like to thank matt for hosting this debate and alex for agreeing to participate in it so in this debate i want to ask nine yes no questions and then show that the answers to those questions lead to a cause of the universe that has the traditional divine attributes or what most people call god so let's get started number one does the universe have an explanation for its existence we know some objects in the universe are contingent or their existence must be explained by something else this debate exists because of computers and internet connections we pray stay up the devices you watch it on exist because of factories and power sources all these things are contingent or they don't explain their own existence instead they must be explained by something else so how do we explain them one way would be to posit an infinite chain of contingent things explaining each other but that doesn't explain why the whole series of things exists any more than an infinitely long chain could explain how a chandelier is hanging above my head you could also say that an object's existence doesn't need to be explained but this violates the principle of sufficient reason or psr which says things have a reason for why they exist we should believe this principle is true because if it were false we would expect unexplainable events like objects popping into and out of existence without a cause to happen more often or to put it more accurately to happen at all science relies on psr being true because otherwise we could never rule out the conclusion that things we observe simply have no reason for why they exist finally without psr we couldn't explain negative states of affairs for example it does not make sense to ask at this moment why isn't matt fred's hair on fire but it would make sense to ask that question if a blowtorch were hitting his scalp and his hair remained unburned both cases presuppose that things which exist must have reasons for why they exist and they don't exist for no reason at all but the explanation for the contingent things we observe cannot be another contingent thing so it must be something beyond the universe or the entire collection of contingent things that explains why everything exists number two does the universe explain its own existence no because that would make the universe a necessary thing or something that has to exist by its very nature but there are no reasons to believe the universe is necessary and many reasons to believe it is not necessary for example the question why is that triangle black prompts an intelligible answer whereas the question why does that triangle have three sides merely deserves the retort because it's a triangle but the question why does the universe exist does not prompt the retort because it's a universe since existence is not a necessary property of universes it's more like the question why is that triangle black which warrants an explanation beyond the thing that needs to be explained there are two other factors about our universe that count against it having necessary existence its property of change and its finite past so let's start with change change occurs when a potential x becomes an actual y this can involve intrinsic change like growth or extrinsic change like motion but no potential x can become an actual y on its own any more than water can freeze itself or a train car could propel itself instead something like a freezer or a locomotive must actualize the potential for change in these objects but of course those actualizers only change because something else actualized their potential for change could an infinite series explain this kind of change no just as an infinitely long train of box cars would sit motionless without a locomotive an infinite number of things that must be actualized by something else would be changeless unless there was a cause of the series that is just pure actuality and had no potential just as a locomotive pulls without being pulled this instance of pure actuality would actualize without being actualized by anything else and since the universe contains a mixture of potential and actual it is not the purely actual cause we're looking for what about the universe's finite past something is necessary only if it is impossible for it to not exist but if the universe came into existence then it can't be necessary it would instead stand in need of an explanation for why it exists one reason to believe the universe has not always existed is because the past contains causal chains that explain objects and events in the present however no past causal series that terminates in the present can be infinitely long because that would lead to a contradiction consider robert coon's paper passer thought experiment imagine beings called paper passers who existed every january 1st in the past so there's one at january 1st 2020 one at january 1st 2019 and so on into an infinite past their job is to receive a piece of paper from the passer who held it during the year before them and to see if it's blank if the paper is blank then they write a unique number assigned to them on it if the paper they receive already has a number on it however then they just pass the paper along to the next paper pastor at the end of the year now here's the question what number is written on the paper given to the paper passer at january 1st 2020 whose year will go downhill very quickly there has to be some number written on it because if it were blank then the 2020 paper passer would write his number on it but it can't be blank because if it were the 2019 paper passer would have written his number on it but the 2019 paper passer could not have written his number on it because if the paper were blank when he got it the 2018 paper passer would have written his number on it if there are an infinite number of paper passers then we have a paradox there is a piece of paper that arrives in the present that isn't devoid of numbers but also can't have any particular number written on it and this isn't unique to this scenario other thought experiments like thompson's lamp or the grim reaper paradox show that objects cannot have infinite causal histories this means causal series must be finite in nature and the first member of the series would have to be uncaused and since causal chains must be finite this means the number of events before today must be finite and so time is finite if the past is finite then our universe began to exist and would require an uncaused cause for its existence notice that we are at an important juncture we've seen the universe as an explanation for its existence and that explanation is not the universe itself instead this explanation is necessary or it explains its own existence it is uncaused because it is the source of all causes and it is pure actuality because it is the source of all change in motion in the universe what else can we know about this cause of the universe number three is this cause changeable no for two reasons first change only happens when potential is reduced to actual but this causes pure actuality so it can't change second since causal chains can't be infinite this means there can't be an infinite series of events since change is an event this means the first cause cannot be subject to such an event or it must be changeless question four is the cause temporal no because time is how we measure change and because the cause of the universe is changeless it follows that it must be timeless as well number five is this cause material no for two reasons first we know the cause is changeless and matter is always changing at least on the atomic and subatomic levels second if the cause is timeless then it must also be spaceless or immaterial because to be in space is to be in time even if the cause were a simple thing with no proper parts it would still change in relation to other things or points in space and so it can't be confined to space just as it can't be confined to time number six is the cause limited no because that would contradict the cause being pure actuality to impose a limit on something would be the same as saying there is a potential for that thing which the thing in question can never actualize that means the causes causal power could not be limited which is another way of saying the cause is all-powerful or there is nothing it can't do and if the cause can bring something into existence from nothing then there really is nothing it can't do if it can accomplish that feat number seven is the cause necessary yes because if it were contingent or if it depended on something else in order to exist then this cause would need an explanation for why it exists and our argument would start all over again also because this cause is changeless it can't go out of existence because going from being existent to non-existent is a temporal and mutable process and we know the cause of the universe is timeless and changeless moreover in being pure actuality this cause would have no potential for non-existence and so it could not fail to exist question eight is the cause personal yes and here are five reasons to think so one there are only two kinds of entities that exist concrete ones like two toy blocks and abstract ones like the number two or the shape of a cube but unlike concrete objects abstract objects like numbers and shapes have no causal power therefore the cause of the universe cannot be an abstract object like a number but must be some kind of concrete object but we also know this cause must be an immaterial concrete object and the only immaterial causal reality we know of is some kind of mind which means the cause must be personal in nature two there are only two kinds of explanations for physical phenomena scientific ones and personal ones scientific explanations consist of physical laws that describe matter energy interactions for example the scientific answer to the question why is that pot boiling is that heat is agitating the water molecules and causing evaporation the personal explanation would involve an intention of an agent like the pot is boiling because i wanted t a universe beginning from nothing can't have a scientific explanation because a state of nothingness lacks the matter energy and descriptive laws that make up those explanations therefore only a personal explanation of the universe remains three this cause of the universe explains the existence of not just material objects but also abstract objects like numbers mathematical truths and propositions but these entities only exist in the mind and so if these objects have necessary existence then they must reside in a necessarily existing mind that is explanatory prior to them moreover if this mind has no potentiality then its knowledge of these truths could not be limited and so it must be all-knowing four many atheists say they believe in god if they saw something like an amputated limb healed through prayer but this means that they would pick a divine explanation for an event over simply saying the event has no cause whatsoever but if our universe came into being just as inexplicably as a healed amputated limb then atheists should be consistent and conclude that the universe is a divine cause as well five our universe contains moral properties that only make sense if they have a transcendent moral source now morality only applies to persons so if the cause of the universe is the source of these moral properties then it must be a supremely good person and not an amoral impersonal force which brings us to my last question number nine is the cause of the universe good by good we mean in both the moral and non-moral sense of that word a car has a bad timing belt not because the belt is disobedient but because it can't fulfill its purpose of synchronizing an engine's valves it's bad because it lacks something it needs in order to act in accord with its nature and this is true not just for artificial objects but also for natural ones like trees and animals now if the cause of the universe has no potential and is pure actuality then it must be good by definition that's because it wouldn't lack anything and so it could not be bad in the non-moral sense of that word but the cause is also morally good because it is the source of objective morality or what i call moral facts alex said in his debate with frank turek that if objective morality or moral facts existed then this would be a compelling argument for god so we can make an argument like this if moral realism is true then god exists moral realism is true therefore god exists moral realism is the view that human beings discover moral truths and don't create them truths like rape is always wrong or all human beings have equal worth do not depend on human beings for their existence alex seems to agree with premise one and other famous atheists also agree for example j.l mackie said of moral facts they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them why should we believe these moral facts exist we are well we are confident the external world is real and that other minds exist simply because those things seem to be real if moral truths like rape is always wrong seem just as real then the burden of proof is on the moral skeptic to show us why we should think otherwise now alex has previously said these moral truths are the objective consequences of subjective assumptions like the goodness of increasing well-being but if that's true then they aren't objective because they depend on precarious assumptions we can and should challenge for example imagine we could genetically engineer human fetuses so they grow up with a desire to be slaves whose source of happiness comes from blindly obeying other people that might cohere with the overall goal of promoting human pleasure or well-being but many people will rightly say this is wrong because it contradicts a basic moral fact independent of that assumption that we ought to treat human beings with dignity and respect so if you believe in moral facts then you should believe in all powerful god created them second human beings are morally responsible for their actions alex says all physical events are determined by prior physical causes but if that's the case and we lack free will and arsonists and serial killers are just as determined as lightning bolts and tigers then it would be nonsensical to blame humans for actions just as it'd be nonsensical to morally blame a hurricane moreover if punishment isn't something that's deserved but rather something the state meets out for the good of society the state could theoretically punish innocent people like a criminal's family members if such an act reduced crime overall by deterring criminals who at least care for their family members but it's objectively true human beings are capable of being blamed and it's objectively wrong to intentionally punish innocent people this is something that only a divine foundation of morality could make sense to hold up moral realism so when all these arguments are seen as a whole they form a strong case that there is a changeless timeless immaterial infinite necessarily existing all-powerful all-knowing and all-good cause of the universe or what most people refer to as god thank you very much trent four seconds remaining that was pretty impressive okay alex are you ready for your opening statement uh just about let me let me get a timer as well and i'll yeah i'm pretty much good to go uh i'll just hit go whenever you all right whatever you say go for it all right okay well yeah thanks man and thanks to trent as well of course for agreeing to do this debate um i can't say i was too familiar with trent's work before i agree to this but from what i can tell i think we'll make a good pairing uh we have a lot more in common than people might think for a start we are both technically catholics i was baptized i took communion i was confirmed i used to pray my rosary i even served a brief stint as an altar boy so i think i've had at least some experienced sailing shall we say before i jumped ship but to be clear uh i didn't jump ship onto another ship i i didn't i gave up my belief ultimately in catholicism and god but not for some other belief system i won't even say that there is no god or that i believe there is no god i just think that the arguments in favor of that proposition remain wanting still i will offer one argument to suggest that there is reason to think