1 00:00:01,120 --> 00:00:08,960 Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol, 2 00:00:09,519 --> 00:00:10,119 an idea. 3 00:00:10,919 --> 00:00:13,439 Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going. 4 00:00:13,279 --> 00:00:18,600 Speaker 1: Through the rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. 5 00:00:18,839 --> 00:00:22,239 If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, 6 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:24,440 not because I put my hand on a book and 7 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,879 made a wish and working together for a more rational world. 8 00:00:29,199 --> 00:00:32,159 Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feels so much more happiness. 9 00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:34,799 Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way. 10 00:00:35,759 --> 00:00:43,640 Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the 11 00:00:43,679 --> 00:00:50,200 Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews. 12 00:00:56,840 --> 00:01:01,600 Speaker 3: My INTERVIEWEAT today a compelling and wonderful guest. As always, 13 00:01:01,679 --> 00:01:04,920 we had an imperfect connection, so there's a little bit 14 00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:06,799 of phasing on the audio. I don't think it's a 15 00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:10,760 deal breaker, but I beg your patients at indulgence. There 16 00:01:10,799 --> 00:01:13,920 is a video of this exchange the YouTube link in 17 00:01:13,959 --> 00:01:23,879 the description box of the show. Having a conversation today 18 00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:27,079 with the gentleman who was there at a pivotal time 19 00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:30,599 in my life. I was coming out of Christianity, I 20 00:01:30,719 --> 00:01:33,319 was beginning to actually I was in the middle of deconstruction. 21 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:37,480 Stumbled upon his book Godless, and it just I mean, 22 00:01:37,519 --> 00:01:40,040 it made an amazing impact. So it's always cool when 23 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:43,000 I get a chance to cross paths with Dan Barker. 24 00:01:43,760 --> 00:01:48,040 He is the author of many books. He was an evangelical, 25 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:51,079 hardcore Sunday go to meet and preacher for a great 26 00:01:51,159 --> 00:01:56,480 many years, co presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, 27 00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:00,120 and author of a new book called Controduction. Dan, It's 28 00:02:00,159 --> 00:02:01,359 good to have you back, brother. 29 00:02:01,480 --> 00:02:04,359 Speaker 2: Good to see you again. I've also been influenced by 30 00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:08,400 your books too, so I guess it's a cross pollenization here. 31 00:02:09,159 --> 00:02:12,280 But I do have a complaint. Seth Okay. You gave 32 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:15,120 me one of your wonderful mugs of thinking atheist mugs 33 00:02:15,599 --> 00:02:18,199 and you signed it, but your signature is washing off, 34 00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:19,240 and I. 35 00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:22,680 Speaker 3: Don't I think that's symbolic. No, that's indicative of life. 36 00:02:22,719 --> 00:02:24,800 Speaker 2: That is, I have to get another one. 37 00:02:25,319 --> 00:02:28,039 Speaker 3: I'm fading over time as a human being. So I 38 00:02:28,039 --> 00:02:30,879 think this is probably a you know, symbolic of my life. 39 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:34,960 The subtitle of your book fascinates me, the hidden fallacy 40 00:02:35,039 --> 00:02:39,280 that inverts reality. I feel like we live in an 41 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,680 inverted reality. I mean, just as far as the headlines 42 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:45,639 the people I live around. Do you ever feel that way? 43 00:02:45,759 --> 00:02:47,759 Speaker 2: Dan? Yeah, and that was kind of the point of 44 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:50,400 the book. And by the way, the publisher took the 45 00:02:50,479 --> 00:02:54,560 subtitle off of the book, it's just now called contraduction. 46 00:02:55,319 --> 00:02:58,120 I had wanted to subtitle the book the Death of 47 00:02:58,159 --> 00:03:02,599 the design argument. But contraduction, as you point out, it's 48 00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:05,800 a new word, and it's still not in the dictionary, 49 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:08,800 but a lot of people are embracing it and using it. 50 00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:11,280 It's a fallacy that in virtu reality we get things 51 00:03:11,319 --> 00:03:14,919 totally wrong. And like I said in that debate, you 52 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:18,240 were at that debate in Florida where this whole thing started. 