SIO7: An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar...

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm your host Thomas Smith and this is episode number seven. Well, I am loving already, it's only been a week and I'm loving this new format of doing an interview on Monday and some inquiries, some free inquiry on Thursday. It's really already, it's just opened up so many possibilities, I'm excited about it, so looking forward to another sort of commentary episode on Thursday, when I have a chance to explore whatever I want, and address comments, play some of the voicemails you guys left. Thanks for doing that, by the way. And if you'd like to do that, just a reminder, that number is 916-750-4SIO. That's 916 750 4746. That'll be fun.

0:01:13 Thomas: I'm going to play some of those on Thursday probably. And if you'd like to comment on today's episode, you could do that. Maybe that'll get in there if you leave me a voicemail. So thanks for doing that. And with that said, let's get to today's interview, which is actually a little bit part interview and part debate of sorts. Today I have Justin Schieber and Randal Rauser. Justin has been on the show before. He's an atheist, of course. Randal Rauser is a Christian. He hasn't been on this show before, but I like him a lot. And they've written a book together called An Atheist and a Christian Walk Into a Bar, talking about God, the universe, and everything. And we're going to find out a bit about what that book is trying to do, what it's about. And then Justin and Randal are going to start tackling one of the arguments. And they actually go back and forth quite a bit.

0:01:59 Thomas: Very interesting stuff. If you're interested in apologetics and counter apologetics, there's some great stuff here. So without further ado, I give you today's interview.

0:02:16 Thomas: Joining me right now are Randal Rauser and Justin Schieber. Randal, how are you doing?

0:02:22 Guests: Hey, it's good to be with you, Thomas. I'm doing great.

0:02:24 Thomas: Great to have you. Justin, returning to the show, people might be familiar with you. How are you doing, Justin?

0:02:29 Guests: I'm doin' excellent. Thanks for having me.

0:02:30 Thomas: I want to first say that the book is An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar, talking about God, the universe, and everything. Now, I think I know who the atheist and the Christian is. Is. But since we haven't met you before on the show, Randal, would you mind giving us a bit of an introduction about you and your work and stuff like that?

0:02:49 Guests: Sure. So, I'm a professor at a seminary in Edmonton, Canada, where I've been teaching for 15 years. This is my tenth book, so I've written on a number of areas, including a few books on apologetics, a book on Christian philosophy, some books on theology and worldview. So, a pretty broad range of stuff. I like to talk about these issues. I blog online regularly at randallrauser.com. And I've known Justin for probably five years now, and I've just really enjoyed getting together with him on this project.

0:03:20 Thomas: Awesome. So, Justin, I guess for new listeners who might not be familiar with you, maybe do a little bit of your introduction.

0:03:26 Guests: Sure. I think that probably most people will be familiar with me from the Reasonable Doubts podcast that I co-hosted for about four years. But that has since dissolved, and I'm currently a host of Real Atheology, which is a YouTube channel where I discuss contemporary philosophy of religion. And this has just been a hobby of mine for quite a while, so always excited to talk about it.

0:03:48 Thomas: Yeah. So how did you guys decide to do this? And what was the goal? I mean, it seems as though it's more amicable. It was meant to be kind of a dialogue, not as much maybe some of the harsh debate that we tend to hear in this kind of area. So how did the idea strike you guys?

0:04:08 Guests: Yeah, I think that, well, a few years back, Randal and I had just been interacting online every once in a while. As he mentioned, he blogs at Randalrauser.com and we would interact in that way. And, a few year back, one of the student groups at the University of Alberta flew me out to have a debate with Randal. And I think both Randal, and I think the debate went really well. And um, a few months later, uh, Randal kind of threw around the idea of perhaps kind of turning this into a larger project, perhaps, uh, going with a book on the issue. So, um, I think that our kind of respect for each other and for the dialogue, I think, really contributes to, uh, the overall goal of the book, which is just to, you know, just to be a casual conversation between two people of radically different views, but that can reasonably disagree and throw back arguments without being too much of a jerk to each other.

0:05:06 Guests: And reference to being in a bar, I think, sort of captures the idea that this is not a formal debate. This is the way two people might hash things out over a couple of beers or a couple cups of coffee in a coffee shop. So it's meant to be very much back and forth, sometimes stream of thought, but still with an overall direction in which we're going, that we are presenting arguments, so there are chapters. But as one reader observed, it sort of reads almost like a stage play, where it's one person says something, the other person responds, and that's the way it just goes. So we wanted to capture the real flow of an actual conversation.

0:05:47 Thomas: Interesting. So did you have different, how did you decide who got the first and last word on different topics and stuff? Because, because obviously there could be a lot of editorial power. Did you guys have to negotiate that a little bit?

0:05:58 Guests: I don't know that we had too much of a difficulty with that. I think that the conversations for the most part, I mean, at the end of the day, we're going to be disagreeing about some of the fundamental questions we're getting down and down into these arguments. There's going to be kind of a, know, I just disagree with you. And so there's a point at which you just have to move on to the next topic. And I think we explore the space thoroughly to where people can get a very good understanding of where we're coming from. But at the end of the day, if we just fundamentally disagree on the implications of a particular particular observation, you know, whether it supports, you know, atheism or theism, um, at the end of the day, that's, it's just a disagreement and we have to move on eventually.

0:06:01 Thomas: Hmm.

0:06:43 Thomas: Anything to add to that, Randal?

0:06:44 Guests: And I would just add, yeah. It's, I think it's timely culturally where we're at, that a book like this is coming out because we're becoming so polarized within North America between various different factions. You certainly see this in politics with this kind of earth shaking election of Donald Trump. And now conservatives who supported him and liberals, progressives have to learn how to talk to one another. And I think you say the same thing in religious discourse. Of course, it's often been quite heated in the last 10, 12 years across the aisle between atheists and Christians or theists. So we're definitely trying to move beyond some of that and have a more productive and irenic conversation.

