AS148: Live Listener Feedback

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 148 and I am your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, so the other week I had Elijiah T on. He was a Christian. He had some criticisms of atheist arguments he had been hearing. And I got, I want to say I got a lot of good feedback, but I also got a curious amount of, not negative feedback directed toward me or anything, but I guess kind of vitriol toward Elijiah. And I was very fascinated by this response. There's quite a bit of it, actually. And so I invited, you'll remember likely, I invited people, anyone who wanted to comment to come on. And we have a couple such commenters today.

0:01:16 Thomas: So without further ado, I'm going to get to the first of my special listener commenters.

0:01:36 Thomas: Joining me to discuss the Elijiah episodes is Jesse. How are you doing, Jesse?

0:01:42 Jesse: I'm pretty good, Thomas, how are you?

0:01:44 Thomas: Want you, I'm good, I just got my coffee, it was a little late, I was out of coffee beans, so there's a bit of a, uh, there's bit of travesty. Yeah, so, you know, there is a delay, and of course, I start going into cold sweats, and, uh... Yeah, but eventually got it.

0:01:52 Jesse: That's horrible, oh yeah, oh, yeah, I know how that is, I spent a lot of time on it, right?

0:02:02 Thomas: Eventually got it, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, if you don't mind?

0:02:07 Jesse: Um, well, I am a non-believer, um, and I, uh, I guess I would class myself as an atheist, although that's not generally the term I sort of use, the terminology I use, because it just gets so overloaded, and means so many different things to different people, and, you know, you You know how that is. I have a serious interest in philosophy, especially in epistemology, and I'm not a professional philosopher by any means. But that's one of the things that I really appreciate about your podcast is you've had some great discussions with philosophers, Massimo Pugliucci, et cetera, in the past.

0:02:25 Thomas: Interesting.

0:02:50 Jesse: And um I

0:02:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I wish I could have a philosopher every week. I really do. I'm with you. But, yeah.

0:02:55 Jesse: Know yeah those are just, I love those. They're just great, right?

0:02:59 Thomas: Awesome. Well, I'm glad you appreciate that. It inspired me to contact somebody else and try to have another one of those. So, why don't you like using the term atheist? That's not the topic at hand, but are

0:03:05 Jesse: Um, well, I don't accept that. I mind using the term atheist. I mean, uh, as a self well, I mean, I'm in Raleigh, uh, raleig durham North Carolina, and it's, it's kind of like, you know, a sort of like a blue bastion to see a red, uh, so there's a lot of, you know, conservative Christianity here, but not, not necessarily in my area. The reason that I, that I don't automatically self-identify as atheist is just because it's like a lot of terms, it has different meanings and the meaning has changed over time and it can be sort of confusing, you know, in terms of what you mean when you use the word. Do

0:03:17 Thomas: You in an area where that's more problematic?

0:03:28 Thomas: Hmm. Huh.

0:03:53 Jesse: You mean you just lack a belief, or do you know, can you go further with it? And I sort of feel that in an normative sense that I respond sort of to the phenomena of theism. So, you know, my position depends on what the claim is. And it's different depending on the different claims.

0:04:12 Thomas: Okay. So you're more of a disbeliever in claims rather than, okay, well, that's fine. I mean, like you said, it has a lot of different meanings. I default to it because I don't think it has to mean, you know, a lot of people allege it means like, oh, you know there's no God or blah, blah, blah. It's like, eh, yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't believe any of the, I'm with you, I don't buy any of the claims and I live my life as though there's no God. So, sure, if someone wants to say that's not an atheist. Someone wants to say that is an atheist, whatever.

0:04:16 Jesse: Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, kind of silly. Right.

0:04:42 Jesse: And I do the same. Right.

0:04:46 Thomas: They can argue about it, I guess. All right. Well, what did you, oh, let me just ask how long you've been listening to the show?

0:04:47 Jesse: Exactly. Oh, um... uh, like in the linear temporal sense, um, sometimes

0:05:00 Thomas: No, in the Doctor Who sense.

0:05:02 Jesse: My life kind of seems like that. Um, I guess it's been a maybe a year or so, yeah.

0:05:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, okay. That's most of it. It hasn't been going that much longer than a year, I don't think.

0:05:10 Jesse: Yeah, I mean, I didn't, I didn't pick it up, pick up on it right away when you first started doing episodes, but you know, it's it's a while.

