Latest / INSPIRE STORY / Episode 12_ God and infinity
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Michael is our genius when it comes to technology. He
- 0:02forgot that he turned off a thing and then for
- 0:05twenty minutes he was checking for that thing. He's like,
- 0:07why isn't this working? He had not checked whether or
- 0:10not it was off. Anyway, that's fun. Yeah, hello, and
- 0:25welcome back to the Spire Podcast. As you can see,
- 0:28there's only two of us here. Sadly, Fulton got sick.
- 0:30He's probably like, actually, I'm not going to make guesses
- 0:33to how sick he is. He's probably just not feeling good. Yeah,
- 0:38So today we are going to do what we said
- 0:42we would start off with last one. So if you
- 0:44were able to make it to the end of last
- 0:46episode during Lint, we decided together to share one of
- 0:51our days of doing Spire s P. I r E.
- 0:55What did we do? And I realize I left my
- 0:58notebook in my room. So while you and that, I'm
- 1:00gonna go get my notebook.
- 1:02Speaker 2: Well, I feel like I have to wait for you
- 1:04because I can't I can't even like tell you what
- 1:06it is if you're not in here. Mine is on
- 1:09my phone. You can go first if you want, and
- 1:11I can just.
- 1:12Speaker 1: Do you want us to restart the intro are you fine?
- 1:14Speaker 2: I don't really care.
- 1:15Speaker 1: This is gonna be fun. I think we should leave
- 1:16all of this end. I love it, okay, so I'll start. Also,
- 1:23last time, I remember talking about like the stuff that's
- 1:26in my journal a couple days ago, I was just
- 1:28like reading through it, like wow, I hadn't realized just
- 1:30how like much I think through things, and just how
- 1:35much I like actually like I don't flippantly write stuff down.
- 1:40I like actually explained my thoughts and whatnot.
- 1:43Speaker 2: It's good.
- 1:44Speaker 1: Yeah, so what I did. Let's see.
- 1:49Speaker 2: So are we just gonna do like this is good
- 1:51for us to figure out, I guess, or we're just
- 1:53gonna say like our favorite thing from each domain.
- 1:58Speaker 1: Each week one day.
- 2:00Speaker 2: It's like, oh, you'd say everything you.
- 2:02Speaker 1: Did for one one day.
- 2:03Speaker 2: Yeah, Spiri, I'm gonna have to try and remember that.
- 2:05I might end up mixing days.
- 2:07Speaker 1: Yes, that's fine, it's fine. I just because that way
- 2:10we see both the successes and the failures. So I'm
- 2:15going to pick up one of the good days. Let's
- 2:20go with Friday. So for my spiritual I put down
- 2:25usual routines. It's just like my normal daily prayer routines.
- 2:29And then I also went to Mass and so that
- 2:31is my spiritual side of things. For physical Friday was
- 2:37it was a bit rough. I was busy and then
- 2:39I just didn't work out. So at the end of
- 2:41the day, I did a brief. Oh no, I did
- 2:44work out. This is Friday. I did a brief full
- 2:46body and stretch. So I just like pull ups and
- 2:48just everything I could think of to do full body
- 2:52in my apartment and I stretched, which is good to
- 2:55do for my intellectual one. This is fun. That day,
- 2:58my mom asked me a question about it physics problem
- 3:01that my whole family had been struggling to find out,
- 3:03and so I had to explain it to them and
- 3:05it was great.
- 3:06Speaker 2: Mom.
- 3:06Speaker 1: I'm sorry that if you don't like how I brought
- 3:08that up, but it was fun and I really enjoyed
- 3:11doing that. For our relational there was two of my
- 3:17officemates at wash You we were just talking, just talking
- 3:22a lot of the hours that we were there, and
- 3:23it was kind of fun. E evangelical. I have a
- 3:28dot dot dot meaning it was as rough today Evangelical.
- 3:32That's one of the hard ones for me to do
- 3:33because I don't really try to do it attention intentially.
- 3:35At the end of the day. I'm like, what did
- 3:36I do that could fit into this? And I put
- 3:41I guess talking with Dominic, one of the guys wash
- 3:45you my officemate his named Dominic, so not the Dominic.
- 3:48You know, he's Catholic, and so we were just talking
- 3:51about Catholic things and it was cool to do that. Yeah,
- 3:55and then I can go into my actual journal part.
- 3:57But you guys don't want to hear that.
- 3:59Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna try and do Saturday because uh little disclaimer,
- 4:07all of my stuff is on my phone, which is
- 4:09being used to record this.
- 4:10Speaker 1: That's a hilarious thing.
- 4:11Speaker 2: I was like a shot on my phone. But I'm
- 4:14gonna try and remember Saturday. So for Saturday, Spiritual was listening
- 4:19to the Bible and Year. I split I kind of
- 4:22split Bible in year up into two different things because
- 4:25it was there were two things I did with Bible year.
- 4:27Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 4:27Speaker 2: Yeah, but so I listened to Bible and Year by
- 4:30Father Mark Schmidtz. I think I listened to like three
- 4:33episodes on Saturday on like two time speed.
- 4:37Speaker 1: I listened to like four driving around.
- 4:40Speaker 2: He's gonna flex on me. You just have to listen
- 4:42to more.
- 4:42Speaker 1: No, I just hadn't been caught up, and I was like,
- 4:44I need to catch up. Even though I couldn't make
- 4:45it to the meeting.
- 4:49Speaker 2: For physical, I was slacking on Saturday. That's been the
- 4:53hardest one for me. Honestly, My Saturday was worse.
- 4:57Speaker 1: My Saturday was a day I'm like, I did a backstre.
- 5:00Speaker 2: I didn't do anything most days because I finally got
- 5:04cleared to throw into hit again. So I've been like
- 5:07doing just T drills and like just soft toss and stuff.
- 5:12Speaker 1: What's a T drill.
- 5:14Speaker 2: It's like a batting tea and I just do drills
- 5:16and I do top and bottom hand and I do
- 5:18like whatever, just hitting drills on a tea, just like
- 5:21that kind of stuff. And I did that a couple
- 5:22of days, but I didn't do that on Saturday. Intellectual
- 5:26there's a YouTube channel called Daily Dose of Wisdom that
- 5:30I watch all the time. He came out with a
- 5:33new video or what.
- 5:35Speaker 1: Is it a daily dose or.
- 5:38Speaker 2: Like is it every day? Yeah, I don't understand the
- 5:42channel name because it's Daily Dose of Wisdom, but he
- 5:45doesn't post every day.
- 5:46Speaker 1: Well, he used to, and it's like I know that,
- 5:48like daily does of Internet used to do that. But
- 5:50does it.
- 5:51Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't around when you started it. It's weird,
- 5:54but it was what was it? It was him interviewing
- 5:59John Lennox, who was one of my favorite Christians.
- 6:02Speaker 1: I almost heard John Lennon another.
- 6:05Speaker 2: Dead Yeah it was not John Lennon. So that was
- 6:09intellectual relational. I worked on music with our friend Dominic
- 6:17song It's a banger. It'll come out at some point
- 6:19this year.
- 6:20Speaker 1: He has not let me hear it yet.
- 6:21Speaker 2: I have not let Nick hear it. There's only been
- 6:23like three people that.
- 6:24Speaker 1: Have heard Dominic. He did not break his promise to you.
- 6:27Speaker 2: I did not. I almost. I was thinking about it
- 6:29and I didn't show you because I was like, we
- 6:31showed it to Thomas. It doesn't have lyrics in it,
- 6:34but Thomas was there when we were working, So that
- 6:37was relational. I just thought spent that time with Dominic
- 6:41and then evangelical I So for this one, it was
- 6:46also Bible in the year, but it was because we
- 6:48had the discussion later and we were able to just
- 6:52talk about it. And I'm not saying I was evangelizing
- 6:55those people, but we were all able to kind of
- 6:56talk about our faith and talk about the Bible. And
- 6:59stuff to get, which could also be spiritual. It could
- 7:01also be intellectual, but I use that for my.
- 7:03Speaker 1: My favorite thing is is a dual posting. So like Thursday,
- 7:08I went to a Theology of the Body discussion and
- 7:10like intellectual, relational, evangelical all the same easy dubs, which
- 7:17is totally fine to do, but also on that evangelical front,
- 7:19which is like you weren't necessarily evangelizing I'm talking went
- 7:23to over the weekend Pete buack I was talking about
- 7:27you know, seven reasons you don't evangelize, and I'm not
- 7:29gonna swoirl that because that's going to be a future video,
- 7:32but like one of the things he was saying is that,
- 7:35you know, we are all called to evangelize, and if
- 7:38you don't feel you're ready, and then like the way
- 7:40you evangelize is by learning. You evangelize to yourself and
- 7:45with others, and so like that, talking with other people
- 7:48about faith stuff definitely counts.
- 7:50Speaker 2: And then I said something on Instagram, you guys should
- 7:54all do spire for a lunch too. It's never too
- 7:57late to start. You could start thirty days in the
- 7:59line if you wanted to, but it's still early enough
- 8:02in line that you could start it and do it
- 8:03for most of lunt So if you want to do.
- 8:05Speaker 1: Spier, still do it for forty days because lynt is
- 8:07actually like forty seven days long if it on Sundays
- 8:10and it doesn't include like Holy Week. So I really
- 8:12I need to do the math is to like win
- 8:14the actual end of the forty days, because I don't
- 8:18really know. I think it's forty seven days totally.
- 8:20Speaker 2: But you just saw us like we still screw up.
- 8:23We don't do it perfectly every day. There were things that.
- 8:25Speaker 1: We missed on some day that can be like my
- 8:27best day.
- 8:28Speaker 2: That's like that doesn't It's not about doing it perfectly.
- 8:31It's just about incremental steps towards uh, you know, getting
- 8:36better every single day.
- 8:37Speaker 1: Yeah, And Fulton, being sick, has done it this week
- 8:41and he did text me what he did because he
- 8:43wants to be part of that, and I asked him
- 8:45to spiritual. He prayed the Angelus at six twelve and six,
- 8:49like you said last week, Rosie, asking for specific races. Actually,
- 8:53that's a pro tip on praying the Rosie. Don't just
- 8:55like just pray the Rosarie. Intentionally pray for a specific thing.
- 8:58When you pray the rochi. So that's cool that Fulton
- 9:01said that for physical workout, focus on conditioning and full
- 9:04body and walking outside. That's a good one. I might
- 9:08use that sometime if I end up on a walk.
- 9:10I don't do that much.
- 9:11Speaker 2: I'm gonna say while I walked to my car to
- 9:13go to school in the morning.
- 9:17Speaker 1: Intellectual Listening to Restore the Glory podcast, he suggested that
- 9:20last week. Now I know it's Restore the Glory. I'll
- 9:22look that up. Relational had lunch with work of with
- 9:26a group of people from work. That's a great way
- 9:29to be a relational, evangelical focused conversation with a friend
- 9:32from work about Jesus and the reality of what he
- 9:35is inviting us to. Man, Fulton beats us out on that.
- 9:38He just like wins.
