Jonathan Pageau PRESSED By Atheist Philosopher | Pastor Reacts

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Why wouldn't one recognize the truth claims of one's own religion as,

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I don't know, not epistemically sound? It's not just like I just have these arbitrary truth claims. I believe in certain things because they offer a world in which

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I exist. I want this Christian to do a great job. I just, I don't think he's communicating clearly and directly.

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Now I realize I should have looked up who Jonathan Pageau is before I made this reaction. This is one of those conversations where I actually now feel stupid.

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Boy, after this, I'm going to need to watch The Three Stooges or something just to clean the palate.

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You know what I mean? Jonathan Pageau is pressed by atheist philosopher

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Peter Boghossian in a recent video. Pageau agreed to be questioned about his Christian beliefs. And if you know

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Boghossian, he's adept at challenging believers to change their mind. So what happens? How does Pageau do in this exchange?

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Will Boghossian change his mind? Let's find out. If you're brand new here, welcome. My name is Nate Sala, and this is Wise Disciple, where I'm helping you become the effective

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Go to logos .com forward slash wise disciple. We got some really super cool discounts running right now, including a free book of the month.

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The link for that is below. When I think about religion, I think about the reference to it has truth claims.

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Sports teams don't have truth claims. And so if you recognize the truth or not you, if one recognizes the truth claims of other religions is silly and one recognizes the trappings behind that, then it's unclear to me why, if one is reasoning honestly, why wouldn't one recognize the truth claims of one's own religion as,

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I don't know, not epistemically sound. So so I'm grateful for how careful

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Boghossian is being here. I'm also grateful because I can track his line of thinking more than I can with Pajos, who just got done saying something rather difficult to follow.

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So by the way, I'm going to leave a link for the full video below. If you want to take a look, I encourage you to do that. So having said all that,

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Boghossian is revealing a bit of his operating assumptions because the way that he's framing this question is that religion is merely a series of truth claims.

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That's precisely not true. Christianity, which is all that I'm going to speak for, because I know that they're talking about religions, does not merely contain a series of truth claims.

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It also contains opportunities to place faith or trust in various claims. It also contains ways of living and conduct.

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So there are multiple things going on in Christianity such that you cannot reduce it down to mere truth claims.

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And these various categories, they're not the same thing. But I predict that Boghossian is going to treat them as if they are, and that's going to lead to some confusion unless Paggio nips this in the bud.

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So let's see what happens. So I guess I'm not buying the binding thing because there has to be, like Hannah Arendt talks about how to have an ideology means you must believe it's true, right?

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I mean, there's a truth component to that in which there's not to a sports team. You adjudicate those, you know, like I know nothing about sports, but...

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There is a sport, there is a truth claim that in sports, what I mean, it's a little different, but it's, you have to accept the identity and the rules of the sport.

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You actually have to accept those as being true relative to the sport. They're not true in an absolute sense, but they're true relative to the sport.

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Those are conventions. Everybody knows that those are arbitrary conventions and they,

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I wish I knew more about sports. I could, you know, give a soccer... They're not completely arbitrary conventions.

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They have a pattern. No, I mean, you can't bring a chainsaw into a boxing match, right? But those rules... Also, you wouldn't make a sport of someone,

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I don't know, someone like rubbing the side of a table for two hours. Like there are certain things that capture human attention that are objective and that you can't, you can't actually...

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There's a scale, there's a scale of relevance in sport, but all sports have aspects in common which makes them sport that are true.

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Like if not, then you don't care about them, right? Like I said, you can make a sport out of something completely ridiculous that nobody would actually love.

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But if you make a sport that has the right amount of excellence and competition, there's a way to know who's winning. There's all of these things that are necessary for a sport to exist.

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So there's variability, but there's still a bound, there's a boundary to variability. So you could say the same. Right. Yeah.

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So let's say you could say... So I'm a Christian. I want to be careful not to like freak people out. So I'm going to be upfront.

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I'm not familiar with Paggio. I suppose he's a type of smart that is perhaps more artistic or something.

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I mean, I know a little bit, right? I know that he's friends with Jordan Peterson. Isn't he also an accomplished illustrator or something?

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Now I realize I should have looked up who Jonathan Paggio is before I made this reaction.

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So in other words, I'm going to try to be charitable here with Paggio because I don't understand what the point is that he's trying to make.

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And I don't see why it's important to spend so much time rounding out the religion and sports analogy when the crux of Boghossian's question was about religious truth claims.

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You know what I mean? I mean, hopefully he'll be able to deal with the issue because like I said, there was an incorrect framing of the question that must be dealt with.

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Well, like I am very much a Christian. What are they going to be freaked out about? Because I'm going to do something that might freak out some of the

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Christians. In order to bind yourself at the highest level, right?

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The way that unites the most elements together, there's a certain amount of variability which is possible, but that amount of variability is limited to the fact that we're binding ourselves to the highest thing.

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So like you said, binding yourself to a sport and binding yourself to the infinite source of all things that gives you a mode of being that encompasses all other modes of being, which is what religion tends to do because it offers identity, it offers morality, it offers ways to come together in marriage, in death, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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That it also has a type of variability. So like a good example would be the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is actually an impossible religion.

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Like technically it's an impossible religion because it doesn't have the characteristics necessary to bind you to something real.

