Live Q&A with Drew, the Genetically Modified Skeptic

okay friends we've got a fun one for you here today we have a christian myself drew an atheist and we're going to take your questions live and do our best to give some clarity on maybe the similarities and differences of how christians and atheists answer some of the big questions of life now as drew and i talked we've got two big goals for this number one that in our cancel culture today we could just model a civil cordial respectful conversation across a pretty significant world view divide but second also bring some substance and just some clarity on how we answer some of these questions so whether you're a christian whether an atheist or a seeker you can look at how we answer these questions as one christian as one atheist and maybe help you along your journey as well so we've got a question for each other and then we're going to jump in and take your questions i would just ask the comments here keep them positive and respectful and in fact if you could limit them to questions we will do our best i have no idea how many questions are going to come through but we're going to each answer them about 60 to 90 seconds and then flop just kind of go back and forth through the hour we have together so drew i got a question for you and this is not really an apologetic question first off thanks for coming back on the show and being my guest yeah absolutely i'm happy to be back on uh it was a great time last time i think that we both were happy with the feedback that we got and felt like it made a difference the kind of difference we wanted to make so i'm i'm excited and in case you're new to this conversation june and i had a conversation maybe three or four months ago just between a christian and an atheist and uh you're right the feedback was almost nearly universally positive so excited about round two all right so my question for you again is less apologetic and more i'm curious in our previous conversation you described some hurt and some pain at the hands of a lot of christians as you were questioning ultimately leaving your faith in your mind what does the process look like to make sure that you follow what is true as opposed to react against something that's harmful and i'm not saying this is unique question for atheists because i could also have incentive to want my belief to be true for different reasons so this isn't a unique question for you in a sense but i'm curious how you work that through your mind so it's not an emotional decision but following what you think is true oh it's a it's a tough one i think that the the place where at least in my deconstruction my actual journey the place that i started was utilizing some of the concepts i learned in my study of my psychology degree which was figuring out what kind of heuristics we fall into what kind of biases we naturally fall into when we are trying to discern what is true and realizing that those things are going to be a factor regardless of how rational we try to be sometimes they're going to be checking against what other people say in order to uh kind of have a bit more control on uh on your own biases so like one of the best ways to control for one's own biases is actually to see what those with the opposite bias have to say about about the topic so one of the best things to do to actually be skeptical about something like faith in your your deconstruction is going to be to see what the biggest and best critics of whatever you might be thinking have to say about that uh and so that's that's a that's an atheist saying that if you are questioning him it's not actually a bad idea to figure out what the apologists might be saying and figuring like going through that actually uh seeing what your opposition might be saying it can be really difficult to control for biases that's that's one way of doing that i also think that socialization is a huge part of keeping oneself from falling into just common heuristics that we as tribalistic human beings are prone to so i think for me when i was deconstructing originally i wanted to figure out what was true surrounding these questions i had about largely the supernatural and because church was something that started with an emotive ritual with singing with a big crowd of people who all believe a certain thing i saw it as an environment which is built and constructed to play into the biases that will help one confirm their own narrative if you're in if if something is if a belief is something you're on the fence about you can basically determine what side of the fence you're going to to come down on by just spending time with and especially exclusively time with whoever agrees with whichever side so if you're if you're really 50 50 about whether or not christianity is true the best thing that you can possibly do to be a christian to remain a christian be actually intellectually convinced is to to consistently hang out with christians people will people will come up with truth claims and and gear their confidence more toward what the crowd is saying if you are really questioning and you're 50 50 and you really want to decide that there is no god or you are not you know if you want to not be a christian then if you go and just hang out with people who are not christians and who would never entertain that idea that's probably what you're going to fall into uh and so for me i took myself i was in a completely christian context when i was deconstructing yeah um my employer i mean i worked at a christian homeless shelter i had just gotten out of my i graduated from my christian college all my friends were christian my family's christian my wife's christian everyone is but i could control whether or not i actually went to church so i did want to continue looking for answers but i felt that based on what i learned in my psychology classes quite clear that church is an environment which would actually make me fall into my biases and confirm what i then like really wanted to be true that christ was my savior and me getting out of that and trying to be as in as neutral of an environment as possible was something that was probably quite instrumental to me deconstructing rather than going back to the faith very thoughtful good response you're up so it's a little long but uh okay so this is a bit of a detailed uh question i guess a bit specific but i know that you have worked on this in the past um and you actually mentioned it in a in a video that we have interacted over before i know that i think that in your master's work you talked about the problem of consciousness and how can we what mechanism does conscious