- 9:39Speaker 2: That was the best all three of ours.
- 9:44Speaker 1: Yeah, Fulton's gung ho and he's amazing. Said that he's
- 9:46not here today. We're going to talk about some really
- 9:48beautiful things being art.
- 9:51Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, this is the second time. The topic
- 9:54today was supposed to be maybe it will be next week.
- 9:58It was supposed to be U what was it like
- 10:02glorify God through art? And this is the second time
- 10:05we were going to try and do it, and the
- 10:06first time we were going to try and do it
- 10:07was the last time Fulton couldn't make it. So we'll
- 10:11do it someday.
- 10:12Speaker 1: Basically, we'll make this the schedule. We'll do glorifying God
- 10:14through art whenever we don't want Fulton here. No, no,
- 10:18we missed the dude. But yeah, so today, pera Fulton's suggestion,
- 10:24because him being gone, he got to pick the thing
- 10:26for us to talk about, and we had no idea.
- 10:30We're bad at that, but he said to talk about
- 10:33how you explain God to yourself and others like, do
- 10:37you do it primarily emotionally, relationally, intellectually, analytically, whatnot? So
- 10:44what are your thoughts on how you explain God to yourself?
- 10:50Speaker 2: It's a tough question because I feel like so I've
- 10:53never really had the opportunity to talk to somebody who
- 11:00doesn't believe that there's a God. So it's not like
- 11:03I have in my head like how I think I
- 11:05would do it for somebody else, But I don't genuinely
- 11:09know for myself though, I don't know because a lot
- 11:16of people tend to look at God as like this,
- 11:19you know, Sky Daddy, the big man with a beard
- 11:22in the sky, and he's always like watching you and
- 11:24he's just like waiting to condemn you kind of thing.
- 11:29Speaker 1: Oh no, you did that, smite.
- 11:32Speaker 2: And that's again that's like the Christopher Hitchens thing where
- 11:34he's like, even if God existed, like I wouldn't worship
- 11:37him because he's so terrible and he's so awful, and
- 11:40it's like he's this vindictive kind of you know.
- 11:45Speaker 1: Hitchens know this about God. If God doesn't exist, that's
- 11:48the question, isn't it, Like why is it that just
- 11:50the existence of a god means that this God has
- 11:52to be like that? Like I guess he has reasons
- 11:54for that.
- 11:55Speaker 2: He does, but he you know, but obviously if.
- 11:59Speaker 1: God existed, he'd be will mean and terrible, which is
- 12:02why we believe in him.
- 12:04Speaker 2: Obviously, that's why people worship him.
- 12:05Speaker 1: I'm great at sarcasm.
- 12:08Speaker 2: I feel like for me, though, the way I would
- 12:10try and kind of conceptualize the idea of God, it's
- 12:15really helped to solidify in my mind understanding arguments for God.
- 12:21And I'm not going to talk about that right this second,
- 12:23but there's certain arguments like the argument from change, and
- 12:31it's Essentially it gets around to the point that God
- 12:34has to be unchanging. He has to be the unactualized
- 12:39actualizer kind of.
- 12:41Speaker 1: So fancy terminology.
- 12:43Speaker 2: It's fancy terminology, but it's basically just he has to
- 12:46be the same now as he always has been and
- 12:48always will be, like by definition. And there's I don't know,
- 12:55there's that one, and then there's things about how he
- 13:00has to be personal, he has to be outside of
- 13:03time and space and everything. And you can get around,
- 13:06you can use these logical kind of arguments and deductive
- 13:10things get to an idea of what he is. And
- 13:17I don't really know, like it's God is a hard
- 13:20thing to really conceptualize. But he's the unmoved mover, he's
- 13:27the first cause he's I don't know. It's a hard
- 13:33question because like I have it in my head of
- 13:35like kind of I understand now, I don't understand. I'll
- 13:37never understand.
- 13:39Speaker 1: You understand you that he should. He does exist for reasons,
- 13:43and you have some idea of some of those.
- 13:46Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's like I it's not that I understand
- 13:50what he is, but I think it's that I understand
- 13:52what he's not. Almost because again the Christopher Hitchins thing.
- 13:57He like says things, and I'll listen to him and
- 13:59I almost like convulse because I'm like, oh, that's so
- 14:02not true. And it's like I'm thinking, if I'm thinking
- 14:04to myself even right now, like how do I define God?
- 14:06It's like I can't even really put it into words,
- 14:10because I can say things like the unmoved mover or
- 14:13like whatever, but that doesn't Yeah, that doesn't sum it up.
- 14:18But I understand what he's not, which kind of leads
- 14:22me to understand to understand what he is and kind
- 14:26of a weird round about way, but I don't know
- 14:28how to like sum it up.
- 14:29Speaker 1: And that's very much into like some scientific philosophies of
- 14:34you know, Carl Popper or some whatever scientific philosopher of
- 14:38the eighteenth century something around those times. It's basically like
- 14:42science is falsification. You cannot ever prove something with science.
- 14:48All you can do is disprove things. And if you
- 14:51fail to disprove things enough, you have enough argument, you
- 14:54have enough reasons to believe it unless it eventually gets disproven.
- 14:59And so it's that actually, yeah, yeah, that kind of
- 15:02ideas like, well, clearly I know that God is not
- 15:04that candle that is on my You probably can't see
- 15:07it because it's probably crapped out, but there's a candle
- 15:09on the table here. And like God is probably not
- 15:13that there's one best thing God is, And if you
- 15:16want to fully disprove God's existence, you got to go
- 15:20through all the options.
- 15:23Speaker 2: So I guess if I have to define it or
- 15:26define God, I would say that God is the perfect
- 15:31being and that sounds super simple. But when you think
- 15:35about perfection, which I I think you want to talk
- 15:40about perfection forever, so maybe I'll let you talk about that.
- 15:43Speaker 1: But I mean, we all love talking about perfection.
- 15:45Speaker 2: Yeah, but you we were talking about like the tomistic
- 15:48metaphysics of perfection. Oh yeah, But I don't know if
- 15:51you want to talk about that. But I'll let you
- 15:52talk about that if you want. But if I have
- 15:54to sum it up, you would be the essence of perfection,
- 16:00like kind of yeah, I don't know.
- 16:06Speaker 1: Well, in the Bible, when God reveals himself to Moses,
- 16:11not Moses to Abraham, he says, I am who I
- 16:17am all of us when we say who are you? Oh,
- 16:21I'm a human, I'm a man, I'm you know, five
- 16:25'ot ten, I'm weigh two twenty pounds. This that we
- 16:32can define ourselves by our qualities. God is the only
- 16:36being who defines himself by himself.
- 16:40Speaker 2: Who defines himself by his being.
- 16:42Speaker 1: By his being. So when it says like I am
- 16:45who am, another way of like translating that is I
- 16:49am being, I be who be? I b who by Yeah,
- 16:53that is another way of translating it ib hubie, which
- 16:56doesn't sound it sounds weird. Who ib who BEI? But
- 17:03like God is the essence of being. He is isness
- 17:10God is And there's some there's some podcast is that
- 17:16I listened to some like pens of the kind of
- 17:17stuff I think that he talks about, you know, the
- 17:20isness of God. Maybe it's a rob Bishop, Robert Baron,
- 17:23a word on fire, but like it's just a really
- 17:26cool way they put it. I forget the exact wording,
- 17:29but it's like God is is who is? That's not
- 17:32that but it sounds funny, but it's actually really insightful.
- 17:37Speaker 2: Okay, maybe it won would be helpful for us because
- 17:41I've I'm struggling to kind of say it, and you
- 17:46said it better than me. But if we just if
- 17:51I'm somebody who doesn't I've never even heard of the
- 17:54idea of a god. How would you go about explaining
- 18:00to me? And then maybe what would be your first
- 18:04step to try and show me that what you're saying
- 18:09is even true, because we can say it, but if
- 18:12it's not true, then like it doesn't matter.
- 18:14Speaker 1: So for someone who has never even heard of the
- 18:16concept of God, I would explain it differenty than how
- 18:19I understand it myself, because there's reasons for that, which.
- 18:24Speaker 2: Is fine though, because like people say, if you can't
- 18:26explain something to a five year old, you don't actually
- 18:29understand it. It's like if you can explain something in
- 18:32simple terms to somebody who doesn't know anything about it,
- 18:38because again, like I was just trying to do it
- 18:40where I try and say like the unactualized actualizer, where
- 18:43it's like I try and say all these fancy words,
- 18:45and it's like, do I really understand what I'm saying
- 18:47if I can't communicate it in simple, clear, concise terms,
- 18:52So I don't know.
- 18:53Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So if we look back thousands of years ago,
- 18:58thousands of years in history, even undreds of years ago
- 19:01that too, or even dozens of years ago, we see
- 19:05people trying to explain things of this world. So the
- 19:08history of the term god originated when humans looked at
- 19:15the trees or the ocean or the wind and was like,
- 19:18how does this work? And they came up with the
- 19:21idea of there is some being or some sets of
- 19:26beings that govern this that make this happen. There is
- 19:30the god of the north wind, there is the nymphs
- 19:33of the trees. There's the God of the ocean. And
- 19:36that's how you get the Pagans who believe in say
- 19:41the Greek pantheon, or the Roman pantheon, or the Egyptian pantheon,
- 19:49or the pantheon that includes thor there's a name, the
- 19:53Norse pantheon. All of those, which ranged thousands of years
- 19:57of history, believed in a multitude of God that did
- 20:01stuff that were the explanations for the unexplainable. And that's
- 20:05why a lot of scientists, not scientists, that's why a
- 20:07lot of people in the modern age, say there is
- 20:10no God, because any explanation of God is just what
- 20:14we don't understand well enough with science. But this search
- 20:17for something that explains that which is puts us on
- 20:21a path, and it puts us on a path we
- 20:24could talk about the history of the Israelite people or whatnot.
- 20:27But for someone who doesn't know what a god is,
- 20:30so what God is is that which underlies all things.
- 20:36So if we want to get into the tonistic you know,
- 20:39first mover. You know, you have a ball rolling down
- 20:44a hill, it hits another ball launches it rolling, that
- 20:47hits another ball launches it rolling. That's cause and effect.
- 20:50This ball standing stationary on a table is not just
- 20:53going to randomly decide to start rolling at two thousand
- 20:56miles an hour. It needs something to hit it to
- 20:58do that. And so the idea is, well, if everything
- 21:04needs something to hit it to get moving, what started
- 21:08all the moving. So either there's an infinite amount of
- 21:12things that keep moving and it just extends on for infinity,
- 21:15which doesn't really understand scientifically speaking, science cannot explain such
- 21:20a thing except for saying, if it is like this,
- 21:23then this is what would happen. Or there's something that
- 21:28does not need to be hit to be moved that
- 21:33is called the unmoved mover, and that being we name God.
- 21:38That is the first proof of Saint Thomas Aquinas. But
- 21:42to someone who has no idea of God, this that's
- 21:44probably really confusing. But yeah, God is the essence of perfection.