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But Islam is sufficiently, like I know I disagree with some of the tenets of Islam, it's sufficiently structured so that it can do that.

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And if someone said, well, replace it with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, then it wouldn't exist as a religion. So I guess, again, trying to be fair to Paggio, he's saying what

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I just said, that you cannot merely reduce religion down to truth claims because there's more going on there.

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There's other categories to consider. And so I suppose he's just saying it in his own way. So if that's the case, it would just be helpful if he was more clear, just in my opinion.

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But if he's making an entirely different point altogether, I wish that he would just deal with the framing of Boghossian's question.

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So let's see what happens. It looks like Boghossian's going to try again here. So there's a lot going on in this conversation. So I suggest before we go down or explore other topics, we need to disambiguate some terms, talk about some things.

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So Victor Stein talks about what you're talking about in terms of the commonalities among sports and calls them family resemblances.

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So they're resemblances. You could have a I don't know if you could have a sport for rubbing a table. I guess you could have a sport for anything you wanted to.

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And again, you have ways to adjudicate, you have conventions. But the difference with religion is you're making you're not making truth claims.

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I mean, you're saying that we agree if you get the again, I'm just making this up. If you kick the ball through this net or whatever, you throw the ball in this net at a certain number of feet, you get two points.

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And then I can't remember what it is. I think it's three points in basketball. Who the hell? I have no idea. No big deal. OK, so something like that.

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But but so this is why Boghossian is so affable. And, you know,

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I don't want to call this out as if to say that this is all manipulation. I take this to be his real personality.

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That is, he genuinely enjoys engaging other people who do not agree with him. And that is actually a huge plus in his favor.

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That's how he can challenge others to think more critically. It's because he couches his challenges in various monologues that help to reveal his internal thought process.

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And that helps his interlocutor to feel more comfortable with him before Boghossian drops another question on him.

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By the way, that is exactly what I do in conversations as well. This is precisely what I think all of us should do.

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That is, if we want to engage someone who does not believe like us, let's do some work to maintain a rapport with them while also challenging them.

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And one of the quickest, fastest ways to do that is to say more words and to help your interlocutor understand where you're coming from.

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So good for Boghossian. We're talking about specific things. We're talking about linguistic propositions, so sentences in which communities agree that belief in those is fundamentally constitutive of what it means to belong in the community.

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For example, there being an historical Jesus. Now, I know some people who consider themselves Christians who don't accept the historicity of Jesus.

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I mean, that that's I mean, I couldn't care less what how people saw it. I mean, I really in that sense. So it's not a moral question or even a political question.

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It's in the broader sense. I think if you would ask the overwhelming majority of Christians, they would say to you, yes, you have to accept that Jesus died for your sins and he was crucified, et cetera, which basically

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Muslims don't believe. I don't know many Christians don't believe that they don't know that Muslims don't believe Jesus was crucified.

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But but that's just parenthetical. So the the the differences, the things that bind us, lots of things bind us.

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You can cook a meal and bind us. But that's very different from a truth claim. Right. So what my like, I you're right that there is a truth claim aspect to religion.

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But I do think, honestly, that in the life of the world, that has always been a secondary thing to the participative reality of religion, which is what

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I mean is that even the truth claims, the truth claims, the reason why we find the truth claims important is because of what they offer downstream.

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Right. So there's a downstream thing in the truth. So it's like it's not just like I just have these arbitrary truth claims.

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I believe in certain things because they offer a world in which I exist and that world has characteristics.

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And so the Christian story, for example, of the teaching of Jesus, the death and the resurrection, the cross becomes a model for being.

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And so and then it becomes the structure of our world. It structures our perception, structures our morality.

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It structures our ethics. It structures what we care about. It does all of that downstream from the truth claim.

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Right. And so I understand. So it's like it's so you can have all kinds of arbitrary truth claims. You can say, well, you know, I have a truth claim, which is that Jesus's sandals, you know, were one inch thick.

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And it's like, well, who cares? That doesn't mean anything. It has no reason. But if I say I have a truth claim, which is

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Jesus died and resurrected from the dead, that is because it offers a world that is different from if that wasn't the case.

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And I'm not sure what the point is here. Is he trying to say that Christian, that that the truth claims of Christianity include high stakes, that that if you do not affirm the truth claims of Christianity, that there are serious internal consequences for this?

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I mean, that if that's what he's doing, I can get behind that. But it sounds like what he's actually saying is that it matters less that Christian truth claims are true and more than it provides a benefit or something.

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That that's a, that's a really weird way to, to put it.

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I mean, especially for our Western ears. I mean, again, this just raises a ton of questions where the answers might make sense if you interpret what

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Paggio is saying in one way. But I think this reveals that he's not being very precise with his words.

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And so it leads to lack of clarity, not more. Boy, I, I sure hope the whole discussion isn't like this.

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And that world happens in, like I said, in participation. So you go to church, the church is at the middle of the town.

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It's the highest building. Everybody can see the steeple of the church with the cross above it. And then they all gather there together to manifest their unity.

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They celebrate the things that brings them together. Birth, death, marriages, all of these things happen in light of that, of what the truth claim offers.

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And so a simple example is that let's say in many, many, in most societies before Christianity, there was no need for to say,

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I do, there was absolutely no need to, it's like, you're getting married. It was decided for you. You bring the people there.