that perhaps god does not exist for which i do have a burden of proof but this is something of an overdetermination my mission here broadly is just to show that there isn't sufficient reason to accept the proposition that god does exist which basically means responding to trent's arguments and playing by his rules some people might claim this doesn't technically make me an atheist because they think someone who merely lacks belief is not an atheist but if so then so be it my job today isn't to be an atheist but to argue against strength assertion that god exists in the meantime you can call me whatever you like so the argument that i mentioned the one that i just mentioned in my view is not just an interesting consideration but i think it is the single biggest problem for christian theism that exists the biggest reason as well that's preventing me from seriously entertaining theism and that problem is the problem of animal suffering now since this is an opening statement and not a rebuttal i'll lay this out argument out first my affirmative case before responding to trans arguments at a later stage so the problem of evil is famously one of the trickiest issues for theism but it's almost always as a reflection of our general philosophical considerations i think completely anthropocentric frequently the problem of evil doesn't just focus on humans at the uh instead of non-humans or not taking into consideration non-humans just as much but it completely neglects any mention of the suffering of non-humans at all but let's start with humans the problem of evil loosely is this i like to discuss the problem of suffering more than the problem of evil per se just because some people apparently think it's problematic for an atheist to talk about evil as we've seen however christians and atheists can both agree on the simple fact that suffering exists and if suffering does exist then the point is this any religion which purports the existence of a loving god must demonstrate why the suffering in the world is justified and the problem is most difficult i believe not on the problem of moral evil but so called natural evil that is suffering cause not by human free choice like things like murder or rape but rather by earthly events generally referred to somewhat unfortunately perhaps as acts of god earthquakes tsunamis natural diseases etc the difficulty for the theists in cases such as these is not so much to say that they're justified but to say that these aren't evil at all because it results because they result from the natural order which god controls not human action and therefore must be justifiably inflicted making it not evil but actually a demonstration of either justice or necessity that is to say when an earthquake rips a child from her mother's arms this isn't something to bemoan but to celebrate since all actions of god must be just and so we would be witnessing some expression of divine justice presumably with some great post mortal reward now trent has previously as i've seen tried to flip the question on the atheist by simply saying that it's possible that god has some morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering to occur and that i have to prove why this can't be the case perhaps suffering is required to explain the existence of human free will perhaps some evil is uh is required for higher order goods right like you can't have uh you can't have bravery without fear for instance but analyze this right the suggestion is that some level of suffering or evil however you want to frame it is necessary in order to achieve some other aim that god has morally sufficient reason to desire fine but then the theist must contend with the idea that if evil is somehow necessary we must have exactly the right amount of evil in the world and this is the most difficult implication for me to accept if a loving god may need to allow suffering for reasons of free will or higher order goods or personal development or whatever it may be this would still not permit god to allow gratuitous suffering right there couldn't be any more suffering in the world than is strictly necessary because then that suffering wouldn't be necessary for good to prevail and this is supposedly why suffering exists in the first place but it must also be accepted that therefore god couldn't have allowed any less suffering to exist because if there could be any less suffering in the world this would imply that the suffering in the actual world as it is isn't in fact necessary and that god therefore does allow specifically unnecessary suffering that is suffering for which there is no morally sufficient reason or which goes beyond that reason so i think trent either has to accept something of the best of all possible worlds approach that exactly the correct amount of evil exists in the world or produce another or supplementary justification for suffering now if we believe in this best of all possible worlds of approach i think we arrive at absurdity intuitively it seems easy to accept that there could in principle be at least some less natural suffering in the world and i don't just mean because the suffering is so great although this observation does have some force uh when candide witnesses the great libson earthquake of 1755 and the horrendous suffering that it entailed voltaire has him muttered to himself if this is the best of all possible worlds then what must the others be like but i want you to really consider the plight of animals on planet earth and not just those animals that we systematically abused in those ignoble torture chambers we call factory farms but consider a deer whose leg is trapped under a fallen branch and starving to death in not just fear and agony but also confusion is this a part of the suffering that's necessary to obtain whatever god has morally sufficient reason to desire could that deer have not have died five minutes earlier could its hunger not have been marginally just marginally reduced why should this proposed sufficient reason require exactly this amount of suffering and no less why can't this deer be granted some form of mercy why can't it being granted some form of mercy be compatible with whatever god apparently desires like free will or higher order goods or whatever it may be is it not compatible with the existence of free will for this deer to have died 30 seconds before it did and what good is this obtaining anyway remember i'm talking about natural evil here not moral evil how could this deers agonizing and unseen death be a necessary requirement for human free will or some higher order good or something does it somehow help shape the moral character of those human beings who aren't even aware that the deer is suffering and never find out that it did does it somehow help the animal and if so how exactly at least for humans the religious expects some kind of divine compensation in the afterlife for their suffering but what does the deer get i imagine this deer not to mention the 72 billion land animals we saw for each year not to mention the sea life we do the same to not to mention the many many more animals that are killed by their natural environment i doubt these animals are going to experience the bodily resurrection promised to us by jesus christ so what exactly is the reward for their suffering and why does that suffering need to be exactly so high exactly so ubiquitous and exactly so deep and so agonizing i'll remind you this suffering this struggle for survival this natural tragedy is exactly what we would expect if we assume a naturalistic universe with no moral author and supervisor i have no problem explaining why animals have such a tragic capacity for suffering but the religious have a harder task on that point if the proposed god of the universe is a god of justice as trent suggests and i want to know what on earth these animals have done to deserve the treatment they receive so that's the first thing but we also of course have moral evil to contend with along with natural evil right everything from people cheating on their partner or stealing from a shop to the confinement of and for sterilization of uyghur muslims in china or the billions of animals forced into gas chambers each year to suit our fondness for bacon sani of course this one is famously easy god is a god of love and love must be given freely for humans to be truly free they must be capable of committing horrendous evils and inflecting inflicting masses of suffering that is a removal of suffering by god is metaphysically incompatible with free will and free will is more important than protection from suffering especially given the reward of the afterlife and voila theodicy but i would like to pose the same question to trent as i pose to anyone else who has ever made this free will defense in my presence and to which i've still never received a sufficient answer is there free will in heaven i would assume so unless you think heaven is some kind of moral matrix in which we all robotically tend towards the good without freedom but a second question do people in heaven have free reign to inflict suffering in the same way they do on earth i would assume not unless you want to suggest that it's logically possible for someone to commit a racist holocaust or something in heaven but they just choose not to that seems absurd clearly in heaven there can't be such suffering maybe you think they can but that would be an interesting bullet to bite but if heaven is a place in which there is free will and yet no suffering then this serves as a counter example to the claim that free will requires the unrestricted ability of free creatures to inflict suffering if free will can exist without suffering also existing the free will defense becomes meaningless if it can happen in heaven it can happen on earth but just to change gears another problem with free will defense is a problem with free will more broadly and that's this i think that free will violates the principle that trent relied on so heavily in his opening statement that is the principle of sufficient reason principle of sufficient reason i'll remind you is the notion that anything which exists has a reason or explanation for its existence and the reason this is important is because the contingency argument that we've just heard from trent relies on this principle trent says given that the universe exists there are only three options either the universe exists without explanation it explains its own existence or it's explained by something outside of the universe eg god a trent rejects the first of these options that the universe has no explanation for its existence why because of the principle of sufficient reason or the psr as i might call it for short that is everything has an explanation for its existence uh at least all contingent things the universe the universe is an uh an existent thing and so it has an explanation right now why believe that the psr is true well trent argues along with people like edward fazer and many others that rejecting the principle of sufficient reason can undermine our basic assumptions of science right science assumes that unexplained phenomena always have some explanation just waiting to be found right if we don't accept that everything has an explanation as trent has said we could just assume things occur all the time for no reason and we have no reason to investigate them to discover why they occurred but if the principle of sufficient reason is true then it would apply to every thought that exists in the human mind any time you think something there is an explanation not just for why you thought something but why you had that particular thought and not another one but okay maybe the explanation is internal maybe me having thought x is explained by the fact that i wanted to have thoughtx fine but if psr is true then there needs to be an explanation for why i wanted to think thoughtx maybe the reason is that i like thought x but that doesn't necessarily determine me to think it but if psr is true then there must be a reason why it did determine me to think it in that particular case if every thought we ever have is explained by a chain of reasons explaining why that particular thought arose when it did and in the way that it did then you've kissed goodbye to free will since you've reception you've essentially adopted determinism uh and i i find that to be quite an interesting observation especially given uh the the moral case that's been made that essentially if we accept my view of a universe where everything uh has essentially a cause that explains why it occurred in the way that it did that therefore morality can't exist which we just heard uh trent say in terms of the moral argument for god he says you know if if there is if there is uh if there's this kind of causal chain of explanations for everything that exists then morality disappears well i think that's exactly what the principle of sufficient reason implies and so i think you either have to throw out the principle of sufficient reason or you have to throw out uh morality on your own account unless you can find some way to get out of this objection which i'll be interested to hear now i've got about two minutes left but there's one other thing that i should point out or at least plan a flag and that we can talk about which is that it's been claimed by by trent at least once and also by other people uh who who propose the principle of sufficient reason that to deny the principle of sufficient reason contradicts some basic fundamental ideas in science as i've already said but interestingly as recently as 2015 we have good reason to think that actually affirming the principle of sufficient reason is what undermines science so i can talk about this more in my rebuttal stage but the principle of sufficient reason entails that there's no such thing as a random event okay a random event by definition occurs without an explanation for why it occurred in the way that it did and so if there is randomness in the universe then it's false that everything which occurs has a fully sufficient explanation for its existence in the way that it exists uh famously quantum mechanics seems appears to involve true randomness and i don't have time to fully explicate it here but there's a an experiment you can perform sending two entangled subatomic particles to different detectors and measuring the spin of one seems to instantaneously affect the spin of the other and uh because i really don't have time now i'll explain why in in the rebuttal stage but in 2015 it was finally conclusively proven that there can't be some hidden variable uh that exists locally to the particles that explains this and there's a principle in quantum mechanics called local realism which needs to be uh essentially denied on the basis of this experiment local localism being the idea that a particle can only be affected by something in its immediate vicinity and realism being the idea that any result of an experiment has a real world explanation for that uh for that experiment for that result which is essentially the principle of sufficient reason so we either have to deny locality or we have to deny realism if we want to keep the principle of sufficient reason that is we want to keep realism we have to deny locality which the follows from denying locality things such as causes being able to occur after their effects and a whole other things which seem to completely undermine science and i'll explain why that is the case in my rebuttal stage if that's a line you want to go down but i just wanted to plant a flag there to say that actually if you hold on to the principle sufficient reason the cost might be higher than you think it is but i think i've just run out of time yeah thank you so much alex okay those are our two opening statements and now we're going to move into our first rebuttal period where each debater will get seven minutes trent let me know when you're ready all right go for it i'm ready go for it well thank you alex for that opening statement you are truly just as smart as you sound uh i wish i had a british accent too uh so what what points did alex make saying that god doesn't exist well he didn't show any logical arguments to show that god does not exist he did offer some probabilistic arguments against the existence of god and some problems with my own case but we have to