0:07:25 Thomas: Well, that's interesting. So when you brought, try not to go into politics, because I know your book likely doesn't have anything to do with that. But you made me think of the fact that, that's an interesting thing to talk about philosophically. Do we need to talk to each other?

For example, okay, this book you've done, it looks like a really good, interesting dialogue, friendly dialogue, dialogue, but you have said like at the end of the day we still disagree, so I guess I'm wondering, maybe I can ask Justin, like, what, where do you see, where do you hope for the progress to be made? Um, sure, it's a friendlier conversation, which I think is good, of course, like, it's, I, I would prefer that over some just yelling back and forth.

But if the core disagreements haven't really changed, we still going to have that difficulty? You know, like if I, and what made me think of it is if I try to talk to a Trump supporter, I mean, I can be as nice as I want, but oftentimes it's still going to come down to some really harsh disagreements. And I don't know what progress I can make there. What are your thoughts on that?

0:08:24 Guests: I don't know that I have a particularly good answer for you. I think that a lot of this stuff is going to be, obviously, positions that we already hold, and the arguments that we employ in their defense are going to be that, right? We're employing them to defend our pre-existing view, right. Right. Now, you can argue about the kind of the moral merits of, I mean, like you brought up the Trump supporter. Right. You can argue, I think that even a lot of Trump supporters are extremely uneasy with a lot of Trump's comments. So for something like that, you know, I think that there can be at least moral progress made in the sense that like, you know, you hold someone to consistency, right? Like, what do you value, do you, uh, is, is party purity more important, uh, than, you know, a basic respect for minorities or women or other issues, like these things, right? Um, Obviously it's complicated. There are a number of different issues in there. Um, but uh, thankfully, uh, Randal's not a Trump supporter, so I don't have to worry about that.

0:08:43 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Oh, good. Okay. What do you, do you have any thoughts on that question, Randal?

0:09:32 Guests: No, about 300 million people in the United States I'd vote for before Trump.

0:09:39 Guests: But having said that, I have to try to understand with people who did vote for him why they voted for him. It's easy for me just to say, well, they're all racists or they're stupid or something. But there's a lot of economic frustration, cultural fear, several motivating factors, I think, that lead people to vote for Trump, and also, of course, some unthinking party loyalty at times. But we can all be guilty of unthinking Party loyalty. So I think when we start talking with one another, we become a little bit more sympathetic. And I think it's the same thing when it comes to theists and atheists talking to one another. You sort of can move beyond the you're irrational or you're evil, kind of shutting down of discourse to developing a little more sympathy with the other person?

0:10:23 Thomas: Yeah, well, that's a good answer. Let me ask you guys, in in sort of that spirit though, I wonder, is there any particular point or argument in this book that this experience made you, if not change your mind on, at least realize, oh, maybe I needed to think of this a different way, or something? Start with Justin, what do you think?

0:10:42 Guests: Sure. I think that, so Randal raises a number of interesting points in the book. One, um, of the chapters on morality, I think, uh, he presses me pretty hard on some issues that, uh, are issues that I haven't thought of as, as thought out as clearly as I would like. And some other points that he's made I think are, are interesting to kind of go back and to realize where your weak points are, um, and to realize, you know, obviously in theory be open to changing your mind about things. Um, my, my moral views have shifted a few times over the last few years, um, and so, uh, getting, you know, prodded by Randal in this way is a nice little healthy way to kind of revisit those things and perhaps dig back into literature and to see what, what appeals to me and what thing, what makes sense of morality for me.

0:11:36 Guests: So, uh, those are interesting questions and, and I appreciate Randal for pressing me on them. And um, they caused me to revisit things as, as anybody should when, when pressed in a way that makes them reevaluate some things. Well,

0:11:48 Thomas: So Same question over to you, Randal. What's something that maybe Justin made you re-examine a little bit?

0:11:54 Guests: He had three arguments, we each presented three main arguments. I think each one of his arguments is worthy of further reflection. So he talks about massive theological disagreement for one, where he's going to argue, well, if God existed, we would expect greater agreement among human beings on the nature of God and what God expects of us. And, you know, that's a reasonable argument. And if you just go out and you begin to look at the amount of disagreement on some pretty fundamental issues, that becomes certainly a significant potential objection to theism. And I think you find it not just in religious belief generally, but certainly you could go further within Christian belief. So you could say, for example, Christians disagree on what is the proper right of initiation into the Christian community.

0:12:45 Guests: Some say it's infant baptism. Some say it's believers baptism for adults. They can't even agree then on this rite of initiation as to what it means to join the community of faith. And you could argue, well, if God was behind the Christian revelation, then he would at least provide clarity on something as basic as that. So I think you could take the argument that Justin presents and apply it in some of those specific ways, and you'd have a good time as a theist trying to provide a decent rebuttal to that.

0:13:11 Thomas: Yeah. You know, one thing I want to ask you guys about, this might be a little bit of a tough question, but it occurs to me that on both sides, there is a wide range of views on, Philosophy of religion. On atheism, there are certainly a lot of people, a lot of atheists that actually don't have a lot of respect for it. There's a lot who have a ton of respect for it. Like, I think Justin would be one for sure. And, but I also think it's the same on the Christian side. So starting with you, Justin, do you have any comment on that? I mean, atheists who maybe, and there's some prominent ones I'm sure you could name, who have a bit of disdain for philosophy of religion. Do you want to briefly comment on it?