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And the woman had absolutely no say in what we're like in the marriage. It's like a man takes a wife and some guy, just, they just decide that that's her and they come together and they get married.

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And there was no need to ask for the willing acceptance of that responsibility of the people. Now Christianity comes offers the cross as an example.

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And now in that frame of willing self -sacrifice, the husband and the wife now in a

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Christian marriage have to say that they are willing to take this other person as their, as their husband or as their, as their bride.

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So it's a little example, but what I mean is that the truth claim is not is it offers a world in which to live.

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And that's the most important, because like I said, who cares about truth claims? Like they're all millions of truth things. I could have that they don't offer.

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They don't offer me anything. Again, I don't know why it's necessary to focus on this particular aspect of the discussion.

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And who knows, like Pajo probably talks about this all the time on his channel. So his audience probably completely understands him and where he's coming from.

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But look at Boghossian like, you know, Pajo like almost broke him just now.

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It would be incredibly helpful if they could speak directly to each other. Because I think Boghossian is asking something incredibly clear, but Pajo is not answering the question clearly.

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And by the way, I'm a Christian and I want him to succeed here, but I'm not even following the point that he's trying to make or, or why he's spending so much time talking about why truth claims are secondary to the benefits of those claims.

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So I wrote down what you said. So it's, the truth game is important because of what it offers.

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Yeah. So you're talking about the consequences of the truth claim. The reason why that truth claim is important, not whether it's true or not.

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That's another question. But the reason why a certain truth claim is important is because of what it offers. But like I said, there are millions of truth things

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I can make, but there's one truth claim. But that was the original question though. I mean, that's where all of this was going was whether or not the truth claims are true.

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Um, so Pajo is driving home a point that Boghossian wasn't even asking about. That's why this is confusing.

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That that will, I don't know, like that will offer me something, right? The truth claim about how to make, you know, how to make a certain type of medicine is more important than the truth claim that there's a, you know, like a half an inch piece of rubber that fell on the ground next to me.

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That's also a truth claim, but it doesn't offer me anything. And so I don't have to posit it in an important place.

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I don't have to lift it up as above others in that way. So, so I'm trying not to import any new words into the conversation.

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So you were saying that one should, and I want to relate this back to the idea of binding to make sure

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I understand you're saying that there are certain truth claims which yield greater binding is, well, let me stop there.

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Is that right? Well, that's necessary. Like in terms of care, first of all, in terms of care person, in terms of attention, certain truth claims necessarily bring about more binding because there are things you care about more than others.

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There's a hierarchy of care in a person in a community or whatever. And so the truth claims of a community are, are binding in care, right?

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So, you know, that's why we claim, that's why we elevate the founding of a nation because that founding of that nation is the reason why we exist as a nation.

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We don't talk about what George Washington ate for breakfast. So, so if something, if the truth, so again,

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I'm repeating this only back to you, make sure I understand. So it's important because of what it offers and the thing that it offers you, would you believe in, even if it didn't offer you anything?

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Should you believe it if it offers you nothing? Well, I wouldn't care about it. It's not that I wouldn't care about it.

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If you said, if you told me, Hey, Jonathan, there's a piece of rubber on the ground in Syria on the corner of these two streets,

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I would say, Oh, Oh, I'm going to forget that now. I'm going to forget that now because you know,

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So remember the original question that Boghossian was asking about centers on the specific truth claims that Christianity makes.

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And I take it that he he's working his way to asking about how confident Paggio is that those claims are actually true because that's just, that's what

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Boghossian does to people. Okay. But Paggio really wants to press home another point about truth claims providing a benefit to the community.

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So, so it's not as important that they're true, but that they first and foremost provide a world as he calls it for Christians.

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But now they're not talking directly to each other. They're they're having two ancillary conversations.

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And I wish Paggio would just be more direct and clear with Boghossian. I mean, even if he wants to say that religion entails more than mere truth claims, then just say that, like, you know what

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I mean? I'm thinking about a lot of things. They're populating my head in the conversation. I'm thinking about this idea of Islam of submission and submitting because it's true, independent of its benefit for you, independent of paradise afterward.

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There's just submission because that's the will of God. And so I'm not, I'm not contesting or repudiating any concept of benefit as you like.

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But it's an interesting, first of all, it's like, it's actually an interesting question because in Islam, we don't say

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God is love. In Christianity, we say God is love. And you know, how can I say this? Like, that might even afford me the possibility of understanding the hierarchy of, of goods that present themselves to me in a different way that a

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Muslim will, will be able to understand. And that will, that will offer a world to me, you know, and that, that world has a shape and we can compare worlds, right?

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We can, we can compare the world of someone who believes, for example, in Zeus, let's say, and what that world looks like and the world of someone who believes in the, the, the monotheistic

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God or the God, the God of the Bible, let's say, or, or et cetera, et cetera. Right. You can also have a world where someone, for example, believes only in reason and you can see what that world for, because we've, we've have an example of it.

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Like we have the enlightenment and we have with that gate and we can see what that does. And, and that's, that's part of this. So it's like there are truth claims that are different than other truth claims in that sense, especially about the highest aspect, because it's a, it's like a, it's an anchor.

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There are truth claims that are different than other truth claims. This is incredibly frustrating.

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I want, I want this Christian to do a great job. I just, I don't think he's communicating clearly and directly.

