Jonathan Pageau PRESSED By Atheist Philosopher | Pastor Reacts

Opening Reaction to Jonathan Pageau and Peter Boghossian

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

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

Boy, after this, I'm going to need to watch The Three Stooges or something just to clean the palate. You know what I mean? Jonathan Pageau is pressed by atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian in a recent video.

Pageau agreed to be questioned about his Christian beliefs and if you know Boghossian, he's adept at challenging believers to change their mind. So what happens? How does Pageau do in this exchange? 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 Christian that you were meant to be. Before I jumped into this ministry, I was a pastor and a debate teacher and it is from that unique intersection of skills that I make these videos.

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Religion, Truth Claims, and the Sports Analogy

When I think about religion, I think about the reference to, it has truth claims. 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, I don't know, not epistemically sound.

So, so I'm grateful for how careful 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.

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, 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.

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. It also contains opportunities to place faith or trust in various claims.

It also contains ways of living and conduct. So there are multiple things going on in Christianity, such that you cannot reduce it down to mere truth claims. 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 Pajo nips this in the bud. 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? 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...

No, there is a truth claim in sports. What I mean, it's a little different, but you have to accept the identity and the rules of the sport. 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, right?

Those are conventions. Everybody knows that those are arbitrary conventions, and they... I wish I knew more about sports. I could, you know, give a soccer or...

Yeah, but they're not completely arbitrary conventions. They have a pattern.

No, I mean, you can't bring a chainsaw into a boxing match, right? So, but those rules...

Also, you wouldn't make a sport of someone, 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...

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. Like, if they're 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, 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.

So, there's variability, but there's still a bound... There's a boundary to variability.

So, you could say the same.

Right, right, yeah.

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. I'm not familiar with Paggio. I suppose he's a type of smart that is perhaps more artistic or something. I mean, I know a little bit, right? I know that he's friends with Jordan Peterson.

I'm, I'm... Isn't he also an accomplished illustrator or something? Now I realize I should have looked up who Jonathan Paggio is before I made this reaction. So, 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. 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.

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.

Like, I am very much a Christian.

What are they going to be freaked out about?

Although, because I'm going to do something that might freak out some of the Christians. Is to say that in order to bind yourself at the highest level, right, the way that, that, that unites the most elements together, there's a, 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. So, like you said, binding yourself to a sport and binding yourself to the infinite source of all things that, that gives you a mode of being that encompasses all other modes of being, which is what religion tends to do because it offers, it offers identity.

It offers morality. It offers ways to, to come together in marriage, in death, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That it had, that it, it also has a type of variability. So like a good example would be the flying spaghetti monster.

Like the flying spaghetti monster is actually an impossible religion. Like technically it's an impossible religion because it doesn't have the characteristics necessary to bind you to something real. But Islam is sufficiently, like, I, though I disagree with some of the tenants of Islam, it's sufficiently structured so that it can do that.

And if it, and if someone said, we'll replace it with the flying spaghetti monster, then it wouldn't exist as a religion.

Okay.

So I, I guess, again, trying to be fair to Paggio, he's saying what I just said, that you cannot merely reduce religion down to truth claims because there's more going on there. There's other categories to consider.

And so I suppose he's just saying it in his own way. Like, so if that's the case, it would just be helpful if he was more clear, just in my opinion. But if he's making an entirely different point altogether, I wish that he would just deal with the framing of Boghossian's question.

So let's see what happened. It looks like Boghossian's going to try again here.

Clarifying the Difference Between Truth Claims and Participation

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

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

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 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.

Okay. So something like that, but, but.

So this is why Boghossian is so affable. And, you know, 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. That is, he genuinely enjoys engaging other people who do not agree with him.

And that is actually a huge plus in his favor. 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.

And that helps his interlocutor to feel more comfortable with him before Boghossian drops another question on him. By the way, that is exactly what I do in conversations as well. This is precisely what I think all of us should do.

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. 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.

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.

For example, there being an historical Jesus. Now, I know some people who consider themselves Christians who don't accept the historicity of Jesus. I mean, I couldn't care less how people saw it. I mean, I really, in that sense, it's not a moral question or even a political question.

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 Muslims don't believe.