0:13:51 Guests: Sure. So philosophy of religion, broadly defined, is just the philosophical examination of the themes of the concepts of the, I don't know, the rationality of belief of certain religious ideas, right? That's, I'm sure there's a more to that definition, but I think that that's a fairly decent working definition of what we mean when we talk about philosophy of religion. Um, and you're right, some, uh, some authors recently have objected and said that, um, I forget exactly the, the precise claim, but something to the effect of that philosophy of religion, uh, has no, it's no longer appropriate to even teach philosophy of religion or to even examine, uh, philosophical arguments relevant to religion in academia. And I think that, you, that's the claim being made, I think there's a number of problems with it.

0:14:44 Guests: First of all, I would say that myself, even as an atheist, exploring philosophy of religion has been an avenue to so many different intellectual quests on my tree of knowledge, I guess you could say. So it connects with so many different aspects. Epistemology, ontology, all these different aspects in philosophy, they tie up with philosophy of religion, because you're looking at the traditional answers that people have given, right? And then you're looking at more what contemporary philosophers tend to be saying, and contemporary religious philosophers tend to be saying about these things. There's a wide variety of opinion on these and they all have really interesting arguments back and forth. And I think that philosophy of religion for me has been a huge part of my intellectual growth, even so, even still being the case that I'm an atheist.

0:15:35 Guests: So I think there's huge value in discussing these questions for that reason. And I think it would be just a shame to not, uh, to not be teaching this kind of thing to people, um, to, you know, to be discussing, uh, if you think that there are problems with all these theistic arguments to discuss why there are problems. There are problems with these theistic arguments, right? What's wrong with them? What's, you know, are there some that are decent arguments and what makes them decent? Uh, all these questions are really interesting. And I think to just arbitrarily, um, throw off, uh. Arguments that have that touch on religion in some respect, I think is just, I I think that's just, it doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand the justification there. Moreover, if you're trying to make this point, what you're actually doing is philosophy of religion, so you're undermining your own argument.

0:16:23 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And I would put the question to Randal in a little bit of a different way. Anyway, I mean, if you want to comment on that as well, Randal, you can. But also, for Christians, how much does your casual Christian really care about these arguments? I mean in your experience, I guess I'm just asking anecdotally, I mean, how much does just a church-going everyday Christian think about these questions of philosophy of religion, or do they, are they more just taking it because they're part of the religion they grew up with it or whatever like that? Do they have faith? Is there some other way? Because I just know when I speak to Christians, oftentimes the faith doesn't really come from these arguments. Does that make sense?

0:17:03 Guests: Sure, yeah. And I think that that's generally true. I think it's also true across the gamut of knowledge. So if you ask, for example, a question of philosophy of knowledge, how do we know that there is a world external to the human mind? Or how do we know that sense perception is reliable, or how do we know that there are minds other than our own, that we're not locked into a solipsistic universe where we're the only mind. I guarantee the average person never stops to reflect very much on those questions, or the answers they are assuming to those questions, simply by getting up in the morning and walking out the front door. So I think it's true likewise within religious communities that most people don't devote a lot of time asking some of these deeper foundational philosophical questions.

0:17:49 Guests: But I would just say that that's not something unique to religious communities. That's something, as I said, with this example of knowledge of the external world, it's something that's generally true of most people, that most people don't devote a lot of time asking fundamental philosophical questions

0:18:04 Thomas: That's fair. Fair answer. Is there anything you'd want to comment on the atheist side of that equation in terms of philosophy of religion?

0:18:10 Guests: I'll just add into that earlier question. Can do philosophy about anything. Philosophy, it has been said, is simply thinking hard. Of course, etymologically, philosophy is the love of wisdom. It's gaining knowledge about different subject matters. There are disciplines of philosophy that focus on the nature of aesthetics, the nature of ethics, the nature of history, the nature of politics, the nature of economics, the nature of science. You can do philosophy in epistemology, metaphysics, or what's foundational in reality. I think to say all of those are fine, but we can't do philosophy when it comes to religious beliefs and religious practices, that just seems to me to be completely arbitrary. And I would suspect anybody who took such a view would probably be driven by some kind of ideological aversion to religion generally that would lead them to take such an anti-intellectual position.

0:19:01 Guests: And I would just add that Justin made an important point there. He said people who develop arguments against philosophy of religion are de facto doing philosophy of religion, because they're engaging in the very subject matter that they are speaking against.

0:19:14 Thomas: Yeah. Well, how about we turn it over to one of the particular arguments you guys wanted to discuss today from the book. What do you think?

0:19:22 Guests: Sounds good to me. So in the book, as Randal mentioned earlier, we both do about three arguments back and forth. I present three and Randal presents three. And one of the arguments that I bring to the table is an argument that I call the problem of the hostility of the universe. So I guess probably the best way to kind of get our intuitions pumping about what this argument is trying to do is to kind of tell a brief story here. So there's the story of Dave and his rich father. Okay, so Dave has this rich father who he's never really understood. He never really had much of a relationship with his father. He didn't know whether his father was indifferent to him, or whether he loved him, or hated him.

0:20:07 Guests: His father was a man of near limitless resources, though. And so let's say that one day Dave finds out that his father built him a home in which to live. So this is a giant skyscraper. Dave is kind of confused by this, but he's got this giant skyscraper that he now owns because his father built him, right? So he enters the skyscraper and Dave realizes that The building is almost entirely hollow. It's like a towering grain silo. The only floor in the entire building is the ground floor. There are no elevators, no ladders. And yet, then Dave discovers that there's a poisonous gas that hovers from the second floor onward. And this is constantly being pumped into the room. That if you go anywhere above the first floor, then you'll likely die.

0:20:56 Guests: So the question that is kind of relevant to the broader question of the argument I'm presenting is, when Dave learns about the gas, about the deadly gas, does he have, you know, what should he think about his father's attitude toward him? Should he think that his father is a loving father that built him a home that just happens to have poisonous gas hovering everywhere except for the first floor? Or does, should he think that his father is indifferent or maybe hostile to him? So, you know, obviously the, or the analogy that I'm trying to draw out here is one to the universe, right?