- 21:51As you were saying, all of these things in this world,
- 21:54that the Egyptians, the Norse, the Romans, the Greeks, all
- 21:58of these people that saw good things of the world,
- 22:01the trees, the wind, the ocean, and attributed to some god,
- 22:07little g god. They saw a perfection and it attributed
- 22:09to a higher being. And they didn't take the next
- 22:15step because they had the God of the ocean, the
- 22:17God of the mountains, the God of the wind, and
- 22:20those are all different gods with different attributes and whatnot.
- 22:25But if you take it to the next logical step,
- 22:28you know, these gods then are that good thing and
- 22:32you have a multitude of good things, you know, and
- 22:35so why not go one step further and say that
- 22:38there is something that gives them meaning, gives them purpose
- 22:42and that being. You know, if you continue up this ladder,
- 22:45you'd eventually get to a single being because there's two
- 22:48of Them's like, why are there too?
- 22:50Speaker 2: You know?
- 22:51Speaker 1: What gives that the distinction? And then you can say
- 22:53there's a higher level of perfection that gives that distinction
- 22:56between these two little g gods and this pinnacle this
- 23:01point at the spire is what we call God. And
- 23:09in the sum of theology, as you were talking about,
- 23:11you were talking a lot about the progression of the
- 23:13Suma by Saint Thomas aquinas he does get into that
- 23:17those distinctions and to connect the dought like the God
- 23:21that is the pinnacle of perfection is by necessity also
- 23:26the God of the infinite regress, the first mover because
- 23:33of the metaphysical aspects of how perfection works in with that.
- 23:38But it's really difficult to explain God or like the
- 23:42essence of what a god is to somebod who's like,
- 23:45what is that?
- 23:46Speaker 2: Okay, so we obviously can't define it. Yeah, So let's
- 23:52say now I am a person who now understands, okay,
- 23:58God is the first God is the uncaused cause. So
- 24:04let's say I understand to an extent the concept of
- 24:08a God. What would be your first step if you
- 24:14have to convince me now that what you just said
- 24:17is true.
- 24:18Speaker 1: Ah, So if you understand the concepts like, okay, right,
- 24:21because say, in science or whatnot, we have models and
- 24:24theories for how the world works. But these theories aren't
- 24:28actually the world. You know, our theories of physics aren't
- 24:32actually the world doing this stuff. You know, we explain
- 24:36quantum mechanics with these mathematical computations. We throw it on
- 24:41a computer, it plugs for hundreds of hours, and we
- 24:43get an explanation for a hydrogen atom with two electrons
- 24:48put onto it somehow. But if you look right there,
- 24:53right exactly where I'm pointing, I'm pointing to a very
- 24:55particular atom, a very particular hydrogen atom that's doing that
- 24:58very same thing in interacting with billions of other atoms
- 25:02in ways. In physics it's called the mini body problem.
- 25:05It's like there's just too many bodies. We cannot physically
- 25:08explain it, and we have ways of putting theories around,
- 25:11but like it's just too much. And so it's like, yeah,
- 25:14I can see that, you know, we can have a
- 25:16theory for a god to be this essence, the pinnacle
- 25:19of creation, but this theory does not necessitate that that
- 25:25is the.
- 25:26Speaker 2: Truth, right, because people can say, like the infinite regress
- 25:31isn't isn't a problem if matter is eternal like that
- 25:36kind of thing. It's like they have this theory that
- 25:38like you don't need a first mover if there was
- 25:41no need for the first movement, kind of thing. So
- 25:44it's like you can have a theory without necessarily having
- 25:48that theory be Yeah, that that theory is not reality.
- 25:52Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I could tell you very much that
- 25:54not all theories are reality. I have the theory that
- 25:56Michael is actually a goth kid in disguise.
- 26:00Speaker 2: But I started wearing this black shirt man suppressed right
- 26:03now wearing a black shirt.
- 26:06Speaker 1: How dare you?
- 26:09Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, you can keep going. I just wanted to.
- 26:12Speaker 1: Like, Okay, yeah, so I'm going to take a slight
- 26:14side step from the intellectual side of understanding God. Because
- 26:19interestingly enough, as much as I love like intellectual pursuits
- 26:23and intellectual understandings, like, that's not why I believe in God.
- 26:29Like I wasn't convinced God exists because of an infinite
- 26:34the failures of an infinite regressive contingency, or the failures
- 26:38of this or that theory, or the idea of a
- 26:41hierarchy of goods or this or that like that all
- 26:43came later. Yeah, And part of my reason why I
- 26:47love that stuff is because it is a way of
- 26:49us trying to approach some aspect of what God is.
- 26:53But like, when I think about God to myself, it's
- 26:57it's an experience. And that's like the like knowing God
- 27:02is an experience. And that's such a difficult thing to
- 27:05explain because you go out walking on the trails, you
- 27:15see the depths of the forest. You go up on
- 27:18a mountain and you see rolling hills forest. There's so
- 27:23many creatures, so many animals, and you're just like overwhelmed
- 27:26with how beautiful it is and just how amazingly cool
- 27:32that is, And like, why is it that the tree
- 27:37over on that mountain looks very similar to the tree
- 27:39over there, so maybe with a slightly different hue of green,
- 27:42such that when I view it as a whole, it's
- 27:45like a painting, a progression of the green color. But
- 27:48like there's so much similarities, there's so much connections, and
- 27:53everything just fits together. And I guess this is getting
- 27:57into a more intellectual thing, but like that that is
- 28:01an experience to understand just the fitting togetherness of all
- 28:05things like that just makes no sense. You know, if
- 28:10if I take a bunch of cardboard and a bunch
- 28:13of really really sharp knives and I put it into
- 28:16this indestructible box so that the knives don't cut through
- 28:19the box, and I shake it up. Okay, at the
- 28:23end of it, I'll have a bunch of scrap, a
- 28:25bunch of meaningless scrap. I mean, I could probably burn
- 28:29it fairly well. It'd be useful for like packing stuff,
- 28:32but it ain't gonna be a puzzle. And yet, when
- 28:37we look at a puzzle with all of these intricately
- 28:39cut out pieces, you jumble it all together and it
- 28:42looks chaotic and like, I can't really explain this. Look
- 28:45at a ten thousand piece puzzle that's pure white. Yeah,
- 28:51try solving that. That's difficult. People have done stuff like that,
- 28:54which is insane. But like you've got this puzzle, it's
- 28:58like it does that makes sense. It looks like a
- 29:01pile of scrap. But if you put the time and
- 29:05effort in, you'll notice that the things fit together perfectly.
- 29:08Each piece has a spot, Each piece fits in perfectly.
- 29:14It may be hard to find that, but it does.
- 29:17And even though there's still nine thousand crazy pieces that
- 29:20you can't explain, there's still a thousand pieces right here
- 29:23that just like fit in perfectly. And it's a puzzle.
- 29:26So it's like you know that it's all gonna fit
- 29:28together perfectly, and like that's how I view got. It's
- 29:30like I understand that the world makes sense, you know,
- 29:38I don't look go out during my day and be like, ah,
- 29:43what if the sun when it's up in the sky
- 29:45turns into a bouncy ball, falls down, bounces a couple
- 29:48of times, and I can pick it up and I
- 29:50can throw it in the other directions such that now
- 29:52the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
- 29:56That makes no sense.
- 29:57Speaker 2: Because that's not how it works. It's like, you know,
- 29:59that's not works. And there's not a chance that.
- 30:03Speaker 1: Some philosophers will say, actually, we don't really know if
- 30:06that's gonna happen, because induction doesn't prove anything. And I'm like,
- 30:10there is an intuitive sense we have in this world
- 30:13of sensibility, and this intuition, this experience of sensibility, I
- 30:22feel it can only be explained by God because because
- 30:25there's no the way, Like we we are intellectual beings,
- 30:27we know that to ourselves, like we we can we
- 30:31just know that. And you can't have sensibility come out
- 30:37of nothing. It just doesn't. It just doesn't make sense.
- 30:42I mean, sure, it's a circular argument, but everything in
- 30:44the end is a circular argument. And to get into
- 30:48like my favorite definition of God God is.
- 30:54Speaker 2: Oh shoot, is it really your favorite if you can't
- 30:58remember it?
- 30:58Speaker 1: Yes, because confusing God is what is necessary for God
- 31:04to exist. Because a lot of people say, your argument
- 31:12for God is circular, and like disargument for science is circular,
- 31:16you know, but science needs a sense of sensibility to
- 31:21explain the world. We go back to the Big Bang,
- 31:25we don't really understand what happens before that, and science
- 31:27breaks down at these extremes that we don't understand black holes,
- 31:31the really small many bodies, the early universe, and we
- 31:36can't explain that. And if we break out of time,
- 31:41science doesn't explain anything because it needs that It needs
- 31:44that structure. Science cannot explain creation out of nothing because
- 31:49it needs to have the possibility for something to be
- 31:52created out of nothing. So in that way, it's like
- 31:56you need to have this thing that it rests on,
- 31:59and that thing has be unexplained. God is a being
- 32:06that is that is his own rock he rests on.
- 32:12So he is a circular argument of being. But in
- 32:17that way he is fully self sufficient. He doesn't rely
- 32:21on anything else to make him be. Science relies on
- 32:24this essence of things can make sense in order to
- 32:28be it is not a circular. It crashes off somewhere
- 32:32and says, I stand on this rock. If this rock
- 32:35were the fall, I would die. God is circular enough
- 32:39that he is his own rock. There is nothing that
- 32:43if the rock disappears, God disappears because he doesn't exist.
- 32:47But there is no rock that God rests upon because
- 32:50he he is that self sufficiency. That's me trying to think.
- 32:59Speaker 2: What was to say? Science? So I've said this before,
- 33:04I think, and it's not exact because science can't prove everything.
- 33:08But I've heard people say, like science can prove everything
- 33:11except for science itself. It's like science can explain things,
- 33:15but when it comes to explaining why science works, it's like,
- 33:18m I don't, Like, I don't know. Yeah, And then
- 33:22the other thing I was thinking about, like Isaac Newton
- 33:25was a Christian, Like every major scientist that you can
- 33:30think of in the past was at least a theist
- 33:38couple years. Yeah, the atheistic scientist movement kind of is
- 33:41a pretty modern comparatively thing. But men expected the law
- 33:48and nature because they believed in a log giver, Like
- 33:53you don't just expect logic to come from randomness and
- 33:59things that don't makes like if you again with your
- 34:02cardboard box thing. If you have the knife and the
- 34:04cardboard in the box and you shook it all up
- 34:07and I'll cut up in the little pieces. If you
- 34:11shook it up again, your expectation would be that it's
- 34:15going to stay a bunch of little cut up pieces.
- 34:19Speaker 1: Wait, you mean the super sharp knives aren't going to
- 34:21come backwards through a piece. Put them together close enough,
- 34:24such as the atoms, and.
- 34:25Speaker 2: It's like when you shake it up again, you're not
- 34:27expecting it to come back together. You're not expecting order
- 34:30from disorder.
