The provided text explores numerous philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God, critically examining their logical structures, assumptions, and persuasiveness. It emphasizes the importance of identifying hidden assumptions in such debates and distinguishes between direct experiences of the Divine and indirect intellectual or faith-based claims. The source underscores the limitations of both theistic and atheistic perspectives that lack rigorous epistemological grounding and suggests that true understanding of God transcends mere belief or logical proof, hinting at the significance of direct, often ineffable, experience.

The Existence of God: A Philosophical Dissection

Study Guide

This study guide is designed to help you review the arguments for and against the existence of God presented in the source material. Pay close attention to the definitions of key terms and the analysis provided for each argument.

Key Areas to Focus On:

The Speaker’s Position: Understand the speaker’s unique perspective, including their claim of direct consciousness of God and how this influences their analysis. Note their warnings regarding open-mindedness, epistemic intelligence, and the dangers of a debunking mindset.
Definition of God: Memorize the classical philosophical definition of God provided by the speaker. Understand what is explicitly not meant by God in this context (e.g., bearded man in the clouds, Christian Trinity, mythological symbol).
Principles of Good Philosophy: Identify the speaker’s criteria for engaging in serious philosophical inquiry, including even-handedness, steel-manning perspectives, and avoiding rationalizations of pre-existing beliefs.
The Nature of “Proof”: Grasp the speaker’s nuanced understanding of “proof” in a philosophical context, distinguishing it from absolute, universally convincing evidence and recognizing the role of psychology and prior beliefs in persuasion.
Analysis of Each Argument: For each argument presented (Cosmological, Something from Nothing, Ontological, Teleological/Fine-Tuning, Moral, Argument from Reason and Intelligibility, Performative Contradiction of Naturalism, Argument from Information Theory, Argument from Free Will, Argument from Consciousness, Argument from Scripture, Argument from Popularity, Argument from Success, Argument from Perennial Philosophy, Argument from Faith, Pascal’s Wager, Argument from Religious Experience, Argument from Miracles):

Understand the core steps and logic of the argument as presented.
Review the speaker’s analysis, noting the identified assumptions, flaws, and potential counterarguments.
Pay attention to distinctions between surface-level weaknesses and deeper, more nuanced interpretations.

The Problem of Assumptions: Recognize the central role of often-unconscious assumptions in philosophical reasoning and the importance of identifying and questioning these assumptions. Refer to the speaker’s statement “assumption is the mother of all fuckups.”
Direct vs. Indirect Claims: Understand the fundamental difference between direct (experiential) and indirect (logical, inferential) claims about God and the inherent limitations of indirect approaches.
The Problem of Self-Deception: Appreciate the speaker’s emphasis on the pervasive nature of self-deception and its significance in the pursuit of understanding God and reality.

Quiz

Answer the following questions in 2-3 sentences each.

According to the speaker, what is the primary focus of dissecting arguments for God’s existence, if it’s not to prove God?
Why does the speaker feel they cannot neutrally present arguments for God’s existence?
What is the key epistemological question that the speaker aims to answer throughout the series of episodes?
Explain the speaker’s distinction between “steel-manning” and “straw-manning” an argument and why steel-manning is important in philosophy.
According to the speaker, what is a fundamental problem with extrapolating conclusions about the universe’s origin based on observations within the universe?
Why does the speaker find the standard ontological argument (perfection implies existence) unconvincing?
What is the main counterargument presented against the teleological or fine-tuning argument for God’s existence?
Why does the speaker suggest that the moral argument for God’s existence is not necessarily strong?
Explain the “performative contradiction of naturalism” as described in the source material.
Why does the speaker consider the argument from faith to be a poor argument for God’s existence?

Quiz Answer Key

The primary focus is on looking at epistemology, specifically how to do effective metaphysics (if possible) and to identify the many traps and foolish mistakes humans make when trying to understand God.
The speaker cannot neutrally present the arguments because they claim to have a direct consciousness of God, giving them a unique perspective and what they believe to be the “final answer.”
The key epistemological question is why proofs and evidence for God are so epistemically problematic, rather than simply whether or not God exists.
Steel-manning involves presenting the strongest possible version of an opposing argument, even if you disagree with it, to ensure a fair and thorough analysis. Straw-manning involves misrepresenting or weakening an argument to make it easier to refute, which is not serious philosophy.
A fundamental problem is the assumption that principles and laws observed within the universe (e.g., cause and effect) necessarily apply to something outside or prior to the universe.
The speaker finds it unconvincing because it seems to be question-begging (assuming what it seeks to prove) and because the idea that perfection requires existence is an assumption that can be questioned.
The main counterargument suggests the possibility of multiple universes (multiverse theory) where our finely-tuned universe is a rare occurrence, but our existence within it creates an anthropocentric bias.
The moral argument is weakened by the possibility that moral truths are relative, subjective human or social constructs that do not necessarily require a divine foundation.
The performative contradiction of naturalism is that if human perception and reason are merely products of survival (as naturalism suggests), then naturalistic philosophy and scientific reasoning themselves become unreliable, undermining the very basis of those belief systems.
The speaker considers it poor because belief or faith does not necessarily lead to an understanding of God, and the pursuit of truth through skeptical inquiry is more valuable than blind faith.

Essay Format Questions

Discuss the speaker’s unique perspective on the existence of God and analyze how this perspective shapes their evaluation of traditional arguments. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of analyzing such a topic from a self-proclaimed position of knowing the “final answer.”
Critically evaluate three different arguments for the existence of God presented in the source material (choose ones that resonate with or challenge your own views). For each argument, explain its core logic and then analyze the speaker’s critique, offering your own assessment of the argument’s validity and the speaker’s analysis.
Explore the significance of identifying and questioning assumptions in philosophical and metaphysical inquiry, using examples from the arguments discussed in the source material. How does the speaker’s emphasis on assumptions relate to the problem of self-deception?
Analyze the speaker’s distinction between direct and indirect claims about God. Why does the speaker emphasize the limitations of indirect approaches? In your opinion, what are the implications of this distinction for discussions about the existence and nature of God?
Discuss the speaker’s assertion that “everything humans say about God is corrupt and misleading.” Explore the reasons given for this claim and consider the challenges this poses for understanding and discussing the concept of God.

Glossary of Key Terms

Epistemology: The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, its justification, and the reliability of claims to knowledge.
Metaphysics: The branch of philosophy that deals with the fundamental nature of reality and existence, including topics such as being, substance, cause, and time.
Theology: The study of the nature of God and religious beliefs.
Scientific Materialism: The philosophical belief that only matter and energy exist and that all phenomena, including consciousness, are the result of material interactions.
Atheist: A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.
Skeptic: A person who questions or doubts accepted opinions or beliefs, especially those held by a majority.
Theist: A person who believes in the existence of God or gods, especially one who believes in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.
Direct Consciousness of God: A claimed personal and immediate awareness or experience of God, unmediated by belief, faith, or indirect reasoning.
Epistemic Intelligence: The capacity for sound reasoning, critical thinking, and awareness of one’s own biases and assumptions in the pursuit of knowledge.
Debunking Mindset: A predisposition to disprove or discredit claims without necessarily engaging in a balanced and open-minded consideration.
Bias: A tendency to favor or disfavor something; a lack of objective viewpoint.
Privilege (in argument): Unfairly favoring one side of an argument without sufficient justification.
Even-Handedness: Treating all sides of an argument or issue fairly and without prejudice.
Steel-Manning: Presenting the strongest possible version of an opposing argument to facilitate a more rigorous and fair critique.
Straw-Manning: Misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack.
Proof (philosophical context): Arguments or evidence intended to establish the truth or validity of a claim, often considered within the framework of logical reasoning and philosophical principles, and not necessarily absolute or universally persuasive.
Syllogism: A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.
Ego: In this context, the sense of self, often associated with desires, attachments, defensiveness, and a tendency towards self-preservation and self-deception.
Epistemic Priors: Pre-existing beliefs, assumptions, and frameworks that influence how one interprets and evaluates new information.
Paradigm: A fundamental set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitute a way of viewing reality for a community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.
Rationalization: Devising self-satisfying but incorrect reasons for one’s behavior or beliefs.
Speculation: Forming opinions or conjectures without firm evidence or proof.
Belief System: A set of interconnected beliefs, values, and attitudes that shape an individual’s or group’s worldview.
Faith: Belief in something for which there is no proof, or a strong conviction despite a lack of evidence.
Dogma: A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
Ideology: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.
Materialist Paradigm: The view that physical matter is the only reality and that all phenomena can be explained in terms of matter and its properties.
Scientific Paradigm: A set of fundamental assumptions and principles that guide scientific inquiry within a particular field or time period.
Retroactive/Retrospective Logic: Reasoning backward from an observed outcome to construct a logical explanation for it.
Empirical World: The world that is accessible to sensory experience and observation.
Intuition: The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
Coherent (local coherence): Internally consistent and logically connected within a specific framework or set of assumptions.
Nuance: A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound.
Contemplation: Deep or considered thought about something.
Radical Open-Mindedness: A willingness to consider even highly unconventional or challenging perspectives without immediate dismissal.
Cynicism: An inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; skepticism about the sincerity of others’ actions or stated opinions.
Nihilism: The rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.
Paradigm Shift: A fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.
Cosmological Argument: Arguments for the existence of God that typically begin with the fact of the universe’s existence and attempt to reason back to a necessary first cause or uncaused cause.
Assumption: A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.
Extrapolation: Estimating or concluding something by extending known information.
Laws of Physics: The fundamental principles that govern the behavior of the physical universe.
Metaphysical: Relating to metaphysics or abstract philosophical inquiry.
Principle of Non-Contradiction: A fundamental law of logic stating that contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect.
Law of the Excluded Middle: A fundamental law of logic stating that for any proposition, either that proposition is true or its negation is true.
Big Bang: The prevailing cosmological model for the universe, which posits that it originated from an extremely hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.
Question Begging (Circular Reasoning): A logical fallacy in which the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises.
Theist (as used in “Something from Nothing”): Often refers to those who believe in a creator God.
Ontological Argument: Arguments for the existence of God that are based on the concept of God itself.
Perfection (in ontological argument): The state of being complete and lacking nothing; often associated with the traditional attributes of God.
Infinity: The state of being limitless or endless in space, time, or other quantity.
Property (philosophical sense): A characteristic or quality of something.
Existence (philosophical sense): The state of being real or actual.
Actuality: The state of being in existence, as opposed to being merely potential.
Contingent (existence): Existing or occurring only if certain circumstances are the case; not necessary.
Non-Existence: The state of not being real or actual.
Paradox: A seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
Teleological Argument (Argument from Design): Arguments for the existence of God based on the apparent order, purpose, or design in the universe.
Fine-Tuning Argument: A specific form of the teleological argument that points to the seemingly precise values of physical constants necessary for life to exist.
Multiverse Theory: A hypothetical group of multiple universes (possibly infinitely many), including the universe we know.
Anthropocentric Bias: The tendency to interpret the world in terms of human values and experiences.
Probabilistic Argument: An argument that concludes something is likely to be true based on probabilities.
Lock Solid (argument): Absolutely sound and irrefutable.
Richard Dawkins: A prominent atheist and evolutionary biologist known for his critiques of religion.
Straw Man (as used by Dawkins): A misrepresentation of a religious argument to make it easier to refute.
Holistic: Relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with individual parts.
Reductionism: The practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.
St. Augustine: An early Christian theologian and philosopher.
Necessary Truth: A proposition that is true in all possible worlds and cannot be false.
Eternal Truth: A truth that is true for all time and does not change.
Law of Identity (A=A): A fundamental law of logic stating that everything is identical to itself.
Void: A completely empty space.
Hierarchy of Goodness: The idea that the existence of varying degrees of goodness implies a standard of perfect goodness.
Perfect Goodness: The ultimate and complete state of goodness.
Relative (goodness): Dependent on or related to specific contexts, individuals, or purposes.
Abstraction: The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events.
Argument from Participation: The idea that qualities exhibited by things in the world are derived from their participation in a higher, perfect form of that quality.
Holistic (model of universe): Viewing the universe as an interconnected whole where properties of the whole influence the parts.
Bottom-Up (model): Explaining phenomena by starting with basic constituents and building up to more complex systems.
Top-Down (model): Explaining phenomena by starting with the properties of the whole system and how they influence the parts.
Reductionism (as opposed to holistic): Explaining complex phenomena by breaking them down into simpler components.
Awakening: In this context, a profound shift in consciousness and understanding of reality, often involving a direct realization of unity and the nature of existence.
Consciousness: The state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings.
Figments of Consciousness: Things that are imagined or created by consciousness.
Aquinus’ Teleological Proof: An argument based on the observation that unintelligent things act towards ends, implying direction by an intelligent being.
Unintelligent (things): Lacking the capacity for conscious thought or reasoning.
Aquinus: St. Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosopher and theologian.
Naturalistic Process: A process occurring through natural laws without supernatural intervention.
Brute Force (process): A method of solving a problem or achieving a goal by trying every possible option.
Neoplatonic Proof: An argument based on the multiplicity of the material world requiring a source in absolute Unity.
Multiplicity: The state of being numerous.
Absolute Unity: A singular, undifferentiated source of all existence.
Beyond Being: Existing in a way that transcends ordinary categories of existence.
Beyond Intellect: Existing in a way that surpasses human understanding.
Simple (in Neoplatonism): Lacking parts or internal complexity.
Internal Distinctions: Separate or different elements within something.
Composition: The way in which constituent parts are put together to form a whole.
Moral Argument: Arguments for the existence of God based on the existence of morality or moral truths.
Objective Moral Truths: Moral principles that are true independently of individual opinions or cultural beliefs.
Scientific Reality: A view of reality based solely on scientific principles and observations.
Questions of Value and Meaning: Inquiries into what is good, right, worthwhile, or significant.
“Ought from Is” Problem (Hume’s Law): The philosophical argument that one cannot derive moral obligations or prescriptions (“ought” statements) from factual statements about the world (“is” statements).
Moral Conscience: An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.
Natural Faculty: An inherent capacity or ability.
Subjective Projections: Ideas or feelings that are imposed onto something else from one’s own mind.
Social Construct: An idea or notion that appears to be natural and obvious to people who accept it but is largely the invention of a particular society or culture.
Platonic: Relating to Plato or his philosophy, often referring to ideal, abstract forms.
Argument from Participation (revisited): Applied to moral qualities, suggesting that our limited goodness participates in a perfect, divine goodness.
Argument from Reason and Intelligibility: The idea that the world’s comprehensibility to human reason suggests a rational foundation in reality itself, identified with God.
Naturalism (philosophical): A system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained by natural causes without recourse to supernatural agency.
Rationality: The quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic.
Intelligibility: The quality of being comprehensible.
Illusion: A false idea or belief.
Infinite Mind: The concept of God as an unlimited and all-encompassing consciousness.
Logos: A Greek term with various philosophical and theological meanings, often associated with reason, order, and the divine principle.
Performative Contradiction: A statement that contradicts itself by the very act of being stated or believed.
Survival (in natural selection): The ability of an organism to remain alive and reproduce in its environment.
Donald Hoffman: A cognitive scientist known for his work on perception and the idea that our perception is shaped for survival, not necessarily for representing objective reality.
Nervous System: The network of nerve cells and fibers that transmits nerve impulses between parts of the body.
Truth (metaphysical): Genuine and fundamental accuracy about the nature of reality.
Self-Defeating (argument): An argument that undermines its own premise or conclusion.
Sanity: The state of having a sound mind and not being mad or mentally ill.
Demons: Malevolent supernatural beings.
Infesting (the mind): Occupying or overwhelming the mind with harmful or unwanted thoughts or entities (metaphorical in this context).
Argument from Information Theory: The idea that the coded information in DNA suggests an intelligent origin, based on principles of information theory.
Information Theory (Shannon’s Theory): A mathematical theory of communication that deals with the quantification of information.
Code/Language (in DNA): The sequence of nucleotides in DNA that contains instructions for biological processes.
Random Process: A process whose behavior is non-deterministic, meaning that it is not precisely predictable.
Natural Undirected Process: A natural process that occurs without intentional guidance or design.
Perry Marshall: An author and speaker known for his arguments applying information theory to the origin of life.
Noise (in information theory): Random or irrelevant data that obscures the intended signal.
Degrades (code): Reduces the quality, accuracy, or functionality of a code.
Mutation: A change in the DNA sequence of an organism.
Spontaneous Generation (of life): The hypothetical process by which living organisms develop from nonliving matter.
Organic Chemistry: The branch of chemistry concerned with the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds, which contain carbon.
Intelligence (in physics): The underlying order, structure, and fine-tuning of physical laws that seem conducive to complexity.
Primordial Ooze: A hypothetical solution rich in organic compounds in the primitive oceans of the Earth, from which life is thought to have arisen.
Tinkering (with genetic code): Making small, often experimental changes to the genetic material.
Fabric of Physics: The fundamental structure and laws governing the physical universe.
SpaceTime: The unified fabric of space and time in Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Argument from Free Will: The idea that the existence of free will suggests a source beyond material determinism.
Free Will: The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.
Material Determinism: The philosophical view that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will.
Contingency: The state of being dependent on chance or uncertain conditions.
Tautology: A statement that is necessarily true by virtue of its logical form.
Argument from Consciousness: The idea that the existence of consciousness suggests a non-material source because it is difficult to explain how matter alone could produce subjective experience.
Hard Problem of Consciousness: The challenge of explaining how and why we have subjective experiences or qualia.
Non-Material Source: Something that is not composed of physical matter.
Argument from Scripture: Arguments for God based on holy texts and their claims about God.
Divinely Inspired: Believed to have been influenced or guided by God.
Powerful Psychological Truths: Profound insights into human nature and behavior.
Illiterate Peasant: Someone uneducated and from a low social class.
Corruption (of scripture/religion): Alterations, misinterpretations, or self-serving uses of religious texts or practices.
Ego (in relation to scripture): The self-centered biases and interpretations that individuals may impose on religious teachings.
Projection: Attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person or thing.
Assumption (regarding scripture): Accepting the truth or authenticity of religious texts without sufficient critical evaluation.
Figurative (scripture): Expressing something in symbolic or metaphorical terms rather than literally.
Interpretation (of scripture): Explaining the meaning of religious texts, which can vary significantly.
Argument from Popularity: The idea that the widespread belief in God across cultures and time suggests God’s reality.
Self-Deception: The act of deceiving oneself or believing something that is not true.
Salient Feature: The most noticeable or important aspect.
Norm (default): The usual, typical, or standard state.
Underlying Kernel (of truth): A fundamental element of truth beneath layers of distortion or misinterpretation.
Argument from Success (of religion): The idea that the enduring success and influence of religion suggests it points to valid truths, including the existence of God.
Antithetical: Directly opposed or contrary.
Corruption (of God by religion): The distortion or misuse of the concept of God for human purposes or due to flawed understanding.
Sages: Wise individuals with profound understanding.
Direct Awakenings/Insights: Personal and immediate realizations about the nature of reality or God.
Distilled (information): Condensed or extracted the essential meaning.
Dogma (as a trap): Turning insights into rigid, unquestionable beliefs that hinder further realization.
Perennial Philosophy: A perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world’s religions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or doctrine beneath their outward differences.
Commonality (between religions): Shared themes, concepts, or experiences across different religious traditions.
Nirvana (Buddhism): A state of liberation and freedom from suffering in Buddhism.
Ganesha (Hinduism): A widely worshipped deity in the Hindu pantheon.
Zen Buddhism: A school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing meditation and direct experience.
Ken Wilber: A contemporary philosopher known for his work integrating various fields of knowledge, including spirituality and psychology.
Breadcrumb Trail: A series of small clues or pieces of evidence that lead one towards a larger understanding.
Argument from Faith: The idea that belief in God should be based on faith rather than proof or evidence.
Blind Faith: Belief without question or evidence.
Leap of Faith: An act of believing in or attempting something hazardous, especially when the outcome is uncertain.
Pascal’s Wager: An argument that it is rational to believe in God because the potential reward (eternal life) outweighs the potential loss (nothing much), while not believing carries the risk of eternal damnation.
Downside (of believing): Potential negative consequences of belief.
Upside (of believing): Potential positive consequences of belief.
Hell: A place of eternal suffering in some religious traditions.
Rationalization (of belief): Creating seemingly logical reasons to justify a pre-existing belief.
Spaghetti Monster: A satirical deity used to argue against intelligent design.
Argument from Religious Experience: The idea that personal experiences interpreted as religious or spiritual provide evidence for God’s existence.
Psychological Interpretation (of religious experience): Explaining religious experiences in terms of psychological states or processes.
Self-Deceived (regarding religious experience): Misinterpreting personal experiences as divine encounters due to pre-existing beliefs or psychological factors.
Argument from Miracles: The idea that reported miraculous events serve as evidence for God’s existence.
Here Say: Information received from other people that one cannot directly verify.
Awakening (as a miracle): A profound shift in consciousness that provides a direct realization of the nature of reality or God, seen as a transformative and revelatory event.
Direct Claim of God: A statement or experience that directly asserts or involves an immediate encounter with God.
Indirect Claim of God: A statement or argument that attempts to infer or deduce God’s existence or nature through reasoning, observation, or other indirect means.
Intuition (as indirect): A feeling or sense that something is true, without conscious reasoning or direct evidence.
Hunch (as indirect): A feeling or suspicion that something is the case.
Hearsay (as indirect): Information received from others.
Speculation (as indirect): Forming theories or conjectures without firm evidence.
Probability (as indirect): Assessing the likelihood of God’s existence based on various factors.
Justification (as indirect): Providing reasons or evidence to support a belief in God.
Thoughts, Theories, Models (as indirect): Conceptual frameworks used to understand God.
Scientific Method (as indirect): A systematic approach to acquiring knowledge that relies on observation, experimentation, and analysis.
Self-Deception (revisited): The act of deceiving oneself about the nature of reality, including the existence or nature of God.
Epistemologically Legitimate Process: A way of acquiring knowledge that is sound, reliable, and minimizes biases and assumptions.
Backwards Rationalization: Constructing seemingly logical reasons to support a belief that one already holds, rather than arriving at the belief through a rational process.
Epistemological Ignoramuses: People who lack knowledge or understanding of epistemology.
Theist (as epistemological ignoramus): Someone who believes in God without a sound epistemological basis for that belief.
Atheist (as epistemological ignoramus): Someone who disbelieves in God without a sound epistemological basis for that disbelief.
Tautology (revisited): A statement that is necessarily true by its logical form; the speaker argues the probability of God existing (as the ultimate reality) is 100% in this sense.
Degrees of God: Different levels or aspects of understanding and experiencing the divine.
Uncorrupted (understanding of God): A comprehension of God that is free from ego biases, flawed interpretations, and misleading religious doctrines.
Hidden Assumptions: Assumptions that are made implicitly and are not consciously recognized or examined.
Problematic Assumptions (list): Specific examples of flawed assumptions commonly made in discussions about God’s existence, including those related to applying finite logic to the infinite, extrapolating from the universe, using probabilities, assuming God’s behavior or attributes, trusting scripture uncritically, and many others.
Infinite Object (God): The concept of God as unlimited and boundless.
Finite Objects: Things that have limits and boundaries.
Sample Size of One (universe): The fact that we only have one observed universe to draw conclusions from about cosmology or origins.
Basian Logic: A system of probability theory used for updating beliefs based on new evidence.
Benevolent: Well-meaning and kindly.
Evil (as a possibility for God): The idea that if God exists, God might not necessarily be good.
Necessary for the Universe: The assumption that God’s existence is required for the universe to exist or function as it does.
Cause (of the universe): The question of what brought the universe into existence.
Something and Nothing: The fundamental concepts of existence and non-existence.
One God vs. Many Gods: The difference between monotheism and polytheism.
God and Evolution: The relationship between a creator deity and the process of biological evolution.
Science and Truth: The philosophical question of whether science provides a complete or ultimate account of truth.
Consciousness and Matter: The debate about whether consciousness can arise from purely material processes.
Awakening (final emphasis): The key to resolving the confusions and limitations of indirect arguments about God.
True Self: The fundamental nature of one’s being, often associated with unity and connection to reality.
Practical Insights (for self-development): Useful understandings that can aid in personal growth and higher consciousness.
Noise and Distraction: Irrelevant or misleading information that hinders genuine understanding.
Absurd Political Situation: The current state of politics viewed as irrational or chaotic.
Market Collapses and Crashes: Sudden and significant declines in financial markets.
Economic Woes: Difficulties or problems in the economy.
Taking Your Eye Off the Ball: Losing focus on what is truly important.
Sticking With Me: Continuing to follow the speaker’s teachings and perspective.

Briefing Document: Analysis of Arguments for the Existence of God

Source: Excerpts from “01.pdf”

Date: October 26, 2023

Prepared for: Individuals interested in the philosophical and epistemological evaluation of arguments for the existence of God.

Executive Summary:

This document provides a detailed review of various classical philosophical and theological arguments for the existence of God, as presented and analyzed in the provided source material. The speaker, who claims a direct consciousness of God, embarks on a project to dissect these arguments, not to prove God’s existence, but to explore effective metaphysics and the epistemological traps inherent in attempting to understand God. While acknowledging his unique perspective, the speaker emphasizes the importance of open-mindedness, epistemic intelligence, and the need to “steel man” arguments before critiquing them. The analysis reveals that many traditional proofs rely on unexamined assumptions and face significant logical and epistemological challenges. The speaker ultimately suggests that a direct “Awakening” or consciousness of God is necessary for true understanding, rendering indirect arguments inherently limited and prone to self-deception.