The universe is a giant place, the vast majority of which is completely hostile to most forms of biologically embodied life that we know of. Um, astronomer Phil Plate puts it this way. He writes, "Of the extremely few places that aren't hard vacuum, most are too hot for chemical reactions to do very well. Molecules get blasted apart before they can even properly form. Of the places that aren't too hot, most are too cold. Reactions happen too slowly to get interesting things to occur in the first place." And then, of course, you have, you just, radiation all over the place, right?

So, just generally speaking, except with the very exception of planet Earth, of a few of the locations on planet Earth, the rest of the entire universe is just completely hostile to most forms of biological life that we know of. Now, my argument is saying, well, this observation should lead us to think that, at the, at best, uh, the universe is indifferent to us, or

0:22:32 Guests: That, the you know, if there's a designer, that the designer of the universe is indifferent to us. So that this rules out the God of kind of classical theism that says God, you know, has some affinity toward us. He's a loving God. He's, he's got moral sensitivity toward us as biological beings. Um, and that this observation just makes more sense on a hypothesis which says that, you know, that atheism is true, that there is no such God. Um, so, so that's the general kind of that I lay out in the book. And, know, Randal and I go back and forth. And I guess, Randell, if you want to raise an objection here.

0:23:04 Thomas: Yeah, let's get Randal's response to that.

0:23:07 Guests: Sure. So first of all, Justin said that in his analogy that the father creates this building for his son. So by analogy, then the argument would be God creates the universe for human beings. And that is certainly not a claim that is entailed by theism, or as Justin said, classical theism. Let me just offer a definition of what we mean by classical theism, so that's actually a modern term. It's a term that was coined by Charles Hartshorne only about 40, 45 years ago, but it refers to this philosophical conception of God which has been deeply influential in the Western philosophical tradition, according to which, by my definition, God is a necessary agent who brought the universe into being.

0:23:55 Guests: He is minimally, perfectly knowledgeable, all-powerful, and all-good. And so Justin, it seems to me, is adding into that, and he created the universe for human beings, beings or for sentient life. And that is simply not entailed by theism or even by Christian theism. Christian theism doesn't commit a person to believing that God created the universe for human beings or even primarily for human being. So when you find that a percentage of the universe, let's say 99.99% of the universe is hostile to human life, that does not provide a defeater for the belief that God created the universe because the Christian or the theist is not committed to believing God created the universe for human beings. So that would be my first response.

0:24:46 Thomas: Certainly have questions, but Justin, in the spirit of the book, feel free to take the next step there if you'd like.

0:24:53 Guests: Sure. So I don't think that the argument, yes, it's true that in the analogy, I explicitly said that the Father created the building for the Son, right? But of course, not all analogies are perfect, and Randal brought out a difference, A relevant difference there. But notice, though, that the that the argument doesn't it doesn't require the premise that the universe was created for humans you know, primarily for humans. Right. What we do know, though, is that humans exist, and so if God exists, he created humans, and they exist in the universe, so there is a real sense in which we are properly in the universe, in that God created an environment, and now we are here, so that's on theism that there must be a sense in which the universe was created, at least in part, with us in mind.

0:25:49 Guests: That's all that's required for this, because once you join that with the additional premise that God is a morally perfect being, you, you're going to have God being morally sensitive to the needs of human beings, and you're also going to want to have a certain kind of connection where, wherein humans come to know God through different, uh, aspects of understanding the universe. So, for example, example, um, atheism says, uh, that there's—there are so many more ways for the universe to be hostile than for the universe to be, uh, to be hospitable to humans, right? Just as a kind of blind luck, there are just so many ways for—for life not to have occurred. Given that, you're going to have the likelihood of human survival of the vast majority of the universe being hostile, being quite high on atheism.

0:26:41 Guests: On theism, though, we have reasons that don't exist on atheism to suggest that the universe is not going to be a complete death trap for humans, mainly the moral sensitivity of God toward moral agents. And so, again, I don't think that this requires the premise that the universe was created as a whole for humans specifically, only that they are one of the reasons for which the universe was created, and that the sensitivity, the moral sensitivity of God would make it the case that the observations we observe are unlikely on theism. So I appreciate that Justin has chastened his analogy somewhat now to say, okay, so human beings were part of God's cosmic plan. My first question to ask, or my first, I guess, observation to make is, great, and he actually provided a third rock out from the sun as a relatively hospitable place in which human beings could come to exist and could relatively thrive.

0:27:37 Guests: The next question is, well, how many other civilizations, how any other life forms are there in the cosmos that God might as well have stewarded them into life, in particular, particular planets surrounding other stars? How many other kinds of exobiological entities that we cannot even imagine might there be in the universe that God has created for those particular areas? I think we have no idea. So I don't think that Justin has any ground on that point to think that the relative hostility of the wider cosmos to human beings is any sort of defeater to the existence of God having created the universe with human beings and whatever other, other life forms there may be in mind. Now I would just add a second distinct point. I can think of some good reasons, even if God did have human beings as one of his central concerns, I can think of some good reason why he would create the universe such as he has created it.

0:28:33 Guests: First of all, I think that the awesomeness of the universe, see there's this concept in theology where you, you can know something of a cause from the effect it produces, and you could argue that you get something of the awesomeness of God, of what theologians would call the transcendence of God, by looking at the universe as his effect. So I think that that would be one reason, maybe through natural theology, that God created the universe the way he did. Another thing I think is quite plausible is that God create the universe in the way he did, with the kind of hostility that it has, precisely so that it can provide tasks for sentient creatures like human beings to go out and explore.

