Tracie Harris On What Does That Mean | The Atheist Experience 572

so you can go ahead and okay tell us what we're talking about i'm going to take off my hat yeah i picked the song building a mystery because i think that the more i dialogue with apologists the more i feel like that's what what's happening so it the the more they talk the less i understand about what it is they're trying to explain to me and in a recent conversation that was on the tv list i just had no luck in getting somebody to explain to me uh the very small phrase it sounds like nothing god exists and it's a very small phrase it's two words and yet those two words are complete mystery um there's nothing in them that i understand as far as getting somebody to explain to me what they mean by god and getting somebody to explain to me how they're using the term exists and the problem that i wanted to read a couple of responses that i got in order to illustrate the problem because it shouldn't be a problem i mean like butterflies exist right um we're kind of talking in the same language we've got you know definition and understanding of each other right and that's a great example okay so if you say to me that a butterfly exists even if i have no idea what a butterfly is you can very easily describe it to me it's you know they they range in size they can be tiny or they can be about that big sometimes they get you know real big if they have big wings but they have you know for the most part colorful patterned wings that are you know kind of opaque generally sometimes iridescent they've got six or i think they have six legs maybe eight i don't know but antenna the probe is kind of tongue they eat now you can give me a very detailed description of what you mean by a butterfly when you're when you're saying it and if everything else fails you can we can go outside and you can grab me and say there's a butterfly right so there's a reference in reality that we can point to and even if we don't have that referent available we can offer a very detailed description of what exactly you mean by butterfly so even if you're talking to someone who lives in antarctica you can still describe the thing to them in terms that they can understand it has wings it has legs it has you know and so it's a very there's there's a way it's well defined it's observable it manifests it's it's a fairly obvious item and so there's it's very easy to get past that first part butterfly butterflies and then exists would pretty much be along the lines of how you would normally use it i think if i said to a per if i just walked into a room and said give me an example of something that exists i think most people would grab whatever's sitting there and just say okay existence is you know here well what do we mean by that we mean manifestation the thing directly observably um you know manifests and you can measure the manifestation we can measure how hard this mug is we can measure the weight of you know muhammad we can you can measure light frequencies there's there's like a whole range of measurements for existence and basically things that manifest and things that can be measured are what we consider to be the realm of existence and what we're talking about when we say exist so when i get into a discussion with an apologist we have two problems the first one of course is that they're giving me the item god which has no external referent that they can generally point to there are some uh exceptions to this like the pantheists we use a lot because they they put forward that the universe is god and so to them all of this would be god and on some level that's almost like also a hindu idea where you've got the divinity of everything so you know but you're putting forward that if if everything is is god to a person i may or may not agree that i would call it god but at least they're they're able to communicate to me what they mean by the term god right and it's the same the same is true for for like greek and roman myths where they had these anthropomorphized beings who had specific domains and specific responsibilities you know this is the god of war right this and this is you know the god of thunder and he can do this and somebody pointed out and i think it kind of meshes really nicely is that even something that we have no reason to think exists like unicorns we can still come up with a description for we can still say this is what a unicorn is this is what i mean when i'm using the label right and oh that's and that's actually a really good uh something that needs to be touched on is that ideas exist but they exist in a way that most of us understand they're in our heads right um so a lot of times people will say not everything that exists has like such a such an obvious manifestation sometimes you have a thing like love that you know yes there's this chemist chemistry to it but then there's this feeling and there's a manifestation of the action of love and you can't really prove that i love you i can act like i love you and but the point about love is that it is an internal idea it is a man-made concept that each person holds uh the model of love in their own mind and it is whatever you define it as now of course there's like general parameters to where we understand that it's for example not um you wouldn't confuse it with something like hate or jealousy although some people might actually take someone else's definition of love and and say that that's the equivalent of hatred where someone might say i loved my spouse so much that i murdered them because i couldn't bear the thought of them being with someone else and to that person that's what love entails is some sort of an actual you know connection that that is the