0:05:16 Thomas: All Right. Just wondering. Cool. And so what did did you think about the episodes with Elijiah? I'll just, I'll give a brief preamble. I was, I didn't mean to make everyone think that it was universally bad feedback from it or anything. It was that, it was personally, it Was that I really enjoyed it. And I had fun talking to him. And yeah, we disagree on like a billion things. But I, the thing with having believers on is I don't, I'm not going to ambush someone with something they didn't want to talk about. And Elijiah, I'll just let everybody know, he's, he, I think I've mentioned this before. He, I've asked him on for debates and he said he doesn't want to come back on for a debate because of the time commitment.

0:06:05 Thomas: Like he, he thinks it'll take a ton of time to prepare and all that. And he must be an over-preparer. So I've had, I had him back on to have a very framed discussion. So, I just want to say people who are complaining like, oh, you should have gone after like his whole, you know, his whole worldview. It's like, well, it's not exactly why I had him on. But anyway, there are also other complaints like that I didn't talk about certain arguments or that I let him to go too far in certain arguments, and that I'm certainly willing to, you know, listen to, but I just wanted to start with that and then go ahead and tell me what you thought.

0:06:42 Jesse: Well, I guess I would first off like to just sort of, you know, say what I, what I really appreciated about it, because um, I really love those discussions. And I think, you know, it's, it's, and I mentioned this to you in the email, but one of my really core central values is that if you're going to live the good life, you need to engage with people who have radically different views than you do, because that's really the only way we have to try to figure out what's more likely true and more likely not, because it's, you know, we're fallible creatures, we make mistakes.

0:07:02 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Okay.

0:07:12 Jesse: Um, so I, I very much appreciated his demeanor, and I think that he was also interested in having an honest discourse, really engaging in the ideas, and I really appreciated that. I think he was very commendable of him.

0:07:12 Thomas: I like it. Oh, well, good.

0:07:33 Jesse: Now, I, of course, have some fairly significant disagreements with him, but One of the great things about philosophy, and maybe this isn't great to everybody, is you get five philosophers in the room, and you have five completely different opinions about many different things.

0:07:37 Thomas: Yeah, well that, yeah. Or is it, is it economists or philosophers where they say, get two, I think it might be economists, get to two economists in the room and you'll have three different answers to the question or something like that.

0:07:51 Jesse: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I don't necessarily see that just disagreeing with somebody has been a bad thing because I'm much more –

0:07:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:08:09 Thomas: Well, on the whole, Let me, let ask in general, do you think that I gave him too much ground? Because I thought I questioned him on almost every single one, to a certain extent. Where do you think I went wrong anywhere? I feel free. To you, know, I, I, yeah.

0:08:22 Jesse: Well, see, I don't like to – I wouldn't use the term. I don't really like to use the term what you did wrong because you used – I think you brought up some very valid points and very good points, things that I probably just wouldn't have occurred, wouldn't Have thought of because we're different and we have different focuses. So it's not in terms of you did this wrong and you should have done this.

0:08:24 Thomas: Sure. Sure. Right. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

0:08:46 Jesse: It's just there are some things that he said that are big issues for me, and there are certain points that you raised that probably wouldn't have been as big issues just because it's what I care very much about.

0:08:56 Thomas: All Right. Well, what's what's an issue That, uh, you'd like to bring up that I didn't raise? I'd love, I'd be happy to hear it.

0:09:02 Jesse: Well, I guess the main sort of issue that I saw was when he started to talk about faith. And now I want to be fair

0:09:11 Thomas: Okay, yeah, this is a good one. Yeah, I want to talk about this, go ahead, right.

0:09:16 Jesse: To him. He said that faith was a fairly ambiguous term. It has multiple definitions. It can be used multiple different ways, and he's absolutely right about that. You know, there is definitely more than one definition, and people use it in all sorts of different ways. And that's kind of – there's a number of words that are like that. Supernatural, you know, right.

0:09:39 Thomas: Miracle, yeah, yeah.

0:09:41 Jesse: Right.

0:09:41 Thomas: Stuff like that, yeah.

0:09:42 Jesse: So the problem with those words is that they can lead to confusion, and they very often do lead to a great deal of ambiguity and sort of slipping in one definition for another. Not necessarily intentionally, just the way our minds work. That can be an easy thing to do, do. Um, so when he's talking about faith, um, you know, he said that to him faith was belief with evidence and uh, that, I guess, I said the problem I see with that, well, one of the problems I saw with that was when he said he couldn't understand how you could have faith without evidence.