0:29:19 Guests: In the same way that a mountain climber might look at Mount Everest as a great achievement to climb this 29,000-foot mountain, I think we've got a universe of unimaginable vastness. I mean, just in the last couple months, we've gone from understanding there being 200 billion galaxies in the universe, now estimates are two trillion galaxies. For me, that's just more to explore. And that's just a greater manifestation of the awesomeness of the creator. So I simply don't find that there's anything here that provides a defeater for believing God created the universe.

0:29:49 Thomas: Boy, well, I certainly Have questions, but I would probably take us into different areas of argument. I don't know what you want to do. You, Justin, it sounded like you were maybe already ready with a response there.

0:29:59 Guests: Sure. I mean, so there's a number of points made there. One of them being that, you know, perhaps the vastness of the universe and the beauty of the universe, the beauty and the because, you know, this inspires awe in humans, and perhaps this could draw humans closer to God. If he were to exist, this would at least be a reason why God might do this. But, you know, but of course, it's always, of course possible that God, if he were to exist would create a large universe for that reason. But that does, notice how, how that goes nowhere toward explaining the hostility of the artwork, right? So you could have a, you could could have someone painting the roof of the Sistine Chapel to be pretty, but that wouldn't explain if when you went up there and touched it that you would explode or something, right?

0:30:49 Guests: Like it had some kind of death trap involved in it, right. Nothing about the beauty of the universe justifies the danger of the universe. And that's something I think is extremely important to point out. Moreover, if we want to say that theism, you know, that God has created the earth for us, and so that that's okay, we can ignore the fact that it's largely hostile to the rest of the universe, I just don't think that that is true. Given theism, nothing about theism prior to observing our surroundings gives us a distinction between the friendly parts to moral beings of the universe and the hostile parts to moral beings of the universe.

0:31:30 Thomas: You explain what you mean by that a little more? I'm not sure I caught That. So

0:31:30 Guests: Sure, sure. So nothing about theism. So when we talk about theism and we're asking, what should we expect on theism? If we're going, if God's going to create moral agents, there's nothing within the concept of theism which has us thinking that, well, God would maybe just create part of his creation that would not be a complete death trap to, uh, humans, right? Nothing, nothing predicts that. It doesn't predict a distinction between, um, hospitable parts and hostile parts. And so what I'm, what I'm suggesting is that this distinction is after the fact. It's, it's an attempt to explain the observations that we do have, that the vast majority of the universe is hostile, and only very small part is hospitable, and I just, this is completely ad hoc. Theism has no conceptual furniture to make sense of that.

0:32:27 Thomas: You're saying essentially, like, if we were to somehow be able to start from scratch in our minds and, like, not know any of the facts of the universe, and take theism versus naturalism, and you were just trying to think like a priori, okay, what would this look like? There's no reason, just given the, I suppose, tenets or whatever, the facts of, or sorry, the claims of theism, there's no region in there you would expect ahead of time to have all this hostility. Is that the point you're making? And

0:32:56 Guests: I mean, at the very least, if we're going to include as our piece of background knowledge the fact that humans do exist, we'd expect that there would be a place where humans can survive on theism, right? The problem is, sure, sure, sure, but the problem is that you're also having to explain the fact that the vast majority of God's creation is completely a death trap to humans. That's a distinction that theism cannot make sense of without ad hoc issues here. Well, no, but theism simply has no implication for what ratio of the universe should be life permitting or hospitable or life not permitting are inhospitable to human beings. Theism simply underdetermines that question completely. The real issue then is, what are God's purposes in creating?

0:33:43 Guests: I mean, it's the same thing if you want to look at, well, what kind of environment would a loving father, to come back to the original illustration, and assuming God, we can think of him for the purposes of analogy as a loving Father, what kind of environment would he give his children to live in, even if he had some particular concern for those children. You could say, well, he would give them a nursery and it'd be all soft with baby powder and bumper pads. But what if he wants them to grow up and develop particular kinds of virtues? Well, then he might well put them in an environment that looks a lot more like a boot camp, where there's a lot more rigor to be expanded and virtues to be developed, simply in living in that environment. So that would be the first thing I would say is it really depends on the intentions of the deity, and you simply can't read that off of the definition of classical theism.

0:34:36 Guests: Second thing I would say is, as I've already pointed out, human beings are but one of the types of creatures that God has populated his universe with. So to simply say, well, why would he make it so inhospitable for human beings, I think keeps coming back to an assumption that somehow human beings were the primary or central reason God created the cosmos. And I just don't think, well, I know that theism and Christian theism are not committed to that claim. So one of the problems here, I think, is if we're going to empty theism of all of its predictive content, we run into a different kind of problem. If the reasons for which the universe was created are not available to us, then we're not entitled to posit theism as a serious explanation for our observations at all. If you know, at that that point, we're still left with the fact that atheism does predict the hostility because it's utterly indifferent to biological beings.

0:35:27 Guests: So, I mean, if we want to seed that we are completely in the dark as to what we should observe, what the kind of intentions that God might have under theism, then this is just something that's better explained on atheism because atheism does have some content there. Atheism does bring with it an expectation of hostility. Mystery is the opposite of explanation. Moreover, if we do want to kind of perhaps, in your view, perhaps to step beyond what theism might say and to start thinking and positing reasons why God might do this, we need not only to posit a reason other than humans for creating the universe, we also need to posit reason for thinking that that reason entails hostility.

0:36:13 Guests: And I'm sorry, I can't think of any reason that would both explain the hostility that God couldn't, you know, in his omnipotence, achieve through an end that wouldn't make the universe a death trap. So, for example, you talk about the goods of exploring or of learning things, right? Right? We can always, you know, we might make it the case that we develop moral character of our children by putting them through stressful moments or something like this. Um, that's all well and good to pose these kinds of intellectual challenges. Uh, but none of that requires 99.999% of the universe being completely hostile to life. So on the one hand, if we want to say We cannot, we don't know what reason God created the universe for, fine, but the explanation game is still one way on that end. Moreover, if we're going to posit an explanation, we need to show why omnipotence couldn't achieve that through some other way other than a large death trap.