Main Themes and Important Ideas/Facts:

The Goal: Epistemological Inquiry, Not Proof: The primary aim of the speaker is not to convince the audience of God’s existence but to examine the epistemology involved in such inquiries and to highlight common pitfalls.

Quote: “it’s not really about proving God to you of course that would be silly it’s uh about looking at the epistemology how to do effective metaphysics if there is such a thing and the many traps that come with trying to wrap your mind around God because this is where humans make all sorts of foolish mistakes that I’ll be pointing out.”

Unique Perspective: Direct Consciousness of God: The speaker discloses a personal “direct consciousness of God,” positioning his analysis from a perspective of already knowing the “final answer.”

Quote: “the problem here is that I do have a direct consciousness of God so I can’t pretend otherwise.”
Quote: “the whole point of this topic and why it’s interesting is because we’re going to be evaluating these proofs from a position of already having the final answer.”

Emphasis on Epistemic Caution: The speaker warns against a simplistic debunking mindset and stresses the need for open-mindedness and “epistemic intelligence.” He also cautions against self-deception, even through skepticism.

Quote: “this topic requires a high degree of open-mindedness and epistemic intelligence which is rare so keep that in mind.”
Quote: “be careful with this debunking mindset what we’re doing here is we’re not Pres presenting any kind of simplistic answers or any kind of ideology or belief system.”
Quote: “it is possible to deceive yourself with your own skepticism so just be aware of that.”

Rejection of Speculation and Belief: The speaker differentiates his approach from others by claiming to avoid speculation, belief systems, faith, dogma, ideology, paradigms (including materialism and science), and rationalization.

Quote: “what’s different about the way that I’m going to cover this topic from how other philosophers academics theists Christians atheists and scientist cover this topic is that I’m not going to be engaging in any speculation there’s not going to be any belief systems there’s no faith there’s no Dogma there’s no ideology there’s not even a paradigm like a materialist or a scientific Paradigm and there’s no rationalization.”

Defining “God”: The speaker clarifies the definition of God he will be using: a classic philosophical one encompassing attributes like Supreme Being, creator, infinite, unlimited, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, intelligent, loving, benevolent, eternal, transcendent, imminent, absolute truth, perfection, and unity. He explicitly excludes childish notions (bearded man in the clouds), specific religious deities (Christian God, Christ, Trinity), human-like entities, mythological symbols, and mere metaphors.

Quote: “really here I mean the very classic philosophical definition which is a Supreme Being the creator of reality world or Universe… infinite unlimited omnipotent omniscient omnipresent intelligent loving and benevolent Eternal… immaterial formless Transcendent and also imminent absolute truth itself Perfection Unity Oneness infinite mind this is what I mean by God.”
Quote: “what I don’t mean by God is I don’t mean a bearded man in the clouds that’s a childish notion of God so drop that idea.”
Quote: “rather think of God more as existence and reality itself.”

Principles of Good Philosophy: The speaker outlines principles for serious philosophical inquiry, including even-handed consideration of all perspectives, avoiding rationalization of pre-existing metaphysics, and “steel manning” arguments.

Quote: “when we’re doing philosophy there’s some principles for what it means to be a good philosopher and not just to half asset or to do some sort of um you know one of these debunking efforts which is not serious philosophy it means that you need to mount a a good serious consideration of every perspective every philosophical perspective even the ones you personally disagree with you have to have a certain uh even-handedness to how you consider various perspectives that’s what philosophy is all about.”
Quote: “you need to make a distinction between steel Manning and straw Manning perspectives so we’re going to look at the steel manned versions of all these arguments.”

The Nature of “Proof”: The speaker notes that “proof” is a loaded word and that even logically sound arguments may not persuade due to human psychology and ego. He emphasizes the psychological and sociological factors influencing persuasiveness.

Quote: “when I say proofs of God this is a very loaded word proof I don’t necessarily mean an airtight proof… just consider how human psychology works and the fact that even that would fail to persuade many people because there’s a difference between the truth of reality the fact the factualness of something and whether you’re able to persuade somebody of it these are very different things.”

Critique of Specific Arguments: The speaker proceeds to analyze several classical arguments for God’s existence:

Cosmological Argument: While the premise that everything within the universe has a cause is accepted, the speaker questions the assumption that this principle can be extrapolated to outside the universe. The necessity of a “cause” for the universe itself is challenged, and the leap from an uncaused cause to the specific attributes of God is deemed unwarranted. The possibility of the universe being eternal or part of a larger, eternal system is raised.
Something from Nothing Argument: The speaker questions the assumption that something cannot come from nothing, suggesting the universe might be an exception. He also playfully proposes that “nothing” itself could be considered God. The lack of empirical reference for the universe’s origin limits definitive answers.
Ontological Argument: The initial formulation is deemed unconvincing, akin to imagining a perfect space kangaroo. A revised version based on the concept of infinity (possessing all possible properties, including existence) is considered more plausible but still hinges on the controversial idea that existence is a property. The nature of existence and non-existence is highlighted as a profound and unknown metaphysical question.
Teleological Argument (Argument from Design and Fine-Tuning): While acknowledging the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, the speaker points out that probability arguments don’t equate to impossibility. Atheistic counterarguments involving multiverse theories and anthropocentric bias are mentioned. The speaker suggests that understanding the “utter genius of the structure of reality” requires a direct experience of God. The analogy of the pocket watch is critiqued as a straw man, arguing that even complex human creations are products of evolutionary processes.
Argument from Truth: The claim that eternal truths (math, logic) require a grounding in an unchanging source (God) is analyzed. The nature of math and logic itself (whether transcendent or brain-based) is questioned. The idea of grounding truth in a void (which is eternal and unchanging) is contrasted with Augustine’s preference for God.
Hierarchy of Goodness: The speaker grants the recognition of degrees of goodness but questions the implication of a scale leading to “perfect goodness.” The relativity of goodness to purpose and perspective is raised, challenging the notion of a purely abstract perfect good. The jump from the possibility of perfect good to its necessary existence is deemed a “sneaky” logical leap.
Argument from Participation: While initially appearing weak, the speaker elaborates on a deeper interpretation rooted in the idea that all qualities in the universe derive from participation in the whole. This aligns with a holistic, top-down view of reality where the universe itself possesses qualities like intelligence and consciousness. The speaker connects this to the realization that “you are the universe,” dissolving the perceived separation and allowing participation in its infinite qualities, including those attributed to God. This understanding, however, requires “Awakening.”
Aquinas’s Teleological Proof: The argument that unintelligent natural bodies acting towards ends must be directed by an external intelligence is examined. The speaker reinterprets “intelligence” in a broader sense, encompassing the order and arrangement of the universe. While the analogy of the archer and arrow seems plausible, the speaker argues that it’s not obvious that the intelligence behind physical laws couldn’t have arisen through naturalistic processes like a “dumb Brute Force unintelligent Force” in a multiverse scenario.
Neoplatonic Proof: The argument from the multiplicity of the material world requiring an absolute Unity as its source is considered. The necessity of such a unity is questioned, particularly in the context of a potentially disconnected multiverse. The nature of this absolute Unity and its relation to the classical attributes of God is deemed unclear, potentially resembling a void.
Moral Argument: The premise of objective moral truths is challenged, suggesting morality could be a relative human or social construct tied to survival. The necessity of God for moral truths is disputed, proposing reason and the avoidance of suffering as alternative foundations. The idea that science cannot address values is acknowledged, but its relevance to the existence of objective morality is questioned. Moral conscience is argued to be a natural faculty, as evidenced by animal behavior.
Argument that Atheists Piggyback off Religious Morality: While acknowledging the “no true Scotsman” fallacy in Jordan Peterson’s version, the speaker offers a nuanced perspective. He suggests that atheist morality, to the extent it involves intelligence, indirectly participates in the intelligence of God (as reality/consciousness), even if unrecognized by the atheist.
Argument from Reason and Intelligibility: The intelligibility of the world to human reason is seen as suggestive of a rational foundation to reality, which is equated with God’s rationality taken to the nth degree (infinite consciousness/mind). This challenges the naturalistic assumption that rationality is solely a product of the brain.
Performative Contradiction of Naturalism: The argument that if naturalism is true, then human perception and reason (including science itself) are merely products of survival and thus unreliable, leading to a self-defeating position. The doing of science and math is argued to presuppose a “faith in your faculties,” which can be seen as a faith in God (as the ground of reliable consciousness). The speaker extends this to the necessity of God for maintaining sanity.
Argument from Information Theory: The presence of coded information in DNA is argued to necessitate a conscious mind as its origin, based on information theory principles that random processes degrade code. This challenges the idea of undirected natural processes creating life. However, the speaker counters that life’s origin is still an open empirical question, and the “intelligence” could be inherent in the structure of chemistry and physics, ultimately stemming from God’s design but not necessarily requiring direct intervention in DNA.
Argument from Free Will: Deemed a weak argument due to the contested existence of free will and the lack of a necessary connection to God. The speaker surprisingly suggests that the absence of free will is actually consistent with the absolute nature of God.
Argument from Consciousness: The hard problem of consciousness is presented as suggesting a non-material source (God). While scientists may disagree, the speaker asserts this is true because the universe is consciousness, and God is consciousness, but this requires a level of awareness (“Awakening”) to comprehend.
Argument from Scripture: Rejected as poor because scripture is written by fallible humans, prone to corruption, misinterpretation, and self-deception. Even if divinely inspired, this doesn’t guarantee infallibility. Personal interpretation further complicates the issue.
Argument from Popularity: Dismissed due to the prevalence of self-deception in human existence. However, a deeper layer suggests that the widespread belief in God throughout history might ironically be because God does exist, but people are largely deluded about God’s nature.
Argument from Success of Religion: Considered unconvincing at face value, as religion’s success is attributed to its service to human survival, which can be antithetical to understanding God. A deeper layer suggests religion works because it originated from sages with direct Awakenings, who distilled insights into useful psychological teachings.
Argument from Perennial Philosophy: Seen as a reasonably good argument, highlighting the commonalities across diverse religious and spiritual traditions, suggesting a shared underlying truth (God/Awakening) beneath cultural differences.
Argument from Faith: Strongly rejected as counterproductive to the genuine pursuit of truth and the realization of God, which requires inquiry, not blind belief.
Pascal’s Wager: Dismissed as a terrible argument due to its selective application and the fact that mere belief doesn’t lead to God.
Argument from Religious Experience: Acknowledged as pointing to something real but often based on poor and impure understandings of God, prone to self-deception.
Argument from Miracles: Rejected as reliant on unreliable hearsay and stories. The only true miracle that proves God is “Awakening.”

The Problem of Self-Deception: This is highlighted as a fundamental and pervasive issue in all attempts to understand God, affecting both theists and atheists. There is no easy solution, and even direct experiences can be misinterpreted.

Quote: “everything humans say about God is corrupt and misleading.”

Direct vs. Indirect Claims of God: A crucial distinction is made between direct encounters with God (the only reliable method according to the speaker) and all indirect methods (logical deduction, intuition, belief, faith, scientific method, etc.), which are prone to self-deception.
Importance of Identifying Assumptions: The speaker stresses that the core of understanding God (and reality in general) lies in identifying and questioning underlying epistemic and metaphysical assumptions, which most people fail to do.

Quote: “ask them to identify their own assumptions no matter what the argument they propose ask them to identify their epistemic and metaphysical assumptions and you will see that the majority of human beings will not be able to do this.”

Truth Over Belief: The speaker emphasizes the pursuit of truth as paramount, arguing that if God is real, truth will lead to that realization. Faith and belief are seen as hindrances to genuine inquiry.

Quote: “what matters is not God what matters is truth so faith is very counterproductive to this process because to realize God requires a deep serious inquiry process Faith prevents any kind of inquiry.”

List of Problematic Assumptions: The document concludes with a list of common flawed assumptions in discussions about God, covering areas like applying finite logic to the infinite, extrapolating universe-internal dynamics, using small sample sizes and probabilities metaphysically, assuming morality, understanding God’s behavior and attributes, trusting scripture, the necessity of God, the nature of causation and existence, the intelligence of the universe, the distinction between God and world/self/evil, the possibility of logical proof, the validity of science for metaphysics, the truth of atheism, the existence of free will, the difference between something and nothing, the distinction between one and many gods, the relationship between God and evolution, the truth of science itself, and the nature of consciousness.

Conclusion:

The speaker’s analysis presents a highly critical view of traditional arguments for God’s existence, primarily due to their reliance on unexamined assumptions and the inherent limitations of indirect epistemological approaches. From his self-proclaimed position of direct consciousness of God, he suggests that true understanding transcends intellectual arguments and requires a direct “Awakening.” The emphasis on identifying and questioning assumptions serves as a central takeaway, applicable not only to the concept of God but to all forms of inquiry into the nature of reality. The briefing document highlights the profound challenges and potential for self-deception inherent in metaphysical investigations, ultimately suggesting a path beyond mere belief and rationalization towards a more direct form of knowing.

Critiques of Arguments for God’s Existence

# 1. The cosmological argument states that everything has a cause, the universe exists, therefore it must have a cause. This cause cannot be an infinite chain, nor can it originate from within the universe. What are the main flaws in this line of reasoning?

The main flaws lie in several assumptions made without sufficient justification. Firstly, it assumes that the principle of causality, observed within the universe, must also apply to the universe itself or anything “outside” of it. This extrapolation is not necessarily valid, as the rules governing our universe may not apply beyond its boundaries. Secondly, the argument assumes that an infinite chain of causes is impossible without providing adequate justification for this claim. It also posits that the cause cannot be from within the universe, leading to the idea of the universe causing itself being illogical, but this dismissal is not self-evident. Finally, the leap from an uncaused cause to this cause being the classical definition of God (timeless, spaceless, immaterial, omnipotent, etc.) is a significant assumption lacking direct support.

# 2. The “something from nothing” argument suggests that the universe could not have arisen from nothing, therefore something more powerful, i.e., God, must have created it. What are the key weaknesses of this argument?

The argument’s primary weakness is the unproven assertion that “something cannot come from nothing.” Our understanding of the universe’s origins is incomplete, and it’s presumptuous to declare definitively what is or is not possible at such fundamental levels. Furthermore, the argument often posits God as the necessary “something” without adequately addressing the question of God’s own origin. If everything needs a cause, then what caused God? Theists often claim God is uncaused, which contradicts the initial premise of the argument. Additionally, the argument does not consider alternative possibilities for the universe’s origin that do not involve a traditional deity. It also fails to define “nothing” precisely, and what we consider “nothing” might have properties we don’t currently understand.

# 3. The ontological argument, in its various forms, attempts to prove God’s existence from the very concept of God, often as a perfect being. What are the fundamental criticisms of this type of argument?

The core criticism of ontological arguments is that existence is generally considered a predicate that must be determined empirically, not solely through definition. Simply conceiving of a perfect being does not necessitate its actual existence. Critics argue that one can imagine a perfect being lacking existence without logical contradiction. The argument often falls into the trap of assuming that if perfection includes all positive qualities, and existence is a positive quality, then a perfect being must exist. However, the status of existence as a “property” is philosophically debated. Moreover, similar logic could be applied to other imaginary perfect entities, leading to absurd conclusions.

# 4. Arguments from design or fine-tuning point to the seemingly improbable precision of the universe’s physical constants and conditions as evidence for an intelligent designer, i.e., God. What are the main counterarguments to these claims?

Counterarguments to fine-tuning arguments include the anthropic principle, which suggests that our observation of a finely tuned universe is a selection bias – we could only exist in a universe with conditions suitable for life. Multiverse theories propose that there could be a vast number of universes with different physical constants, making our seemingly improbable universe just one possibility among many, some of which would inevitably be life-permitting. Additionally, the argument assumes that the current physical laws and constants are the only possible ones, which we cannot definitively know. Finally, even if the universe appears finely tuned, this does not automatically prove that the tuner is the traditional God with attributes like love and benevolence; it could be some other form of intelligence or a natural process we don’t yet understand.

# 5. The moral argument for God’s existence often claims that objective morality requires a divine foundation. How do secular ethics and evolutionary biology offer alternative explanations for the existence of moral principles?

Secular ethics proposes that morality can be grounded in reason, human well-being, social contracts, and the need for societal flourishing without invoking a divine lawgiver. Ethical frameworks like utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics offer non-religious bases for moral principles. Evolutionary biology suggests that moral behaviors could have evolved through natural selection because cooperation, empathy, and altruism can enhance the survival and reproductive success of social species. These evolved tendencies, combined with cultural norms and rational reflection, can form the basis of moral systems. The argument that atheists cannot have objective morality is often seen as a “no true Scotsman” fallacy, as many atheists lead moral lives guided by secular ethical principles.

# 6. Several arguments, including those from reason and intelligibility, and the performative contradiction of naturalism, suggest that the very capacity for human reason and our ability to understand the universe point to a deeper, rational foundation or even a divine intelligence. What are the counterarguments or alternative perspectives on these claims?

Counterarguments suggest that human reason and our understanding of the universe, while remarkable, could be the result of natural evolutionary processes that favored cognitive abilities beneficial for survival. The “intelligibility” of the universe might be a consequence of our brains evolving to find patterns, even if those patterns don’t necessarily reflect a pre-ordained rational structure imposed by a deity. The performative contradiction argument, while interesting, can be challenged by pointing out that even if our cognitive faculties evolved for survival, they could still be capable of discerning truths about the world to a sufficient degree, even if that truth is not absolute or perfect. Furthermore, science operates on methodological naturalism, which brackets metaphysical claims about ultimate reality and focuses on explaining the natural world through natural processes, without necessarily requiring a faith in divine faculties.

# 7. The perennial philosophy argument suggests that the commonalities found across various religions and spiritual traditions point towards a shared underlying truth or a universal God. While the speaker finds this argument “pretty good,” what caveats or criticisms should be considered?

While the commonalities across religions can be striking and suggestive, there are significant caveats. Firstly, the interpretations of these common themes often differ widely, and the specific beliefs and practices of different religions can be contradictory. Secondly, similarities could arise from shared human psychological needs, cultural evolution, or even convergent development of ideas rather than a direct apprehension of a single divine reality. The argument also risks oversimplifying complex and diverse religious traditions, potentially ignoring fundamental differences in their doctrines and practices. Finally, the fact that many people believe in something does not automatically validate its objective truth.

# 8. The speaker dismisses arguments from faith, Pascal’s wager, religious experiences, and miracles as weak or flawed. Summarize the primary reasons for these dismissals.

The argument from faith is dismissed because blind faith discourages critical inquiry, which is essential for understanding truth, including the nature of God. Pascal’s wager is seen as a self-serving and intellectually dishonest approach that does not genuinely lead to belief and can be applied to any hypothetical deity. The argument from religious experiences is problematic due to the subjective, personal, and often culturally conditioned nature of these experiences, as well as the significant potential for misinterpretation and self-deception. The argument from miracles is considered weak because personal accounts and hearsay are unreliable forms of evidence, and individuals rarely witness events that definitively violate the laws of nature in a way that irrefutably points to divine intervention. The only “miracle” deemed significant is Awakening, a direct experience of consciousness, which transcends mere belief or secondhand accounts.

The Nature of God: Arguments and Underlying Assumptions

The nature of God is a profound question that has been explored through numerous philosophical and theological arguments, many of which the speaker in the source aims to dissect. The speaker begins by providing a classic philosophical definition of God as a Supreme Being, the creator of reality, world, or Universe, which are used synonymously. This God is described as the source with a capital S, infinite, unlimited, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, intelligent, loving, and benevolent, eternal (having existed forever, beyond time, transcending time and space, more fundamental than time and space), immaterial, formless, transcendent, and also immanent, absolute truth itself, Perfection, Unity, Oneness, infinite mind.

However, the speaker also clarifies what they do not mean by God:

A bearded man in the clouds, which is considered a childish notion.
The Christian God, Christ, or the Trinity.
A human-like entity or a personal being in the conventional sense.
A material creature like aliens who might have created the universe as a simulation.
A mythological symbol, story, or metaphor, distinguishing this from symbolic or mythopoetic interpretations.

Instead, the speaker suggests that, for skeptics and scientists, it might be more plausible to think of God as existence and reality itself. The “trick,” according to the speaker, is figuring out how to reconcile this with the religious qualities and attributes associated with God.

Throughout the analysis of various arguments for God’s existence, further aspects of God’s nature are implicitly discussed:

Cosmological Argument: This argument suggests God is the timeless, spaceless, immaterial, very powerful, and absolutely simple cause of the universe. However, the speaker questions the assumptions inherent in this argument, such as the necessity of a cause outside the universe and the impossibility of an infinite chain of causes. The speaker also points out that even if a simple, timeless, and spaceless cause exists, it doesn’t necessarily align with the theistic concept of a loving and intelligent God.
Argument from the Big Bang: This argument attempts to link the scientific theory of the Big Bang to a creation event caused by a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and powerful entity, identified as God. The speaker cautions against hinging belief in God on a scientific theory that could change and highlights the unproven assumption that the cause of the Big Bang is the theistic God.
Something from Nothing Argument: This argument posits that since something cannot come from nothing, the universe must have been created by God. The speaker raises the possibility that God could be considered “nothing” in a certain sense, which might not satisfy traditional theists. The fundamental difficulty in understanding concepts like “nothing” and “uncaused” is also emphasized.
Ontological Argument: The initial formulation of this argument suggests that a perfect being must exist because lacking existence would be an imperfection. The speaker finds this unconvincing and proposes a better version based on the concept of infinity. This version suggests that infinity, possessing all possible properties including existence, is synonymous with God. However, the speaker acknowledges the philosophical debate about whether existence is a property and questions whether the concept of an entity with all possible properties is coherent. The speaker later notes that these arguments become more convincing after a direct experience of infinity.
Descartes’ Causal Argument: This argument claims that the idea of a perfect, infinite being within us must have been caused by an actual infinite, perfect being (God) because an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause. The speaker critiques the assumption that the idea of God contains more reality than a finite, imperfect being and questions the premise that an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause.
Teleological Argument: This argument suggests that the complexity, harmony, and intelligent order of nature point to an intelligent designer (God). While acknowledging the apparent intelligence in biological systems, the speaker highlights the scientific explanation of evolution by natural selection. However, the speaker also suggests a deeper level where the underlying substrate of reality and the origin of life remain mysterious, leaving room for a non-traditional understanding of God, possibly as the universe itself or the intelligence inherent in its laws. The fine-tuning argument, a related concept, posits that the precise conditions necessary for life suggest intentional design. The speaker finds the extreme improbability of these fine-tuned constants arising by chance to be highly suggestive of a deeper intelligence.
Aristotle’s Proof from Movement: This argument proposes an “unmoved mover” as the first cause of all motion, which must be eternal, immaterial, necessary, and perfect, equated with God. The speaker questions the impossibility of an infinite chain of movers and the mechanism by which an unmoved mover causes motion, especially the idea of motion arising from “desire or love”.
St. Augustine’s Proofs: The first proof equates God with eternal, unchanging, and necessary truths like math and logic, arguing that these truths must be grounded in something equally eternal and unchanging. The speaker questions the nature of mathematical and logical truths and whether they transcend physical reality. The second proof, the hierarchy of goodness, suggests that the recognition of degrees of goodness implies a standard of perfect goodness, which is God. The speaker questions the objectivity and absolute nature of “perfect goodness”. The argument from participation suggests that qualities exist in degrees because they are derived from participation in the ultimate source of those qualities, which is God. The speaker initially finds this unconvincing from a purely scientific perspective but suggests that with a shift in understanding to the universe as consciousness, this argument gains more weight, implying God as the sum total of all qualities taken to an infinite degree.
Platinus’ Proof from Multiplicity to Unity: This argument posits that the multiplicity in the material world requires an absolute unity as its source, which is beyond being, intellect, and definition, equated with God. The speaker questions the necessity of absolute unity as a source of multiplicity, considering possibilities like a multiverse without a single containing structure. The abstract nature of this absolute unity and its connection to the classical features of God are also questioned.
Moral Argument: This argument claims that the existence of objective moral truths necessitates the existence of God. The speaker challenges the existence of objective moral truths, suggesting they could be relative and human constructs. Even if moral principles are based on reason and the avoidance of suffering, the necessity of God is questioned. However, the speaker later suggests that atheists are only moral to the extent that they participate in the intelligence of God.
Argument from Reason and Intelligibility: This argument states that the world’s intelligibility to human reason suggests a rational foundation to reality itself, which is God taken to the nth degree. The speaker contends that materialism assumes rationality is a purely natural phenomenon but argues that rationality is deeply interwoven with the metaphysics of Consciousness, with God being infinite Consciousness and mind.
Performative Contradiction of Naturalism: This argument suggests that if naturalism is true, then human perception and reason are merely products of survival, making naturalistic philosophy and scientific reasoning unreliable. The act of doing science, therefore, implies a faith in one’s faculties, which is ultimately faith in God. The speaker extends this to the idea that even sanity is maintained by God.
Argument from Information Theory: This argument posits that the coded information in DNA, which functions as language and programming code, must have originated from a conscious mind, as codes and language do not arise from random processes. The speaker finds this argument interesting but questions whether the origin of life itself could be an example of code arising through a natural process, albeit one possibly grounded in the intelligence of physics rather than direct divine intervention.
Argument from Free Will: This argument suggests that the existence of free will points to a source beyond material determinism, implying God. The speaker finds this weak, questioning the existence of free will and arguing that God, as absolute, might imply complete determinism.
Argument from Consciousness: This argument claims that the existence of consciousness suggests a non-material source, as it is difficult to explain how dumb matter can become conscious. The speaker agrees that this is true, stating that the universe is consciousness and God is consciousness, but this is not obvious to those who are not “awake”.
Argument from Scripture: This argument uses scripture, claimed to be the word of God or divinely inspired, as evidence for God’s existence. The speaker dismisses this as unreliable hearsay.
Argument from Religious Experience: This argument uses personal religious experiences as evidence for God. The speaker acknowledges the existence of such experiences but cautions that many are poor understandings of God and can be forms of self-deception.
Argument from Miracles: This argument uses reports of miraculous events as proof of God. The speaker considers this a bad argument as individuals rarely witness miracles directly. However, the speaker suggests that “Awakening” is a miracle that proves God on a deeper level.