does consciousness arise from within a naturalistic worldview well the the answer to that is we we don't really know i think that you and i would agree that when it comes to a natural explanation of consciousness it's kind of up in the air we're not really sure there's not some definite thing and i know that you have said that from your biblical worldview it makes sense that consciousness would be informed by or caused by spirit that is a part of human nature is spirit what i'm wondering is is there some way to investigate through observation that spirit is in play when it comes to consciousness is there some mechanism that one could discover that would confirm that spirit is in fact involved with producing consciousness that's a great question so the way i reason at this is twofold let me take a step back and clarify number one is it's not an argument from ignorance to say that consciousness makes sense within a theistic worldview i think we agree that there's a lack of a naturalistic explanation for consciousness but then i think you stated it well if god himself is conscious immaterial it would make sense that we would find human beings who can be material and have an immaterial component so this doesn't prove god exists but it fits within the christian worldview or theistic worldview so you might say it's a negative there's the lack of naturalistic explanation but then there's a positive fit within the theistic worldview that's why i think it's not an argument from ignorance now of course if we want to test for consciousness it's not going to be a physical test through the normal means of science because consciousness would not show up in the way that it would such as atoms or particles or some other process within nature it's actually primarily a philosophical question although i do think there's some intersection with science when we start looking at near-death experiences and what the best explanation and principle could be for near-death experiences would point towards a kind of consciousness and continued existence as the best cause so the kinds of evidences that i will give and i don't obviously don't want to spend too much time on this but if near-death experiences are true and i mean the kind where people are physically dead come back tell a story and have information they could not have had otherwise then that seems to be a sign that there's at least a minimal continued consciousness when the brain stops working and the heart stops speeding now that's a big if i think there's good evidence for that in certain peer-reviewed journals but that would be one way of testing if consciousness is involved not just a story about heaven not about 90 minutes here or three minutes in hell information that could not have been known in that physical state that would point towards a conscious cause as opposed to a physical cause i would point towards two other things one thing like free will and this is a huge topic i know some atheists will differ on this some will say there is free will and i've heard one point like quantum physics explains it which to me basically means we have no idea where it comes from i've heard others take an agnostic position we don't know where free will arises and others like sam harris would take more of a position and deny free will well if there is such a thing as free will which i would argue is just so basic to being human then it points towards something not physical because it requires a kind of causation outside of just physical particles in motion but of kind of rational choice and reflection which is a mental process in which thoughts and ideas are involved hence a kind of consciousness would be the best explanation for it one other one i won't go into is even just reflecting on what it means to be human i won't go into in too much depth like is there a difference between the brain and between the mind if everything can't be reduced down to the brain are there things like thoughts and sensations and feelings are they real and they seem irreducible to physical properties and characteristics and seem to point towards a conscious kind of existence for their grounding so that's a huge topic but that would be the basic way that i would go addressing hopefully where your question hit okay yeah i have i have more to investigate into into the answer i knew that that's something that you worked on a good bit so i wanted to wanted to hear from you before i end up uh getting into the reading there yeah thanks i'd have some suggestions i'd be happy to to throw out there now here's kind of a more general one curious where you'll go with this one this is for both of us colton says uh sean and drew what do you think is the greatest strength of the other's view so what do you think is the biggest strength of theism over atheism uh theism i i would i would take probably christianity at least uh the the form of christianity that sean belongs to the ability to socially organize uh the ability to get people to cooperate and work on something that is a shared common goal i i think that uh a having a i use this in a sociological sense having a mythological structure having a myth for common origins having a myth that grounds morality having something that people can all share grounds for coming together and having shared experiences based upon moral foundations uh being able to have ritual those are things that make people bond together and work together they they ritual can be used to get people to work together and bond together in a way that isn't ultimately helpful and can be quite damaging and this is why uh militaries all over the world whether you're talking about a guerrilla force or you're talking about some force that committed genocide or you're talking about people who are fighting for for good for just causes they use ritual they use grounding myth and to to frame and ground a moral structure that allows them to work together with confidence i don't think that that's something that when you are kind of defining yourself as individualistic and [Music] thinking for one's self in the way that you do not belong to any kind of official structure and you don't think that there is some kind of uh grounding for morality that one can just share with another person in every single way i i don't think that that really encourages cooperation and social organization in the same way not to say that it precludes the possibility but it doesn't produce it within itself so i would say yeah christianity produces cooperation much better very interesting that you responded in sociological fashion as opposed to like intellectually historically it's