Debate: Something from nothing? | Alex O'Connor vs Cameron Bertuzzi

well today on the program we're asking why is there something rather than nothing why is there a universe at all did it have to be here is God behind it those are the kinds of questions we're going to be addressing today as we debate something the Philosopher's call the argument for God from contingency that's part of a wider family of arguments for God known as cosmological arguments and actually next week's show we'll do a kind of part two as we deal with one well-known example of that the Kalam cosmological argument but today it's this argument from contingency that we're looking at as we asked why there is something rather than nothing and do we need God as a necessary being to ground the rest of reality we'll be getting into those terms we try to keep it relatively simple when we do these deep dives into philosophical issues it can get dense pretty quickly but I'll be doing my best to make sure we we stay in the shallower ends of the water as far as possible but it's a great pleasure to welcome back to the studio Alex O'Connor our atheist guest today he runs the popular YouTube channel cosmic skeptic where he debates philosophy and science and critiques religious arguments welcome back to the studio Alex well thank you for having me I think it's the third time now it is it is probably over a year ago that you were last with us with Frank Turek on that occasion yeah I think it's about a year ago so remember rose in the middle of exams back then so well we'll come to the exams in a minute Cameron Bure Tutsi is also joining us via Skype and Cameron runs capturing Christianity a website dedicated to exploring philosophical and apologetic arguments for God's existence welcome back to the program as well Cameron Justin it's an honor to be back I'm really excited to have this discussion with Alex we actually had him on my show which is sort of similar to unbelievable so it's great to be in discussion with Alex again that was a that was a fun discussion that we had there so I'm excited about this one well I'm glad you guys know each other a little bit already in that case but as I say yes about a year ago that you were last on Alex and in the midst of exams and you've just gone through another set of exams because you've just finished I think your a-levels that's right yeah so as AAS levels the last time and now I'm done which gives an indication that you've still got all your life ahead of you and you've already achieved a lot in the sense that you've got now I think about 200,000 odd subscribers to your YouTube channel which is phenomenal reowww that's kind of you to say just just come 200,000 yeah and and from that perspective what began really is just I guess something you thought you'd try has obviously mushroomed into something that could could be a job if you wanted the rest of yeah well for the really I mean it's obviously growing what do you think is behind the fact that people want to subscribe to this kind of content and see you talking about it of course it's difficult to say maybe a mixture of an oxonium accent and the charm of youth probably plays a role but other than that I really couldn't tell you and is is the kind of philosophical cyber stuff the kind of thing you want to continue to look into in terms of future career development study and so on I should think so it's it's not necessarily the the way that I wish to discuss ideas that I care so much about just that I get to do it so yeah yeah this is one job that allows me to do that so I'm happy where I am at the moment you know yeah brilliant well well done anyway and I I think part of the appeal if you allow me to say of the channel is that you are a very clear thinker you put your ideas across very cogently and and and that all goes towards I'm sure the reason why it's been such a success Cameron you're a photographer by profession aren't you in fact but you kind of do capture in Christianity on the side so so what just remind us what led you from just doing photography to also this this side career in christian apologetics and philosophy yeah so a few years ago now my brother became an atheist and that really sent me on a journey to sort of discover whether or not christianity was true for myself he asked some questions in a discussion that I had with him that I didn't really have good answers to and so from that I started to really look into the evidence for and against Christianity into epistemology until all of these you know apologetic type of arguments and evidences and stuff and so it just my interest in it continued to grow and grow and grow and eventually I started capturing Christianity primarily as a blog so that I could like practice writing and that kind of thing but then it started taking off into what it is today where we host discussions and we've even filmed some interviews with some pretty high-profile guys like Richard Swinburne so it's it's it's really crazy how it's taken off now we're not anywhere near Alex's kind of success but it's we are experiencing a good bit of I mean our Facebook page we have we're closing in on 5000 likes so that's a that's a pretty good number there but yeah the the ministry was launched and primarily due to the fact that my brother became an atheist and it really started to make me wonder about the truth of Christianity whether or not it was true and so so yeah did you kind of know what you were unleashing at that point when you started to look into this stuff because I guess it's taking you on this huge journey into many many areas of philosophy and theology and apologetics no I had no idea I remember listening to a talk by William Lane Craig a few years ago and he was mentioning that it was a talk on there the evidence for the resurrection and he was mentioning that a lot of Christians just think that you have to believe in Christianity on faith like you don't have any reasons or arguments and that was sort of where I came from I was like I had these experiences at church but I had no idea that there were like literal arguments for the resurrection from history and books written on it and and all that I had like no clue at all so yeah it was it was really surprising to find that out but then not only the historical arguments but also the philosophical arguments like the one we're discussing today I mean the this argument that we're discussing the contingency argument is incredibly powerful to me as I've sat through and excuse me I've done a lot of research into this argument and and the more that I look at it and the more that I look at objections and whether or not they they work it's I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's that it's a sound argument now what's interesting is that the last time I was on the show I was defending reformed epistemology mmm which is the idea that arguments and evidence are not necessary for a rationally justified belief so to sort of come on the flip side of that I'm defending an argument for God I think that's a yeah and just you're kind of here is the evidential astir day to say there is an argument I mean personal question at this level obviously for you your studies and so on have convinced more and more of the truth of theism and Christianity has it gone anyway to persuading your brother no I don't think he's I don't think he gives it a whole lot of thought at this point he just sort of goes about his life and it's not something really pressing on his mind at least I mean and that's I guess true of anyone who has like a really intense hobby like not everyone shares that hobby you know so I I get it and in that sense it's like it's just not a real big interesting question for him right now so I don't think that he spends a whole lot of time thinking about it I think you've defined as a an atheist essentially for a while now yourself I like cetera do you feel like in principle you could be I think we are Isis before but in principle a philosophical argument could persuade you that there is a god yeah if I didn't think that then there'd be no point in me being here so of course you know yeah so it's so in a sense who knows what could happen by the end of today's program the cosmic sceptic could begin this cosmic believer but we we we shall wait and see I imagine today's program will be very much about exploring this topic and helping other people to understand it as much as anything yeah well I think my plan here is is more to I'm not necessarily going to say that I know this argument is false but I want to I've got some thoughts I came to explore and see where it leads you know I I don't necessarily have a damning critique as of yet but by the end of the conversation something might have kind of clicked emerged I that's the thing I suppose just in the course of what you're doing you you're constantly thoughts are evolving on all of these