The speaker emphasizes the critical distinction between direct and indirect claims of God. Direct knowledge comes from a direct encounter or consciousness of God, while all arguments, logical deductions, intuitions, beliefs, faith, hearsay, speculations, probabilities, justifications, thoughts, theories, models, and even scientific methods are considered indirect and prone to self-deception.

Ultimately, the speaker stresses that understanding God requires recognizing and overcoming self-deception and identifying the underlying epistemic and metaphysical assumptions in any argument about God. The speaker provides a list of common problematic assumptions made in discussions about God, highlighting the limitations of applying finite logic to the infinite, extrapolating from the universe to beyond it, using small sample sizes, relying on probabilities in metaphysics, assuming the nature and behavior of God, trusting scripture without verification, and many others. The core of understanding God, according to the speaker, lies in identifying these hidden assumptions rather than simply believing or disbelieving.

Arguments For and Against God

The source you provided contains a comprehensive discussion of various arguments for the existence of God, where the speaker analyzes classical philosophical and theological arguments, often pointing out their flaws. The speaker approaches this from a unique perspective, claiming a direct consciousness of God, which influences their evaluation of these proofs.

Here’s a summary of the arguments discussed and the speaker’s analysis:

Cosmological Argument: This argument posits a first cause for the universe, which is identified as God. The speaker finds this not very convincing because it makes assumptions about what lies outside the universe and applies human logic to the origin of existence, which may not be valid. The speaker also notes that even if a first cause exists, it doesn’t necessarily align with the theistic definition of God.
Argument from the Big Bang: This argument attempts to link the Big Bang theory to a biblical creation event, suggesting the cause of the Big Bang was a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and powerful God. The speaker cautions against hinging belief on a scientific theory that could change and points out the unproven leap from the Big Bang to the theistic God.
Something from Nothing Argument: This argument states that since something cannot come from nothing, God must have created the universe. The speaker raises the possibility that God could be considered “nothing” in some sense and questions the assumption that “something cannot come from nothing,” suggesting it might be a question-begging premise. The lack of reference for understanding such fundamental questions in our everyday experience is also highlighted.
Ontological Argument: The initial form suggests that a perfect being must exist because lacking existence would be an imperfection. The speaker finds this unconvincing, comparing it to imagining a perfect intergalactic space kangaroo and assuming its existence. A better formulation, based on the concept of infinity possessing all properties including existence, is presented. However, even this is questioned due to the debatable nature of whether existence is a property and the possibility that the concept of such an infinite being is incoherent. The speaker later notes that these arguments become more convincing after a direct experience of infinity.
Descartes’ Causal Argument: This argument claims that the idea of a perfect, infinite being within us must have been caused by an actual infinite, perfect being (God), based on the principle that an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause. The speaker finds this very tricky and ultimately unconvincing, questioning the notion that the idea of God contains more reality than the individual and the validity of the principle itself.
Teleological Argument: This argument proposes that the complexity, harmony, and intelligent order of nature suggest an intelligent designer (God). While acknowledging the apparent design, the speaker highlights the scientific explanation of evolution by natural selection. However, a deeper level is considered where the underlying substrate of reality and the fine-tuning of the universe suggest a profound intelligence, although whether this equates to the traditional concept of God is questioned. The speaker notes that these arguments become more compelling after experiencing God directly.
Fine-Tuning Argument: Closely related to the teleological argument, this states that the precise conditions necessary for life in the universe suggest intentional design. The speaker acknowledges the extreme improbability of these conditions arising by random chance, making it suggestive of a deeper intelligence, but also mentions counterarguments like the multiverse theory. Ultimately, the speaker deems it not strictly logically convincing.
Argument from Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover (mentioned implicitly): While not explicitly detailed with numbered steps, the speaker touches on the idea of a necessary first cause of motion, which is a classical philosophical argument for God. The speaker questions the assumptions made about the nature of this first cause.
Arguments from St. Augustine (mentioned implicitly): The speaker refers to arguments based on eternal truths and the hierarchy of goodness. The speaker critiques these, questioning the nature and grounding of such abstract concepts and the leap to the existence of a theistic God. The “argument from participation,” suggesting qualities exist in degrees due to participation in an ultimate source (God), is also discussed, initially found unconvincing but gaining plausibility with a view of the universe as consciousness.
Platinus’ Proof from Multiplicity to Unity: This argument suggests that the multiplicity of the material world requires an absolute unity as its source, identified as God. The speaker questions the necessity of such a unity and the nature of this absolute, simple entity, asking how it relates to the traditional attributes of God.
Moral Argument: This argument claims that the existence of objective moral truths necessitates God. The speaker challenges the existence of objective morality, suggesting it could be relative and human-constructed. Even if morality is based on reason and survival, the necessity of God is questioned, though the speaker later posits that even atheist morality participates in divine intelligence.
Argument from Reason and Intelligibility: This argument states that the world’s intelligibility to human reason suggests a rational foundation to reality, which is God taken to the highest degree. The speaker argues that while materialism assumes rationality is natural, it is actually deeply connected to Consciousness, which is God.
Performative Contradiction of Naturalism: This argument suggests that if naturalism is true, then human perception and reason are unreliable products of survival, undermining the basis of naturalistic philosophy and science itself. The speaker argues that science requires a faith in one’s faculties, which ultimately implies a faith in God (Consciousness). The speaker even extends this to the idea that sanity is maintained by God.
Argument from Information Theory: This argument proposes that the coded information in DNA must have originated from a conscious mind, as code doesn’t arise from random processes. The speaker finds this interesting but questions whether the origin of life itself could be an example of code arising naturally through the intelligence of chemistry and physics, without direct divine intervention.
Argument from Free Will: This argument suggests that free will implies a source beyond material determinism, thus God. The speaker finds this weak, questioning the existence of free will and suggesting that God’s absolute nature might imply determinism.
Argument from Consciousness: This argument states that consciousness suggests a non-material source, as it’s hard to explain how matter becomes conscious. The speaker agrees that the universe is Consciousness and God is Consciousness, but this requires “Awakening” to realize.
Argument from Scripture: This argument uses scripture as evidence for God. The speaker dismisses this as unreliable hearsay written by potentially corruptible humans.
Argument from Popularity: This argument suggests that the widespread belief in God across cultures and time indicates God’s reality. The speaker finds this poor, stating that self-deception is common, but paradoxically, the popularity might stem from the underlying truth of God’s existence, albeit with widespread delusion about God’s nature.
Argument from Success (of religion): This argument claims that the success of religion implies it points to valid truths and God’s existence. The speaker finds this unconvincing, suggesting religion’s success is due to psychological factors related to human survival, which can be antithetical to understanding God. However, on a deeper level, religion might work because it originated from individuals with genuine insights into God.
Argument from Perennial Philosophy: This argument points to the commonalities across different religions and cultures’ notions of God. The speaker finds this a pretty good argument, suggesting it indicates that various traditions are pointing towards a similar ultimate truth, even if expressed differently.
Argument from Faith: This argument suggests that belief in God requires blind faith, as God tests believers. The speaker deems this atrocious, advocating for the pursuit of truth through skepticism rather than blind faith.
Pascal’s Wager: This argument suggests believing in God is rational due to the potential reward (heaven) and punishment (hell). The speaker calls this terrible, as belief alone doesn’t lead to God, and it can be applied to any ridiculous belief system. It also ignores the potential downsides of religious belief.
Argument from Mystery (God of the Gaps): This argument uses science’s current inability to explain certain phenomena as evidence for God. The speaker considers this bad, as it relies on the limits of current scientific knowledge, which are constantly changing.
Argument from Religious and Mystical Experience: This argument uses personal experiences of the divine as evidence for God. The speaker considers this one of the best, as the ultimate knowledge of God comes through direct experience. However, the problem of distinguishing genuine from corrupted experiences is acknowledged.
Argument from Miracles: This argument uses reports of miraculous events as proof of God. The speaker finds this bad, as individuals rarely witness miracles directly and rely on unreliable hearsay. However, “Awakening” is presented as a real “miracle” that can prove God.

Throughout the discussion, the speaker emphasizes the crucial difference between direct and indirect claims of God. Direct knowledge comes from a personal encounter or consciousness of God, while all the listed arguments are indirect and susceptible to self-deception.

A central theme is the importance of identifying one’s epistemic and metaphysical assumptions when considering arguments for God. The speaker provides a long list of common problematic assumptions made in these discussions, cautioning against applying properties of finite objects to the infinite, extrapolating beyond the universe, using small sample sizes for probability, assuming the nature and behavior of God, and many others.

Finally, the speaker mentions that this is just the beginning of a deeper exploration. Upcoming episodes will delve into why God cannot be proven and will present the speaker’s own “unique proofs” for God.

Philosophy of God: Arguments and Epistemology

The source you provided delves deeply into the philosophy of God by examining various arguments for God’s existence. The speaker emphasizes that the goal is not to prove God but to analyze the epistemology and potential pitfalls in metaphysical inquiries about God. This involves dissecting classical philosophical and theological arguments, many of which are deemed unconvincing by the speaker.

Here’s a breakdown of the key aspects of the philosophy of God discussed in the source:

Defining God: The speaker begins by establishing a classical philosophical definition of God as a Supreme Being, the creator of reality, infinite, unlimited, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, intelligent, loving, benevolent, eternal, beyond time and space, immaterial, formless, transcendent, imminent, absolute truth, perfection, unity, oneness, and infinite mind. This definition is crucial for evaluating the arguments and avoiding straw man arguments against simpler or more anthropomorphic conceptions of God. The speaker explicitly excludes notions like a “bearded man in the clouds,” the Christian Trinity, a human-like entity, or mythological symbols. They suggest that for skeptics, thinking of God as existence and reality itself might be a more plausible starting point.
Analyzing Arguments for God’s Existence: The majority of the source is dedicated to analyzing specific arguments:
Cosmological Argument: Critiqued for assuming that everything must have a cause and for extrapolating from the universe to its potential cause.
Argument from the Big Bang: Dismissed as reliant on a potentially changing scientific theory and making an unproven leap to theistic attributes of God.
Something from Nothing Argument: Challenged by questioning the assumption that something cannot come from nothing and even suggesting God could be “nothing”.
Ontological Argument: Initially deemed unconvincing but a more sophisticated version based on the concept of infinity is presented, though still debated on the nature of existence as a property. The speaker later suggests these arguments resonate more with those who have directly experienced infinity.
Descartes’ Causal Argument: Found unconvincing due to questionable premises about the “reality” contained in ideas.
Teleological and Fine-Tuning Arguments: While acknowledging the appearance of design and the improbable fine-tuning of the universe, the speaker notes the scientific explanation of evolution and the existence of counterarguments like the multiverse, ultimately finding them not strictly logically conclusive but suggestive of deeper intelligence. Direct experience of God enhances the plausibility of these arguments for the speaker.
Arguments from Aristotle (Unmoved Mover), St. Augustine (Eternal Truths, Hierarchy of Goodness, Participation), and Platinus (Multiplicity to Unity): Each of these is analyzed, with the speaker pointing out questionable assumptions and logical gaps.
Moral Argument: Challenged by the possibility of relative or human-constructed morality and the potential for morality to exist without God. However, a deeper connection between consciousness, morality, and God is later proposed.
Argument from Reason and Intelligibility & Performative Contradiction of Naturalism: The speaker argues that reason and the intelligibility of the world point to a rational foundation (God/Consciousness), and that naturalism undermines the reliability of the very reason it employs.
Argument from Information Theory: Interesting but ultimately inconclusive due to the open question of life’s origin and whether it required direct intelligence.
Argument from Free Will: Considered weak due to the contested existence of free will and the possibility of a determined universe where God still exists.
Argument from Consciousness: Deemed literally true because God is consciousness, but this requires “Awakening” to realize.
Argument from Scripture & Popularity & Success (of religion) & Faith & Pascal’s Wager & Mystery (God of the Gaps) & Miracles: These are largely dismissed as unreliable, illogical, or based on flawed premises. Faith is even called “atrocious” as it hinders genuine inquiry.
Argument from Perennial Philosophy: Considered a “pretty good argument” for its indication of a common underlying truth across various spiritual traditions.
Argument from Religious and Mystical Experience: Highlighted as one of the best, as direct experience is the ultimate way to know God, though the problem of corrupted experiences is acknowledged.
Epistemological Considerations: The speaker repeatedly emphasizes the importance of open-mindedness, epistemic intelligence, and careful analysis of assumptions. They warn against a “debunking mindset” and stress the need to consider perspectives even if one disagrees with them. The distinction between steel manning and straw manning arguments is crucial for good philosophy. The speaker underscores the loaded nature of the word “proof” in this context. A central theme is the difference between direct (personal experience) and indirect (logical arguments, intuition, belief, etc.) claims of God, with the latter being prone to self-deception. The speaker provides an extensive list of problematic assumptions commonly made in discussions about God, urging listeners to identify these assumptions in any argument presented.
The Speaker’s Unique Perspective: The speaker’s self-proclaimed “direct consciousness of God” positions their analysis from a unique standpoint, evaluating proofs from the perspective of already knowing the “final answer”. This allows them to see flaws and limitations in arguments that might seem convincing to those without this direct experience. However, the speaker acknowledges that the audience cannot verify their claim and must evaluate the quality of the analysis itself.

In essence, the source offers a critical philosophical examination of various arguments for God’s existence, emphasizing epistemological rigor, the identification of assumptions, and the distinction between direct experience and indirect reasoning. The speaker’s unique perspective shapes this analysis, suggesting that while logical proofs often fall short, the direct experience of God is the most compelling form of knowing. This aligns with the branch of philosophy of God that explores the nature of religious experience and mystical knowledge.

Dissecting Arguments for and Against God’s Existence

Based on the source “01.pdf” and our previous conversation, a comprehensive discussion on the existence of God involves analyzing the multitude of arguments that have been proposed, alongside a critical examination of the epistemological challenges inherent in such discussions.

The speaker in the source undertakes a detailed dissection of various classical philosophical and theological arguments for God’s existence, often finding them unconvincing due to flawed logic and unexamined assumptions. It’s crucial to understand the speaker’s definition of God in this context: a Supreme Being, the creator of reality, infinite, unlimited, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, intelligent, loving, benevolent, eternal, beyond time and space, immaterial, formless, transcendent, imminent, absolute truth, perfection, unity, oneness, and infinite mind. This sophisticated definition avoids simplistic straw man arguments.

Here’s a summary of how the source addresses the existence of God through analyzing different arguments:

Arguments Based on Causation: The cosmological argument suggests that everything has a cause, and the universe’s cause must be God. However, the speaker critiques the assumption that this principle applies outside the universe and questions the necessity of an infinite chain of causes. Similarly, the argument from the Big Bang attempts to link the scientific origin of the universe to a divine creation event, but this is criticized for relying on potentially evolving scientific theories and making unjustified leaps to theistic conclusions. The something from nothing argument is also examined, with the speaker challenging the assumption that “something cannot come from nothing” and even suggesting that God could be equated with “nothing”.
Arguments Based on Perfection: The ontological argument posits that the very concept of a perfect being necessitates its existence. While the speaker initially finds this unconvincing, a more nuanced version based on the concept of infinity is explored. However, doubts remain about whether existence is a necessary property and whether our concepts necessarily reflect reality. Descartes’ causal argument, claiming that our idea of a perfect being must have a perfect being as its cause, is also dismissed due to questionable premises about the “reality” contained in ideas. Arguments from St. Augustine concerning eternal truths and a hierarchy of goodness, and from Platinus regarding multiplicity requiring absolute unity, are analyzed but found to contain leaps in logic and unproven assertions.
Arguments Based on Design: The teleological argument and the fine-tuning argument point to the apparent design and improbable precision of the universe as evidence for an intentional creator. While acknowledging the staggering improbability of the universe’s fine-tuning for life, the speaker discusses counterarguments like the multiverse and the limitations of probabilistic reasoning. Ultimately, these arguments are seen as not definitively proving God’s existence but potentially pointing towards a deeper intelligence.
Arguments Based on Morality and Reason: The moral argument asserts that objective moral truths require God’s existence. This is challenged by the possibility of morality being relative or human-constructed. The speaker also presents an argument from reason and intelligibility, suggesting that the very fact that we can reason about and understand the universe implies a rational foundation, which could be seen as God or consciousness. The performative contradiction of naturalism is also mentioned, highlighting the potential self-undermining nature of a purely materialistic worldview when it comes to the reliability of reason.
Arguments Based on Information and Life: The argument from information theory claims that the coded information in DNA necessitates a conscious mind as its origin. While acknowledging the complexity of DNA, the speaker points out that this argument begs the question of life’s origin and whether undirected natural processes could lead to such complexity.
Arguments Based on Human Experience and Belief: Arguments from free will, consciousness, scripture, popularity of belief, success of religion, faith, Pascal’s wager, and miracles are largely found to be weak or based on flawed premises, such as unproven assumptions, hearsay, or self-deception. However, the argument from religious and mystical experience is considered one of the strongest, as the speaker believes direct experience is the ultimate way to know God. Despite this, the problem of distinguishing genuine from corrupted experiences is acknowledged. The argument from perennial philosophy, highlighting common themes across diverse religions, is seen as suggestive but not conclusive evidence.

The speaker’s unique perspective as someone claiming “direct consciousness of God” is central to their analysis. This allows them to evaluate these arguments from a standpoint of purported knowledge, seeing limitations and assumptions that others might miss. However, they emphasize that the audience must assess the quality of the analysis itself, regardless of the speaker’s claim.

A crucial takeaway from the source is the emphasis on epistemology and the identification of underlying assumptions in any discussion about God’s existence. The speaker provides a comprehensive list of common problematic assumptions, urging listeners to critically examine these when evaluating arguments for or against God. The speaker stresses that indirect arguments (logical deductions, beliefs, etc.) are prone to self-deception, and that direct experience is the most reliable path to understanding God, though even this is not immune to misinterpretation.

Ultimately, while the source dissects numerous arguments related to the existence of God, it does not aim to definitively prove or disprove God’s existence through these arguments. Instead, it focuses on the epistemological challenges and the importance of direct experience in truly understanding the nature of God. The speaker concludes that most human discourse about God is “corrupt and misleading” due to unexamined assumptions and self-deception.

Critique of Belief and the Pursuit of Direct Knowing

Based on the source “01.pdf” and our previous conversation, a comprehensive discussion on the epistemology of belief reveals a perspective that is highly critical of belief as a reliable pathway to truth, especially when it comes to profound metaphysical questions like the existence and nature of God. The source consistently contrasts belief with more direct forms of knowing, such as direct consciousness or Awakening.

Here are key points regarding the epistemology of belief as discussed in the source:

Belief as Indirect and Prone to Self-Deception: The speaker emphasizes that belief is an indirect way of engaging with reality. Unlike direct experience, belief relies on secondary sources such as scripture, tradition, hearsay, or logical deductions that are often built upon unexamined assumptions. Because of this indirectness, belief is highly susceptible to self-deception. People often adopt beliefs not through rigorous inquiry but through cultural conditioning, emotional needs, or as rationalizations for pre-existing worldviews.
The Role of Assumptions in Belief: The source highlights that all reasoning and belief systems are founded upon assumptions, many of which are unconscious and taken for granted. The failure to identify and question these underlying assumptions is a significant source of flawed thinking and self-deception. The speaker stresses that in the context of God, many arguments and beliefs are based on assumptions that are not necessarily valid, such as extrapolating properties of finite objects to infinite ones or assuming that logic as we understand it applies universally.
Belief as a Hindrance to True Understanding: The speaker suggests that belief can actually impede the pursuit of truth. By accepting something as true without direct verification or rigorous inquiry, individuals may become closed off to alternative perspectives and the deeper work required for genuine understanding. The source argues that the focus should be on pursuing truth through careful epistemology rather than simply adopting beliefs.
Critique of Faith as a Form of Belief: The “argument from Faith,” which suggests taking a “leap of faith” in God, is described as an “atrocious argument”. The speaker argues that if God is real, skepticism and the pursuit of truth will ultimately lead to that realization, making blind faith unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Faith is seen as preventing the kind of deep inquiry needed to truly understand profound matters.
Belief in the Context of Religious Arguments: The source analyzes numerous arguments for God’s existence that often rely on belief in certain premises (e.g., scripture is divinely inspired). These arguments are frequently found wanting because the underlying beliefs are not themselves rigorously justified and can be products of human corruption, self-deception, or misinterpretation. The “argument from popularity,” which cites the widespread belief in God as evidence, is also dismissed because self-deception can be a pervasive feature of human existence.
The Appeal to Direct Experience Over Belief: The speaker’s own claimed “direct consciousness of God” positions direct experience as a superior form of knowing compared to belief. The “argument from religious and mystical experience” is considered one of the strongest because it points to personal encounters rather than indirect reasoning or faith. However, even these experiences are acknowledged to be susceptible to corruption and misinterpretation. The ultimate goal, according to the speaker, is to move beyond belief to a direct and clear understanding of reality through practices that lead to “Awakening”.

In summary, the epistemology of belief, as presented in the source, is viewed with considerable skepticism. Belief is seen as an indirect, assumption-laden, and potentially self-deceptive way of engaging with reality. The speaker advocates for a rigorous epistemological approach focused on identifying and questioning assumptions, avoiding blind faith, and ultimately seeking direct experience and understanding rather than relying on the shaky foundation of belief. The source suggests that true knowledge, especially regarding profound metaphysical questions, requires a move beyond mere belief towards direct consciousness and truth.