an open question there's a lot of different ways we could go i don't know if this is the greatest strength but one thing that came to my mind is a number of my atheist friends and this includes juju i think have paid a significant cost for their beliefs a willingness to reject the things that they've learned and i don't i mean i just don't know if this is true for all atheists i can't generalize but many that i know are willing to say i don't believe that here's why and pay the cost for that and although i believe things differently that certainly made me say okay am i willing to do that what that would cost to my family am i willing to believe things differently professionally and it's definitely challenged me in that area and i remember one study i don't know if there's a recent study that showed as a whole atheists actually have better religious understanding as a whole than christians do and yeah when i saw that i was like guy that's because it's probably easier as a whole to just be a christian and go along with the flow and the culture but if you don't believe it you're going to get challenged so you have to take the time to understand what you believe and why and in my experience a whole lot of atheists have taken that seriously even if i differ with them and their solutions i think that's the strength that asks me am i willing to pay the same price cool um all right you're up yeah i mean coming from a family of missionaries the uh paying a price for what you believe in kind of thing or don't believe it yeah that's that's been a theme for me from a christian perspective for a long time and uh and then i guess i have continued that as an atheist i appreciate that let me see i need to find a question here um all right i'm getting a little bit lost in the questions sean if you already have one uh go ahead i'm still looking okay you know it is a little hard to go back um uh here's what i can just throw this out here and see what you think about this uh here's the unique one uh denise says i'd be curious what drew thinks of progressive christians maybe we'll just say progressive christianity where them explain things they sound like closeted atheists who don't know it yet i'd imagine even an atheist we could be confused by them do you have any thoughts on the kind of progressive christian movement as an atheist i think the first thing that i have to clarify is that because i don't define christianity in a theological sense in any way i define christianity from a sociological standpoint um when it comes to theological truth i don't see progressive christianity being any different than any other form of christianity uh i don't i don't find theology to be a practice that informs my view of reality in any practical way not not any more than me discussing the hypothetical world of lord of the rings and i'm sorry to be disparaging but that's how i see it please i want to know how you see things and so when i think a lot of the time when people ask that they want me to say whether or not i think they're like real christians i think anybody who calls themselves a christian is a is a real christian because i think the from a sociological perspective the bar for entry is simply identifying as such uh that said i i sean i think that you would have been considered a progressive christian at some point uh i i think that the most conservative christians in one political and sociological context would be considered progressive in others and and progressives of today in some other context would be considered quite conservative uh in my opinion religion is something that is infinitely malleable it's constantly changing evolving and you can see that borne out by reading uh ancient manuscripts of religious leaders apologists and just you know everyday religious people the the kind of thoughts that they had so i suppose that i see progressive christians as political allies um i know christians who are just as have just as many you know trans and non-binary friends as me and support their rights and would vote the same as me um so that's that's cool that said i i still don't see reason to ground my understanding of reality within a system that i view to be mythological in origin in the first place if you i suppose admit that one is simply choosing to do to to believe this uh in order to to have some kind of subjective sense of structure uh fine i guess that's the same as being an absurdist uh but yeah i i can have the same values as many progressive christians but without needing to to find the jesus story as any more than seemed like a pretty good guy [Laughter] true i gotta tell you that's not what i expect you to say and that is super helpful because again you're looking at this sociologically which makes sense if you're an atheist you don't think any of the supernatural is real i look at this question more theologically and i just interviewed george yancey and have an injury come up with ashley kwozek they wrote a book called one faith no longer and they're sociologists they do such a good job in the book you can't tell if they're progressive or conservative and they basically say when you look at the big questions of life what is sin who is jesus where is authority they're such differing answers that they're functionally as different of world views as hinduism and buddhism and frankly i think he's right about that the only qualifier i would give is sometimes the term progressive christianity covers people that would hold a more historically orthodox view and those who don't so it's a nebulous term that can only go so far but i guess the point being for this conversation is just to see how differently we even approach that because i'm probably going to differ with not all but with most progressive christians politically on certain ethical issues so we share the title christian we share a common care of who jesus was and what he said but you share more political affiliation but differ with them theologically so anyways fascinating response i got plenty more i can pull from but i want to make sure if you have questions you can throw them in there too all right yeah no i mean if you if you have some questions keep them coming i i have so much trouble uh cutting through all this okay no problem i just want to make sure this is fair here's one that that jumped up for me i think it's pretty interesting from ricardo he says would drew like for christianity to be true uh selfishly uh if if it meant that i christianity was true and i had access to uh a blissful afterlife with god then then sure for for my own sake and for my family's sake i would love for the vast majority of