issues and and so on and probably some of the videos you began making on your channel you'd now record in quite a different way absolutely from from when you began great stuff and watch out for a video of this appearing on the unbelievable YouTube channel in due course and the cosmic skeptic channel and and capturing Christianity as well if you want to get in touch with the show though other ways to do that are to email in unbelievable at premier dot o UK you can also get us on the Facebook facebook.com slash unbelievable JB or at unbelievable JB for the Twitter account for the show all of those links and links to my guests as well they're various YouTube channels and websites from today's program at premier Christian radio com slash unbelievable so let's get into the meat of today's subject as say it's going to be a deep dive into a philosophical question which will kind of go back to on next week's program when we look at specific version of the cosmological argument the Kalam cosmological argument but today we're going to something which is been around for a long time this argument from contingency so we're going to give at the outset camera a little bit of time to lay this out first of all so come and take take some time now just to tell us about this argument what what it is some of the terms involved and of course help us to do that in as in as accessible away as you can as I'm sure you'll attempt to go ahead yes so I've I'm when I was formulating the argument and I was putting everything together I was trying to use terminology that was very accessible which is difficult to do like you note because the argument is so I mean it it's called a contingency argument you're like well what the heck is contingency mean hmm you know that right off the bat sort of starts to raise some questions but there here's a really simple way of answering the question why is there something rather than nothing there is something rather than nothing because there is a necessary part of reality and something exists because basically something must exist and so some people call this foundation this necessary part of reality god others will just say it's the universe I think that's an easy way of sort of putting the contingency argument but I have like a premise like one two three four five steps argument but before we get to that I wanted to make just some very brief preliminary remarks about the argument about arguments more generally so if you're looking for like an irrefutable proof of God's existence you're probably not going to find it we really have knocked down arguments for much of anything that we believe I mean it's possible right now that we're all in the matrix and you know we could have when I walked into this room right now it could have been induced with some alien serum to think that I'm on unbelievable right now when I'm not really on unbelievable so we don't have knock-down proof so much of anything nevertheless I think this is pretty decent evidence for God's existence I think that's a good way of looking at it and secondly I think that apologetics is more of a jury than a destination so when we're looking into apologetics and these arguments there's always going to be room for growth and maybe even finding out that the argument is false or wrong or incorrect so someone like Alex who doesn't accept this argument I'm not saying that he's irrational if he doesn't think that it's a good argument so with that other way let's define what we mean by contingent versus necessary because I think these are probably the most two important terms here so contingent things can fail to exist here's a really easy example I'm a contingent being I can fail to exist at any moment I haven't been here forever you know I'm 31 years old so I am a contingent being yeah so in a sense Cameron Bure Tutsi didn't need to be here there's nothing about his existence that is that in that sense is necessary your contingent if your mum dad hadn't met then you wouldn't be here that you're in that sense you're your contingent is that is that what I'm getting absolutely yeah and you can also think of it in terms of like groups of things so like my family is also contingent and and you can extend the family as far as you want but like my daughter my son and my wife were all contingent things and but a necessary thing on the other hand cannot fail to exist so those things must exist a necessary thing is just basically the opposite of a contingent thing and so the way that I like to formulate the contingency argument is to break it down into two stages and I think this is really helpful because well I'll just mention this I had Graham oppe who's one of the most brilliant atheist alive I have a ton of respect for him he was on my show debating the contingency argument with Josh Rasmussen who is probably the most premier theist defending the argument right now so they came on my show and grandma P basically accepted the first stage of the argument he disagreed with stage two and so a theist don't necessarily have to disagree with stage one right off the bat I think that's just interesting and it helps sort of split the argument and get to what the mmm the the difference here between the two parts here okay all right so here's stage 1 for any contingent thing or group of things there is an excellent of the fact it or they exists premise to considering all the contingent things that exist if there is an explanation of those things then there is a necessary part of reality and then premise 3 this is the conclusion of those two premises so there is a necessary part of reality that is stage 1 of the argument and I figured that we can spend some time just sort of discussing the structure the argument or I can just go into a defense of stage 1 and then we can discuss stage 2 later on well lay out stage 2 briefly at this point and then we'll go back to stage 1 yeah okay yes stage 2 is really easy if there is a necessary part of reality then God exists and then premise 5 it follows from 3 & 4 so God exists that God exists okay that's that's usually the way these are big arguments for God to end God exists but it's of course whether the premises are true that depends on and and so just going back just just so that I can you know put this hopefully in layman's language premise 1 is essentially just pointing out that contingent things exist the things that did not have to be here exist but that if such things do exist they need a reason for their existence which must end in a necessary thing and is that kind of where I'm getting if I wish to try and boil it down into into that kind of language yeah I would say that that's more combining 1 & 2 together so I would say premise one is about explanations and it's about like every contingent thing that you can think of has an explanation for why it exists or the premise is literally for any contingent thing or group of things there's an explanation and and and contingent things in this context is not just you and I and Alex but in fact every single physical object in the universe that's that's the kind of field of you that you're encompassing when you talk about contingent things is that correct well I'm not I'm not committing myself to the idea that everything in the universe is contingent the premise two is a little bit more modest it just as considering all the contingent things that do exist if there is an explanation of those things there is a necessary part of reality so so we're just agreeing that there are contingent things but if those things exist there there must be a necessary part of reality from raged from which they stem in a sense I mean the way I've sometimes thought about this I don't know what your take is on either Alex or or Cameron on this is I mean we hardly ever think about the fact that there is a reality around us that we're part of it you know that there is something there is a universe in which we we live because we sort of take it for granted it's it's a given almost of our experience and and I've sometimes want to do if that's almost like rather like the fish who swims through the water who never questions the reality of its you know existence the this water stuff it doesn't even think about water it just thinks about this is this is my reality that a lot of people don't even haven't even thought of this question why is there something rather than nothing because they just kind of take it as granted that there is something they never thought to consider what why there might be something rather than nothing and and that for me is is an important kind of thought in this whole thing is to ask are we justified in just simply assuming that stuff exists in in and of itself is that is that kind of one way of trying to kind of put this across Cameron I think so yeah I mean for me personally there are times when I'm just like driving in my car and I look around I'm like