- 34:32Speaker 1: It's called the second law of thermodynamics. And do you
- 34:35know why we know that's true science because we just
- 34:37do it. It just makes sense, Like honestly, sorry before
- 34:43you continue. It's like the sheer amount of things that
- 34:45I learned as a graduate student in physics. It's just like,
- 34:49this is the way things are, and so we can
- 34:53explain it using this mathematical form and to say, the
- 34:56second law of thermodynamics. And we can prove the second
- 35:01law of thermotademics using some basic assumptions, which is the
- 35:06circular arguments that it's like, it's rests on what yeah,
- 35:10you know.
- 35:12Speaker 2: So I want to take a little bit of a
- 35:13different approach to how I would kind of come with
- 35:17this question. So I don't want to say this a
- 35:28lot of people who so science and God are oftentimes
- 35:32presented as conflicting entities. It's like, if you believe in science,
- 35:38you can't believe in God. If you believe in God,
- 35:40you can't believe in science. It's a way it's usually not.
- 35:42Speaker 1: Just prove God. Come on, what are you talking about?
- 35:44Speaker 2: Science can't disprove God because they're answering two different kinds
- 35:47of questions. So when I hear people say that, the
- 35:53way that I would kind of approach that, if that's
- 35:56something that you ever hear or you've ever asked yourself,
- 35:59is like, can I believe science?
- 36:01Speaker 1: Like?
- 36:03Speaker 2: And there's people who talk about like young Earth versus
- 36:05Old Earth like, and that's a that's a whole thing.
- 36:09Whether you believe it one way or the other, I
- 36:10don't really care. I think it's kind of inconsequential. But
- 36:14it's like, can I believe what science says and still
- 36:17believe God? And a lot of people, primarily atheists, will
- 36:23tell you no, And it will tell you that these
- 36:26two things are conflicting in that if you believe in God,
- 36:28that means you don't believe in science. And if you
- 36:30believe in science, you have to only believe in science
- 36:34and you can't believe in God. And that's why people
- 36:35like John Lennox, I don't know, I keep on bringing
- 36:38them up. I don't know if you know who John
- 36:39Lenox is. But uh, that's why people like him. Of
- 36:42a musician, that's why people like him are so rare,
- 36:47is because he is. He's a mathematician, Oxford mathematician, and
- 36:52he is a devout Christian, and he's just such a
- 36:54rare thing to see because people think that it has
- 36:57to be science or God. Well, like I said, they're
- 37:00answering two different questions. So what people don't understand is
- 37:03the difference between mechanism and agency. Science is an answer
- 37:10to the question how, and God isn't answer to the
- 37:14question why. So if me and Nick went out and
- 37:19looked at my car and I showed Nick, I opened
- 37:24up the hood of my car and I showed Nick
- 37:26the engine, Nick wouldn't say that that engine is incredible,
- 37:30like it's amazing that it just randomly came together one day,
- 37:33like he wouldn't just assume that because the engine has
- 37:38you know, the pistons and whatever, and it like all
- 37:41works together, and because the mechanisms are all tied together,
- 37:43and because it just works, his assumption would not therefore
- 37:47be that it did not need to be created. Nick
- 37:53is a smart person, and Nick would instead say that's
- 37:57amazing that somebody engineered it to work that way. And
- 38:00so when people see like, uh, you can talk about
- 38:05like the fine tuning argument for instance, where it's like
- 38:09if the strength of gravity, it was like, I don't
- 38:12even know what the number is. It's some insane number.
- 38:14It's like one out of one to the like one
- 38:18hundred thousandth power or something. It's like one part and
- 38:23that one.
- 38:25Speaker 1: Hundred thousand different or something.
- 38:26Speaker 2: Yeah, it's way they're getting one hundred thousand. It's like
- 38:30one to it's like one to the one hundredth power
- 38:32or something.
- 38:33Speaker 1: That's a big nob. So to view that scale, that'll
- 38:37be basically saying.
- 38:40Speaker 2: There aren't that many of anything in the universe. Problems.
- 38:44Speaker 1: Well, first, there's about ten to the eighty Adams in
- 38:47the universe. Ten to the is it eighty three? Like photons,
- 38:53And so if you're doing ten to the one hundred.
- 38:55That's basically saying, let's make it simpler, let's just make
- 38:57it ten to the eighty.
- 38:58Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just saying that that's the number of.
- 39:01Speaker 1: Every single atom in the observable universe. If one of
- 39:06them was red and all the rest were blue.
- 39:12Speaker 2: The entire thing would fall apart. But they're all blue exactly.
- 39:16So it's like, I don't look at that and say
- 39:22that's insane that this randomly happened, and that there are
- 39:27so many other ones. Gravity is just like the one
- 39:29that first came to mind, like the number of finely
- 39:33tuned things. They're so specifically tuned for, specifically tuned for life.
- 39:41Like if gravity again one part and one to the
- 39:45one hundred, if it was any different, even the slightest bit,
- 39:49life would be impossible. I don't look at that and
- 39:54say it's so crazy.
- 39:56Speaker 1: Not just like life, Like, if it was that different,
- 39:58stars would not form, no, yeah, to remain just as
- 40:01constantcy of plasma, or to condense back into a black
- 40:04hole very quickly, and whatnot. Like it's not just saying like, oh,
- 40:07in life would be impossible. How do you know that? Well,
- 40:09because all of our science tells us that if it
- 40:11were this way, there would be no way for anything
- 40:14to be different.
- 40:15Speaker 2: Yeah, and no way for anything to be different. Actually,
- 40:19is the next thing I wanted to say or talk about.
- 40:22So agency and mechanism are two different things to answer
- 40:28the how and why questions science. So again, science is
- 40:36built on the assumption that science works like science doesn't
- 40:43work unless science works basically like it. It's the logic
- 40:49behind it is completely dependent on the belief that the
- 40:53logic is sound. And so if you don't have that foundation,
- 41:02that doesn't work at all, which means that science is
- 41:05a dependent thing. And so if we look at the
- 41:10universe as a whole, the only way that we don't
- 41:16run into the problem of an infinite regress, or if
- 41:19we don't run the problem of like what happened at
- 41:21the beginning to initiate the entire thing is if the
- 41:25universe and time and space and matter are all necessary,
- 41:31like if they have to exist. And even this is
- 41:36not a very scientific way of thinking about it, but
- 41:39if you can imagine something not existing, it's probably not
- 41:44really that necessary. Like if you can reasonable I guess
- 41:48I should say, if you can reasonably imagine something not existing,
- 41:53it doesn't prove that it's not necessary, but it increases
- 41:58the probability because I.
- 42:00Speaker 1: Can just imagine that God doesn't exist.
- 42:02Speaker 2: It just reason world.
- 42:04Speaker 1: What do you mean reason? That's it?
- 42:06Speaker 2: Like? Because then if you say so, if you make
- 42:08the assumpt like if you say I can imagine world
- 42:10where God doesn't exist, then I can still ask the question. Okay,
- 42:13then word everything come from, I can still go. I
- 42:15can still say like.
- 42:17Speaker 1: That you need to have an explanation, like if to
- 42:21reasonably assume that Michael doesn't exist, I could be like,
- 42:25but who is this person sitting next to me? Yeah,
- 42:28And if you don't have an explanation, oh, that's John.
- 42:30He just looks like some dude named Michael. Then like,
- 42:36if you don't have anything to explain it, that's not
- 42:39a reasonable okay.
- 42:41Speaker 2: And so I can say. Somebody could say like like, oh,
- 42:45I can imagine God doesn't exist, and then I would say, okay,
- 42:47that's fair. Let's ask these questions. Now, I can reasonably
- 42:54imagine the universe not existing. I can reasonably imagine nothing
- 43:01existing at all, nothing like you don't have to exist.
- 43:05And if you don't have to exist, why does the
- 43:07coature sitting one have to exist. If the couture sitting
- 43:09doesn't have to exist, why is your apartment or Saint
- 43:12Louis City, or the United States or the world or
- 43:15the universe have to exist. And then you can go
- 43:18on that infinite and like get all the way out
- 43:21and it's like nothing has to exist. And based on
- 43:24the science. Because I'm a Christian who believes in the science.
- 43:28For the most part, time and space and matter all
- 43:33came into existence at the same incident, which means none
- 43:37of them are necessary individually. I guess you could imagine
- 43:43that they would be necessary as a whole, but again,
- 43:46they don't have to exist. Nothing has to be that way.
- 43:49And so that's why we would ask the question of why,
- 43:52because science can get you from now all the way
- 43:55back to the point of creation, but whatever happened before
- 44:00for that science has no idea because that point in
- 44:05the creation of all of those things of time and space,
- 44:08matter is literally the foundation that the science is built on.
- 44:12So if you go back to that point, you go
- 44:14past that point, you have nothing. You have no grounds
- 44:19to explain it with science, Like you can't say, oh, well,
- 44:22this law existed in like the blah blah blah blah
- 44:25and these particles. It's like no, no, but because that's not.
- 44:29Speaker 1: How science can explain it. But like, how do you
- 44:30know we haven't found out a way to explain what
- 44:33happened before the Big Bang? Like, yeah, sure, you know,
- 44:37general relativity quantum mechanics don't explain that. But we clearly
- 44:41already know that general relative and quantum mechanics fail at
- 44:44some things in the universe, and so there's definitely going
- 44:47to be something more that we can find. So why
- 44:49not that thing that we find explained before the creation?
- 44:55Speaker 2: This is like, when I think about this, maybe I'm
- 44:58misunderstanding what you're saying.
- 45:00Speaker 1: Correct me if I possibly I don't even understand what
- 45:02I'm saying because I don't believe it.
- 45:04Speaker 2: That's a fair point. That's why I like the Devil's Advocate.
- 45:06Things are hard from point A just the beginning, going back,
- 45:16there is nothing. People tend to try and to find
- 45:21nothing with certain parameters, and they say, like it's this
- 45:25kind of nothing, and they try and explain nothing as
- 45:27if nothing is some kind of but like that necessitates
- 45:34there being something.
- 45:37Speaker 1: They're being the field with no fluctuations, yet.
- 45:40Speaker 2: Like it's not that difficult of a question to answer.
- 45:44It's like nothing is not a super complicated mathematical state
- 45:49of being or anything. It's literally the state of non being.
- 45:54There is nothing. Frank Turk, he's another Christian guy. Uh.
- 46:00What he always says is like nothing is what rocks
- 46:02dream about. It's there. It's just there is no thing.
- 46:08That's why it's called nothing is because it's no thing
- 46:11like that.
- 46:12Speaker 1: That's actually I really like because that that just shows
- 46:15like rocks don't dream.
- 46:17Speaker 2: Yeah, and you'd see that and it'd be like, okay,
- 46:20so why are you trying to define nothing? Is this?
- 46:22Like you obviously understand the concept of nothing, so why
- 46:26are you trying to define it into oblivion to try
- 46:28and accommodate for your yeah, theoretical proposition about blah blah
- 46:33blah blah. Like if you go past this point and
- 46:36we say it, if I ask you the question how
- 46:38did something come from nothing? You can try and explain
- 46:42how the nothing produced to something, but it always comes
- 46:46back to there is something in the nothing possibility.