people that i know to have some kind of incredible eternal life that where everything is justified and everything makes sense there's no absurdity to life they're ultimately pain is annihilated in the glory of their savior and at the end so for me sure but i i think that would be quite selfish given that i i suppose that i'd have to say does me granting christianity being true mean that i agree with the moral structure that says that you know x number of people must suffer in hell for all of eternity if it means that me granting christianity being true i can't have any kind of disagreement with any of the moral the morality of it uh it's it's really hard to answer i i don't want the vast majority of people who have ever existed on the planet and this is at least the theology that i was taught to suffer in health for all eternity even people who deserve serious punishment or i guess you could make an argument for them deserving punishment maybe that's what you know justice justice served would look like them being punished i from my current moral paradigm i don't want that i don't want that that punishment to happen and i might not send people to heaven in order if i if i was in charge send some people to heaven a small minority of people just for the majority to to suffer in agony for all eternity is me granting christianity being true does that mean that i would automatically agree with those people being punished i guess it would so it's it becomes very difficult to answer selfishly speaking it would make me and my family you know it could be great but for most other people that i've ever known and that or that i know now and that i love not really i think christianity it would be someone that i just hung out with a co at a coffee shop with and had an incredible conversation there's absolutely no way they'd be making it in to heaven their gender identity and their philosophical views that have been shaped partially by their own deconstruction of of gender norms would preclude them from ever having a relationship with christ and i i simply in my own humanity in my own moral paradigm now i couldn't justify uh that kind of punishment uh very fair thanks for an an honest answer um here's one more for me so instead of taking one that was for you i'll take one for me and then you jump in and tell me what you think after this one if that's all right i think this is thoughtful from danique she says for sean why is it not okay for atheists to believe the world just exists but christians believe god just exists my answer would be that it is okay for atheists to believe that atheists can believe whatever they want to believe i know that's not the heart of what you're getting at but i respect if people are going to believe whatever they want to hold about the origin of the universe the question is what is what is irrational about believing that or why don't i hold that belief and i would say i don't think there's parity when we think about god and when we think about the universe so god is understood to be a necessary being it's a necessary being that means that god exists in all possible worlds there can't be a logically possible world in which god doesn't exist because god is a necessary being but that's not true for the universe there's nothing about the universe itself that is necessarily an existent thing that would exist in all possible worlds so i don't think there's parity between the universe and between god at least in terms of our understanding of it of them being necessarily existent things the second thing i would say is i think there's very good evidence that the universe itself actually did have a beginning and i won't go into all that but things like the red shift uh certain things from einstein's discoveries i think there's philosophical arguments to say that the universe actually hasn't always been here and just exist that's a challenge to the physical world that i don't think exists to god a ton more can be said but hopefully that brings clarity do you want to give some thoughts on that um i'm i think i'm still trying to understand exactly what what the question is getting at here that i'd be able to answer it why is it not okay for atheists to believe the world just exists i mean i think i would probably say that if you're trying to answer the question of whether or not the supernatural is real and just flatly saying no is probably ill-advised i i think that obviously the burden of proof is going to fall on those making the claim but and so i would say that not necessarily believing in the supernatural as a default is okay i suppose but i don't know that that necessarily means that one actually has some kind of rigorous uh epistemological reason for or or method for coming to the conclusions that they did i i think i'm less interested in someone having a specific belief and i'm more interested in someone having an informed perspective the issue in the first place okay fair so i wouldn't say it's it's okay for atheists to just be atheists as default and never have thought about it if they want to say that they they are informed and of course i'd say the same thing for for any religious position maybe i'm misunderstanding the question but okay no that that that's totally fair um i've got plenty more i can go to but did you have any questions you want to bring in all right hmm it's fine if you don't i just want to make sure i'm being being fair and not yeah no you're definitely being fair i just have trouble cutting through the through these here hey hit me and i'll i'll provide the next one just all right sounds good and then when i'm answering you can give your your you can look through so daniel kelly says a question for drew and i'll weigh in on this one too how important do you think the question of god's existence is is it trivial is it crucial is it important and i would assume it means in terms of a belief system what is true for how we live is that a central question to you or maybe a secondary question hmm it's it's a bit of a tough one because i think there are other concepts that are conflated with questions about morality that that aren't about god's existence i think that you could ask the question uh you know do you think that what we do here affects any kind of state of consciousness that we will have after we die will it affect the afterlife uh do you think that we will be reincarnated differently or do you like do you could ask does reincarnation exist and how important of a question is it to to say whether or not we are reincarnated i think that that's an equally important question to whether or not there's a god i suppose i