what where am i right now why am i in this universe it that sounds a little weird I guess when I'm when I'm like saying it out loud but I do get those like those thoughts every now and then I'm like the universe is just a very odd thing to exist I feel like like did it have to be here is it always been here these are questions that I have every now and then that are like really existential really deep for me to think about so yeah I think that's a good way of looking at it but because in some sense you're is your view that it's logically possible that none of this could be here that there's you know does it look to you like our existence the universe itself is contingent in that sense didn't didn't have to be here I would say so however I mean I am a Christian theist and so I believe that God is a necessarily existing being so I if if the universe weren't here there would still be something right there'd still be God right and so that that's the only qualifier I would make there yeah if no physical thing was here they would do we yeah that dimension of reality um anything else to say about this this stage one before we hand the baton over to to Alex well I do have some defenses of the premises but we can either discuss those now or what if why don't we give Alex a chance to chip in here on the argument in general again you if you want I will post a link to to Cameron's website where you can see this kind of set out if you like in a philosophical way we're just kind of generally talking through these things in a more kind of informal way though on today's programming and on this front Alex is is the way that Cameron's presented the argument here kind of familiar to you at some level in terms of what you've seen of these contingency argument it certainly is although I'd say that I I don't necessarily know that I granted the same deductive quality that you Justin seemed to granted a moment ago in that I don't necessarily think for part two at the very least that the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises I know that that's these are basically two different discussions there's the the the idea that there is the distinction between necessary and contingent beings and the idea that contingent beings exist and once you have that then you have to argue that that necessary being that exists is God and there's our two separate discussions and I don't know if the latter part follows necessarily however I think my my main problem with the first part here is that certainly the first premise at the very least seems to rely on a kind of shallow common sense the idea that of course everything around us is contingent because it could have not existed well I'd like to ask Cameron how it is that you know that given the possibility of things like determinism and you don't necessarily have to be a scientific determinist to to see this point in the sense that if you are a scientific determinist which I think I would to some extent class myself as being one in the sense that you can say well it was possible that I couldn't have existed because my parents may never have met but is it not possibly the case that it's not possible that my parents couldn't have met because in some way that was determined it's like the conditions that brought about to their meeting and their conception of me was facilitated by something that would have happened no matter what I'd have to see some justification for the idea that there really is a way that the universe can run a course without there being some level of determinism and if you take determinism right back to the very beginning then you have no such thing as contingency because nothing could have existed in a different form or not it was all kind of predetermined at that level to exist in the in the form it does exist therefore there there isn't content in yeah and and also I have a problem with the idea you say that it's a it's kind of a weak form of the argument because you're not saying that everything in the universe is contingent but considering the things that are contingent well anything that isn't contingent is necessary so that to even say that everything in the universe isn't necessarily contingent presupposes the conclusion that necessary beings exist so I think you either have to say that everything in the universe is contingent or you have to justify the fact that necessary existence can be a thing before you get started or you can say that everything in the universe is contingent but then you'd still have a lot of work ahead of you trying to prove that it is in fact possible that the things that exist and the way they exist could have existed differently okay I warned you this would be a deep dive so so here we go but if I can unpack that a little bit Cameron the first question I think that that alex has here is but if if we take the view that I think alex is sympathetic to that everything is ultimately determined from a beginning point in the universe things couldn't have turned out any different than the way they are then in that sense nothing is contingent in that sense it all had to be the way it is what's what's your response to that one to that one I think that we need to be careful about conflating determined with necessary because so here's here's an illustration so imagine we have a gumball machine and it only has red balls okay so that we know that when we put a quarter in it we're going to get a red ball so it's determined in that sense that we're going to get this well however we can still ask the question well why does that gumball machine exist so I think that we would have to be careful about conflating determined with sort of existing necessarily so I think that that'd be my biggest worry there now I do have defenses of the first premise which I think was one of the first things that Alex said was about you know it seems like we could don't only defend it through common sense which I think is one way of defending it but I think there are other ways of defending that Fiona do you put that across quickly and we'll go to a break after a few minutes so you just got a few minutes and feel free to bring your defense of that go ahead okay yeah so so common sense is definitely one of them and it's based on I mean it's it's really ingrained in scientific thinking if you think about scientists are trying to explain why biological life exists and and the most popular explanation of that at least in part is evolution right and so we're constantly looking for explanations in science so it's very common sense but sometimes common sense can steer us wrong so we want to have some more robust reasons for thinking this so the second one is what I'll call inductive generalization and that's a really fancy philosophical term that's that's actually a lot easier to understand so when we look around we can see that gravity works pretty normally pretty consistently everywhere that we go and so we normally can infer from this fact from our experience that gravity works the same everywhere in the universe I think that's a really safe inference to make and so we can do the same kind of thing when it comes to explanations of contingent things like everything that we experience has an explanation and so we just sort of generalize to all things all contingent things have have an explanation and I know there's a there's a question of whether or not that that's the fallacy composition which we can get into later but the inductive generalization that's the second thing and then the third one is that our universe is predictable it's not chaotic it's it's actually orderly and so the question though is if things aren't randomly popping into existence why is that not the case why aren't why isn't there an elephant that just popped in the room right now why isn't the universe just described by this sort of unpredictable chaos and here's a really simple answer to that contingent things just simply can't do that they must always be accompanied by a reasonable explanation and that that's basically just another way of restating the first premise so there are other reason and these are just three so there there are other reasons to think that that first premise is true but I again to go back to Grandma P like this is not the one that he rejects this is not the the premise that he rejects and I'm not trying to make an argument from Authority here I'm just pointing out that you don't have to as an atheist to reject this premise you can you can accept I think it's a really plausible premise overall would you say these plausible or say that makes one of us I have to say that almost everything you've just said that seems to make perfect sense and I can see where that would make sense but I disagree with almost everything you've said so perhaps after yeah we go to the way why do we do that we were really still at the beginning of this argument in kind of dialoguing