remember that probabilistic arguments can't defeat a demonstrative argument for god's existence any more than circumstantial evidence in a murder case can defeat something like an iron-clad alibi that shows someone is innocent but there's also weaknesses in these probabilistic arguments that show that they're not insurmountable when it comes to the principle of sufficient reason randomness doesn't violate the principle of sufficient reason quantum events have probabilistic causes rather than determinate ones for example if quantum mechanics did not act in accord with the principle of sufficient reason then scientists scientists could never perform experiments with regularity to make the very conclusions that alex brought up also alex neglects that there's more than one theory of quantum mechanics for example there's the bone de broglie interpretation which shows there are determinate causes in quantum mechanics but through what are called hidden variables uh alexander offered us a long argument from evil against god he talked about what i call the why not heaven now objection so alice claims that since it's logically possible for free human beings to not choose evil in heaven then god is morally obligated to only allow those state of affairs to obtain and i agree with him there's going to be no evil in heaven either because god alters our will somehow or because when we are in the presence of god who is perfect goodness itself our intellect will never fail to apprehend the good well the answer to the question is that a world where so god can make a world without any evil whatsoever that's like heaven but a world where free people where people make a free choice to have a heavenly existence has more goods than one where they're merely created in that state uh you could analogize this analogy to marriage for example that it would be better for someone to marry the perfect spouse than to create someone in the state of being perfectly married like some kind of creepy uh stepford wife in other words a world that journeys from imperfection to perfection has more goods in it than one that is already perfect now alex might object and say that the good of pleasure is all that matters and these other goods that come about in pain aren't important but that's a highly controversial opinion as i've noted in my opening statement if maximizing pleasure or well-being is all that matters why not genetically engineer fetuses to grow up to be slaves that only want to improve well-being their whole lives or if pleasure is all that matters why not take them a fetus and put them in a pleasant virtual environment their entire life as they grow up like the matrix so they only know pleasure i think many people would see that as a harm actually that it's better to have a real existence even if pain is a result from it alex also brought up free will now this is not a fatal objection to theism because you could just be a theist who doesn't believe in free will you could be a theological determinist for example like some calvinists but when it comes to free will i would say that the alex claims i can't claim whatever begins to exist happens without a cause because don't people freely choose to act what's causing them to make those choices and i would say that they are causing themselves to make that choice i reject the view that human beings can't be their own cause for their events by making a rational choice and that if god exists he can be capable of allowing them to be able to do that but here's the thing even if we can't fully explain how free will works we know it does work in the same way an atheist can say consciousness emerges from matter even if he can't say how at this moment and plus my argument from moral responsibility shows that we do have free will because if free will didn't exist you couldn't be morally responsible for anything so if you believe in moral responsibility i don't see how you can hold that view and also deny that free will exists now going on to evil uh christians do not claim natural evils like tsunamis are good things rather we would say the pain and death that they inflict are privations of goodness but since god is infinite in power and knowledge he can allow these privations to exist in order to create greater goods or prevent greater evils now what could those reasons be well any finite physical system will have fluctuations in goodness the fire gets increases in being and uh the brush decreases in being the lion increases in being the zebra decreases when it's eaten pain is necessary for animals to function in the natural world complex organisms can't last long if they don't feel pain goods like courage and compassion cannot exist without evils like danger and suffering and it it's possible some theists believe that god will compensate animals in the afterlife the bible does talk about the lion laying down with the lamb for example alex said he found it implausible that our world contains the perfect amount of suffering and i agree there is no such value god could always create a world with more or less suffering it would just have more or less goods as a result but as long as god always brings more good from the evil he tolerates there's no reason to believe he does not exist also alex also talked about that there's these unjustifiable evils but i would say what criteria has he offered to show some evils or gratuitous and others aren't he actually hasn't done that how much time do i have matt i'm sorry one minute and 42 seconds ah perfect there we go let's talk about animal suffering alex said we should doubt god's existence because he doesn't see a justification for the suffering of non-human animals uh but as i said before there could be goods to justify animal pain that exists and the existence of animals themselves even if humans are not aware of them may be that good i'll give you a thought experiment imagine all human beings left earth to colonize another planet and alex is on the last ship leaving earth there's only non-human animal life left on the earth and i said to him alex here's an anti-matter device that will instantly destroy the earth instantly the animals just flap out of exist phase out of existence should we do that or should we let these animals continue existing if you say that they should continue existing even though there will be a lot of pain and suffering for those animals if you think that that is worthwhile then there can be good reasons to justify the creation of allowing animals to exist even though they may suffer otherwise i think alex would be committed to the view that if we ever left the earth we should just vaporize it right after we go finally atheistic ethics leads to an arbitrary preference of humans either leads to an arbitrary preference of humans over animals or an unlivable equality that would make factory farmers worse than hitler atheists just can't explain the unique moral duty we have to animals and if that's an objective moral duty we have i.e it's just an objective fact we ought to care for animals but not in the same way that as an objective fact we ought to not cause unnecessary suffering for animals but also a fact that humans are intrinsically more worth have more worth than animals i believe only theism can explain the existence of those moral facts okay thanks trent and then we'll move on to alex's first rebuttal you ready alex uh just about yeah uh there's a there's a hell of a lot to respond to i mean so many doors are being opened but um let me let me try and go through i've tried to make rough notes about this okay the first thing that you said that trent was that uh quantum mechanics still acts in accordance with kind of uh probabilistic explanation rather than deterministic explanation but this doesn't make much sense because the the very problem with quantum mechanics is that yes if you fire enough photons you'll find that fifty percent of the time they have up spin and fifty cents and they have downspin but there is no way uh to explain why any particular photon has either upspin or downspin that's the point right i i agree with you that there is an expert that there there's an explanation in the conditions from which the photons emerge perhaps that explains why they statistically exist in a 50 50 correlation but there is no explanation for why any particular photon has a particular spin and that's what was proven in 2015 uh by bell's theorem this was this this is the this is the point that was proved it was previously thought look maybe it's the case that there's some kind of hidden variable maybe that's maybe that's problem as you say there are multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics but the point that i would have raised or trying to raise before i ran out of time was that the interpretations of quantum mechanics in which you're allowed to keep the principle of sufficient reason mean you have to give up uh you have to give up locality right you have to give up locality which according to general relativity has wacky wacky into uh uh uh corollaries right for instance the idea that if information can travel faster than the speed of light which is which is true under this interpretation um then you can you can get because of the way that different uh frames of references affect the the time in which something happens depending on your frame of reference a cause could occur after the effect so i don't disagree with you that there are interpretations of quantum mechanics which allow you to keep the principle of sufficient reason but at what cost it would be at the cost of a principle like causation or something which would undermine uh not just many other aspects of science but also a great many arguments for the existence uh of god but the point remains that it's not about explaining why there's a like sure there could be an explanation to say why 50 of the photons have this been 50 have that spin but we need an explanation for why a particular photon has a particular spin and that's what can't be done and that's where the principle efficient reason would be uh false um let me see here i've got an interesting question actually you when you mentioned the the why not heaven now objection you said that one of the reasons why i perhaps uh we want a a world of earthly suffering before we reach heaven is because there's something morally better about freely choosing good than just being kind of good by nature right like sure god could create beings in heaven which are just good because they're in the presence of god and they know to be good and that's just their nature but it's morally superior to have the opportunity to commit evil but to choose to choose to commit good uh instead right this is this is what you said of human beings but if it's morally if a being which has the capacity to commit evil is uh and chooses not to is better than a being that's good by nature then i would imagine that your definition of god is not a maximally good being because if god is a maximally good being then i suppose he's not capable of committing evil he's perfectly good by nature but you seem to be suggesting or maybe he's uh capable of committing evil but by some kind of roundabout way but you're saying he you would imagine i would imagine you would say that he's good by nature but if god is good by nature you seem to imply in your discussion of humans that it's actually more moral or better morally speaking to not be good by nature but to choose to be good despite not being good by nature and i'm interested in how that would work out i'm sure you have an answer to it but it's not something i've thought about before so i'd be interested to hear what you have to say you also said about evil being the privation of good which i simply can't accept i can't imagine that the infliction of a holocaust would just be the lack of uh suffering when trivially like i don't think this is a neutral state of affairs i think that something like picking up a phone is a neutral state of affairs that's a privation of good and the privation of evil but the infliction of suffering i don't think i can count as a privation of good but perhaps that's just where catholic and utilitarian intuitions rub against each other but you did offer a thought experiment about animals saying well if we were leaving the planet would i kill every animal on on on the place of the planet now that's a difficult question right um because i think you need to take into consideration the distinction between doing and allowing um i'm not quite sure what i'd do in that situation let's just say perhaps you know i would kill those animals like fine but that's not the situation god's in right the situation god's in is being often offered an opportunity to allow those animals to continue existing with less suffering and if you gave me that option i'd choose that option any time right so i think you've presented something of a false dichotomy by saying look we're getting on the spaceship and you have the opportunity to allow these animals to carry on suffering as much as they are um or you kill them all immediately it's like there's a middle option which is to have them experience less suffering then what else do we have you also made what i consider to be something of a bizarre uh a bizarre statement about factory farmers being worse than hitler on my view i suppose because you interpret me as saying that non-human animals are worth the same as as human animals and you think that the only way to justify distinction there is with theism i don't think that's true i think that if you have say a utilitarian worldview which maybe broadly i do but it's not quite accurate but let's just say that you did you could easily say that because humans are capable of experiencing higher and different kinds of pleasures to say a pig that although a human's pleasure is worth the same as a pig's pleasure all the other things being equal the human is worth more than the pig because of that capacity for pleasure in other ways that there are ways to say that a human is worth more than the pig and i think a human is worth more than the pig but my position on on animals in this in this instance isn't that animals are worth the same as humans it's that animals are worth more than human taste buds right so i wouldn't say that factory farmers are worse than hitler because you could or at least you're not committed to that view because you could say that if animals are worthless killing lots of animals for food is really really really bad and killing lots of humans because they're jews or disabled is worse right that those are perfectly compatible um in my view you've also on the point about free will you said well look you could just say the explanation for why a particular thought arises is because you know the explanation is within you like you are the explanation for your thought but look there has to be an explanation for why you had that thought and not another thought right we're not just trying to the principle of sufficient reason doesn't just commit you to offering an explanation for why a thought occurred but why that thought occurred otherwise you haven't sufficiently explained right to be a sufficient explanation it has to explain everything so the question would become why is it that you had that particular thought right and if there's an explanation for that it either exists within you which requires its own explanation or you get explanatory far enough back that it goes outside of you external to you in which case you're not in control of it so i think that that would undermine free will uh that's seven minutes there's there's so much there's so many things to discuss but i think that's about all i can just about kind of scrape the surface there okay thank you very much alex we're gonna now move into our second rebuttals where each of you will get four minutes trent are you ready yes start whenever you like all right all right let's let's start this is really fun i'm really enjoying this this is a cheesecake of a debate uh you know we've got a lot of stuff packed in here i think it's gonna be great for people to pour over so let me just comment on a few things that alex brought up when it comes to quantum mechanics and this goes a little bit to the question about free will the principle of sufficient reason that i was defending is a limited principle of sufficient