would say that it's an important question but i it's not one that everybody actually has the resources to investigate uh particularly well and i don't think that the vast majority of people throughout time have actually been able to investigate this question very well at all they've addressed it from a very very limited view uh and god yeah my this is this is a tough one i suppose that i think it's important in the way that having a well-analyzed moral structure is important and if god is something that is influential to your culture's understanding of morality then that is a very important question however i think that if you go somewhere else where like if you are in a community of jane's for instance the question of whether or not a god exists is not going to appear all that important because that doesn't affect their moral structure particularly well within their their culture but the idea of whether or not bad karma can literally attach to oneself and then weigh it down in a cosmic way which which causes you to be reincarnated in a lower form and then reincarnation becomes an incredibly important question for any kind of moral discourse so yes it's an important question but it's an important question in the same way that any hypothetical structure which may or may not affect morality is important good answer here here would be my thoughts on this i think whether or not people are asking the question in their lives or have the ability to research it is different from the import of the question itself so to me i don't think there's a more central question that we can ask or investigate that has more implications than god's existence or non-existence for like you said morality for the afterlife for human value for uh meaning and purpose in the universe for the existence of free will for the existence of justice i don't think there's a question that has more implications for all those areas in life than the question of whether god exists or not and how we know this to me it's the supreme question that should determine the basis of any world view um all right do you find one i've got some more here but uh i want to make sure you have a chance i have won uh for you okay it's not it's not necessarily for me a few people have actually asked this okay basically it's the question of whether or not a person can be a genuine christian and then again this is apologetics question can be a genuine christian who's actually convinced uh actually has a real relationship with christ and then become a non-believer who does is genuinely convinced of their non-belief or is everybody who leaves a a true faith just suppressing the truth and unrighteousness so you're right this is an apologetic question but it's also technically a theological subcategory of apologetics so calvinists would say no if somebody left because god is the one who selects us they never were in the faith in the first place uh so that would be one position by calvinist more armenianist position or many disposition would say yes one could leave here's where i stand on this and i don't think i've ever answered this publicly interestingly enough if i want to be totally honest with you drew i can't say most but i would say many atheists that i have met who've left the faith as i probe some of their theology it at least makes me wonder if they understood the gospel in the first place now let me emphasize i'm not saying most i'm just saying in my experience many times when i've talked to people who become skeptics and atheist agnostics and i just ask questions trying to surface what did it mean to follow jesus what is the gospel over and over again i hear something that i don't think matches up with what jesus and paul taught and what the heart of the gospel always is so at least many times that's the case but i'm also going to say it's not it's i wouldn't say it's never the case because i think the bible has a lot to say as a christian about people staying strong in the faith and this is the way it's framed obviously within the scriptures to a christian is different than how an atheist would look at this but like hey keep strong don't quit believing and we see examples of people who once were believers who no longer were and it doesn't seem to be that they're just a part of the church and the christian community but genuinely were believers and left so i am totally open to that i'm not going to close that possibility for theological reasons and frankly the other reason is i do want to be charitable towards people who say i believe this this is my belief system i follow jesus i don't want to discount somebody right out of the gun without hearing their story and being open to it so a ton more could be said but hopefully that's at least an honest answer of how how i look at it gotcha okay cool i i actually found one uh for myself here if you don't if you don't mind yeah tanner davis says drew do you ever try praying to the god that might not or that might exist what if the way to come to know he exists involves a personal relationship so actually when i became an atheist that didn't mean that i stopped praying actually uh for for a little while actually for like two years because i couldn't i couldn't help it uh when any time i there was something i wanted to give thanks for or i was struggling with or something that i wanted or especially if i felt afraid just immediately i would start i would start praying and it would be i would hear kind of words in my head you know what the prayer that i'm that i'm giving off i would get into kind of this emotional state to where it was identical to the one that i had when i was a christian i was praying kind of purposely and i realized that the reason why i was doing that it was completely automatic and it's simply because i've been doing that for almost two decades i i mean even i was always so in a a spirit of prayer that when i used to skate and i just wanted to do a trick well i i prayed about it you know if i if somebody gave me something that day or gave me a compliment that was that was nice made me feel good i thank god for it just everything that was anything that was emotionally involved was something that i took to my savior in prayer of course i would why why wouldn't i i was in a constant spirit of prayer that's what i that's what you do that's just what being a christian is at least if you're not particularly separated from god at that time uh and so i i kept praying it was just automatic and it's it's the same as when i might hear a certain song that i've heard probably hundreds of times in church i get this feeling that i need to come to this state of peace