Debate: Does God Exist? # 9

CARM

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

How do you know the content of God is inherent in people, since the majority of people over the world believe in God?

00:06

Well, that's something we could empirically test, but it does seem to be that when someone has a near -death experience, which is created by that famous chemistry of the brain that you're talking about, that they see the tunnel of light and sun because of chemicals, but they see at the end of the tunnel somebody consistent with their own religious beliefs.

00:25

You don't see a good Catholic seeing Krishna or Zeus at the end of the tunnel, nor do you see someone in Islam seeing

00:34

Jesus at the end of the tunnel of light. They have been conditioned and they learn, and it's programmed into them from the earliest time.

00:44

But you go find a newborn baby and ask him what he thinks about your teleological principles, ask him things about the theodicy of God, and see just what they have to say.

00:55

I guess that would work for asking if he's an atheist also, he wouldn't deny or affirm that, would he?

01:02

Assumption is nothing more than assumption. This question is for Edwin. You said earlier the rules of logic are dependent on the human mind.

01:09

Is that correct? All right. The rules of logic are dependent on the human mind. Would it cease to exist if the human mind ceases to exist, or never existed?

01:17

For example, 10 billion years ago, if we were to assume evolution is true, before the human mind even existed, did the immaterial concept of 2 exist, or would 2 plus 2 exist, or 2 plus 2 equals 4 exist, absent of the human mind?

01:34

If a man speaks in the forest and there's no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?

01:44

Please understand that the question you read and the words you used, the letters you formed, were all created through a process of education.

01:56

If you had lived some 3 or 4 thousand years ago, your question might have been written in cuneiform on clay tablets.

02:05

Of course these things evolve. Of course the concepts evolve. That's how it works.

02:13

That's why in the Bible they thought that a bat was a bird. Biologists learn differently.

02:22

I don't understand what the biblical classification in biology has to do with the existence of logical absolutes and saying that they evolved or not.

02:30

They didn't evolve. Come on. Give me some transitional evolutionary forms of logic. It doesn't work.

02:35

It's conceptual. I've already addressed the issue of human brain chemistry. I've already addressed the issue that that cannot be it.

02:40

And it can't be it because people are contradictory. It just cannot be that human minds are the authors of logic.

02:46

It just doesn't work. Study some good philosophy on this stuff. Just study and you'll find out.

02:51

It does not work for a whole bunch of reasons. I don't have much time to go into them all. Next question. Mr.

02:57

Slate, may I have a very short point of clarification first? Sure. You present God as the author of the axioms of logic, yes?

03:03

In a sense, yes. Authorship is a difficult thing. It's a necessary existence because of the mind of God.

03:09

There was not a time when logic did not exist because God never not existed.

03:16

Fair enough. In that case, I have to ask, which logic? We have discovered other self -consistent and applicable logics.

03:21

For example, trivalent logic, which posits a third truth value. Which logic? Trivalent logic.

03:27

Trivalent, okay. Trivalent, fair enough, which we can call perhaps, which incidentally in response to your question about language -specific logics is used by the

03:36

Aymara language spoken in South America. We've also discovered quantum logic, which applies in particle physics because we found that I believe the law of syllogism does not apply at the subatomic level.

03:47

So you want to go to quantum physics, which I understand anybody who says they understand it anyway doesn't really understand it.

03:53

So you want to go to that area, a great unknown, to explain another unknown? I don't think that's what you want to do.

03:58

No, but my point is that clearly, if not all axioms can be true in all circumstances, which by the existence of these other logics they cannot, then some axioms must have been written by humans.

04:09

So couldn't they all have been written by humans? We'd have to discuss which axioms, and I didn't mention any other than the law of identity, the law of non -contradiction, and the law of excluded middle.

04:18

Now these are the ones that I have mentioned as being known. Now there are debates on what more intricate laws of logic really are.

04:25

But in order to do that, they have to use logic. To do that, it presupposes validity.

04:32

Trivalent logic outright rejects the law of the excluded middle. It does? How so? Third truth value.

04:39

So give me a logical example of that. I can't. We use observational logic, which is what the logic that God invented is based on.

04:46

So you cannot give me an example that violates the law of excluded middle, but yet it's not valid? But I could invent another self -consistent and applicable logic for that situation.

04:53

So then you can invent it, and I can invent something that's contrary to that, which is true? They're both true.

04:58

Okay, they cannot both be true if they contradict each other. According to your logic, which is what we're discussing anyway.

05:04

Okay, you know what? You're wearing a blue shirt that really demonstrates you're feminine.

05:10

Now is that true? If I said you had a blue shirt that demonstrates you're feminine, that's not a true statement, is it?

05:18

I'm not being logical because I'm not being accurate. I'm not comporting with reality. You're obviously a man, and you're nothing feminine about you that I can see, and you have a green shirt on.