ownership and that is um you know commitment that you will kill them if they if they break that commitment or they break that um sense of ownership that you're holding it in with love you know we talked about it before with particularly and we obviously um i think most believers and most of us would agree that these people are deranged something got wrong but when you talk about a woman who kills her children in order to send them off to heaven quicker i'm from her perspective she's doing something that she thinks is loving and not evil but my main point is that if you really get around to asking people what do they mean by love how does love manifest what does love entail you'll find that there are different models and that people have different models of this and one person's love is another person's monstrosity and you know it there's just because it is a mental concept held inside the mind it has that amorphous quality that cannot clearly be communicated from one person to another you will never know what i mean by love and i'll never know what someone else means by it they can communicate it to the best they can communicate it and sometimes when they communicate it i might think i wouldn't call that love but that's what they call love and that's what it is to them and that's what happens when you deal with a concept but that isn't what happens when you deal with a referent right when you have an external objective referent like this mug there's not a lot of discrepancy as far as what color is this how hard is this how deep is this i mean it's measurable and whether somebody wants to believe that it's you know maybe four inches deep or not is really you know certainly they can believe that but they can be proven wrong and you can show that the mug is as deep as the mug is by simply pulling out a ruler well i think it also kind of ties the two together i mean talking about love you've got people in in several of the monotheistic modern religions where either they'll just flat out say god is love um or their attempt to define or or not define their god makes it um the rough equivalent where god has just become a concept almost and yet they've they've transposed us to where they think no no it's not just a concept right it's real and it exists right and that's what i want to say it's like as far as the argument and i i i hesitate to even call it an argument but the uh the putting forward of the idea that you know god exists like love exists to me that's i just put that one right out the window because i know of no one who would sit there and argue about the existence of god who is seriously putting forward that god exists merely as a mental concept every theist that's come to our list to go to the wall to explain that they believe god exists they are they are loathed to say that god is a concept in their own mind i have yet to hear one person say yes that's exactly what i mean god is a concept of mind just like love if that's all you're thinking there's you're going to find very few atheists who are going to argue with you about that because most atheists will agree that god is is a concept a model in your mind but if you want to say that there is an objectively existing entity of some sort something outside your head that exists in the external realm of existent reality of objectively existing reality beyond yourself then that whole idea of god exists like love exists doesn't apply anymore right so now we're looking at an objective reality which is a measurable reality and where the way that we know and test a concept so if if me and matt get into an argument about whether or not this mug is deeper than two inches or not deeper than two inches it can be resolved we simply have to examine the mug you measure how many inches deep it is and we will know who is correct and who is incorrect where you lack an external referent the problem becomes upon what do you base your model okay and that's a big problem because if there's nothing upon which to base your model and somebody makes a claim about god god is loving well i there is i can't measure that i don't know you're claiming that but i don't know and i can't check your claim against the external referent to see if what you're telling me is accurate so without having something to examine i have your claim or someone else's claim but i have nothing to examine in order to confirm that claim is accurate yeah and in order for the concept to actually work i mean going back to like the mug analogy not only do you need to be able to define it specifically and explain it but we need to be using common terms and that means that if we're going to measure how deep that is we need a standardized unit of measure that we're both going to agree on right so that you know i don't i don't all of a sudden say that well i'm when i say two inches that equals two feet for you correct and and you hear similar things with regard to this this god claim as well you know when we talk about whether or not god's moral uh this concept of god that's presented in the different religions whether or not that that is something we would consider morally true um or whether or not we we think that it's logically reasonable to get to this god then you get these claims of well that's because you're measuring by man's standards and not god's standards well okay i mean if you want to if you want to say that you know invisible pixies exist and you're measuring them by the invisible pixie standards that's great but now you got to tell me what those standards are and we have to agree that that's a good measurement for this right so we run into an issue where the person if they want to have a dialogue about god they need to be able to explain what