Top Proofs For The Existence Of God

The Original Text

[Music] I thought it would be fun for us to go through every argument for the existence of God that mankind has made up and point out where they go wrong these will be classical philosophical and Theological arguments and frankly many of them are not very convincing not very good and so I want to dissect and analyze that all that with you today and in so doing it’s not really about proving God to you of course that would be silly it’s uh about looking at the epistemology how to do effective metaphysics if there is such a thing and the many traps that come with trying to wrap your mind around God because this is where humans make all sorts of foolish mistakes that I’ll be pointing out now of course a warning is that this topic requires a high degree of open-mindedness and epistemic intelligence which is rare so keep that in mind this is a serious Advanced philosophy epistemology metaphysics and Theology and this is going to present a trap for you if you’re a scientific materialist or you’re an atheist or you’re a skeptic so uh be careful with this debunking mindset what we’re doing here is we’re not Pres presenting any kind of simplistic answers or any kind of ideology or belief system I’m not a Christian I’m not a Believer I don’t have any faith I’m not religious however I do have to let the cat out of the bag because you know as I was structuring this talk I was thinking about how do I present this in a very even-handed manner because there’s going to be theists watching and there’s going to be atheists watching and all sorts of people in between those camps Skeptics and so forth and how do I present the topic in a fair way to everybody cuz we don’t want to you know bias and privilege one side over the other and so I thought I would just kind of neutrally go through the arguments but then I realized as I was you know spend a lot of time thinking about this I can’t really do that because of course I’m coming from a pretty unique position um if you’re new to this work to this channel then uh and you’re not familiar with with myself and my background then of course um the problem here is that I do have a direct consciousness of God so I can’t pretend otherwise uh um and so I’m coming at this whole topic from a very unique angle because you can find a lot of topics about this question on YouTube from scientific people theological people from Christians and from Skeptics and philosophers and so forth academics uh but you see the problem is is that well they don’t really know what they’re talking about um and that’s because they don’t have a direct consciousness of God and it doesn’t matter whether they believe in God or don’t believe in God that’s irrelevant what matters is what you’re conscious of so the whole point of this topic and why it’s interesting is because we’re going to be evaluating these proofs from a position of already having the final answer I have the final answer I know what that is so that makes evaluating the proofs very easy now of course the problem is that from your point of view especially if you’re new to all this you have no idea if I have the final answer if I’m full of [ __ ] or whatever you can’t know that so what do you do well of course skepticism is good always be skeptical although you have to be careful about how you apply the skepticism because it is possible to deceive yourself with your own skepticism so just be aware of that um but really how you evaluate the quality of the analysis is you you look at the actual analysis and you look at the actual quality of the epistemology that’s being done here right so the focus is on the epistemology not on convincing you of God that’s not what this is about so what’s different about the way that I’m going to cover this topic from how other philosophers academics theists Christians atheists and scientist cover this topic is that I’m not going to be engaging in any speculation there’s not going to be any belief systems there’s no faith there’s no Dogma there’s no ideology there’s not even a paradigm like a materialist or a scientific Paradigm and there’s no rationalization this is mostly what you get from those people because if you don’t have a direct consciousness of God what else can you have but those things but of course if you’re an atheist or a skeptic or an academic scholar or philosophy then this seems kind of already unfair and biased of me to come at this you know topic from that angle because you might wonder like well Leo shouldn’t like you’re already assuming the conclusion but I’m not assuming the conclusion I’ve come to the answer so here is where you have to really open your mind to the possibility that it is possible to come to some answer and that it’s not just all up as a matter of relative perspective and opinion and that it is actually possible to say something meaningful and accurate about the nature of God it’s just very rare that people do so because most people don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to this idea that’s just the situation we’re in the purpose of this episode and the ones that are going to come as part of a series here is we’re going to be answering the question the profound question of why proofs and evidence for God are so epistemically problematic that’s the really interesting question not whether God exists or not it’s really why is it so damn hard to understand what God is or to even come to know that God exists why is that so hard because you would think that if God existed it should be easy right such a crazy thing if it was real should be easy to know first of all that it’s true second of all why it’s true and how it’s true and how it works the mechanics of the whole thing like supposedly if God exists how did God come into existence that’s that’s the real question here right how do you answer that why is that so difficult to answer that’s really what we’re after here is an answer to that question so let’s get going to get started of course we first need to Define what we mean by God because different people can have different ideas but really here I mean the very classic philosophical definition which is a Supreme Being the creator of reality world or Universe I’m using all those words synonymously here the source with the capital S infinite unlimited omnipotent omniscient omnipresent intelligent loving and benevolent Eternal which means has existed forever Beyond Time transcends Time space more fundamental than time and space immaterial formless Transcendent and also imminent absolute truth itself Perfection Unity Oneness infinite mind this is what I mean by God this is a very good definition but also see It’s tricky because even if you somehow realize God um or somehow prove god with some kind of argument the problem is that it’s not enough to just prove God you have to also understand all of these different aspects and facets and properties of God and there’s quite a few of them and uh at times they can seem contradictory how do you explain why God has all these attributes if God even exists that’s not so obvious what I don’t mean by God is I don’t mean a bearded man in the clouds that’s a childish notion of God so drop that idea um you got to be very careful if you’re an atheist or a skeptic that you’re not arguing against a straw man of what a God Is So if you’re arguing against the bearded man in the clouds idea then yeah you win that argument no no no no doubt about that so we’re all in agreement about that um we’re talking about a much higher level of what we mean by God right so just understand that there’s different definitions and versions of God there’s very childish ridiculous fundamentalist ones and then as you go up the scale it gets more sophisticated Advance it gets more philosophical basically you’re you’re you’re transcending traditional religion and you’re getting into some heavy metaphysical stuff I also don’t mean the Christian God and I don’t mean Christ and I don’t mean the Trinity I don’t mean a humanlike entity or a personal being I don’t mean a material creature like aliens that have invented the universe that are sitting outside the universe and the universe is just a simulation and those aliens are the god that’s not what I mean and I also don’t mean a mythological symbol story or a metaphor so people like Jordan Peterson for example or Jonathan Jonathan Pau they will they will like to wax philosophical and symbolical and mythological sort of mythopoetic about God being this ultimate symbol in a hierarchy of symbols and all this kind of stuff I I don’t mean that we’re not talking about stories here I’m being very literal about the nature of existence that’s what we’re talking about is the nature of existence also for those of you who are kind Skeptics and scientist types and rational types um to help you get on the proper framing here um rather than thinking of God as this personal Christian being in the clouds uh rather think of God more as existence and reality itself imagine if God was synonymous with reality but of course now the question is like well if God is just synonymous with reality and existence well that’s kind of seems kind of like a you know a word game or some kind of like mental trick that’s being played here because we already know existence in reality here it is so where’s the God and why call it God and why give it these weird religious qualities and attributes some sort of trick is being played here right um well that that’s yeah that’s the the trick is is figuring out out um how to reconcile those two things but if you really want a serious straw man version of what people really mean by God and why we talk about God at all you have to get away from these childish Christian Notions of God and you have to get into uh God as reality itself and then we can talk about what that really means and we can go into a lot of depth on that [Music] um so uh so that makes it a little bit more plausible for you a little bit more plausible uh now before we get into the arguments a few notes here so of course for for this topic we’re doing serious philosophy here so what that means is when we’re doing philosophy there’s some principles for what it means to be a good philosopher and not just to half asset or to do some sort of um you know one of these debunking efforts which is not serious philosophy it means that you need to mount a a good serious consideration of every perspective every philosophical perspective even the ones you personally disagree with you have to have a certain uh even-handedness to how you consider various perspectives that’s what philosophy is all about it’s about considering different perspectives not about just Defending Your Personal pet belief system so that’s a key distinction between good and bad philosophy and um cuz you know philosophy can be used as a rationalization for anything you believe and that’s what we want to avoid is just engaging in rationalizations our of our pre-existing metaphysics that’s the Trap also you need to make a distinction between steel Manning and straw Manning perspectives so we’re going to look at the steel manned versions of all these arguments many of these arguments I personally don’t like and and don’t agree with and I wouldn’t I wouldn’t make them if I was trying to convince somebody but um we have to consider them because maybe there’s something we don’t understand maybe there’s more depth to it more subtlety and Nuance that we’re missing right so for this reason we have to steal man on the arguments and then we’ll pick them apart and see whether they hold any water also uh it’s important to to note here that when I say proofs of God this is a very loaded word proof I don’t necessarily mean an airtight proof because that’s what you think about right it’s like give me an airtight proof that if I it to anybody they’ll just drop to the floor and start praying to God that’s again this is a sort of a childish notion of what a proof is proof is actually a very loaded notion and I’m going to have a whole episode coming after this one that’s going to be deconstructing the very notion of what proof is so that’s going to be very profound so we’re just setting that up here but um proof I’m using that word synonymously with u with arguments these are arguments and you have to consider that an argument might be able to only take you so far even even if you had an airtight proof that was logically 100% deductively sound if you had a syllogism that proved God just consider how human psychology works and the fact that even that would fail to persuade many people because there’s a difference between the truth of reality the fact the factualness of something and whether you’re able to persuade somebody of it these are very different things and to persuade somebody means you have to go through their ego and if you know what even a little bit of what ego is that’s a whole hornet nest right there so how are you going to navigate all the egoic tricks that the ego plays to try to persuade somebody of anything could be God or really anything that’s the challenge of epistemology of doing quality epistemology so just be aware even if there is a a proof for God it doesn’t mean that it’s going to convince you so you can’t judge these proofs by whether it convinces you personally because that’s a that’s a very psychological notion it’s even a sociological notion because you have various kinds of epistemic and metaphysical priors that you got from your culture which shape what you consider persuasive and plausible do not think of yourself of some sort of neutral third- party um hyper rational agent who is sitting there and carefully methodically loging through life and then you know deciding what’s true and false based on that that’s that’s not that’s not at all how human psychology works nobody’s mind actually works that way that’s not how our worldviews are developed that’s not how we’re convinced to change our minds either often times we’re convinced by things like profound suffering or crazy love emotional things not logical things of course in this whole series we’re going to get very very logical we’re not going to be making any appeals to emotion here it’s all going to be appeals to logic but remember again I could give you the perfect logic and it would have no effect on you so just keep that in mind even if you’re very scientific you think that you’re persuaded by Logic be careful that you’re not fooling yourself once again Beware of the misuse of skepticism skepticism is a powerful tool but can be abused when you use it to to immediately pick apart an argument right sometimes also keep in mind that an argument an advanced subtle argument about the very nature of existence could it maybe be the case that such an argument isn’t just something you hear within a few minutes and then you immediately decide in your mind whether it’s true or false and then you immediately rip rip it apart and debunk it and then you move on with your life Maybe maybe there’s a little bit more to understanding reality than that kind of mode that kind of approach maybe these arguments need to be mold and contemplated for hours and for years to see the nuances of them to try to understand maybe how you’re misunderstanding them how you’re inadvertently even if you don’t want to you could be strawmanning them you see this is good philosophy when you start to think this way and this requires that you are also able to put your skepticism on pause that doesn’t mean you’re going to believe just to believe stuff you’re going to put your skepticism on pause enough to be able to really shift outside of your Paradigm to consider another Paradigm then later you can step back into your old Paradigm but people are quite resistant to switching paradigms which is why good philosophy is quite rare because most of us are stuck in one Paradigm or another also consider that skepticism itself rationalism scientific materialism cynicism nihilism these are also paradigms Paradigm doesn’t just mean the false stuff the fictions of superstitious people or conspiracy theories or bad forms of logic and reasoning paradigm means every way that you fundamentally can look at reality so paradigms are very deep and tricky things and don’t underestimate how stuck you could be in your own Paradigm also consider that many of these proofs only work in retrospect and this is true not just of proofs about God but just in general much of logical proofs if if we exclude stuff like mathematics but we consider the empirical world you know questions about the empirical world is the earth round or not and um uh do planets orbit or are they stationary in the sky sorts of stuff like questions like these are empirical questions so for this logic by itself is not enough you also need some sort of grounding in contact with reality and so a lot of times we think that we’re very logical in How We Do Science but if you actually examine the workings of science carefully accurately and not just the myth of science then you’ll you’ll realize that a lot of the logic of science is actually retroactive retrospective we discover something by accident or by a leap of Intuition or even just by a belief Faith or whatever and then once we verify through some sort of you know H lucky experiment or whatever then we can come back and we can logic through why it was was true but that doesn’t mean that we could have arrived at it through logic alone cuz you can have multiple different systems uh or models that are logical and self-consistent and coherent locally coherent and they’re all going to be competing with each other and you’re not going to be able to distinguish between one or the other which one is actually true of empirical reality and also consider that these proofs might have multiple layers to them and that certain aspects of these of these or certain layers of these arguments and proofs the surface layers can be false or silly and ridiculous and kind of unscientific and illogical but then you can get below those if you’re very careful with how you use your mind you can get below those to deeper layers of these arguments and proofs which actually have um deep truths within them so also consider that possibility all right so let’s get into the first proof or argument which is called the cosmological argument the way all these proofs are going to go is there’s usually multiple steps to them so I’m going to go through all the steps in sort of a logical sequence to so that you can see how they all connect together and then uh we’re going to go back and and sort of evaluate each step in the sequence and see uh where it goes right where it goes wrong and discuss okay so here’s the cosmological argument first step is everything that exists has a cause is that true look look for yourself is that true everything that exists surround you does it have a cause have you ever encountered a thing that does not have a cause the universe exists so it too must have a cause that’s the logic step two is that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes step three the cause of the universe cannot come from inside the universe it must come from outside the universe because if it came from the inside this would be uh logically impossible or ridiculous and nonsensical because in some weird way we would have to say that the Universe cause itself step four is the cause of the universe must be timeless spaceless immaterial very powerful and absolutely simple otherwise it would depend on Parts which need other causes to explain them and so if there were other parts to this cause then it would just create the infinite regress problem again and so why must it be timeless and spaceless is IM material well because by definition time and space and materiality are aspects of the universe so and we’re talking about something that’s outside the universe and so therefore that simple time Timeless spaceless immaterial very powerful absolutely simple cause is God so that’s the whole argument the cosmological argument so what do you think by the way I’m I’m very curious to see if you guys would want to rate in the comments section if you want to give a like a one out of 10 rating 10 being that you’re super convinced and you love the argument and one being that it’s a shitty argument post down below we’ll compare who thinks what of these arguments so here’s my analysis of this argument so let’s go back to the first point everything that exists has a cause that’s true if you’re looking inside the universe everything has a cause the universe exists that’s true so it must have a cause this this is not so obvious so here’s here’s where we start to really run into the problem of assumptions all of these arguments and really any logic and any argument about anything not just God is going to involve assumptions and this is where the self-deception starts to happen this is where the sloppy thinking starts to happen is that there’s many assumptions that we make when we reason and think about making sense of reality that we’re not conscious of our own assumptions and we take them for granted and then this gets us into trouble in fact I have a whole episode called assumption is the mother of all fuckups go look at that episode and I’m going to need another episode about assumptions because the nature of assumptions is so profound and Advan that U it’s responsible for so many problems that I’m going to have to do another episode on it um despite the very comp apprehensive and good one that I already have so so really what we have to do when we’re doing good philosophy is we have to ask ourselves what are what are the assumptions of all these different arguments and worldviews and we have to question all the assumptions and this is really the heart of what skepticism is and this is where I love skepticism is in the questioning of assumptions this is skepticism done properly so what is the Assumption here the Assumption here is that the stuff that’s going on inside the universe that we can use that to empirically understand that well everything in the universe has a Cause so therefore the thing outside the universe must also have a cause that’s not obvious you see what’s the Assumption here well the Assumption here is that we can make extrapolations about what we found inside the universe to outside the universe that’s an open question that’s a very very open question and you can’t just assume that for example the laws of physics apply outside the universe and of course it’s more than just physics but really the metaphysics even science realize has metaphysics even physics has metaphysics because physics assumes things like cause and effect time and space this is more than just physical stuff it’s metaphysical stuff it also assumes stuff like for example the principle of non-contradiction various kinds of logical laws the law of the excluded middle um even Notions of like what a circle is can you have a square circle inside of our universe it seems nonsensical to have square circles but it’s not obvious that we can conclude from that that it’s impossible to have square circles outside the universe see Sloppy bad philosophy would just jump to those conclusions highquality philosophy doesn’t allow oneself to jump to those conclusions and therefore really what we have to be is we have to be very honest about not knowing this brings up my episode called The Power of not knowing very important episode to be able to do high quality reasoning and philosophy so the truth is and this is the whole problem of of proving you know the origin of the universe is in a sense when we’re talking about God we’re we’re talking about the question of what happened before the Big Bang where did the Big Bang come from what caused the big bang and of course that’s a great mystery we don’t know at least we think we don’t know maybe some of us do know maybe it’s just that mainstream culture doesn’t know see that’s also an assumption see even the assumption that we don’t know what caused the Big Bang that’s an assumption that’s a commonly held assumption for example within science because the way scientists reason about it is like well if we did know what caused the big bang that it would just be part of the science curriculum that’s not guaranteed you don’t know that maybe some of us do know but it’s not part of the scientific curriculum for important uh sociological epistemological political reasons because for something to be part of a scientific curriculum it has to be accepted by the mainstream of science maybe the cause of the Big Bang is so radical that it will not be accepted by mainstream science you have to consider that possibility don’t just assume that science will be able to figure out the source of the Big Bang or to accept it you don’t know that again because look here with with science here’s the problem with science is that people assume that science just applies across the board to everything but that’s an open question that’s an assumption too cuz you don’t know that you don’t know where science applies to and what and where it doesn’t science might apply everywhere inside the universe it doesn’t mean that science applies to what’s outside the universe or the cause and source of the universe see because that boundary between inside versus outside the universe that’s a very significant boundary so moving on to the next step of this argument is there cannot be an infinite chain of causes that’s also a problematic proposition why not why can’t there be an infinite chain of causes why can’t be why can’t it be that that’s what the universe is it’s just an infinite chain of causes of course you see the problem here though is well it’s I don’t know if it’s a problem it whether it’s the problem or not really depends about about whether you want God to exist or not people have different opinions about that do you want God to exist you answer that for yourself but um if you have an infinite chain of causes could that entire chain then be what God is is an infinite chain of causes after all one of the important characteristics of God from that definition we we stated earlier is it’s infinite if God is infinite then we’re looking around for God we don’t see God anywhere but what we see is an infinite chain of causes so maybe that’s God T you know you want to be open to that possibility too now you say well but it’s nonsensical to have an infinite chain of causes surely it has to stop somewhere why why does it have to stop somewhere well Leo because everything in our Ordinary World you know everything has like a cause that we can track and it’s all kind of like finite and we can kind of tell where stuff stops and ends you have to be very careful about remember that we’re chimpanzees basically on this spinning ball of Earth um and we look at the world and reality from a from a certain very narrow band of scale not not the micro scale and not the cosmological scale we’re somewhere in between and our intuitions are tuned so that we survive in this you know narrow band that chimpanzees survive in we we don’t have good intuitions about the quantum scale and how stuff works there we’ve already discovered in the last 100 years that the quantum stuff Quantum phenomenon is very weird spooky nonsensical um to kind of like to wrap your mind around and actually to model it we have good mathematics for predicting How Stuff behaves at that at those scales but we don’t really have a good picture of of what’s really going on like in a sort of an intuitive physical sense we don’t really even have a good understanding of of what a photon is or what an electron is so but but it’s the same thing is that uh we shouldn’t expect our intuitions to work outside of the range that they evolved in our intuitions might be very wrong about the quantum scale and they might be very wrong about the you know the ultimate cosmological scale which is what we’re talking about here the cosmological argument the Big Bang uh whether human intuitions apply to the very most fundamental aspects of existence this infinite chain of causes maybe that’s where our intuitions just break down but nevertheless an infinite chain of causes exists and maybe we’re in it right now maybe this is the infinite chain of causes now of course the problem with that is that you might say well okay fine but Leo why should we call it God it’s an infinite chain of causes but it’s a material chain of causes it’s a naturalistic chain of causes known to bring God into this whole thing um and we don’t really see the kind of like spiritual qualities of God in this infinite chain we don’t see we don’t see the love we don’t see the intelligence we don’t see uh the omnipotence we don’t see the omniscience we don’t see some of these other qualities and that’s that’s a fair point and you’re going to see this in many of these arguments is that even if the argument proves some version of God it doesn’t usually prove the version of God sort of the maximalist version of God that a theist would want and usually what ends up being proved is something like well um very very simple so let’s move on to the next step in this argument which is that the cause of the universe cannot come from inside the universe so it must come from outside the Universe um how plausible is that well you have to also consider the possibility here is why couldn’t the universe just Exist by itself or have caused itself what if the universe is its own cause now you might say well Leo that’s impossible because logic tells us and our experience tells us that nothing inside the universe can be its own cause it’s always caused by some other thing which is why we have this infinite chain of causes that’s true but again that’s only on the interior of the universe if we’re talking about beyond the universe what caused the universe Maybe it’s possible that the universe created itself that’s an interesting possibility we shouldn’t dismiss that and then it’s interesting because if the universe created itself well what does it mean to create oneself if there’s an object that can create oneself might that be what God is is a self-creating object sounds like a plausible candidate for God but again this self-creation notion is a very loaded notion um what does self-creation really mean did the sun create itself did the earth create itself did life create itself what does that mean did SpaceTime create itself that’s some heavy stuff that we don’t have time to answer here so we’re going to keep going um I’m just kind of getting your mind start thinking metaphysically existentially here and so the final step of this argument is that the cause must be timeless spaceless immaterial very powerful absolutely simple and not dependent on Parts which NE other causes okay so what can we say about this point um Timeless spaceless immaterial yes almost by definition Timeless and spaceless because we’re defining time and space as the universe so if we’re talking about something Beyond or outside the universe then almost by definition it have to be timeless and spaceless now whether it’s immaterial or not that’s a again it’s see It’s tricky because it’s all about how we Define our terms is what’s outside the universe immaterial or material how would we know that we should be open to both possibilities we don’t really know is it powerful in a certain sense yes because it created the universe so it’s it’s quite powerful is it absolutely simple again this isn’t obvious it’s not obvious that it is absolutely simple and even if it is absolutely simple this is actually kind of against the point of the theists because the theists want to claim something more than just absolute Simplicity for God when a theist believes in God prays to God the theist is not praying to some sort of simple I don’t know what would you call it aoid I mean like what is absolute Simplicity that’s not met of Parts the only thing that could be is like a pure void a pure formless void so first of all we have to be a to the possibility that God is just a pure em formless void maybe that’s what God is okay that’s an interesting possibility but then uh the science the scientist types will say well but then if it’s a empty void that’s not a problem for science I mean science will accept that the the universe appeared out of a void okay we can accept that because a void is a kind of a scientific notion nothing mystical and woo woo about it uh nothing Supernatural about a void and why call avoid God it seems like you’re you’re changing the goal post here and you’re just trying to smuggle God into any to any place you can that’s how a scientist would would look at this situation um and that’s that’s a fair that’s a fair argument I would say um because it’s it’s not obvious at all how a simple void first of all how does that help us explain the universe it doesn’t it almost doesn’t help us at all um and uh and also it doesn’t seem to fit the the definition of God how how is a void intelligent how is a void loving how is a void this all powerful Supreme Being that has these Godly qualities to it it’s just a [ __ ] void just a a blank canvas okay that’s just materialism right so how is God different from materialism then so ultimately what do we make of this cosmological argument um it’s not very convincing it’s it’s not very convincing because it makes all these assumptions about how the outside of the universe should be and how it should work and it assumes that all of this normal human intuitive logic that we use to understand the the everyday physical world that that’s going to apply to the to the origin of existence to where the physical laws came from and so forth and that’s just you can’t make that kind of um leap logic can’t help you understand that because you don’t know even if logic exists outside the universe that’s a very profound question is logic something that’s part of the universe is it part of even something smaller like just the human psyche maybe even the universe is not strictly logical it’s just that the human psyche imposes and projects its logical schemes onto the universe in a sort of a conent sense maybe it’s like that maybe logic is part of like the structure of the brain more than it is the universe itself it’s it’s entirely non-trivial to answer that question so you can’t just assume that so that’s the cosmological argument post down below how effective you think that is now let’s move on um another argument here which is kind of related to the cosmological one is like this it’s the argument from The Big Bang it goes like this a lot of Christians make this argument they say that of course in the Bible it says that God created the the earth and the in a sense but the whole world and by world is meant the whole universe um so there was a clear creation event and science tells us that the Big Bang seems to be that creation event everything can be projected backwards to the big bang and so the Big Bang matches how the Bible says God created the universe in a single event and so the Christians want to say that science proves that the Universe then is not Eternal and it has a beginning which implies that creation event and therefore the cause of this creation event of the Big Bang must be some Timeless spaceless immaterial very powerful thing which we call God that’s the whole argument how convincing is it well let’s take a look the first problem here is even assuming the Big Bang don’t forget that even the Big Bang is an assumption we don’t really know if it’s even true that the Big Bang occurred it seems that the universe is expanding but that’s only based on our current best science and science changes over time future Generations maybe in 500 years scientists will change their minds and create some new models some new understanding of quantum mechanics and general relativity some new synthesis and Grand Theory of Everything which changes how we understand dark matter and dark energy and all this kind of stuff and then we realize that the Universe maybe is not expanding the way it we thought it was or the inflation didn’t happen how we expected and because to get the big bang you have to make assumptions as well and we don’t know all those assumptions so here’s actually a problem for Chans and theists if you’re a Christian and you want to use this big bang argument here’s the problem do you really want to hinge your belief in God on the validity of the Big Bang because what happens if tomorrow scientists come out and say you know guys we were wrong science gets it wrong sometimes we were wrong and we realize the Big Bang didn’t actually happen so does this now mean that God doesn’t exist see if you’re a Christian you have to be very careful you have to be like honest about how you make these arguments because if you really are hinging your belief on this argument then you’re going to have to change your mind about the existence of God now of course the problem is that Christians don’t do that they’re using these arguments as rationalizations not as actually to come to knowledge of God it’s just a rationalization a backwards rationalization so there’s a difference between those so that’s one problem here um another problem here is of course that to make this argument you have to believe in in the Bible you have to to believe the Bible is true accurate that’s not obvious you can’t assume that Bible could be full of self-deception how do you know so that’s an obvious problem um the next one is the next step in this argument is that science proves that the that the universe is not Eternal and it had a beginning that’s also not that’s also a bit of a leap because first of all just because the Big Bang happened does not mean that that the universe is not Eternal for example the Big Bang could have just been a a contraction of the previous universe and so maybe what the universe is doing is it’s just sort of expanding and Contracting on itself over billions and trillions of years it’s doing this expansion contraction but it’s just one object doing this expanding blowing up and Contracting and and crunching down uh that could be the case in which case it’s doing that eternally so you can’t just assume that the Big Bang means the universe is not eternal or that it had a beginning um also you can’t assume that the Big Bang was the beginning of everything maybe the Big Bang is just a part of something much larger and then you have an infinite chain of Eternal stuff Beyond The Big Bang and then which brings us to the final part of this argument is that so the cause of this big bang must be God again that’s a leap you can’t you can’t make that leap because maybe the cause is some sort of Intergalactic alien or interuniversal alien or maybe it’s some kind of demon or maybe it’s something else maybe it’s a material object maybe it’s a transmaterial cause you can’t assume that it’s God you can’t assume that it’s loving and intelligent and all this kind of stuff why would you why would you make that assumption just because the Bible tells you so but you can’t trust the Bible if you’re if you’re really going to do serious philosophy serious metaphysics serious epistemology you can’t just take the word of of any human as to what the nature of reality is you have to actually sit down and figure it out through some kind of logical empirical inquiry not by hearsay and beliefs from other people CU any person can be wrong even with good intentions they can be wrong and never even mind the people with bad intentions who want to fool you with religion plenty of those around as well the next argument is this the something from nothing argument which basically says that something cannot come from nothing anything that created the universe had to be more powerful than the universe itself what are we to make of this argument again is very not obvious that something can’t come from nothing now in our Ordinary World inside the universe it seems that something can’t come from nothing and it never does something always comes from something but the universe itself might be a distinctly different kind of phenomenon which does come from nothing and also for for the theists it’s usually theists who make this argument that something can’t come from nothing so it must come from God that’s the gist of this argument well here’s something I want to warn you about you you theists is this um why are you assuming that God is not nothing what if the very something that creates everything is nothing and then that’s your God see that’s not very satisfying to Christian theists because they want to have a personal connection with God but but what if God is not something that you have a personal connection with maybe that’s just your needs your ego’s needs and really God is truly nothing and you you’re not going to have a personal connection with it or maybe you can have a personal connection with this nothing but this nothing you know to have a personal connection with it requires something other than the sort of Christian stuff that you’re doing yeah it’s just um the problem here is that these questions about can something come from nothing can something be uncaused does everything need to be an infinite chain of causation these are such fundamental questions that you see we don’t have reference for it in our everyday life and world so we don’t even know how to think about these properly because not grounded in anything the way that we figure out how the world works is that we actually look at how it works and we’re looking at the stuff that’s local to us it’s hard for us to look very far beyond the universe to see how stuff really works so we just don’t have the vantage point we don’t have the the empirical data that we need to really answer these questions that’s the problem here and a lot of people who find any of these arguments convincing are ultimately what you’ll find is that they’re question begging and you can do question begging from the religious theistic point of view or you can do question begging from the scientific skeptic materialist atheist point of view both can engage in question begging question begging is basically when you assume the conclusion for example it’s question begging to say that something can’t come from nothing because the real issue here is that we have a question here this should be framed as a question can something come from nothing that’s an empirical question don’t tell us that it can’t frame it as a question in your own mind you see because if you’re telling us it can’t you’re already assuming you know the answer without ever having asked the question and this is a much more profound question than you would think people want to skip over as though these are obvious answers to to obvious questions it’s not obvious at all all right let’s move on to something new the ontological argument first step in this argument is we can imagine the concept of a perfect all powerful infinite being second step but a perfect being that lacks existence and only exists as a concept in our imagination is not perfect because it’s lacking something namely it’s lacking existence so this perfect being must actually exist just by virtue of the fact that it’s perfect Perfection implies existence so the very idea of perfection requires existence that’s the ontological argument how convinced are you that God exists from that argument I would say if if I heard this argument I would not be very convinced in fact I did hear this argument I heard this argument back in my University days when I was studying theart and so forth um yeah I was never very convinced by this argument it seems kind of absurd so let’s let’s break it down and see why it doesn’t seem to work okay so we can imagine the concept of a perfect all powerful infinite being okay we yeah that’s true we can do that imagine one right now all right so you got the picture of God in your mind okay but then how do we go from that to knowing it actually is real and that we’re not deluding ourselves so yeah obviously the next step in the argument is that a perfect being that lacks existence is not perfect because it’s lacking something um okay we can we can grant that I think that’s that’s pretty plausible a perfect being I mean again still you’re making an assumption there like Perfection requires existence is that true how do you know that’s true if you want to be really skeptical and I