Pints With Aquinas - Cosmological Argument for God's Existence w/ Michael Jones of "Inspiring Philosophy"

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

In this episode, I talk with Michael Jones who runs the YouTube channel “Inspiring Philosophy” about the Leibnizian Contingency Argument for God’s existence. If that sounds like a mouthful, don���t worry. We break it down and explain the whole thing.    FREE E-book "You Can Understand Aquinas": https://pintswithaquinas.com/understanding-thomas SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Catholic Chemistry: https://catholicchemistry.com GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/ This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer co-producer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd

Hello, hello, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and I'm super glad to have you here with us today. Today I'll be speaking with Michael Jones, who runs an excellent YouTube channel called Inspiring Philosophy, and we are going to be discussing the Leibnizian contingency argument for God's existence. So this is going to be a fun one. We're going to chat for about an hour, and then we'll start taking questions from super chatters and patrons. Glad you're here. Do us a favor before you begin. Click that like button, that thumbs up button. And if you want, do us a favor and share the video. I've showed you this beautiful Pints with Aquinas beer stein before. So here's the deal I'm going to make with you.

If we get 500 thumbs up before the show's over, I'm going to send Michael a Pints with Aquinas beer stein for free, whether he wants it or not. And there you go. It'll be great. All right, let's get underway. G'day, Michael. Nice to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Tell our viewers a little bit about yourself, mate. Oh, my name is Michael Jones. I run Inspiring Philosophy. It's a Christian ministry here on YouTube. And I don't make videos like this. They're all graphic driven. You never see my face. So just a lot of documentary style videos. Yeah, I was telling you before we jumped on the chat today

that I remember watching your video about the Leibnizian contingency argument for God's existence about five years ago. And I remember being really persuaded. You've got a great way of presenting the arguments in a non-emotional, just very logical, here it is kind of way, and I found that very convincing. So thanks for the work that you've done. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then I also understand you do a lot of these graphics on your own, and you've got a video coming out soon on the Book of Exodus. Not on the Book of the Exodus.

I have a video coming out on a case, an archaeological case for the Exodus. So it'll be my longest video ever. It's between 75 and 76 minutes, and it's going to be a long documentary arguing for the Exodus. So that'll be live on my channel March 26th. And is the idea that some scholars dispute whether the events recounted in Exodus happened, and you're trying to show that maybe that is whether the events recounted in Exodus happened, and you're trying to show that maybe that is, that they did happen? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to have a lot of evidence I'm going to go over.

I'm going to be arguing, first, external evidence, evidence on the ground in Egypt, and then internal evidence within the Pentateuch that supports the Exodus. Tomorrow, I'll be previewing parts of that documentary on my donor Q&A. So if anybody's interested, they can sign up on Patreon, and we will see parts of the Exodus documentary tomorrow. Yeah, and to my viewers, if you're just now hearing of Inspiring Philosophy for the first time, the first link in the description below will take you over to Michael's YouTube channel. So I'd highly recommend that you click that link and subscribe to his channel. That way you can see all his great content.

And this video he's got coming out on the Exodus. All right, so let's jump into today's topic uh the leibnizian cosmological argument am i saying that right leibnizian yeah that's i mean i'm pronunciation i've always got off so sometimes every now and then someone comes he goes no you're pronouncing it wrong it's actually here's the perfect german one but that's what i typically hear scholars from Craig and Press pronounce it as. Okay. And just a personal question before we dive into that argument.

Have you always been a Christian or a theist? No. There was a time where I was more like an agnostic deist for a while. I don't think I was ever really an atheist because it just never made sense to me. The logic behind contingency arguments is one of the reasons, of course. When did you start looking into these arguments, and did they kind of persuade you towards theism out of agnosticism? Well, I would never really call myself a pure agnostic. I was always kind of a deistic kind of thing, maybe like an agnostic deist.

Like there's got to be some personal force behind the universe. I don't know what it is kind of thing uh but i started looking more to the arguments after i became a christian looking for ways to defend christianity and whatnot and just sort of building on the intuitions i feel like we already have with regards to a lot of these arguments like the the inferences we sort of make there okay awesome all right well tell us a little bit about who leibniz was if you can and maybe let's get into this argument and i'm going to do my best to play devil's advocate as you present it to me. Yeah, so yeah, Leibniz was a philosopher many, many years ago. I believe he

died at the beginning of the 18th century, sort of like a follower of Descartes and sort of building on that. A mathematician, did a lot of prominent work with error, but he also did a lot of philosophical work. So he developed the contingency argument of his own, which a lot of modern philosophers today have even built upon. Okay, so how about that? No problem. Maybe do us a favor and just sum up the argument briefly, and then we can go through it at length. Sure. I mean, I'll just run through the premises really quickly here. This is a version you'll find in like the Blackwell's Companion to Natural Theology. So premise one, anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Premise two, the universe has an explanation for its existence, and that explanation is grounded in the necessary being. Premise three, the universe exists. Premise four, therefore the universe has an explanation of its existence,

following from one and three. And then premise five, therefore the explanation of the universe, therefore the explanation of the existence of the universe is grounded in the necessary being. Conclusion, therefore God exists, which we would identify as the necessary being behind the universe. So that's just a simple run-through of how the basic argument would work. And as you can see, it's just like the Kalam,

it's very similar, just a contingency style argument. The difference here though would be that it's not based on the finitude of the past, right? Correct. It's based on contingency and the PSR, so the principle of sufficient reason, that if something existed as an explanation for its existence. So it doesn't have to function necessarily on the cause or the beginning of the universe kind of thing. It can function without that. Yeah, I prefer, I think, contingency arguments. I prefer them just because you don't have to kind of go back and forth on the science having to do with the beginning of the universe, which very few of us understand.

That's why I like Aquinas' arguments of God's existence as well. None of them depend on the universe being finite in the past. Okay, can we go through them one at a time? So maybe you could remind me what that first premise was and we can chat about it. No, we can't. Okay. See you later, Michael. It's been really great to have you. Sure. Premise one. Anything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either a necessity of its own nature or an external explanation.