and reflection and and be thinking about these certain things and i realize oh my gosh i have been honestly forced into this so many times this is how my brain just works now this is not any kind of evidence for prayer being an actual connection to god this is not evidence for the song actually getting me into some kind of spiritually heightened state it's not indication of god's presence what it indicates is that i was forced to drill this like literally do drills where i prayed where i reflected in a certain way and so i kept doing it and it was uh i didn't really intentionally stop i suppose i didn't want to force myself to like oh no no that's those thoughts aren't allowed because though the whole point of my deconstruction was kind of i'm trying to examine things and and come to a true understanding of them or a reasonable understanding of them not just what i want to believe and uh so i thought you know something comes of prayer then sure there's some reason for me to think this is some genuine connection to god then sure but there nothing but an automatic emotional response uh really ever seemed to surface when it came to prayer now what if the only way to understand the true god or come to a belief in the in the true god is personal then uh cool i await that it's that personal experience i i thought if i thought that there was some kind of reliable methodology by which i could come to a reliable understanding of god through some kind of personal devotional um transcendent meditative experience then i would i would certainly try it but i've i've studied the rituals of of course i started in protestant christianity and then i studied a bit of catholicism and how they would do it and then eventually i ended up actually studying a good bit about mystics within islam and the the sunnis who are i mean sunni mystics are maybe the absolute worldwide champs of figuring out how to induce a transcendent experience with the with the divine uh fasting praying and chanting things that are particularly repetitive group rituals spinning uh substances all of those things i if one of those things in some way shows to be more reliable and maybe what sean was saying uh if people engage in a certain kind of experience and they come away from that experience having information that they couldn't possibly have any other way this experience is able to impart new information something we can observe on to the person who experiences that then then maybe i would believe that some kind of personal route to god was reliable but at this point i just haven't seen any any practice that produces reliable information things seem to be quite wildly uh disparate among different religions very fair very thoughtful response i had not thought about that what would it go from being someone who prays to somebody who doesn't so i appreciate you you sharing your thoughts on that you had one for you i've got one for me that i think is really interesting it relates back to consciousness uh which was your question for me at the beginning so i'll uh i'll bring this one if that's okay and then you jump into the next one daniel kelly says sorry i just realized the someone said in the comments i think i said sunnis not sufi's yeah my bad i was talking about i was talking about sufi uh muslims not sunnis my bad drew you are canceled you just offended billions of people you're done um actually what i hope we're modeling here is you can make mistakes and we're not going to do that certainly on an issue an honest honest correction like that good correction though okay question for sean daniel kelly says if we were to build a general a.i artificial intelligence which seemed to have self-awareness achieving consciousness would that convince you that it is an emergent property now this is a thought experiment about the possibility of there being an emergent property with self-awareness some of you might think i'm crazy but i think the chances of building that are essentially nil because i think mind and self-consciousness is a fundamentally different property and substance than matter and machine so i'm willing to entertain it but i find zero reason to think actually as i've studied consciousness and thought about this that such a thing is actually even not logically possible it's logically possible but physically possible with that said imagine we did such a thing what it convinced me it's emergent property and the answer would be maybe because what has to be explained within a naturalistic framework is an emergent property that arises purely through naturalistic causes not through intelligent causes so in this case if we build an artificial system there is information and mind input put in from the beginning and so this wouldn't be akin to the kind of experiment we would see in nature that either arises that explains the first origin of life or the first origin of consciousness or self-consciousness even if we did this it would be this analogous and if anything it'd be an argument that for there to be consciousness for there to be self-consciousness we actually need an intelligent mind and a very intelligent mind if we use artificial intelligence to get there so i would say if we did such a thing it would actually be more of an argument for design and the need for intelligence than it would be for the existence of an emergent property through naturalistic means you don't have to answer but if you have any thoughts on that feel free to jump in i suppose the first thing that i would say is demonstrating self-consciousness demonstrating consciousness i'm not sure that that's actually something that can be done in the first place particularly well uh i don't think that you i don't know of any test that would actually demonstrate that consciousness or self-awareness is existent within uh something that is responding to stimuli because i think that the idea of of consciousness as we tend to define it is is it's basically a supernatural construct i i think it's an abstraction which doesn't really serve serve our understanding of that thing particularly well i mean people define consciousness in a myriad of different ways and some try to ground that in some kind of naturalistic understanding uh some naturalists will say that yeah consciousness is the thing it exists this is a completely coherent concept and some will not say that i think most people that i hear talking about consciousness as something that most definitely exists and can be defined most of those people are believers in the supernatural i asking whether or not we are conscious i'm not sure if that's a particularly coherent question i don't