it is they're describing what it is they're referring to what it is that i'm supposed to be acknowledging and i wanted to read some excerpts from one of the dialogues that happened recently because it gives a really good example of the problem that occurs and and when you're an atheist and you're trying to talk to somebody about their concept of god it becomes problematic when they give you answers like this i'm sorry about that i could if i could explain god in the way you want me to then i would pretty much be a god myself his glory is too great even to come close to understanding anything about the nature of his existence and another response we got to someone else on the same question is and it's the same person putting this out but by no means is this person unique in their description i mean this is not something that we rarely hear this is par for the course here he is again trying to describe it this is the awesome glory of god i don't have a clue as to what he is none whatsoever this is what makes him so magnificent because there is nothing in in this world that could explain or describe or imagine what his glory is like we only say god and he because it is the best way for us to identify who we are talking about but that doesn't describe what he is like or what he is made of or anything a thing we can describe god we cannot and let me tell you that the last part of that paragraph is something that most atheists would give a hearty amen to because it does seem like a thing you can describe but god you cannot and it also seems like we don't know who or what or you know what we're talking about or anything about it so if this is the description that i'm getting back and i'm trying to have a conversation with someone about god exists and i can't get past god i don't know how to have that conversation yeah and and i you know while i wouldn't have phrased it this way and i certainly wouldn't have started with this is the awesome glory of god the idea that you're you're you're saying i believe in this thing that i can't possibly understand i can't comprehend i can't even imagine i can't describe i can't know anything about why would anybody believe in that what is that you're believing right i mean how can you say that i can't comprehend it but i believe it right i can't understand it i can't describe it but i believe it right i mean i don't know i don't know what it is i'm supposed to be understanding that you believe when this is the response um i have no idea what i mean if it if you can't make sense of it and you can't understand it how in the world can you possibly expect to communicate that to someone else and what does that say for example if they're if we extend it into what they're what they're normally talking about where this is a god that created you and he specifically created you in a manner that you're unable to comprehend understand identify describe or in any way know anything about it now i realize that not all believers necessarily fall into this category but if you're in that category if you can't i mean you don't even know what this thing is that you don't understand and yet you're you're believing it and then eventually you get the justification that i believe it because you know he made me made everything that type of thing uh well how do you know that how do you know there's a there's any there there i mean it's just it's it's maddening well i mean it's it's basically a description of nothing i mean there it's a description of nothing and then i'm supposed to talk about it like it's something and i don't know how to do that and i think that's what i'm trying to to say today is there is a a a definitional divide i think between like apologists and atheists that there it's no wonder to me that communication doesn't happen or that it's so difficult when a person who is offering that sort of description for god does not understand the non-information they're providing they're providing me a whole bunch of words and saying nothing they're describing nothing they have given me zero information in that paragraph they've just spent an entire paragraph explaining to me why they can't explain to me god and yet they want to dialogue with me about god well if i want to have a conversation with someone about god they have got to be able to tell me what they're talking about if you can't tell me what you're talking about there cannot be a conversation so i would say before you approach somebody to discuss your god you need to sit down and do some reflection and try to figure out what you mean by that word specifically what you mean and i also don't mean what do you think god does i mean what do you think god is because what you think god does is really irrelevant until there is a shown to be a god that is you can tell me all day long god creates worlds god wrote the bible god and i cannot confirm any of it because i have no god to go to and examine and say you know what that's correct this god does did write the bible and that's the other problem that we had with this particular person was the idea that the evidence that was being put forward on behalf of his god's existence all assumed that god existed so you would have the bible put forward and it's like well god created the bible and so here's the bible and this is evidence for god it's like well but if there is no god then god didn't create that book so i can't you can't come to me when we're trying to determine is whether or not there is a god and say you've got this book that is the product of that god and you want to enter that into evidence for your god and i should accept it as evidence because it was created by your god well if the point of contention is whether or not god