Okay. So this is trying to say, I'll try and say it without just repeating verbatim what you just said. Whatever exists, there is a reason for that thing existing. And that reason can either be outside of it or inside of it, as it were. That might be the wrong terminology because we're not talking about a material thing. But outside or within. Yeah, go. That's a simple way to sort of say it. It's sort of like saying, if it's within its own nature, it cannot fail to exist uh if it's beyond itself but an external explanation then it could fail to exist you know we could think of things like

cars for example uh they're contingent they have they have their explanation is in an external uh cause they didn't actually you know create themselves or whatnot uh you would say if you were a platonist you would say the forms in the platonic thought would be necessary they didn't come into existence they're just they exist in and of by themselves kind of thing so if you were a platonist like a hardcore platonist which i'm not you would say they the forms, Plato's forms exist in and of themselves. Could something exist by a necessity of its own nature, never have begun to exist, but could go out of existence? Not if it's necessary, no, because it'd be necessary. It cannot fail to exist. So on like a little side trail, some people will say, well, if God is

omnipotent, he could do everything. That's not really what omnipotence means. I mean, this goes back to even St. Augustine. God cannot just fail to exist. He can't take himself out of existence. So, you know, he's omnipotent, meaning he has power over everything, but that doesn't mean he's capable of doing certain things like failing to exist. Something that is necessary cannot fail to exist ever. Right, okay. Okay, and then I suppose the next question is, like, why think that's the case? It seems reasonable, and it seems intuitive that if I encounter something, there is a reason for its existence, but is it possible that something can just exist without an explanation? Sure, that's an argument a lot of atheists will try to take. And it seems kind of counterintuitive.

One thing we'll note with these arguments up front before we get to that is something William Lane Craig would say. What we're trying to do is show the intellectual price tag of atheism. Explain that, because I love that. It's to accept atheism and avoid the conclusion, these arguments, you have to accept all sorts of irrational conclusions by the end of the day, which I'm sure we'll get to plenty. And I'll point them out as we go through it. It's you accept all these weird things that just seem so against reality, against logic, against our intuitions on how reality operates. So this seems to be one of those when you start denying the principle of sufficient reason. Alexander Press, who's a philosopher, defines or revises the PSR to say that every proposition that possibly has an

explanation actually has an explanation. So that's a very simple form building on Leibniz. And for an atheist to say, well, maybe things just simply don't have an explanation, it would, first of all, it's sort of pulling the rug out from under the atheist on argument, because their own reasoning could not have any sort of underlying explanation for it. It could just simply be ad hoc, or it could simply just not function. They're assuming that their reasoning, that they have an explanation for their reasoning that we should accept, but they're going to deny the PSR. So to argue against the PSR, you kind of have to assume the PSR. Okay, so I might not be following. Why not assume that the atheist does have sufficient reason for why he thinks your argument fails, but the universe itself or maybe some things have a sufficient reason, but there's nothing that exists by its own nature, by necessity of its own nature.

And this is called the taxicab fallacy. Basically, what it means is you get in a taxicab and you get out whenever you're ready. You're willing to accept, yeah, the PSR applies it typically is, but when it starts to get to things like the universe, no, no, I'm going to start to question the PSR. Again, it's very counterintuitive for us just to start to say the PSR doesn't apply, by PSR I mean principle of sufficient reason, when it gets to things that would imply theism. What you start to do is you make the PSR almost ad hoc. It just sort of comes when you need it, but it goes away when you don't need it. And that just seems, there's no reason, there's no principle, there's no sufficient reason to accept that that's the way the PSR would operate. It just seems entirely convoluted. Now, I've heard William Lane Craig use the example of finding a blue kind

of luminous orb on a hike somewhere and talked about it expanding. Could you explain that to us? Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is Craig's analogy. I think this helps. Yeah.

It's like him and his friend are going through a hike and you find a blue orb in the forest and you start to wonder where this blue orb came from. And your friend says, just forget about it. It just exists. let's move on yeah that would not nobody would accept this explanation right you'd still wonder even if you had to keep going you'd still wonder where the blue orb came from and you would intuitively assume it had an explanation so let's just say the orb was actually as big as like a building you a pretty big orb you would still think it has an explanation what if it was big as the universe well you would still think it has an explanation

just the size of it doesn't change that so when people say well you're sure the blue orb in the forest has an explanation but maybe the universe doesn't size would not determine the strength or your value of the psr the PSR would still apply. In your debates, because I know you've debated several atheists, have you found that many of them have denied the PSR or are many willing to grant it? I see more that I've debated willing to grant it, although we've not really gone into a lot of specifics with regards to the debates I've had in the past. They tend to... What I tend to get is things

like, I'm not convinced. Hint, hint, people knew who I'm talking about. I'm going to have him on my show to debate Trent Horn on the resurrection of Christ soon. Godspeed. I've got a feeling he won't be convinced, but never mind. Yeah, so no, I've not actually encountered a lot of that in the live debates I've had, unfortunately. Okay. Then why not think that, fine, I'll grant your first premise, right? Anything that exists exists either from an external cause or by the necessity of its own nature. Okay. So why not just say everything that exists exists because of something else

and that there are an infinite chain of explanations going back into the past and grant granting for a moment the philosophical version of the kalam cosmological argument doesn't work and you can't show the finitude of the past because aquinas actually rejected it so um what would you say to that i mean is it possible that there's just an infinity of explanations so here's an analogy i like to use with regards to that? I mean, is it possible that there's just an infinity of explanations? So here's an analogy I like to use with regards to that. So let's say you ask to borrow a book. I've got plenty. So I say, well, I don't actually have that book. I'm going to get it from my friend. So I go to my friend and he's like, well, I don't have it. I got to get it from my friend. He goes to his friend. He's like, well, I don't have it. Let me get it from my friend.

Let's say that goes on infinitely. Is there a book? Well, no. You just have an infinite chain of people asking for a book that really isn't even there. So to posit an infinite regress, it's not an explanation. It's like the book. It doesn't really exist. You're just constantly appealing to something else. That in itself is not an explanation.

You have to stop. The buck has to stop somewhere. And that has to be the grounding of all things. You just can't keep going on infinitely. There is no explanation. But I mean, that's essentially an argument of the Kalam cosmological argument, isn't it? Just phrased differently.

Sort of, yeah. I'm just sort of giving the analogy. And I like it. Like it's intuitive. It's intuitive. And it makes sense to me. But suppose I was unwilling to grant that there were philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe, including that one. Would this get off the ground then, this argument?

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you rephrase? Yeah, sure. rephrase yeah sure so if i'm not willing to grant that the universe began to exist let's say i oh i've heard all of the arguments that dr craig and others have given and i just find them lacking and i'm you know so maybe maybe the scientific evidence points to the beginning of the universe but even that i find doubtful would this leibnizian cosmological argument work? Or do I essentially have to grant the finitude of the past in order to get to a being that exists by necessity of its own nature? Not necessarily.

We could talk about the ontology of the universe in and of itself. So there's an interesting analogy. I remember in Immanuel kant's work that i could use he talks about how think of a ball resting on a pillow for all eternity right now the what created the impression well the cause is the ball even though it existed for all eternity so you could still have an eternal cause even though it goes back infinitely. That's funny. So you still want to explain why the impression exists,

and the eternal explanation, the eternal cause, would be the ball. That's interesting. When Aquinas argues why the Kalam argument doesn't work, he actually uses a similar analogy. He talks about a foot being in the earth forever, and there would be a corresponding footprint that would have existed forever. So that's okay. Fair enough.