0:37:16 Thomas: Can I just tack on to that just because I'm dying to get something in here, but I'm trying to leave it to you guys. Just a small thing, like also just the amount of empty space. I mean, it's one thing to say, sure, maybe there will be some exploration, built character, that kind of thing, but that we're never going to be able to get anywhere near a relevant percentage of the universe explored. It's just too big. It's too vast. It's too empty. So maybe a little bit of space might make sense or something, but there's just so much vast, empty, nothing space in the universe. It seems incredible to me. But with that, I'll throw it back to Randal if you want to respond to this.

0:37:19 Guests: Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, I would say it's there's actually a lot of dark matter. It's not nearly as empty as we often think it is. I think, as well, Thomas, that the the way you've described that assumes, again, I think, a sort of anthropocentrism, or this idea that human beings are somehow at the center, that if we can't get out and explore a particular galaxy that is 200 million light years away, well, then what's the point of its being there? And I think that that's falling into this trap of thinking somehow theism is committed to anthropocentricism. And I've come back, so a couple things I'd flag in the way Justin describes the problem, as he puts it, is referring to it as hostility and referring to it as a death trap, which I think are rhetorically loaded terms, which don't necessarily illuminate.

0:38:41 Guests: I think a more neutral way to put the state of affairs is that a large percentage of the universe is not life permitting for human beings or for other carbon-based life as we know it. But I just don't see that as being a particular issue unless we would expect the creator, if there is a creator, to create a universe that is largely hospitable to carbon-based and human life. And I just don't think Justin has shown that. Let me just give an illustration of how I think evidentially Justin's argument works, and why, even if I concede that much, I don't it as being particularly strong. So let's say that the theist and atheist are analogous to two people debating, to two siblings debating whether their dad came home during the day.

0:39:29 Guests: And the one sibling says dad didn't come home during the day. So he parallels the atheist who said dad was never here. And the reason he gives is that there are no muddy footprints on the front step. Okay, that's that's a decent argument, because you would expect muddy footprints on the foot, on the front step, if dad had come home, he argues. But then the other person who says they think dad did come home, they would respond and say, well, but dad also often comes in the side of the house, and dad often comes on the back of the house. So the fact that there are not footprints in the front, it may be right to say you would expect that there were no footprints if dad didn't come home. But it's also consistent to say there would be no footprints of dad did come home, because he could have come in the inside of the bag.

0:40:14 Guests: He doesn't have to come in the front. And that's where I'm at, that I would say, true, you might argue you'd expect a largely inhospitable universe if there was no God, but that doesn't mean you would expect a larger life-permitting universe if there was a God. And thus, I don't think that Justin's argument provides very much support at all, even if it is successful for believing atheism. So, Randal, one question. Can you posit any plausible reason for creating the universe that God might have could not be achieved without having 99.999% of the universe? Because, I mean, what seems to be your point here is that, you are not the reason for creating the universe, right? Perhaps there's these other reasons out here.

0:41:00 Guests: I mean, if that's going to be a plausible route, I think that we are at least owed some kind of reason for the universe that is such a great good, but yet somehow entails the utter hostility of most of the universe. Can you think of any plausible reason that would meet those conditions? I think that you're presenting a false expectation that there's something problematic intellectually with the concept of God creating a universe that is largely not permitting to carbon-based life. And I simply don't accept that as an assumption at the outset. I don't see a problem here. I only see a problem if you're assuming that God would create the universe largely for human beings and perhaps other carbon-based life and want to give us the maximal space in order to stretch our legs within the universe.

0:41:51 Guests: And I don't accept that. So I simply don't see a problem. I don't see that there's anything I have to explain as to why God didn't do it another way. Well, presumably you have at least some reason why this hostility would be there, right? Right? Presumably, I forget the argument for a second. We are left with the fact that the vast majority of the universe is hostile. Does theism have any reason to expect that particular observation? Forget humans, forget all this stuff. Is there any reason to think that the universe would be utterly hostile, the vast majority of it, to biological beings? Is there anything within theism that would predict that? No, I think, as I said with my illustration of Dad coming home, I think theism completely underdetermines that issue. It underdetermines it? Underdetermines it, yes. So if you're trying to present an objection to theism, I don't think it's working as an objection, because there's no reason for the theist to expect at the outset that God would create a largely life-permitting universe.

0:42:45 Guests: Do you think that there's any reason on theism that does not exist on atheism that would lead us to be slightly surprised about the hostility of the universe? I'm not surprised about the hostility of the universe, because theism does not include the assumption that God created the universe largely for human beings, first of all. But also, as I've already noted, in part of my background knowledge, I'm aware of the virtue-building value of facing challenges. I gave a quick analogy earlier of a boot camp. And I think that you could certainly look at space exploration as the ultimate boot camp of exploration. I can see human beings individually and collectively as a species gaining virtue in the way Neil Armstrong said, one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

0:43:35 Guests: Going out and exploring a universe that is largely not permitting for human beings, I see great goods coming out of that. So it doesn't surprise me at all that I find those features in the universe. Yeah, I guess I see a huge moral difference between setting before your child an intellectual challenge or a technical challenge, and creating the vast majority of the universe to be largely a detriment to their life. I mean, those seem like they don't match these analogies that we're using here. Well, is it just a subjective intuition that it seems they don't match, or do you have a reason? Well, I mean, it's it's simply not an intellectual challenge, right?