- 46:50Speaker 1: Logic makes sense. Sorry, that's me. Yeah, okay, so I
- 46:58just because I said the logic thing, I something that
- 47:02everyone has as an assumption is that logic makes sense
- 47:07you can have like the principle of non contradiction. You
- 47:14cannot have something that both is and is not my hand,
- 47:18both is closed together and not close together. False. It
- 47:23is close together but not close together. I think that's
- 47:28the right number of double negatives. So anyway, we always
- 47:31use yeah, that's right. Sorry, we always use.
- 47:36Speaker 2: Yeah. I know.
- 47:37Speaker 1: We always use logic as as a basic thing. And
- 47:40so it's like, oh, but okay, maybe this explanation doesn't work.
- 47:43But that it was like true, nothingness does not even
- 47:46include the possibility of logic. I have a thought experien
- 47:51for you picture nothing. What do you picture darkness? You
- 47:56picture a vast expanse. You picture nothing, And it's like, okay,
- 48:00I look around dark dark. I go over here, dark dark.
- 48:04I go over there, dark dark. There's two things you're
- 48:06assuming here. One space, yep, you're excuming. You're assuming spatial proportion,
- 48:13you're assuming relation between points. And two you are assuming darkness. Darkness. Well,
- 48:22that's not nothing. Darkness is the absence of light exactly.
- 48:26Darkness is a concept and nothingness there is not even
- 48:29a concept. You cannot picture nothingness, which is why when
- 48:33you were saying it was like, oh you can you
- 48:34reasonly picture a universe that doesn't exist. No, you can't.
- 48:38You cannot picture nothingness. You can picture blackness, you can
- 48:41picture not some things, but you cannot actually understand nothingness.
- 48:49I under stay this thing is nothing. I put a name.
- 48:57Where did I put it to something? There's some concept
- 49:02of this thing that we call nothing that we are
- 49:05able to point to and name, and that means it's
- 49:08not nothing. And that's weird to think about. This is me,
- 49:13like sixteen years old, being like, whoa dude.
- 49:17Speaker 2: The other thing, this is totally unrelated, but you're saying,
- 49:19like me, sixteen years old, Yeah, it's like one of
- 49:21the mind boggling moments that you have where you just
- 49:25realize something. You're like, oh my gosh, that is mind
- 49:27blowing thinking about like an infinite regress and thinking about
- 49:32the possibility of like time stretching infinitely in the past,
- 49:39and I just like have this moment where I realize
- 49:43that if the past was infinite right now could not
- 49:49happen because it is impossible to traverse an actually infinite
- 49:55number of things, Like you can't if you start at
- 49:58the beginning of infinity, you literally can't reach like there's
- 50:02not even like it's so hard to even conceptualize. But
- 50:06it's like, and then people try to infinity. I don't
- 50:10think infinity is practically I don't think it's a thing
- 50:15that can actually exist. You're a science person, so maybe
- 50:18you can explain that to me. But I understand that
- 50:21it's a mathematical concept. But I think that that's all
- 50:24it is, because no matter how many of something there
- 50:30are or is, you could always count them, it's gonna
- 50:34be an insanely high number. Like if we say there's
- 50:39an infinite number of golf balls in the universe, and
- 50:44then you remove one of them, like how many of
- 50:46them are there? And it's like there's still a number
- 50:49of those things. It just is such an incomprehensibly large
- 50:53number you can't understand it. So that doesn't But that
- 50:56doesn't mean that it's actually infinite, because it's literally impossible
- 51:02to actualize an infinite number of things.
- 51:05Speaker 1: Do you mind if I go on a bit about infinities, Go.
- 51:08Speaker 2: Ahead, No, just thrill because I don't really understand it.
- 51:11That's my lay person understanding of it.
- 51:14Speaker 1: But so first, mathematically speaking, there are layers of infinities.
- 51:19But we're saying what you were talking about is the
- 51:22classic Xeno's paradox? Do you know have you heard about that?
- 51:25Maybe but not zeno paradox or Achilles and the hair,
- 51:30or there's any number of ways you can formulate it.
- 51:32So first Achilles is or no, let's say Zeno is
- 51:38trying to walk to that door that you cannot see
- 51:40because it's off screen. It doesn't exist, it is nothing. Yeah,
- 51:44you have to get halfway to the door first, so
- 51:47I go halfway to the door. You have to go
- 51:49halfway between there and the door again, so I go there,
- 51:52and then you have to go halfway and you have
- 51:53to go halfway again, and again you have to go
- 51:56half a quarter, an eighth, a sixteenth, a thirty second,
- 51:58a sixty fourth or one twenty eighth, two fifty six,
- 52:00five twelve ay twenty fourth or twenty forty eight to
- 52:03forty ninety six or something like that.
- 52:05Speaker 2: Good job with that multiplication A.
- 52:07Speaker 1: Twenty forty eight. That game really worked out. But you
- 52:11have to keep going and it just keeps going, and
- 52:12there's an infinite number of halves to get from here
- 52:16to anywhere else, and ritically, yeah, and then and then
- 52:20that's the thing. It's just like, Okay, you're right, and
- 52:23so Zeno's like change cannot happen. There is no way
- 52:27for something to move from point A to point B
- 52:30because of this infinite amount of time. But I move
- 52:34from point A to point b. This proven okay, So
- 52:38maybe infinity it doesn't exist. Maybe infinity is just a
- 52:41mathematical construct. But it depends on how you look at it,
- 52:46because in a way, there are an infinite number of
- 52:50positions from here to there unless you think about space
- 52:53as quantized. But that's a weird thing to think. Some
- 52:56scientists say that it's like, that's not how we do anything.
- 52:59But okay, yeah, it's a difficult thing. But a bit
- 53:04of explanation for those math nerds out there about infinities.
- 53:08There's one level infinity called countable infinites. Okay, so if
- 53:12you have on the number scale, I can go one, two, three,
- 53:16and I can set up a pattern to keep going. Okay,
- 53:19name any number, and I will count from one any
- 53:23positive integer. I will count from one to that positive
- 53:26number number and a finite amount of time. I can
- 53:29tell you exactly how long it will take. Okay, I
- 53:32can't do that theoretically I could, but if you then
- 53:36really had a number. I can't do the math in
- 53:37my head about how long it would take, but theoretically
- 53:39I could. Okay, that's count to be infinite. But how
- 53:43large is the set of all is the set of
- 53:46all integers? How large are is one, two, three, all
- 53:48the way up? How many of them are there?
- 53:52Speaker 2: I don't think that there's But that's again the theoretical thing,
- 53:56because there's no practical application.
- 53:58Speaker 1: There's no physical okay physical, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the difficulty.
- 54:02A lot of people delve into the world of the material,
- 54:08and Plato talks about this, Aristotle talks about this, All
- 54:11of these ancient philosophers talk about like the world of ideals?
- 54:14Do we live in just a world of matter? Do
- 54:16we live in a world where things can happen? Am
- 54:19I a brain in a vat? Or all of these things?
- 54:22But yeah, okay, So if you don't want to say
- 54:24that you know numbers actually exist.
- 54:26Speaker 2: Well, because you can. You can make theories all you want,
- 54:34and you can theoreticize, is that the right word, Yeah,
- 54:38into oblivion, But that doesn't actually change the world that
- 54:43you're living in. So like you, like you said, with
- 54:45like you can split the distance between you and the
- 54:47door and half an infinite number of times, you can
- 54:52still traverse that distance. So the idea doesn't necessarily translate
- 55:00into reality. And so regardless of what the theory is,
- 55:04theory is we live in a world that is a
- 55:06certain way that we and we understand it to be
- 55:08that way, regardless of what the theory says.
- 55:11Speaker 1: And there is truthness to theories even if they are
- 55:13not the truth, because part of this world underlies a
- 55:19sense of logic. And I'm not talking about like symbolic
- 55:21logic as you learned in high school or this or that.
- 55:23There is some aspect of things can make sense, as
- 55:26I've talked about. And so when we judge theories, we
- 55:30see how self consistent they are. So, yeah, you can
- 55:34theorize about anything, and it can be and it can
- 55:37say whatever. It's like, Yeah, I could theorize, you know
- 55:40that I can both be here and not here.
- 55:42Speaker 2: Theorized, not theoretic sized size, that's not the right word.
- 55:49Speaker 1: A theoretician or a theorist the yeah, but like that
- 55:55is not internally consistent. I could set up a sense
- 55:59of set of rules to explain something and then follow
- 56:03through that set of rules. They're called axioms and come
- 56:06to a contradiction where one of the axioms pushes it
- 56:09up against the other and they do not like each other.
- 56:13So you cannot have both of those axioms set. That
- 56:15is an inconsistent theory. So when we talk about like, oh,
- 56:20you can theorize anything, Yes, you're right, but until we
- 56:24have a contradiction, that theory so far as we know
- 56:27is true, that's the principle of falsification or whatnot that
- 56:32you talk about. But okay, so let's look at the
- 56:35consistency of me walking from here to the door. And
- 56:38you say, oh, there's not an infinite number of points,
- 56:40You're like, okay, But if there is an infinite number
- 56:42of points, and then you say, but I can walk there,
- 56:45and I'm like, okay, yeah, so there's an but I
- 56:47can use my theory if there's an infinite number of
- 56:49points and add on an axiom or something that allows
- 56:53me to explain going from point A to point B
- 56:55without breaking my idea of an infinite number of points.
- 56:58And that axiom is just simply you can traverse like
- 57:01you can go through an infinite number because when I'm
- 57:04going from point A to point B, that is a
- 57:06sense of time and I can say it takes me.
- 57:09I have to go halfway to the door, and I
- 57:11have to go halfway again, and I can say, to
- 57:13explain this, each subsequent step takes half as long. So
- 57:18in a sense, you are multiplying two infinities together in
- 57:21a weird way. You're combining two infinities, and you're getting
- 57:25that door as the result, and mathematically it is weird.
- 57:30It works out, but it's consistent, and so it's like, yeah, yeah, I.
- 57:33Speaker 2: Don't like it. That's internally consistent. But I think my
- 57:36problem is that a lot of the times it seems
- 57:38like they aren't externally consistent, like it I don't know,
- 57:47because even when you're saying, like, uh, you split in half,
- 57:51but then it only takes half as long, but it
- 57:53doesn't matter because there's an infinite number. So even if
- 57:57it only takes half as long, you still would not
- 57:59ever reach the end because it's still a time and
- 58:04there's still an infinite number of things we asked for first,
- 58:07and affinity doesn't happen fast, but it doesn't matter because
- 58:11infinity doesn't end. So it's like you still could not
- 58:13reach the end of infinity, and people, yeah, there's like
- 58:18maybe you can explain this to me later, because probably
- 58:20nobody wants to listen if you ask this kind of question.