0:09:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

0:10:34 Jesse: Because that's kind of a very problematic statement to make on epistemology because there are these things called properly basic beliefs, like the primacy of external reality that we can't really seemingly just – we have to accept the belief. We can't just lock ourselves in a room all day. So it seems like we need to accept these things, but we don't really have evidentiary justification for them. We can't foundationally justify other minds existing.

0:10:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:09 Thomas: It's more like we need to, there's certain assumptions we need to take on In order to just go about everyday life and

0:11:13 Jesse: Exactly. Exactly, and that is a type of faith. I mean it's not necessarily religious faith, but it's a starting position that you sort of have to take right

0:11:17 Thomas: Uh, Yeah. Hmm. Or At Least it could be under a given definition, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. Well

0:11:31 Jesse: Under a certain – because you don't really have evidence, but you have to believe it. But now, of course, we talk about David Hume, and we can start to ask questions like, well, how many – is it better to have more of these properly basic beliefs or fewer? I think the answer is fewer. Some we have no choice.

0:11:51 Jesse: So I guess my issue with that was that he sort of wanted to say that every belief should be justified, and it seems to me that there are beliefs that just cannot be justified. At least I don't know of how.

0:12:05 Thomas: I Don't I Don't Know that I took that from. I, it's interesting, I thought you're going to go a, a different direction, and maybe you would if I didn't interrupt you. But I was thinking you were going to say that, thinking back on it, I think that I should have pushed him a little more on the fact that other people have a different definition of faith. Now, I did say that I thought throughout history, and someone later sent me, I guess, a quote from the Bible that supported what I said, which I really appreciate that, by the way, whoever sent me that. I should I can't remember off the top of my head. It's hard to get a lot of emails, but thanks for that. And it was a quote that supported the fact, I think it might've been about, who is the disciple that didn't, or no, not disciple. Who's the, well, anyway, someone in the Bible, is it Mark?

0:12:25 Jesse: Yes, yeah.

0:12:58 Jesse: Doubting Thomas?

0:12:59 Thomas: No, no, no. It is the one where he never got to meet Jesus or he never get to see Jesus, but but he had to accept. I don't know. Anyway, the point was something like, well, you know, I know that Jesus rose from the dead because of such and such, but everyone else is going to have to take it on faith throughout history, you now.

0:13:18 Jesse: It sounds like Pauline. Is this Paul?

0:13:20 Thomas: Oh, oh, oh maybe. Yeah, yeah. Could be Paul. Yeah. Maybe that's it. Exactly. Thank you. And, and I think that even if that quote isn't exactly what I'm I think it kind of is, but also I'm pretty sure that throughout history, faith has not meant belief with evidence. I think oftentimes it's been belief in the face of evidence. It's been belief against evidence.

0:13:23 Jesse: Ah, yes. Yeah, right.

0:13:45 Thomas: We've certainly heard it used that way, especially, like I say, in history when people were starting to make scientific discoveries that went against the Bible. It'll be, well, the evidence is showing one thing, but we just have to have faith in the Bible that that it's right. And I think that Elijiah, I will fully take people's word for it. I think for Elijiah, faith means belief with evidence in this case. I'll take his word for that. That's fine. But what I should have said, which I think you bring up, is I don't think that his argument against the atheist argument is valid because it works for certain people and certain definitions of faith. Yeah.

0:14:27 Jesse: And that's actually still the case today. I mean, if you go out onto the street and talk to people who aren't involved in apologetics or philosophy, they very quickly will get to you. It's important to have faith. You have to believe, even when you have doubts, that there is a concept that it's virtuous to believe in the face of doubt.

0:14:29 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah or philosophy. Yeah I think That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly, because, and and I can't remember if I brought this up, but I know I, that thought occurred to me, why would faith be a virtue if it's just belief with evidence, because that's just seems like what normal life would be, you know, it's not really a virtue.

0:15:07 Thomas: You. If I, like, if I believe that, you know, the rest of the rooms in my house are still there when I'm not in them, it's like, well, it's not very virtuous. It's just, that's what the way the evidence is. But anyway, uh, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Did you have anything else to say on the faith part?

0:15:06 Jesse: Well, I guess that I just wanted to say in terms of properly basic beliefs and that being a sort of faith, that I don't – I want to sort of make it clear that I'm not saying that that's a good thing necessarily. I would prefer to not need faith of any kind. The fact that there seem to be these – they're starting these assumptions, these things that we just can't really bootstrap from without, that we would have to accept that, but as little as possible.