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Is it just me? Are you following Pajos train of thought at all? Let me know in the comments, because right now

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I'm probably just as confused as Peter Boghossian is at this point. Would you believe something if, are you comfortable with all of your, your

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Christian beliefs? Am I comfortable with all my Christian beliefs? That's an interesting one.

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I would say like most people, there is a hierarchy of comfort with a hierarchy of Christian beliefs.

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Maybe that's a good way to understand it. It's like, because the purpose, like I said, what's, what's when, the reason why

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I'm saying this is that the way that we live in the world is about trust and about where to go mostly, and less about truth claims.

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Right. I believe there's nothing. I think truth games are important. Like I think that they, that they're part of this, but so there are things about Christianity, which

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I see as being absolutely necessary and absolutely a world giving, you know?

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And, and so I do believe them. But as you go down the list of what all kinds of Christians believe, there's certain things which seem either irrelevant to me or kind of shift and shady.

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And then I'm like, eh, you know, either I think it's not interesting or I, or I don't believe it.

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Or I'm like, well, just whatever. And then maybe one day I'll have more, more confidence on this or that, but it doesn't, it doesn't matter that much because like I said,

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I don't think most of our lives are about making sure our truth claims are accurate. Most of our life is about knowing where to go and what to do and how to be.

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That's the thing that's most important. And I'm not, I want to be careful. I'm not saying the truth things aren't important and that making sure things are accurate, isn't important, but it's downstream from the other.

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Cause the one, the one of how to be, where to go, how to, where to look, how to exist. It makes you care about certain truth claims and not care about others.

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And so the truth claims are downstream from the direction you could say. Are you frustrated?

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Who are you identifying more with at the moment? Is it Pasho or Boghossian? Let me know. I'm curious to get your thoughts.

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I'm, I'm definitely sensing that there is a desire on the part of Pasho to not adopt the flawed framework of Boghossian, you know, the way that he's framing the discussion and the way that he's answering or asking the questions.

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And so Pasho is doing some work. It seems to clarify where Boghossian's questions are improperly worded.

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And I would agree with Pasho that the way that Boghossian has framed the questions is too reductive of what Christianity really is.

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The problem is the more Pasho says, you would think to clarify his position, the more confused he's making

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Boghossian. And that's on Pasho, in my opinion, that's not a Boghossian. Boghossian is obviously an atheist and doesn't believe what we believe.

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Yes. Okay. Fair enough. But he's asking some good questions that should set up the Christian to help him understand our position, but that's just not happening.

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And that's amazing. Would you follow a path if you, if it had the binding element to it and you thought it made your life better, but it wasn't true?

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Well, and that's it, right? Because Pasho has spent so much time on driving home the benefits of Christian truth claims.

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He's now pressed on whether or not he thinks the truth claims are actually true. And so now he's either going to have to walk back some of the things that he just said, or he's going to have to say, yes,

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I'll, I'll stick to the beliefs, even if they weren't true. Let's see what happens. Well, it depends if I could know that it wasn't factually true.

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That's a little, that's a more complicated because even the, what is something that is true, but not factually true?

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What does that even mean? I don't, I don't actually true to me is complicated. It's a little complicated because there are different levels of factuality.

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And so the question is always what level of factuality is necessary for you to believe something is true.

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And there, there are certain, and what I mean is that there are forensic descriptions to a police officer.

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Right. And so it's like, here's a fact sheet of all the things that happen at a crime scene. And it's like a super detail and it's whatever. Right. And then there's the, then there's the,

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I think my wife loves me. That I think my wife's love me as a truth claim, but I don't have the forensic.

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I can't access the forensic better. My life, my wife loves me because you, you would be in airing.

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If you said, I think my wife loves me. Yeah. What do you mean? Sorry. Well, no, I trust,

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I trust my life. My wife loves me as opposed to, I think my wife loves me. But I would have made something like, I trust my wife loves me.

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How about that? Well, no, because your feeling of trust, you'd be, you'd, you'd be infallible with that.

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What trust would be that there's a sufficient amount of, of, of stickiness between let's say my trust and the facts.

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Yeah. So you can just eliminate the, my trust, or I think my wife loves me. My wife loves me. Yeah. But I could be proof. I could be proven.

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There could be a moment where things happen. And then I don't, that is definitely possible. Look, I, I, I think

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Pazzo is a good guy, but this conversation is not going well. I mean, at just about every turn where Boghossian has been trying to get clarity,

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Pazzo has further, uh, he's pushed ambiguity and, and, and he's made things even less clear.

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I mean, the whole point about factually true or non factually true, I don't get that at all. Either. Things are either factually true or not.

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I mean, that's the, what is that? That's, that's the law of identity and excluded middle, right? I mean, to, and non -contradiction.

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I mean, to say that you think your wife loves you does nothing to change what is factually true about whether your wife loves you or not.

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Are you saying that the benefits of what you get lead you to believe it's true? No, I'm not saying that.

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Oh, okay. What I'm saying is that the benefit of what it offers makes you see the value of it.

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Okay. That I can see. Yeah, totally. And then it makes you see why you should care. Okay. That I got that.

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That's linear about that. You should participate in that. Okay. I got that. All right. And then, okay, let me give you, let me give you, keep going, keep going with the string.

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Cause I'm following you. And so, and so, and so then there are certain elements of that that have to do with what you would call factuality at certain, at different levels.