05:25

Why would you insist that in order to demonstrate, I'm assuming you're on the atheistic side, that your atheism must be validated by trying to say something can't be logical?

05:36

And so what you're doing is saying, I deny that logic is really what it is. That's how I can hold my atheism.

05:42

Are you talking about that woman in the red shirt? There's a woman in a red shirt? Never mind.

05:49

Now a point of clarification from me. I'm not questioning the existence of possible logics. I'm pointing out there are multiple logics.

05:56

There are? Yes. And are they all valid? In different circumstances. In different ways. My point is that the observational logic which we have assembled, the law of the excluded middle, the law of the two truth values.

06:08

I asked you to demonstrate to me how the law of the excluded middle is non -valid. It is. Okay, so it's valid.

06:15

May I finish, please? Pretty please. All right, wrap it up quickly. My point is that if there can be multiple logics, then logic is not transcendental.

06:26

If there can be is a proposition. There can be, because there are. That you would have to demonstrate using logic as being true.

06:32

It's been demonstrated. Really? By the existence of, for example, quantum logic which holds true absolutely in subatomic areas.

06:38

And I have read some stuff on this. And what I understand is that there are a lot of scientists who don't say what you are implying that quantum physics is really saying.

06:47

They're saying that there has to be an underlying cause for the events that occur. Because it's logically impossible that something occur for no reason.

06:56

Unless you want to, well, I could make it. All right, fair enough. Edwin, any response to that? Oh, yeah, yeah.

07:02

Briefly, things could occur for reasons, Matt, that you don't understand. Can you make room for that possibility?

07:08

For reasons you don't have any idea. Things like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and other things.

07:15

Just for openers. How do you know that God never did not exist?

07:22

How could you possibly know that? Were you there? I mean, how do you know that,

07:27

Matt? Thank you. That's a good question. Actually, there's a difference between knowing and believing. And we certainly will make judgments based upon evidence and draw logical conclusions.

07:37

And I have presented the issue of logic in its own existence to demonstrate the existence of a transcendent mind.

07:42

I'm going to conclude out of that that He has always been. I'm sorry, but I thought you were arguing all along that we use logic to prove that God did exist, not the other way around.

07:53

Sorry, I got confused on that. I don't know a lot of the big words that have been thrown around tonight. I don't either.

07:59

But if you believe them, that's cool. But my question is actually directed towards you.

08:05

You haven't gotten very many questions, so I figured I'd ask you. No, I'm going to feel lonely. Why is it that logical truths are universal when it's instilled with us before we even know language?

08:16

If you walk out into the rain, you're wet, whether you understand it or not. You don't know, why am I wet? You don't know what the word for wet is.

08:23

All it is is that you are wet because you're in the rain. That's a logical conclusion, I believe. I don't know.

08:29

Would you experience it the same way if you were a duck? Well, wetness remains wetness whether I believe it or not.

08:35

The truth remains the truth whether popular opinion supports it or not. Okay, and Quintus Veritas, what is truth?

08:43

Pilate too, the trial of Jesus. What is the truth you're talking about that remains the truth?

08:49

At the beginning of time, when water was created, whenever the molecules came together and everything, it was water, whether we called it water or not.

08:58

The same it is today, tomorrow, and a hundred years from now. I think that's a logical conclusion to believe that when water is on something, it is wet.

09:06

Have you ever heated water to 225 degrees? It becomes steam though.

09:13

Have you ever reduced it to below zero centigrade? Have you ever taken water and subjected it to hydrolysis, breaking it into oxygen and hydrogen?

09:27

My point is, sir, is that water exists no matter what form it is in. And whether you live in China and speak

09:34

Chinese or you live in Mexico and speak Spanish or you live here, water exists.

09:39

And you see some correlation between that assumed fact and the fact that, in your view, the rules of logic are the same everywhere, right?

09:48

Well, I'm just saying if people made up logic, how come no matter where you're at, no matter what language you speak, wetness is the same?

10:00

It's just the example. And I'm not trying to focus on the wet. I'm trying to focus on the fact that throughout all of time, if you go out in the rain, you become wet.

10:08

No matter who made that up, that's just what it is. It's not something that humans made up.

10:15

Okay, well, that may be true, but it's not true of logic. Wetness and logic are two different things.

10:22

It's because that's an example. But it's not a valid example. So when you go out in the rain, you don't get wet if it lands on you?

10:30

Well, because logic is not water. That's why. Let me interrupt here.

10:36

Okay, and I don't want to go back and forth on this. Do you want to get in on this and respond? Okay. Wetness is a necessary state of water.

10:43

And it's a universal truth that things get wet when water is applied to them. The universal truth didn't evolve.

10:49

That's my point. I'm sorry. I'm not very good at saying it. It's okay. I had to listen. It's okay. You're not all wet.