reason i'm not arguing that any state of affairs or any event requires an explanation it could be the case that you have something that happens that we can't determine we can't predict uh you know if you have a ball on the tip of an infinitely sharp cone why does it roll right instead of left there may not be an explanation or there may be an explanation that's probabilistic that we can't determine uh but when it came to the question of the broglie bone hidden locality variables in quantum mechanics alex brought up the bell inequality theorem but john bell himself in speaking about this said it is a merit of the de broglie bone version to bring this non-locality out so explicitly that it can't be ignored so he actually praised this interpretation of quantum mechanics but as i said if you have a limited version of psr where i'm talking about the reason a thing exists rather than a particular event takes place then my argument from contingency to a necessary being still holds up quite well when it comes to goods is it better alex that is it better for a being to be able to choose evil and not good no it's not better for that being but it the good is always better than evil however beings that have free will you can draw out more goods in that situation than beings that lack free will so beings that have free will you can have moral free will you can have goods like forgiveness mercy compassion courage and it's worthwhile to create a world where we have those goods during the imperfect phase of that world's existence and then they cease to exist when the world journeys into its perfect phase of existence uh so i don't see any contradiction there at all that it's better to i think a world with these kind of virtues and from our own experience we see that that virtues and compassion these are goods and if god makes a world where those goods exist uh he's perfectly free to do so when it comes to privation my argument is that a privation is not nothing uh it's it's a it's not invisible it's not non-existent for example a hole in the ground is a privation but it's real you can fall into it so these privations are bad but once again if god chooses to make a physical system where goods and privations can exist as long as he brings more good from that then there's no moral problem here when it comes to picking up a phone for example that's not a privation of goodness in fact the it's non-moral goodness that occurs there of the ability of a rational creature to pick up something and make a call that's actually a good of using your rational powers to reach out and call someone and let them know whatever's happening when it comes to utilitarianism i agree utilitarians can say that there are higher order pleasures but at the same time it's interesting i don't think atheism could justify i'm sure alex would say well we can justify factory farming right now because we need it to at least feed the world i've heard him say this before we might need some factory farming in order to feed people and it's an evil we tolerate i wonder if alex would say the same thing about human slavery or human sex trafficking i highly doubt he would be willing to make those similar tolerations which speaks to the view that human beings have an intrinsic kind of worth that animals do not and i believe that atheism simply can't explain that but theism can explain the human being's main image likeness of god also those higher order pleasures by the way not all humans can exercise them some humans are cognitively similar to or inferior to pigs like infants or unborn children under alex's view if those humans are valuable because they have the capacity for higher order pleasures that would explain why infanticide is wrong but i'd say we got an argument against abortion pretty quickly here uh finally just to summarize everything what alex has given us in his reply to this case are puzzles about free will and puzzles about suffering but they have not disproven my argument for an unactualized actualizer an uncaused cause who has all the divine attributes he's offered puzzles that have not refuted demonstrative arguments okay all right thank you trent and now we're gonna remove uh move to the sec your second rebuttal for four minutes uh just let me know when you begin i'll just click the timer okay all right nice one um okay some interesting points again i'll try and blast through this as quickly as possible uh trent you made an interesting claim that your principal efficient reason is a limited one that doesn't necessarily apply to events this to me seems to be a distinction without difference i'm not sure how you could justify that claim and why it wouldn't undermine science in the same way about events uh requiring certain explanations but if i just granted it to you that fine okay not all events need an explanation i could consider the big bang to be an event and the event of the big bang is the explanation for why the universe exists but on your account the event itself doesn't need an explanation so the universe can come into existence without an explanation because that's an event and it's the event that caused the existence of the universe and therefore everything's explained and there's no problem the only way to avoid this objection i would see is either to find some way to explain why specifically the big bang is one of the kinds of events that would require a cause um or to i suppose uh throw out the pr the principle of sufficient reason i hope you see what i'm saying there um also you said that john bell praised other interpretations of uh of quantum mechanics sure john bell's paper came out in 1964 right the proof that specifically got rid of the hidden variables theorem uh the hidden variables hypothesis happened in 2015. i've got no doubt that uh in the interim periods there was plenty of good reason to believe either side but it's only very recently that we've got good substantive evidence to say that the hidden variable uh hypothesis of explaining um bell's inequalities is totally bunk and again i don't exactly have time to explicate this here and i'm certainly not um a quantum physicist and i presume that you're not one of the benefits of studying at oxford is that uh one of my good friends who i went for coffee with the other day uh who just received his masters in physics with the best grade in the whole university and i was able to talk to him for a very long time about quantum mechanics and i was bemused when i realized because i've been thinking about the principle of efficient reason in preparation for this debate and when i mentioned it in passing he just blew my mind by showing me exactly how to hold on to the principle of sufficient reason is what undermines current scientific understanding not the other way around um you also said that i've elsewhere said that factory farming might sometimes be justified in order to sustain human civilizations but i wouldn't make the same kind of um i wouldn't make the same kind of concession for something like human slavery um again i fear this is a misunderstanding of my position i've said that animals need to die in order for us to survive in one way or another because even if you're growing crops you're killing uh you're killing insects you're killing rodents and things um like sure but the difference is like we don't need slavery in order to survive but we need to kill animals in order to survive so like if there's a situation in which you actually need to kill an animal in order to survive that suffering becomes necessary and you're justified in inflicting it uh there's there's not a situation in which slavery is actually necessary to human survival in the same way and that's why i think that the two aren't equivocated if you were in a situation where the only way for you to survive would be to kill another human being i think that you're probably justified in doing that and it would be a form of self-defense right so i do think that the analyses would be the same i think that perhaps we would know that i can see from your facial expression that we disagree with uh that you probably disagree with me there but i think that uh human beings have a have uh uh how can i put this um an impossible it's impossible not to have this drive to survive for most people the people who do have it they can't help but have it and i think that like the drive to survive there is a psychological fact that is true of anybody uh and so essentially the point that i want to make on that is that in order to say that somebody shouldn't do something that is what is kind of allowing them to survive in order for somebody to completely essentially self-destruct themselves would be psychologically impossible and i think because if ought implies can you shouldn't be able to ask them uh to do that um also uh well i mean let's not open the the the question of abortion we've got about four seconds and that's definitely not time to answer it but i i think i'm i'm i'm probably i'm more pro-life than most pro the most pro-choices that i know and i think i'm probably more pro-life than you think i am but that's not to say i am pro-life um but maybe that's a discussion for another time okay one can help all right so i just want to let everybody know what what's coming up here we're about to go into cross-examination and then we will be taking your questions please remember as i said in the beginning that at the end of this debate i'm going to be announcing the next debate and who those debaters will be on this channel so be please be sure to stick around to that uh but before we move into cross-examination i want to say thank you to our second sponsor hallo hello is a really fantastic app that will help you pray and meditate it's actually the number one catholic app in the u.s it has five-star ratings on the app store there's really something for everyone there so if you're somebody who's just beginning to pray then that's great if you're somebody who prays every day there's something there for you as well it's you know you can listen to the rosary the divine mercy chaplet uh they have nightly examines prayer minute meditations they even have they even have like sleep stories where people read the bible to you i don't think anybody wants to hear me reading the bible one day there was this guy nobody wants that but father mike schmitz is on this that's pretty cool it's free to download and permanently it has permanently free content but if you go to hello.comfran we'll be sure to put that in the show notes below you can get access to the whole thing 30 day free trial hallow.com please check it out i actually mean it it's a really sophisticated app and just yeah super great so check it out okay so here's what we're going to do now we're going to be moving on to cross-examination and i just want to let those viewing know what's how this is gonna how this is gonna go first we're gonna begin with at the affirmative cross-examine and so that'll be trent uh cross-examining alex he has 12 minutes to do that and then alex will cross-examine trent uh but i also want people to know that the cross-examiner is allowed to interrupt and move the flow of the argument as he sees fit so if trent starts cross-examining alex or alex trent and they feel like they're not going anywhere it's not rude of them to to interrupt or anything like that okay so trent uh you let me know when you're ready and we'll begin with 12 minutes whenever you whenever you start speaking i'll just click the 12 minute timer sure yeah let's um let's jump into this here uh alex i'd like to talk about um uh the the point actually when you talk about the raised eyebrows because i do think that the different intrinsic moral worths of human beings as opposed to other animals is a significant problem for atheism that you made the claim that well it's justified to kill animals non-human animals if one needs to do that in order to survive and we would do the same for human beings now i agree in the sense of self-defense where if someone is trying to kill me uh my intention is not to kill them it's to stop their fatal attack even if um i foresee it will kill them it's the principle a double effect but i think it's very clear that you cannot kill another person merely to save your own life there was a famous british maritime case called rv dudley versus stevens in 1884. uh it was about a group of sailors who were stranded just about to bring this up yes yeah okay good then you know about it they killed the they killed they killed and ate the cabin boy richard parker which creepily enough edgar allan poe wrote a story about a cabin boy named richard parker being eaten 60 years earlier uh and the court said there that no murder is not necessity is not a defense for murder so would you agree that in some cases just because you need to live you don't have the right to kill another human being well interestingly the reason that i was going to bring up that example was uh to play on the intuition that they were actually justified in doing so right because these were men in a boat who were all about to die they were going to die anyway and they would be dead uh had they not committed this action and the cabin boy was ill he was going to die anyway right and so they made that sacrifice now don't get me wrong this is not a nice thing to do it's not like a blase yeah it's fine you know you can advise but the cabin boy didn't he didn't he the point of the case is the cabin boy didn't volunteer himself uh that's correct yeah so he was he was murdered it's you know even you know so i i guess that that their definition of murder i think it depends on your definition of murder because i think crown has said in this case okay so you so you don't see it you don't you so even though others may see this as an unjustifiable homicide you just might be the minority view to dissent against that i think it's at the very least a blur case and i think that we that we can be quick to judge somebody in that situation um for the action they took but i think that if you're in that situation i think there's a i think there's a fair argument to be made that it's a justifiable action to take okay well let me change the situation a little bit suppose you're dying and you need a heart transplant and there's someone who is also terminally ill that has a heart but the problem is they're probably going to live for another six or 12 months and you're going to kick the bucket in three months even though that person's going to die anyways that wouldn't justify you killing them in order to take their hearts so that you can live on for for many decades whereas in whereas in almost all cases we would be able to kill an animal for any reason to be able to live so it seems to me we still have a big difference between how we treat humans versus how we treat non-humans uh that i don't think can be explained if your criteria for morality is species neutral do you see the problem i i do i do see what you're saying um i think those situations are different and i wouldn't be in favor of people being able to harvest people's organs in that respect um do you i mean do at least on first instance one of the differences between these situations is that we don't want terminally ill people being worried that their organs are going to be harvested at a moment's notice right these situations uh these situations are not the same true but we might also but also alex we might want passengers on ships to not be worried they'll be eaten in lifeboats i mean this is true but i think we can agree that this is such a rare occurrence that i don't think this is a this is exactly i mean in other words i don't think people are generally afraid that they're going to end up on a boat at sea that isn't going to be rescued and happened to be the person who's ill and about to die that was true now that's true now but it wasn't true 150 years ago that was quite common for people at that time oh i see i suppose that i don't know how common that would be at the time i suppose that that may be fair but it was kind of a dirty it was a dirty secret of maritime travel that everyone tolerated until the dudley case right so i guess let me let's just we'll put that there i mean morality is i think when we talk about this morality is probably one of the most interesting things people wrap their heads around so we'll we'll talk more