over whether there are these can h éeer of these contingent things and so on so where did you want to pick up from in terms of Cameron's that argument here so I suppose I should clarify when you're talking about contingent contingent things my understanding of course I want to make sure that we're on the same page here to say that something could have not existed or it could have existed differently are you saying that it logically follows that that relies on something else for its existence is that kind of because I fail to see a distinction between saying for instance a contingent object has an explanation for its existence and for its state of affairs and saying that it has a cause I mean is there a difference between those is it is it something that's important I know I think you're actually making a really helpful distinction between in the literature it's called dependence I think so there's a there's one sense where things can be contingent that it can fail to exist but then there's another question of whether or not it's a dependent thing whether it depends for its existence on something else and I think that when we when we talk about the contingency argument we can actually make that distinction but I was trying to avoid it because it it really gets into some really complicated ago that's fine so I was just trying to focus the first one but I think they they all go hand in hand there's even another way of looking at contingency but I think they all sort of go hand in hand okay because I wanted to answer some of the other defenses you had of the idea that that contingent objects exists it seems a pretty basic place to begin one of the things was was you you picked up that you said that that I might accuse you of the fallacy of composition now I wouldn't do so that I'd perhaps accuse you of something else so the point you were making was to say well we can we can look at this argument the same way we look at science you know I every single book I've ever dropped has fallen to the ground and so I can say that if I were to drop another book gravity should still work of course I don't know that for a fact because I can't because I haven't done it yet but based on everything else that we've looked at we can say that it probably applies to everything and it's the same thing with contingent objects you say well everything we we've we know of seems to have been able to not exist or exist differently I mean it's perfectly possible that I could have put my bottle of water on my right side rather than my left side but my point isn't that you shouldn't be able to take that and generalize it my point is that you can't even say that those things are contingent so what I'm saying is not that you you rather than looking around and saying everything that I see is contingent and so I would presume that everything else is contingent what I'm saying is that you can't even do that first part you can't look around and say that everything is contingent because there's no way to know that the fallacy of composition as well wouldn't be to extend the fallacy of composition isn't to say well everything that everything that I've seen is contingent therefore I'll presume that everything in the universe is contingent the fallacy of composition is to say well everything in the universe is contingent therefore the universe itself is contingent and that's another problem in its entirety and were you doing that and I would accuse you of doing something that I think is irrational at that at worst I suppose but if you can't show to me that one or two of these things such as myself or you or this bottle are contingent meaning that they could have not existed or existed in a different form then I don't think this arc gets off the ground and it's all to do with defining terms because there's nothing wrong or illogical about living in a deterministic universe even if it's some kind of theological determinism you can still have a God that doesn't refute the end of the argument it doesn't refute the the conclusion but it refutes the premises that are taking us to the conclusion yeah do you wanna pick up on that now Cameron yeah so as you were talking I was trying to think about like the the best way to put this and I already mentioned the gumball the illustration so I'll just mention it just just briefly again so imagine you have this gumball machine it's filled with red balls you put a quarter in and you know what you're gonna get right you're it's determined in that sense yeah the the further question the deeper question though is why well why does this gumball machine exist why is it not filled with blue balls instead of red balls why is there a gumball machine at all and if you want to explain that its existence in terms of well it just exists because it exists because it's determined to exist then that's actually a circular explanation it's like saying that well there's a chicken on the ground over here well why does that chicken exist well because it exists okay we can we can kind of Intuit that this is like this doesn't actually explain anything like this doesn't explain why that thing exists it'd be like saying well you know I exist because I exist but that but obviously that's not true there are so I don't mean to interrupt you is that not exactly what you're saying about God a necessary being is something that just exists and it's it's cause is within itself and it's not contingent because the explanation that it exists is just within its existence if you're doing that for God then why not why am I not able to do it for anything else I think that's a really good question actually and that that helps us in stage two of the argument it helps us actually when we start to question well why does the necessary thing exist at all I think that we can actually start to answer that and look at alternatives sure so maybe we just have to shell that question stage two the argument I can also come back on this idea of the gumball machine the gumball machine wouldn't exist in isolation so it wouldn't be determined if the gumball machine just existed that a red gumball would come out because you need the hand to put the quarter in right so whatever cause that hand but the quarter in either that hand putting the quarter in and turning the the lever either that is necessary or it's contingent and if it's necessary then the Gumble must have fallen out exactly when it did because the hand turning the lever was necessary couldn't have happened any other way which means that in fact yes the Gumpel falling out is entirely necessary all the hand itself is contingent which which means that the gumball machine is contingent upon the hand which would therefore be contingent upon something else and eventually you'd come back to something necessary but you'd still be left with this chain of events whatever necessarily calls the hand to move would therefore by process of logic necessarily cause the hand to put the quarter in the Machine and turn the lever and necessarily cause the Gumble to come out and that's what I'm saying about the universe is that you can ask you know where did the universe come from rather than just talking about things within the universe but if you follow the chain of causation back and this is similar to the Kalam cosmological argument I think they'll go very well hand-in-hand but you take that chain of causation back and you end up with the necessary being it were this is what you're trying to argue at the very least but if you do then everything that follows from that necessary being must have necessarily happened do you follow that Cameron yeah so I think that that still is is we might need a shelf that first h2 because we're still at that point where we'd be asking well what kind of properties does this being have you know is it sort of determined to act as it does or yes does it have like a free will does it so these are questions that maybe we need to sort of suspend yeah ice age to which you're still very good question well we probably do need to get to stage two before too long anyway I mean in this stage one though I think where we've got to is alex has some questions over whether we can really contingent things really are contingent if we live in a determined universe and they sort of had to be the way they are anyway at some level but and you seem to be coming back to the idea well even if that were the case there's still a question of why are those things there at all that's the kind of contingency that you're talking about rather than the specifics of why you know that Alex happen to his mum and dad met and produced him it's it's the kind of whole world why is there a a reality in which such things do exist and happen and someone is that kind of the the bigger picture if you like that you're painting here Cameron yeah I just think it goes back to that possible conflation between something