exists of course i'm not going to accept that the book is created by god we need to establish first there is a god that could create the book then we can talk about whether or not he did create the book there may be a good test too though i mean if you're if you're doing it in written communication take a second because you know looking at what the person wrote if you take out your gods and he's uh and it's if you want and sub in something i put x a lot of times nothing right or x pdr just in any string of characters and it makes as much sense if if it's if if you're conveying exactly uh no information either way right then there's a problem right and we're going to get to that too the other question that comes up is what is meant by exist so we go through the whole thing with god we can't define god we don't understand god i have no more information about god and then i'm wondering if you can't give me any data and you have no way to measure to examine to then what do you mean by exist because when i use the term exist i'm talking about the measurable objective reality around me and if i can't if there if if there's no measurable way to examine this thing that you're talking about how then is it that you're considering it part of existence and what do you mean by the word exist at this point and how do you tell things that exist from things that do not if we're going to include non-manifesting items in the realm of existent items that becomes a problem so what i wrote to the person was that existence as far as i know is the term we use to define the set of all items that can be shown to directly manifest to people to say that any item exists indicates that it manifests in some direct manner if you cannot show a direct manifestation of any god then you have no actual reason to put forward a god exists if existence is not manifestation to you please define the term exist as you apply it and if you use if your use of exists does not require direct manifestation please explain how you differentiate between things that exist in things that do not exist i assume i should clarify that your putting forward god exists in the present and not that god is merely a past event that no longer exists such as a deist might put forward to me that question is very clear how do you define existence how do you tell the difference between things that exist and things that don't if you're not using manifestation as your measure i don't know how i could have been any more clear the answer i got back is for this you'll need faith i can't show you god god will show himself to you in his own ways when you have faith and trust me you'll know it's him but it's all up to you the best i can do is show you the truth about jesus who is the manifestation of god in human flesh now all i asked was how do you define existence and how do you tell things that exist from things that do not and the answer i got back was i can't show you god okay i didn't ask him to show me god i didn't ask him how i can see god i didn't ask him you know all i said was how do you define existence and how do you tell things that exist from things that do not and i did not get an answer to the question unless you you ask the question how do you tell the difference between things that exist and things that don't and if you take his first sentence for this you'll need faith maybe that was his answer i just take it on faith that whatever i happen to believe in actually my point my point is that the question i asked really is divorced from you know can be divorced from whether or not we're even talking about god right how do you define existence and how do you tell things that exist from things that don't no i'm saying his answer may i i don't think it's i'm i'm being kind of funny well yeah but i'm just saying i mean yes he would i wouldn't probably accept that he is saying that i need faith it's really a way of saying i don't try to tell the difference between what exists what doesn't exist i feel like believing in uniform unicorns i'll just take that on faith so then he told me you'll know they're real when they gore you through the stomach with that horn he's when he said he couldn't show me god i said if god does not manifest like every other existent item manifests what are you defining as existence again i didn't say if god doesn't manifest like every other item that exists manifests so therefore your god doesn't exist all i said was what are you defining as existence if god doesn't manifest like every other item manifests in existence what are you defining as existence that's a very straightforward question the answer i got was you want a natural explanation for a supernatural being that doesn't work apparently you think supernatural isn't that super and just a tad bit more than natural the best thing we have are miracles he's performed for us in our lives that's the manifestation you're going to get again i didn't ask for an explanation about i didn't all i said was what are you defining as existence and no answer no answer i get more of an apology about god and you know why you can't and i'm not asking him why can't we see god i'm saying what are you defining his existence and i got no answer i don't know what he means by existence so i tried again i said i'm unbiased enough to be willing to accept that you have some sort of a god that exists if your god can meet the one and only criteria i am aware of for existence measurable manifestation when i ask you what you mean when you then may mean by exist and existence and how you tell things that exist from things that do not you say i'm putting constraints on god i'm not i'm merely asking you and i put that in all caps you to define what you mean by exist