about it uh but let me actually well morality evil that kind of fits in there um your argument from evil it was a probabilistic one that you saw it doesn't disprove god but it makes them unlikely because there's some evils that i you don't see how they could be justified or they appear to be gratuitous so is your argument that it's the gratuitous evils that should make us skeptical of god or or all evils it's just a subset of the evils is that correct yeah no i definitely don't think that the existence of of evil or perhaps i should frame it as suffering to suffer certain complications is a problem in itself i think it's the extent and the depth of the suffering and that's the point that i was trying to make by saying that uh i believe that you're that you would be actually committed despite what you said in your rebuttal to the view that we do have exactly uh the exact right amount of suffering in in in the world um because look i mean if you wanted to and bear in mind my argument was specifically to respond to a defense of the of the existence of suffering so people who say that suffering exists right because god has morally sufficient reason you said a second ago or a moment ago you said that uh god could create uh more suffering or less suffering that would just be more or less good but my understanding of a perfectly moral being is one which maximizes morality one which maximizes the good wherever it's possible to do so now i understand why you'd have a limitation on a maximally perfect being in getting rid of say all suffering that wouldn't make any sense as you say if there are such things as higher order goods or goods which require certain suffering such as free will then it makes perfect sense well i would just well alex what i would say is i would disagree with that assertion that a perfectly good being must maximize the good that you and i would agree there is no such possible world that that has an intrinsic maximum of the maximum good because you could always make more and more people and then you would lead to some kind of contradictions for example suppose there was a world with one million people and they have uh let's say 99 happiness would you say that's a that's a good world yeah i i see where you're going with this um well let me just keep going because not everyone will be as clairvoyant as you yeah so then what if we did two million people at 98 happiness yes see i don't know the answer to that question but that doesn't mean that there isn't an answer right look i don't first i don't think that um i don't think that the quantity and quality or quantity and let's say uh amount of pleasure the amount of pleasure that someone receives and the quantity of people receiving that pleasure are on the same kind of pedestal here for instance i think that one person experiencing 2x suffering is worse than two people experiencing ex suffering um like i don't think they kind of map onto each other in in the same way okay so i'm trying to get a handle around what you would say now what's interesting here though is when we're talking about evil uh about the moral duty that god has so if god creates a world i'm trying to get my head around for you there's two questions here what would be the contents of the moral duty we can put that in quotation marks and then two would be the epistemic foundation sorry the ontological foundations like where do these moral duties come from so like if god makes a world is it just maximizing pleasure or is it minimizing suffering like they could be incompatible how would they be incompatible well for example if the goal is just to minimize suffering then god can make a world with an electron and then there's zero suffering right yeah i see what you mean um so i think that generally speaking for conscious creatures that do exist the minimization of suffering and the maximization of pleasure are kind of two sides of the same coin and some people prefer to frame it in terms of maximization and pleasure some people minimization of suffering you could just say that you want a balance of both but look i i see what you're saying which is that they can't be like it's difficult to imagine what the perfectly moral or the worst possible uh world would look like but my point is just this my point is that it seems almost trivial trivially true that there could be at least some less suffering in the universe yeah and if there's no i agree i agree with you i agree so i i wonder what your what your reasoning would be or what your suggestion would be as to why it's not the case and what i would say to you is does some suffer is suffering can suffering be justified yes okay okay so let me let me refrain then i i think that there can be i think that there can be less unjustified suffering in the world than there is right now then what criteria do you use to determine whether a suffering is justified or unjustified what objective criteria do you use all right so to be clear i'm i'm talking in terms of your worldview here so whatever you take to be the criterion of good i think either and again you can reject this claim so i'll say that whatever your criterion of good is i'm asking the question could there be less unjustified suffering and if the answer is yes then i think you've run into a problem if the answer is no then i think you've accepted it but alex under under my right but alex under my view as a theist i do not believe unjustified suffering exists at all because i believe any suffering can be justified by greater goods or the prevention of greater evils so on my view i don't see that as a problem but for you that's precisely my point i mean that's precisely the point that i made maybe maybe we're talking about each other here a little bit but my point was to say that the theist believes that any instances of suffering or what people would generally call natural evil are not in fact evil at all like these aren't because they're not unjustified suffering okay you know i i don't i don't hold that view my view is that evil is a lack of good uh there are intrinsic evils uh things that one must never do but evil itself is just an absence of good there can be non-moral evil and moral evil there can be moral evils that we tolerate and moral evils that we must never tolerate or never engage in so it'd be a richer dichotomy here how much time do i have sorry about that you have one minute and 50 seconds okay um well let's go to the basement then of these about morality and moral duties because my argument was if moral realism is true god exists moral realism therefore god um it's a valid argument and based on your comments in the debates would you hold the premise one uh what the moral realism is true or that moral realism entails god if moral realism than god i i i'm not sure about that because i i don't think that i'm not a moralist i don't think that moral claims can be objectively true um and i think i would hold that that would be the case even if god existed so i'm not sure i can accept that claim and i can explain why if you'd like okay so you believe moral realism is simply an impossible state of affairs depending on exactly what you mean by moral realism for instance i think that a claim like you ought not murder doesn't have truth value okay so it's it's just um an utterance or disapproval of certain kinds of killing uh i would interpret it slightly differently but essentially yes okay it's essentially it's a form of a motivism or non-cognitivism i guess you could say but it it's potentially a bit more complicated than that so you would say that when it comes to morality there are the statement rape is always wrong or let's take the most foundational one the statement humans ought to promote human flourishing uh you don't believe those statements are true uh i think that perhaps a statement of something being good can be true because that's a descriptive claim but an ought claim contains an essence of command and commands can't have truth value so i don't think that can have truth value okay i know so i have no problem if there's a if there's a moral author of the universe and that god and that god determines that something is good i think that's perfectly i think that's perfectly coherent um however i'm not sure uh i would say the same for ought statements which in other words are prescriptive if it turns if it turned out though final question 12 minutes are up or should we um we can switch that's okay all right uh just trying to be fair to both of you here okay so alex as soon as you start i'll click the 12-minute timer and you can cross-examine trent and you can interrupt him at any time to move move the conversation along sure well i'm uh i'd be happy to to further that discussion perhaps in another another point because like it it takes 10 minutes just to get it off the ground because we have to understand exactly what we mean by different moral uh moral terms um so i'm interested just to be just be clear about this talking about animal suffering i'm interested trent what do you think for example um okay well let me just put the question like this why do animals suffer as much as they do in your view why do animals suffer the current amount that they suffer yeah well i would say animals suffer the current amount that they suffer because our universe has regular fixed and predictable laws of nature and that animals are finite physical creatures that have to operate in that environment and so in order to operate as complex organisms the higher order animals will need survive they survive best when they have pain sensors to determine threats to them and it allows their they evolve to have pain sensors to increase their ability to survive and propagate but it's exactly my answer it's at least possible that those animals could have experienced less suffering like do you think it's in other words what i'm asking is am i expected to kind of interpret that as you think it would would have been logically impossible for god to have created a functional set of natural laws that didn't entail the amount and depth of animal suffering that it currently does uh no i don't think it's logically impossible i mean you could create but the reason i asked sorry is because if you say that the reason why this animal suffering exists or at least one reason is because of the fact that there are natural laws which entail it well if if those natural laws aren't necessarily the case then why not have just made them differently that that's not really a justification for the for the problem at hand well you you didn't ask for justification you only asked a descriptive question why are things the way that they are okay i suppose uh implicitly i mean to say why are they that way uh assuming uh that there is a morally perfect supervisor of the universe why would he allow that to occur well for the same reason as the the theists overarching defense which would say that any evil and suffering whether it's human or non-human uh an all-powerful being can allow the existence of evil if that being can bring greater goods from it or prevent greater evils that for me it seems very clear that if this principle applies to humans uh that we do this all the time where we allow uh you know we allow evil to exist and suffering among humans and non-humans to secure certain greater goods if we allow humans to do that in limited circumstances i don't see a problem in allowing an omnipotent omniscient creator to have far more latitude to do it and also the reasons he would have i don't really have epistemic access to all of them because i'm a limited finite creature but given that it does work for humans uh i don't see why i wouldn't work for god that was why i brought up that thought experiment about vaporizing the earth when humans leave i think many people would would leave the earth as kind of a zoological habitat for those animals even knowing that they would suffer because there is a goodness just in them existing well unless you could create a system whereby they're existing with less suffering like if you had that option surely that would be the option to take well um i mean i i in other words let me put it this way if i gave you that option we're moving away in this spaceship and say look you've got three options here trying you can either abolish all life on earth as we move away from it you can keep things exactly as they are or you can create a kind of paradisal earth where animals are existing with at least a lot less suffering maybe no suffering if you like which button do you press well no suffering would be would be different the terms would be vague is it um if there still is suffering even minimal suffering after millions of years that would be an incredible amount of suffering uh let me put it this way then um there's a button which which reduces the amount of suffering by 50 overall with with no with no kind of non beneficial side effects right right but not knowing i would kind of affect alex my person my personal view my personal view on the matter is that i believe the existence of animals is a good thing uh so maybe i would push that button maybe i wouldn't i might need more data as to what it what it means to reduce the suffering so for example by pushing the button like does it it keeps everything the way it is i guess my my trouble with this is that uh yeah it's possible to create a feasible world where it's the exact same but there's less suffering my concern is that that may not be feasible it might be like the problem of philosophical zombies so now you're toying with the idea that maybe the amount of suffering in the universe is exactly how where it needs to be and that's what i was that that's what i was putting forward in the first place that what i think your view commits you to i think you either have to say that the amount of suffering in the universe cannot be budged one way or the other all you have to do okay well here's can we have good reason to say that it should go one way well here's how i went here's how i'd answer that here's how it is if i if i give you those buttons and you refuse to press the button or at least even can say well i don't know what maybe i'll just let them go on suffering maybe i won't press this button which has no other effect but to give them less suffering like i think that would be i think that would be a moral travesty not to press that button but then will you agree though that the button that results in no suffering i'm not a bl i'm not obligated to pick that because it ends the animal's existence and you agree that's a mis that's a harder case well yes that's a harder case it may be the case that we should press that button if the suffering is bad enough and if the suffering isn't counter balanced by pleasures right but that's let's just say it's the weight of this question right but ultimately what i would say is my choosing to push any of those buttons will be undergirded by a partic i would say that it's not under your view that morality is about subjective assumptions we have about what the good is i could just tell you alex i have a different subjective assumption about the ultimate foundation of morality i don't believe it's a utilitarian maximization principle so i'm not under a moral duty to press any of them because it's your opinion against mine but my view actually allows there to be universal moral duties saying that it is a fact we ought to act certain ways and i think that's a huge deficiency on atheism i i see what you're saying and this is this is just a point about conflicting kind of base worldview beliefs here and i i want to move on to talk about something else briefly here i hope my point has gone across but as i say i'm happy to uh continue discussing this any time i should go to london and have one of those delightful backyard conversations with you like you do with um your friend what's named woodford stephen stephen yeah that would be good or on the podcast um sure i'm uh one thing i want to ask about is the principle of efficient reason now now it seems to me that you're quite influenced by ed phase's arguments um i i may be kind of pulling that out of thin air but from what you said they seem to have a lot of correlation now i'm interested if you follow his reasoning in in one of the ways that i'm thinking about here um in the argument from motion or the argument from actualization of