that has determined versus something that is necessary no I know that he just sort of extended that and said that you've got this hand in this scenario in this gumball machine and so the hand is necessary he's thinking about God and so the effect also has to be necessary so that's that's another thing that we can excuse just because we do have to move move things on just so we can get at least it somewhere a bit further down stream in the argument we've kind of talked a bit about premise one there but let's let's say okay for the sake of argument that there are contingent things just just reminders premise to impress three are just just see if we need to uncover any of that before we go to the second stage here Cameron so premise two is considering all the contingent things that exist if there is an explanation for those things then there is a necessary part of reality and then premise three is the conclusion of premises one and two so it's not actually a premise so if one and two are true then three follows necessarily and and he's the way I I kind of see this happening and forgive me you can correct this sort of laypersons attempt to explain that that premise two but if if contingent things exist things that didn't have to be here things that that kind of require an explanation of their existence if you like what you seem to be saying is that it must go back to something which does not require an expiration of its existence which is which exists necessarily so if there are contingent things there has they have to kind of stop ultimately in any kind of regressive causes to to a in in a necessary thing something that that if you like does not require an explanation of existence otherwise we would have a I guess an infinite regress in that sense is is that where you're going or is that not quite what this argument paints here Cameron yeah I think that's what it paints premise to that what you just said is basically just a restatement of the premise to and here's a reason to think that that premise to is is true and that's because self causation is absurd causation and again go back to like that that chicken example if you're wanting to explain the chicken in terms of its own existence that's circular and so it's gonna be absurd it's not actually an explanation of anything well just pointing to its own existence that's that's not an explanation at all itself I'd say self causation is is only absurd for contingent beings because of course self causation is the nature of a necessary being and so the reason why I think premise one is so important and I'm willing to grant it and just move on is that if we're not able to say that in fact contingent beings as we've defined them can exist then you can't say that self cause is absurd because if self cause is absurd for non contingent beings then self cause for God then the the ultimate non-contingent being would also be absurd and God would therefore require another explanation meaning that God is not necessary yeah I suppose I just wouldn't think of God existing necessarily as something that is self caused I just wouldn't look at it in those terms so that I mean that that's that's that's the best I can say sure the only other equivalence to I do believe that is where you commit the fallacy of composition the thing about the fallacy of composition is that it's it doesn't necessarily mean that what you're saying is wrong so what I think you're doing is you're saying well if all of the contingent objects within this group let's call the group all contingent objects within that group all of those things require an explanation does that mean that the group itself requires an explanation this is what Bertrand Russell famously described in his radio debate when he said that every sheep in a herd has a mother but that doesn't mean that the herd itself has a mother a good example that I've heard is the example of a brick wall and this is to demonstrate why it's not necessarily a problem you could say that there's a brick wall and every single wall in the air every single brick in the wall is red therefore the wall itself is red there's no problem with that and that that follows logically but you might also say something like every brick in the wall is small therefore the wall is small but that doesn't necessarily follow so the thing about the fallacy of composition is although I think you're employing it for premise two that doesn't mean that your the the premise is wrong it just means that you can't prove that it's right so I'm happy to move on well but let's just stand it for a moment because is what you're accusing Cameron here of doing is saying there are lots of contingent things in the universe therefore when you put them all together ie the universe that itself must be contingent and you don't think that necessarily follows yes fallacy very at the very least it would be to say that the way that I've heard it phrased before the way in fact Cameron when I when I looked in your website which is very it's an intriguing set of premises that you set out of a new website I think it's a fantastic way of putting it especially with qualifying with words like possibly it's it's fascinating but the way that you seem to suggest it was that for the the group of all contingent all contingently existing things and I think you refer to that as L for simplicity sake so let's cool it out let's say that the group that every single contingent thing that exists grouped together is called L and you said well L must have some explanation that is not contingent because if there's a contingent being that explains L it would reside within L and you can't have something within the group explaining the rest of the group what I'm saying is that you might not be able to have something within the group explaining the entire rest of the group but the group itself is not necessarily explained but it could be it could be self referential if you see what I'm saying so is the difference between saying that something within L can't explain L and saying that L can't explain itself okay and Cameron can't come back on this and then I want to word about that Bertrand Russell debate which I think is an interesting example of a where he landed up in terms of what he took to be his his necessary object if you like it on that instance but yeah go ahead Cameron no this is this is extremely helpful and you're also I don't know how much research you've done on the argument but this is a really popular objection I think Hume raised it well really there's two ways of looking at it we could we could go the fallacy of composition route so maybe I'll just say a little about that yeah real quick so I'm not assuming that the take the group of all contingent things I'm not saying that that's like a whole distinct thing the premises the way that I set up the argument and that's not gonna be obviously super apparent up at the front but the way that I phrased it was meant to avoid this type of object so really what we're talking about is a plurality of things we're not so for instance if I had like a group of hard drives I'm a photographer so I use a low photographer analogy if I had a group of hard drives in my hand I'm not gonna say well that group is now a whole distinct object and has its own properties I'm just saying that this is a plurality of thing and each one of those things has an explanation so that's that that's just one minor thing to mention about the fallacy of composition but you however well yeah it comes go ahead camera and then we'll have Alex for fun yeah well let me just say I'm really really enjoying this conversation I think it's awesome to have this conversation with you Alex so I just wanted to say that well anyways so going to the infinite regress which i think is what you were basically saying there is that if we have an explanation of each part then we don't need an explanation of the whole thing or the plurality of things or the whole group of things and here's an illustration to think about this a little bit more and maybe to see why that's that's not a good response so imagine that we had this big factory that was producing cameras that's been doing this for all of eternity and they're producing Nikon cameras because that's the I'm a Nikon guy so they're producing Nikon cameras and so every single Nikon camera has an explanation for why it exists so would it make any sense to be like well why does the plurality of all these Nikon cameras exist so here's here's a question that that doesn't answer though there are deeper questions about the factory response that doesn't actually answer it why does the factory exist and then why does the factory produce Nikon cameras instead of Canon cameras why are there no cameras why aren't there no cameras at all and so when we when we look at this factory explanation of why each thing exists it doesn't actually answer these deeper