know that there is a definition that we can ground in the material in the first place i think that one of the reasons why it can make so much sense within a a theistic understanding of the world that consciousness exists is because consciousness first of all is just an extension of our supernatural i would say quite mystical and mythical understanding of the human mind in the first place i think that the soul the spirit consciousness they're kind of all one and the same rather ill-defined usually stemming from mythology and nothing more and and so that said i am a sentientist uh and if we were able to construct a a mind that or we were able to construct it for me mind and brain don't mean anything different so if we were able to construct something that seemed to have the cognitive capacity of of humans it can respond to stimuli in a similarly complex way however we decide to define that uh first of all i would be like do we need to grant this personhood probably so we need to write that's where it goes um i i think that we could create a a facsimile of a human who that would be in every way indistinguishable from a human through naturalistic means i just don't think we have those means yet okay that also i'd also like to say i i think of the evolutionary process natural selection and uh reproduction with mutation with slight variance that that is a mechanism for design that is design uh it's just design that can happen entirely naturalistically without any kind of outside interference so i would say that the yes a human has been constructed through design it has been designed but it's been designed by a particular process that does not require an external force and so i would see i would see no difference in uh let's say like a brain or a mind that was designed by an intelligent creator and something that was designed by an unintelligent rather blind process okay very fair i sense maybe a whole show where you and i just explore consciousness at some point i think would be fun that's come up i have more of a personal one here do you have one you want to jump to or can i bring one in that i i uh no go ahead go ahead this one i i think i'm curious this is from soothsayer it's not really a question he just says i'm an ex-christian waking up was so hard i threw away my life and friends to stand up for the truth now the reason i brought this one is i want you to just speak to soothsayer who's anonymous and i would just say one thing i would say if you are an ex-christian assuming i don't know if you meant waking up in the morning the first day you became an ex-christian or just kind of waking up in general my guess is there's a lot of pain behind this and you threw away your life and your friends maybe that's some things you did i don't know but i'm guessing there's a lot on the side of others who did not love you and respond the way they should have while you question things if that's the case i'm sorry that that's happened and part one of things why i've had this conversation with drew is i think christianity is true and i try to make a case for it and i hope at some point in your life you would reconsider it but i also want to push back on christians and say we have to do better and we can be friends with atheists we can be friends with people across the aisle in fact jesus called us to do such a thing so anything you want to add to this comment drew yeah absolutely that that's definitely a point that needs that needs to be aired so i i sense a at least through the the word choice i threw away my life and friends to stand up for the truth i know that it can be incredibly difficult to feel like what you have done is justified on the other side you know i i basically committed social suicide for this is it worth it i can't tell you whether or not it's going to be worth it because i don't know how the rest of your life is going to play out but something i'd like to emphasize is that there a chapter of life could have potentially closed could have potentially ended certain relationships probably have been damaged to the point where you may not be able to reconcile that one thing i would say is do your best to while completely protecting yourself and setting appropriate boundaries so that you are not abused you can't necessarily write certain people who do not understand completely off at this point you may be able to have relationships with those who are not responding well at this point of course what you need to do is prioritize your own well-being there but then also there are opportunities to rebuild a social structure rebuild a group of people that love you and care for you and that doesn't mean that oh you can go be friends with people who aren't christian now yeah you can you can be friend or you can go and seek relationships with people who will encourage you and love you regardless of any of that you know like sean was saying there there are hopefully some people out there who would heed sean's instruction that our christian who would be willing to give you encouragement and love that which you deserve and so i would say realize that while some things some relationships some chapter of life may be ending in one way that doesn't mean that life itself is actually over it can continue from this point i remember when i started deconstructing what it felt like was you know what this there's a cliff i don't know how high it is and it's completely dark so if i if i jump off anything could happen i could be completely lost everything could be lost there could be no hope everything would be terrible and in fact i have reason to think that some things might be pretty bad but i can't stay up on this precipice anymore i have to keep moving and it sounds like you you had to keep moving too so you you jumped off of the cliff it can be extremely dark when you first jump off of there and you can't see the bottom you don't know where you're going to land to complete the metaphor but realize that where you're going to land is a continual process that you do have some control over i would encourage you if you are seeking mental health support if you need tangible resources you need to find some community in the descriptions of any of my newer videos i have a link to the recovering from religion foundation where you can actually call in and you can talk to people who have gone through this and are also trained to work with people who are going through this so i would i would start there you can also find a secular counselor there if you would like regardless if you have the means to it's a good thing to get a counselor just to have someone to talk to through all of this