- 58:23But there's like the different sizes offah, and people say,
- 58:26like there's like a bigger infinity, and when you add
- 58:29the bigger infinity the smaller infinity, it's like the bigger
- 58:32one just swallows up the smaller one. But it's like
- 58:34what happened to the smaller one, Like like you can't.
- 58:38That's again one of the theoretical things. I just don't.
- 58:40I don't understand the way its Okay, so before I
- 58:44feel like maybe we're getting.
- 58:45Speaker 1: A little bit no, okay, I'll make it quick. Okay,
- 58:47go ahead, because you asked the question and it's a
- 58:49fascinating thing, and let's go into the mathematical and be like, yeah,
- 58:53we don't have to talk about this, but it doesn't
- 58:55even necessarily make sense physical, but like, let's talk about
- 58:57the mathematical to try to understand the different levels of
- 58:59infinity and why we know that there are different sizes.
- 59:03So the ascountable infinity that I'm saying, give me any number,
- 59:06any integer, and I can count to it in a
- 59:09finite amount of time, and that finite is important because
- 59:12that gets read of the infinite. Okay, so we define
- 59:15it by finite values and just say give me a number,
- 59:20and I'll go to it. But I don't ever put
- 59:24a limit on the numbers. Give me a number, I'll
- 59:26not go to it, I'll go past it. That's how
- 59:28we define countable infinity. I'll go to a number and
- 59:31go past it. Any number you give me I can
- 59:33go past it. So therefore there is no finish, because
- 59:36if there's a finish, i'd say give me that number,
- 59:38I'll go past it. That's the normal sense of infinity.
- 59:41Then the next level of infinity, so far as we know,
- 59:44is called uncountable infinite. And this is if in the
- 59:49numbers sense, accountable infinite is all the integers. Uncountable infinite
- 59:54is all of the numbers, the entire real line, all
- 59:56the irrational numbers. And the way this is different from
- 1:00:00the countable infinites is give me a number. There is
- 1:00:04so like I cannot set up a pattern.
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: There's an infinite number of numbers between one and two.
- 1:00:09Is that kind of what you're gonna get? Yeah?
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but there's also countable infinite number of
- 1:00:13numbers between one and two, which is weird because like
- 1:00:16the number of rational numbers between one and two is
- 1:00:20equal to the number of integers from one to infinity,
- 1:00:26equal to in the weird mathematical sense. But there is
- 1:00:30no pattern that I can set up saying I'm going
- 1:00:32to do this than this, than this, that is going
- 1:00:35to guarantee in a finite time. That's the important part.
- 1:00:37In a finite time, I will not guarantee to get
- 1:00:40any number you pick any irrational number. If you pick
- 1:00:44a random irrational number and I go on my pattern
- 1:00:47from this number to this number to this number, there
- 1:00:49is no guarantee that I will ever get there in
- 1:00:52the finite amount of time. In fact, it's almost guaranteed
- 1:00:56that I will not. And that's different levels of infinity. Yeah,
- 1:01:00and there's different ways you can talk about it, but
- 1:01:02you don't want to go too much into that. We
- 1:01:04can talk about that later.
- 1:01:05Speaker 2: So I'm trying to think of a way to tie
- 1:01:09it all back together because we just have a theoretical
- 1:01:12discussion about infinity that this is probably today. We've wanted
- 1:01:18to talk about this forever and we were finally we'll
- 1:01:21just do it today. We tie this all back together.
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about infinities. Some people call God the infinite,
- 1:01:31the one who is infinitely perfect.
- 1:01:32Speaker 2: So yeah, sorry, actually go ahead, No, that was my question.
- 1:01:39The way that we've been talking about infinity, I wouldn't
- 1:01:44say the infinitely perfect, but the way we've been talking
- 1:01:50about infinity relates to a mathematical or like based off
- 1:01:54of time kind of thing. This this is something that
- 1:02:00I realized recently. And again, this is one of those
- 1:02:04things where it's like I think it and I can
- 1:02:07say it. I don't know if it's true, so don't
- 1:02:09take my word on this. We know that God doesn't
- 1:02:12experience time like we do. Yeah, but I was thinking
- 1:02:20about it recently and I kind of came to the
- 1:02:22conclusion that maybe God doesn't unless he forces himself into
- 1:02:28time like he did with the incarnation, he doesn't really
- 1:02:34experience time at all because he is completely outside of it.
- 1:02:40So unless he enters into it, he doesn't experience it.
- 1:02:42And so if I say the universe can't be infinite
- 1:02:48because it's impossible to traverse an actually infinite number of things,
- 1:02:53somebody might say it, Well, you say God is infinite.
- 1:02:56I don't really say God is infinite in the same
- 1:02:59way that we think of it because he is completely
- 1:03:01outside of time. So the concept of infinity doesn't even apply.
- 1:03:05He transcends, He transcends. The find that he transcends time
- 1:03:09and space and matter completely, and so it's it sounds
- 1:03:14like it sounds like I'm trying to like just avoid
- 1:03:19the question. But by definition he has to be that way,
- 1:03:26so he can't the concept. Again, I'm just gonna say
- 1:03:30it again, the concept of infinity doesn't really apply to
- 1:03:35a being who is by definition outside of that concept.
- 1:03:39Speaker 1: Yeah. Completely, I can definitely see this distinction and that
- 1:03:44that's a very interesting distinction you think about.
- 1:03:46Speaker 2: Yeah, because like and it was. It was always one
- 1:03:48of the things that hurt my brain. I don't want
- 1:03:50to say it doesn't, because it still does when I
- 1:03:52like really try and think about it too much. But
- 1:03:54it would always hurt my brain. I'm like, I can't
- 1:03:56even conceptualize something existing forever, Like if I think about God,
- 1:04:03I can't. I can't picture this is where the universe starts, and.
- 1:04:09Speaker 1: You can picture. I can go to a point and
- 1:04:11I can go beyond it, but I cannot picture like
- 1:04:13the entirety.
- 1:04:14Speaker 2: Of because because there's not like I can you do that.
- 1:04:18But it's like even if you say that's all of time,
- 1:04:20it's like past that complts.
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: Yeah, Basically I'm saying, come here, I can go there.
- 1:04:25Come here, I can go there, like and you.
- 1:04:28Speaker 2: Just keep doing that, but it's like that doesn't apply, yeah,
- 1:04:31because it's just, uh, there's the classic thing of like time, space,
- 1:04:37and matter all depend on each other to exist. Because
- 1:04:40if you have time or sorry, if you have matter
- 1:04:46but no time or space, where and when would you
- 1:04:49put it? If you have space but no time or matter,
- 1:04:52or when would you put it? Or like, just like
- 1:04:54there's that kind of thing, And so they all have
- 1:04:58to come into existence at the same point. And so
- 1:05:00whatever cause those things to come into existence by definition,
- 1:05:03has to be outside of them. And so I think,
- 1:05:05I I'm not gonna speak for anybody else. I know
- 1:05:08I have always understood the idea of God existing eternally
- 1:05:12completely wrong because I've been trying to understand it based
- 1:05:17around my definition and my kind of like preconceived notions
- 1:05:21of like what time is, and I like I experience
- 1:05:25time the way I experience it, And I'm trying to
- 1:05:27conceptualize infinity based on the way, or an infinite being
- 1:05:31based on the way I experience time. But again, unless
- 1:05:35God enters into time, he doesn't really at least I
- 1:05:41would say he probably doesn't really experience it the same way. Like,
- 1:05:45it's not like God has existed forever in the sense
- 1:05:50that we would think about forever, because he's outside of
- 1:05:54it forever.
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: We so, like I do agree, like he is outside
- 1:06:00there are forms of explanation. I have a question for you.
- 1:06:03Is there something about God that we can understand?
- 1:06:07Speaker 2: I feel like not completely.
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: No, that's why something that we can understand somewhat. Is
- 1:06:14there anything related in any sense to God that we
- 1:06:20can come to some form of a possible understanding.
- 1:06:24Speaker 2: Are you trying to leave me in direction with this question?
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: No, I just wanted to see to see how you
- 1:06:30how you think about that?
- 1:06:31Speaker 2: So what I would say is we can know about
- 1:06:36God what God has revealed to us mm hmm, because
- 1:06:40I think that He has revealed himself in time he
- 1:06:43has entered into time.
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: Do we know the everything about how He has revealed
- 1:06:48himself to us?
- 1:06:50Speaker 2: We could ever even begin to scratch the surface.
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: Okay, so there is a large amount of what that
- 1:06:56God has revealed himself to us. So he is outside
- 1:06:58of time he's outside in this unexplainable manner, and we
- 1:07:01cannot approach that in any sense of the word. I
- 1:07:03agree with you on that. And then you say that
- 1:07:06God has revealed to himself us to himself in some way,
- 1:07:10or revealed him to us in some way, and I
- 1:07:14could talk about it like the world he gave us
- 1:07:16is part of it, part of his revelation to us.
- 1:07:20The concept of logic from which we can derive mathematical
- 1:07:23formulations is part of that. But so like we can
- 1:07:27understand some aspect and at some point it's like, yeah,
- 1:07:31we can. We can keep understanding more, because do you
- 1:07:34ever think that in this world we were to understand
- 1:07:37all that there can possibly be known about how God
- 1:07:39has revealed himself to us. So there's always more we
- 1:07:42could learn in this world, and so we can extrapolate
- 1:07:44like we can in this world. There's this infinite way
- 1:07:48of understanding God because we can never reach it. That's
- 1:07:51one explanation of the word infinite is unreachable. You know,
- 1:07:56it's an infinite distance from here to China for me
- 1:07:58to walk there because I can't walk there because there's
- 1:08:01water in the way. That Okay, not not the best
- 1:08:03definition but yeah, So let's because now that we know
- 1:08:09that there's scales of understanding stuff, can we conceptualize what
- 1:08:13it is like to be unable to understand something greater?
- 1:08:19And this is where I have Yeah, this is where
- 1:08:21I'm leading to. So I read a book recently, flat Land.
- 1:08:25Speaker 2: It's also sorry disclaimer, I'm I'm saying a lot of
- 1:08:28things that I may not understand. I'm just trying to
- 1:08:31get thoughts out that. It's like, I think about this
- 1:08:33stuff a lot, and I have questions that nobody really
- 1:08:37seems to be able to answer about some of it.
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: Please don't ever only say stuff that you understand. Don't
- 1:08:44understand anything that.
- 1:08:44Speaker 2: I Pretty much everything I say on this podcast I
- 1:08:47don't understand.
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: But so here's a book. I'm holding a book for
- 1:08:51those who are listening on the podcast AKA Nick in
- 1:08:53three days, that's me, I'm Nick. I take one page
- 1:08:58of this book. Okay, and this is our universe. Okay, Sure,
- 1:09:05we might live in a four dimensional space time, we're
- 1:09:07an eleven dimensional height whatever, whatever, consider this is our
- 1:09:10universe where we can go ford on the page, left
- 1:09:13and right on the page. We cannot go up and
- 1:09:14down the passage of time would then be explained by
- 1:09:18this is our universe, and this is our universe one
- 1:09:21second from now, and this is our universe two seconds
- 1:09:24from then, and then this is our universe moving through
- 1:09:26time as this sheet moves into this sheet moves into
- 1:09:31this sheet. Okay, and when we're on this sheet, we
- 1:09:34can look into the past in some way and be like, oh,
- 1:09:36I understand how this worked, but that's not where I
- 1:09:38am now, because I'm still on this one flat sheet. Okay,
- 1:09:40this is just in the past. So this is the
- 1:09:42universe now, and then this is the universe a second
- 1:09:46from now, et cetera, et cetera. But this is a
- 1:09:50two dimensional universe. We live in a three dimensional universe.