0:15:46 Thomas: Well, you Know, I, uh I'd be happy. Yeah. It'S a bit of a digression, but I'd Be happy to talk about that because, uh My thoughts on that. I don't think you need faith at all in any part of your life? I still don't. I mean, when we talk about properly basic beliefs, I think that the answer may be, I could be wrong. It sounds like you've studied this a bit. Maybe you know better than I do. But it seems like when we're talking about external reality, other minds, those basic beliefs you're talking About, do I have it right? Things like that?

0:16:25 Jesse: Yes, they're not necessarily all external, but I mean – well,

0:16:27 Thomas: Oh, sure. What's another example of a basic belief you're talking about?

0:16:31 Jesse: I mean obviously this gets kind of complicated because we sort of – you end up talking about foundationalism. I know Elijiah actually touched On this a little bit. Where do you – are you an internalist or an externalist in terms of justification? Classification, um, so it, it just seems to be the case that, you know, for example, if we talk about the problem of induction, you know that we can't seemingly, you know, justify internally justify, anyway you know, the process of induction continuing to be reliable even though it's been reliable in the past. Yeah.

0:16:36 Thomas: Right, right, right.

0:17:08 Thomas: Right. Okay. So is that another basic belief? Yeah. Well, my thing with those is that there's another option, which is to not have to pick an answer to them. I mean, when we talk about things like, are other people conscious? You can't really know, to my mind. I mean I don't think there's been any proof of that. It's something you kind of just have to go with. And for me, it's not so much like, oh, I need to have faith.

I think this is where it gets muddied because when we talk about faith in God, there's a bunch of baggage that we bring in where it's like, and maybe this is not explicit, but there are assumptions you're bringing in like, oh, you better believe or you're going to hell or you need to make a choice because there's going to be consequences. You know, like I think that's something that gets smuggled in there. Whereas all the other examples we talk about, there really aren't consequences. Like if I just decide one day, well, I don't think everybody I'm interacting with is actually conscious. What is the consequence of that? There's no consequence. I have to,

0:17:10 Jesse: You Just Have to well, I

0:18:15 Thomas: It's the world is still exactly the same and it would have to be exactly the Same. Otherwise I would be able to prove one way or the other. So there's not really a consequence to that. Excuse me. And I think that's what gets smuggled in, especially like, oh, faith in your wife. It's like what, what the problem is with all these things we're talking about, they're not the same as, oh, you need to have a decision about God before you die. And then there's some place you go that, where it'll actually matter, you know? It seems like a different problem. What do you think?

0:18:44 Jesse: Think It is a different problem. Yeah. Yeah, and that kind of sort of gets back to the whole point about properly basic beliefs, I guess. So when we say that – to say that there's no consequence, if we think about induction, I can't think of a way that we could function without relying on induction. I mean you couldn't know to even eat something if you didn't have the prior experience that eating was a cure for hunger.

0:18:46 Thomas: Yeah, right, right. Right. But there's all kinds of times where that goes wrong and it just is. Here's what I want to say is like, maybe I don't have the best wording for this, but we are forced to go with what works in our lives and induction works in Our Lives. Sometimes it doesn't. I mean, sometimes we do something that we think is totally based on induction is going to work. And I see this with animals all the time. I'm just thinking about how my cats have all these instincts and they have all these reactions. Sometimes they react to something that's just totally wrong because they don't have a conceptual view of what's going on.

They just sort of have, well, when this circumstance happens, when I'm done eating my food, I'm going to start burying it because that's what I do. But it turns out you're eating on a a laminate floor. There's nothing to bury with. So they just scratch at it forever. And it, and what's the thing I want to say is like, sure. If we're, and that's just an analogy, by the way, for something we might do where it seems inductively valid. If it doesn't turn out, like there's no way we could have known. There there's nothing we're doing with that information, there's

0:19:13 Jesse: So you – yes, yes. Yes.

0:20:20 Thomas: No way we're making...

0:20:19 Jesse: We just have no choice, right?

0:20:21 Thomas: Exactly. We have to go with what works in our life. So, like, it's not as though... And I think you're right that we do basically have to accept induction, but it's more like... But it's Not as though if you ask someone who, say, was, you know, pondering the question of, is the sun going to rise tomorrow? And they give the answer of, well, well, yes, because it, I don't know, it always rises, you know, just to pick a basic example. That doesn't really mean like, well, then therefore you have to have faith that induction always works. It's like, no, it's just kind of, that's going where the odds are. And, and, you know, you Know what I mean? Like you don't, I think it's kind of a philosophical game to really think about, well is this a hundred percent valid? You know, all the time. Yeah. I don't know.