questions which is really what we were trying to get at with the original question so it turns out that this explaining the the the whole plurality of things in terms of the individual parts being explained is actually ultimately another case of this circular explanation why does the factory exist oh it just exists why didn't I con cameras exist oh well they just exist so I think it's it's it's ultimately not an explanation at all well I would object to that in the sense that you say that if we have an explanation for why each individual camera exists we wouldn't necessarily even speak of the cameras as a whole you wouldn't need to well I would say that we do when you when you break things down far enough so let's say for simplicity sake there's three cameras that are made in the factory and each has its own explanation well so those cameras are contingent upon something else and each has its own different explanation well those explanations are themselves contingent on something else and those explanations for those three things or perhaps that'll be multiplied to six would be contingent on other things and eventually you go far enough back and you do in fact have one explanation that explains all of the cameras and so it does make sense to talk with the cameras as an entire group now saying that the cameras have one individual explanation and and there and and that therefore all of the cameras need an explanation seems to me to presuppose the existence of some if you take it far back enough that there is one thing that explains everything that would be your necessary being because it would have to be otherwise we'd have itself an explanation so if you're going to say that every camera is contingent upon something else then you've either got a situation where that means that all of the cameras and all of existence needn't needs an explanation which would take you back to N or if you're not going to say that if you're saying that that that's not what you're saying and you don't actually have to talk about the cameras as a whole then you'd have to say that there are separate causes for each individual camera that don't ultimately come back to one source which I don't think you can do because then there would be multiple necessary beings with conflicting wills and that would bring a whole bunch of paradoxes I hope you're following along i I think this is important stuff though it's easy to get lost in the weeds slightly we will move it on to the bigger question of whether and necessary being follows if you were to grant some of these premises anyway but but quick quick response camera and then we'll get into into the second stage at least of this argument so my response unfortunately is gonna have to be to ask for some clarification because I I don't know that I was able to follow along what the argument was so if you could just give me some clarity yes that's what I needed yeah on second thought I don't think I would it that particularly well I suppose what I'm saying so it was just a moment ago you you seem to say that that you are not saying that because each individual camera has an explanation that the cameras as a whole need a single explanation would you say that that's that's part of your argument no I what I was saying there was I'm not treating like the group of things as an independent object that was my point there and so I would say that you have to have an explanation of the plurality of things and that goes back to that Factory like why does the factory exist why is the catagory cameras why is that category not empty why is that yeah you know why isn't that okay I don't like cameras canon cameras I think I can clarify this now then so you've got two two options either so we'll grant that every each individual camera needs its own explanation is contingent and needs an explanation will grant that so you've got two choices of either you you do treat all of the cameras as one thing that needs its own explanation in one go or you do not and if you don't then you'll be saying which which is what you're saying you do you don't treat them that way then the only possible explanation is that each camera has its own explanation that doesn't ultimately come back to one source but if it doesn't ultimately come back to one source then that doesn't help your argument so if your ultimate ly going to conclude that the things that are causing those individual cameras are ultimately one source then that's the same as treating the cameras as though they're one group surely so I am saying that the group like the plurality of things does need an explanation I don't know if that that helps her if I'm maybe not understanding your your objection there but I am saying that the plurality of things that's that's the stage one of the argument is that when we consider all the contingent things that exist there has to be an explanation of those things and it has to be beyond themselves otherwise we're committing ourselves to the idea of self causation and I think that's absurd so I am saying that the the plurality of things has to have some explanation as to why they exist instead of not existing live those things instead of some other thing that exists so I am saying that the plurality of things does need an explanation well let's move on from this because I appreciate that that we could go around the technicalities of this one and I did want to come back to this idea the you know there was that famous I assume it's the radio debate with them Frederick coppleson as you're referring to there when Bertrand Russell essentially I think made the the view put the view forward that well if you're going to have a necessary thing while it can't it just be the universe itself why do we have to have a cause of the universe in God sort of thing and and he sort of a if you like posited the universe itself as the brute fact in that my brute factors as an atheist he said now this was a little bit before we had Big Bang cosmology and everything else that maybe raises that whole question of where scientifically speaking didn't if the universe come from but but I think I think it's it's an essentially the the thing that I often hear an atheist saying on the basis of someone presenting something like this argument alex is well why why does the necessary thing have to be God why can't it just be the universe the reality we live in maybe if you're gonna say I've got a special thing god that doesn't require a cause for its XML a an explanation for its existence and so on well I'm just gonna say yeah but the universe yeah I can but it can be that do you see how that objection kind of riddles itself into the very first premise because if I'm going to deny the existence of contingent objects as Cameron has defined them then that kind of means that the universe and everything in it is necessary in a sense and that would be enough because if the whole reason that you need this necessary being that you're calling God to explain the universe is because everything in the universe is contingent then or at least some things in the universe are contingent then if the the premise the first premise is false and there aren't in fact contingent things in the universe then that means the universe itself is necessary and therefore there's no need for this extra explanation so I think I do agree with that objection but I think it need arises at the very beginning of the argument right very briefly a response to that camera and then we'll go to to the next stage in the next section of the program so I do think that this this line of argument about the the universe being the necessary I think that's probably the best route for the atheist to go that's also what grandma P did on the show that I hosted so the only thing I would say to you Alex is that I think that you can't get that conclusion without some additional assumptions because remember I was making that distinction between something that is determined versus that is necessary I think you could probably get there you just had to add some additional assumptions and I don't want to really get into that because it would I would just make the conversation even more complex but that's basically more or less that's what grandma P does yeah I would say I would just add though that I think that the distinction that perhaps you're drawing between determinism and necessity although I don't think they're the same thing I think that one does follow from the other and perhaps you're right that it's not good to get into that there but perhaps I'll have to just appeal to the opinion of the audience and say that it seems to me fairly logical to say that if something necessarily exists and it therefore if necessary is desire is defined as cannot have existed in another way then if there is a being that necessarily caused something to exist then that was determined if you see what I'm saying because