Many Christians don't believe that. They don't know that Muslims don't believe Jesus was crucified, but that's just parenthetical. So the difference is the things that bind us. Lots of things bind us.

You can cook a meal and bind us, but that's very different from a truth claim.

Right.

So you're right that there is a truth claim aspect to religion, 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 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.

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

And so the Christian story, for example, of the teaching of Jesus, the death and the resurrection, the cross becomes a model for being. And so, and then it becomes the structure of our world. It structures our perception, it structures our morality, it structures our ethics, it structures what we care about.

It does all of that downstream from the truth claim.

Right.

And so I understand. So it's like, so you could 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.

And it's like, well, what, who cares? That doesn't mean anything. It has no reason. But if I say I have a truth claim, which is Jesus died and resurrected from the dead, that is because it offers a world that is different from if that wasn't the case.

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

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.

That that's a that's a really weird way to to put it. 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 Paggio is saying in one way.

But I think this reveals that he's not being very precise with his words. And so it leads to lack of clarity, not more. Boy, I sure hope the whole discussion isn't like this.

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

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 I do. There was absolutely no need to is like you're getting married. It was decided for you.

You bring the people there. And the woman had absolutely no say in what like in the marriage is 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.

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

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

They don't offer me anything.

Belief, Factuality, and the Christian Worldview

Again, I don't know why it's necessary to focus on this particular aspect of the discussion. And you know, like Paggio probably talks about this all the time on his channel. So his audience probably completely understands him and where he's coming from.

But look at Boghossian like, you know, Paggio, like almost broke him just now. It would be incredibly helpful if they could speak directly to each other, because I think Boghossian is asking something incredibly clear.

But Paggio is not answering the question clearly. 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 why he's spending so much time talking about why truth claims are secondary to the benefits of those claims.

So I wrote down what you said. The truth claim is important because of what it offers. 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, 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 claims 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. Um, so Paggio is driving home a point that Boghossian wasn't even asking about.

That's why this is confusing.

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.

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. 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. So you were saying that one should, and I want to relate this back to the idea of binding to make sure I understand you're saying that there are certain truth claims which yield greater binding is, well, let me stop there.

Is that right?

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

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? 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.

We don't talk about what George Washington ate for breakfast.

So, so if something, if a truth, again, I'm repeating this only back to you, I want to make sure I understand. So it's important because of what it offers and the thing that it offers you, would you believe it?

Even if it didn't offer you anything, should, 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. If you said, if you told me, Hey, Jonathan, there's a piece of rubber on the ground that in Syria on the corner of these two streets, I would say, Oh, Oh, I'm going to forget that now.

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

So remember the original question that Boghossian was asking about centers on the specific truth claims that Christianity makes. And I take it that 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 Boghossian does to people.

Okay.

But Paggio really wants to press home another point about truth claims, providing a benefit to the community. 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.

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

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.

But it's an interesting, first of all, it's like, it's actually an interesting question because in Islam, we don't say 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 goods that present themselves to me in a different way that a Muslim will be able to understand. And that will offer a world to me, you know, and that world has a shape and we can compare worlds.

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 monotheistic God or the God of the Bible, let's say, 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 affords because we have an example of it. Like we have the enlightenment and we have what that gave and we can see what that does.

And 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.

There are truth claims that are different than other truth claims. This is incredibly frustrating. I want, I want this Christian to do a great job. I just, I don't think he's communicating clearly and directly.

Is it just me? Are you following Paggio's train of thought at all? Let me know in the comments, because right now, I'm probably just as confused as Peter Boghossian is at this point.

Confidence, Evidence, and the Resurrection

Would you believe something? Are you comfortable with all of your Christian beliefs?

Am I comfortable with all of my Christian beliefs? That's an interesting one. I would say like most people, there is a hierarchy of comfort with the hierarchy of Christian beliefs. Maybe that's a good way to understand it.

It's like, because the purpose, like I said, one of the reasons why 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, right?

I believe there's nothing, I think truth claims are important. Like I think that they're part of this, but so there are things about Christianity, which I see as being absolutely necessary and absolutely world giving, you know?

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

And then maybe one day I'll have more confidence on this or that, but it doesn't matter that much because like I said, 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. That's the thing that's most important. And I'm not, I want to be careful. I'm not saying the truth claims aren't important and that making sure things are accurate isn't important, but it's downstream from the other.