So that's interesting. Okay. Yeah. So even if the past is infinite, we would still have to get to a being that exists by necessity of its own nature to explain other things. Otherwise, it's almost like – sorry, you go.

I was going to say Richard Swinburne has another analogy. Just think about these ballerinas dancing for all eternity. We'd still want to know why they were dancing for all eternity. Would the explanation be in the necessity of their own nature? They expect the explanation to be in the necessity of their own nature. And building on philosophers like Ryan, probably mispronouncing his last name, but Beerly, B-Y-E-R-L-Y, there's nothing inherent in, for example, something like the ballerinas that would seem to be necessary. So we'd still look for something beyond that to explain why they are there for all eternity. Yeah, I, you know, I like, it's almost like you can think of these arguments linearly

or hierarchically, to butcher that word, you know, like, so whereas the Kalam argument goes like horizontally looking for causes, for causes, for causes, arguments that don't depend on the universe beginning to exist, you could think of being vertically, almost like what explains the chandelier. And you would say, well, it has a little attachment which is linked into another piece of metal, which is linked into another piece of metal. It's almost like if you don't have the thing that hooks to the ceiling and the foundation, then you wouldn't have the chandelier. And that would represent the kind of necessary cause.

Does that make sense? Maybe I'm not explaining that well. And I feel like the atheist is already thinking at this point, well, why can't I just say the universe is explained in its own necessity? Because that's the next, that's the very, like, that's where the real crux is. That's where you're going to go to people like Quentin Smith or Graham Oppie. They're going to try to say, well, sure,

there has to be some sort of necessary foundation for all of reality. I'm just not going to say it's God. I could say it's the universe, or maybe it's eternal matter, some sort of like substance that's just non-sentient that sort of causes everything. And so that's the typical argument they would put. Okay. So it sounds like we're kind of getting into the second premise right now. What is that second premise again, if you don't mind? I'm going to look this up so I can throw it up on the screen. Sure.

The universe has an explanation for its existence, and that explanation is grounded in a necessary being. Now, the atheists will say, well, why not in a necessary substance, like the universe itself or a multiverse or some sort of underlying quantum field perhaps? You get the idea. Yeah, so why not that that seems simpler than positing a god in some sense at least initially you would think so yeah and

then you start getting into the ontology of these sorts of things so let's just say uh so let's start with the universe itself well there's nothing inherent in the way the universe is it would imply it's necessary so for example the philosopher i talked about earlier ryan uh buyer byerly says the search for a naturalistic or at least non-theistic being whose internal nature explains why it is necessary and which can serve as the explanation for the wide range of facts and view in view and cosmological arguments is one that may appear hopeless before it even gets off running because there's nothing inherent in like the universe or naturalistic things that

seem to suggest they are necessary and we can even draw a little bit from science here the most up-to-date scientific research suggests space-time is emergent uh it's contingent what does it emergent mean for those who aren't aware? So emergent means it comes from something else. So it sort of, it's a lot of, you look at physicists like Leonard Susskind, who worked on the holographic principle. They'll say that space-time, our three-dimensional space-time matter, it's not really fundamental.

It seems to be more emergent from some sort of underlying information processing okay yeah so that that seems to be what they go now you'll get a lot of atheists that'll go well okay it's under underlying maybe it's just sort of like non-sentient quantum field perhaps it's sort of like brings everything into existence yep okay this comes back to the intellectual price tag issue so you're telling me that the universe emerges from something that is non-sentient that somehow man so there's no time there's well space-time emerges from it so it's spaceless and timeless um it's somehow it is able to cause itself to create contingent universes but it's not sentient it somehow can act upon itself to create things remember it cannot be

acted upon by an outside force because whatever that is you start the infinite regress chain there and then we have to avoid that it's illogical so this underlying cause of the universe is non-sentient somehow creates the universe by itself that sounds like a mind i mean it sounds like you're trying to say everything you're trying to you're trying you're giving the theist everything it wants, you just don't want to call it God. For example, see my debate with Matt Dillanti, basically gave me all my premises, just didn't want to call it God, because that creates baggage in his own words. Interesting. So what would he be willing to grant? I mean, I'm not asking you to quote him, because obviously you don't have it in front of you, but how would an atheist explain this necessary being without calling it God, in your experience? In my experience, and of course you're going to get much more better

representations if you read someone like Graham Oppie, so I'm sorry if I sound like I'm simplifying a lot of things here, but it's just a necessary substance in and of itself that sort of like causes things on its own without actually being sentient. Now, it just seems like you're giving the theist everything he wants, but you're just adding this ad hoc line, but it's not sentient or it's not conscious or it's not a being, however you want to phrase it. But aren't theists basically arguing that there is something beyond the universe that somehow acted upon itself to create the universe we call God? I mean, I don't understand how that is different than what we're basically arguing here. You're just trying to add the ad hoc line, but it's not God or it's not sentient. Well, I mean, to try to be fair to the atheist,

it wouldn't seem like at this point in the argument that you've shown why this necessary being is conscious. Correct. And so that's kind of what I'm building on here. So again, if we're talking about what would cause the universe. Now remember, it has to be something beyond space-time. It has to be able to create things. It cannot be acted upon itself. So it cannot be like a domino effect because, you know, who pushed the first domino over? Whatever pushed the first domino over had to make a decision to push. It cannot have been acted on by external forces like with the dominoes.

So that in itself, the only thing we know in existence is a mind that could actually do that. And if it, the old line, you know, if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If the underlying cause of the universe acts upon itself, it's most likely a mind. So that seems to be the most, that seems to be the best inference given what we know logically or metaphysically from our understanding of reality. Wouldn't you have to assume that the mind is... wouldn't you have to assume a lot about the mind to project how we understand our mind to what God's mind could be? What do you mean? How would we assume a lot about the mind? Well, I guess in saying that the necessary being has to be a mind, you're saying that it has the free will to make decisions, that it is independent of the stuff that it is causing.