yeah point of clarification yeah contingency the way that I defined it was cannot fail to exist so not not just that it can't be something it you know have some different property yeah but it cannot fail to exist like it can't sure but to me that's that that's the same as determinism it's like if this bottle had to exist then it was determined to exist we're going to go to a break and we'll well this is a complex stuff and I always knew it would be when I invited my two guests for today's program Alex O'Connor and Cameron Bertuzzi to debate the argument from contingency we're doing a deep dive philosophically today on the program hope you're keeping up and I hope that some level this at least will give you some food for thought as we debate the whole question of why is there something rather than nothing and do we need our necessary being aka God to ground it all in the first place that's essentially what this whole argument is about in the end Justin Bradley with you for unbelievable today a philosophical edition of the program and we'll be back in just a moment time with the final part of today's discussion we've we've gone over various aspects of looking at some of these various premises you've you've that you've put before for us on the program today Cameron and and I one of the kind of I think the graspable things we got to at the end of that last section was this this idea of well very often in your experience gram of people one of the leading atheist protagonists on this has said but why can't we just say the universe is isn't a necessary thing you know why do we have to give the universe a course in unnecessary being God and so maybe start there as you draw us into kind of how you how you kind of bring this argument to its conclusion if you would so I'll say at the outset that excuse me stage two is the part of the argument where I'm less sure about so I'm really confident about stage one in in terms of like I've really really looked into the evidence and the arguments and stuff and so I'm pretty convinced that part one is to stage one of the argument is true stage two is the one where I have my own questions my own doubts because again apologetics is a journey it's not a destination so I'm still looking into it it's it's not this this thing where I've like oh I've got all the answers not at all but so here's here's a reason to think that stage two and again just for clarification we're talking about premise for the argument which is if there is a necessary part of reality which is what stage one gave us then God exists and so like you said this is where grandma this is where atheists I think should get off the argument this is where they should should leave if they want to and so I think that there's basically two different methods that you can use in order to to argue for premise for the first one is the cumulative case and I actually I think I might be saying that wrong community how do you guys say cumulative is that what you mean cumulative yeah advantage because you guys already had a British accent no I'm announcing words wrong but it's a very small language barrier go ahead so I invited Richard Swinburne to do an interview with me and one of the questions that I asked him was well what's your favorite theistic argument and I expected him to say something like the teleological argument the design argument something like that but what he said sort of surprised me he said that his favorite argument was the cumulative argue for for God and so what I think what we can do here if we need it to is just sort of introduce some of the other arguments for God the fine-tuning argument the argument from beauty the argument from moral knowledge if we needed to introduce those other arguments in order to sort of flesh out this concept of this necessary part of reality I'm okay with that we can't really do that in this debate because I would take obviously way too long to do so that's method one method two is to simply analyze the necessary foundation and so on my website I provided like you guys have been referencing I provided a full analysis on my website of the different properties that you can get but those might be a little bit too complex to do on air so why don't we just think about it this way if we ask the code the question why can't this being failed to exist again we're talking about this necessary part of reality why is it the case that this that this the being can't exist can't fail to exist because because if you look around all the contingent things everything that we're acquainted with can fail to exist now know that Alex projects that but the question still remains why can't this other being failed to exist and so here's a really elegant solution I think to that it's that the necessary foundation must exist because it is perfect anything that is perfect must exist and so I think that's a really elegant solution to the question and then what we could do at this point and maybe we'll have some time to do it there are there are I think at least three positive attributes of a this perfect being hypothesis that we can look at and I think that that make it sort of stand out and above the rest and I'm not saying that this is a knockdown argument at all but I do think that these are really important considerations maybe they will lean us one way or the other so we can get into those or we could discuss mmm where we're at so far right okay Jonah Jonah pickup from boom where it seems to me like the second more analytical way of getting to God that you've proposed there is it sounds to me just like the ontological argument that your so it sounds like you are just kind of still making a cumulative case although perhaps more deductively but I'm interested to see why you would well I suppose I think it would be interesting to briefly I suppose explore why you think that the existence is a perfection yeah and just so that I'm clear as well on this Alex the this this premise that if there is a necessary part of reality then God exists yes which is premise for do you do do you yourself feel that well let's grant that maybe there is a necessary part of reality but that it doesn't ever follow that God exists but that basically you can have something that might be necessary but wouldn't in any way be akin to what Alex thinks off as God in terms of an all-powerful well yeah I I don't want to sound too much like a prominent Canadian psychologist it would depend on what you mean by godlike like if you're going to cool whatever net whatever part of reality is necessary if you're going to call that God I have no problem with that but that might just make you a Buddhist or a pantheist or a panentheism I've got a problem with that but it seems to me that and certainly are a Cameron on your website you suggest that God is much more than just that so I would be interested to see how you're making that leap to come up with a distinct necessary being that has certain attributes and the one you've mentioned here is perfection and not only can you can you know that the necessary being is perfect but you also know that it's because it's perfect that it would be necessary that is it's because it's perfect that it must exist I'm interested to kind of unpack that briefly and see where that leads go ahead Cameron only endris thoughts on that yeah so what I would say to this is that there's what I do on my website is I basically provide a sort of deductive argument for the different properties for omnipotence omniscience perfect goodness but what I'm doing in this conversation which i think is a little bit easier to discuss is doing a more kind of an abductive case so what I'm doing is I'm looking at this alternative which is the the perfect being hypothesis and I'm saying well what are the what are the virtues of this hypothesis and then maybe what we can do is compare this hypothesis to a different hypothesis like the necessary universe hypothesis and then let's just compare those two and see well which one do we like better which one has the more explanatory virtues that kind of thing so I'm not really doing right now I deduct 'iv proof of all the properties what I'm doing instead is the the kind of abductive things like looking at the two I mean let's just look at those two alternatives then for instance why is a necessary thing better kind of posited as God in the you know judeo-christian sense that you obviously believe in God Kameron as opposed to simply a necessary universe that's that's that's say and presumably of those two options you think it's more likely Alex that if you're gonna choose between those two you you you end up with a necessary universe interestingly I don't think I think that's the case for how to haven't reflected on it enough but but the two reasons the way that I can get the way that I can say that justifiably is firstly that the way we've arrived to this dilemma is