- 1:09:53We can look at this book as a whole, and
- 1:09:56we can look at each of these pages and see
- 1:09:58how it progresses through time. So it is possible for
- 1:10:02there to be conceptually speaking, of course, which is how
- 1:10:06we always have to talk about things. It is conceptual
- 1:10:09for there to be some existence that cannot understand something,
- 1:10:15but some other existence can. So two dimensions cannot understand
- 1:10:20three dimensions, but three dimensions can understand two dimensions. And
- 1:10:24what we do when we talk about God in this
- 1:10:26infinite sense is we extrapolate that God, being out of time,
- 1:10:32would in a sense, be able to look at time
- 1:10:33as a book and it wouldn't take him time to
- 1:10:36flip through. He just see it all at once. And
- 1:10:39that's like his being out of time. It's like he
- 1:10:40can see all things at once and he is not
- 1:10:43subject to time. And you get some really weird, seemingly
- 1:10:46contradictions that don't contradict once you delve a bit deeper.
- 1:10:51But it's just confusing as all get out, because like,
- 1:10:54once you stop talking about time, we don't understand anything.
- 1:10:58We need time, we need change to be able to
- 1:11:01understand things, and if it's not there, we can't. But
- 1:11:05we try and we try, and we talk about infinities.
- 1:11:09We say okay when this two dimensional world and it's
- 1:11:12like okay, but there's an infinite number of times we
- 1:11:15say this sheet stacks up infinitely, like we can talk
- 1:11:17about this and yeah, it's not the way it actually is,
- 1:11:21but it's the only way we have of approaching it
- 1:11:24so far as we know. So yeah, I'll agree with you,
- 1:11:27Like these ideas that the infinite seem a bit iffy.
- 1:11:30My brother who loves talking about like math, stuff with
- 1:11:33me is also like that. He's like, I don't really
- 1:11:36believe there's different levels of infinity, and it's like, yeah, no,
- 1:11:39there's mathematically makes sense, but it just it just doesn't
- 1:11:41sound like practically, yeah, it just doesn't. And it's like, yeah,
- 1:11:46you're probably right, but it's like the best we got.
- 1:11:52These these ideas of the infinite are the best we
- 1:11:55got at explaining something like God. The closest we can
- 1:12:00get to explaining God in this conceptual framework, because there's
- 1:12:04other ways of approaching God is through extrapolating odd infinitum
- 1:12:11to the infinity and saying, well, God isn't here, God
- 1:12:15isn't here. If you pick any point, any explanation, I
- 1:12:20can say God isn't this, He's something beyond that any point,
- 1:12:24and then I can go further, and that's infinite. And
- 1:12:26so we say God is the end of that, the
- 1:12:29end of this thing that never stops. That makes no sense,
- 1:12:32but it's the best we got.
- 1:12:34Speaker 2: That's really interesting that you just brought to that, because
- 1:12:36we should probably end soon. While we were talking about earlier,
- 1:12:40like almost at the very beginning, about how there are
- 1:12:44these different things but there's always something greater and how
- 1:12:47God is at the top of that is on the
- 1:12:49top of the spire. Yeah, yeah, that's it's two different things,
- 1:12:56but it kind of plas it all together. It's kind
- 1:12:59of an annoying that we spent so much time.
- 1:13:01Speaker 1: It was really good and so I could talk about
- 1:13:05for this is stuff I think about all the time,
- 1:13:07and it's sometimes it's a little scary to think about.
- 1:13:09And I don't really talk about it with a lot
- 1:13:11of people because a lot of people get like freaked
- 1:13:12out by some ways or say, oh, I don't understand that,
- 1:13:15and it's like I don't either. Can you help, Like
- 1:13:18I don't care that you don't understand it. I don't
- 1:13:20understand it either. It's like, can you figure out how
- 1:13:22to understand something a bit better?
- 1:13:24Speaker 2: So please?
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: I hate it when people are like, oh, you're so smart,
- 1:13:28I can't understand this thing, and doing like, oh I
- 1:13:31have so.
- 1:13:32Speaker 2: Much because I know everything wise because I know that
- 1:13:35I know nothing.
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I have so many words to say
- 1:13:38about like people's idea of what's smart is and it's
- 1:13:41it's a it's a big annoyance of mine that people
- 1:13:45belittle themselves because they're like I'm not smart, Like you
- 1:13:48was like, Okay, sure, I'll admit I have a mathematical
- 1:13:51mind and I can conceptualize things mathematically in an easier
- 1:13:55way than some people can, and for those people approaching math,
- 1:13:59it's like it's a little harder for them, And so
- 1:14:01in that way, I am smarter in the very specific
- 1:14:03sense of mathematical conceptualized blah blah blah. To some people.
- 1:14:06It's like people don't give enough themselves enough credit. I
- 1:14:10see such intelligence in people that does not show itself
- 1:14:14in the sense of being able to do mathematical computations.
- 1:14:18Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:14:18Speaker 1: Sorry that Yeah, that's no.
- 1:14:21Speaker 2: I was just gonna say it, like because it is
- 1:14:23amazing and I love talking about it, but there's so
- 1:14:26much more that I wanted to talk about. Yeah, like
- 1:14:30if no, because I was doing it too. So it's
- 1:14:32not like it's your fault. If I didn't have my
- 1:14:34computer here, i'd probably just talk for like three hours.
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like we didn't even been going for
- 1:14:40a little over an hour.
- 1:14:41Speaker 2: Really, I kind of am like closing it anyway.
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: Well, it took us like twenty minutes to get started,
- 1:14:46that's true. So like the actual video which you guys
- 1:14:48are watching on his screen. It says it's been one
- 1:14:52hour twenty two since it started. I bet you it's
- 1:14:54only been like an hour five, an hour ten.
- 1:14:56Speaker 2: Yeah, like we didn't even get to touch on like, uh,
- 1:15:01causal chains or like the moral argument.
- 1:15:04Speaker 1: We did talk about causal chains.
- 1:15:05Speaker 2: We did a little bit. So yeah, there's so there's
- 1:15:10so much.
- 1:15:10Speaker 1: There was something you would talk about earlier that just
- 1:15:12like if I don't it's in my brain. If I
- 1:15:15don't exist and this couch, then this that couch doesn't
- 1:15:18need to exist. That's the argument of contingency. But you
- 1:15:20did it backwards, which is really interesting because because you know,
- 1:15:24Thomas the Kuyt is an argument contingency says, if I
- 1:15:27exist and I'm sitting on a couch, and clearly the
- 1:15:30couch exists, but you kind of like went backwards. If
- 1:15:32I don't exist, then the couch doesn't need to exist
- 1:15:35because like the couches here because I'm sitting.
- 1:15:37Speaker 2: Like and the for you the couches.
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird things, but like it some people can't
- 1:15:44tell the difference between the contingency versus the cause and effect.
- 1:15:48But one is temporal, the other is not. Contingency is
- 1:15:52not temporal, which is why it's hard to understand me.
- 1:15:57Sitting on this couch does not necessitate a time dependence
- 1:16:00of the couch existing necessitates a now dependence. And Riley
- 1:16:05just walked past really concerned for me.
- 1:16:09Speaker 2: But yeah, there's there's just so much.
- 1:16:13Speaker 1: There's so much like we we can't like talk about
- 1:16:16all these proofs for God because we could talk for
- 1:16:18hours about any of them and get what my problems.
- 1:16:22Some people might think.
- 1:16:23Speaker 2: Nowhere, Yeah, we don't. And that was kind of the
- 1:16:25thing with this is that just walk it doesn't even matter.
- 1:16:32But we didn't like get anywhere, I guess. So it's like,
- 1:16:36if you're listening to this and you're expecting some kind
- 1:16:38of like massive conclusion to like, oh, this is how
- 1:16:41like that we didn't get God exists.
- 1:16:45Speaker 1: That's my conclusion. I can't tell you how I got there.
- 1:16:49Speaker 2: But it's just if you're listening and you're confused, that's okay,
- 1:16:51because so are we, and.
- 1:16:53Speaker 1: So is Alex O'Connor, and.
- 1:16:54Speaker 2: So is Alex O'Connor, and so is Richard Dawkins, and
- 1:16:58so was Christopher Hitchens and Plato Aristotle.
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: We are all confused people. Some some of you listening
- 1:17:06might know the name boy number confused. It makes no
- 1:17:09sense to people who weren't in on that joke, But
- 1:17:11I'm boy number confused. But we are all confused because
- 1:17:16that's the state of being we live in, yea. And
- 1:17:19what do we do with that? We strive towards an understanding.
- 1:17:23And that is what Plato did, that's what Aristotle did,
- 1:17:25Saint Thomas Aquinas, that's what sh Dawkins does, that's what
- 1:17:28Alex o'canna does, and we all do it in our
- 1:17:29own different ways. But like, we can't say that a
- 1:17:33confusion means that we have no understanding of things because
- 1:17:37we are all confused.
- 1:17:39Speaker 2: Well, yeah, anyway, the other the other big because we're
- 1:17:46not going to make this into like a philosophy like
- 1:17:49apologetics podcast. The only the other argument for God that
- 1:17:52I want to talk about at some point is the
- 1:17:55moral argument, Yes, because that has a lot of practical implications.
- 1:17:59It's like, if right and wrong exists, what do you
- 1:18:01do with that? But like, how do you know the
- 1:18:03right and wrong?
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll get at that.
- 1:18:06Speaker 2: I do want to talk about the moral argument because
- 1:18:08I think that that's the most compelling case for me,
- 1:18:13That is the most compelling argument for God.
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: There was probably about seven minutes ago when I time
- 1:18:20stamp it was probably exactly right, I doout it. But
- 1:18:24where I was saying, it's like, and these are like
- 1:18:27that's all we can do, Like that's the best we
- 1:18:29got for explaining God in this conceptual, mathematical way. That's
- 1:18:32the best we got because it's other ways that are
- 1:18:35better at reaching God, and the moral is one of them.
- 1:18:37Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like again it's the how versus the why.
- 1:18:40It's like asking the scientific logical questions that are super
- 1:18:45intellectual and like haughty, No, that's not the right word.
- 1:18:49Super like there's a word for that. I can't think
- 1:18:53of what it is, super.
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: Like temporaneous stylistic zootopia. Uh, I'm just trying to think
- 1:19:01of lot.