Because the one of how to be, where to go, where to look, how to exist, it makes you care about certain truth claims and not care about others. And so the truth claims are downstream from the direction you could say.

Are you frustrated? Who are you identifying more with at the moment? Is it Pascho or Boghossian? Let me know. I'm curious to get your thoughts. I'm definitely sensing that there is a desire on the part of Pascho 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.

And so Pascho is doing some work. It seems to clarify where Boghossian's questions are improperly worded. And I would agree with Pascho that the way that Boghossian has framed the questions is too reductive of what Christianity really is.

The problem is, the more Pascho says, you would think to clarify his position, the more confused he's making Boghossian. And that's on Pascho, in my opinion. That's not a Boghossian. Boghossian is obviously an atheist and doesn't believe what we believe.

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. And that's amazing.

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

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

Yeah.

That's a little, that's more complicated because even the...

What is something that is true, but not factually true? What does that even mean?

Factually true to me is complicated. It's a little complicated because there are different levels of factuality. And so the question is always what level of factuality is necessary for you to believe something is true?

And there are certain... What I mean is that there are forensic descriptions to a police officer, 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, I think my wife loves me. That I think my wife loves me is a truth claim, but I don't have the forensic. I can't access the forensic.

Better, my wife loves me. Because you would be in airing if you said, I think my wife loves me.

Yeah.

What do you mean? Sorry.

Well, no.

I trust my life.

My wife loves me as opposed to I think my wife loves me.

But I would say something like, I trust my wife loves me. How about that?

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

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

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 proven. There could be a moment where things happen and then I don't. That is definitely possible.

Look, I think Paggio's 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, Paggio has further, he's pushed ambiguity.

And he's made things even less clear. 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. I mean, that's the what is that?

That's the law of identity and excluded middle, right? I mean, to a non contradiction. 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.

Are you saying that the benefits of what you get lead you to believe it's true?

No, I'm not saying that.

Oh, OK.

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

OK, that I can see.

Yeah, totally.

And then it makes you see why you should care.

OK, that I got that.

That's why you should participate in that.

OK, I got that.

All right.

And then, OK, let me give you let me give you.

Keep going. Keep going with the string because I'm coming.

And so and so then there are certain elements of that that have to do with what you would call factuality at certain different levels. And then those have to connect. Like there has to be a certain amount of connection with factuality.

Of course.

And the loss me. Lost me, had me up until levels of factuality. And then he lost me. I'm I'm actually experiencing this alongside Boghossian at this point, which is amazing because I'm not an atheist at all.

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

Like we should be able to withstand tough questions regarding the Christian faith. This is taught in the scripture. It's part of the expectation of God that he has for his church. But this conversation is not going great at all.

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

And I just don't know why.

The One and the Many, God, and the Meaning of Reality

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

It's true.

Um, okay.

So let, let, let's, let's, it's, there's this, how can 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 it.

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

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.

Sure.

That would force me to question that. 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. And some people will, will be triggered too late and then it'll collapse and they'll fall into the hole.

Right.

And so the person that is triggered really fast, they'll be, they'll be, they'll be afraid. They'll be super cautious. They'll be really careful. Maybe most of the time they're, they're avoiding something, which is not a problem at all.

And the person that, right. So there's a, there's a scale.

I'm tracking all of this, but the scale has nothing to do with factuality. This, this is about epistemological certainty that that's where the scale comes in. And Begosian knows a lot about this actually.

So Paggio, golly, he should watch out where this leads. But to say that the scale applies to factuality is, what is that? That's misleading. I mean, it just leads to greater confusion.

This is the same thing with the religious thing. In the sense that, you know, if you, if you're an American, right. And you think it's good to be an 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? What about Thomas Jefferson's sins? What about Thomas Jefferson's slavery? What about this, this, this?

And some people will start, will say, well, if Thomas Jefferson had slaved, therefore America invalidate, right. And other people will say, well, no, I need, like, you know, 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.

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

And it's like, it's like, okay, you, can you do that? Like, can you show me that resurrection is impossible? And what does that even mean? I'm not sure what that, what are you talking about?

I think that's really interesting.

So let's follow with that.

That's a really good point. And I hear you.

So let's, let's follow that up.