potential uh phaser makes the point that uh whatever actualizes you know the thing that actualizes this mic being here on the stand is the stand but the stand only holds that actualization um uh instrumentally because that's actualized by something else and so it's the actual the full explanation for what actualizes the microphone is not the stand because that only has instrumental um actual actualization via other things in the same way i would say that the same should in my interpretation be true of the principle of sufficient reason that is uh if a contingent factor is explained by another contingent fact that contingent fact is also explained by another contingent fact so the thing that explains whatever contingent fact we're looking at is only instrumentally uh explanatory only has instrumental explanatory power for it to be a sufficient explanation is in principle of sufficient reason to explain why a contingent thing is the way that it is you may disagree with my reasoning here but let me try and let me try and spell this out um we're trying to say that there needs to be a sufficient reason for why and why something exists right but if that if if the reason or the explanation for that thing also also requires an explanation then in the same way as actualization that explanation is only instrumentally explanatory you see what i'm saying it's kind of by analogy it's also only instrumental in this explanation in that that needs to be explained by something else and that needs to be explained well that's the nature of the nature of contingent things or the nature of things that are a mixture of act and potency is that if the thing does not explain itself it's quite capable of explaining other things but we don't have a complete explanation of the state of affairs because we're stuck at something that still needs explanation sure so when you say that anything has a sufficient reason that is a reason that's all-encompassing and explains everything that to me would imply that you would need to have all of the instrumental um explanations and the base root explanation be it whatever brute fact you think it goes back to which to me makes it seem like the the argument for the principle of sufficient reason is begging the question because to say that something has uh sufficient reason is essentially to say that you have an explanation which ultimately terminates in a brute fact that is to assert the existence of the brute fact before you get off the ground i don't know if i'm making sense here i haven't explained this very well um no well i would say that that when it comes to explaining things we can have sufficient explanations you can have a sufficient explanation that is not a complete explanation for example when i left the house today i saw there were a plate of cookies on the table and so i would think well why is there a plate of cookies there's a scientific explanation that dough heated in the oven to make a confectionary delight and a reasonable personal explanation my wife laura made them but i mean a total one would be like the bread that was harvested the cocoa that was made the oven that was constructed going all the way back to the big i mean that seems to be what you would need to actually have a fully sufficient explanation of why this contingent thing is as it is um but but also i just want to flag this before we run out of time look the distinction you've made there i think is a false one you make a distinction between scientific and personal explanations like boiling the cattle you say why do you boil the cattle where there's the explanation involved in chemistry and these the explanation involving um what i want but me wanting a particular type of drink or something is also scientifically explicable right by like like that that is all i don't see why that's different just because it involves a person like the the reasons the neurons that are firing in my brain to make me want a particular thing rather than another is just as easily scientifically explainable as the chemistry of the right but what i would say is that well what i would say is that endorses a controversial view of the philosophy of mind that even many atheists don't accept which is that uh mental intent that intentions or mental experiences don't exist alex rosenberg makes this point uh in his book the atheist guide to reality that an intention would be having a boutness to something but in my wife's brain the neurons the electrons that are firing there's no property of aboutness or chocolate chip cookies about chocolate chip cookies in there so if the only thing that exists or these material objects we haven't really explained uh that crucial element of it if you try to reduce mental states and intentions just to a materialist explanation which even many atheistic philosophers of mind don't do they can be property duelists and other things like that yeah um well i think that looking at my time i think we've pretty much run out of time 40 seconds over 40 seconds okay well i was just getting ready to to do i have any more i've been glancing over at the live chat and i remember when i said you know i can't i can't talk about or justify abortion one way or the other in four seconds and someone was like yes you can for sure yeah yeah i'm happy to move on to audience q a for sure comes next huh um uh matt people are saying they can't hear you oh i'm sorry sorry everybody can you hear me now um all right we're gonna move into uh 30 minutes of q a if you direct a question we'll take one question for alex one question for trent we'll go back and forth like that uh trent will have two minutes to respond and then you know if he's being asked the question then alex will uh get to respond well i'm really glad that somebody pointed out that i was muted because that would not have been fun to waste the rest of this time okay so if you have a question please put it up in the live chat man can you believe we have 2500 people right now that's amazing i'm pretty sure they can hear me now people people are still saying you're muted um yeah you know why they they might be a little i don't know if they're a little delayed i thought there's a delay but they're still i don't know someone's saying fixed i think it's fine now yeah yeah i think it's okay now um what's difficult is we've got like how many people right now 2 415 people watching and they're all asking questions at the same time so let me see if i can you guys can just take a breather all right let's see uh uh question here for i'm gonna throw it up on the screen for alex so alex i'll ask you the question as soon as you start answering i'll give you two minutes then i'll cut you off and give trent a minute to respond can alex explain his perception of how consciousness can be realized with only a naturalistic phenomenon thanks um well i mean the short answer is no um i think i have just as much idea about what consciousness is and how it works as anybody else um i i'm not entirely sure i know it came up so maybe it is relevant something i said but i don't see the immediate relation but like no i i mean like to put a bluntly like i i don't have a strong opinion on what consciousness is or how it works but i think that like it's at least plausible that there's a natural explanation for how it uh for how it comes about like i mean you can kind of think of non-conscious perception of surroundings as a very uh as a very kind of minimal um trivial version of consciousness that the more complex that becomes that's essentially what consciousness is but i mean really i i i hate to kind of almost refuse the question but i i just don't know i i don't know what consciousness is i wouldn't know how to account for it okay i have uh trent you have a minute to respond uh yes i'm aware of arguments for the existence of god like this and i'd recommend listeners to jp moreland's book the argument for god from consciousness i think the listener brought it up because i made the point that for an atheist like alex he's justified in believing that he has conscious mental states even if he cannot give a step-by-step scientific explanation of how it is the case he has those from a physical brain much the same way i believe theists and many people are justified in saying they have free will because it's free will is just as seemingly obvious as the fact that i am conscious even if you can't give a step-by-step physical explanation which may be the wrong kind of explanation to give for this sort of phenomena that as i said before if you're morally responsible which girds the moral realism i defended then i think it shows that you have free will and you can believe in that even if you don't have a step-by-step explanation for it okay thanks very much question for trent he's uh this is m jordan he says how can we have free will in heaven yet not be sinful why didn't god do that from the very beginning what is his point of testing us if he already knows the outcome well what i would say is that it's not about a test and so this goes back to alex's argument which is why didn't god just create a world of only moral agents who only choose the good and god could have made a world like that if he had just made human beings immediately in his presence and gave them perfected wills so that if they have perfect wills and their intellect never fails to achieve grasp the good which is god himself his beatific vision then they would they would apprehend that but my point is that god is justified in allowing evil if he can bring about greater goods and that a world that goes from imperfect to perfect has goods that this direct heaven creation does not and so god is justified in making this world that has those kinds of goods and namely uh the virtues that are inextricably tied to vice like compassion courage forgiveness mercy uh these are good things and god is justified in allowing them to exist and so the other argument i gave was that um i think it's good for god to create rational creatures and to respect their freedom to not simply create them into an existence where like many atheists will say god just makes us his slaves that might be a somewhat of an argument if god made us right in his presence and we just bow down and worship him but if he gives us the choice whether to follow him or not and he freely respects the decisions we make then that's a respect of human agency and liberty that i think is a good that should be taken into account that goes against that common caricature of god okay i'll let's give one minute to respond yeah i mean i i understand what you're saying but i think that there are some interesting implications such as the idea that once you get to heaven the fact that you're kind of fully apprehending god means that you will always choose to do the good because once you're in heaven you'll kind of you're essentially being psychologically coerced into doing it this is one thing that i i think there are some interesting implications about the freedom of conscious creatures when the kind of the argument relies on the idea that in order to be freely good you have to be free you have to have the capability of being freely evil as well but if you're essentially saying that once you get to heaven the reason evil doesn't exist is because people just they just can't psychologically bring themselves to commit it because they're in the presence of the good then that's the same thing as saying they're not capable of committing evil in which case are they really freely choosing uh to commit the good if you say something like well they do still freely choose to commit the good they just i mean they can still commit evil they just kind of choose not to then i i'd be interested to know whether you think that it's logically possible that there would be an event like the holocaust in heaven because to me my intuition says that that wouldn't be the case maybe you think it is but in order to say that actually no there is still some kind of free choice going on there you could say that they don't in practice shoot submit a holocaust but they could if they wanted to and i think that's not a great implication next question from manuel he says and this is for alex why do you think a perfectly good being god is obligated to maximize the pleasure or minimize the unnecessary suffering of his creatures in class and then he says theist goodness in depth of creatures okay so i think you got the gist of the question did you yeah i mean i if i used that language it was probably just to avoid the complications of trying to use words like good and evil which people don't like me using a lot of the time um the point that i'm trying to make is one on uh is one on the theistic worldview so i think if there is such thing as a maximally i'm essentially following jl mackie here and saying that if there is a perfectly moral being it will minimize evil wherever it can um people don't like the way that i'm using evil so i say whatever you take to be a criterion of evil just just slot in the word there but i perhaps more generally just worded as that i think that if there is such thing as objective morality if there is such thing as a god who's perfectly moral then i think that he would minimize whatever is objectively evil uh and that's what i'm saying leads to the view that whatever evil exists in the world right now if there is a perfectly if there is a perfectly moral god exists necessarily and there couldn't be any more or any less now that's something that trent disagreed with and we kind of dance around the subject a little bit i don't think we really pinned it down but i think that's the implication that you're led to if you're going to say that there is a perfectly moral being and a perfectly moral being will minimize evil that whatever you take to be evil then necessarily exist exactly the right amount right now because they couldn't be any more or any less i hope that makes sense all right trent yeah and i i disagree with mackie's premise that a perfectly moral being will minimize evil uh because you could do that uh like if i'm a perfectly moral being and i had the anti-matter device that could destroy the whole universe instantaneously as a perfect being i should press the button because i'll bring the amount of evil in the universe down to zero uh so i just disagree with that premise in mackie's argument my view is that if god is perfectly moral then any evil he allows to exist evil is not a thing he makes is an absence of good any evil that he allows to exist will be justified because in doing so god either makes he prevents greater evils or he brings about greater goods which as i said is a principle that uh we justify among humans and it can if that's justified among humans tolerating evil for greater goods like we build roads to other towns even though there will be people who die from car accidents we allow free speech even though people will say horrid things uh then we can apply that to god and then i can't help but comment on the last question no there will not be a holocaust in heaven all right ever impossible next impossible next question impossible impossible next question is for trent um what are your thoughts on adam and eve only eating plants pre-fall does this not offer support for the idea that christians should aim to be vegan go for it well i don't see anything in the genesis account it does talk about how adam and eve were given every green plant in the garden to eat uh the catechism of the catholic church says in paragraph 390 that the account of the fall in genesis i think is 390. the account of the fallen genesis 1-3 affirms a primeval event but it's written in symbolic language so that you know so it's it's presenting truths but not necessary in a literal historical sense so to derive a universal moral duty from that i think would be unfounded uh as a christian i would say that we have uh the moral permission to eat animals uh but we also have the moral duty to not cause unnecessary suffering for among animals obviously that would include directly torturing animals but i'm extremely sympathetic to alex's view that much of factory farming uh causes unnecessary suffering and i've actually been criticized by other catholics for saying this that there could come a point where we say that that it is immoral to eat food that comes from certain kinds of animal meat production that