Wouldn't we have to assume, therefore, that if we're going to liken our mind to this mind, that we have a proper understanding of our mind? That is to say, we have free will, that we can actually make choices, that our mind is somehow independent from our body or separate from our body, or no? Correct. I feel like we do need to do that. And, of course, that opens up a whole new topic on the study of consciousness. I refer people to my Irreducible Mind series on my channel, five parts, which argues for this, that the idea that the mind is not created by the brain. But I will remind people just sort of to quickly cover it is that

there is a thing in philosophy of mind called the hard problem of consciousness. And it's called the hard problem because it's one of the hardest problems humans are trying to solve right now, which is how the brain would create consciousness. And substance dualists and idealists like myself would say that there's a lot of evidence in the nature of the way consciousness is or the way minds are that implies they're not physical. And there's no way to explain how mind could emerge from matter.'d be like trying to ask could you create a married bachelor it's just logically incoherent in and of itself when you study the nature of subjective experience the nature of consciousness these things just don't emerge

from matter so the mind in and of itself our intuitive understanding of a mind is not something that emerges from brain chemistry it seems to be independent of itself so again without going too deep into a lot of the arguments surrounding consciousness the very intuitive nature of our understanding of consciousness implies that it is something that is not material and so we can use that same general reasoning to argue that the underlying cause of the universe is similar to a mind and the most likely explanation is that it is a mind all right fair enough um i i just yeah you keep going oh no i had one more thing if people are interested as well i have a video on my channel called the emergent universe where i give additional arguments from something called quantum cognition that the underlying cause of the

universe is the underlying explanation of the emergent universe is also a mind. So I use the work of Franco Vaza and Alberto Felitti, as well as quantum cognition, to argue that when we start to study the underlying cause or structure of what gave rise to the universe, it resembles a mind in other ways as well. I just found this Leibnizian cosmological argument laid out as a syllogism. It might be slightly different to how you phrased it, so I apologize, but let me just throw it up on the screen here. Every contingent fact has an explanation. There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts. I don't know what that premise means. There is a contingent fact that includes

all other contingent facts. Okay, well, so there would be you could argue like the Big Bang is a contingent fact that includes all, that is sort of like the explanation for everything that sort of happens in the universe. In that kind of sense. Okay, this feels a little more convoluted than how you put it. Well, that's why I use the other version. Yeah, sorry.

Okay. Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact. This explanation must involve a necessary being. And this necessary being is God. Okay. Well, now that an explanation of this fact. This explanation must involve a necessary being, and this necessary being is God. Okay. Well, now that I've just confused everybody with a different formulation of the argument, where should we go from here? Oh, no, I think that that was just another way to phrase the basic argument that I have. So I don't really think it was that confusing. I'm using the version you're going to see William Lane Craig or Alexander Pruss argue. So that's generally... I just feel like it's more tailored to a modern audience,

which is good. Leibniz was writing for people in his day. We need to update language occasionally so people better understand it. What do you think the best objections to this argument that you've presented are? I think the one we kind of went over is going to be the most used is why not just use a necessary substance? The atheists will argue it seems ad hoc, it seems convoluted, it seems like we're multiplying entities beyond necessity to posit a God. Wouldn't it be simpler just to say like some sort of like underlying substance, a necessary substance caused the universe?

sort of like underlying substance, unnecessary substance, caused the universe. That's simpler than saying a necessary mind caused the universe because a substance is simpler than a mind. And that just shows you their confusing Occam's razor or their misunderstanding.

We don't go with the simplest explanation. We go with the simplest explanation that is necessary to explain all the facts. If we were going with the simplest explanation, we should to explain all the facts if we were going with the simplest explanation we should go with Thales the ancient Greek philosopher who said all is water that's that's very simple that explains everything this is a really great point you're hitting on because we people do often throw out Occam's razor and and I really appreciate you pointing that out because that is you're right it's it's misinterpreted as the the easiest explanation of the most basic but it's likeed as the easiest explanation or the most basic.

But it's like, no, no, it needs to be the most basic explanation that works. That's the one we should prefer. Right. And scientists just don't operate that way. We have replaced Newtonian understanding of gravity with Einstein's understanding of gravity. Because that is necessary to explain the facts. And right now we are looking for a theory of quantum gravity. to explain the facts.

And right now, we are looking for a theory of quantum gravity because Einstein alone, general relativity, doesn't alone explain all of gravity. We need a quantum theory of gravity. Now, it would be ridiculous for some militant fundamentalist Christian to come off and go, well, it's much simpler just to posit gravitational pull, so I'm going to throw out all this Einstein stuff because we should go with the simplest explanation. No, scientists would laugh them out because it doesn't explain all of the facts that

need to be explained. Likewise, when atheists respond to contingency arguments like, well, I'm just going to posit something simpler, it shows you they're not understanding the laws of parsimony. Yeah, okay, that's really good. Would you like to flesh out anything else before we take questions? To preempt some, I'll run through some possible objections really fast to sort of get this. Doesn't premise two beg the question? No, because the PSR is... Remind our listeners what that is again. Premise two is the universe has an explanation for its existence, and that explanation is grounded in a necessary being.

I often get atheists say, well, that sounds very similar to the conclusion. And I'm like, yeah, that's where the most debate is going to be. But it's not begging the question because the entire argument doesn't depend on that premise. Remember, we spent a lot of time with premise one. Premise three is also important. The universe exists. I mean, it seems obvious, but it's still part of the argument, so it has to be in there. Therefore, this argument doesn't logically beg the question. It doesn't just depend on premise two. If you

study the literature, you'll see a lot of argument around premise one. So again, it doesn't beg the question. Some will say, well, it's more humble just to accept there's no explanation. Why are you having to posit this God hypothesis? It's better just to say we don't know until we have one. Well, that's a red herring. It's an argument from emotion. Arguments are not humble or non-humble. People are humble.

The argument still works regardless of what you subjectively think is humble or not. Some will say, building on Lawrence Krauss, they'll say like, well, particles come into existence from nothing, so why couldn't the universe? I remember there was a video. It was an atheist collaboration video, and there was one atheist in it. He came up on the screen. He's like, the universe is so incredibly interesting. We have particles popping into existence. X, Neil, hello.

And I had to stop and go, no no that is not at all what science states particles don't come into existence x neil hello particles uh come into existence from energy or from the underlying quantum realm so quantum field theory says virtual particles can come in and out of existence but that's because they're emerging from underlying uh nature underlying uh energy within a quantum field it's not that they're coming're emerging from underlying nature, underlying energy within a quantum field. It's not that they're coming into existence from literally nothing. It doesn't make sense. So, you know, it just shows they really don't even understand the issue.