tend to want to be um I’m not even willing to grant that honestly um yeah it’s it’s not obvious that perfection requires exist why can’t non-existence be Perfection I mean aren’t you aren’t you biased we all exist so of course we think existence is is so good but maybe non-existence is the better option maybe Perfection is non-existence so you know we want to be open to that too that’s what radical up and mindus means so you can’t just assume that um and then and then to to make the next leap is to say that I can imagine per this perfection this perfect being and then it requires exist then it must exist and then and then that that it actually does exist this just feels so question begging to me like you have to really want to believe it because look we can also make the argument like look I could imagine a Intergalactic space kangaroo a perfect Intergalactic space kangaroo and since it’s perfect it needs to exist and so therefore a perfect Intergalactic space kangaroo exists is that true I mean that’s a ridiculous argument you would never make this argument about anything obviously you’re making this argument about God only because you need to rationalize that God exists um so yeah this this is not a very good not a very convincing argument I I’ve made a better formulation though it’s a little bit more plausible cuz I was trying to steal man this and this one just I it was hard for me to steal on this so I I I made a better version of it which goes like this this is the better ontological argument step one imagine the concept of infinity step two Infinity would be unlimited possessing all possible properties so when we’re talking about Infinity we’re imagining an infinite object an Unlimited object this object must possess all qu all properties and all qualities CU otherwise it would be finite and limited and not infinite for example if Infinity did not include color in it then it would lack color and therefore it would be limited if Infinity didn’t include elephants in it then it would lack elephant the quality of elephant and then it would not be infinite and so on okay so that that’s the second step the third step is that existence is a is a is a possible property that one could have and the next step is if Infinity does not have existence or actuality then it cannot be infinite it must be finite and then the last step is that therefore God must not only be imaginary but actual because God is infinity so what do you guys think about this argument post down below how would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 so um this is a much more convincing argument but it really hinges on the idea of this concept of infinity you have to really like understand what Infinity means and when I say infinity I’m not talking about mathematical Infinity I’m not talking about numbers talking about something more than that so it’s the the sum total of all possible Properties by properties I mean wet cold hot sharp soft round Square big small blue red the smell of a skunk that’s what I mean by Infinity all the possible properties so if you kind of smoos them all into one and then existence is a possible property now this this is a little bit tricky because if you’ve studied some serious philosophy you know that arguments have been made against this kind of argument and the argument against it is that existence actually is not a property see to say that a cat is red or blue or soft or sharp or big or small these are all properties of an object called a cat that’s plausible but to say that a a cat possesses the property of existence is maybe technically not correct maybe existence is such a fundamental thing that it can’t even be called a property because after all existence is something that all properties partake in whether something is red or cold or sharp or a cat or a dog or whatever it can either exist or not exist so existence is a possibility for all properties so maybe it’s not right to jump to the conclusion that even ex even if you have an object that has all the possible properties maybe you can’t then jump to the conclusion that it must exist too so but but but see this is tricky because this this now brings in the concept of existence and this is very tricky because this is the root we’re getting to the root here of metaphysics what is existence the problem is that you don’t know you don’t know what existence is nobody knows if you knew what existence is we wouldn’t be having this conversation you would well I don’t want to I don’t want to spoil it for you um yeah I don’t want to spoil it for you I know what existence is so I’m I’m holding back I’m trying not to tell you um cuz I want to I want to like go through it as a newbie right I I don’t want to just give you the answers I want to help you to see the thought process that I went through to get the answers and then what it means to think well and what it means to think poorly so we can’t assume these things so if we’re coming from a position of ignorance we don’t know what existence is existence is a very mysterious very fundamental thing and we should be very careful about assuming stuff about EX existence whether existence is necessary or contingent not obvious what what that means it’s also not obvious what the relationship is between existence and non-existence that’s also extremely non obvious does non-existence exist and if it doesn’t exist then there’s no non-existence it’s it gets very strange loopy here um Can existence not exist you see that’s kind of stuff you get into weird paradoxes and that’s that’s not a mistake AK it it should be that way but um but anyways I’m not going to explain to you what existence is here that’s beyond the scope of this conversation but um let’s go on to the next step of this argument which is that if Infinity does not possess existence then it’s not infinite and this means that Infinity must exist because Infinity possesses all properties is that true how plausible is that I mean you could kind of believe it um but it it’s not it’s not very like it’s just so speculative you know it’s so conceptual we have to we have to be very open to the possibility of self-deception what if we’re just imagining this concept of Infinity of all possible properties blending together but then that’s just like in our imagination and then in the real world it doesn’t work that way I mean after all what do we know in the real world that is a a a an amalgamation of all possible properties in one in fact you might think this is impossible because Leo how can it it’s it seems logically incoherent to talk about the an object that is both red and blue and sharp and not sharp and a cat and a dog and an elephant and a not an elephant and all of this together it seem and it exists and it doesn’t exist it seems like this is a just a a fantasy incoherent thing like we could we could talk about triangles with four sides and we’re just talking nonsense that is doesn’t mean that there are these magical triangles with four sides in the real world it it just means that we’re confused it’s it’s not even at the level of being true or false it’s just meaningless there’s that third category of just meaningless nonsense triangles with four sides maybe Infinity is just a triangle with four sides and um we can’t conclude that therefore it actually exists it could just be a concept how do we know that any of our Concepts have to correspond with the physical empirical reality that’s not obvious and in fact our everyday experience tells us that we have many many objects and Concepts in our minds that correspond to nothing in the real world unicorns and four-sided triangles and so on you can think of more so this ological argument in the end uh not that convincing uh especially if if you don’t have a a deep understanding of what Infinity is now here’s where it gets really interesting I remember I talked about layers so on the surface we we’ve just been talking about the surface layer the surface layer that these ontological arguments are not very convincing but once you have an actual experience of infinity if you realize infinity and infinity is is real once you have an experience of infinity then these actual ontological arguments will be much more convincing to you and you will actually see that there’s something profound in these arguments it’s not just a coincidence that these arguments exist they exist for some good reasons because they do point to something they point to Infinity the nature of Infinity but that’s in in retrospect in retrospect you can’t get to Infinity from these arguments that’s the problem that’s why it’s not convincing cuz you have to already have experienced Infinity to be convinced by these arguments in a sense these arguments will only prove God to those who already have experienced God so um it’s kind of to logical and uh preaching to the choir preaching to the choir of course that’s the whole problem with God is that those who understand it don’t need to be told about it and those who don’t understand it no matter how much you tell them about it they won’t understand it so then why are we talking about it well we’re talking about it because there is value in the epistemology and the metaphysics and to look at how our minds think about these questions there is value in that that’s the value the next argument is decart’s causal argument it goes like this I have an idea of a perfect infinite being this idea must have a cause it didn’t just come out of nowhere has a cause that’s step two step three is the effect sorry an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause this is a really interesting twist so decart’s causal argument is is similar to the ontological arguments but it’s got this interesting twist to it here so think about this an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause H we’ll get back to that the next step in the argument is that my idea of an infinite perfect being contains more reality than myself because a finite imperfect being the next step is therefore only an actual infinite perfect being could be the cause of this idea in me therefore God exists that’s the whole argument how convinced are you that God exists from that argument uh this it’s very tricky let’s go through it step by step because um okay so where does this fall apart I have idea of a perfect infinite being okay I got one okay I can do that uh okay step two this idea must have a cause okay yes it has a cause like my brain caused it we might say scientifically or the cause might be that I read it in the Bible I read the Bible and it caused me to have this idea or the cause is that I listened to a video of Leo talking about it okay so the cause is that Leo was speaking these words that went into my ears into my ear holes and then caused some neurons and chemicals and now I have this idea okay so there’s the cause Okay so next step an effect cannot contain more reality than its cause what the hell does that mean that’s not obvious if that’s if that’s true an effect cannot contain more reality well maybe they all contain the same level of why this assumes that there’s more and less reality to various causes and effects but it’s not obvious that that it works that way do we have multiple levels of reality or is there just one reality what does it mean to say that one cause is more like re has more reality than some other cause that’s very shaky footing so the next step is that my idea of an infinite perfect being contains more reality than me because I’m a finite imperfect being man that’s that’s such a that’s a [ __ ] leap deart you’re killing me here deart why you make this leap because here’s the problem the materialist will want to argue that actually it’s the opposite um this idea this concept of a imperfect or sorry this concept of a perfect being God it’s just a concept and that the actual brain that is causing this concept has more reality than the concept in the same way that the brain is more real than a unicorn we can imagine a unicorn that doesn’t mean that the image of the unicorn in our minds was caused by an even realer unicorn in the real world because it could have been caused by our brain and so the next step is that therefore only an actual infinite perfect being could have been the cause of this idea yeah that’s that’s tough that’s tough also notice this assumes that you me the the imperfect being finite being is separate from God the infinite perfect being conventionally speaking that’s how it seems but we also have to be so careful not to assume that I’m not God maybe you are God maybe there’s no difference between me and God we we can’t assume that either maybe the reason I’m having this idea of God is because I am God maybe that how do we know that’s not true see we have to be open-minded so in conclusion yeah very very unconvincing this will not convince any skeptic I don’t think or a materialist however that’s on the surface level if you go on a deeper more subtle level which is going to be retro active after you realize Infinity you look back on De cart’s argument you’ll actually realize there’s something to it here it’s it the problem is that it just doesn’t work going forwards it works going backwards because it’s so non obvious and you need like you need the empirical proof at the very end of the tunnel to see that the tunnel leads somewhere other than a dead end and that it’s just not obvious I remember studying this argument back in in my University days when I was studying philosophy and I was not I was a skeptic and an atheist back then I was not convinced At All by this argument and I had to steal man this argument like for you know to pass exams in University and so forth and I would steal man it but my heart wasn’t in in it because it just it didn’t convince me the next argument is called the te theological argument and it goes like this it’s pretty simple uh it’s not very logical it’s more an appeal to an intuition it goes like this step one is that the complexity Harmony and intelligent order of nature suggests an intelligent designer this order resembles that of man-made intelligent objects so there’s a kind of intelligence that man puts into creating his artifacts a kind of obvious intelligence and so by analogy by sort of a parallelism the argument goes that if you if you look carefully around at the complexity and Harmony of nature you’re going to see a profound intelligence and not just in life but even in the inanimate objects like stars planets gravitation um the Sun the way light works the relativistic nature of light it’s just and see this there’s multiple levels to this theological argument because on the surface when you say that God must exist because everything appears so intelligently designed as if it was designed of course the scientists materialists atheists will come in here and say what the [ __ ] are you talking about um uh it’s not really designed it just appears that way because that’s how Evolution works and we already know Evolution we’ve scientifically validated Evolution through natural selection we know the whole mechanism we understand all that we already know that you can get very complex things that look like design through random mutation and through um natural selection and billion yeah billions of years of evolution millions of years of selection you can get the eyeball you can get wings on birds they have evolved co-evolved um there’s been convergent evolution multiple times throughout history eyeballs have evolved Wings have evolved in different animals from birds to bats and so forth and um and you see this all throughout the biological sciences so it can seem if you study a lot of Science and evolution and biology the way that I have it’s very this argument is a very sort of Topsy Turvy like roller coaster first you start out thinking that m well you can start in different places depending on where you start you can start believing it or not believing it but you can start let’s say believing that reality was not intelligently designed let’s say you start there then you start to study like actual molecular biology and you start to study the mechanisms of how DNA works it’s mind-bogglingly intelligent when you start to study that so you’re you’re kind of shocked by by its beauty and and Order and Harmony how all the little molecules trillions of cells all work together perfectly to create your immune system and cell biology and all this sort of stuff and it seems the more you study it the more intelligent it seems so that sort of starts to make the argument seem a little bit more plausible that maybe God did design all this stuff it’s pretty crazy how all this stuff just came together accidentally really accidentally all this stuff that’s kind of farfetched but then you start to study the actual mechanisms of of natural selection you start to realize you know wait a minute billions of years I’m thinking on time humans we we think of time scales of of you know days and weeks but here we’re talking about billions and millions of years we have a very extensive fossil record of how animals have clearly evolved from more primitive forms to more advanced forms and not the other way around and we can even we we even have examples of how dog breeds have been artificially selected by a man and just within a 100 or 200 years you can have new dog breeds just by selecting certain kinds of dogs over and over and over again certain traits within dogs you can domesticate animals this way you can domesticate foxes for example through this method just by selecting and only breeding the foxes that are the most friendly to humans after just a a few dozen Generations you can have nearly domesticated foxes that exists today you can find videos on YouTube of these foxes um they’re not quite as domesticated as a as a dog or a cat but um it’s pretty impressive how far they get with just a few Generations you know so that seems like pretty good evidence and we can see we can even see mutations and evolution happen within viruses within bacteria and so forth so isn’t that the F final nail in the coffin doesn’t that mean that everything is just Evolution and that there’s no need for a god anymore well not so fast again there’s deeper layers to this you can reach that point but then there’s an even deeper level where first of all there’s an assumption here which is that God and evolution are natur are mutually exclusive that you either have one or the other to think that way you have to sort of think that well God was just a human invention designed to explain away where life came from before we understood how life really came about which is just through natural selection and evolution and once stwood figure that out and we need a little bit more work to you know to to cross all the te’s and and Dot all the eyes once we once we did all that um 100 years after Darwin now everything is very clear there’s not much mystery left there’s a little bit of mystery as to how life originated like the very beginning at the very beginning of the cycle but other than that like we understand all the natural selection all that and so therefore God is just irrelevant now we don’t need God because we can explain it all naturalistically materialistically yes but you’re still assuming something you’re assuming actually a lot you’re you’re assuming the existence of the entire substrate of of of reality um you are also assuming the origin of life we still do not have a at all any any scientific understanding of how life originated at all so there’s still some Gap there that we could stuff God into the god of the god of the gaps we can do that and you never know you know atheists make fun of this idea of God of the gaps but um maybe there’s a gap where God really will be found you can’t just assume that it will never be found it’s true that you can try to stuff God into all sorts of gaps within science and that might be silly and wrong but you know if there’s anywhere that you would plausibly want to stuff God into it’s the gap of the origin of life because that’s a real mystery uh chemically and biologically speaking that’s a huge mystery we don’t know how it happened um it’s kind of a miracle if you really look into it how it happened um now is it a literal Miracle or is it just a figurative miracle and that it was just very unlikely or maybe there’s something we don’t understand yet and actually it was very likely but we just don’t understand the mechanisms so those are all possibilities we don’t really know at this point um however it could be possible that God exists and evolution and natural selection are the means by which God is unfolding God doesn’t have to mean the literal Christian God of like God stuck his fingers into into molecules and made life out of it it doesn’t have to be that silly and childish it could be the deistic version of God which is that God created the universe God doesn’t interact with the universe God created it and the universe is running and part of how the universe runs is the physical laws and ultimately the physical laws just give rise to chemistry which gives rise to life and to biology and so that’s not contradictory you have to be open to that possibility and also you have to be open to the possibility that again maybe the universe itself is God if the universe is God then physics is God then chemistry is God and then biology is God and natural selection and evolution is God and so God is creating animals through Evolution natural selection now of course the atheists and materialists will come back and say well yeah Leo you can move the goalpost like that and you can redefine God as however you want I mean you can define God as mathematics you can define God as scientific method and then um but then what are you really achieving it seems like you’re just playing word games you’re not achieving anything you’re not actually help helping us understand the world because you’re just renaming things to suit your superstitions to try to kind of like say face because you don’t have any good arguments and you don’t have any good evidence and that’s that’s a fair argument from a certain point of view um so so there really is this question of like if God is the universe why not just call it the universe why even talk about God and it’s not at all obvious from this argument why call it God if you want to say that Evolution and natural selection are intelligent design that’s literally what intelligent design is then many scientists and atheists would just accept that they would just say yeah so then what you mean by intelligent design is just Evolution okay so so what but that you haven’t made any any Headway here but there’s an even deeper level to this argument which is you start to look not just at the animal life and so forth and evolution you look at even things that don’t seem to evolve which is you know planets and stars and cosmology you look at the big scale stuff and this is where now we get into the next argument which is very closely related called the fine-tuning argument which goes like this Step One is the precise conditions necessary for life in the universe suggest intentional design all of these constants of physics the cosmological constant the the the force of the you know between the electron and the proton and and the magnetic force constants and this kind of stuff and the plank length and all this and the speed of light all these have to be perfectly balanced to within impossible levels of precision otherwise the universe just wouldn’t hold together we would have a nonsensical universe and no life would be possible uh higher matter couldn’t form you know electrons and protons couldn’t combine together you couldn’t have more than just hydrogen in the universe you couldn’t have heavier elements you couldn’t have carbon um you couldn’t have iron and all this stuff that’s necessary for life and you wouldn’t have life and so therefore God exists so how convincing is the fine-tuning argument um well see uh the fine tuning argument connects with the te logical argument in the following way which is that the fine tuning doesn’t just have to apply to life itself the fine tuning can apply and Theological argument can apply to um not just the existence of life or Consciousness but to just even the the very fabric of SpaceTime there’s an even a sort of a beauty and intelligence and genius if you study quantum mechanics and just einsteinian physics just to those equations and how all of that stuff works it’s incredible the the way black holes work the Precision of it and all that are we really to believe that happened by accident that’s very implausible super super implausible virtually impossible if you just do if you just run the numbers as a like pure random chance statistical um model of getting all these constants and variables just tuned correctly so that this could happen it it’s not just unlikely it’s it’s literally impossible there’s not enough the odds of it are less than there are molecules in the universe it’s like one to a to trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions it’s basically impossible within the time of the universe now of course you can make counterarguments here with the various kinds of fancy schmancy Multiverse theories and you could say there’s multiverses and we just happen to be in this particular Universe because we happen to be conscious and we’re alive so we’re already biasing our perspective there’s this anthrop Centric bias that we have so maybe our universe is a very rare universe but we don’t even experience all the broken universes because the broken universes don’t have any creatures like us who can look back and reflect on being in the universe so maybe by this kind of weird um Loop the odds are very astronomical but they’re sort of made irrelevant by the fact that we’re here and looking backwards on it retroactively looking at the odds so that’s sort of the the counter argument that an atheist would make um so what are we to make of this are these fine tuning and Theological arguments are they convincing of course if you want to be strict they’re not convincing first of all because they’re they’re not even lock solid logical arguments this is just it’s probabilistic at best these arguments can be probabilistic you’re sort of assuming that it can happen by random chance but maybe a universe could just just happened by random chance we’re saying it’s improbable but if something is improbable that doesn’t mean it’s impossible so there’s that counter argument so uh even if it Point even if at best theological argument fine tuning argument Point towards the possible existence of God it doesn’t guarantee there is a God it just means that it’s possible okay yeah it’s possible but where does that get us it doesn’t get us anywhere a lot of things are possible May and maybe it wasn’t God maybe it was a Intergalactic space kangaroo maybe that’s what it was maybe that’s who fine tuned all this stuff and designed B possible maybe life on Earth began because some some alien species planted it here maybe that happened of course that raises the question of where did they come from just pushes back the problem but you know still um so these arguments of course are not very convincing however if you go a more advanc subtle layer if you come back to these arguments after you realize God then you’ll understand that actually they’re correct these arguments are correct but you can’t know they’re correct unless you have an experience of God unless you understand understand what God is uh that’s very difficult to explain because really what’s being missed what scientists are missing is that they just do not comprehend the genius the utter [ __ ] genius of the structure of reality it’s Way Beyond anything any scientist comprehends and sure scientists will say no no no Leo I understand I understand what you’re talking about yeah I mean we look up at the stars it’s incredible there’s trillions of stars out there and and all those stars have planets there’s trillions of planets and probably a bunch of weird life and really weird advanced stuff happening out there in the universe it’s like it’s mindboggling billions of years we’re talking about we’re talking about trillions of molecules just in my own body never mind the whole universe it’s like it yeah it’s staggering and when you look and study the mechanism of natural selection and evolution and microbiology and DNA and all this it’s like wow wow whoa that’s why I became a scientist this is something you would hear from uh Neil degrass Tyson but I’m saying something more advanced way more advanced than what Anil Tyson degrass Tyson understands what I’m saying is that this this this you’re tapping into a sense of like wow wow existence right [ __ ] existence wow you’re tapping into that and that’s like whoa but you’re not understanding how profound that is take that take that sense and scale it up to infinity and when you do that then you understand the power of theological argument and it’s not this stupid Richard Dawkins kind of argument the kind of straw man that he makes which like you know if you were walking through the Sahara Desert and you found a a pocket watch laying in the Sahara Desert and you would pick it up and you look at it and you say well obviously this was made by some intelligence it didn’t just appear here out of the blue it didn’t just evolve it somebody designed this thing it’s a [ __ ] clock look at it’s look at the intentionality behind its design and Richard Dawkins would say well yeah yeah but that’s a stupid argument because a clock is man-made but a clock is ultimately a a pocket watch is ultimately in a certain sense it is the process of evolution it’s question begging because where did the where did the pocket watch come from it came from the mind of man and where did the mind of man come from well it came from an evolutionary chain that started from just a bunch of molecules swimming around in in some ocean and so in a sense the pocket watch is just the intelligent design of the pocket watch you think that it comes from like this this sort of like ethereal manly quality of intelligence but really no it’s a process of evolution that we got clocks and cars and even rocket ships when you see a rocket ship if you really think profoundly holistically about Evolution there’s not actually a distinction between a rocket ship and the evolution of a frog and the evolution of of microbes it’s all one continuous chain and so really the intelligence that is in the rocket ship a rocket ship is very intelligent it has to be tuned just right it has this perfect harmony to be able to not blow up and fly where it needs to well that came about through a process again how did we invent rocket ships look at the actual process of inventing rocket ships it wasn’t that some genius Godlike human sat down and just drew a rocket ship and it worked we had a hundred years of trial and error a lot of error a lot of people got killed making Rockets until we finally evolved to the point through trial and error and natural selection that we selected the right designs by blowing up the bad ones the bad ones were killed the dumb human you know the human rocketeers and Rocket designers who were stupid made bad rockets and killed themselves and so only the Smart Ones survived and then they made the best rockets that is evolution Richard Dawkins might say so what’s the mystery we know how it works but now I’m going to say there’s an even deeper level to that which Richard Dawkins does not understand which is that you’re taking all of this for granted you’re taking all of this for granted this doesn’t just happen by luck and it doesn’t just happen by natural selection there’s something more profound happening than natural selection so natural selection is actually an I don’t want to call it an illusion it’s a it’s a red herring natural selection exists and it’s a powerful force and it’s important but if you think that you can explain the intelligent design of this universe of this fabric of existence through natural selection you are a [ __ ] fool because you’re blind to the Staggering intelligence that is running this whole show you don’t understand what you’re dealing with you’re completely underestimating the the nature of reality the problem though is that me telling you that isn’t going to change your mind that requires an Awakening you need an Awakening to see that that’s hard to come by all right let’s move on to the next argument which is Aristotle’s proof from movement this is a bit more uh complex there’s many steps to this argument so let’s go through them the first step is everything in the Universe moves and changes okay we can buy that next step everything moved every moved thing is moved by some other thing next step is this creates a chain of movers Next Step this chain cannot be extended infinitely far back we’ve seen this before next step is an infinite regress would leave an entire chain unexplained okay next step so there must be a first cause of motion Next Step the first cause must be itself unmoved otherwise it will require a mover and it would be part of this infinite chain so to terminate the chain we need to come to something that is not moved but that causes movement and the next step says that this unmoved mover must be Eternal otherwise something would have to have brought it into existence and then the attributes of this unmoved mover are that it must be immaterial Eternal necessary and perfect and then Aristotle makes some other claims about what this unmoved mover is like and how it causes for example motion he doesn’t really make an argument for it so much as just to say this is how it is is that it doesn’t work through physical contact so you might wonder how does the unmoved Mover create motion Aristotle says not by physical contact it moves things um as an object of Desire or love the cosmos is drawn towards Perfection towards the Perfection of the unmoved Mover and it produces motion by being loved now this how convincing is this argument that’s the whole argument how convincing is this um yeah there there especially towards the end here you have this a lot of these you know claims about love how can you make any scientific sense of this how you can make any rational sense of this what does it mean to say that there’s an unmoved mover that moves things towards love what what does this even mean uh let’s go back to the beginning of the of the whole argument of the whole proof here and just kind of like go through it step by step so everything in the Universe moves and changes is that true yes uh next step every moved thing is moved by some other thing is that true within the universe I’m inclined to say yes that’s true that’s how science says things work Works um this creates a chain of movers is that true yes next step is the chain cannot extend infinitely far back again that’s not obvious we can’t assume that maybe it can I don’t know why why Aristotle assumes it can’t uh he he says that an infinite regress would leave the entire chain unexplained maybe it does leave it unexplained but you can’t assume that the ultimate source of existence should have an explanation so you have to appreciate that explanation could be something that applies to stuff within existence but not the source of existence so why can’t there just be an infinite chain of Movers stretching as far back eternally far back infinitely far back and then that’s it and then you don’t need to explain anything else that’s that’s just the structure of of the universe why can’t it be like that Aristotle doesn’t really give us a good reason why it can’t be that way also why can’t you have a a universe that’s shaped like a circle just a loop so you have an infinite Circle a chain of causes that all Circle back to each other why can’t you have that aerosotle doesn’t explain that possibility so he says there must be a first mover which is unmoved but this is problematic because how the hell does an unmoved thing create movement this is equally as mysterious and implausible as an infinite chain of movers maybe even more implausible especially once you start to bring in Notions of love into this thing you know how does love move anything from from non-movement I mean it’s very weird how that would work no explanation for the mechanism or anything like that and he says that this unmoved mover must be Eternal implying that it’s God but if the unmoved Mover can be Eternal why can’t an infinite chain of causes movers itself also be Eternal that’s not really explained very well and then what are we to make of this unmoved mover what like what is it that we’re actually meaning when we say an un unmoved mover what is that it seems like it it can’t be a material object and Aristotle in fact says it can’t so then again we’re kind of lead led to this conclusion that it’s just this very simple object with no parts to it no cause and effect within it so it’s like an empty void is that what aerosotle means by the unmoved Mover it’s just an empty void okay well then scientists can accept an empty void that’s materialism a bunch of matter happening inside an empty void so then why are we talking about God how does this prove a god it just proves an empty void and then it doesn’t prove love either so in the end not very convincing next proof is St Augustine’s proof number one there’s going to be a second one here so his first proof is this step number one is that certain truths like math and logic are Eternal unchanging and necessary Next Step these truths transcend individual minds and physical reality they are not created they are discovered Next Step Eternal truths cannot exist independently or in a void they must be grounded in something equally Eternal and unchanging and then the next step these Eternal truths cannot be grounded in in a material world since it is always changing and these truths are unchanging Next Step the foundation for all truth must be God because God is the only unchanging Eternal thing God must not be merely truthful but truth itself and St Augustine has this beautiful quote which says quote if truth were to perish it would still be true that truth perished end quote so this is a sort of an argument of equating God with truth and then connecting this with logical and mathematical truths since they seem to be necessary and almost like absolutes for example something as very simple the very basics of logic is like the law of non-contradiction a equals a the law of identity this kind of stuff St Augustine would want to say is basically God these truths rest in God because these truths where are they found where do you find these truths you don’t find them out in nature you don’t find mathematics out in nature so what are we to make of this proof let’s go through through some of these steps here so he says certain truths like math and logic are Eternal unchanging and necessary this is this is already difficult because what are we to make of math and Logic the truths of math and logic so-called are these are we supposed to think that these are out there in the universe somewhere beyond the universe or are these residing inside the the mechanism and structure of the human brain maybe logic and math is just how human psychology and neurology works that’s not obvious to say what is the nature of math and logic and its truthfulness that’s extremely these are extremely challenging questions that mankind has been trying to answer for thousands of years and we don’t have very good answers as to the nature of why math is is true and is math true in all possible worlds and universes or only in this one can we have a Multiverse with other universes that have different kind of math and logic again that’s not very obvious what the answer to that is so I wouldn’t want to speculate it would be most accurate to say we don’t know the next point of this proof is that these truths transcend individual minds and physical reality and they’re not created but discovered again that’s not obvious do these truths transcend physical reality does math transcend physical reality or is math like somehow baked into and something we extract out of physical reality you know we see it we see one cat and we say that’s one cat and we see another two dogs and we say that’s two dogs and then we add them together we get three because we can add them empirically in the real world maybe there’s nothing more to math than just that the empirical physical laws of of the universe why are we assuming that law that math somehow transcends physics maybe it doesn’t it’s not entirely obvious he he says math and logic transcend individual Minds does does it really I don’t know not obvious either um then Augustine says that Eternal truths cannot exist independently or in a void they must be grounded in something unchanging this I find very puzzling because a void is eternal and unchanging so why wouldn’t you want to ground math and logic into a void and yet he somehow doesn’t want to do that but he also doesn’t want to ground it into a material world because he says the material world is always changing well it’s hard to imagine anything other than either a material world that’s always changing or you have something that isn’t changing and it’s very simple it’s just a void I mean like what is the third alternative here and then if he doesn’t want to put it into a void and he doesn’t want to put it into the changing material world like what’s the middle ground that’s not obvious so to me this one is not very ing he has a second proof this is St Augustine’s proof number two which I call hierarchy of goodness it goes like this step one we recognize degrees of goodness in the world you can have very good people moderately good people evil people and so on and it doesn’t just have to be people it can be things to objects different objects you can have a very good car a mediocre car and an awful car you can have [Music] um you could have various degrees of of Beauty for example too so the next step is that he says that um this implies a standard of perfect goodness because if you can imagine different degrees of goodness from the lowest towards the highest what’s the highest well it’s going to be Perfection perfect goodness then he says that this perfect good must exist and not just as an idea and that the perfect good is what we call God he says quote God is that than which nothing better can be conceived end quote so that’s the whole proof what do we make of this is it true that there are degrees of goodness yes although we could even question that because we might say well what is goodness isn’t goodness just something we constructed and that we’re projecting it’s a mental construct maybe goodness is a social construct maybe in the in the world without humans there is no degrees of goodness so already right there there’s a problem with his argument but let’s Grant him that we recognize different degrees of goodness okay so then the next step is it implies that there’s a a scale of different goodnesses that goes all the way up to Infinity to Perfection this is also problematic because what does it even made to mean to say that something is perfectly good is there such a thing as a perfectly good car isn’t that relative and that depends on like what its purposes are like you can’t just say that there’s a perfectly good car because you need to know like what you’re going to use the car for because there can be a there can be a perfectly good for example minivan for shuttling five of your children to school back and forth but then that minivan is not very good at drag racing and conversely you can have a car that’s great at drag racing but terrible for driving your kids to school so what does it mean to have a perfectly good car and then couldn’t we scale this idea of couldn’t we relativize this notion of goodness and say that basically any for anything to be good we have to know who it’s good for and for what purposes nothing is just good in sort of in pure abstraction it has to be good for some purpose and that purpose depends on who’s using it depends on some kind of ego so already this calls into question whether we can have this perfectly good platonic thing that St Augustine wants there to be but let’s say we Grant him let’s say we Grant him that there even is the concept of a perfect goodness in abstraction