0:20:24 Jesse: Right. Right.

0:21:07 Jesse: And it's not right. And induction, of course, induction is just the principle that generally things will be like they were in the past, but not exactly. It's going to be different, and you're absolutely right. Induction works very well until it fails, and then it just fails miserably, and really bad things happen. So you can't just make the assumption that just because things were this way in the past, they will always be that way, just generally.

0:21:16 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and the thing is you're just, you're doing what works. I mean, there's nothing, if someone told, okay. If someone told me right now, Hey, we've just somehow philosophically proven induction doesn't work, you know, 80%, 80% of the time it's going to work 20% of time. It's not going to work. What could I even do with that information? There's nothing, there's nothing actionable, which is why I don't think I need to have faith in induction, which was the point I was trying to make, but I don't know. Maybe I didn t, yeah.

0:22:02 Jesse: And I wouldn't say that you need to have faith in induction. I think you don't have any choice but to believe in induction, and whether you want to call that faith or not is – right?

0:22:11 Thomas: Right, you operate, right, You just have to operate as though it's true. Same goes with my, you know, the oft-cited example of my brakes in my car. I am going with it until I have any reason. As soon as I have some sort of reason to believe they re not going to work, all of a sudden I don't have a bunch of faith in my brakes, which is why it's just a meaningless term for that.

Now, it was a little, I wasn't totally ready for Elijiah's argument, you know, because we didn't go over any of this ahead of time. I didn't know he was going to say, yes, it's always, you know, faith is always belief with evidence. So when people bring up, what annoys me is when people bring out the, oh, you have to have faith in your wife or whatever.

That's the, that's what I was, where I was thinking he was gonna go, because just that's where Christians usually go with it, um, and That bothers me because there's no, I don't need to have faith in anything, you know, it's just not the same. Like I said, I mean, I will act a certain way under certain circumstances, and as soon as I have reason to doubt, you know, my wife's fidelity, then I'll go ahead and doubt it. Like, it's you just, it's more of, you're operating under assumptions until you have good reason for them to change. It's,

0:22:57 Jesse: Right,

0:23:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:23:20 Jesse: And I guess what I didn't understand with – and this is – maybe I just don't fully understand the apologetic argument, but what's the difference between that sort of faith and trust? I mean I don't see how you can differentiate the two.

0:23:33 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. And I think Elijiah's answer, I'm pretty sure his answer is, well, there isn't really any difference. That's why the atheist, he would say that's why the atheist argument is dumb. Like, it's just, you know, faith is kind of trust and trust has evidence of blah, blah, but I think where you're right and where others have been right in the comments is, yeah but there's a lot of people who have that definition of faith. So, I actually, I can't remember. I don't think I ended up agreeing with him on that point fully, but I could be wrong. I have to go back and listen. But I would say that I think you have some good counter arguments there. And I agree that I should have at least if I didn't, I should Have concluded, well, I think a lot of people have that definition of faith. And therefore, the atheist argument that he's citing,

0:24:22 Jesse: Well, and you did raise a really good point about the historical usage, and there is definitely – within religious communities, there's absolutely this sense of – that faith is almost a willing yourself to believe. That's why they talk a lot about choice because – and maybe this is a bad atheist argument. I don't know. When they say it's not a choice, and I agree that belief isn't a choice. But a lot of times what they mean is fake it till you make it. In other words, convince yourself by pretending.

0:24:51 Thomas: I But, and I just remembered, I think what Elijiah and I ended up agreeing on there is that you need to just ask whoever you're talking to what their definition of faith is. And that that's fine. But but also maybe I could have said when we're talking about atheist memes and arguments, you know, it's not they're not often in a situation where you can ask everyone looking at it what your definition of fate is. So, yeah, yeah.

0:25:01 Jesse: Yeah, right. That's fair.

0:25:16 Jesse: Yeah, everybody on both sides of the argument. You know, it's very easy to make assumptions and to accidentally, not even intentionally, strawman somebody. And, you know, we all have to be very careful, right?

0:25:20 Thomas: Right, right. Well, Shoot. The time has flown by on this. I can't imagine, I wanted to try to squeeze a few other people in and I'm amazed because this was really fun and it went by really fast. So I want to thank you for coming on. Were you going to say something?

0:25:39 Jesse: Well, no, I appreciate it. It was enjoyable talking to you, and I keep up the great work and keep producing great content.