involve unnecessary suffering but i don't believe that animals have the same moral status as human beings okay yeah i mean i i would only have to add that i think um i think if people want to put this bluntly jesus would probably have some choice words if you took him on a tour of a modern factory farm i would just point out that i agree with you there trent that it's not necessarily intrinsically wrong to kill an animal and eat it or to eat an animal product uh in any circumstance what's wrong is committing unnecessary suffering in your words you say like unnecessary suffering in order to to produce that food i would say that because we now live in a situation whereby we don't need animal products to survive um and because killing an animal in most cases and certainly the production of things like milk and the separation of cars from their mother do cause suffering by definition that's unnecessary suffering because we don't need to do it to survive and therefore you should be giving up milk that's the only thing that i would have to add if you wanted to you say you're sympathetic to the the argument and people like to say yeah i'm with you on the factory farming stuff well if you're with me on the factory farming stuff then stop finding it all right another conversation indeed just so you know trent alex i'll cut you off after the two minutes so don't feel like you're you're i'll let you know if you go over your time so this next question is for alex from david john he says have you become more convinced or more doubting of atheistic principles through talking to the likes of william lane craig etc thanks well i'd be i'd be careful to use words like atheistic principles i'm not sure such things exist but i know that i understand the grammar of the question and like yes absolutely no no doubt in my mind whatsoever since studying at university and it's not so much the actual the the course itself but the people i've met some of my best friends most of them are religious and we have these amazing conversations i've had i've had great luck to speak to people like william lane craig who i have great respect for um and used to be part of the crowd who would kind of just chime in and say oh these dishonest apology charlatans and i i can't believe that it's so obvious that i knew nothing about what i was talking about and now i i so so much more um that's why i said in my opening statement that the problem of animal suffering is the main thing that's stopping me from uh seriously entertaining theism because if that problem is sold if i can find a solution for that then i could very easily uh see myself becoming religious if i found you know a deductive argument that i thought worked you know if you could break the symmetry of planting as ontological argument i believe in god like that it's as simple as that like i've become i've come to realize that if the argument is presented and it's a and it's presented and it's valid and it's sound like there's just no escape from that so i i think i have certainly more respect for the arguments that i've been responding to because of conversations with people like craig but also i've realized more that if an argument was out there it could convince me in a heartbeat sure and i would say on this answering the question i guess from my perspective hearing it i would agree the problem of animals suffering uh is a difficult one for theists to to confront at least at an emotional level i do think though that once again these probabilistic arguments that just make god less likely they'll always be defeated by a demonstrable argument like you know the example i gave is that if i have ironclad evidence that i'm innocent like an alibi even if there's really damning evidence against me like your fingerprints are on the gun like oh yeah that is hard to explain but then if i've got this demonstrable thing to outweigh it then then the theist still comes out on top so i think with the evidential arguments when we do evidential arguments against god it's only fair to also include all the evidence that is uh for god as well to see where this the scales tip uh but also for me the the distinction about animal suffering is that you're gonna wrap up for me the the oh am i done yeah you can wrap it yeah wrap up your thought if you want is that the the way to resolve the moral duty we have towards animals without veering into arbitrary human arbitrary human value inequality or an unlivable human non-human equality and ethics that one the difficulty that arises from that pushes me more towards the theistic moral realism and christian view on the subject all right this next question from andrew montpetit says science leans on the assumption something has the capacity to be understood uh so trent how do the limits of humanity's capacity play into your understanding of seemingly random events and then i look forward to hearing alex's response well yeah so alex brought up the idea that there are events that are random that might not have a reason for why they occur but i don't believe that that cuts against the idea that there's a principle of sufficient reason to explain why things exist so a famous example of this is a farmer plowing his field and he comes across buried treasure by chance like it would seem random that he was just plowing in that place and why did he why did he get the the treasure in that place it doesn't show there's no principle of sufficient reason because there is a reason why the treasure exists and why the farmer is plowing uh chance and randomness only makes sense as being the byproducts of natural predictable laws of of nature and reality so if a rock falls down a hill and crushes a smaller rock by chance quote unquote that's only because there are predictable laws and explanations for why rocks exist why certain forces move them in the way they do why their potential is actualized and it's within that framework of predictability and sufficient reasons that we get these random events that's why going back when when alex is talking about these experiments that are performed i really do think that makes the case i'm talking about because if you didn't have psr one you couldn't uniformly do these experiments and get the same result every single time and without psr you'd have a lot of reason to doubt whether your own sensory uh experiences of these events was trustworthy because you wouldn't know that that it's actually happening with kind of a reliable predictability for more on that i would recommend alex press's book on uh the principle of sufficient reason that go press and coons go into that in more detail okay yeah alex feel free to respond and take an extra 30 seconds if you like since trent took a little longer on that last one so i would i would second the second the book recommendation and i would also say that like trying i think you've just kind of defined randomness out of existence there like that the whole point is that yeah if uh if a farmer randomly kind of digs up some treasure that that's not actually random that's that's like the whole argument is that well there is an explanation for why that was there you can if you knew all the kind of facts about the universe if you knew kind of you know who buried it there why the farmer went this way instead of that way what was going on in his brain which way the wind was blowing you know how hot how how uh sharp the tool was that he was digging with so how deep it got all these kind of things then you could predict uh and explain yeah that's why you hit the hit treasure so it's not actually random right the point is um that generally speaking you know most scientists from the time of newton at least thought that the universe acted in accordance with these deterministic uh laws even if there were certain things like you know somebody randomly coming across something quote unquote as you say and i think the reason you say quote-unquote is because you realize it's not true randomness um people thought well even if we can't explain it because there are too many variables there is an explanation if you flip a coin it's almost impossible to know all the variables to predict exactly which way it would flip but if you knew all the variables you could predict with 100 accuracy which way it flipped that is the only thing that would be truly random is something like which we observe in quantum mechanics and if that does hold which it does then we have what we would call true randomness which means not just something that appears to happen randomly but does actually have an explanation but something that actually occurs and exists with no explanation okay excellent thank you this next question we have a super chat thank you so much uh this is uh irving nestor he says now this is for alex quantum randomness only implies a limitation of knowledge of an outcome why can't god ordain this limitation and quantum laws and thus be the explanation while not having the limitation himself uh sorry can you repeat it one more time yeah you got it quantum randomness only implies a limitation of knowledge of an outcome why can't god ordain this limitation and quantum laws and thus be the explanation while not having the limitation himself yeah well look i might be misinterpreting what you're saying but you seem to say that quantum mechanics implies that we just kind of don't know which way something's going to go like the principle is not that the principle is that we can't know because nothing determines it right that is what the experiment in 2015 finally proved and by the way they've been doing experiments since like the 80s um but they finally actually conclusively proved it without loopholes in 2015. it's not just kind of like uh yeah well you know there's no way for us to know there's some hidden variable that we can't see there's there's something preordained about it that we just can't access what it proves is that like it cannot be pre-ordained in that in that sense even in a naturalistic sense it can't be from the point of which the photons are released um you could not know even in principle and that means even if you're the divine creator of the universe um unless i suppose you could think of it in terms of seeing the future but it would be in the future there'd be nothing that you could see at that instance even if you knew all true facts about the universe that would tell you what was going to happen or which way uh that particular photon was going to spin that's the point it's not like a practical limitation it's a it's a limitation in principle um so i think that the kind of the question maybe kind of misunderstands the point that i was making in the first place okay trent yeah i think we've talked past each other a little bit about psr but the limited principle sufficient reason that i argued for was just that things which exist have a reason for why they exist you don't just come across things that exist for no reason whatsoever so when we talk for example quantum mechanics like the reason a beta particle a decaying beta particle from an atomic nucleus exists is because it was brought about by the atomic decay in that nucleus so the atomic nucleus is the explanation for why the beta particle exists now alex i say we'll go deeper why does it exist at that time rather than another time and we would attribute that to the property of an atomic nucleus uh generating beta particles according to some kind of probabilistic framework so it's a there's not like there's just um no causes or determinant causes there can be causes that are indeterminate and so that and so god can even know those by various reasons the the mystic view would be that since he upholds everything in existence he knows everything that will happen including these probabilistic causes the next question which is directed at trent thank you gina for being a one of the super chats here she says trent have you read christopher steck on a catholic framework for animal theology and if so what do you think of it for your information alex i recommended trent doherty to start with on the problem of animal suffering go for it no sorry i have no thoughts on that so many books to read uh and then and and there are uh different views trent doherty is one um uh it's a gentleman who wrote nature red tooth and claw michael murray i think is his name um has another explanation on that point uh but i have not read that particular work though i do think that once again the baseline here when it comes to the evidential argument from evil we must not forget is that if the demonstrative arguments for god's existence work then no probabilistic argument from evil can overcome them i would appeal to my courtroom analogy the trial analogy that i made earlier if it's just probabilistic it can't be demonstrative much the same way if uh if a atheist had 100 logical proof god did not exist no evidential argument for god could beat that either so when we're comparing so when we're doing these evidential arguments all of it has to be on the table otherwise it's not a fair assessment of evidence you can't look just at one piece of evidence at trial you've got to look at all the evidence when it comes with god the evidential argument against evil all of it has to be on the table to be weighed okay go for alex um i would just say well thank you for the for the recommendation of trent's book i spoke to trent yesterday um and uh we'll definitely be discussing uh discussing the book with him at some point and i think yeah it's a good place to start i agree with you um i i'm not sure exactly what i if i have anything yeah let's just say on the point i can't remember what the original question actually who's just reading if i had read a book yeah just a book recommendation yeah i'm not sure i really have anything to add in that case no worries although i would perhaps just say that i think i agree with you trent that um evidential arguments don't you know don't hold the same weight as deductive arguments do i would say that there you know there is a logical form of the problem of evil that could be pulled out of what we're discussing for instance if you do accept that a maximally good being would minimize evil then i think there is a logical point that can be made there but if you reject that then i would agree with you that yeah um back to what was said earlier about you know if i'm more sympathetic to these arguments it's like if you can produce a deductive argument that god exists and that god is perfectly moral and it was valid and sound then sure the problem of evil would kind of just dissipate it would become a problem of explaining it not trying to kind of discuss whether it means god exists or not right next question here comes from andrew connor and this is for alex alex have you studied soren kirk kierkegaard and could knowledge beyond human discovery exist and again if you haven't read that specifically feel free just to talk about the general topic i have a a little bit um uh and we studied uh fear and trembling in depth um wait no uh look i i i have not sorry i think i'm getting mixed up there no yeah that's right that's correct yeah yeah uh yeah uh what was the what was the second part of the question um let me see here uh have you studied uh could knowledge beyond human discovery that's right exist um i think that knowledge beyond human discovery i i think not uh the reason being because um although there's not a kind of fully there's not a fully agreed upon analysis of what knowledge is i think one of the things that that knowledge does require one of the necessary conditions of knowledge is that you believe it's the case and so if it's kind of beyond human comprehension or beyond human access then i don't think it could count as knowledge um unless i suppose you could posit something like a divine intellect in which cause knowledge can exist in the divine intellect but isn't accessible to human beings maybe um but if you try to use that to prove god's say that would be begging the question i think i i think that if you're talking about human knowledge um there there can't be such thing because i suppose maybe you're trying to kind of talk about there being such thing as as divine knowledge in which case sure if god existed yeah there could be knowledge that's inaccessible to human beings and if that's maybe an implication if that's maybe supposed to