stuff realize that this isn't the end this is a point that's very hard to see past but that doesn't mean that it's the end i'm i'm you know encouraging you to take it from me if you decide to do it keep going and sean and i will both be here to try to make whether this world gets more non-theistic or more christian because of either one of us we're both trying to create a world where people can have these discussions and you don't have it's not doesn't mean that you're throwing your entire life or social situation away just because you change your mind about one of these issues drew i've got one more question for you then we gotta wrap up but i do want to draw out to my audience i've written a book called so the next generation will know why am i mentioning this because i spent a lot of my life having talking to parents about passing on their faith so as parents and those of us who are christians are concerned when kids deconstruct and deconvert from the faith that's natural when you believe the things that we believe and you should do things to try to minimize that if christianity of course is true but i do want to highlight two things you said you number one you described your experience as a dark cliff and second you raise mental health issues minimally christians amidst our efforts within the faith can we recognize how painful this is for many people who deconstruct their faith and deal with it appropriately i think this is partly why jude 1 22 says have mercy on those who doubt it was painful when i doubted i think it was even a lot more painful when drew doubted so thanks for that answer one that's on a little lighter note and we'll just kind of get your quick take on this this is for you i'll give my two cents and you can jump in and then we'll wrap up leaving people hopefully wanting more uh the question is drew are you a vegan or a sentientist and i can't answer for you but for me i am not a vegan i eat meat and i do think that when you look at the bible especially the old testament care for animals is highlighted over and over again and there are serious penalties for abusing animals even animals were to have a kind of sabbath rest even though they're not human persons so i actually think when we understand the creation account that creation is good and we're stewards over it it should be christians as much or more than anybody else who cares for the environment and cares for animals but with that said i also think humans have more value than animals and are uniquely made in god's image so we can eat animals if it's done in a humane careful fashion and i talked with a ceo of a huge farm with chickens and he was motivated by his christian faith to try to carry out his business with integrity and care towards the animals and others and i thought that's a good mark of how christians should be your quick answer to this thought on being a vegan or sentius uh i am both those are not mutually exclusive so i'm a sentientist in the way that i base more moral consideration in the uh organism's ability to suffer and i do i roughly define that as feeling pain at least when we're talking about any kind of cross species question i do not eat animals i don't consume animal products and i think that within i this is a complete softball version of what i think but within the the american context at the very least where meat and animal products are a result of factory farms more of the time than you think which what i'm saying is it's almost all of the meat and dairy that you consume is factory farmed in the ways that you would see in a vegan video doing an exposed thing uh ethical farms uh are those that have different methods than factory farms are in the extreme minority and you will probably never find any of that meat in a grocery store unless there's literally one piece of it in some specialty section and even then i have moral problems with that so uh i even if i agreed with eating humane humanely slaughtered meat whatever that would mean uh i still would not consume any animal products within the context of america because the way that that is produced requires very extreme basically torture of of animals and i i don't agree with that drew good answer i gotta tell you i have thoroughly enjoyed this if anything just clarity in my own mind how you think about being a vegan how you think about progressive christianity why you stopped praying i it didn't even cross my mind we would come to some of these topics but great questions and i apologize i mean there are dozens and dozens we didn't have a chance to get to so i'm sorry if i missed your question i'm flipping through right now seeing some other great ones but i think i'd rather end with people going i want more than just drag this thing out so maybe we'll have to talk and consider doing it again hey make sure you subscribe to uh drew's youtube channel the genetically modified skeptic if you're an atheist you don't need me to say that if you're christian you might be thinking why would you do that and i'd say look actually if christianity is true number one we should know what other people believe to treat them better and we should have no fear of other ideas if christianity is actually true so drew is thoughtful as you saw all my interaction with you is that you aim to be gracious and that you state your convictions clearly so i hope my viewers will check it out and interact with it also make sure you hit subscribe here we've got some shows coming up you're not going to want to miss next week i have a conversation with a progressive christian by the name of colby martin about the bible and lgbtq relationships friday released in an interview on strategies that progressive christians use to try to lead to a paradigm shift amongst evangelical christians super interesting and then a couple weeks after that have craig keener coming on who's done the most in-depth study on miracles probably ever and has a new book coming out with some new cases and we're going to look at what is the evidence for the supernatural today drew hang on one minute after this week in chat but thanks again for coming on and just for a great conversation yeah absolutely thanks for having me on i enjoyed this and i'm sure we'll do something else in the future we'll do it you

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 18,158

Rating: 4.914094 out of 5

Keywords: God, theism, atheism, theist, atheist, interaction, conversation, dialogue, answer, worldview, truth, spiritual, Christianity, humanism, faith, Bible, Jesus, belief

Id: a_-L4i5gL1k

Length: 62min 24sec (3744 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021