okay so there is that thing but then he jumps to the to The Next Step which is the perfect good must exist not just an as an idea because if it didn’t exist it wouldn’t be good this is a very sneaky it it’s Sneaky it’s very sneaky there’s very clever argument because look if if something imagine that it’s possible for something perfectly good to exist but it doesn’t exist that would be bad we would say right that’s not good the question though is can you go from that to concluding that it does exist that it must exist just because it can but if it doesn’t that it’s bad does that mean that it should exist that’s not that to me that’s not obvious at all I mean why can’t there be the possibility of perfect good we grant that it’s possible and I don’t just mean it as a concept I mean let’s say let’s grant that it’s it’s physically possible for there to be a universe that’s perfectly good and we can even go further and Grant that and if it doesn’t exist in actuality that’s bad okay but then why can’t we just have a bad Universe um if you’re if you’re truly honest and open you should be open to that possibility why can’t we just have an evil Universe uh that St Augustine doesn’t really address that okay now we have a slightly different version of this argument which is the argument from participation it goes like this step one things exhibit qualities like Unity Beauty goodness Perfection intelligence and Consciousness to various degrees step two if something has an attribute by degree it possesses it by participation and this degree can be scaled up infinitely so you understand what that means in a sense what this is saying is that for example if anything in the universe has the quality of it being intelligent we can say a human is intelligent relative to a rat most would agree so if a human is more intelligent than a rat and we could say a rat has some intelligence too you know a rat can navigate a ma and there are smarter rats and Dumber rats so rat there’s different scales even of rat intelligence and a rat is more intelligent than a cockroach okay we can grant that but then that means there must be something more intelligent than a human maybe in an AI and then maybe something more intelligent than that it scaled up infinitely we got God but what this argument is really trying to get at the this is something very profound it’s the idea that in order for any quality to exist in any degree it has to derive that quality from participation in the sum total of the universe that’s what is really being said here now that’s a very interesting clever and profound metaphysical idea the question is is it true we don’t know so the next step in the argument says that because things can only exist by participation in the whole universe there must exist a higher Nth Degree from which all of these attributes arise originate and that would be God now how convincing is this argument to you that’s the whole argument are you convinced that God exists um well you see the problem here the problem is that of course it’s easy to Grant the first premise or step of the argument which is that of course there’s various degrees of qualities of things in the universe that’s that’s easy to Grant but then the next step is very not obvious which is the the notion that to have any attribute that attribute can only come come to you by participation in something higher which possesses all the attributes to an Nth Degree more or less well exactly actually to an Nth Degree um so in a sense what this argument is saying is that reality works not bottom up the way that materialist science is but actually top down it’s not that you have a bunch of dumb molecules bouncing around and then they come together over billions of years and then they produce something intelligent and then you get the first intelligent thing and then that thing produces more intelligent things and more intelligent things and scales up intelligence that way that’s not this is so this is the sort of inverse of that what this is saying is that if anything exists in the universe and has Intelligence it’s because it’s deriving its intelligence from the universe itself as a whole this is a holistic top down sort of um model of of the universe what evidence do we have that the Universe actually works this way it’s not obvious not obvious at all especially if all you’re doing is empirical science it seems to actually work the opposite way is that everything by reductionism everything reduces down to molecules and all you have is molecules and from that it seems like more complex stuff takes time to evolve at the beginning of the universe 14 billion years ago you just had a bunch of hydrogen atoms and nothing else and then it took a long time for something more complex even for like gold atoms to form took a long long time so what are we what do we to make of this like you know gold are we to say that gold you can have different degrees of gold and then gold derives from some sort of higher ultimate infinite gold not really clear how that works however that’s on the surface level there’s a deeper layer once you have some Awakening there’s a deeper layer where you will start to appreciate this argument a little bit more in that in a certain sense like look you understand that you’re not just a creature inside the universe you are the universe you’re not just inside of reality you’re not like a thing that was born into reality you are reality and I don’t just mean that from some mystical religious point of view I mean from the scientific point of view if all you do is just by strict materialist atheist hard-nosed science you still can’t deny the fact that you are reality yeah you’re not just in reality you are reality that’s a lot of things that that seems kind of obvious when I say it but this is not obvious to most scientists and atheists and now you might say well Leo yeah I am reality but what so what where does that get us well it gets you a lot further than you would think because if you think that you’re a human ape within reality that puts you one step away from reality you’re a there’s a step of removal there from reality and this is actually very important because it creates an an epistemological obstacle that scientific minded people and materialists don’t know how to overcome whereas if you realize that you are reality that changes everything it seems subtle but it changes everything and then when you realize that you are reality that means any any property or quality that you have reality has right it’s not here’s the trick is that it’s not merely that humans are intelligent because they’re intelligent creatures that evolved within reality no no no no no it’s that reality is intelligent and reality is doing humanness reality is giving a part of its intelligence to create humanness out of itself think of it like Legos I’ve made this analogy in the past where you can use Legos to build some sort of higher order structure you can use these little bricks so you’re combining These Bricks then you build let’s say you build a pirate ship I used to do that I had had a pirate ship when I was a kid so you got this Lego pirate ship if you’re looking at just if you’re sort of like lost in the higher order structure of the pirate ship you think it’s a pirate ship and you forget the fact that it’s m of Legos but the the pirate ship itself is made out of the actual blocks and whatever properties the blocks have the pirate ship has so like if we had Lego blocks that are made out of gold the pirate ship would be made out of gold and it would be participate so the pirate ship form is actually participating in something more fundamental which is the blocks and the substance of the blocks which in this case would be gold well that seems fairly simple except with the universe now it gets much more abstract and and far out there it’s not just that the universe is made out of atoms and that everything possesses the quality of atoms that’s not what I’m saying I’m saying the universe possesses Consciousness and it’s by virtue of the fact that the Universe possesses Consciousness that you possess Consciousness and so really what’s happening is that the things that science thinks are just these dumb properties like gold or big or small or hot or cold or you know wood or metal whatever whatever property or substance you think is fundamental to reality what’s not being understood because Awakening hasn’t happened with Awakening you would understand this is that actually these are these are all attributes are figments of Consciousness so really gold gold is not a physical thing gold is a figment of of Consciousness Consciousness imagines gold it’s because the universe is infinitely conscious that it can imagine [ __ ] gold and also why you’re intelligent the reason you’re intelligent is because the universe gave you intelligence a little bit of it and the reason a rat is less intelligent than you is because the universe gave it a little bit less intelligence than you and since you are the universe you are reality you are consciousness because you are it there’s not that step of removal removing that veil of perception and that epistemic boundary that was created by materialism that’s been removed so therefore you can participate in more of the qualities of the universe which would be everything taken to an Nth Degree Perfection goodness Beauty Unity intelligence so see notice what happened here when I first presented this argument to you it sounded kind of weak and silly and dumb and if you gave it to an atheist he would instantly debunk it but then when I presented to you the much more robust version of this argument it made it much more powerful and convincing see and the only reason I was able to do that is because I have a very direct understanding of the nature of Consciousness in the universe um not as specul or belief but because I like I have it because I’m the universe you might wonder like Leo who are you to say these things to us and to act like you know all this stuff you can’t know these things you’re just a dumb ape living on a planet you can’t know these things and my response to you is you think I’m a dumb ape living on a planet actually I’m the universe so I can know these things because I’m realizing that I’m the universe and you don’t realize it yet some of you do but if you’re skeptical about all this stuff then you don’t realize it yet right so that’s that’s what Awakening is for you’re missing that Awakening again you can’t assume that you’re not the universe don’t assume that you aren’t don’t assume that you’re just some dumb Hairy Ape inside the universe maybe you’re more than that maybe you’re participating in something much bigger and that is what we would call God now now this still leaves the question of like well Leo but then you know why why is God called um loving and so forth well actually this argument kind of does make a pretty good case for the kind of qualities of God that the other arguments didn’t really um didn’t really convincingly demonstrate at all because this argument from participation sort of relies on this notion of qualities so in this argument if you assume there’s various degrees to nth degree of qualities then what we would say that what God is is just the sum total of all the nth degrees of every possible quality which includes intelligence love Perfection goodness and so forth now still you’re probably wondering well Leo but then what is God it what does it even mean to say that you’re taking all of these qualities and sort of lumping them together to e degree combining them together and then like what is that thing it has you’re talking about a thing it has to be a thing or it’s not real it’s just a concept right so what is that thing of all these properties combined together what is that well uh that’s Infinity which doesn’t help you for me to say that um yeah you’re not going to get what that thing is without Awakening that’s what Awakening is Awakening is when you realize what that thing is that you don’t currently understand and that you won’t understand no matter how much I talk about it so we have to move on the next argument is aquinus TE teic proof it goes like this step one is that natural bodies act towards ends and goals despite themselves not being intelligent step two all unintelligent things must be directed by an intelligence outside themselves step three for example it’s not a step really it’s just an example is that um for example an arrow reaches its Target only if directed by an Archer that’s an example he uses and um and then the last step is that this intelligence is God so what do we make of this argument so the first one step is that natural bodies act towards ends and goals despite themselves not being intelligent is this true natural bodies so like let’s say the Moon it acts towards ends and goals despite not being intelligent so the moon we would want to say under materialism the Moon is not intelligent but in a certain sense it does act towards like it stays in its orbit consistently does that require intelligence though that’s very iffy it’s it’s very question begging does the moon’s orbit require intelligence if you’re a strict materialist you want to say no it’s just moving along physical you know forces that’s not intelligent but then if you go one layer deeper you could say yeah but the but the actual mechanism and fine-tuning of the physical forces that’s really where the intelligence is the intelligence you have to think about intelligence in in a much broader and more abstract way than something like stuff that the brain is doing that’s not what’s being meant by intelligence intelligence is the order the order with which everything in the universe is arranged and which with which it moves right so under this Paradigm the moon in a certain sense we could say is intelligent because it moves in this intelligent way that doesn’t mean the move the the moon can solve math problems or do an IQ test we’re talking about a different notion of intelligence here much broader than an IQ test so don’t straw man this really consider that intelligence could be something much wider and broader and more abstract than an IQ test can measure so in this sense let’s say let’s just grant that the Moon is doing something intelligent when it’s orbiting the Earth but ainus wants to say that the intelligence of the moon’s movement is not coming from the Moon the Moon doesn’t have a brain obviously so the intelligence is coming from outside of it the intelligence is coming from we could say from the universe’s structure from the physical laws the physical laws are so intelligently designed and arranged that they are imparting their intelligence to the movement of the moon in the same way that for example if we design a car we could say the car is intelligent what we mean by a car being intelligent is not that it has a brain and it can solve an IQ test what we mean is that all the Parts in the car are arranged in such a way that when I turn the ignition key all the right parts move electrons move through the wires spark plugs spark on time everything is so perfectly synchronized the Pistons you know start moving uh you know gasoline and oil is is is sprayed into the combustion Chambers and all this is moving crankshafts are spinning wheels are rotating traction is happening gears are shifting in a transmission and now the car is behaving and accomplishing an intelligent operation again does this mean the car is now going to drive itself to where you want it to go no that’s not what’s meant what’s meant is that the operation of the mechanism is intelligent the intelligence is not found in like a brain located somewhere the intelligence is distributed through the organization of all the parts in Harmony in the system and then we say that intelligence in that car it’s not in the car it came from outside the car which means a human engineered it it’s really the intelligence of the engineer that created the car and if the engineer was stupid he could not create a well-functioning car it would be a dumb car not a smart car so you see the way that I’m framing it now now this whole argument seems a lot more plausible it’s not as stupid as it sounds at first now of course it’s kind of question begging because you wonder like well the intellig the intelligence of the human created the car okay we can grant that but was intell but the real question is here was Intelligence needed to create the physical laws that are moving the orbits of the planets it’s obvious that a car needed intelligence but it’s not so obvious that the orbits of the planets needed intelligence couldn’t have that Arisen spontaneously through a naturalistic process that’s where I think this proof falls apart is that that’s not obvious that it couldn’t you can’t know that ahead of time without Awakening um it could just be the case that the laws through some sort of Multiverse scenario many different universes were tried they failed they collapsed they imploded and then one arose which was conducive to life and this was happening through some sort of naturalistic mechan like Brute Force mechanical process where just every possibility of universe was tried until eventually our current one happened to work and so here it is and that wasn’t intelligent it was actually a dumb process of pure luck or maybe it’s not even luck but it’s more just like brute force can we say that brute force is intelligence like if for example there is a Multiverse and literally every single possible Universe was tried can’t you see that it’s necessary logically necessary that at least one of them would be our universe so literally just through a Brute Force process it should be possible to create our universe it’s just that you’ll also have a bunch of really [ __ ] up and bad universes out there but as long as we’re not in it to see it then who cares right maybe that’s how it works and so maybe the universe did come from actually a dumb Brute Force unintelligent Force we have to be open to that possibility so how can ainus say that it didn’t happen that way how would he know not not so obvious the next proof it’s called the neoplatonic proof it goes like this step one the material world is made out of Multiplicity there’s many different things right step two all multiplicity requires absolute Unity as its source step three the absolute Unity must be Beyond being Beyond intellect Beyond definition step four it must be absolutely simple with no internal distinctions or composition and this Unity is called God that’s the whole argument how convinced are you that God exists so let’s break it down a little bit step one the material world’s man of Multiplicity okay obvious we can grant that no problem step two all multiplicity requires absolute Unity as Source that’s much more iffy what does this even mean all multiplicity requires absolute Unity as a source but like why couldn’t we have a Multiverse where we have different universes so we have multiplicity of universes on the other hand the counterargument to that is to say well yeah you can have all these multiverses but then doesn’t that mean that you have some sort of containing higher order structure that contains all the Multiverse like something has to hold all the universes together right even if you have many of them or maybe not see again this is this is such a fundamental question that really like this is this is actually like an empirical question we would want to be able to do science on this to figure out which way actually does it work because we don’t know we don’t want to assume how it works is it possible to have two totally different universes that are in no way absolutely whatsoever in contact with each other and never will be just like these pocket realities that are just completely different and will never know each other never contact each other is that possible and how would we know by definition it’s impossible to know that and yet it could be possible so who are we to say we we can’t exclude that possibility um so the next step of the proof is that absolute un must be Beyond being Beyond intellect Beyond definition I mean this is true of course um but like um how do you explain to somebody this to somebody who hasn’t experienced infinity or Awakening or Unity who doesn’t know what these things are it doesn’t it’s not going to make sense um what does it mean to say that you have an absolute Unity like what is this Unity is it an object it can’t really be an object but then what is it uh platinus says that it must be absolutely simple with no internal distinctions or compositions okay so you have this absolute simple Unity is it completely empty okay but then um and then but then we’re calling it God okay but then but then how do you get the sort of classical features of God from this absolutely simple Unity again it all it sounds like a void how is this different from aoid how is this absolute absolutely simple Unity not just nothing and if God is just nothing then what why are we even talking about God why not just talk about nothing that’s not really explained okay the next argument and proof is um is the moral argument it goes like this first objective moral truths exist second moral truths can only exist if God exists third a purely scientific reality cannot have objective good and bad in it fourth science cannot answer questions of value and meaning you can’t get an ought from an is and lastly moral conscience cannot just be a natural faculty it requires consciousness of God’s goodness so this moral argument is commonly made by Christians and theists of that kind of persuasion so let’s look at this so first first step of the argument objective moral truths exist is this true um that’s not obvious that it’s true why can’t moral truths just be relative subjective projections Christians don’t even seriously consider this possibility but they should because it’s very obvious that morality could just be a human construction and if it is then there goes your God no God for you you see how dangerous it is to actually hinge your God on any of these kind of arguments because if one of these arguments fails for example if God requires there to be morality and then morality is realized to just be a human construction well no more God for you so you have to be careful about what kind of arguments you subscribe to not very wise to hinge God to morality the next step is moral truths can only exist if God exists is that true let’s see um I mean that’s not obvious either why can’t moral truths just be something that you can get by through reason just through through pure reason for example why is it morally wrong to torture somebody because it creates suffering and suffering is harmful to biological organisms if there was no suffering and biological organisms weren’t harmed by suffering then torture wouldn’t be good wouldn’t be bad it would it could be good why is theft wrong and bad theft is bad because you’re taking the the property or energy of some other creature that worked hard for something and then you’re stealing it um but you can look at it purely rationally like the reason theft should is wrong is because again when you steal from somebody you’re causing suffering to them and you’re endangering their survival so why couldn’t you just boil all of morality down to survival the reason we say things are bad is because it it hinders survival and we don’t need God to explain that survival is just like what humans or animals need to live and so if you want to be good you don’t need God all you need is just to to respect the survival of other organisms why can’t we just boil down all morality to that seems quite plausible in fact that is a very accurate description of how humans do morality it’s not like humans are these hyperoral uh you know platonic creatures that live in this world of perfect moral Clarity and and goodness it’s the opposite humans are live like animals and even the the the soall moral ones behave like Savages and will exploit each other and um the only reason they don’t is because when they look at the suffering they cause that causes them suffering there’s a sort of a mirror neuron response you know torturing someone is not as easy as it seems go try torturing somebody it’ll be hard um most people will will will cringe and they will not enjoy the process of torturing somebody so that’s what keeps torture away it’s not God or your knowledge of God or that God gave you some Commandments or some Divine intuition about torture it’s just that you find torture disgusting if you do it so the next part of this argument is that um a purely scientific reality cannot have objective good and bad we can grant that in a sort of a absolute sense that science according to science you know science doesn’t call things good or bad all that science can do is just tell us that like you shouldn’t do that because it will harm or kill somebody and then whether you want to kill them or not that is up to you science doesn’t make any value judgments about whether killing is is good or bad you know killing a virus or a bacteria could be good for saving a human life but science can’t tell you which bacteria you should or shouldn’t kill that’s a um you know that’s a more iffy question so yeah it could be the case that science does give us an absolute sense of good and bad but that could just be because there isn’t one and because we don’t need one and the universe just doesn’t have those things because good and bad are just much higher order things that are really just tools that we use to survive amongst each other as a collective right the reason we need Notions of good and bad is because we don’t just live individually if you were the only person on the planet there would really be no such thing as good and bad you could live however you want and it would be mostly fine um but since you live with other humans you need some sort of rules to so that we’re not living in a hellscape so that that works that sort of undercuts this whole moral argument so the the next step of this moral argument it says that science cannot answer questions of value and meaning you can’t get an A from an is um that’s true but it also might not be a problem and the final step of this argument says that moral conscience cannot just be natural faculty it requires conscious of God’s goodness this is not obvious at all moral conscience could be a natural faculty after all for example animals animals live together mostly peacefully you can see a a group of monkeys a flock of birds a school of fish are you going to say that a school of fish has God’s goodness consciousness of God’s goodness no it’s just a school of fish it’s behaving like a school of fish very robotically and it just behaves and these fish are hardcoded and programmed to get along with each other because they need to because if they didn’t they would all die so it’s a school of fish they don’t need morality for that they don’t need some sort of platonic moral conscience and then if if if a school of fish can behave that way and for example a pride of lions can live together mostly peacefully now you know Lions sometimes eat their young and abuse each other and maybe even kill each other but you know what humans do that too ultimately what is the difference between a pride of lions and a group of humans and who’s to say which of them is more moral I could make the case that humans have less morality than than a group of lions and lions you don’t want to say that Lions have some sort of higher consciousness of God’s goodness that’s not why lions get along Lions get along just based on their Natural Instincts and because ultimately they need to get along in order to survive because they couldn’t survive you know individually now here’s the next argument the next argument goes like this atheists are kidding themselves when they think that their moral is coming from a secular Source like I was just describing so the the Christian theist wants to say that a true atheist would actually be an immoral psychopath and that really what atheists are doing is that they’re actually piggy piggybacking off the moral Foundation created by religion and by God this is an argument that Jordan Peterson likes to make um it’s a sort of a it’s a bad no true Scotsman argument because what Jordan Peterson wants to say is that like there’s no such thing as a true atheist even when an atheist well there’s no such thing as a true moral atheist if you were a true atheist you would be immoral because you would believe in nothing and nothing would ground your sense of right and wrong because you need God for that and even if you don’t consciously believe in God still in some way you’re you’re actually leveraging God because either you’re coming you grew up in a chist judeo-christian c culture um or and so even if you don’t believe it you have those habits it’s baked into your culture and you got it from your culture and then he might say that cultures that that don’t don’t have that kind of moral Foundation they turn to evil precisely because they lack it and then he would say that ultimately where did that moral Foundation come from it wasn’t just invented by humans arbitrarily it came from God and that’s what the whole Bible is about is about teaching morality through lessons that were gotten from God and then disseminated through a culture then a culture was built around this and now even if you’re secular and even if you’re atheist and even if you want to be a nihilist you’re still living off that moral foundation and to the extent that that that Foundation is eroded is to the extent that our society is going to hell that’s what Jordan Peterson would argue so how convincing is this argument well of course it doesn’t prove that God exists um yeah it’s it’s the no true Scotsman fallacy is the problem uh Jordan Peterson really needs to open his mind to the possibility that you could have an atheist who is perfectly moral and is not a psychopath and is a real atheist and in fact he could be more moral than your religious Christian and in fact that’s usually the case if is the case that many genuine atheists and I was one so I’m speaking from direct experience here I’m not just guessing many genuine atheists who have no belief in God whatsoever and do not subscribe to the judeo-christian ethic and culture that um they can be perfectly good people simply because they have Consciousness and intelligence and if you’re intelligent then you understand that behaving in a highly selfish way is counter productive you don’t need Christianity to tell you that and you don’t need God to tell you that right a lot of this stuff is just very very obvious stop being a selfish prick that’s the sum total of morality for you it’s not rocket science it doesn’t have to be super complicated you can derive it yourself now of course there’s an actually a it’s it’s so tricky here because there’s a more subtle Advanced layer at which actually Jordan Peterson is making a better Point than he seems so even though he is committing the no true SC and fallacy there’s a deeper layer where notice what I just said I said through intelligence you can just figure out to stop being a selfish prick because it’s counterproductive but notice that assumes intelligence now if you’re an atheist and a materialist you think that intelligence is just something natural biological the brain is doing but as we talked about before if you awaken you’ll realize that intelligence is is coming from God it’s not just that intelligence is coming from God intelligence is God so when you realize that intelligence is God actually it is true that atheists are only moral to the extent that they are intelligent and literally to have an intelligent atheist is to have an atheist who is participating in the intelligence of God but of course the atheist has no idea that that’s what’s happening so in a certain very perverse and six sense I don’t mean sixth sense I said sick diseased sense Jordan Peterson is right that atheists are piggybacking off of God but the way that he describes it is incorrect the way that I’m describing it is the correct explanation so I hope that you’re seeing how many layers there are to these arguments and how you can be wrong at surface layers and then right at deeper layers and also vice versa you could be right at the surface and then wrong at the deeper layers depending on how deep you go how deep you understand the stuff how you frame things see how you frame it is so [ __ ] important because you could frame any of these arguments in a stupid way and then it’ll be false or you could frame it in a very intelligent way and then it’ll come out to be true the next argument is argument from reason and intelligibility and this is sort of now going to be connecting with what I just said about intelligence the argument goes like this step one the world is intelligible to human reason step two this suggests a rational Foundation to reality itself step three God is this rationality or intelligibility itself taken to the nth degree that’s the whole argument so you see the problem with naturalism materialism and Atheism and rationalism is that it assumes that rationality and intelligibility is a natural phenomenon and that’s a very sneaky assumption because it seems so obviously true right the brain generates intelligence the brain generates rationality and the brain is just physical matter and that’s all there is to it and there’s no God in this equation that’s how it seems however this is an illusion when you awaken you realize that rationality is not just something that some chimp brain is doing rationality is deeply interwoven with the very structure and metaphysics of Consciousness because reality is not just a dumb Clockwork machine like like you thought like you assumed under materialism it’s Consciousness reality is a mind if you switch your Paradigm from that of A Clockwork to that of an infinite mind when you have an infinite mind this infinite mind has the capacity for intelligibility senscience Consciousness and rationality it has an internal logic to it you could call that the logos although that word is very badly abused by people like Jordan Peterson so I don’t even want to use that word but it does have a sort of a logical structure to it um but this is not at all obvious to a materialist because your Paradigm is backwards so it actually is true that God is the rationality and intelligibility of the universe taken to the nth degree because if you take intelligibility to to the nth degree what you get is you get infinite Consciousness infinite mind that’s what God is but how convincing will this argument be to an atheist probably not convincing because they have their Paradigm it’s their Paradigm locked their Paradigm locked into thinking that the universe is a dumb Clockwork how can you help a person like that okay the next argument is called the performative contradiction of naturalism it goes like this step one if naturalism is true then human perception and reason is just the product of survival step two if naturalism is true then naturalistic philosophy and scientific reasoning is unreliable step three even the doing of Science and Math proves a faith in your faculties which is really faith in God that’s the whole argument so look at how this works if naturalism is true then human perception is only there for as a product of survival in fact people like Donald Hoffman make this point um he’s a sort of cognitive scientist philosopher who’s been talking about this model that everything you see is just the product of survival so you don’t even get the true you don’t get the true view of the world because it’s all just mediated by natural selection and natural selection doesn’t select for truth it selects for survival in a certain sense that’s true in a certain sense that’s false so look if naturalism is true the problem here is that there’s a performative contradiction in that if the naturalist view is true the naturalistic philosophy and scientific reasoning itself has no basis for being reliable you see if you’re going to say that natural selection and evolution has produced your nervous system and that your nervous system is detached from truth from any sort of deep metaphysical truth or God then you’re going to say that it’s all just whatever is working for your organism to survive but then now you’re using this nervous system to then generate your own model of evolution that means your model of evolution is not true it’s just something you’re using for survival so it’s self-defeating you see so science by this notion is self-defeating for you to actually genuinely think that science is giving you a true picture of reality you need to ground that in something deeper than Evolution it has to ground in a faith in your faculties what does science require science and math requires that you believe in logic reason scientific method deduction induction perception and other things for example you need to as a scientist you need to believe that you’re not hallucinating right now now that all of your science is not a hallucination you need to believe that you’re not in a simulation created by aliens that you’re not a brain and a vat you need to believe that you’re not being influenced by some malevolent evil demon in the background who is manipulating your science and so forth you need to believe all these things in order to do science and scientists are in denial about this so the argument goes and that really scientists do have a sort of crypto faith in God it’s just that they don’t call it God what they call it is just reason or scientific method or logic or even something like Evolution as a scientist you’re trusting that Evolution gave you a brain that gets you to truth now if you say well no Leo I don’t need to trust that as a scientist I don’t need to believe in truth there is no truth as a scientist I can be a pure pragmatist and I can just say science is just whatever works but this is incoherent you’re not going to be able to um you’re not going to be able to maintain that world you because um in the end as a sign is you’re going to be making truth claims for example you’re going to want to say that God doesn’t exist you’re going to want to say that unicorns don’t exist these are truth claims and you’re not just saying that unicorns don’t exist just because it’s impractical uh you don’t just you’re you’re not just a pragmatist if you think you’re a pragmatist you’re lying to yourself and this is part of what this argument is putting forth is that you’re confused and you’re deceiving yourself when you think that you’re not participating in the faculties of God Of Consciousness you are science ultimately requires Consciousness God is consciousness so the argument here is that you couldn’t do science without Consciousness being reliable and the only reason your conscience is reliable is because God maintains it now will this convince anybody probably not but this literally is the case in fact I’ll take it one even more radical extreme the only reason you have sanity sanity this is beyond rationality and Beyond intelligence this is sanity this is something so profound that nobody understands what sanity is the only reason you’re able to maintain sanity is because God is maintaining your sanity what I’m saying is that if God was not maintaining your sanity sanity right now demons would be infesting your mind demons and Horrors the likes of which you could not imagine now you wonder Leo this sounds crazy how could there be demons and so forth well what is this nonsense this is very unscientific yes it’s very unscientific from your narrow vantage point but when you realize that the universe is just Consciousness a demon is just Consciousness no different than a unicorn or a [ __ ] horse there’s no difference between a unicorn a horse and a demon they’re all just forms of Consciousness right what God is doing with your Consciousness right now is so [ __ ] intelligent that it’s maintaining your sanity this is so intelligent you don’t even understand this is happening you’ve been taking your sanity for granted your entire life so on a surface level it’s kind of silly to say that science requires God on a much deeper more subtle advanced level you realize that you couldn’t even be sane without God but that’s Way Beyond what people understand um the next argument goes like this it’s the argument from information Theory step one of the argument says that DNA contains coded information that functions as language and programming code step two according to information Theory codes and language always originate from conscious Minds not random processes step three no natural undirected process has ever been observed to create code or language step four genetic code could only have originated from conscious intelligence that’s the whole argument this is an argument made by Perry Marshall he wrote a book about this it’s a very interesting argument um but it’s a little bit uh tricky let’s go through some of these steps so first DNA contains coded information that functions as language and programming code this I think is pretty solid pretty solid point um he argues it in the book he analyzes what language and information are and um there’s actually a science of information founded by Claude Shannon so there’s information Theory it’s complicated I don’t know it too well but from what I understand DNA is sort of a language or a programming code so we grant that step two is according to information Theory codes and language always originate from conscious mind this is question begging this the problem here is that this is question begging because we don’t really know we only have one single source of information which is human beings human beings create information code language um the problem though is that human beings under the scientific model came from natural selection so if you assume materialism the scientific picture then you can you can say that that through natural selection and DNA and so forth we got humans and then humans now create language and Co computer code and so forth but then the question is where did the where did the code come from in the DNA to create the humans so Perry Marshall wants to say well just like human code has to come from Minds because a human code cannot be generated through random processes because anytime you introduce Randomness into a information system into a code it actually degrades the code you don’t get an improvement in Code by introducing random errors and mutations for example if you take programming code take the source code for Microsoft Windows and start just randomly changing lines of code here and there hoping that randomly changing this line of code that line of code will produce a better version of Microsoft Windows Perry Marshall wants to say here that this is impossible you can’t create Microsoft Windows through a process of randomly splicing codes together and just seeing what will work it it it can’t work that way the Microsoft operating system is so int intelligent that it had to be created by an intelligent mind not through this random mutation process because random mutations introduce noise and noise always destroys information this is something that information Theory says so that all seems to be pretty solid the problem though is that it’s not so obvious because we don’t really have a lot of different examples of it we only have a single example of Life originating so it’s not so obvious that life itself required an intelligence to create it now Perry Marshall says that no natural undirected process has ever been observed to create language or code the problem with that statement is that it’s question begging because it really the real question here is did life originate through an undirected process the one example we have of that is life itself right so per Marshall wants to say there are no examples of it but maybe life is that one example and then it would be the source not only of all of life but then also the humans who then generate all the computer code so this question of is it possible just from scratch without any intelligence to sort of generate bottom up a chain of ever more complex things that ultimately end up in genuine information and language and programming code is that possible