have an implication for the problem of evil um like you know there's some explanation or there's some something that god knows that we can't then then sure fine uh it just wouldn't do much for the debates that that we have as human beings in our human capacity okay trent uh yeah i don't know how kierkegaard would would fit into this he was a 19th century christian existentialist uh who has interesting writings though i would prefer the writings of blaise pascal to him uh when it comes to knowledge beyond human discovery i would say absolutely because i would say there are infinite amounts of knowledge we have infinite sets for example in mathematics uh knowledge of the universe beyond human comprehension if knowledge is justified true belief uh we have many beliefs like i could believe there are uh an odd number of atoms in the universe i don't know how we're ever going to know whether that's true or false i don't think human beings could ever reach the technological capacity to answer the question uh but it's definitely true or it's definitely false uh but i do think that the lewds packed an argument i made earlier which is that if these uh truths some of them are necessary like mathematical truths propositional truths if they are necessary and they exist then they must exist in some kind of necessarily existing mind and that provides more evidence for the kind of the divine intellect that alex referenced okay thank you yeah sorry i may have misunderstood i think if you mean the truths exist that we couldn't know then yeah absolutely sure all right here's the final question i think this is a great question to end on i'll give you both two minutes if you'd like to answer this this comes from one of our patrons vincent wise he says i would love to hear each of them comment on the argument they struggle the hardest to answer it's always interesting to learn how a person deals with their weaker points so i guess the question here is i could ask alex what do you think is the most formidable argument for theism and i could then i'll ask trent what's the most formidable argument for atheism so alex go for it it's a difficult question to answer because it it it's like it's impossible to tell what effect an argument is having on me until it actually finally works like i don't kind of feel slightly pulled and then fully bullish like it either gets me or it doesn't um as i briefly mentioned a moment ago like i think ontological arguments uh are some of my favorite i i'm something of a i prefer rationalistic thinking to kind of empirical argumentation or something so like i'm fascinated by ontological arguments for the existence of god and i love the idea of being able to kind of talk about the existence of a necessary being through thought alone i think that that's where the potential lies to make me believe in a necessary being or something like that i do think perhaps maybe there's some interesting arguments about consciousness um my friend jonathan mcglatchy raised a point to me recently that evil is an argument in favor of god and not for the kind of reasons that uh someone like yourself would put forward but he said essentially um in a bayesian sense he was like well evil presupposes consciousness and because consciousness is so much more likely on theism than atheism evil is actually kind of by a kind of long way around it's actually argument in favor of god and i thought that was really fascinating and interesting i think the mystery of consciousness has a lot to be unpacked um and has plenty of potential but i'm afraid i i just don't really know until it convinces me but i think the most potential lies in ontological arguments okay trent what's the most formidable argument uh for atheism you find most difficult to answer well i i think it's going to be the argument from evil uh it does pose uh intellectual problems to overcome i do not believe they're insurmountable but i i do think that as human beings we're not computers we're not vulcans we don't rationally process everything uh you know if you if you you know when alex is talking about arguments moving him he almost talked about like saying when did you know that you you you loved so and so it's like well it's hard to tell there's no step-by-step process it just kind of hit me and i think it's it's something similar with uh you know these arguments or coming to know people so i think that evil it impacts us in that non-rational way that many people come to believe in god for rational reasons and also non-rational reasons not irrational but non-rational that just the same you can assert the worthiness of of having a personal relationship with someone because of the beauty that they exude and for other non-rational reasons i think that that works for god so then of course the ugliness in the world could make you quite angry with god and understandably so and sometimes i get angry i like god why why is this happening and and i'm comforted that in the new testament in first peter 5 it says to cast all your anxieties on him for he cares for you so sometimes yeah the horrid evils i see just make me want to throw my hands up but if i threw god out of the picture all i'd be left with is the horrid evils it would still be horrible and miserable and awful but there'd be no possibility for any kind of vindication or compensation so for me i don't see the need to do that with god unless someone shows me there's there's evidence beyond that that he's either incoherent or that all the arguments simply don't work but i i'm sympathetic to how the argument can pull people but i believe there are strong ways out of it okay well thank you very much guys that was really fascinating um we're going to take five minutes each for closing statements and we're going to begin with you trent when you're ready and then we'll move on to alex so just let me know well we covered a lot of ground here in this debate and what's hard with these debates i mean any limited time format uh unless we were bertrand russell and father coppelston and we just talked for hours and hours and hours on hand and maybe there'll be a time for that but i think given the time constraints people have i think debates like this serve an important purpose they may convince some people god exists they may convince some people that he doesn't exist you might watch and be unmoved in your feeling about it at the end of the day though i hope that debates like these will encourage you to really own your belief on the matter whether your belief is that god exists or your belief even atheists have a positive belief like no arguments prove god exists i would just say whoever you are watching this own that belief we referenced many things tonight uh go and read up on that more visit our youtube channels uh alex's and mine and read the articles we've written to go deeper in that and so i would just say that look for those who are considering atheism or rejecting god i would i would say you can do that but you you pay a high price in choosing atheism you do because in rejecting the arguments that were proposed tonight as we saw with alex and our engagement an atheist i believe has to be prepared to reject many truths about reality that seem quite sensible truths about causality truths about the principle sufficient reason that things that exist have explanations uh i think that through the course of this debate there was not a fatal objection lodged against my arguments from causal finitism the arguments for a purely actual actualizer even for the arguments for a necessary being or one that is the full ground to morality so when you look at morality i think especially if you follow the morality alex puts forward in his particular atheistic world view you have to embrace many controversial positions as we saw in tonight's debate about whether is it true that it's always wrong to do some things like murder an innocent person or to rape someone uh is morality objective i think if you saw tonight's debate if you embrace alex's particular atheistic view it reads it leads to some heavily morally counter-intuitive positions and if you don't want to embrace those i would say embrace a theistic view of the world of god being perfect goodness itself who created us in his image and so regardless of where you move forward remember that you are made in god's image you are loved the only reason you exist is because god wanted you to exist and you're valuable so as you go and talk and discuss and maybe go in the comments section below this video try to remember you and the person you talk to are valuable even if you don't believe it you're valuable because you're made in god's image you have uh ever an everlasting life and unique uncountable worth and so if god does exist i think my arguments have shown that then it makes it more likely that maybe god interacted in the world such as by supernaturally performing a miracle like raising a man from the dead a topic we unfortunately could not explore in tonight's debate but maybe we'll explore in a future debate or discussion and i hope you will explore those questions as well and i'm grateful for all of you who watch the whole debate and i just encourage you once again pursue the truth uh no matter the cost i will yield my time yeah thanks um i i don't have too much to say either i would potentially second the essence if not the practicalities of everything trend just said i would i would agree on the the key point i think is that one of the best ways to investigate uh beliefs that we hold is to investigate what they lead to and other incompatibilities that they might hold with other intuitions or beliefs that we hold you might not realize uh that that uh that a particular belief about the problem of evil might lead you to think that something that you don't think should be morally permitted is morally permitted you might have to explore that as try to show but i also think you know it can it can happen the other way too i think that if you hold something like the principle of sufficient reason you might find uh that you're in for a bit of trouble uh when it comes to understanding the implications that quantum mechanics has for that and realizing that you're throwing out a lot of other scientific principles too which i wish we'd have had a bit more time to speak about because i'd love to show exactly how by holding on to the principle of sufficient reason you essentially kind of throw out our traditional understanding of causation which i think undermines a lot of what um religious people like to use to justify their conception of god i would say just be aware that these kind of things exist and explore them fruitfully because um it's all very well and good being able to defend each in isolation but if they're incompatible with each other then something is wrong but also remember after all like even if you kind of look at these inconsistencies and you and you adapt your world to you accordingly and everything's kind of existing consistently you can be consistently wrong so there's kind of another stage of the process there you know make sure that everything you believe consistency is kind of the first step to take to make sure that something is is coherent um but then kind of test it uh in the second stage of analysis to find out if it's actually true um but yeah even though i'm not going to justify it in the same way trent did i would also um generally kind of agree with the proposition be nice to each other in the comments remember that that other person is a is an animal with maybe not intrinsic worth but some kind of vague extrinsic worth related to their capacity for pleasures and pains so you know be nice um but yeah i think you know because of the amount of stuff that we had to say that doesn't seem like a kind of very good conclusive sentiment that i could kind of put here because there are so many kind of avenues that are left open but i think it would be interesting to perhaps have that longer form conversation with each other at some point maybe on a podcast or something i'm not quite sure when but i i feel like you know debate format is good for opening questions but it's not always great for answering them fully so maybe we should try and do that at another point but i just i would just thank you both and thank everyone for listening sure i would enjoy that and i'm grateful you were here it's a very fruitful exchange and one that i think should be ended with the sign to be continued very good very good well i've put both trent's youtube channel and alex's youtube channel directly below in the description of this video so the show notes please be sure to click that but uh why don't we just wrap up real quick you guys did fantastic thank you so much for being so charitable and awesome so maybe uh just as we wrap up here uh each of you tell our listeners and viewers where they can learn more about you sure i'll start uh uh you can yeah you can well affirmative i'll just start i'll let alex close uh i i would say uh you can go uh to catholic.com much my work is there uh my podcast the council of trance co unscl is available on itunes and google play so council of trent and you can support the work that i do the council train is also the youtube channel so you can go council of trent youtube and uh if you want to support what i'm doing feel free to check out trenthornepodcast.com to support everything that's happening there alex i'm pretty much everything forward slash cosmic skeptic because it's such an uh unusual name and my podcast has a much less interesting and genius name which is just the cosmic skeptic podcast unfortunately i i still can't get over how great of a name that was uh for yours um yeah you can you can find me pretty much anywhere online forward slash cosmic skeptic except tick tock where uh someone took the name cosmic skeptic and you know it's not like i'm doing dances on there or anything i'm having discussions about animal ethics so if that's your kind of thing then then you can go on there uh you can find me at ask a vegan um because i don't know if i mentioned that i'm vegan yet in this debate but in case you're interested i am and it's something i'd like to talk about and i do that on there uh but yeah everywhere else is cosmic skeptic very good well thank you so much guys i just want to make three announcements before we wrap up today uh the first is the very next debate that we're gonna be having on this channel i'll throw it up on the screen so you can see it's going to be a debate between father gregory pine and ben watkins from real a theology and that will be happening on september 1st 8 p.m eastern standard time so please be sure to to subscribe click that bell button it supports the channel and you'll obviously be notified uh when that comes about and then two more announcements uh that i want to make here is that uh here we go in october of this year the 23rd through the 25th i'm going to be hosting the largest catholic apologetics conference that's ever happened we are getting a hundred brilliant uh speakers and uh well i don't know if they're all brilliant but they're all pretty bloody articulate and faithful to the church and very good presenters and we're hoping to get around sixty 000 uh people now what's great about this conference is that it's 100 free and you can obviously attend no matter where you are so i will put a link in the description as soon as i'm done feel free to put your name email address and we'll let you know as soon as the registration page shows up and then finally i just want to say thank you to all of my patrons who make these shows possible what i'm trying to do as we as we progress here is actually like today's episode just pay a stipend to our debaters because they obviously have to put a lot of work into this and i thank them for it so if you want to become a patron at patreon.com you get a bunch of free things in return like beer steins and signed books and stickers and all that jazz so thank you very much thank you to trent and alex again and see you later thank you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 302,038

Keywords: debate, atheist, christian, Catholic, God, cosmic skeptic, dawkins, hitchens, harris, atheism, theism, God's existence, aristotle, thomas aquinas

Id: 5PF1JgXOKDQ

Length: 126min 13sec (7573 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020