And also, like, for example, like latest quantum theory doesn't even use virtual particles. So there's competing views of quantum field theory even. So it just shows they don't understand the science behind there. Trying to think of any other objections. i think i kind of hit on it oh uh someone will try to say that maybe the idea of the multiverse sort of caused the universe and there's this eternal inflation in the past so the universe multiverse is sort of expanding inflating i guess you could say and we have this idea of eternal inflation. Well, cosmologist Laura Massini-Houghton has pointed out that in her paper, The End of Eternal Inflation, and her other paper, Is Eternal Inflation Eternal?, that it can only be future eternal logically. Scientifically speaking, it can't be past eternal. It has to have a beginning

point. So those are the objections I can think of off the top of my head just running through them quickly. Okay, that's great. We have a super chat here from Barry. Thank you, Barry. He says, Peter Venenwagen argues that Leibniz's version of the PSR entails determinism. What do you think, Michael? Well, I preempted this objection earlier by stating Alexander Pruss's explanation of how he defines the psr which is every proposition that possibly has an explanation actually has an explanation now notice that's much that's that the revised psr it's much simpler you're not positing you know this sort of like um

a strong form you may have seen in like libanese where uh he is positing you know like um you know that you could actually get kind of determinants from them so dr craig um and um like um alexander press responded and they sort of addressed it here um i have a quote from dr craig i believe i can pull up right now um so peter van and wagen yeah so when he i addressed this in my video if you recall but william lane craig says the theist could maintain that for any contingently existing thing, like the universe, there is an explanation for why that thing exists. Or again, he could assert that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. of its own nature or in an external cause. These are more modest, non-paradoxical,

and seemingly plausible versions of the PSR. Thus, the objection raised by Vanden Wagen misses the target or, more accurately, is aimed at another target. So Vanden Wagen is sort of going after Leibniz's original formulation of it. But more modern versions that have built on Leibniz have built into their structure a way to already get around this objection.

Okay, now, I don't want to scare you, but we have an objection to your argument here, Michael, that you may not have heard before. And, well, I'm just going to throw it out here. Atheists don't posit something simpler. They reject bullshit. So had you considered that? I don't know if you considered that. Oh, no, I've not considered that. They just rejected bullshit. So had you considered that? I don't know if you considered that. Oh, no, I've not considered that. They just rejected bullshit.

Okay. Okay. No, it doesn't remind me. Sometimes you'll get atheists argue a lot of the way that some sort of militant young earth creationist world, they'll just call evolution bullshit, or they'll just mock it, and then therefore they're right. It's like, you guys ever wonder how sometimes militant atheists

and radical fundamentalists are sort of the same side, or two sides of the same coin? It is, that's an interesting point. I often find that radical atheists, and this isn't always the case, obviously there are very bright, very open-minded atheists who are open to the evidence, I think. But I do tend to find that if somebody is a convert from a sort of fundamentalist Christian background, they tend to be just as obnoxious on the atheist side. He also says, read a book. So I just want to throw that out there. I don't know if you have read a book, but you could have spines.

You could read this book, Black Will's Companion to Natural Theology. I have Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. You could read a book by an atheist, Mind and Cosmos. That's all right. So Suntoro25, I think he's read a book. No, but honestly, if you are an atheist here, you are welcome. Obviously, this is just dismissive stuff, which is why we're making fun of it. If you do have a legitimate objection, I'm happy to share that.

We have a super chat here from Alex who says, What does IP, that's you, think of Josh Rasmussen's supreme naturalism? That is something I need to research more. I have books in my queue from Josh Rasmussen I need to read. I haven't gotten around to yet because I'm currently in grad school, and I'm reading a lot of Aristotle right now. And if you know anything about Aristotle, is that you don't have time to read anything else when you're reading Aristotle so I'm learning a lot with regards to virtue ethics in ancient Greek philosophy right now and so my goal is when I get out of schools I'm gonna

start reading more Josh Rasmussen get more into this because of my masters and I want to eventually write a book on the digital physics argument which is an argument I commonly use it's another contingency argument if you want to see my latest form, check out the video I just did on Cameron's channel, Capturing Christianity, where I debated apostate prophet. Cool, yeah. We have a couple of questions here that don't necessarily... Oh, here we go. Jay-Z Ruz wants to know, what is Michael's view of Thomistic philosophy? Does he have objections to it? I don't know if this is about divine simplicity or... Yeah, it depends

on what he means. I'm getting more into that because, again, I'm reading Aristotle and I'm getting quite convinced by a lot of his arguments. And Aquinas builds on a lot of that. So, again, my goal as soon as I get out, I'm going to finish reading Aristotle, the parts I'm not reading in school. Aquinas, Josh Rasmussen,

Graham Oppie. So I'm going to read a lot more on that because, as I said, I want to write a book on this stuff, but I'm not reading in school. Aquinas, Josh Rasmussen, Graham Oppie. So I'm going to read a lot more on that because, as I said, I want to write a book on this stuff, but I'm going to try to dive more into that. So yeah, I'm really interested in a lot of Aquinas' views and whatnot. So I find I might be gravitating more and more towards that the more I study Aristotle as of now. Yeah, and I'm sure you know this, but for those who are watching, Aquinas' five ways in the Summa Theologiae were summaries of arguments that he expanded upon elsewhere. For example, his argument from, is it Motion, I think, his first argument in the Summa Theologiae, I think it's one paragraph, but in the Summa Contra Gentiles, it's 21 paragraphs.

So that's helpful to know. And you're probably more than familiar with Ed Fazer, are you, Michael? Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah, he's probably the best modern kind of proponent of those arguments, I think. Yeah, he's also on my list. It's a lot on my list right now. Yeah, yeah. Eric Holmberg says, I appreciate Michael's work a great deal. Thank him.

Question. If he's not a Catholic, I don Michael's work a great deal. Thank him. Question. If he's not a Catholic, I don't think he is, I'm curious what his top one or two objections to converting would be. Bit off topic, and I don't plan on debating you on that. But if you want to answer it, you're welcome. I don't claim a denomination. I don't tell people what my denomination is because I don't feel like my channel is meant for that.

I refer people to 1 Corinthiansinthians 1 10 to 15 where paul says do i follow apollos do i follow cephas no i follow i follow christ let's focus on that so i don't have any objections against catholicism that i that i would if i did i wouldn't even say them publicly because i want to just defend Christianity and fight for all Christians. I don't want to bring division. Kind of get pigeonholed. So yeah, I leave my denomination out of it. It's not important right now. Okay.

Brett Zakari says, why can't an atheist just accept this argument? Does accepting a non-material cause for the universe entail theism? So I was just going gonna look for a paper does accepting a non-material cause for the universe entail theism i i would say it does uh i feel like when as we kind of went through earlier when you start going through the logic of this it tends to just sort of get you there it's you know when you start getting especially when you get to the first cause principles what is the first cause of the universe it has to be able to act upon itself it just seems to imply it's a sentient being uh there there was a paper i read recently and uh what they were basically arguing was the difference it was it was not on the cosmological argument

well it was but it was on the psychological reasons why theists or non-theists either accept or do not accept the cosmological argument and so I thought it was very interesting because they were there was a some things I disagreed with but there were other things I sort of liked but what they were basically pointing out is that theists just seem like they're more willing to accept inferences and non-theists seem to just be – they're more cautious in how they sort of accept inferences. So what I get when I debate a lot of these non-theists, they tend to just sort of be like, well, I mean it could be – and they throw out all these other possibilities. Maybe it's X. Maybe it's Y. Maybe it's Z. Whereas theists are more saying, well, the evidence infers – the evidence implies this. I'm ready to make the inference.