- 1:19:01Speaker 2: Super intellectual and hard to understand. I don't really understand
- 1:19:05how they understand them. And then there's the why. And
- 1:19:11there's more of the emotional kind of moral ethical questions,
- 1:19:16which is you know what the moral argument is all about.
- 1:19:19So it won't be next week, probably, but at some
- 1:19:22point in the future we'll talk about that. Yeah. And
- 1:19:24then I'm sure that there's.
- 1:19:25Speaker 1: And if onny It puts the comments saying I want
- 1:19:27to hear about the moral argument. We'll do it a
- 1:19:29lot sooner than we.
- 1:19:30Speaker 2: Will do Maybe we'll do it in two weeks instead
- 1:19:32of a year or something. Who knows, but well, I
- 1:19:37guarantee that we'll talk about we'll have forgotten forever and
- 1:19:41when mister Cobb does it with us. Anyways, that's all
- 1:19:48we got I think right now.
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: Anyway, without a fool here, it's hard to get a
- 1:19:52point inspire.
- 1:19:55Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, if you gain anything from this, if
- 1:19:59we talked about anything that you didn't understand, if we
- 1:20:01helped you understand something, if we said something that you
- 1:20:04think we didn't understand, you want to explain it to us,
- 1:20:07leave a comment, dm.
- 1:20:09Speaker 1: Us, please disprove some of argue against some of the
- 1:20:13things I say. If I made a lot of claims
- 1:20:15about science and mics a like, I believe you that's
- 1:20:17probably how the math works. Disprove me, please, because then
- 1:20:20it'd be fun to have a good conversation.
- 1:20:22Speaker 2: And then prove to me that actual infinites can actually exist.
- 1:20:26Try and leave a comment explaining how infinity can practically
- 1:20:29exist in the physical realm, and I would love to
- 1:20:32read that, because I don't think you can do it.
- 1:20:34There's a challenge.
- 1:20:35Speaker 1: I don't have to rely on conceptualizing.
- 1:20:37Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't think you can do it. So
- 1:20:40if you want to challenge, then go ahead and do that.
- 1:20:43Speaker 1: You're going to make me lose faith in science and
- 1:20:45able to explain things because infinity doesn't exist.
- 1:20:49Speaker 2: Maybe it does, and I'm just not a scientist.
- 1:20:51Speaker 1: So's hilarious is there's a series that I just watched
- 1:20:57clips of but I haven't actually watched Young Sheldon what not.
- 1:21:00And at one point, this little kid that thinks he's
- 1:21:03so smart and whatnot and it is smart in many
- 1:21:05ways or whatever says zero doesn't exist, and they proved it,
- 1:21:10and then they went through a couple of things. It's
- 1:21:11like zero doesn't exist because zero is the concept of nothingness.
- 1:21:14Nothingness doesn't exist, so therefore zero doesn't exist, and it's
- 1:21:16like everything's false And I'm like, what, that's nonsense. But
- 1:21:24it's like that idea of like you have if you
- 1:21:26deal in the conception, it's like you're missing the physical
- 1:21:28and it's like, I've never thought about it that way. Yeah,
- 1:21:31is there something that you want to finish us out on,
- 1:21:33some way of wrapping up what we've talked about.
- 1:21:36Speaker 2: I don't even know, man, I can't in my own head,
- 1:21:38I can't even remember everything that we talked about, because
- 1:21:41we talked about a lot. But I would say this
- 1:21:46because this is what led me down the road of
- 1:21:49trying to understand all the stuff more. And I obviously
- 1:21:52don't after you listen, if you got this far, you
- 1:21:55know I don't understand it.
- 1:21:56Speaker 1: But you don't have a very low view count.
- 1:21:59Speaker 2: Yeah, even if they watch all the way through, they're
- 1:22:02gonna be like, what did I just listen to this dream?
- 1:22:06But allow yourself the freedom to ask questions, because, like
- 1:22:14I was saying, I was having trouble understanding God being infinite.
- 1:22:20And that doesn't mean that there's not an explanation for
- 1:22:23how God could just exists like there. That doesn't mean
- 1:22:28that there's not an explanation for how God could be
- 1:22:31who be? God be, who be? But if you never
- 1:22:36allow yourself to ask for the explanation, if you never
- 1:22:40allow yourself to seek that explanation out, then when somebody
- 1:22:43asks you. That's the big thing with this the There
- 1:22:48might be some people who are gonna be convinced by
- 1:22:50intellectual arguments and stuff, but more often than not, that's
- 1:22:56not gonna be what convinces people. However, I've had actually
- 1:23:02I lied earlier. There was an atheist that tried to
- 1:23:04talk to me one time. So there I'm not gonna
- 1:23:07tell the story of it because it's whatever. But there
- 1:23:09will be people who ask you intellectual questions and they say,
- 1:23:13what about this? And how do you explain this? And
- 1:23:15how do you explain that? And why does God allow this?
- 1:23:18And why does God not allow that? And it's like
- 1:23:20they will you will get these questions, and when you
- 1:23:23get those questions, if you don't have some kind of answer,
- 1:23:27you'll start to ask yourself the same question. If you
- 1:23:29don't seek out the answer, then it'll plant a seed
- 1:23:32of doubt in your heart, and if you don't try
- 1:23:34and find the answer to it will grow and it'll
- 1:23:37just cause a lot of problems. So just if you
- 1:23:39have questions, look for the answer. Don't be content with
- 1:23:46just accepting things because it's the way that like, because
- 1:23:50you were told that's just the way it is. Give
- 1:23:53yourself the freedom to go and look for the truth.
- 1:23:57And it's if you're Christian, I think you're probably gonna
- 1:24:00find it in the place you're expecting it. But you
- 1:24:02might understand it in a way that you didn't understand
- 1:24:04it before. So just give yourself the freedom to ask questions.
- 1:24:09Is kind of the big thing that I would say,
- 1:24:10because it's hard to realize sum up everything else we
- 1:24:12talked about.
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually that's a really important question. Thing to say.
- 1:24:16It is, do not be afraid of asking questions. It
- 1:24:18is not heretical to ask questions. Okay, you can go
- 1:24:22up to priest and ask, like, why why do we
- 1:24:26believe that Jesus is fully present in the Eucharist. That's
- 1:24:30not a heresy to ask a questions, Like if you
- 1:24:32don't if you want to understand more, you can do that,
- 1:24:35and there's ways of understanding more. But you can't be
- 1:24:38like you should be like, oh, I don't really understand
- 1:24:41this at all. I feel like I want to understand
- 1:24:43more because it seems like it doesn't make sense that.
- 1:24:47It's not a heresy to ask questions. It's a heresy
- 1:24:51to outright oppose the dogmas of the Catholic Church. That's
- 1:24:57the definition of heresy. But you could be like, I
- 1:24:59don't understand this dogma. I have a weird question that
- 1:25:02I can't explain. I have faith that there is an
- 1:25:05explanation for it, and you can search it out and
- 1:25:07you can find and seek for it. But it's not
- 1:25:10a heresy to ask questions. I'm gonna finish with a
- 1:25:13couple of anecdotes. One I heard. I don't have citations
- 1:25:20or what not for this, but it'd be cool to
- 1:25:22believe that sixty six roughly sixty six percent of scientists
- 1:25:29under forty are theists. Everyone's like sciences proves God.
- 1:25:33Speaker 2: Science, it's not what the scientists like.
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: Literally, a huge portion of the young scientists population believe
- 1:25:41in God in some way or another. It's the oldest scientist.
- 1:25:46This is a lower population because it's kind of cool
- 1:25:48not to believe in God, or at least back in
- 1:25:50the nineteenth century that was a big philosophical things like,
- 1:25:52oh my goodness, what if God doesn't exist? And all
- 1:25:54the sciences like whoa? And now the young science are like,
- 1:25:58what are you guys talking about? This makes nose And
- 1:26:04there's something that Chesterton Gilbert Eston, a great philosopher of
- 1:26:09the nineteenth century, great writer, a super smart person. He
- 1:26:12said that if everyone went to live for a thousand years,
- 1:26:15everyone would either everyone would die. Either a member of
- 1:26:18the Catholic Church or a complete neholist about everything in life.
- 1:26:23So a really smart dude ten years before he converted
- 1:26:27to Catholicism. Note that he said this before he was
- 1:26:31a Catholic. He wasn't a Catholic at this time. And
- 1:26:34he said, if everyone were to live long enough, the
- 1:26:37only two places they would end up in terms of
- 1:26:40an intellectual understanding is complete nihilism. Nothing matters, there is
- 1:26:44no point, there's nothing, or they would be a part
- 1:26:47of the Catholic Church. Ten years before converted to Catholicism. Yikes,
- 1:26:53that dude is cool.
- 1:26:56Speaker 2: GK.
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: Chesterton, Yeah, that's that's that's I said.
- 1:26:58Speaker 2: Gilbert, said Gilbert, and I was like, wait a minute, Yeah.
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: G GK. Says said but that was like a really
- 1:27:05cool thing to hear. So that that's a latic notte
- 1:27:07for you. Whether or not you want to believe that
- 1:27:10up to you, but I believe it because it kind
- 1:27:12of makes sense. Yeah, those are the only two fully
- 1:27:16internally consistent world views. Absolutely nothing matters and God. Yep,
- 1:27:25those are the like God is an internally consistent and
- 1:27:28the other thing that's internally consistent is nothing ever matters.
- 1:27:31You could choose which one you believe.
- 1:27:35Speaker 2: Hopefully you can tell which one we believe.
- 1:27:37Speaker 1: Hope. So I might have said some sarcastic remarks earlier
- 1:27:40that might have been misinterpreted.
- 1:27:42Speaker 2: Uh, but yeah, like I said, leave a comment if
- 1:27:45you heard something you liked, or if you heard something
- 1:27:47you didn't like, if you heard something you understood that
- 1:27:49you didn't understand before, or if you heard something that
- 1:27:51you didn't understand even after we tried to explain it.
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: Such a convoluted way of saying things. But that's how
- 1:27:59our mind art is going, right, We're so confused.
- 1:28:01Speaker 2: Uh, you know, leave comment. D m us follow us
- 1:28:04on Instagram and sub to the YouTube and then on
- 1:28:06Spotify too, just so that you can.
- 1:28:09Speaker 1: At umsol. So he's like, wait, there's a random person
- 1:28:12at UMSL that watches then crazy.
- 1:28:15Speaker 2: If you go to umsol on I'm I'm not going
- 1:28:19to tell you where I am because.
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: You can recognize his hair. He's very unique.
- 1:28:24Speaker 2: Anyway, thank you for listening.
- 1:28:27Speaker 1: We will see you next time with with a little
- 1:28:30more cohesive Fulton.
- 1:28:33Speaker 2: I realized once once we start talking. I've always realized
- 1:28:36that like Fullen is someone who kind of like mixed
- 1:28:40grounds us because we can get kind.
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: Of flighty and like what man but had nothing. Yeah,
- 1:28:46I could go much more.
- 1:28:48Speaker 2: I could go literally anyway. Thank you for listening.
- 1:28:51Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
- 1:28:53Speaker 2: Have a good time, have a good life.