0:25:48 Thomas: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that so much. Let me know if you ever want to come back for any opinion on something else. I really, really want to incorporate more listener opinions. It's fun. I like it a lot.

0:25:49 Jesse: Yeah, it is. It's great.

0:26:00 Thomas: All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming out and I'll talk to you soon.

0:26:01 Jesse: All right. Thanks.

0:26:15 Thomas: Alright, joining me right now is someone you may remember from a previous show, Marcel. How you doing?

0:26:21 Marcel: Hello, yeah, well, I'm doing great.

0:26:24 Thomas: Alright, and I want to say, Marcel, thanks for coming on, thanks for volunteering, and also thanks for all the comments you leave. I really appreciate them and I know other people do as well, so just wanted to say that since we're live here. Okay, so we wanted to talk a little bit about the Elijiah T episodes. Go ahead and lay some thoughts on me. Yeah.

0:26:36 Marcel: Okay, yeah. Thank you.

0:26:48 Marcel: Yeah. Well, I listening to those episodes, and especially when he started talking about evidence. Well that rubbed me the wrong way.

0:27:00 Marcel: I thought he wasn't making much sense, actually. Kind of glossing over all kinds of things and then, uh, well, of course he, he has, uh, I think he has a degree or something in philosophy. Well, he is obviously more, uh, more into philosophy than I am, and then he can use big words, but, um, well, I still thought he wasn't making much sense and, uh, yeah.

0:27:34 Thomas: Well, he, I will say that I think, because you commented about his, you, you thought he was saying we should disregard evidence, but I, I didn't really think that's what he was saying, and, and I want, uh, people should keep in mind that Elijiah works in the field of biology, I believe, so he's, he's into science, um, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

0:27:57 Marcel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a special point. Let me see if I get my, try to get my comments back in. Front of me.

0:28:06 Thomas: I was actually just Doing, doing the same thing. Right.

0:28:12 Marcel: Yeah, first I thought, I made a comment because I thought he was kind of dismissing evidence-based science altogether, but, but then you pointed out, now he was just, uh, dismissing that somebody said you should only believe things which have scientific evidence, and Then, then he said, well, do you have evidence for that notion? Well, Then the other guy said, well, no. Well, then that's not a sensible statement. And, And, okay, I get that.

0:28:31 Thomas: Right, right. Well,

0:28:45 Marcel: But then I was thinking, well, what does that get him? Why?

0:28:53 Marcel: So, okay. If you turn that around, that would mean it is not necessary to have evidence to believe something. And then I think, well, why is he okay with that? Why would he be okay to not have evidence for, for instance, believing in God, because that was what he was talking about.

0:29:17 Thomas: But I, I see, I don't think he would agree with that, because I, I mean, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but he very much is all about having evidence for believing in God. He thinks he even defined faith as believing in God because of evidence. Oh,

0:29:17 Marcel: Yeah.

0:29:32 Marcel: Yeah, sure, but well, then that was my other comment. Then what he defined as evidence was actually, well, a very, very weak, weak in my view. He said, Uh, evidence is something that made a claim more probable. Yeah. I think that's very weak. Well,

0:29:43 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Well, How would you define evidence? I'm curious. Something

0:29:56 Marcel: I would at least add something to it, so something observable that increases the probability, for instance, because I think Yeah. I mean something you can observe in reality somehow. And, and I got the impression from Elijiah that because he said, well, you wouldn't need scientific evidence for everything. There would be other ways to get knowledge. And I think, yeah, you could. That may be true. But existence

0:30:12 Thomas: Observable. Yeah. Well,

0:30:45 Marcel: Of God, and so I think he kind of acknowledges that he doesn't really have scientific evidence. He says he has other evidence. I don't see, well, I don't actually understand what he would mean with scientific evidence. What's scientific evidence? You just have evidence. Something you can observe in reality, that's evidence. I don't see difference, and if you

0:31:13 Thomas: Well, what he would say, here's what he would say. He would say we don't have any observable evidence for mathematics. We just have logical proofs. And mathematical knowledge is something that most people agree is a form of knowledge.

0:31:13 Marcel: Oh.

0:31:30 Marcel: Yeah, yeah. It's a form of knowledge, but mathematical truths are not something that exists in physical reality. It's human constructs. It's something we made up. So in that sense, yeah, if that's his reasoning, then I believe God is real, because God is a construct made up by people. And so God is as real as, as, as the number pi is, is real, or as Wednesday is real. Uh, we can all talk about Wednesday and it's real. Yeah.