Let's go. And atheists seem to be just more reserved, like evidence implies this. I'm ready to make the inference. Let's go. And atheists seem to be just more reserved. Like, I don't know if I want to make that inference kind of thing. So they were arguing the difference is more in a psychological aspect. And when I find the paper here, I will tell everybody. Oh, here it is. Just found it. The Cognitive Appeal of the Cosmological Argument by Helen de Cruz and John DeSmit.

And I thought it was just a very interesting paper. Okay, yeah. What is Truth says, if atheists or atheism is correct, then of any moment of death of oblivion... Okay, I'm sorry. This is a bit hard to read here. If atheism is correct and at any moment,

death of oblivion means nothing ever happened in the first place. No, it would just mean that there would be no one there to remember it. Right. I just love reading this guy. Son of Torah, I didn't mean to make fun of you. I'm glad you're here. Theists mostly leave because they get their feet burned there.

I don't know if that's an Inquisition reference. My feet are kind of cold right now. Or feet are burnt, okay. I would recommend he read the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths, written by several historians on how the Catholic Church was not anti-science. Thank you. What is a monad? A monad?

Speaking of monads. Yeah. So this is going really into that kind of thing. So a monad is sort of like, you know, it's like an individual substance kind of thing. Is it like what we would think of a cork, like the fundamental basic thing of reality? Yeah, I feel like that's kind of what it's used. If I could get a definition here,

it's like an elementary individual substance which reflects the order of the world and from which material properties are derived. So it's an elementary individual substance. You could argue this is sort of like another word for like, you know, maybe a particle, a subatomic particle, I guess you could say. It's just like a unit, an atom, one thing.

Yeah, okay, that's fair. What do you think is the best argument for atheism, and how would you formulate that with as much rhetorical gusto as you can muster right now? Best argument for atheism. I feel like it would probably be argument from suffering, argument from evil. I'm actually about to do a video on the argument from suffering in early May.

The philosopher Justin Mooney is helping me write that and get that ready. So I feel like that is going to be one of the stronger arguments. Why is all this suffering involved in the universe? Is it necessary? Why is it there? And I'm going to try one of the stronger arguments. Why is all this suffering involved in the universe? Is it necessary?

Why is it there? And I'm going to try to flip it on its head, argue that it's almost part of sort of a necessary feature that one would need to get around other issues. So if I'm going to formulate the argument from suffering as best as I can, it's going to be building on the philosopher William Rowe, who says like imagine 10 40 50 000 years ago there was a forest fire and a baby deer or a fawn was trapped got its leg cut and slowly burned to death it seemed like sort of no purpose it just happened it was

gratuitous yeah why would you know why would that happen if it served no greater purpose in the end so you could think now just multiply that with all the suffering that's happened over the millions of years that life has been on this planet. So I feel like that would be the strongest argument the atheist could use. I'm going to be doing about a 40-minute video in May where I'm going to try to rebut that and offer arguments in favor for that. Yeah, I look forward to that. Yeah, it is interesting in the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas sets himself objections to respond to, and the two objections he raises against God's existence are the two that have stood the test of time. Namely, it's superfluous to posit a God because we can account for material things by other material things, and evil.

For me, I think the most kind of compelling argument against God's existence would be a subset of the problem of evil, and that is like the hiddenness of God. Really, I never really thought that was a good one. My reasoning is that I feel like it just reduces to either one of two things. It's not an argument, it reduces to a conclusion. So atheists will often say that a non-existence God is equivalent with a hidden God. So they're the same thing. So you've come to the conclusion of the non-existence of God. You can't use the conclusion of your own reasoning as an argument of itself. Or I feel like it's an emotion argument. It's appealed to like, well, I've never experienced God. I think that's probably where it's coming from on my... I'm not saying you can't formulate like a logical argument. For me, that is the case. It's like, if you really loved me and want me to

know you and to do your will, why is it that when I pray, things don't happen? You know, it almost is this emotional kind of response to suffering. I would recommend the book. If you ever get a chance, check out the book Until We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. Yeah. Because he argues the reason why we can't see God is because we don't have faces yet. That's wonderful. Are you familiar with the philosopher Peter Kreeft from Boston University? Peter, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Boston College, I should say. Oh, good. Wait, Peter Kreeft? Kreeft, yeah. He uses that book analogy you used earlier. I don't know if that's where you got it from or not. I think I got it from John Lennox, but he may have got it from Peter Kreft.

But I know I have Kreft's book here somewhere. Oh, yeah, he's fabulous. Yeah, this is a pretty good book for anyone starting out in apologetics. I remember reading this years ago. So Kreft has this great little analogy. He says, you know, asking, you know, is there life after death? It's a little like, you know, two fetuses in the womb asking each other, do you think there's life outside the womb?

No. And even if you say, well, yes, what would you think it to be? It would be just a much larger, more cozier womb. That would be the best you could kind of come up with. All right, let's see here. The atheist is back at it, and so I want to give him a chance to chat. He says, why else... Yeah, this bloke doesn't seem like a well-read atheist. Why else would everything exist? Therefore, God is an argument from ignorance and circular.

Okay, so let's explain what those actually are. This is not an argument from ignorance, first of all. An argument from ignorance would be if I came up here and said, you can't prove God doesn't exist, therefore he exists. Or you can't prove evolution didn't happen and therefore it did. Those would be fallacious arguments. That's an argument from ignorance. Circular would be saying something like, well, the Bible says God exists, and because God exists, therefore I know the Bible is true.

That's circular. Nothing – the Leibnizian cosmological argument is not circular because it argues from premises. It builds to an argument from a deductive conclusion. Professional atheist philosophers like Graham Arby – Graham Oppie do not say this about argument, because they're obviously far more well-read on these issues. What do you think are some bad arguments for God's existence? The tag, honestly, I'm not a big fan of the tag. What's that? That's the transcendental argument for God's existence.

You see a lot of presuppositionalists use it. I think Victor Redford basically sums it up pretty nicely in The Black Will's Companion because he's like, well, it's just sort of like saying, like, I'm going to use logic to prove God exists, and therefore I need God for logic. It's begging the question. It's just circular. You're using logic to prove God, but you need God to use logic. You're kind of going in a circle there. That's circular. You're kind of going in a circle there. That's circular.