0:44:22 Guests: So for example, is it an issue of scale? Is it issue of scale that the universe is just so vast and so hostile that it becomes let me try to put it this way. Let me let's say that, uh you know, a family in the basement of their home is is where the kids generally play, right? Uh Let's say that the the basement of the home has a fairly small area for the kids' playpen and all this stuff, but the rest of the the basement uh is for other activities. Let's say that the father of the family likes playing with power tools, and so there's all these power tools all over the basement, uh vast majority of the basement's full of incredibly dangerous things to children, um, but, you know, can't complain to the parents because they have a small playpen in the corner, right? So long as the kids stay within their boundaries, they're going to be all right.

0:45:10 Guests: Does that sound like a responsible parent to you? It's a nice analogy. It's also, I think, a polemically loaded analogy. So you're giving this illustration of, you're given an illustration of a couple of children locked into a little playpen. I mean, first of all, I don't think planet earth is exactly a little playpen and I agree, but I don't think that helps your point. Well, you have an issue. Then you have the picture of the father sort of leaving power tools around. He's got the bandsaw here and other tools over here, and he's sort of not watching them. I mean, I understand the polemical purpose of that illustration, but I don't think that, and you'd say, well, all sorts of things. You'd say that a father has obligations to watch over and steward his children children and to protect them from all sorts of dangers.

0:45:59 Guests: The question is, in the analogy, whether it is appropriate to describe God acting in the exact same role as the parent. And of course, the first initial problem there is that God is over all creation and has innumerable relationships with whatever sentient life there may be out there. It's not just about God and the human species. So, I mean, that's right there, an initial problem. Okay, so are you advocating for the plausibility of other sentient beings on other planets, then, and that this is a kind of theodicy here? Oh, well, Christian theism has nothing to say about that. I mean, you have medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas speculated that there may be innumerable alien civilizations. Sure, sure. But don't you think that positing those as a way to try and, you increase the probability of this hostility on theism, don't you think, that that's ad hoc?

0:46:50 Guests: I mean, aren't we getting to the point where you're just positing more and more details, whereas atheism, you know, it doesn't really have much of a problem making sense of the vast majority of an indifferent universe? Yeah, I come back to, you go ahead. I'm just saying it seems like we're not, we're not only getting into explanatory, explanatory differences here, but we're getting into theoretical concerns where the simplicity of these theories is now increasing on one side while it's largely stayed the same on the other side. I'm sorry, that not the simplicity, the complexity of your theory seems to be increasing. Yeah, so I think it maybe would help to come back to the illustration I gave of how I think this is how your argument is functioning. That so your argument, again, for the two children arguing whether the parent came home, the father came home in the afternoon, and the one says, look, there are no muddy footprints.

0:47:43 Guests: If he had come home, we would expect muddy footprints, and then the other child says, the fact that there are nobody footprints on the front step is not an argument that he didn't come home because he could have come in the back way or the side, because we know he also comes in those ways, or that he may at least come in those those ways. And what I'm saying, and that analogically, is, uh, the front step, the parent coming home on the front step, is analogous to a universe created just for human beings or primarily for human beings. But the back step and the side are also the indeterminate possibility that God may have created the universe for any number of purposes beyond simply the flourishing of human beings. So, And So,

0:48:23 Thomas: For that to work, You've also got to say why that side door equivalent entails that the vast percentage of the universe would be hostile, because you could just have another planet or something or another area of our planet or anything, and space could be completely non-hostile to us. It could be not filled with radiation, not, you know, way, way too cold. It's like you're using this side door to say, oh, here's easy other explanation. But I don't, I think Justin challenged you earlier and you didn't want to provide any sort of plausible explanation why there could be also more life, but also that that would entail the universe having to be hostile to us.

0:49:04 Guests: Yeah, the side and the back, those are illustrations of the fact that there are all sorts of reasons beyond human beings having a hospitable place to live that God could have created the universe. So the fact that we find the universe lacking the feature of largely being a hospitable place for human beings to live is not an argument against God having created the universe. So, I'm okay, I, I'm actually really curious about this father coming home analogy, because I actually think you're wrong about it. So let's say that there's three entrances into a home, and we don't know whether or not there's mud on any of these entrances. We're completely agnostic about it, right? But then let's see, we discover that entrance A does not have footprints. Are you telling me that that is of no evidential value when it comes to a father coming home?

0:49:53 Guests: I mean, if we assume that there is an equal probability that all three of those entrances share equal probability, then the fact that there is no footmarks on entrance A seems to me quite obviously of evidential value to that question. Yeah, no, that's correct. Maybe I'm missing the inference. I'm sorry. Yeah. I didn't say it was of no evidential value. What I'd said earlier was that even if your argument succeeds, it is of comparatively weak evidential volume.

So for example, if you have the two children and all they have to go on is that there are no footprints on the front step, that is inadequate to form a belief about whether the parent came home or not. So simply based on that evidence, you ought to be agnostic about it. And so what I'm saying is, I agree, I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. So, so what I'm seeing is that even if your argument succeeds, it doesn't provide adequate evidence for atheism.

Now you could, of course, you could combine that as a cumulative argument with some additional evidence, like maybe you had, you, you have testimony that dad was at in the office all afternoon.

0:50:53 Guests: And you could build a cumulative case that he never came home, but you wouldn't have adequate evidence, even if that argument is successful, to believe that he didn't come home. And that's the simple point I'm making. Sure. I have no problem with that. I was never arguing, neither here nor in the book, that this argument was sufficient to bring one to atheism. I'm only saying that this is a piece of evidence for atheism, and that, of course, we need to look, look at all other possible evidences to weigh them properly and to figure out where we would want to end up. Um, nevertheless, I think it's a significant piece of evidence. You, you obviously, you disagree, but I think it's still quite obviously evidence. Sure.