through premises that I don't agree with sure but even if I did it's not my job to say that the universe is more compelling than God it's Cameron's job to say that the God is more compelling than the universe even if they're precisely the same if they're just as attractive then we have to posit let's call it an ostracism so you know that's not my job so to speak but I think an important thing to do Cameron I'd ask you to do this if possible if you're going to mention perfection is perhaps you could define what you mean by perfect because I'd be interested to see how you could come up with the definition of perfect that couldn't apply to the universe yeah okay so perfect the way that I would define it is something that cannot be improved upon okay but but what would it be would it be best to sort of go through the different explanatory virtues that I think that the the perfect being has and not that way we could sort of compare the perfect being hypothesis to the universe and sort of got some idea there a way to do that we're a little bit pressing up against the time barrier but but if you can keep it concise then we'll see what sandurz ones okay so I think that a concept of a perfect being is actually maximally simple it takes very few concepts to express the theory and so to see this contrasted with the idea of Zeus so Zeus he has parents and siblings he's king of other gods he lives on Mount Olympus he's limited in what he can do and what he knows and so we can kind of see that the concept of Zeus is going to be incredibly complex compared to the perfect being on the other hand is maximally simple and since it's so simple this is the the second thing since it's so simple it has a high intrinsic probability it has a high probability of being true before we look at any of the evidence for its existence and that's that's true of any more simple hypothesis if I look outside and see that the ground is wet that there's water on the leaves I could explain this by simply saying that it rained or I could say well a bunch of kids with buckets poured water all over the street thousands of birds flew in the air and dropped water droplets on the leaves but the second one is a lot more complex and so it's going to be less likely to be true so it has this this virtue of simplicity which all things being equal makes it more intrinsically probable and then the third one is that it solves the problem of arbitrary limits and so suppose that the necessary foundation were part of the universe where was the universe and it could create say ten universes a natural question that arises at this point is well why does it why can it only create ten why couldn't it create 20 why couldn't only create one universe so the natural question that that arbitrary limit it seems like that's an arbitrary limit that has some kind of explanation that's not present in the perfect being hypothesis so that's that's a virtue that it has so those three together I think that there's a huge amount that we could potentially impact there but I'm gonna limit you just a minute responds Alex yeah that's why perhaps perhaps that's all I need I would say that to quickly brush away with this idea that your idea of God is the maximally simple explanation I'd only have to bring up concepts like the Trinity and and ask how on earth anybody could posit that that is more simple than say I a different religion I'd say that you know the the story in the godliness of the God of Islam or the the position of its prophets and the the non necessity for this confusion over you know stemming from but not begotten by if you're looking for maximal simplicity then I don't think Christianity is the way to go but even even if that were the case surely the maximally simplistic argument is the brute fact of the universe I think the existence of the universe that is governed by very simply mathematically demonstrable laws is much much simpler than the idea of a God with its own will but a will would be contradictory with the idea of necessity because then things would be contingent upon the will but what's the will contingent upon I mean there are so many avenues of discussion so much lacks so much of this lack simplicity that I don't think it's fair to say that the maximally simple case is the existence of the regard rather than the universe we we III appreciate we could have further conversations on that and what I will simply ask is for you both to conclude just a minute each let's say with with what you would say to someone who hadn't just heard the last hour or so of that philosophical debate but simply asked you first of all Cameron why is there something rather than nothing what would you say to kind of try and summarize you know what we've been debating and discussing in the last hour or so oh gosh what we've been debating in the last hour so the question is why is there something rather than nothing I think a really elegant and really elegant solution to that is well something must exist there's there's a necessary part of reality and and then we could look at the steps of that argument the stage one which is to just notice that there are these contingent things that exist and in our experience contingent things have explanations and so if we take the plurality of all contingent things that exist we ask well what's the explanation of those things and it must lie outside of itself because as I said self causation is absurd causation that's not an explanation at all and so it must lie in some external being to itself and it must be therefore non-contingent it must be a necessary being and so then we could look at well what kind of properties does this necessary being have and before that we could actually introduce some of the other theistic arguments some of the other evidence to suggest that this being is actually a personal being like the fine-tuning argument I know that you debated that Alex with the Josh Parikh but I think that's a good argument and I could add that on and say well at least we have a designer here and so we'd combine that with the the fact that we already have a necessary part of reality who is a designer and then we could just start to develop the different properties that this ping has I think there are really good arguments that this being is omnipotent it's infinite in power and then we can really start looking at deducing the other divine properties that this being would have so I think there's there's routes there it's just a really complex argument well get it is once you start unpacking it and you've summarized it very nicely though here at the end of the program at least reiterated what what the steps are that you would go through to show why you believe thee that something is dependent on a necessary part of reality in your view God again the same opportunity if you had to just explain in a minute or so to someone asking you Alex why is there something rather than nothing what would you say as an atheist I'd say I don't know but neither do you so let me know when you've got an explanation it also doesn't escape me that any God that you posit to fill in that gap is also something so I don't think that really moves you very far I I would have to say I had no idea it's a wonderful mystery and I can can't wait for somebody to come up with a reason compelling enough for me to believe that they have the answer and that's why I'm here that is why we're all here debating these things thank you very much both Alex and and Cameron for being on the show today and look out for a video of this appearing on Alex's channel the cosmic skeptic channel and indeed on the unbelievable YouTube channel and capturing Christianity's website as well links to all of those from today's show premier Christian radio comm slash unbelievable I'll give you the ways to get in contact as well in a moment's time and you can look forward to a part two as well this as we dive into another very popular these days a cosmological argument probably made most famous by William Lane Craig in recent years the Kalam cosmological argument we will have Stephen Woodford aka rationality rules and similar sort of style of YouTube channel to the cosmic skeptic YouTube channel on next week's show but for the moment thank you very much Cameron and Alex for being with me on today's show thanks for having me again thanks yeah Alex it was a real pleasure to have the discussion with you and thanks for inviting me back on Justin it was awesome great to have you guys thank you

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 176,321

Rating: 4.8763466 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, debate, contingency, capturing christianity, unbelievable, Justin Brierly, Premier, radio, discussion, the contingency argument, Bertrand Russell, Frederick Copleston

Id: DGpkGRoLBQ8

Length: 67min 26sec (4046 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018