He uses a much more modest argument called the argument from reason, which I think is pretty good, but I would only use it as like a secondary argument for God's existence, not a primary. Another bad argument, I feel like people arguing from young earth creationism. Like I see a lot of young earth creationists saying like, well, I'm going to argue for a young earth. Therefore, this proves God and this proves the Bible. And I'm kind of going back, well, look, let's say you could prove a young earth. That wouldn't mean Christianity is true. Islam could be true.

Judaism could be true. Maybe an ancient pagan religion is true. That doesn't even get you to where you want to be. It doesn't even prove God. Maybe everything just came into existence 6,000 years ago. You need a cosmological argument beyond your argument for the 6,000-year-old Earth to get to God. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, it's funny.

Like, the times that I have doubts about God's existence, and when I start to examine them, I realize they're not actually terribly good. A lot of them tend to kind of arise emotionally, you know, like I'll look around at a chaotic world in a chaotic country that's politically divisive and a chaotic church that's continually divided, and I want some safe place. I need things to make sense. I really want there to be a purpose for my life. I want, yeah, I want there to be a grand reason. I want to know that when I'm dead I don't just snuff out of existence. Now of course to say that God doesn't exist is because of those would be the sort of genetic fallacy or something, but I do think people tend to believe in God not because of arguments but because of

things like that. Yeah, we are emotional creatures. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? So we tend to all really go on our emotions a lot. And the Bible constantly reminds us to use our reason. You know, Isaiah says, come, let us reason together. Paul constantly appeals for the Christians to use their reason, not just to actually think for themselves. And Jesus says, you know, if you don't know that your father, you want to know if your father loves you, consider the lilies of the field or consider the birds of the air. What are you saying? He's kind of saying, if you think about it, do natural theology, study nature to know the nature of God.

And so I think that's a, you know, we're called constantly to use our reason. So I feel like we as emotional creatures, we have to recognize our emotions every day. We have to recognize that a lot of the conclusions we came to were not just from reason, atheist or theist, and we need Submit your worldview to public scrutiny and see if it actually holds up. That's why I'm not afraid to do debates because the best thing that can come out of it is I learn more and maybe change my mind on certain things. And I hope I'm able to do that and fight my emotions as much as I can. If people would leave this interview and watch one debate that you've done on YouTube, what would you recommend that they would watch? And then after this is over, I'll be sure to put a link in the description to that debate oh that's a good question um i've done a lot let me see here uh so maybe my most recent one

uh with apostate prophet on capturing christianity's channel uh you can also watch uh my one with um i also did another one on there on why would God allow evil with cosmic skeptic you could always go watch my debate with Matt Delonte I did that's a popular one although I will say in that I I some people said the arguments were a little too convoluted so I simplified them when I presented the debate with the apostate prophet so I'd probably say that one okay yeah so yeah because people have said like they're're good, but you need to simplify them, make them a little easier to take all in. So I did that with my debate with the apostate prophet.

Yeah, it is hard, isn't it? When you get into the weeds of these arguments and you find out how sophisticated they are and how nuanced the objections are to them, and then you want to present the best case, you just want to throw everything at the wall. But sometimes people can't follow everything at the wall. But sometimes people can't follow that, including myself. But that's cool. Apostate-prophet debate. Okay. Yeah. He's a great guy. We may have another conversation in the future. But I mean, that's where I simplify the arguments as best I can. Joshua McGillivray says, why on earth was my message deleted? Joshua, I'm not even in youtube so i can't delete messages

if i wanted to i'm using a third-party streaming system so i just say that like i did not delete you to your question if you have one i'd be happy to i'd be happy i get those all the time people say delete their comments i've not deleted a comment in a long time and typically it's something like you're a effing whatever or post links to like these long like people just like attacking me. So it's like that kind of stuff. But like YouTube just sometimes removes stuff, man. I mean, that's just the way it is. I don't have to tell you.

Yeah. Let's see. Maybe. Oh, maybe this was his question. It just came up again. Is IP familiar with Maurice Blondel's argument for the existence of God? And if so, what does he think of it? I'm not familiar with who that is, so I apologize.

How do you know what's good, says GPL. He says that begs the question. Well, I mean, it's quite simple. Just look at Matt's beard. The end. How do I know what's good? I mean, I would use probably some reasoning from kant that it's just in and of itself it's like asking me how do i know what is yellow well i have to see yellow

and i know that it is yellow it just simply is the color yellow um how do i know what's good well it just simply is aristotle uses the phrase it's in its own name or it's in the name it just simply is in and of itself good you cannot reduce it to something else because then that you have to goodness badness they're in they're in the name and of itself now i know like and i know you're looking into this with aristotle and you're about to read aquinas but for me this is divine simplicity can help here. If being and goodness are the same thing, just looked at through different lenses, then goodness would be anything less than good would be a deficiency

in goodness, which would be a deficiency in being. Which would be either a moral or a natural evil. If a stone lacks sight, we don't say this is evil. It's not a natural evil, but if is evil. It's not a natural evil. But if a bird does, that is a natural evil. There is a deficiency in the being it ought to have.

I find that kind of stuff helpful. Yeah, that's a good explanation. Christopher says, How is it reasonable to reject God simply because we can't explain why everything we perceive as evil happens? It seems like pride to suppose we should be able to explain all that or else no God. How is it reasonable to reject God simply because we can't explain why everything as evil happens? Well, it's not so much that. The argument you're going to get from people like William Rowe is going to be like,

it seems logical that there is gratuitous evil, evil that happens for no reason. logical that there is gratuitous evil evil that happens for no reason and an all-good being would not want there to be evil unless he could bring a greater good out of it now I am of I agree with William row that there is gratuitous evil but I don't think that actually defeats the argument or it defeats theism and I'll explain more in my video I'm also going to introduce something I'm working on called the law of triumph as a response to the argument from suffering oh okay oh it looks like your gpl just to be fair to him says i was not replying to michael my comment was about how problem of evil is not a logical but an emotional problem all right fair enough it definitely has that

component but i do feel like there are good metaphysical arguments that argue from evil um it is you do see a lot of it as like an emotional objection but when you're going to but I do feel like there are good metaphysical arguments that argue from evil. You do see a lot of it as an emotional objection, but when you're going to read the literature like William Rose paper, famous paper he wrote, I believe in the 1970s, he's not so much appealing to emotion. I don't really get that. I feel like he's actually making a good cogent argument that the theist needs to address.

