AS154: The Portable Atheist

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 with your host, Thomas Smith. This is episode 154. I do those things a little out of order sometimes, and it screws me up every time. Okay, so I have some announcements and just random stuff to give you, some random info to give you before we get going. First off, I had a listener who you might remember by the name of Gerald, who suggested that we, he had a suggestion for a panel that I think would be pretty cool. So some of you might remember, or all of you, or I don't know how many, maybe zero percent of you have no listeners from a few months back. Probably not. Anyway, you may remember we did a parenting panel, like a secular parenting panel, and it was really cool.

0:01:18 Thomas: I liked that a lot. And the focus was on parenting without God, kind of parenting as atheists in a religious environment, how that, you know, how that goes with your kids being in school or, you can, you know, your kids around religious people. So those kinds of issues. Well, Gerald had a suggestion for sort of another parenting panel and I really like it and it has to do with more with morality. So, whereas before the focus was how do you raise kids as an atheist around religious people, that kind of thing, this suggestion would be more like a panel of how do you raise your kids in terms of morality and what that means? I mean, because there's a range you could go with.

0:02:05 Thomas: We are probably mostly atheists here, pretty much all atheists listening or, or the panel might be all atheist. Now you might, you might think that a lot of religious morality is still good. Like don't let your kids have sex. Don't let you, you know, stuff like that. Don't let your children have sex with you. Don't let your kids watch, I don't know, R-rated movies until a certain age. Or you might be the opposite. You might think, well, there's, you know religion is bunk. So why are we going with all these rules that don't really apply? So I let my kids do whatever. And there's a lot interesting range in there for conversation. And I think Gerald's got an idea. So he volunteered to be one spot. I certainly have a lot of thoughts on this. I'm not a parent yet. I mean, I do. Let's face it.

0:02:50 Thomas: I have three cats. So I mean you people with kids, it's a lot more involved to have three cats than it is to have kids. I means kids are easy. You just ignore them and they go to the bathroom in a box. Oh, wait. No, I'm thinking of cats. Never mind. I have that backwards. Okay. Okay, cats are a little bit easier than kids, but anyway, I have some ideas on that, and I think that it would be really easy to find one, maybe two people. Now, I want to have a diversity of opinion. I want a secular mom in addition, at least, so if you want to volunteer, let me know if you think that would be a good idea. I really think it would. I think there's some good conversation to be had there in terms of what restrictions restrictions, what restrictions are worth placing on your kids, and what ones are just like, oh, this is, you know, abstinence-only sex ed, for example.

0:03:39 Thomas: I mean, that's probably pretty clearly a religious thing. So, interesting. Let me know. Email atheisticallyspeaking at gmail with a, you know, subject line of parent panel or something, whatever, if you want to get in on that. I think it's a great idea, so thanks to Gerald for suggesting that. Okay, item two on my little agenda here. Oh, we're starting a new book in the book club. I had meant to start it earlier, truth be told, but I sort of let it get away because everyone was doing the Pinker book. And I, anyway, long story short, I've adjusted the dates. So we're now starting the free will book because I wanted to have, we have 50 members in the Atheistically Speaking book club now, 50 members. So I figured that was enough to where we could start doing maybe two books and have people decide which book they want to read.

0:04:30 Thomas: People are already reading Pinker and discussing it and enjoying it, so that's great. If anyone wants to join me, I didn't have the Pinker book on hand, so I'm sort of going to leave that one to the rest of the group, which is a good deal for me because I get to learn about it and I get time to read another book. So I'm going to read the free will one. If anyone would like to join, go to Goodreads and if you haven't joined, join the book club, Atheistically Speaking. Or if you're already in the book Club, check that out. I posted how we're going to divide up the book. So that'll be really fun because it's free will. It's like lays out all the arguments. It'll be a really fun to have a discussion on where people stand on those. So I'm really looking forward to that. So please check that if you are in the Book Club. If you're not in the Books Club, feel free to join.

0:05:18 Thomas: And then finally, I just wanted to mention, I had a good response from the last episode about that Catholic wedding, and I had someone email by the name of Richard, and I won't say your last name, Richard, just in case. I didn't check with you, and I like to keep people anonymous until proven guilty. No, I don't know. But he had an interesting comment, a nice email about a Catholic process, a Catholic ritual, I guess he witnessed, where it was baptism and placing wafers onto to babies and stuff. And I thought it was interesting. I just briefly wanted to mention, he said that for the, this particular procedure, you know, sacrament, they, the priest does it and he has all these lines that are like, okay, this is, everything is essentially just right.

0:06:08 Thomas: You know, this has to be done just like this. This has to be done just like this. But then he says, Richard says, the photographers requested it again. Like, oh, we didn't get that shot when when the wafer went in the mouth. And so the priest just did it again. And Richard's point was like, how much can this matter? How scientific is this? If you could just stop, you know, redo it. Oh, here's another wafer. Like it doesn't really matter. And I thought that was so funny. So thanks for that email. Sorry, I'm not going into it in more depth, but I want to have time to get to the rest of our episode. So that was, that was a great email, Richard. And I totally can imagine that. It seems like religion is pretty powerful for a lot of people, But one thing that trumps it for almost everyone is what are the pictures on Facebook going to look like after the event?

0:06:56 Thomas: So no matter how religious the ceremony, no matter however important all the traditions are and all the rituals and all that, if the picture didn't turn out right for Facebook, then you just can't, or Instagram, I won't be, you know, I'm probably a little behind the times because I don't really, I don't have Instagram. I don't really get it. But anyway, if the picture doesn't look right, then you can't, you got to do it again. It doesn't matter if God endorsed the second time you did it or not. It's like not important. Enough of all that, though. Time to get to what we are really going to do on the show today, which is a real, an actual portable atheist this time, because the last one was sort of a false go. Didn't really happen. Nothing much going on there.

0:07:41 Thomas: There, but we are in luck because this one is great. I'm really excited for this reading. So today's reading, or this month's reading or whatever you want to say, because the last one didn't count, is A Refutation of Deism by Percy Shelley. I might have mentioned that last week. So I'm very excited about this because I am very curious about it. I don't really take a lot of time to refute deism personally, just in my thinking. I usually think more about refuting including any certain theology or just, I don't know, cosmological arguments. Well, I guess those are, now that I think about it, arguments for deism. So maybe I'm totally full of it there. But anyway, let's start with, we always start with Hitchin's intro.

0:08:27 Thomas: So here it is. It isn't so long since a test of Anglican orthodoxy was applied to anyone seeking to study or teach at Oxford and Cambridge University. One of the most celebrated victims of this theocratic policy was Shelley, 1792-1811, who was expelled from University College Oxford for writing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. He and his poetry were much influenced by the climate of skepticism engendered by the French and Scottish Enlightenments, and he himself was to marry the daughter of the free thinker William Godwin. In this extract from A Refutation of Deism, Shelley sets about the propaganda of the creationists. So there's Hitch in his own words. And so a little bit of an intro.

0:09:14 Thomas: Shelley's really interesting. So it's not really too surprising to have a poet in this compendium, you know, this collection of atheist writings and all that. It's not too out of the ordinary. The weird thing is, it's a poet, Shelley's a poet, but we're reading like a philosophical doctrine, like a, you know, almost a treatise instead of some poetry. So I find that really interesting, and exploring Percy Shelley more and more, he was a very very talented thinker. I mean, I think it's probably required to write good poetry to be a thinker, but we don't, not so much anymore.

It seems like these days poetry, at least you know, in the sense that we all know it in the form of music and lyrics and all that, it doesn't take brains for poetry anymore, for music. Now, I know there are still plenty of poets of a more scholarly nature who are very smart, but it's funny when we think of poetry, I think the recent thing is like, well, anything goes. Anything goes when it comes to poetry, as long as it's art, you know? You can do anything. But I think for back in the day, it was a bit more rigorous, at least popular poetry was.

And it's not surprising that this Percy Shelley was so smart. And there's so much here and Percy Shelley had a lot of other writings on it too. So he did a lot work that wasn't just poetry. And he writes like a philosopher, I think. Obviously not, I don't think he writes a great philosopher of all time or anything, but this is good philosophy to me, or at least worthwhile for the time.

0:10:59 Thomas: I think it's worthwhile philosophy and very interesting, but that's just an amateur's opinion, of course. So just a tiny bit about his life. He died very young, died at age 29 in a shipwreck. I thought that was weird. There's some conspiracy theories about how he died, like a pirate attack. Actually, there's some sort of evidence on the Wikipedia about someone might have tried to ram his boat to rob him or something. And then ended up, you know, sinking it and killing all three people on board. Other people say that there just wasn't enough, you know, boating knowledge, nautical knowledge on board, and so they just kind of were incompetent and sunk. But anyway, I saw the early death and I was thinking, oh, cancer or some disease of the day, but no, shipwreck.

0:11:47 Thomas: Kind of, hmm, kind of interesting. Like Hitch said, he went to Oxford but was expelled for writing The Necessity of Atheism and there was an appeal. Apparently his father intervened and got him reinstated on the condition that he would recant his views, but he wouldn't. And his refusal led to a falling out with his father, as I read directly from that section of Wikipedia. I'm not going to pretend as though I did some great research on Percy Shelley, just giving a general overview. And since he died so so young, there's not too much more. I mean, that was his school. There were a few suicides in his family, and who knows if that influenced his views at all.

0:12:33 Thomas: I'm sure religious people would say, Christians would say that's why he was an atheist. Oh, he hated God because of this stuff, but I'm guessing that's probably not it. So, that's good enough. Let's get to the actual reading, and I want to read, and I don't read the whole thing or even near at all the whole thing I mostly summarize, but I do want to read the first paragraph because it's a good start and it's pretty short. Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. The matter in controversy is the existence of design in the universe and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute. So right there, that's a pretty solid that lays it out pretty well.

0:13:19 Thomas: Insidiously, to employ the words contrivance, design, and adaptation before these circumstances are made apparent in the universe, thence justly inferring a contriver is a popular sophism against which it behooves us to be watchful. To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, or attribute rather, that matter is inert, that every combination is the result of intelligence is also an assumption of the matter in dispute. So I think that was a good start, give you a sense of how he wrote the language and all that. And then I'll obviously mostly summarize from here on out, because I don't want to just read to you.

That'd be boring. That would be like a podcast where someone reads you the Bible. That would be incredibly boring. So right off out of the the gates solid argument, who knows if that was original to him, I, I doubt it, um, I'm sure someone had thought of it, but yeah, he's writing this as sort of a dialogue between two fake people, but one person is, you know, the atheist and the other is, uh, the, the theist, who I think there's a more precise name for what position it is, but an apologist basically. And he's saying we can't just assume design.

We can't assume design and then say, well, every design needs a designer, because that's cheating. He goes on to ask, why do we ever recognize design? And this may be familiar thinking to you. I've certainly heard versions of this before. He says, why do we recognize design in machines, or, you know, in technology, that sort of thing?

0:14:51 Thomas: He says it's because we have knowledge. We have prior knowledge of humans designing stuff. We know that human human beings are capable of designing stuff. We have that knowledge. And so when we see a watch, then we say, oh, well, it's most likely that a human designed this watch and not that, you know, nature just designed it. But he said, if we had none of that prior knowledge, which is impossible because if you are you, then you have some knowledge of some ability to design stuff. But anyway, if somehow you had none OF that knowledge, then it wouldn't be a good argument. You wouldn't be able to say that a human designed it, obviously. It would be valid to say, well, nature probably designed this because we don't have any example of anything else like this before.

0:15:36 Thomas: And I think this is important. He says that it would be presumptuous in the case that we had no prior knowledge, we discovered a watch or whatever. It would be presumptuous to say it was designed. He doesn't say it wouldbe wrong. It's not like you would know for sure what it was. You just come across a thing, an object, and the substance of which you have no familiarity with, you just can't jump to conclusions. You could make a guess, but it would be very presumptuous to know and to say someone designed it when you have no prior knowledge of that happening. He says, just to reiterate in the next couple paragraphs here, he says that our knowledge, our ability to assign design to things is because of our knowledge of human design, but he says, he makes kind of a critical point here.

0:16:24 Thomas: He says, we don't have any knowledge of the divine. People pretend to have knowledge of it. Uh, and they, they think they know all these things about God. And this is me speaking. He just said that one sentence that we have no knowledge of the divine, but this is me reflecting on that. People intend to have all this knowledge, but it's all based on these arguments, which you can't assume. I mean, we can't assume a designer. We can't consume design yet. We haven't proven that yet. So without all those assumptions, we really have no knowledge of God at all. And we can't assume, obviously, unless you're assuming the Bible is true, then that's a whole different story. So Shelley is correct here, I think, to point out we have no acknowledge of this. We have no examples of this, therefore we're not able to make the leap and say, oh, the universe, design. So next he lays out kind of what argument is left for, in his view, for the existence of God.

0:17:15 Thomas: I'm I'm going to read this because he lays it out really well. Not much. I couldn't do much better. What consideration remains to be urged in support of the creation of the universe by a supreme being, if not design, that is. So it's admirable fitness for the production of certain effects, that wonderful consent of all its parts, that universal harmony by whose changeless laws, innumerable systems of worlds perform their stated revolutions, and the blood is driven through the veins of the minutest animal, I wanted to read this because animalcule, I don't know if that's a molecule, but an animal, animalcul, I do not know what that is, that sports in the corruption of an insect's lymph. On this account, did the universe require an intelligent creator? Because it exists producing invariable effects, and inasmuch as it is admirably organized for the production of these effects, so the more did it require creative intelligence.

0:18:09 Thomas: So that is what he is laying out. And these are reasons I think you will have heard, despite the fact that he's trying to debunk them back in, you know, 17, or no, this would be 1820 or something. I didn't actually see that there wasn't a date on this page, which was kind of annoying to me. But anyway, so these are things people, tide goes in, tide go out, moon, yeah, moon rises, sun rises, things that Bill O'Reilly is still espousing, just the regularity of the universe, the the intelligibility of it, the law, the consistency of laws, these are things he's saying, okay, this is what's left now. If I've proven that design is not, you know, we can't prove design and we can't infer designer because we haven't proven design, Shelley is saying this is what's Left.

0:18:56 Thomas: So his response to that is, I'm guessing something you've heard and it's pretty obvious. He says, all these qualities you're talking about, the regularity, the complexity, the things about the universe that you're saying require God, well, all those things are just as true, if not infinitely more true, about God. So, the infinite regress. He's making an argument about the infinite regres, and this is where, I'm not sure if it's quite yet, but there's a point where I think he may be wrong, and it's very interesting. I don't know, that's a strong statement. I don't know if he's wrong, but he talks about the universe being infinite, and we now know, well, I suppose we don't now that's not true, but evidence suggests the universe as we know it is not infinite, though I would argue that there could still be, very easily be, a multiverse that is infinite or something else.

0:19:53 Thomas: But we'll get to that in a minute. So he says there's going to be an infinite regress, because any quality like that, and he puts it really well, like God has has all those qualities, if not more. He's organized, he's consistent, he has all these things that we just said the universe has that requires a creator. So God would then require creator, and then that God would require creator, etc., etc., and that is obviously nonsense. So this is what's interesting here. I alluded to it, but he says here in this paragraph that we may reasonably assume, until proven otherwise, we may reasonably assume the universe universe is eternal. And this is going to give us an opportunity to talk some apologetics because people like William Lane Craig, all them, and people I've had on the show have made the argument that, well, the universe, if the universe were eternal, then everything would be fine.

0:20:47 Thomas: But it's not eternal, so that means it must have a cause. And the thing I always find so funny about this is that we've known the universe was not eternal for like 80 years or something, you know? I think since the 20s, so maybe a little more. That's a rough estimate. And there have been Christians a lot longer than that. So I like how they just latch on to whatever science is happening and like, oh, there we go. It's like, you didn't know that before. So that can't be the reason that you have your belief. But anyway, all that aside, it's interesting because what Shelley says may still apply to a multiverse. So he has a, I'm going to try to read this. It is going to be a a little weird out of context, but he says, "We admit that the generative power is incomprehensible, but to suppose that the same effects are produced by an eternal omnipotent and omniscient being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more incomprehensible."

0:21:43 Thomas: That is a great line. And I think that that is as true now as ever, maybe more so, because it's a good argument for like, you'll hear scientists say all the time, just say God did it. That doesn't, do anything. You can't do anything with that information. Like he said, it promotes it more into obscurity. It takes the science and says, well, don't bother doing the science. You can never access God. So just say God did it and you don't have to study it anymore. So that was a great quote. I really liked that. I know it was a little out of context, but it was good stuff. I think this is a good opportunity to talk a little bit apologetics here, because it does present a challenge, I think. I think atheists would be a little arrogant if they assumed the non-eternal component of the universe, the non eternal quality of the universe didn't present some challenges for atheists.

0:22:38 Thomas: Now, again, don't don't people sometimes think I give arguments too much credit. I'm not saying that this proves God or anything. I'm saying it provides an interesting challenge because it would be easier if we found out the universe was eternal and it was just stagnant. It wasn't, it was static. It doesn't expand, didn't contract. Everything just sat there, blah, blah. If we found out that were eternal, I think atheists would have a lot easier of a case because it'd be like, yeah, well, it's just part of the reality that we live in. And this is the reality we live and we can't really prove it. We can't get behind the universe, we think anyway, so this is just what it is. But the fact that it had a beginning in the Big Bang, it does offer a little bit more evidence for some sort of creation.

0:23:30 Thomas: Now, again, there's a million reasons why it's not a sufficient argument, but I'm just saying it makes it a little more difficult. Cult. So I found that interesting in reading this. Does Shelley, is he wrong? Does he commit a bit of a fallacy here? I don't know. I think that what he's saying could apply if we found out there was like a multiverse. Now, the reason the Big Bang provides a bit of a challenge for atheists is as I've had, I think, Blake or possibly another Christian on here. What they've said, the argument goes as follows. If there are sufficient causes for the universe all the time without God, without requirement of like an agent, then the universe should always be happening.

0:24:15 Thomas: There should be a bunch of universes popping into existence all the time because the causes are always sufficient. They're infinitely sufficient at all times. So how is it that there just happens to be a universe now, you know, blah, blah. And that's That's where their argument is interesting because they're saying, well, it takes an agent, it take someone with will to decide, okay, now I'm going to create a universe rather than it just being created all the time. Now, again, not compelling because I think that there's a lot of different ways to tackle that argument. I think for one, it actually could be that universes are created all of the time, I mean It could be that conditions for universe creation exist in a multiverse at all times, and those universes are being created at all time.

0:25:06 Thomas: That could be. That's perfectly possible to my mind. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I think that physicists would agree from all the research I've done that that's at least possible. So right away, that pokes a hole in the argument of like, well, there has to be an agent. Now, there could be a static multiverse in which universes form all the time, and when you're in a universe, you don't have access to the universes around you forming all the time. So we couldn't tell, and time is specific to our universe, so that also solves that. I mean, the universes could be popping all the Time infinitely, but, you know, there's Time in our universe and we perceive Time a certain way. So that's an explanation there. There. But it is interesting that Shelley did think the universe was eternal.

0:25:52 Thomas: And it makes sense. I can imagine thinking that. I guess everyone thought that until old Hubble with his telescope discovered that things were accelerating very, very rapidly away from each other. So that was very interesting for me to read because it was cool to read like, oh, here's this guy making some great arguments for atheism. And then it's like, well, he has this wrong. He has this particular data wrong. And I I don't know if it invalidates this whole argument here or not. I don't think it does because I think, like I said, it could apply to a multiverse. This next spot, I'm not sure if he's right about it. He then says we also can't attribute one cause to multiple and varied effects.

0:26:38 Thomas: He's saying it doesn't work to say that, oh, yes, God's responsible for, like, you know, the wolf, but he's also responsible for the prey that's running from the wolf. Now, there's interesting thought in that, and I think he's sort of onto something, but he phrases it like, oh, you definitely can't, you would need to posit all kinds of different causes for all these opposite effects, like hot and cold, and he sort of puts it like that, like all these different effects need to have, by the creationist logic, need to have different causes. And I don't know that that's 100% true. I think it's interesting, and it is true that if you're starting from zero, it doesn't make much sense to all of a sudden leap to the fact that, oh, you know, God is responsible for everything.

0:27:26 Thomas: It could be that, you know, like some sort of Greek situation or some sort of polytheistic situation where, you know, someone's in charge of the ocean, someone is in charge of this, someone in charge of that. So I think it depends on how he meant this. It's a little hard to know for sure exactly how he meant the argument. But if he means simply that there could be multiple gods and it's impossible to say that there's just one, then I would agree. But the way he put it, it sounded like he was saying you would need to attribute different causes to every effect, which I don't think is true because you could come up with a scenario of, okay, this god is responsible for all these these different things, and here's why. So that was a little interesting. Then quickly, he adds, this is a point I think he's made before, but he says the laws are just the unknowable, like completely just mysterious causes of effects that we can observe, and we can never, it's his opinion that we cannot really access those.

0:28:25 Thomas: Now, we can get closer and closer, but on a fundamental level, I've always thought it's interesting that all science is ever doing, I think, and again, maybe Maybe we'll be proven wrong by some amazing discovery or something. But all we're doing is explaining phenomena. And this is me. This isn't Shelley. I'm just saying it made me, reminded me of thoughts I've had about this in the past. All we're ever doing with science is trying to find patterns and laws and explain things to a smaller detail. But it doesn't ever really answer the fundamental issues. Now, it does get smaller and smaller. On. So it's like, for example, you say, why do, you know, why do people fall? And you say well, gravity attracts, you know, you discover gravity, you Say, okay, that attracts someone down down to the earth.

0:29:15 Thomas: And so that's why they fall. And then you look at more detail, and you find examples that don't quite fit. Well, you Know, birds can fly, airplanes can fly different things like that. And it's Like, well, oh, there's an exception, wind resistance, for Example. And then maybe there's magnets that, you know, repel that. And you say, oh, there's another exception, magnetism. Oh, there is another exception here, blah, blah. So you are trying to get to the smallest detail where there aren't exceptions. Obviously, if you only had knowledge of gravity, and that is the only knowledge you are going with, and you are saying things always fall to the earth, the minute you see an exception to that rule, it would completely shatter your worldview. So it makes sense that science is looking smaller and smaller, more detailed. And that was just a weird example, of course, that didn't really reflect the reality of how discovery went, but that was the best example I could think of.

0:30:06 Thomas: We're always looking for the smallest, the best, simplest explanation at the smallest level of detail that has the fewest exceptions. And right now, I think likely the audience knows, you guys know that unification might be impossible. It hasn't been done. There's fundamental laws that we haven't unified, and that's a problem in science, and it's a problem that some people think may never be solved, but it probably will be, I think, probably in our lifetimes. I have nothing to back that up except intuition of just how amazing our progress is with CERN and with just, you know, the Large Hadron Collider and just all that stuff. It's really cool. More news every day on that.

0:30:52 Thomas: Actually, just the other day, I think, we discovered a new particle. My bet is on the scientists, but that is an interesting thing to point out. He thinks there is some fundamental level on which we may not be able to explain anymore. We could get down to a fundamental level where you could explain the entire universe, given a certain state of affairs, plugging it in, you could expand the entire thing so you've reached the fundamental level. You've, science literally cannot progress anymore because you've reached a level where if you have the starting conditions, you can predict every single thing that'll happen in the universe, let's say. Well, at what, at that point, you still, I think, this is me philosophizing, I think you still don't have an explanation.

0:31:39 Thomas: You still don't have a, well, why is that like that? I mean, you've just explained it down to the fundamental law. And I think that's what Shelley's getting at, that there's always going to be something thing that just is that way. I mean, the reality just is that way, and we can't access a deeper explanation. All we can do is people appeal like, well, there must be someone in charge of it, and then that somehow satisfies it. But you can't prove that, and as Shelley and millions of others have shown, those arguments don't follow. So I thought that was fascinating to go through that. I'll try to skip through a bit because I spent a lot of time on my thoughts. So he goes on to talk about he actually says he thinks Shelley kind of thought we could explain everything.

0:32:25 Thomas: He thought, oh, we know these laws. And he goes like, oh Kepler can explain the laws of Laplace can explain the approach of the moon to the earth. He goes through all these things. He's like, we can explain all this. We've got everything. So he was pretty optimistic because, you know, of course, as our ability to explain improved, proved. Also, our ability to detect exceptions to our explanation. So, that's how I would phrase it anyway. So it's funny that he thought we could pretty much explain everything by these laws. And then he said, well, these laws are fundamental and that's just how it is. It turns out not to be true, but he may be true again, to some degree on some law, like that we may get to a point where there's just a fundamental law we can't explain. So that was interesting. And then here's what I I found most intriguing.

0:33:14 Thomas: I felt like, now I Googled it and I didn't see anyone who had this thought, so maybe I'm just totally wrong. It was a quick Google search and I wasn't, you know, I didn't come up with anything. But it almost seems like he kind of predicts evolution in a way, because this was written in, like I said, somewhere around the early, early 1800s. Again, there wasn't a date on the front page, no date, but he died in 1811. So, you Know, 1805, maybe, I don't know. Somewhere around then. He talks about, and Origin of Species was published in 1859. So he's definitely ahead of that. But he talks about here, he says, well, let me try to read this and you can tell me if I'm nuts. I don't, I'm not, again, I am not saying he was like a prophet and predicted and knew everything about evolution, but he says something that is intriguing and it sounds kind of like evolution.

0:34:02 Thomas: He says, you insert, you assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connection between organs of perception and that which is perceived, for example, like, oh, the eye happens to be fit to see stuff and it's like, how fortunate. But anyway, the relation between everything which exists and that which tends to preserve it in its existence imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another and that the combinations which they would form must, so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the the circumstances of their situation.

0:34:59 Thomas: Well, that was what I was going to read, but I'm going to go on because now I'm even more intrigued by this. It by no means follows that because a being exists performing certain functions, he was fitted by another being to the performance of these functions. So rash a conclusion would conduct, as I've before shown, to an absurdity, and it becomes infinitely more unwarrantable from the consideration that the known laws of matter and motion suffice to unravel, unravel, even in the present imperfect state of moral and physical science. Okay, so he admits it's imperfect. That's good. The majority of those difficulties which the hypothesis of a deity was invented to explain. Didn't that sound cool? Especially when he said, "Their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation." Now, I don't think I'm just being like religious people where they try to find like any significance in a religious text.

0:35:50 Thomas: I think that And it's possible, I'm not a historian, it's possible that pre-Darwin there was maybe a sense of adaptation or maybe things adapted a certain way. Maybe there was a general sentiment that Shelley is referencing or something, but he didn't have the particulars or something like that. But maybe not. Maybe he had a good idea because he essentially was saying, look, it is not true that That it's, you know, we're so lucky the eye sees things and the ear hears sounds and there are sounds in the world, you Know, the religious people at the time seemed to think it was a possibility that humans would have ears, but then there'd be no such thing as sound. Like, like that's a possibility.

0:36:36 Thomas: But then it's so lucky, you Now, otherwise, that's why we were designed with ears because there is sound. They think that's proof of God. But Shelley is saying, well, no, these things could have been different, like animals could have had a different form that didn't survive, but they just wouldn't have worked. And so, you know, if it could be different than the one that works would exist. And maybe I'm putting too much into that, but I'm curious what you guys think, because that sounded, I mean, predating Darwin by 40 years here, and it sounds, or 50 years maybe. Sounds a lot like Darwinism to me. So I thought that was really cool. I don't know. I did a search for Shelley and evolution and all that, and I didn't come across anything.

0:37:23 Thomas: So maybe I'm making something out of nothing. But yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. Oh, and actually, there's another, later on, there's Another Little Selection that, let me read you, that certain animals exist in certain climates results from the consentinality of their frames Let these circumstances be altered to a sufficient degree, and the elements of their composition must exist in some new combination, no less resulting than the former from those inevitable laws by which the universe is governed. That really sounds like natural selection to me. That is so fascinating. I'm going to try to do more research into this.

Again, maybe I'm overblowing this, but it seems like he was really on to something, and maybe everyone was, but it was just Darwin who was able to do the, you know, well, I think another guy also at the same time as Darwin's kind of made a similar discovery, but that, that's neither here nor there. Maybe these sentiments existed, like I said earlier, but I don't know. It really was cool to read this, the predated evolution, and he pretty much like describes evolution. He says, oh, if an, an animal, you know, has certain traits that comport to his habitat, to the animal's habitat.

0:38:37 Thomas: I started speaking like it was old English or something to his habit. Then if they didn't, if they had different, if the habitat changed, well, it's possible based on the laws of nature for the animal to have different characteristics. And once it did, that animal would survive. I mean, it is really close to natural selection. So that is pretty cool. Well, we're running out of time, and I definitely don't want to make this a two-parter, so I'm trying to hurry through. Basically, there's no God. He goes on to say the only reason we think good and evil exists is because it's relative to what we think. I don't think he's advocating relativism or anything, moral relativism, but he does say that without us, without someone who's benefiting from one set of circumstances or being harmed by another, there wouldn't be value judgments.

0:39:29 Thomas: Which I think is right. I mean, if the universe were just rocks, as Sam Harris has said, I mean, what would be the moral consequences? There's none. He, Shelley, goes through some different examples and said, yeah, this is good for one person, bad for another. And they view it that way because of that. So that's, that's interesting. I know that was really abbreviated, but I'm trying to not, not go too long here. And then he says, there's some, here's a good little paragraph, I'll. There's no attribute of God which is not either borrowed from the passions and powers of the human mind or which is not a negation. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and immateriality are all words that designate properties and powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of negations by which the idea of limitation is excluded.

0:40:25 Thomas: See what I mean about... I can't believe this guy is a poet. Like, he really had some good, rigorous thoughts. I mean, that makes perfect sense. These are all characteristics because a lot of religious people allege one terrible argument for God is, you know, if there's no God, how did we all get the idea of God? Because he's perfect. We can only get ideas of things that exist, you know, and God, if he doesn't exist, we couldn't get an idea of him. But the obvious counter to to that is, like Shelley said, in a very, very interesting and concise way, he said, yeah, they're all elements of humans, but then just taken to infinity. They're all just, oh, this is, you know, some, that guy over there is smart. What about someone who's infinitely that?

0:41:12 Thomas: And it doesn't really make sense. It's, it doesn't, you can't just do that and decide that being exists. You're just taking these qualities and then removing, he says, the wording is so interesting, with the addition of negations by which the idea of limitation is excluded. So I thought that was cool. One more small paragraph, and then I think I will likely kind of skip the rest, but this is a great quote. That the frequency of a belief in God should be any argument for its favor, none to whom the innumerable mistakes of men are familiar will assert.

0:41:47 Thomas: It is among men, oh, and this is, he gives us credit, guys and gals. It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found, but among these alone is cherished and hostility to those errors with which the illiterate and the vulgar are infected. So it goes a little bit elitist there and says that only smart people are atheists, only, you know, scientists and rigorous people are atheist. And, uh, you Know, the masses who are, who are infected with, with just illiteracy and, and bad ideas, they're the ones who believe in God. So that that's a little bit elitist for me. But it may have been more true back then when only wealthy, well-off people had access to education. Certainly, I don't think there was much Internet.

0:42:32 Thomas: I'm pretty sure it was just dial up back then. So, you know, rich people could afford faster Internet to do more research. So I thought that was interesting. But the quote before that, where he says, what makes these quotes so great is just, well, probably why he was a poet. He's just able to phrase them in a way I would never think to phrase him.

But he says, like, no one will make an argument that the prevalence of the belief in God is proof of God's existence unless they're totally ignorant of just the follies of humans. But he, of course, phrased it a lot better than that. So I think that'll do. We've gone too long. I know I can ramble, sorry guys, but this inspired a lot of interesting thoughts, and it has been over a month since our last real Portable Atheist, and though these can sometimes be full of me within my random musings, I hope some people get some enjoyment out of that, and if they don't, it's only once a month, or maybe even more infrequently, so there you go. I'm actually looking into, into trying to form a more coherent schedule.

0:43:39 Thomas: Coherent was a bad word, a more consistent schedule. I'm actually thinking of doing that because the show has gone, you know, it's pretty old now. Well, not old, but it's been coming on, it's probably a year and a half, I guess. And it may be a benefit to me and to you guys to have a consistent schedule of different topics, maybe like each month, so you don't get the same show or the same interview or whatever over and over again.

You might get one of that kind of show in a given month, and then, you know, it'd be another month till that kind. I tried to do that a little bit already, but I've been thinking about it, and it might be beneficial to set a strict schedule so that I stick to it and everyone stays interested, even if maybe they like one kind of episode more than another. So that's something I have in mind, just to let you guys know. Well, I believe I've thanked all the patrons on Monday because my most recent patron was someone named Matt Dillahunty, and I think I already addressed that. So I'll just go ahead and thank my top patrons. Thank you, Zimu Zinu. Thank you, Adrian Borschoff. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Jonathan Moyer, Jay Alden, Waltz Bangs, Naughty Bits. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sean Peter Skelton, Brian Gear for Dale, Matt Garrett, Samantha, with the honorable mention. Thank you guys so much for your support.

I can't explain it's the greatest, uh, it's the best. Feel free to message me at any time and just, we'll talk, because my supporters are awesome. If you ever, you know, want to make a suggestion or talk about a show, please feel free to contact me on Patreon or by email or on Twitter. And, uh, that'll be that. That's our show for this week in the royal hour, me and my cats. All right, guys, I will see you, you next week.

0:45:25 Thomas: And I think I'm going to have some really cool guests on one or two. I won't spoil it just in case scheduling woes happen, but I look forward to that. And thank you for listening.