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And then those have to connect. Like there has to be a certain amount of connection with factuality. Of course. And the con lost me, lost me, had me up until levels of factuality.

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And then he lost me. I, I'm, I'm actually experiencing this alongside Boghossian at this point, which is amazing because I'm not an atheist at all.

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Uh, by the way, really quick, I engaged Peter Boghossian about three months ago now. And he invited me on his channel to do a live stream.

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And we had a discussion. I had no idea what to expect. And so I essentially prepped for him to grill me the way that he's grilling

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Paggio right now, as it turns out, I ended up asking Boghossian a lot of questions about what it would take for him to change his mind and to become a believer.

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So the reason that I wanted to do this reaction is because I'm rooting for the Christian guys.

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Like we should be able to withstand tough questions regarding the Christian faith. This is taught in the scripture.

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It's part of the expectation of God that he has for his church. But this conversation is not going great at all.

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This is a bit of a mess. And I suspect there are a lot of things, uh, that Paggio can offer

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Boghossian about our faith. That would be beautiful and wonderful, but he for some reason cannot or will not give direct answers to direct questions.

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And I just don't, I don't know why. They, the connection there, is this a kind of,

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I don't mean a pejoratively, but a God of the gaps. It's like, is this that, that gap keeps getting smaller and smaller so that at some level of a factual accordance means that the activity is tethered to reality and that it's true.

27:24

It's true. Um, okay. So let, let, let, let's, let's it's, there's this, how can

27:32

I say this? Like there's a scale of, there's like a scale that you need in order to know that you want to engage that you want to participate in.

27:39

That's what I, that's what I'm seeing. It's about participation. So if I write, so I trust that the sidewalk near my house is going to hold me up.

27:47

Right. I trust that. And I actually, I don't think about it. I actually never think about it. I just walk on the sidewalk. Right. But it is possible that something could happen that would force me to question that.

27:56

And the thing is, is that there's, there's actually a scale of that. And it, and some people will be triggered really fast about, about the trust of the sidewalk.

28:04

And some people will, will be triggered too late and then it'll collapse and they'll fall into the hole. And so the person that is triggered really fast, they'll be, they'll be, they'll be afraid.

28:13

They'll be super cautious. They'll be really careful. And maybe most of the time they're, they're avoiding something which is not a problem at all.

28:19

And the person that, right. So there's a, there's a scale. So it's, I'm tracking all of this, but the scale has nothing to do with factuality.

28:25

This, this is about epistemological certainty. That, that's where the scale comes in. And Boghossian knows a lot about this actually.

28:33

So Paggio, golly, he should watch out where this leads, but to say that the scale applies to factuality is what is that?

28:41

That's misleading. I mean, it just leads to greater confusion. This is the same thing with the religious thing.

28:46

Like in the sense that, you know, if you, if you're an American, right. And you think it's good to be an

28:51

American because you trust the foundation of America, then people, what they're going to do. And they do now is they're going to start to say, well, what about this?

28:58

What about Thomas Jefferson sins? What about Thomas Jefferson slavery? What about this, this, this? And some people will start, we'll say, well, if Thomas Jefferson had slaves, therefore

29:05

America invalidate. Right. And other people will say, well, no, I need like, you know,

29:10

I would need, I would need to know that like someone, I don't know, like the, the, the very principles of the, of the, the whole thing are completely erroneous in order for me to abandon my allegiance to America.

29:22

But all of that is like, all of that is like, and so it's the same with religion. So someone will say, you know, do you believe in the truth of resurrection?

29:27

And the truth is I would say yes. And then someone would say, but what if I could show you that resurrection is impossible?

29:33

And it's like, it's like, okay, you, can you do that? Like, can you show me that resurrection is impossible?

29:39

And what does that even mean? Like, I'm not sure what that, what are you talking about? I think that's really interesting.

29:45

So let's follow with that. That's a really good point. And I hear you. So let's, let's follow that up. So instead of someone saying to you,

29:51

I can show you that resurrection is false. Let's say that, I don't know, some archeologists went on some digs somewhere and they found this ancient library.

30:01

And in this ancient library where nearly perfectly preserved scrolls that were like, ha ha, we perpetrated a great hoax.

30:08

We, you know, the, you know, whatever that the Jesus, you know, would you still believe then?

30:16

Okay. So that scenario would call into question my faith, that the eyewitness testimonies of the disciples that Jesus died and rose again is true.

30:26

I would take that very seriously. It wouldn't end my faith overnight because, you know, I didn't come to my faith overnight, but it would absolutely raise some serious questions and perhaps even doubt, particularly if those scrolls were proven to be authentic and contemporary to the writing of the gospels.

30:41

Now, is that a clear enough answer? How does a

30:47

Paggio respond? Let's find out. What if, what if someone in a thousand in 500 years went back into our old internet archive and was able to get into 4chan and discovered that there are like insider

30:59

CIA people that are saying that we're run by lizard people and that they have a whole account of it, like 500 page books about how we're run by lizard people.

31:07

All right. So I see, I understand you and I hear you. And I think that that's your, and if I'm out of, you know, if this is a, if this is too harsh, let me know.

31:19

I think you're looking for a reason to maintain the belief. You think, well, yeah, because of what it affords me, of course.

31:26

I'm looking, not looking for a reason to maintain my belief. I'm suspicious of people who try to take it away from me.