and existence and how you differentiate that which exists from that which does not i'm not asking god to provide anything in this request i'm questioning your model and your definitions and your lack of support i'm not asking anything from god and then the answer i got was do i believe that jesus is a real person i know that at least you once did but what about now trust me i'm not dodging your question as a as a quick reminder while we hold off on on this real quick um the telephone number's up on your screen if you're wanting to call in um we're on the air till 4 30 and then after that we go to dinner at thread girls down on riverside any anybody's welcome to join us any atheist or atheist friendly person um you can call in we're going to continue discussing this but i want to make sure people that knew that they that the phone lines were open and you know if you want to call in and give you normally ask what do you believe in why i mean that's what i want the most tell me what you believe in why we can figure out where we disagree where we don't and the point that tracy's kind of addressing is the one that we almost duck and dodge on the show too when somebody calls in to make their argument or makes make their case for for what they believe sometimes we we try to get them to define terms and sometimes we don't sometimes the frustration frustration's too great and we just presume that okay whether anybody understands what you're actually talking about or not let's at least hear what your argument is maybe it'll make sense after the fact but if you know if you've got a definition of god or you've got some understanding um you know or some insight into this if you think that you could answer direct questions better than some of the apologists that we've had an email please feel free to give us a call and as a last reminder next sunday everything changes we're moving channel 16 from 4 30 to 6 p.m and i'll talk more about that later okay all right so we really didn't get i never got an explanation for what did he mean by exist and how does he define it and how he tells things that exist from things that don't exist and the answer about jesus is i mean i i think i understand what he's trying to do but the the problem is that jesus you know lived and died and even if jesus at the time he lived was some sort of human manifestation the problem is we don't have that now and my point to him earlier was you're not talking about a past god that used to exist you're talking about a god that you believe exists right now which means that you're saying this thing is right now so why isn't it manifesting right now why do we have to go back two thousand years to look for a manifestation of something you say is here now i mean it's not there's a difference between saying it used to be in that case i can understand trying to pull from some sort of evidentiary argument about why we would think something used to be but when you're saying something is you're making a claim about current state of existence and so i need to know currently when you say god exists what are you saying about existence what does it mean to you to exist and how do you tell a thing that exists from something that doesn't exist and that has to be clear and also what has to be clear is what you're talking about when you say god what is it that is striking you about the world outside you or you know what's beyond your brain that makes you say yes this thing is out there what are you seeing what are you experiencing what are you what is it that you're calling god what is that reference that's outside your mind um is there one where is there not you know and and if there's not then please don't be surprised that i don't believe you um and if there is then explain it and let's talk about it um but anyway the next thing that we tried to discuss was i was trying to make the point and it seems to me like a no-brainer but it was so difficult and i the whole time i was responding to this person i remember i just kept thinking why is this hard you know why is this hard and there was a few times i actually wrote that and i would say you know this is this does not have to be this hard you know telling me what you mean by existence shouldn't entail a huge you know explanation about your god i'm just asking you in general what do you what do you mean about by existence that's that's a very simple thing when you're talking about things that exist and things that don't exist what do you mean by that and if you don't know what you mean by it then what you're really saying is you don't know what existence is and if you don't know what you mean by exist and existence then how can you make a claim that something exists when you don't know what that means so you've got to have something in your head that that is existence and you're you're about to shift gears here uh but it demonstrates something that we've talked about a lot i apologize to the to the regular listeners who um are fans of the show sympathetic and email who have emailed and not gotten a response uh i i apologize in part because one of the reasons that you don't get a response is because for whatever reason some of us uh spend a lot more time answering the emails that come in from apologists or christians theists of some stripe whatever um in the hope not only that we'll we'll develop uh better ways to explain things on this show when callers call in um to try and overcome the communication gaps that tracy's talking about but what this this letter is fairly typical in a couple areas not just in the inability to to answer a question or communicate a point or come to some common ground in order to have a discussion but it goes from point to point to