I want to put, since Santoro is writing a lot here, I want to kind of put him on the spot here a little bit and honestly use a tactic that Trent Horn taught me, right? So Santoro says there are only poor arguments for God. Sorry, guys. So here's my question for you, mate, and you put it up and we'll read it for you. What is the best argument out of all the crappy arguments for God's existence? You say they're all bad. What's the argument out of all the crappy arguments for God's existence? You say they're all bad. What's the best out of all the bad ones, and why does it fail? I think that's a very good question just for our Christian viewers to ask their atheist interlocutors. Obviously, they're very bright atheists, and they might give you a very good answer, but a lot of YouTube atheists,

I shouldn't disparage YouTube atheists. There are obviously some very good answer. But a lot of kind of YouTube atheists, I shouldn't disparage YouTube atheists. There are obviously some very good YouTube atheists out there as well, like Alex O'Connor and others. But they won't actually give you a sophisticated argument and show why it fails. They'll just say, well, there aren't any. Or they'll say, God caused everything. There had to be an explanation. And you're like, okay, so it's evident from this that you haven't read arguments for God's existence for the last like like, 2,500 years or something. Do you find that to be a helpful tactic? Yeah, that is an interesting tactic.

I don't know if I've ever employed it, but I might have to in the future. I'd be interested to see what they sort of say with that. So, yeah, that is a pretty good point to try to bring up. I mean, and the same could happen. the atheists could also say the same thing. What's the best out of all the bad arguments for atheism? Why does it fail? And if you can't give a kind of at least prima facie compelling argument, then that also would be evidence that you haven't really done your reading.

So I think it cuts both ways. But anyway, Santoro, if you want me to read your question again, give us an answer to that. Otherwise, I think we're probably done. Spoons and Forks, which I don't think that's his real name but if it is so sorry thoughts on kierkegaard and also on christian existentialism do you have any yeah i've read i've read kierkegaard sickness until death book i tried to understand it it's kierkegaard though so you know probably didn't understand all of what he was saying. I'm not, I wouldn't consider myself an existentialist. I don't feel like I just

follow that tradition because I just feel like it's incompatible with what Paul is talking about in the biblical text. I feel like it's more, it's not so much working out the sort of personal idea, it's Paul is constantly appealing to the community community let's work together as a christian appealing to what has been handed down to them it's not so much work out you know you know it's just your personal faith with god jesus we gave a public ministry and wanted to start a public family to spread out across the world so i feel like existentialism it's like it's trying to look at christianity and it's like taking one piece of like a thousand piece puzzle and saying like there's a personal you just work on the personal aspect between you and like

it doesn't really feel like you're capturing half of christianity let alone a part of it it feels like there's a lot more going on there um and you you'll never guess but good old Sam Toro responded just like I thought he would there are no best they're equally terrible so dear everybody watching, if you start getting trolled by an atheist or if you have an atheist friend that's a great question to ask

what's the best out of all of the bad arguments and why does it fail Aristotle said it is the mark of an intelligent mind. You can entertain a thought that you don't agree with. It doesn't seem as this atheist can do that. You're not even able to entertain other arguments you don't agree with. Right, right. Let me ask you a question here. What do you... If it were the case that your arguments for God's existence failed,

and you saw that they failed, and somebody could show that they don't necessarily lead to God, and you were left only with, say, experience, would you continue to be a Christian? I'm not saying that they can be refuted necessarily, in the sense that if you have an argument for God's existence based on the resurrection, someone shows Christ's bones. That would obviously probably take you out of Christianity. I'm just saying if they didn't actually get to God and someone could show you that.

I feel like I'd probably be more of an agnostic if that happened. Because, I mean, like, what is my foundation at that point my foundation I mean it's it's I cannot I don't like saying my foundation is my own my personal experience or sort of just internal you know emotional drives I have I guess I feel like I really want my foundation to be something more objective something I can actually argue. That's why I call myself a classical theist, or a classical apologist, I guess is what I'm thinking of, because we argue first for God's existence from natural theology, metaphysics, basic logic, and then we sort of build up from there. And I feel like if you could take that out, what else do I have to say now at that point?

We've got a question here from a super chatter, so I want to make sure I ask it from Trevor. He says, love IP. Doesn't determinism necessarily entail an infinite regress of explanation? For that reason, can't we just dismiss it offhand? What does he mean before you respond? So he's talking about the infinite regress issue. So determinism is like, what caused me to do my actions? Well, my brain chemistry. Where did my brain chemistry come from?

My parents. Keeps going back. I make sure you get back to the big bang and i guess you could say i've never really thought about it from that perspective that's an interesting way to put it would it actually entail determinism i don't know i feel like the determinist would say it goes back to the big bang the first moment of time and they would say that is like the thing and they would just sort of go well I don't know what caused that kind of thing I don't know if you just say like get the determinant that so it doesn't plan if you're regressed because there are Christian determinists out there there are theists that are determinists there are deists that are determined so you could say that there is God sort of determined everything, and he's the first cause, so you don't necessarily get to the infinite regress.

So I don't know if that really does get you there. Determinism is more focusing on the nature of reality, and I feel like you could still have a first cause with your deterministic view with regards to reality. All right, let's do one more question here. This comes from Gerald Chua, who says, Hi, Michael, have you lost in a debate? Also, keep in mind that false humility is a sin, Michael. all right let's do one more question here this comes from gerald chua who says hi michael have you lost in a debate also keep in mind that false humility is a sin michael

no first of all i would say i don't think there are winners and losers in debates i hate using that that those terms although i'm guilty of it no one comes away with the debate you don't come out of debates with scorecards like a football game. You can't really pick a winner and loser. You could say opponent A did well, opponent B did well. Good. You could say opponent well did A, but opponent B didn't do good. So I would say I feel like I've come away from all my debates doing good. And that's the feedback I tend to get.

Okay, that's excellent. All right, well, look, in the description below, we've got a link to your YouTube channel, Michael. People can go click and subscribe right away. You have this excellent video on Exodus, which you showed me a bit of, and it really was great. I even asked you before the show, who did the graphics? And you were like, me, which was very impressive. So people can check that out. I'll also put a link to your debate with the post-state prophet that people can watch over on Capturing Christianity's channel.

So thank you kindly for taking the time to be with me today. Anything you'd like to point people to or remind people of before we wrap up? Yeah, I'll be on my Patreon channel tomorrow doing a private Q&A for all my donors. You can ask me anything. And we're going to preview parts of the Exodus documentary. But that'll be live on my channel March 26th. It's been about five to six years of research for that. So I'm excited about that and ready to release it.

And then after that, hopefully I'll get to the conquest. Cool. Patreon.com slash? Inspiring Philosophy. Inspiring Philosophy, one word, eh? Awesome. All right, brother. God bless you.

And thanks for being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. See ya. Nå er vi på Norske Norske. សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Kanskje vi kan ta en kvart? Thank you. Bye.