31:33

I'm first of all, suspicious about their intention. Just like the way, just like the guy who comes to me and says, you know, I saw your wife talking to this guy.

31:38

It's like, I'm suspicious about your intention. Like what is it you're hoping to accomplish by casting this doubt on me? Ah, that those, these are, that's the thing.

31:46

So it's not that I'm looking for a reason to maintain belief because when I'm walking on the sidewalk, I'm not looking for a reason to maintain belief. But if someone, like if someone's trying to cast doubt on, if a crazy guy comes up to me and says, the sidewalk is made of Jell -O, the sidewalk is made of Jell -O.

31:57

And then I'm going to be like, well, sorry. Not you. Yeah. That's because you have, you have no reason to, but if you were walking down down the street on the sidewalk and a couple of people just vanished, like they sunk into the sidewalk and turned into some like sci -fi super,

32:10

I would definitely not speak. That would be a very reasonable rational thing to do.

32:16

So, but, but in these instances, Let me give you an example today. Like today, right?

32:21

It's like there are people that fake miracles all the time. The people that lie about miracles are people that lie about healing.

32:26

There are people that lie about all kinds of stuff. And every time I hear a story of someone getting healed or someone, some miracle or whatever, like,

32:32

I'm like, well, you know, I don't know. I don't necessarily have an opinion on it. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that I don't believe that miracles are possible or that healing.

32:41

That's fascinating to me. So why should on a scale from one to 10? So if one is no way, Jose five is maybe 10 is absolutely, why should your default be five?

32:50

Your default should be like 1 .1. What do you mean default should be one for one that I should immediately believe people's claims?

32:57

No. So, so if we have a scale with one being, this is, this is BS. Five being maybe it's possible.

33:04

10 being, this is absolutely true. If someone tells you about some miracle they've seen,

33:10

I don't understand why you're defaulting to five instead of defaulting to two. So you need to be careful here.

33:16

Why is your default? Maybe my default would be, my default would be 1 .0. Like if the scale is zero to 10, it'd be like 0 .1111,

33:25

but I would still be doxastically open. You know, I'd be open open to that given sufficient evidence, but why would your default be five?

33:30

Why would you say maybe? Well, because I, well, depending on what the evidence is and whether the evidence is understood to be sufficient, which is usually where nonbelievers tend to miss the forest for the trees.

33:40

Because if you ask a nonbeliever, what counts as evidence for the God of the Bible, they'll show you that they don't even know what would count as evidence.

33:47

Many of them would admit this by the way, or they haven't really given much thought at all, which means that it's very possible that the evidence that is in front of them is legitimate, but they are unwilling to recognize it as legitimate.

34:01

So, let me say this because maybe Paggio broke my brain too, but I think

34:08

I'm starting to understand a bit of what he's talking about. And I guess, boy, this can all be categorized under the human condition.

34:19

Well, and then even more specific than that belief formation and maintaining belief. And if I'm right, then

34:25

Paggio's on pretty solid ground regarding that specific topic of conversation.

34:30

Cause I've talked about this quite a bit on this channel, right? Jonathan Haidt, uh, and social psychologists like him have shown that we are not purely rational beings, that emotions are all wrapped up in our decision -making.

34:42

And I would argue our belief formation. And so if someone were to attempt to disconfirm our beliefs in some form or fashion, we're probably going to meet this type of thing with emotional or even non -rational resistance.

34:56

Okay. Which is the point that I'm always trying to make with atheists and skeptics because they're guilty of this just as much as anyone else is.

35:02

Having said that, all of that is still a far cry from what Boghossian is focused on asking, which has everything to do with whether or not

35:11

Christian claims are true. You know, that, that's a separate category of discussion compared to whether or not

35:17

Christianity provides benefits. I think everyone, uh, agrees that living in a healthy

35:23

Christian community provides a lot of benefits. Let's say that you will go to a parallel world and one of those worlds had a

35:28

God, uh, and the other world didn't have a God and the world without a God, people are praying.

35:35

They're calling upon the higher meaning. It's intercessory prayer on behalf of someone else. I don't cancer, alcoholism. I think this is why, because you don't agree with what a

35:42

God is like there, that the world would not exist without, without a God. Like a world can, that if you believe in God, that's a totally different, that's a totally different question.

35:51

I'm happy to explore that with you. I mean, we can do that right now. Well, why not? And how would you know that? The way to know it at a lower level, let's say at the start is to realize that, that the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

36:04

And you see that happen. So you see that every being has a third being. So it's like, there's you and I, and then there's, there's a relationship.

36:12

And that relationship has a, as a kind of, I mean, it's, it's in our, in this case, it's transient to some extent, but it's also real.

36:18

Right. And so this is true about all groups. Like all groups have something that pops up above it, which becomes an identity, which, which, which, which relates people together.

36:26

And that identity is causal vertically, right? It binds. It's, it's a, it binds that group together.

36:32

Boy, it sounds like Paggio is referring to the problem of the one in the many.

36:39

So this is a very, a Vantillian approach, very Bonsonian. Is that even a word?

36:46

And I mean, shoot, I realize that I may be projecting onto him my own stuff because at the end of the day, he's not speaking clearly guys.

36:55

And that's a big issue. But the problem with the one in the many is, is maybe the oldest philosophical question that humanity has ever wrestled with.

37:04

It's a question about the nature of reality is the nature of reality one, or is it many unity or is it plurality?

37:13

It's funny. I was literally just reading about this recently. So it's fresh. Let me give you an example of this.

37:18

So I have a beagle, a beagle is a dog. So the term dog is an abstract concept that refers to one thing, a dog.

37:29

And this concept of dog helps us to identify and understand how all the various particular examples of dogs like my beagle, and then, and then all the dogs in the world are all unified in key ways.

37:45

So, so there is a unity of all dogs under this broader concept of dog.

37:50

And then there is the plurality of different kinds of dogs as well. The same thing is true of humanity, right?

37:57

We are all particular examples of one singular concept that unifies us. Same thing for the universe.

38:03

We have a singular concept for the universe, but many particulars inside that universe. But the way that we understand how this is all unified together is this singular concept of the universe.

38:16

If you think about it, this concept of both the one and the many is so deeply ingrained in everything about our existence, that even all of our propositions in every single language contains both unity and plurality.

38:30

So the, the question comes in, what is the fundamental nature of reality?

38:36

Is it unity or is it a plurality? If we say it's unity, then we run into the problem of not knowing how anything is truly distinct from each other.

38:46

If we say plurality, then we can run into the problem of not knowing how things are truly related. So Van Til came along and he said,

38:54

Hey guys, the Trinity best explains this problem because at base, nobody can answer whether the nature of reality is one or many, by the way, this question did not originate with Christians.

39:05

This question originated with Heraclitus and, you know,

39:12

Parmenides. Okay. But, but the, the fact that there is this question, it's been asked for so long, it betrays the fact that there is both unity and plurality that appear to be fundamental to all of existence.

39:25

It's a both end kind of a thing. And the best explanation for this both end is the

39:31

Trinitarian God, who is both one being and three persons simultaneously.

39:37

I mean, it's, it's a, it's a profound argument that is incredibly complex. And I've certainly not given it any justice in, you know, 120 seconds, but there you go.

39:47

If that is what Paggio is arguing, it's just going to require a lot of clarity.

39:53

Like this is a big topic to discuss that I don't think I even have the, the, the, the wherewithal to be able to have this discussion with clarity.

40:01

So man, I hope he can pull this off. Okay. I'm, I'm with you so far, but I don't understand.

40:07

I'm not. That's a God. That's a God. So by the way, I don't, that, that, that is a God or an angel use whatever word you want.

40:13

It is a active agent that binds multiplicity together into unity. Oh, so you're not talking about, you're not talking about a cosmological thing.

40:22

You're not talking about Aristotle's prime mover. You're not talking about the Alpha and Omega, the beginning of the universe.

40:28

Like, you're not talking about the Atman, the breath, you're not talking, I mean. But it all, the hierarchy of gods culminates into the absolute, like it has to, again, because you can see it happen at every level.

40:39

And at some point, you know, whether or not the absolute that, you know, I understand why some people struggle to see the absolute as personal or agentic.

40:46

I understand why that that's part of some philosophies, but there's a sense in which you can see it kind of scale up. That's why all the traditions have these kinds of hierarchies of God, right?

40:53

It's like you have little gods and bigger gods and these gods kind of hold out a God just in Taiwan. I saw, I saw, I was fascinated like that.

40:59

Yeah. So I mean, for the same reason that we have, like, you see that there's a person, right? There's a multiplicity in me and I'm held together.

41:05

And then that I can hold together in a family and then that family can hold together in a city. And then that city can hold together in a nation.

41:11

And all those levels have a form of, of a binding, right? And a form of agency because they command us how to be together.

41:19

And that continues to scale. And I'm with you. I'm with you on the scaling. I'm with you in the binding.

41:24

I'm with you. So let me just ask so I can understand. So unhelpful, unclear, making things worse.

41:32

I just, I think I've had enough of this, uh, conversation, but I'll play it out a little bit longer.

41:41

And if a meteor came and smashed, killed literally everybody on earth, uh, would, would there, would there be a

41:48

God? That's a, that's a hilarious idea. Like it's one of those things where I, if, well, the reason why

41:55

I was asking the question is because he wants to know Paggio's view of God. And while it may be helpful to talk about how

42:02

God invades on the everyday lifestyle of the Christian community, Paggio is not being clear about the part where God is the ultimate ground of being and what that even means and how that even works.

42:14

Because when you zoom in on that particular aspect, see, now we can start to talk about aspects of Christian truth claims that can be verified because guess what?

42:22

Christianity claims that God created the heavens and the earth. And while we cannot scientifically verify spiritual agency at the beginning of the universe, we can do some work to verify whether or not the universe came into existence in the first place.

42:36

Uh, while we cannot specify, um, scientifically verify the resurrection of Jesus, 2000 years ago, we can do some work to verify that his disciples claimed to have seen him alive again.

42:45

And then many of them were tortured and or killed for their eyewitness claims. You see how like that it's an immediately a different conversation with Begosian, but, but that's not where Paggio is going.

42:58

And I mean, to me, this, this is all a largely wasted opportunity. If you believe that the world lays itself out in meaning, right.

43:07

Then to just say, well, if something wiped out the meaning, making agent of all of reality, would

43:14

God still exist? Because you don't believe the world functions with meaning. You think it's just arbitrary causes things bumping into each other.

43:20

So you imagine a meteorite that hits earth and kills all the agentic agentic beings that we know. Yes. Because you don't believe that there's actually a story and that there's actually meaning.

43:28

So to be consistent, I can't answer that question because I actually believe the world lays itself out in hierarchies of, of, of beings and in hierarchies of stories that this is how it functions.

43:38

No, no, no. There's only to be consistent. There's only one answer to that question for you, for your belief system.

43:43

To my belief system, there's I think two, possibly three, but to yours, you'd have to say that's not possible.

43:50

That what's not possible for the meteorite to just hit the earth randomly. Yeah. Wouldn't you?

43:58

Well, I don't understand what's so hard about this.

44:05

Like if a meteorite crashed on the earth and killed every last one of us, God would still exist.

44:11

Like, I don't know. Is that, is that a hard question? That's not a hard question to answer. This is one of those conversations where I actually now feel stupid.

44:21

Like, I feel like I'm the one missing the inside joke. But from my perspective,

44:27

I just think that Paggio, he spent so much time ultimately obfuscating the clearer issues, underlying the discussion.

44:34

And now we've come to a point where Boghossian has asked a simple question about a meteorite that has a straightforward answer.

44:42

And Paggio seems now stuck. Is it possible? I mean, there is there,

44:49

I mean, there's obviously a sense in most traditions and in Christianity too, that this world will end, that that's part of the story.

44:55

Right. And that, but the ending of this world is not the ending of the world. Like in the sense that there's a new world that emerges from the end.

45:03

Right. But not that it's programmed into the telos or subspecies of Trinitatis at the, you know, under the watchful eye of eternity, this, these events unfold, but just SOL man, big meteor dude came down from fricking who knows what alpha whatever, wherever it comes down and just like kills everybody.

45:23

What a bummer that would be, but that's what, that's what I mean. What I mean is that I'll never get my black belt in jujitsu.

45:32

Okay. So we could, I mean, we could obviously do it at a, at a smaller scale that, that, that makes sense. Right. Because tragic things do happen.

45:38

You know, that is definitely true, but I think you're right. That I would, I would tend to think that because I believe agency and intelligence are actually an aspect of being like they're actually the reality.

45:54

And, and I think that humans, at least to our knowledge, right. Play a specific role in that, in that cosmos.

46:00

Like we humans seem to be, at least, like I said, as we know, to be being that is both intelligent and incarnate.

46:06

And so we, we, we have that, that kind of that place. And so we seem to have an important place in the universe in that sense, because we are, are the universe knowing itself where the universe where we are basically the capacity for being to analyze itself, to know itself and all of that.

46:20

And so the idea that just random destruction of all humans, I think you're right. That I, that I don't think that that can happen.

46:28

Like I think that the end of all things can happen, but I don't think it, I think that it would be, it would play itself out in a story.

46:35

Cause I think stories are part of, of, of, of reality. All right. I've had enough. That's that's enough of that.

46:45

Boy, after this, I'm going to need to watch the three stooges or something just to clean the palate.

46:51

You know what I mean? So here's what

46:57

I can affirm. Paggio is definitely an artist. You know, I I'm married to a brilliant artist.

47:03

I have friends who are like this and the way that, that, that he thinks is definitely rock and roll.

47:11

Like if you can map his brain patterns as he's talking to Bogosian, it probably looks like a Hokusai painting.

47:16

Right. You know what I mean? Um, Jordan's Pete, uh, Peterson speaks like this a lot, which is interesting because George, uh,

47:23

Peterson's domain is more within kind of a logical framework. And so Peterson definitely has a kind of a, there's like a unique conversational musicality to him.

47:34

And Paggio is like this too. And sometimes this can be inspiring. You know, I'm a fan of Peterson.

47:40

I enjoy some of his discussions. This, however, was a gigantic mess. And I think it's because I'm putting myself in Bogosian shoes.

47:50

Would somebody like Bogosian needed was more direct, clear left -brained communication. And he didn't get it.

47:56

I imagine he is probably more confused now than he was before he ever sat with Paggio. And look,

48:02

I totally understand the thing of like not making it easy for a non -believer to become a Christian because you know, the

48:08

Christian life is not easy and Jesus was not secret friendly by any stretch. Okay. Not if you pay attention to the gospels.

48:15

But there has to be a meeting of the minds for, for there to be communication to work.

48:20

You have to like meet somewhere in the middle, a clear shared definition of terms so that the concepts are understood and wrestled with this whole exercise was just talking around the issues, not drawing out clash where there could be, you know, the, the issue with Bogosian.

48:41

And by the way, this never got explored which is, Oh, it was such a missed opportunity is that Bogosian actually appears to conflate faith and knowledge.

48:52

Again, the way that he asked the original question at the very beginning of the video, it appears to show that he thinks faith is a form of epistemology.

49:01

That is not true. And that right there, if Paggio could have explored that with him meaningfully, it could have cleared a lot of the figurative debris to get to a more effective conversation about God.

49:15

But instead we got Hokusai. And that was, that was just incredibly frustrating to watch.

49:23

All right, now it's your turn. What did you think of Jonathan Paggio's answers to Bogosian? You know, clear and helpful or the opposite?

49:30

Let me know in the comments below also helped me to raid Bogosian. Like how do you think he did in this exchange? I'd love to get your opinion on this since you made it all the way to the end.

49:38

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49:45

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49:52

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