point without any concession at all of i understand this now or i disagree but i have a question about something else it's it's this this meandering i've they've presented their case we've offered some response and then with no acknowledgement they move on um when jeff d was on the show that didn't fly ever it was in and ashley pointed out to me today and to remind me and it was no no no until you answer the question or until you address that point or acknowledge that we've made a point we're not moving on you don't get to give up on your first argument and then move on to the big bang and evolution and and you know any other thing that you can do when we haven't even gotten past the basics and in this case we're having a difficult time even getting the basics of two words right which which which are the entire claim i mean there's only two parts to the claim god exists and the person can't tell me what god is and they can't and they're not they're using exist in a in a way that is obviously not the standard way that it's normally used but they won't tell me how they're using it so i have no idea what the claim means when you're telling me god exists and you cannot explain to me what god is and you cannot tell me what you mean by existence i don't know what you're claiming yeah and i try to assume yeah if you try to go with like a generalized definition of god right um in order to get to specifics that they can't do inevitably without fail they'll come back well that's not the god that i yeah that that will that will consist you're unfairly putting words in my mouth well if you won't put them in there then we're done right that will consistently bite you in the ass to make an assumption about what somebody means when they say god because i guarantee you i have not met two theists who mean the same thing by that word i have no i have not met the two theists that worship the same god and the uh the next thing that i was trying to explain to the person was that things that do not exist cannot be the cause of other things and this became extremely problematic because the theist in this case was interpreting me to be saying god cannot be the cause of things because god does not exist so he was thinking that i was presupposing the atheist stance and therefore saying that god cannot be the cause of anything because god doesn't exist that is not what i was saying what i was trying to communicate to the theist in this case is that if there is no god god cannot be the cause of other things and you can say that about anything if there is no pen then the pen cannot be the cause of anything now that doesn't mean that we have to start with a presupposition i guess that there is no god but what i am going to start with is that we need to establish that there is a god before we can start moving forward and saying that that god causes things that that god manifested as jesus that that god wrote a bible that that god produced a universe maybe it did but let's sit down and say do we have an existent god is god an existent thing that can cause other things because until we have that part down we can't move forward right and we've we talked about this before and this is the whole thing and tracy's completely sold me on it so i have to end up talking about it on a number show about manifestation and and we touched on it a little bit ago um what you specifically wrote was things that do not exist cannot be the cause of other things and the reason for that is or cannot be the cause of other things that exist i suppose things that don't exist could be the cause of other things that don't exist but we don't need to contemplate our navels for the rest of the show um if if something basically one of the claims from people about god is that it is this um well it it doesn't manifest because it's this transcendent otherworldly outside of reality being then it then what what you're saying is it can't therefore affect reality in any way at all because the second it does it has by definition manifested in some way there are lots of things that we can't or couldn't um see or identify um and yet we saw their effects this led us to hypotheses about what they potentially were and we begin investigating to to measure and identify how those things manifest couldn't see atoms for a very long time and yet we began to build an understanding of the fundamental building blocks of everything in the universe that led us to well i mean the ancient greeks had some sort of atomic theory long before anybody could have actually seen or measured one um and that's just one of the many examples if there is some effect or some observation some phenomena in reality it doesn't matter whether it's caused by something else in reality or if you're willing to go this far something else outside of reality there's something there that we can look at that's the manifestation and if you you think your god can do things in reality then by definition he's become measurable and identifiable and quantifiable um did you wanna sure

Channel: The Atheist Experience

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Keywords: atheist experience, the atheist experience, theatheistexperience, atheist, atheism, atheist vs christian, atheist debate, religion debate, atheism debate, Matt Dillahunty (Broadcast Artist), belief, faith, reason, rational, proof, evidence, logic, fallacy, religion, religious, science, secular, Skepticism, skeptic, questioning god, doubt, is god real, agnostic, agnosticism, evidence for god, Christianity, Islam, morality, evidence for jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, debate, Bible, Bible contradictions

Id: xHX_UTAdeSU

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021