0:31:30 Thomas: Yeah. Sure, sure.

0:32:10 Marcel: In our minds, it's reality. It's a real construct humans made, but it's not a physical thing in reality. Oh,

0:32:19 Thomas: Well, yeah, okay. I think that's a good point, but I don't know that it's necessarily contradicting what he's saying. So I think maybe I'd be curious what you think. You're into physics, I know, and you teach physics. Something like a multiverse or something like, you know, that sort of theory that we could never really prove. Well, we don't know that we can prove, but we can pause it and we can explore theories and we can do all that. And that might be something that's real. It's not like a construct in our minds, but we have to access it using kind of arguments and using models and that sort of thing. Could you argue that God could be similar? Like it could, Elijiah argue, well, we don't really have access to God, but you know, models and arguments that can address the probability of God that makes it more than something that we've just created. And again, I'm playing God's advocate here, so on,

0:32:28 Marcel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:24 Marcel: I, I see, yeah, well, I think I think in a way, that's a good point. I think the multiverse and God are, well, in my view, are at the moment kind of on, well, on equal footing because there's no evidence for any of them.

0:33:40 Thomas: The same level. Yeah. I I agree. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Right.

0:33:49 Marcel: Perhaps we have multiverse maybe more consistent with other physical models we have. But from the science point of view, it's only a hypothesis.

0:34:04 Thomas: But you could say that, if we, and I've heard this argument, I think, by physicists, if we get to the point where a model completely predicts, you know, everything in the universe, uh, and does it very accurately and very well, but it also predicts a multiverse, at that point you would say, well, in all likelihood there's a multiverse, even though we don't have access to it, because there would have to be, now granted, that would have to mean somehow, conceptually, the multiverse had some impact on our universe, otherwise there's no way that it, you know, that the model would project one.

0:34:41 Thomas: So, I think that Elijiah could make the argument that God is the same way, and that there are things about our universe that are only consistent with a created universe. Now, you and I both disagree with that statement. And I, yeah, and that's fine. But I think it's important to note that I actually, he might be right about how he's framing the question. He might be Right about saying, we need to look at our world and see if there's our things that are only consistent With a created Universe. And so I'll grant him that I think he's right. I mean, I can say hypothetically that there could be something, there could be a fact, like you said, just like the multiverse. They're very similar. There could be facts about our universe that would lead us toward belief in God. Now, where you and I would go is, well, I don't see any of those facts. There are none.

0:34:40 Marcel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, then

0:35:37 Thomas: I'm not convinced by any.

0:35:39 Marcel: If that was what he was getting at, then it's a pity that he didn't propose a kind of test. They say, well, if God exists, according to this worldview, we should expect such and such in reality. Or this and that, and that can only exist in reality exclusively on the premise of God existing, so it's a kind, and then we would go and look in reality whether it's there or not, and I've never seen any such test, uh, well, he didn't propose one on the show, obviously, but I haven't seen anything like that uh ever. They only, they Only, well, He mentioned on the show, for instance, the, what he mentioned was the defined tuning argument, for instance, but

0:35:57 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:36:24 Thomas: Well, yeah. Well, he later retracted that, by the way. He thought that he He did, and I wish he had done it on the show, because I think he did make a mistake there. That's definitely not evidence, but he retracted it and said the fine-tuning itself is what might be the evidence for God, but go ahead.

0:36:31 Marcel: Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:49 Marcel: Well, well, well, the, the funny thing is that fine-tuning wasn't predicted by religious people based on their theory that would be, that would be a strong argument if they had already 1800 years ago, what, two thousand years ago, just after Christ, had predicted that, well, in the future, when, when scientists will understand the world, they will see this fine tuning because that's consistent with God. And then we would go and look at the universe and then we wouldn't find it was fine tuning. Then that would be evidence. But they do it reversed.

0:36:57 Thomas: Right, right, yeah, yeah.

0:37:24 Marcel: Physicists have a model. They find something and then they say, "Oh, wow." Yeah, but that must be our God. That's not. No, that doesn't. I don't buy that at all. It's, yeah, you can, you can make anything uh fit in that way, so

0:37:41 Thomas: I agree with you, but I think that I would like to, maybe in general, how did you feel about Elijiah being on the Show and the conversation? Did you get stuff out of it? Did you think I shouldn't have had him on or do you?