0:51:34 Thomas: Can I just ask you, Randal, and we probably need to start bringing it to a close, but I'm really wondering, how does your explanation for this, how is it fundamentally different from God works in mysterious ways? You know, because it sounds like there's nothing, it really is starting to sound like there are no facts about our universe that you couldn't just say, well, we don't know. He could have made it for somebody else. Whereas, with the analogy of the father coming home, you've got a very tangible set of expectations. Theoretically, we can go look look at all three of the passages, there's no mud, and we can say, well, he hasn't come home. But you haven't given us that in this argument. There's always some other possible reason that we don't know of. So how is that different from just always being able to say, I don't know, God probably has some reason.

0:51:40 Guests: The The theists is playing the mystery card again, that's what's going on, right?

0:52:30 Thomas: I'm wondering how it's different in this case.

0:52:31 Guests: Yeah. Sure, sure, so that's a good, I'm glad you stated it like that. And, and um, so let's come, come back, first of all, I think people have to appreciate what has been going on here. In this whole conversation, what Justin has been trying to do is to present a reason, some line of evidence to be less confident in the truth of theism or to think theism is false. And what I'm trying to do is undercut that evidence. So what philosophers would call an undercutting defeater, remove the grounds to think that Justin has provided an adequate line of evidenced to substantially increase the plausibility of atheism. And what I've tried to do, first of all, is I pointed out that his objection is really tuned not to classical theism, but I believe to classical theism plus a commitment to anthropocentrism, that human beings are somehow to God's plan, that we're primary in his perspective or his intention to create the universe.

0:53:28 Guests: And I said a theist is not committed to that. I've also provided at least two reasons. So these were were not simply playing the mystery card, but two substantial reasons, possible goods, to explain why God would create a universe that is largely not life-permitting or is largely life-prohibiting. And the first one I said was the beauty of the universe and its testimony as an effect back to the creator, the awesome creator, and testimony to his transcendence, etc. Second point I made, I think a really important one, is the goods that come about as sentient creatures undertake undertake the challenge of exploring that universe, which I think is a very important good. So this is not simply playing the mystery card. This is actually looking at real tangible goods that we can see occurring in other areas, like the virtue of a person climbing Mount Everest and undertaking that enormous task, but then having the value and virtue and character development of having achieved that great task.

0:54:26 Guests: Finally, let me just come back to the point on mystery, and then, then I'll be quiet. So mystery cards, so to speak, are not always illegitimate. The issue is, should we expect to have sufficient knowledge of the intentions of a person, in this case God, such that if that person's apparently acting doesn't conform to those intentions, it provides a defeater to the claim that they in fact did act? I know that's kind of maybe hard to understand, but the point I'm making then is, do we have adequate knowledge as human beings about all the reasons God would have to create, such that if he didn't match up those expectations, we would have a reason to believe he did not create? And I've been arguing, I don't think that is the case. I think that God could have innumerable reasons. I mean, go back to the house illustration, there could be 20 entries to the house apart from the front door.

0:55:14 Guests: We simply don't know. And I mean that's simply a fact of human ignorance. I don't think it's playing the mystery card in an illegitimate way. I I think it's simply recognizing human limitation. I think that's certainly fair. I think, you know, as you said, I mean, I think there is an aspect of mystery to your response. But as you just noted, you did provide two reasons, mainly beauty and the challenges from a hostile universe that would be presented to humans. My only problem there is that neither beauty nor setting before humans these challenges seems to explain the hostility. I think is that those two things could be achieved in ways that don't require a mostly hostile universe. But, you know, obviously you disagree on that.

0:55:56 Thomas: Yeah, well I think we're going back and forth at this point.

0:55:59 Guests: Been. I'll tell you this. It's been a great conversation. So thanks a lot for having us.

0:56:00 Thomas: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Thanks both of you for coming on. It's been a really interesting conversation. There's so much to try to do. I can't believe how fast the time went by, because all the other questions I have kind of of branch out into like, well, why do we accept classical theism, and how are we, you know, it's just, I would love to talk about that, like why we're allowed to use just some broad classic version of theism to argue against, when really it seems like when we're talking about God's desires and stuff, we have to start, you know, postulating what he actually would want to accomplish. But anyway, topic for another show or something. The book, yeah, yeah. The book of course, once again, is an atheist and a Christian walk into a bar talking about God, the universe, and everything. Of course, I'll have a link in the show notes to it. Anything you guys would like to make sure we have said before we call it a show here?

0:56:37 Guests: Yeah, that'S a great one.

0:56:53 Guests: I'll just end with the point on which we began, which is the importance of having friendly, ironic disagreements on really important issues. So I think Justin and I disagree on some pretty big issues, but we can still be friends at the end of the day. And we can go out and have a beer or a coffee together. And I think that's just an important thing for all of us to strive for. Absolutely. And obviously, I would second at that uh those comments by Randal, um, and uh, when it comes to anybody looking uh up any of the stuff that we're doing, or you can find Randal Rauser's blog at randalrauser.com, and uh and then my YouTube channel is realatheology.com. Thanks a lot for having us on, Thomas. Yeah.

0:57:34 Thomas: No problem. It was a pleasure. Thank you. That's Randal Rauser and Justin Schieber. Excellent stuff.

0:58:04 Thomas: All right. That's it for today's show. Thanks so much for listening. And thank you to everyone who supports me over on patreon.com/seriouspod. Uh, if you're unable to do that, uh, that, okay. But I would just ask that maybe you spread the word about the show, share it on social media. Uh if there's something you particularly like, if there is an episode you like it, share share it around. Let's try to get this thing a further listenership and that benefits everybody. So that's all I have for today. That was a really interesting discussion. I definitely have some thoughts on that whole question, but it's already an hour. So maybe I can incorporate them into Thursday's show or who knows, maybe I'll find some venue for them. But very interesting stuff. And I can't wait for Thursday's episode and I'll just have to see you guys then.