um Perry Marshall wants to say no because that requires God now a materialist atheist would say yes it is possible because that’s literally what evolution is that’s literally what life is and that yes humans are needed to to to be intelligent to create Microsoft Windows but that does not mean that that kind of intelligence was also required to create the very very first living organisms which could have somehow come together spontaneously through you know just through the structure of chemistry basically organic chemistry even though we don’t exactly know how that would happen but uh it it’s conceivable and I’m what do I think about this well I’m inclined to say that it is possible I’m open to the possibility that life originated just through the intelligence in the structure of organic chemistry which is ultimately grounded in the intelligence of physics so um the problem is that Perry Marshall’s argument here isn’t really conclusive because it begs the question on this issue of how life came about and we don’t really know that’s an empirical question we need to do more science on that um but my guess is the way that life came about is that obviously it didn’t come about through Randomness it did come about so in a deeper sense Perry Marshall is correct he’s correct in that God did create the whole universe but that does not mean that God literally like stuck his finger into the primordial ooze to create the first organism through somehow you know tinkering with the genetic code I don’t think it works that way I think the way it works is that just the genius of God is in the structure the top- down structure and intelligence that is baked through and suffused through the entire fabric of physics and logic and SpaceTime which ultimately leads to a spontaneous generation of life it seems kind of spontaneous and dumb but it’s not really there’s a much deeper intelligence behind it but it’s not that God is literally interfering uh in your DNA okay the next argument is the argument from Free Will so this is pretty weak argument but it just says that the existence of Free Will suggests a source Beyond material determinism if material determinism was true then Free Will wouldn’t exist and Free Will must exist right so therefore God this is a bad argument for several reasons because there’s a lot of bad assumptions here first of all it assumes that Free Will exists this is not obvious it’s not obvious what free will is in fact I have a whole deep conversation called does Free Will exist um go check that out um the issue of Free Will is very difficult and you need to be open to the possibility that there is no free will so you don’t want to assume it you don’t want to hinge your belief in God on whether Free Will exists so that’s problem number one um problem number two is that you know it’s possible that there is Free Will and that the universe is not deterministic but there’s no God that’s also possibility so the connection between Free Will and God is very sketchy and fact and and it’s it’s actually the op so here is where theists really go wrong because here here’s the the real mind [ __ ] for you what you’ll realize when you have your Awakening and you realize what God really is you’ll realize that God is absolute absolute means it has no contingency it it exists as a tautology that means everything exists as a toy that mean there’s no wiggle room in the existence of anything in the universe that means that the universe is completely determined that means there’s no free will so it’s actually the opposite of what theists think um it’s because there is no free will that God exists that’s the mind [ __ ] here so it’s way worse than theists think um you don’t need free will for the existence of God because God is just a logical metaphysical ontological topology it has to exist there’s only one way God can exist which is as it exists that’s such a profound issue that I I can’t really go into it here we don’t have time the next argument is from Consciousness which says that the existence of Consciousness suggests a non-material source after all how can matter dumb matter ever become conscious this is the hard problem of Consciousness so this argument says basically that the hard problem of Consciousness will never be resolved by science because Consciousness is a non-material thing how convincing is this argument well it’s not very convincing to a scientist however this argument is literally true because the universe is consciousness God is consciousness and so literally the existence of Consciousness is your proof of God however this is not obvious because you’re not conscious enough to recognize what Consciousness is and that Consciousness is infinite and absolute that would require Awakening so again the irony here is that atheists scientists materialists rationalists Skeptics people like Sam Harris those types of people when they argue that God doesn’t exist Richard Dawkins they’re using Consciousness to argue that God doesn’t exist and Consciousness is God so they’re literally God arguing that God doesn’t exist it’s the most absurd and stupid situation but that’s what they’re doing but the reason that it passes as something legitimate and scientific and rational is because everybody that they’re talking to is equally as unconscious as they are so it works because it’s the blind leading the blind but anybody who’s conscious who’s awoken will realize that it’s a joke it’s a joke the next argument is from scripture it goes like this scripture is based on historical events and scripture is the word of God or divinely inspired if not the word of God Scripture contains powerful psychological truths and scripture says that God exists so therefore God exists and things like the Quran are just too perfectly written and too beautiful and contain too many powerful truths to be the work of some illiterate peasant it had to be inspired by God that’s the only way the Quran could have been written and various kinds of arguments like this so this is the argument from scripture so does that convince you no this is a very poor argument for several reasons first of all all scripture was written by humans not by God although there’s a deeper layer I’ll say in a second so all scripture was written by humans so that’s a problem um second problem is that humans are very corrupt creatures and even if humans are divinely inspired divine inspiration does not preclude corruption and evil and self-deception and falsehood and illusion so it could be the case that Muhammad was divinely inspired to write the Quran but it could be the case that his ego got in the way he was corrupt and there are falsehoods in the Quran so you can’t trust um you can’t trust any human Source because it could be corrupt it could be infested with ego and it could be false and it could be self deceived and not only could it be all of it is and on top of that you’re not getting the Original Scriptures from the original people you’re getting stories and mythologies and compilations and recompilations interpretations and reinterpretations and reanalysis and also these scriptures are kind of figurative so there’s a question of how you’re interpreting them you could be misinterpreting them too even if the scripture was perfect and written by God in the hands of an ego like you it’ll get misinterpreted so even if God exists you read your scripture but then your ideas of what God is and what God wants you to do or not do that’s all your corruption and interpretation and projection so even though I’m saying God is real that does not mean that I’m saying that your ideas about God are real in fact all your ideas about God are wrong I promise you they’re all wrong they must be wrong you’re not going to understand God through scripture or belief or anything you heard in church none of that will allow you to understand God in fact it’ll hold you back so scripture is one of the worst worst worst arguments you don’t even know if the stories are true you don’t even know technically speaking you don’t even know that Muhammad wrote the Quran you don’t know that you don’t even know that Jesus existed technically speaking these are assumptions these are all assumptions and if you’re doing good rigorous philosophy and epistemology um you’re not going to assume any of those things so you can’t know that God exists from scriptures nor can you know what God is from scriptures or even if you do you’ll have very bad ideas the next argument is the argument from popularity which goes like this the majority of the world’s population believes in God this couldn’t be the case unless God was real it would be impossible to delude so many people for so long sure it’s possible to delude like a little group of people here you can have a little cult here you can maybe delude an entire Empire but you can’t have everybody across every continent believing in God across cross thousands of years that would be impossible that level of self-deception is impossible so this argument goes how good is this argument how convincing well it’s a very poor argument for the following reason because in fact self-deception is the most uh Salient feature of human existence self- exception is the default and the norm the majority of mankind is self- deceived about all manner of things including the very nature of God so even though I’m saying God exists God does not exist in the way that the majority of mankind believes it exists in fact what most of mankind believes about God is so wrong that it’s better for them not to believe in God than to believe in the wrong things that they believe about God is it possible to delude so many people for so long yeah it is um that’s what religion is now there’s an even deeper layer however to this argument which actually is true it actually is the case that the reason that people all around the world since the beginning of time in every Empire in every civilization have believed in God in various forms and that is because God exists that’s true these people are not deceived that God exists but they are deceived about what God is how God works what this means proofs for God the epistemology and metaphysics underneath God all that that that’s where they’re deceived and also the all the corruption that comes with religion and spiritual schools that’s all corruption but the underlying kernel that there is a God that is true so actually the Reason God is so popular is ironically because it’s true it’s just that people are deluded about what it is the next argument is the argument from success which goes like this religion works because it points to valid truths if religion was all just fiction and fairy tales then it would work religion could only be successful as successful as it’s been because morality is real and God is real how convincing is this argument um in a certain sense it’s not convincing because religion working yes religion works because religion is designed to serve human survival and serving human survival has very little to do with God it’s actually antithetical to understanding God so religion is actually a Corruption of God precisely because it works so well for religion to actually be true it would have to not work because understanding God is not a practical thing it’s a highly metaphysical it’s the most metaphysical the most philosophical Pursuits so religion works not because God is real religion works because it has certain psychological patterns that are true for human beings and so forth so that’s on one level on a deeper level though religion does work because God exists and the reason that is is because religion was written and invented by people sages who had Direct Awakenings and insights into the nature of God such as myself and then they distilled that information and out of those created powerful psychological teachings which were useful to people so for example if you watch the actualized.org body of work and you find it useful and you’re able to use it to get a little bit of sex to get a better job to get a better career and so forth you can use it for all that but you may not recognize that the reason I was able to give you that good advice and this good psychological insight into the nature of human beings and politics and sex and relationships and all this stuff and morality the reason I able to give you those insights is because I had Direct experience of God and literally it came from God through me to you whether you understand that or not is another question you may not understand that for a long time until you experience that for yourself you have some Awakening then you’ll understand where I got all this incredible Insight from but see you can see that there’s something truthful and very powerful about the actualized.org teachings why is that is that because I’m so so [ __ ] big brained and smart no it’s because I figured out how to connect to something higher than myself and so that is in a sense the origin of religion if you took all of my teachings and you you turn it into Dogma you’d have a religion of course I make sure not to do that because that’s a that’s a that’s antithetical to the realization of God so that’s a trap the next argument comes from perennial philosophy it goes like this all religions all cultures all eras have some notion of God of course they all differ But ultimately you can see the commonality if you study them all study Buddhism Hinduism Judaism Zoro asianism Chism and Mormonism all of them in in a sense will be talking about God and pointing to the ultimate truth of Awakening just in different very different ways and people are very confused about the differences they fight about the differences but but underneath all that corruption and noise you find the signal and that signal is God so how convincing is this argument um this is actually a pretty good argument um of course it doesn’t guarantee God or anything like that but um what I mean by it’s a pretty good argument is that actually what helped me in my journey a lot is when I started to study various spiritual traditions and I started to look for the commonality between them and I realized how much commonality there is between all the different spiritual traditions and that they’re not as different as atheists would like to believe you know for the atheist argument it’s very convenient to think that well but you know Buddhists don’t believe in God so you have all this contradiction and so therefore God can’t be real because the Buddhists don’t talk about God they talk about Nirvana and nothingness and then the Christians talk about Christ and then the Buddhist or the the Hindus they talk about you know Ganesha how is the Ganesha the same thing as Christ and nothingness well of course these all are all the same thing um but it takes a lot of intelligence to to see the unity of all that but but yeah you start to study you see all the connections if you want a good example of that go check out my old episode called Aztec nonduality where I read to you like some powerful non-u spiritual stuff from the Aztecs Aztec culture ancient Aztec culture um and it’s amazing how similar it is for example to to Zen Buddhism and so when you study a lot of this perennial philosophy you know Ken Wilbur has done a lot of work on this front assembling a lot of different spiritual uh cultures and traditions and then trying to unify them all you see like it’s quite convincing now of course it’s not a guarantee because these are just words in the end human Words which you can’t trust but it’s convincing that all these cultures are all like pointing towards something and you got to wonder like could it be that all these people across all these cultures and all these different geographical time zones and and areas and climates that all of them were just diluted the more you study it the less plausible that argument becomes and I think that atheists would benefit a lot from studying more of this perennial philosophy as it’s called of course it’s not going to be conclusive but it’s a good little you know breadcrumb Trail for you to follow to then U start taking the pursuit of Awakening seriously the next argument is the argument from Faith which says that it doesn’t doesn’t matter if there’s proof or evidence of God the whole point is that you must have faith in God Blind Faith God doesn’t reveal himself to us because God wants to test your Blind Faith so just take the leap of faith how good is this argument this is an atrocious argument this is probably the worst argument on this list um do not have faith in God this is this is very very bad um if God is real then be skeptical through your skep see if God is real you don’t need to worry about being skeptical because your skepticism will ultimately lead you to what’s true so really all you have to care about is pursuing what’s true don’t pursue God don’t have faith don’t have belief none of that stuff is needed just pursue what’s true and if God is true you’ll realize that and if God is not true you’ll realize that and either way you’ll have truth and that’s what really matters what matters is not God what matters is truth so faith is very counterproductive to this process because to realize God requires a deep serious inquiry process Faith prevents any kind of inquiry the next argument is called Pascal’s wager was which goes like this you might as well believe in God just in case because if you’re wrong you’re going to go to hell so believing in God has very little downside but much upside so you might as well just believe in God how good is this argument this is a terrible terrible argument um first of all because belief in God doesn’t get you anywhere it doesn’t actually get you to God second of all the problem is that there’s too much other stuff like this that you could believe but you don’t believe for example you don’t apply this argument to the belief in unicorns or flying tooth fairies or Santa Claus or spaghetti monsters or anything like this you only apply it in this sort of Christian sense so it’s really a rationalization um just because someone is threatening you with hell doesn’t mean that you believe in something right like I I could invent a religion which says that believe in my Galactic Intergalactic space kangaroo and if you don’t he’s going to torture you so according to Pascal’s wager you should believe in my interactive space kangaroo you know hey just because because it’s just just because it might be true and you don’t want to get tortured you see you can invent an infinite number of ridiculous things to believe in just because someone threatens you with torture this is um this is not right and also when Pascal says that you know believing in God has very little downside and much upside this actually isn’t true there is a serious cause for believing in God blindly believing in the Christian God there’s a CA to this don’t think that you’re getting awake scotf free here believing in this stuff you’re expending energy reading the Bible taking it seriously going to church praying to God all this sorts of stuff you’re you’re investing thousands and thousands of hours and more than just that you’re investing your ego into it it’s creating a uh a whole filter through which you see reality and it’s a very distorted corrupt filter and then you adopt all the Corruptions because see you’re not just going to believe in God you’re also going to then if you believe in God then you also have to believe that you have to go to church and you have to pray and you have to accept Christian dogma it’s not enough just to believe in God and then once you start doing all that it becomes a whole religion and then religion definitely has a huge downside in fact I would say it’s mostly downside little upside the next argument is the argument from Mystery or sometimes called the god of the gaps and it goes like this science cannot explain X therefore God for example science cannot explain the origin of life therefore God science cannot explain the Big Bang therefore God science cannot explain Consciousness therefore God science cannot explain rainbows therefore God you see now the rainbows science can explain but 5,000 years ago science could not explain rainbows and so when you saw a rainbow someone could have pointed that and said oh look it’s God so how good is this argument it’s a bad argument because the truth is is that most religious people are just backwards rationalizing and they’re looking for any excuse to find some kind of evidence for God and the more science encroaches and the more of reality science is able to explain the less and less appeals Believers and people who have faith can point to to butress their faith see the problem with faith is that it’s not truth you think you can fake your way to truth you can’t truth when you have absolute truth it gives you a kind of confidence that Faith could never give you because in the back of your mind no matter how much you [ __ ] yourself with your Christian faith in the back of your mind it isn’t true you don’t know that it’s true it’s just a belief there’s a difference between absolute Consciousness and belief and faith in the end your faith is flimsy and it will crack as soon as something bad happens to you in your life you suffer a lot you lose a loved one a child or something I promise you your faith will be shaken and destroyed while absolute truth will withstand even death so that’s why you’re a fool to want faith and belief over truth so it’s a mistake to hinge your knowledge of God on areas that science has not yet figured out because tomorrow science might figure it out and then what does that mean that God isn’t real that’s stupid your knowledge of God needs to be based in something absolute not belief not faith and not flimsy logical arguments that are backwards rationalizations especially ones that are contending with the advancing edge of science cuz science is finding out new stuff all the time what if science is able to make it a conscious AI 10 years from now does that mean God doesn’t exist now because science could do that what if science creates artificial life 50 years from now what does that mean that there’s no God because science now has figured out the or the mechanical origins of life no God is way more fundamental than all of that there’s nothing science will ever be able to do that will change the situation with God never ever because science is consciousness and Consciousness is God okay and the last few arguments the argument from religious and mystical experience which goes like this people’s personal experiences of the Divine suggest God’s existence you have things like near-death experiences outof body experience es Supernatural experiences paranormal experiences astral projection Christ Consciousness Enlightenment Awakening psychedelic experiences these prove God how convincing is this argument well actually I’ve saved this one for last because this is one of the best one of the best of this whole list because in the end God is not a logical conclusion you come to God is an experience the way you know God exists is by experiencing it and the experience is so absolute that it’s beyond doubt now this is not going to convince any atheist or scientific materialist like Sam Harris or whatever or Richard Dawkins because they’re always going to say that well God is just a hallucination could just be a hallucination your personal religious experiences mean nothing that’s because they have no idea what experience really is they don’t understand the metaphysics the uh epistemology of experience itself and experience of God is not just an experience an experience of God transcends the notion of a brain and a perceptual system that ha or a human chimp animal biological creature that is having experience you’re transcending all that but that’s beyond the scope of explanation here so um so yeah mystical experience is A+ topnotch that’s the best proof however there is a problem here which is that you can have many corrupted experiences of God there are many people who have what they call experiences of God but they are corrupted they are tangential they’re not direct they’re not clear they’re corrupted by the ego they’re misinterpreted meanings are projected and attached to it it’s turned into some human nonsense turned into a religion turned into some new age woooo [ __ ] extremely common so then the atheist will rightly say well Leo if if you’re going to say that there’s true experience of God and false experiences of God how do you distinguish between them this seems like a major problem and the answer is that yes there is a major problem self-deception is a major problem for everybody it’s a problem for you the atheists and it’s a problem for us the non- atheists there’s no way around this problem and in fact it’s such a deep problem that once you realize God you’re still going to be self- deceived that’s how big of a problem it is so there’s no solution to this problem um at least not that I’m going to give you here um really if you want a solution to the to the self-deception problem that solution is called actual eyes.org but even that still contains self-deception in it so it’s a deep deep deep problem um yeah I’ll lot of religious experiences are very poor understandings of God not pure not pure and then the final argument is the argument from Miracles which says that there are reports of miraculous events out there Saints and so forth having Miracles um that’s proof of God how good of an argument is that it’s a very bad argument because the truth is that you have never seen a miracle yourself so all you have are stories here say and beliefs and that’s it and none of those are reliable the only miracle that would turn this into a good argument is Awakening so yeah there is on a deeper level there actually is a miracle that will prove God to you and that Miracle is called Awakening all right those are all the arguments uh let me know down below what were your favorites which ones convince you the the most which ones the worst uh I’d like to know also what you think about my analysis of all this post your critiques if you think there’s holes in my analysis post away I welcome all that be as skeptical as as you like a few concluding remarks here as we wrap this up so those are all the arguments I encourage you to go through it again and really engage with the arguments think about them um don’t take them for granted don’t don’t Ste strawman them try to steal man them in your mind and see really what they’re being what they’re pointing to but also look for Flaws and the logic and so forth uh very importantly as you do this make a clear distinction between direct and indirect claims of God what do I mean by direct direct means you have a direct encounter with God so ask yourself right now have you ever had a direct encounter with God it’s a yes or no question if no that’s perfectly fine that’s just where you’re at that’s the truth and if you did okay great then I don’t need to explain much more to you but uh if you didn’t then here’s the problem now you’re dealing with indirect stuff here’s all the indirect a logical deduction is indirect intuition is indirect belief is indirect a hunch is indirect faith is also indirect hearsay is indirect speculation is indirect probability justification thoughts and theories and models all of that is indirect scientific method is also indirect there’s only one direct method which is a direct encounter with God everything else is indirect so if you’re dealing with indirect you have to be very very careful because it’s not the real thing and so you’re going to get self deceived one way or another whether you’re for or against God is irrelevant you’re dealing with indirect epistemology that’s the problem remember that just because you suspect something is true and it feels true to you whether it feels true to you that God should exist or it feels true to you that God is illogical and ridiculous none of that matters because your feelings and intuitions are in the end self-deceptions you must take self-deception extremely seriously in this work if you don’t you’ll never reach Awakening that’s why I stress it so much all of my work there’s only like one theme in my entire body of work which is just self-deception that’s all I study is self-deception everything I teach is self-deception if anybody ever makes arguments of God to you ask them rather than debating with them be more intelligent ask them to identify their own assumptions no matter what the argument they propose ask them to identify their epistemic and metaphysical assumptions and you will see that the majority of human beings will not be able to do this and you will see them struggle you will see their whole argument start to collapse they will get flustered and paranoid and defensive and egotistical with you no matter if they’re atheists or theists because in the end they have not done the work to identify all these assumptions they have not carefully thought through the epistemology and the metaphysics someone like a Jordan Peterson hasn’t someone like a Sam Harris hasn’t someone like a Richard Dawkins hasn’t they haven’t done these things someone like a NE Neil degrass Tyson hasn’t done this it hasn’t been done by atheists or by theists and you can very quickly figure out that they haven’t done it by being very careful in the questions you ask them you ask them epistemological questions don’t ask them questions about their beliefs whether there is a God or there isn’t a God or morality or any of that stuff go straight to the epistemology and you will see that there is that they are epistemological ignoramuses 99% of people who make Arguments for God have no idea what God is they are arguing backwards to rationalize their beliefs they are engaging in epistemic self-deception just because you have a belief that happens to be true does not mean that you’re in a good position what matters even more than having the right belief I mean really having the right belief doesn’t matter at all what matters is that you arrived to the truth through a epistemically legitimate real process not a backwards rationalization if you’re an atheist you should admit to yourself right now that you do not know whether God exists or not and if you refuse to do that you’re failing at epistemology because there’s a fact the fact is very simple is that you don’t know whether exists or not you can’t possibly know that God does not exist now you can rationalize it to yourself by saying putting probabilities on it you could say well yeah Leo technically I can’t be 100% sure God doesn’t exist but I’m like 90% sure no that’s horseshit you don’t know don’t put probabilities on on whether you think God exists or not all your probabilities are [ __ ] just sit with you don’t know you don’t know that’s what’s true true you don’t know beautiful not knowing is beautiful go with that and if you’re a theist you got to get real honest with yourself that you don’t know if God exists either you have scriptures you have beliefs you have faith all of that is [ __ ] you don’t know you don’t know just admit it to yourself that’s a truth you don’t know have you had an Awakening are you conscious of God right now are you a that this is God right now then you don’t know you don’t know what I’m talking about and if you do know great congratulations you’re awake people cannot know how to explain God without not just one Awakening many Awakenings many many many Awakenings and there’s not just God there’s many degrees of God there’s many many degrees of understanding God the amount of humans on this planet who can talk clearly truthfully and accurately about the structure of God Is So Few who can do it in an uncorrupted way so few it’s so rare you’re lucky you found this communication right here very very lucky you can tell within minutes of speaking to somebody whether they have a direct understanding of God or not or if it’s just beliefs and theories and speculations I can tell within a few minutes of listening to somebody but that’s only in retrospect after all the work that I did many many deep Awakenings so the most important lesson in trying to understand God is that everything humans say about God is corrupt and misleading religious versions of God are silly absurd nonsensical unscientific and as a skeptic you’re right to be skeptical of that but also consider the possibility that even though humans did invent all sorts of silly Notions of God that underneath that there could be something real and true but there’s a lot of layers of crap that you have to go through and so this is what creates so much confusion and so the whole point of this conversation is that I’m trying to help you to clear up this confusion because there’s very few people on this planet who can help you with this notice how many assumptions the arguments up above make everything boils down to these assumptions for example um well I’m going to give you a whole list of assumptions here in a second but um I just want to stress that un that identif Ying hidden assumptions is really the the core of this work I’m not here to convince you to believe in God I’m here to help you to learn how to identify epistemic assumptions not just about God but about anything that you want to understand about reality and in this way to avoid self-deception so now I’m going to give you an a list of examples of problematic assumptions um that are very common through all of these different proofs and disc discussions of God I’m going to quickly rattle through this list because we don’t have a lot of time left one assumption is you can’t assume that U properties and attributes of finite objects apply to infinite objects that’s a common assumption people have you think that you can apply the logic of finite objects to an infinite object like God another assumption is that um you can’t assume that the Dynamics from inside the universe apply to outside the ver Universe another one is you can’t extrapolate anything from a sample size of one for example the universe existing is a sample size of one what are you going to do with that if you want to say well How likely is it that the Universe could exist you can’t make a probability calculation because it’s a sample size of one also for example with the origin of Life How likely is it that that life could originate randomly you don’t know because you have a sample size of one we only have one example of Life originating and even there we don’t know how it happened so you can’t speculate or make any kind of conclusions from that you also cannot use probabilities or basian Logic for this metaphysical work you can’t say well the probability for God existing is 50/50 or 1% or 99% you can’t do this this is nonsense it’s baseless you’re just imagining probabilities that have no connection to Reality by the way if you want to know the probability of God existing is 100% it’s a tautology there’s no other possibility um you cannot assume that morality exists you cannot assume how God would behave if God did exist for example de cart famously makes some assumptions about how like God would if God existed and God is all good and powerful and benevolent and loving God would never deceive me no that’s a false assumption God would certainly deceive you God is deceiving you right now God is infinite self-deception um also you cannot assume God’s designs or operations fit human needs expectations or intuitions you cannot assume God cares about human morality you cannot assume that God’s attributes uh uh what God’s attributes or qualities are you don’t know you cannot assume what humans say about God is true maybe God is evil how do you know you have to encounter God and then experience God to figure out is it evil or not you cannot assume that scripture is true you cannot assume that God’s existence is necessary for the universe to be how it is you cannot assume that the Universe needs a cause you cannot assume that something can’t come from nothing you should not assume that the universe is dumb as opposed to intelligent you cannot assume the distinction between God in World God in self and God in evil you cannot assume logical proof of God is possible you can’t assume that scientific method is valid to apply to metaphysical questions just because science works in the physical world does not mean that science will work on God cuz God is a fundamentally different category of thing you cannot assume that atheism is true you cannot assume that Free Will exists you should not assume that something and nothing are different from each other you should not assume that one God versus many gods are different you know as a as an atheist you might say well Leo you’re talking about one God that’s monotheism but what about polytheism why can’t there be multiple gods if there could be one God there could be multiple gods so who’s to say what’s real well what does that assume that assumes that there’s a difference between one and many gods and of course there isn’t you cannot assume that God and evolution are different things they could be the same thing you cannot assume that science is true you cannot assume that Consciousness cannot be generated by matter maybe it can maybe it can’t you cannot assume that solipsism is untrue you cannot assume that ultim reality is sane remember we talked about sanity you cannot assume that proof applies to God you cannot assume that logic applies to God you cannot assume that God can be conceptualized you cannot assume that God is an object or a thing you cannot assume that God can be formalized Quantified objectified or made third person you cannot assume that you can run science experiments on God you cannot assume that God is good you cannot assume that God can be communicated you cannot assume that God is Christian you cannot assume any category or Duality you cannot assume that God fully knows itself you cannot assume that God has only one form you cannot assume that the Big Bang actually occurred as science says you cannot assume any limits or or physical laws you cannot assume that metaphysics is meaningless impossible or impractical you cannot assume that God cannot be known so that’s it for this episode but we are not done with this topic not even close this believe it or not was just the appetizer we just set up the beginning of the real conversation which is going to be in the next episode which is going to be called why God cannot be proven where I will deconstruct the very notion of what a proof is of what proof is that’s what all of this was about this was just the entry point so please stick with me on that and then beyond that there’s going to be a third episode called Leo’s unique proofs for God cuz see I sat down and analyzed for days all these conventional proofs I looked through them all I did this analysis that I shared with you today and as we saw here most most these proofs are not very convincing and then I realized well hell I know God better than any of these people so why don’t I just make my own proofs so I just sat down and made my own better proofs and they’re a lot better more rigorous and much more powerful and profound and insightful than the stuff you’ve heard so far so stick around for that there’s going to be about a handful of maybe like seven or eight of them that I’ll share with you all right that’s it for this one oh and by the way I just want to say um if you have not followed my blog go check out my blog go bookmark I put so much effort into my blog these days I put more effort into my blog than I do in my videos so like I’m posting a lot of important and profound stuff if you’re not following my blog um you’re missing a lot of important insights and teachings that help to round out this video content that you’re seeing here and also I just want to say as a final note that this whole project that I’m doing with actual eyes at org it’s a catalog of all the most important Concepts that are needed for understanding and making sense of reality and for living living the good life so to speak um I’ve been doing this for 12 years now and there’s a lot of content and some of you start to get the sense that oh Le Leo’s just repeating himself it’s just all more the same and then kind of like I I know everything he has to teach and that’s it we’re we’re like it’s over we’re done we’re not done um there’s so much more there’s so much more I I have hundreds literally hundreds of video topics planned and already in the works uh it’s just it takes a this is you have to appreciate please be patient with me um I haven’t been posting as much content lately for health reasons and other reasons I’ve just got burned out after 12 years of constant work um so I took some time off but um I’m coming back stronger now and I’m going to be putting out more content and it’s going to be more Advan the most advanced sophisticated content is Yet to Come As you see every new video is getting more powerful and more clear um as I’m clearing away the my own Corruptions from my own mind and I’ve by the way I’ve been doing a lot of that over this period where I haven’t been putting out as much content so it it wasn’t just that I was lazy I was doing a lot of internal important work to be able to reach new levels of of understanding of reality so that was very necessary um this is all part of a very long project this is a multi-decade long project perhaps a lifelong project and this catalog of all these Concepts is still incomplete there’s a lot of important stuff that’s coming so I what I just want uh to encourage you is like you found a gold mine of powerful lifechanging insights that you’re not likely to find again not that there are not great teachers out there there definitely are and I recommend you go find them but it’s hard to find teachings this clear and this powerful and this Advanced um for free so um and more is coming and it’s going to get even more advanced and even more amazing so just I recommend that you don’t get this attitude of like okay yeah I watched a few videos okay I got it I got it Leo I got it okay there’s nothing more there’s nothing I figured it out it I’m telling you it just keeps getting deeper and deeper and deeper and it’s all worth the time right you’re investing time but this is the best investment of time that you can make even though these videos seem so long so unnecessarily long eventually you’ll realize and understand why they had to be this way because our goal here is something much more profound and deep and holistic than any other teachings that you find out there the breadth the depth the advanced the the um the interconnectedness that you’re going to get here is going to be unparalleled but you got to stick with me for the Long Haul think of this as not just watching a few videos to get a few little benefits here or there or even to have an Awakening Way Beyond all that right like this is a lifelong project stick with me for the rest of your life and take these insights seriously the more seriously you take them the more passionate you are about them the more you’re going to want to work them the more you work them the more benefit you’ll get from them eventually it’s all going to snowball it’s all going to interconnect but this takes time this is a long-term project I’ve invested my whole life into this I recommend that you invest your whole life into this into studying these teachings if not from me from other people I don’t care if it’s from me invest your life into something that really matters which is sense making avoiding self-deception finding the the concepts and insights that you need that are practical for building and advancing yourself and developing yourself to higher stages of consciousness that’s what life is really about everything else is nonsense [ __ ] noise and distraction that’s what you find on the internet for the most part with a few exceptions I’m just reminding you of this those of you who have stuck with me for a long time you already know this but I’m just reminding you because it’s easy to forget there’s so much noise it’s easy to get distracted especially with our absurd political situation these days do not take your eye off the ball do not get distracted by stupid politics do not get distracted by market collapses and crashes and economic wo this is what really matters everything else is noise stick with me