0:37:41 Marcel: Oh, No, no, no. It was great, oh, it was great fun, uh, Yeah, yeah, I, I, of course, I, I, uh, I thought there were, well, I, I made a lot of comments on the show, of course, but, uh, um, that's really because I liked it, and and what I liked is you, you let him talk quite a bit, and I know I said in the comments that you were too easy on him or something, but that's all okay. It's a way to have him talk so we can hear what his views are. Well, we know you don't agree with him, and that's okay. But, yeah, well, it was

0:37:56 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Right. Okay, good.

0:38:37 Marcel: Funny. I remember I listened to the first show. I was on my way to work and I just listened to the first few minutes of the second part. And then I was at work, so I had to stop listening. But he was just talking about his evidence and I had just had to have it out of my system. And I have to write a comment now that I think it's a stupid statement he made. But yeah, It was fun. Yeah, oh yeah.

0:38:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:07 Thomas: Yeah, well, Again, I'm glad I just wanted to, I just want to ask because it's, it, I'm curious about the the way it was received, and I think that there are people who left negative comments but I, I uh, I don't know, I, I'm not sure if they meant I shouldn't have them on at all or if I just didn't argue with them enough. I don't know, so I, i' m very interested in this, this episode, I loved it and I would have them back in a heartbeat personally, and I'm glad to hear that, uh, you got something out of it, um, yeah.

0:39:40 Marcel: Yeah, and maybe when you have, when you haven't back then, then you could ask him some some questions on, well I had the comments like this or that, or people And And let's Hear what he has to Say, oh,

0:39:51 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Well, Someone Did Give me a good, uh, I'm getting something I'm going to talk about too, is is the omniscience part. Because that is an interesting question that I'm curious about his response on. All right, well, I appreciate the comments, Marcel, and thank you so much for coming on and sounding off on it.

0:39:55 Marcel: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, great.

0:40:31 Thomas: Well, there you have it. Thank you so much to my two guests for coming on. And I really, I love my listeners. I really do because you guys always have such good comments. And, uh, I want to also thank, I mentioned the omniscience thing. Sorry, I mean omnipotence. They're so easily to get confused. I want to thank Thaddeus for posting a link to a video on the Facebook, and I watched it, and the guy was pretty irritating, but that's okay. I think Thaddeus mentioned that. But there were some really good points in it toward the end, and I'm trying to run them by Elijiah to see if I can get him to comment. I was going to talk about it, but I think we're already about at time and it would be a little bit too much to get into for this episode.

0:41:18 Thomas: So we'll get into that on a later date and I'm looking forward to it. So as I said, yeah, thank you so much to my listeners who participate, who come on the show. Uh, I love it.

It's, it's really nice to have that feedback and, and I always feel like I'm doing a good job because I've, don't think I've ever had a listener on who I thought, like, oh, this person is crazy, crazy, like, they're not, you know, I don't think I have, I think all my listeners have been like really smart and pretty well spoken.

I mean, some people are nervous to come on a podcast, that's no big deal, but, uh, it's, it's pretty impressive, I'll be honest, I, I think it could be a lot worse, I think they're, I wouldn't be surprised if other shows, or, you know, have listeners that are not quite as, as eloquent and thoughtful as mine Are, I think, but maybe I'm, maybe I'm, uh, you know, living a dream world, but that's what I think. Okay, so, uh, no new patrons this week, unfortunately, but you could become a new patron and you could get that special shout out by going to patreon.com/atheist. And have I mentioned that there's a bonus content every week with the lovely, the wonderful Jake Farr-Wharton, who really is just the nicest guy in the world and I love doing shows with him. And this week we talk about the shooting, as depressing as that topic is. And we kind of, we let loose on it a bit and just talked pretty unrestrictedly about it and about. Well, I don't know, it's pretty awful.

0:42:52 Thomas: It's not a cheery subject, but we talked about gun control. We talk lots of stuff. Anyway, it's every week. It's bonus content. It's different from the show, even though there was a little bit of overlap this time, so I want to thank my top patrons Zimu Zinu, Adrian Borshchoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Havardess Jay Alden, Walt, and Bangs Nutty Bits, and then of course Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, Matt Garrett, Samantha as the honorable mention, so thank you guys for being my top patreons. I love you guys so much, it means the world to me and thanks for keeping the show going. And with that, I will see you next week with some fun stuff. I got some good episodes coming up. We're going to talk about Pale Blue Dot for one, but also I've got some other stuff, but I don't want to spoil it. So you'll hear when you hear it. All right. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye.