AS162: Real Atheology with Justin Schieber, Part 2

Transcript

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

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to episode 162 of Atheistically Speaking. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, well, today we have part two of the interview with Justin Schieber about his new YouTube channel, Real Atheology. But it's more than, of course, just an interview about a YouTube channel. It's about the arguments involved and that he's talked about in his first video. They're really cool, and I think we got into some interesting territory. So I'll go ahead and give you part two right now.

0:01:23 Thomas: Fleas.

0:01:24 Justin: Mirror argument there would be that, you know, would be you looking over your cat cat for one particular flea, and not seeing it initially, and then inferring from that, that probably there are no fleas on my cat. Now, the problem with that, of course, is, as you've said, you haven't really, yeah, because they're the kinds of things that you wouldn't expect to see necessarily.

0:01:45 Thomas: Or assholes. Yeah, exactly.

0:01:50 Justin: So in It all, I mean, the argument really hinges on whether or not God's justifications are the kinds of things that we would have, quote unquote, epistemic access to, whether or not they're the kinds of things we could see, or we could, that would be intuitive, that would be kind of obvious to us, right? Like, for example, you know, when I see a child getting a shot by a doctor, the justification in that instance is really obvious to me, right, clearly, the doctor has good intentions, you know his, you know, is his, uh, doctor outfit very much implies the reason, the justification entailed in this situation, right, but

0:01:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Unless he's an evil Nazi doctor or something, yeah.

0:02:32 Justin: God Yeah. Well, there's definitely that possibility, right, um, but, uh, so, you know, we're, we are justified in inferring that probably that doctor has a good reason for allowing that. But, um, unlike that situation, the flea situation is, is different, because the fleas are of the, of the shape and of the size that they're not necessarily the kinds of things we would see, uh, even if they were there. So what the theist is saying is that this argument is completely nonsense because it has a completely illegitimate inference as its key inference.

And so the skeptical theist is saying, look, those, uh, you know, we want to be very skeptical of making that inference, and so they, they generally don't allow it. Now, uh, there's of course been a lot of, um, back and forth stuff on skeptical theism, and, and there's a number of problems with skeptical theist, which I'll cover in a, an additional video after that, but Um, it actually gets really interesting because, um, there's the whole battle as to whether, as to what skeptical theism entails, and whether or not it bleeds into other areas of the theistic worldview, and does some damage that the theist

0:03:39 Thomas: Awesome.

0:03:54 Justin: Would not otherwise want to occur

0:03:54 Thomas: Well also off the top of my head, I think maybe it was from one of your previous appearances, but I know you've mentioned before that, while, or I think, I think it was you, that while there, there may be unknown reasons why the suffering might not be gratuitous. There also could be unknown reasons why would be gratuitus, and those cancel out. So is that one of the responses that someone might have?

0:03:57 Justin: Yes. Yes. Yeah. In in response to a very specific kind of argument that would work So, uh, so in, in that conversation, we were talking about, uh, Draper's evidential argument, and his, his, his argument is a different approach. What he's doing is he's looking at two competing hypotheses and seeing which one better explains the observations at hand.

0:04:22 Thomas: Okay, right. Okay.

0:04:39 Justin: And that particular response to skeptical theism works really well in response to that. But a skeptical theism put against Rowe's argument, this successful approach. It will defeat Rowe's argument if you want to hold on to this view about the seeability of these kinds of justifications that God might have. But, as I've already alluded to, that brings some cost. That brings some unwanted consequences.

0:05:09 Thomas: Right. And not only that, it seems like this is where I get a little, I don't, I don't want to say frustrated, but I start to wonder if they're, you know, if these kinds of arguments ever accomplish anything, because it really seems to be a matter of psychology. It seems to me a matter of, well, do I want to admit that at least one of these instances of suffering is gratuitous? Do I want believe that, or do I not want to believe that? There's nothing that really makes you go one way or the other, is there? I mean, it seems to your bias and just how you're raised and what beliefs you already have that point you one direction or another in that, because there's no, you know, it's sort of an inaccessible argument to me, it seems like, because, right? Or, I mean, what do you think goes into that?

0:05:56 Justin: Well, I mean, there's a number of different questions here. I mean, so at least in how I presented Roe's argument in my video, I presented it as making a very modest claim that these kinds of seemingly gratuitous instances of suffering constitute evidence against God, right? Now, all that means is that wherever you had your probability estimate of the existence of God, wherever it was before you took on this argument, this argument should lower it. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that everyone needs to be an atheist after hearing this argument. All that means is that it should lower wherever you were before. So let's say you were an extremely confident theist. Let's say that you had a whole bunch of arguments that were different from this argument that all supported theism and you were convinced by all of them and you thought they were all just very impressive.

0:06:54 Justin: And then this argument comes along, this might lower your confidence in theism, but not necessarily enough to be an atheist, you know, just maybe a less confident theist. And so as to the question that you're asking as to whether or not, I think I guess what I took you to be asking is, you Know, when a person is confronted with this argument, what do they decide about the nature of these things? Are they gratuitous or are they not? Not? Well, if they are not a skeptical theist, if they want to grant that, or if they want to say contra-skeptical theism that these possible justifications are the kinds of things that we should see, or that we would expect to see if we look for them, right?

0:07:40 Justin: Like if God's justifications are like cartons of milk in a fridge, then they have no choice but to take on this evidence, and it will definitely lower the probability that they place on God. But if they're a skeptical theist, then they can avoid that move because the argument is now irrelevant to them because we shouldn't expect to see these things even if they did exist. But as I've alluded to, that brings with it a whole bunch of unwelcome consequences, so It's a it's kind of a paradox

0:08:06 Thomas: Right. So, I think I went too far with, yeah, when you said it was a successful defense, I think it took you to mean something that you didn't mean. So you just mean that if Someone takes on that point of view, if someone takes on the everything that goes with skeptical theism, then in that way they can kind of ignore this argument. But I, I guess I, when you said it's a successful defense, I, I, I, yes, I misinterpreted that to mean, um, that it, it, you know, defeats the argument kind of in all instances, uh, okay.

0:08:08 Justin: Oh, Okay. Okay.

0:08:25 Justin: No,

0:08:33 Thomas: So, I, I understand you now.

0:08:33 Justin: No, I mean only only Yeah, Only if you're a theist of a particular type is this argument irrelevant to you. But again, if you're a theist of that particular type, mainly of the skeptical theist kind, then there are other issues that I will discuss in my next and upcoming video that

0:08:50 Thomas: I I'm I'm Happy to not to not try to, uh, preempt that At all, so I'm very excited for the next video While We're on the topic, uh, quickly, do you have any estimate of when your next video is going to be out?

0:08:55 Justin: It'll be very interesting. Well, actually, I'm going to to be filming tomorrow and uh, this, this video will be a kind of introduction to, uh, Schellenberg's deductive argument from, uh, divine hiddenness, um, which he came out with in 1993. And it's pretty much, uh, single-handedly, uh, has made this a huge issue in philosophy of religion. And I mean, there's... there's already been several books that are that are themselves compilations of responses to his, his initial book, so It's, it's a really impressive, uh,

0:09:08 Thomas: All right. Wow. Well, I promise I won't make you come on and talk about every video, although I very easily could. I would enjoy that. But well, I can't wait and I will probably have more questions about it. But going back, I'm curious about the interesting, you painted a picture of a sort of calculus that goes on where if your, you know, certainty about God is at x percent, then this argument just decreases that. So, it's all other evidence being held equal, basically, is what you're saying. Like, this just sort of should reduce, unless

0:09:43 Justin: I Would not at all mind. Yeah.

0:10:16 Justin: Sure.

0:10:16 Thomas: You're a skeptical theist, I guess, this should reduce the probability. But to me, that's a very curious thing because, and I'm sure you've come across this, like, I don't know how you quantify all that. And I go back and forth because on one hand, I can accept like, oh, yes, it should just reduce it, you know. But on the other hand, like how much, like, how do you, you know, like does that mean every argument is equal? I mean, is there, it brings up interesting questions of like, well, are there better arguments that should reduce your probability like twice as much? And does that means reducing it 1% versus 2% or does that mean 25% versus 50%? Because it makes a big difference. And yet I don't really see any way that that could be quantified. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's difficult. I go back and forth on it because it makes sense on one hand, but then sometimes I think about it and I'm like, that doesn't make sense.

0:10:49 Justin: Right. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, so definitely there's, uh, it's not as though these different possibilities have like, uh, stickers with percentage labels on them, right? These these are going to be, uh, I mean, I mean, this stuff is by its very nature is going to be guesstimates of conditional probabilities stacked upon other conditional probabilities. So, for example, I mean, let's say that I came over to your house and I grabbed a quarter out of your change drawer or something, right? And I flip it seven times in a row, I get heads each time, and then I stop. And then I lay out three hypotheses, prophecies. The first one being that the coin is weighted towards heads. The second one being that it's weighted towards tails. And the third one being that it is a fair coin. It's a perfectly fair coin. Now, prior to our observation, we have reason to think that the coin is probably a fair coins, just because most coins that exist are going to probably be fair, fair coins.

0:11:17 Thomas: They should, damn it.

0:12:16 Justin: So prior to what we would call our prior probability, prior to our flipping our, you know, our observations, prior to that, we can say with pretty good confidence that it's probably a fair coin. Now, now, given that we have flipped it seven times, and it's seven times come up as heads, then we can ask ourselves, what hypothesis better explains this, right? So you could say, okay, well, think about the probability of those observations on the hypothesis that it's weighted towards heads. Well, seven times heads in a row, the hypothesis that it is weighted towards tails, it wouldn't really seem to give any support to that, right?

So while I can't give you precise numbers of how that works, we can talk about guesstimates, and then we can feed those guesitimates into something like Bayes' theorem and come up with, uh, really interesting, uh, relationships of how these probabilities play into each other. Now, um, with something, you know, if we want to isolate all our available variables and talk about coin flipping, you can get actually really precise, right? Because it's a perfectly fair coin in a vacuum. It's going to always, you know, flip it enough times, you're always going to end up with a 50-50, right. So, but not all probabilities are that clean.

0:13:48 Justin: And so, there is a measure of guesstimate. And the thing is, is that most of the time, people are going to be able to generally agree where that should be. And when you don't, that's where the legitimate debate comes up. And that's where people raise arguments. Why, you know, this is more likely in this hypothesis. Well, it's not that likely. It's only this likely. Well, no, here's my reasoning for thinking that that's more likely, right? You can go back and forth until, you win someone over. And whoever has the best reasoning, right, like in any good game, ideally, is the one that wins out.

So While we don't necessarily need, I mean, we don't really necessarily need precise numbers in that sense. Because all I'm saying is that this provides significant evidence. And so, or all Rowe is saying is that this provides significant evidence and that you should lower it. Now, you know, the strength of that argument is going to be contingent upon a number of different things. And, you know, it's just a whether or not you're going to honest with yourself about the probabilities and how they relate to each other and how it's going to affect your on these things.

0:14:25 Thomas: Yeah, I agree. And I like those kind of analogies and I understand it, but I think the hang-up for me is that in the instance of God, a lot of times we're talking about like logical impossibilities or logical contradictions. I mean, to me, this argument very clearly shows that an omnipotent, omniscient God doesn't exist because of gratuitous suffering. I'm looking at it as more the deductive kind, but I don't know how you can have like kind of a little bit of a logical inconsistency. It's merely the certainty that the instances that at least one instance of intense suffering certain is gratuitous. Is that where the the uncertainty comes in?

Because it's almost like if you were to take that coin analogy, it's like if you had a proposition, um, let's say, you know, you had your three coin propositions. Let's say one of them is that this coin will, will, is, is unfair in that it will always be heads, and then you flip it like a thousand times and one of them is tails, it's like, well, that should kind of decrease your probability. It's like, no, that should a hundred percent decrease your certainty because you, you know, it's a logical impossibility, um, and and it's weird to me that we have arguments that are like, like this where it's, yeah, most likely this is completely logically incoherent, you know, you know what I mean? Like, I

0:16:22 Thomas: Think that's so

0:16:22 Justin: Well, It's not necessarily, I mean, so recall that premise three asserts that God would never realize any gratuitous suffering, right? So the question is whether or not we actually can identify some actual instance of gratuitous suffering. That's really what the argument comes down to. Skeptical theists want to say, look, we just don't have the cognitive, uh, resources to be able to do that. So anything that seems gratuitous to us, it's just not, we don't really have any good reason to think that's actually

0:16:56 Thomas: That's where the uncertainty comes. That's where the probability comes in, it's, it's how, yeah.

0:16:57 Justin: Yes. Yeah. It all comes in with uh, our confidence of whether or not we'd be able to see these things if they did exist. Yes.

0:17:07 Thomas: Now If I were presenting this argument, um, and maybe it wouldn't be, I, I think the argument is is fine, but I just mean if I were going to, um, I don't know, if I was going to try to explain it to a theist, maybe I would, I would maybe do a lot of research. It seems to me that this is this is somewhat empirical because, because you could do a ton of research on all the, you know, the frigging species of beetles in the world that all suffer needlessly when, you know, they're the classic example is the, what is it? The bee or something, or the, some sort of insect that like is a parasite and like goes into the beetle and then like lays eggs. And then it's like all this needless suffering that has nothing to do with free will at all. And it seems like you could almost make a bit of a empirical question out of it and and present just the mass of all this animal suffering, and

0:17:28 Justin: Well, Yeah,

0:18:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:00 Justin: It's it's certainly empirical, so. So, I mean, all empirical means, right, I mean, in the sciences and philosophy, all it means is that you're using some observation in the world and making some inferences about it. So, an empirical argument, that's what it does. So in scientific theories, it'll say, look, this observation is more likely on this scientific hypothesis than on this one, therefore it confirms the first one and not the second one, right? In the sense of, you know, uh, gradiated confirmation, confirmation theory, probabilistic, right? Yeah, it's going to be empirical, uh, just the nature of the argument is it's just the question, of course it hinges on the question, what kind of inferences we can draw from those observations, uh.

0:18:47 Thomas: Well, yeah, but does that not at all depend on the proportion that we're seeing? So, like, yeah.

0:18:53 Justin: That Does does, absolutely it does.

0:18:54 Thomas: So, all I'm saying is it's not exactly reflected in the argument. The argument is put so basically that it seems like if you added the data of, look, there's a massive amount of suffering, all of which seems gratuitous, with this in the animal kingdom. So, therefore, it's highly likely at least one instance is gratuitous because, yeah, well, I'm just saying that the wording is very, I don't know, I guess it is, again, going back to trying to just, what's the proper wording? As weak as possible Or as little as possible? I don't know what the,

0:19:19 Justin: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, No, it's not trying to be weak. I think it's a very strong argument because remember the premise one is talking about there are many instances of intense suffering that seem gratuitous. Premise two, all you need to do is identify one of those or all you have to do, all You have to say probably at least one of them actually is gratuitous, so that's a very, you know, if the skeptical theists are wrong, this is a hugely powerful inference. Because if we are allowed to say that the kinds of inferences or the kinds of excuses that God might have are the kinds things that we would see, right? They're like cartons of milk in the fridge. If that's the case, then this inference from premise one to two is extremely strong.

It's like kind of saying, you know, if you didn't have your glasses on or something and you see a bunch of quarters on the ground and they all look like they're heads up, but you're not entirely sure because your glasses are off, right? But they all kind of look like they're heads up. The probability that at least one of them is heads up increases with the number of quarters that appear to be heads up, right.

0:19:44 Thomas: Right, right.

0:20:37 Justin: So in the same way, the number of instances of a natural evil in the world that appear to be gratuitous, the probability that at least 1 of them actually is gratuitous increases with the larger the number is of instances that there are.

0:20:51 Thomas: So I see what you're saying there. And so I think that's why I mentioned earlier that it does seem to have a lot to do with where you're, whoever is reading this argument or hearing it, like it, it has a lot of value. With where your head is. I mean, what your, I guess, prior assumptions are.

0:20:51 Justin: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the whether or not it counts as evidence only requires I mean if you're a skeptical theist this won't count as evidence because it's just the argument has a fundamental flaw right but if you're a theist that's not a skeptical this argument clearly provides evidence but the effect that this evidence has on you is of course going to depend on your priors. It will depend on where you were before. If you were really confident that God existed, then this will just perhaps make you less confident. But let's say you were an agnostic and you just didn't know. You thought the evidence was ambiguous. But then once, of course, you take on this argument, well, then that would kind of tip the scales. And you'd then become an atheist in the narrow sense of the traditional sense of this as being that God does not exist.

0:21:12 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:22:02 Thomas: Well, sort of related to this, I don't know if we can tackle this right now, because I think it's also a big topic, but I've been wanting to ask you for a while, and I keep forgetting, actually. I struggle, and maybe I'm just asking your personal help. I struggle with the the idea of evidence for theism. And so many of the ways that I see you and other philosophers, and I'll go ahead and call you a philosopher, by the way.

0:22:30 Justin: Yes.

0:22:30 Thomas: That's a different story. But so many other philosophers talk about like, oh, well, this, you know, such and such, that's evidence for theisim. And such and much, that is evidence for atheism. There can be competing evidence and and you're just trying to take sort of the weight of it. And we've looked at that a bit today. But I struggle sometimes with the idea of evidence for theism when it seems like theism is just a story that people have invented that should completely 100% go along with every observed thing in the universe. I mean, if it's a story you're coming up with based on, and again, I know that's begging the question, but in a theoretical sense, you could come up with any explanation. You could come up with some sort of a story that is 100% consistent with the state of reality, I guess, with the State of Affairs on Earth, and then everything would be evidence for that, right?

0:23:35 Thomas: So, how does, you know, like, do you see the difficulty there?

0:23:21 Justin: Sure. Sure. Yes. But Of Course. But of Course. Yes, I understand your concern, but I think that you're, you're missing that there, the evidence is not the only thing relevant to whether or not it's reasonable to believe something. So, for example, what's his name?

0:23:55 Thomas: This is why I'm enlisting your help. I'm sure you'll explain this in a way.

0:23:56 Justin: So Okay, so I mean there are of course a number of different things. So, for example, Elliot Sober in one of his articles makes this point that's really important, I think, where, or at least I'm going to add to this point. Let's see that you're a child, right? And you've, you know, through cultural reasons and through your parents, you've acquired this belief in Santa Claus. You know you're, let say that it, you're up in the middle of the night.

0:24:26 Thomas: Is that a bell going out? What do you got there?

0:24:29 Justin: I don't know what I'm doing over here. Anyways.

0:24:32 Thomas: I wasn't sure if those were thoughts you were having, like, ding, ah, here we go.

0:24:38 Justin: Yeah. So let's say that, you know, you are this child on Christmas Eve, right? And you can't sleep because you are super excited. And you believe that Santa Claus is coming to your house and, you now, all this stuff, right. And so far in your life, because you You've not really thought too much about it so far in your life. Everything that you know about Christmas seems to be confirmed, or at least the story that you're told seems to be confirmed on Christmas morning, right? Where you have all these presents that magically show up and you're lying to you, right, and

0:24:43 Thomas: All right.

0:25:19 Justin: All signed Santa, right. What is the deal with this? So let's say it's Christmas Eve, right, so so to you the Santa Claus hypothesis is a very plausible hypothesis because it makes sense of a lot of some particular events. Now let's say that all of a sudden you hear some noise on your roof, are you rational to think of that noise on your rooftop Christmas E, where you already believe in Santa, are you you rational in hearing those noises and adjusting your confidence upwards, the question

0:25:55 Thomas: Adjusting your confidence of what? Of what? Of purely just Santa Claus? Okay. I

0:25:58 Justin: Santa Claus, yeah. So let's say you're very confident in Santa Clause before this happens, right, because it makes sense of a lot of the stories and you haven't, you don't think your parents would lie to you when they're telling you this stuff, and you know they're, you know, the really weird stuff about how we can do all this stuff in one night is explained because he has a time machine of some, some crazy contraption, right? And he manages to somehow shrink down to fit through chimneys. All the different things are explained by a number of different auxiliary hypotheses, right. So Christmas Eve, you can't sleep because you're so excited. And all of a sudden you start hearing sounds on your roof. Should those sounds further be, should those sounds further raise your confidence in Santa?

0:26:40 Thomas: Think, yes, but the reason I asked what specifically you were talking about with raising your confidence in is, I wasn't sure if you were saying, does it raise your confidence that Santa is there that night or just in general that Santa exists? But, uh, that, that might be a very tech minor distinction, but

0:26:54 Justin: Well, I mean, I mean, so specifically the question here would be whether or not he's at your house right now. Oh,

0:26:55 Thomas: Okay. Well, it, because the reason I say that is because if you already have a pretty high confidence that he exists, then I don't know if that increases it.

0:27:08 Justin: I should say one more thing, I should, I should qualify this statement with one more fact or one more claim about this story. Let's also make it the case that you've never ever heard sounds on your roof before. So the very first time, you know, so Christmas Eve, right, all of a sudden you hear sounds on your roof, this is a very, this is very unexpected, you've never had this happen before but it just so happens to fit perfectly with the story of Santa Claus, so the question is, should, should that at least to a, you know, given your beliefs right now, given that child's beliefs, should that new evidence, the sound on the roof, raise the probability that that child thinks about the existence of

0:27:09 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Right. I think

0:27:50 Justin: Santa?

0:27:50 Thomas: A certain amount. Yeah.

0:27:52 Justin: Yeah. Yeah. So that, so it would be right. So do you think that the word evidence is applicable there?

0:28:01 Thomas: Hmm. Evidence.

0:28:02 Justin: Do you think those boots, and again, I mean, evidence is not completely, you, it's not the end all, right? There's a whole bunch of other issues. So you can have evidence for false hypotheses. This one, this hypothesis, the hypothesis that Santa's on your roof, know, does that enjoy some support in the child's mind by the walking on the roof? It would seem to me that it quite clearly should, that if the child is updating his beliefs according to the evidence, that at least at that point in time just hearing, I mean, obviously if the, it's, you know, Santa never comes down the chimney, right, then obviously that's going to be disconfirming, but at least the boots on the on the roof would seem too, uh, confirm, in the sense of raising the probability that he places on the existence of Santa.

0:28:29 Thomas: Yeah, okay.

0:28:57 Thomas: I see your point. I guess I wonder if there's a difference between a Santa mythology that could very easily, easily, um, be disproven, um, a difference between that and a tale like God or theology where any, anything that could happen in the world is not evidence against God to some people, I mean, because if you, if you have the idea that God, you know, God exists and he could have his reasons for what, he works in mysterious ways, there's not any evidence that you could give against that, is there? I mean, or, or do I just lack imagination? I mean if, okay.

0:29:14 Justin: To To certain persons, right, let's let's, you know, let's, uh, make up this person, or I'm sure they exist, uh, that uh that there are no, there's no possible observation that could disconfirm, uh, or even affect their kind of credence that they place on God, right? Let's say that that's this person right now, there might be a number of different explanations for this. Maybe their epistemology is one that they just, evidence is not what they focus on when it comes to the existence of God. Maybe they care far more, maybe they're a reformed epistemologist where they think that what they feel as something being God talking to them is so powerful that evidence doesn't really affect this.

0:30:27 Justin: They might be that kind of theist. But in so far as we're talking about an evidentialist, a person who does let the evidence affect them, then certain observations can, of course, be evidence for or against God.

0:30:46 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense. I want to bring up one more analogy. Just, I, you, you might've answered it, but I, it just occurred to me that, what's that?

0:30:53 Justin: Seven. That's the answer.

0:30:57 Thomas: Oh, okay, all right, seven, sure.

0:30:59 Justin: Go on.

0:31:01 Thomas: It was, my question was how many more times are you going to come on in the next month? So, okay I guess it's seven. All right, you've got, you've committed, no, I'm just kidding. I sort of look at it as oftentimes when we're talking about, you know, typically we're taking about atheism or maybe naturalism versus theism, right? Like that tends to be, is this more evidence for naturalism or is this such and such more evidence for theism? And to me, it's almost like saying, look, is these more evidence of naturalism? More evidence for solipsism or for naturalist? It's almost almost like solipsism where it's like, well, anything is consistent with solipsim and there's nothing. It's like sometimes I feel like there are people saying, well look at evolution or look at such and such and it's, like, yeah, but we could all just be in the matrix.

0:31:47 Thomas: So, you know, like this, whatever's happening could just be happening in the Matrix, and oftentimes it feels like that to me with theism, but I guess you've already answered that in that you're saying maybe some people's beliefs are structured so that they aren't just simply a believer in God first. Yeah, but I don't know a lot of those people.

0:32:07 Justin: Well, so for example, I mean, William Lane Craig Craig is completely unapologetic about this, right? He's so very confident in his, know, for lack of a better term, Holy Spirit epistemology, that there is no evidence that could lower the probability of God low enough for him to no longer believe in God.

0:32:08 Thomas: Right, and it's so frustrating because all he does is talk about arguments and it is like, why are we doing this? What is the point?

0:32:38 Justin: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, for him, so he's trying to obviously kind of cast a net to the evidentialist crowd, crowd, even though he himself is not an evidentialist.

0:32:46 Thomas: Right, yeah. I wonder how many of those people exist, what the percentage is. Probably low, but hey, it is still interesting. I don't know. Okay, well, I will go ahead and say that I have taken up enough enough of your time. And I want to thank you so much for coming on and explaining the evidential problem of suffering and enduring some suffering while I ask you some questions about it. But I assure you there's a greater good for it. So, hey,

0:32:56 Justin: Oh, not at all. Not at all a problem. Therefore, it is justified. Well, hey, thank you so much for having me on your show again. It's always a treat talking with you.

0:33:25 Thomas: Same goes for you and everyone check out Real Atheology. Just Google it. It'll come up.

0:33:31 Justin: And the music is pretty darn cool, I think.

0:33:33 Thomas: Oh, that is some great music. Yeah. Now now that you mention it, a killer tune. So check that out. All right.

0:33:39 Justin: Yeah. All right.

0:33:41 Thomas: Thanks, Justin.

0:33:42 Justin: See ya.

0:33:52 Thomas: All right. That's it for another week of Atheistically Speaking. I wanna thank you so much for listening and I want to especially thank those who support me on patreon.com/atheist. Your support means so much to me. It really does. I can't thank you enough. If If you'd like to contribute, just go to patreon.com/atheist and make a small pledge. You won't notice. It'll help the show and you will notice the thank you you'll receive. Hopefully, if I make it good. Speaking of, I need to thank my any new patrons that I have. So let's see. I think I missed that last week due to my dodgy Internet connection. But I would like to thank definitely patron.

0:34:39 Thomas: Let's see, I think. How about, uh, Bonnie? Thank you so much, Bonnie, if I didn't thank you already. Dan Hansell, thank you so much. Brian Manzoli, thank you, Brian. And Timo, Timo Zimmermann, thank you guys so much. And then, of course, I need to thank my top patrons of all time: Zeno, Zemu, Zena, sorry, Zemu, Zenu, Jr. That's weird, that's the first time I've had trouble with your name, Zemu. I think, um, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyer, Jay Alden, Walt Bangs, Naughty Bits, of course, Sean Zipper, Peter Skelton, Brian Gearford, Dale, Matt Garrett, and honorable mention going to Samantha. Thank you guys for your support. I love you so much and you make the show continue and go round. All right, like I said, thank you for another great week and I wish you all a very nice weekend and I will see you guys on Monday.