By Amjad Izhar
Contact: amjad.izhar@gmail.com
https://amjadizhar.blog

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Top Proofs For The Existence Of God Navigating God: Assumptions, Arguments, and Awakening

The Existence of God: A Philosophical Dissection

Study Guide

Quiz

Quiz Answer Key

Essay Format Questions

Glossary of Key Terms

Briefing Document: Analysis of Arguments for the Existence of God

Critiques of Arguments for God’s Existence

# 1. The cosmological argument states that everything has a cause, the universe exists, therefore it must have a cause. This cause cannot be an infinite chain, nor can it originate from within the universe. What are the main flaws in this line of reasoning?

# 2. The “something from nothing” argument suggests that the universe could not have arisen from nothing, therefore something more powerful, i.e., God, must have created it. What are the key weaknesses of this argument?

# 3. The ontological argument, in its various forms, attempts to prove God’s existence from the very concept of God, often as a perfect being. What are the fundamental criticisms of this type of argument?

# 4. Arguments from design or fine-tuning point to the seemingly improbable precision of the universe’s physical constants and conditions as evidence for an intelligent designer, i.e., God. What are the main counterarguments to these claims?

# 5. The moral argument for God’s existence often claims that objective morality requires a divine foundation. How do secular ethics and evolutionary biology offer alternative explanations for the existence of moral principles?

# 7. The perennial philosophy argument suggests that the commonalities found across various religions and spiritual traditions point towards a shared underlying truth or a universal God. While the speaker finds this argument “pretty good,” what caveats or criticisms should be considered?

# 8. The speaker dismisses arguments from faith, Pascal’s wager, religious experiences, and miracles as weak or flawed. Summarize the primary reasons for these dismissals.

The Nature of God: Arguments and Underlying Assumptions

Arguments For and Against God

Philosophy of God: Arguments and Epistemology

Dissecting Arguments for and Against God’s Existence

Critique of Belief and the Pursuit of Direct Knowing

The Original Text

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Top Proofs For The Existence Of God Navigating God: Assumptions, Arguments, and Awakening

The Existence of God: A Philosophical Dissection

Study Guide

Quiz

Quiz Answer Key

Essay Format Questions

Glossary of Key Terms

Briefing Document: Analysis of Arguments for the Existence of God

Critiques of Arguments for God’s Existence

# 1. The cosmological argument states that everything has a cause, the universe exists, therefore it must have a cause. This cause cannot be an infinite chain, nor can it originate from within the universe. What are the main flaws in this line of reasoning?

# 2. The “something from nothing” argument suggests that the universe could not have arisen from nothing, therefore something more powerful, i.e., God, must have created it. What are the key weaknesses of this argument?

# 3. The ontological argument, in its various forms, attempts to prove God’s existence from the very concept of God, often as a perfect being. What are the fundamental criticisms of this type of argument?

# 4. Arguments from design or fine-tuning point to the seemingly improbable precision of the universe’s physical constants and conditions as evidence for an intelligent designer, i.e., God. What are the main counterarguments to these claims?

# 5. The moral argument for God’s existence often claims that objective morality requires a divine foundation. How do secular ethics and evolutionary biology offer alternative explanations for the existence of moral principles?

# 7. The perennial philosophy argument suggests that the commonalities found across various religions and spiritual traditions point towards a shared underlying truth or a universal God. While the speaker finds this argument “pretty good,” what caveats or criticisms should be considered?

# 8. The speaker dismisses arguments from faith, Pascal’s wager, religious experiences, and miracles as weak or flawed. Summarize the primary reasons for these dismissals.

The Nature of God: Arguments and Underlying Assumptions

Arguments For and Against God

Philosophy of God: Arguments and Epistemology

Dissecting Arguments for and Against God’s Existence

Critique of Belief and the Pursuit of Direct Knowing

The Original Text

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Discover more from Amjad Izhar Blog

Comments

One response to “Top Proofs For The Existence Of God Navigating God: Assumptions, Arguments, and Awakening”

Leave a reply to swamigalkodi Cancel reply

More posts

Al Quran Surah Al Baqarah Tafseer in Spanish Language

Al Quran Surah Al Baqarah Tafseer in Russian Language

15 Easy Freelance Jobs That Pay Well

Al Quran Surah Al Baqarh, Al-e-Imran, An Nisa Fast Recitation سورہ البقرہ، آل عمران، النسا