53 00:03:18,719 --> 00:03:21,400 It's kind of like the guy who's so impressed, And 54 00:03:21,479 --> 00:03:24,800 how did they make all those rivers flow right along 55 00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:28,360 the state border? How did they do that? It must 56 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:32,680 have been an immense expensive civic project to exquisitely fine 57 00:03:32,800 --> 00:03:36,560 tune those rivers to perfectly match the borders. Well, of 58 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:41,240 course that's backward, right, it's inverted. It's what i'd call contraductory. 59 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:43,800 If you think about things the wrong way around, you 60 00:03:44,199 --> 00:03:46,960 won't see the real picture. And this, of course applies 61 00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:50,680 to what a lot of people say is the strongest argument. 62 00:03:50,759 --> 00:03:53,319 It's not a great argument, but the strongest argument for 63 00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:57,199 a God is the fine tuning argument, where we think, 64 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:00,960 look at how look how the universe is exquisitely fine 65 00:04:01,039 --> 00:04:03,199 tune for life. Well you can see where that's going, 66 00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:03,599 can't you. 67 00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:06,599 Speaker 3: It's a word that you made up. Is it a 68 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:07,840 Dan Barker word? 69 00:04:08,199 --> 00:04:11,479 Speaker 2: It is a Dan Barker word. In fact, you were there. 70 00:04:11,960 --> 00:04:13,599 Do you remember the debate in Florida a couple of 71 00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:16,480 years ago. You gave a talk at the Free Flow 72 00:04:17,279 --> 00:04:21,519 and I was debating Adam Lloyd Johnson, and during his 73 00:04:21,600 --> 00:04:24,720 opening statement, if you remember, he said, I'm not going 74 00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:27,199 to argue for the biblical God. I'm arguing for mere 75 00:04:27,279 --> 00:04:34,199 theism using abductive reasoning. And I thought, abductive. You know 76 00:04:34,319 --> 00:04:36,199 how often do we hear that word? Well I knew 77 00:04:36,199 --> 00:04:39,040 what it meant. And as I got up in my rebuttal, 78 00:04:39,079 --> 00:04:41,800 I said, abductive is the week is kind of reasoning. 79 00:04:41,800 --> 00:04:44,639 It's really just kind of a best guess, you know, 80 00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:48,040 the best explanation. And I said, I think Adam's thinking 81 00:04:48,160 --> 00:04:51,879 is backwards reversed, and what we need. And you can 82 00:04:51,920 --> 00:04:53,879 see this during the debate, I was ad libbing. I 83 00:04:53,920 --> 00:04:56,279 was thinking, we need a new word, not abductive, we 84 00:04:56,279 --> 00:04:59,160 need a word and I said, how about post deductive? 85 00:04:59,240 --> 00:05:01,560 We need a word this shows it wrong, that has 86 00:05:01,560 --> 00:05:05,920 slipped around wrong. And the audience did not seem impressed 87 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:08,120 with that because I was just add a living. But 88 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:11,000 later I was thinking, so well, word is doing you. 89 00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:13,720 We don't need a prefix that means after, We need 90 00:05:13,759 --> 00:05:19,600 a prefix that means inverted. So contraductive. We have deductive reasoning, 91 00:05:19,759 --> 00:05:25,480 inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning for whatever that's worth. Then, and 92 00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:28,360 I think we have a fallacy that precedes the reasoning 93 00:05:28,439 --> 00:05:32,480 called contraduction, where we if your premise that you start 94 00:05:32,519 --> 00:05:35,120 with is reversed, your whole argument is wrong. 95 00:05:35,519 --> 00:05:38,759 Speaker 3: Dan, how many debates, I mean, just ballpark? How many 96 00:05:38,800 --> 00:05:40,800 debates have you done over the years. 97 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:43,839 Speaker 2: I don't need a ballpark. I've been keeping track since 98 00:05:43,959 --> 00:05:48,639 nineteen eighty five February, where I did my first debate 99 00:05:48,680 --> 00:05:53,160 as an atheist with doctor Ruble Shelley in Nashville, Tennessee. 100 00:05:53,839 --> 00:05:59,399 I have done one hundred and forty formal, public, moderated 101 00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:01,920 timed debates like the one that use one hundred and 102 00:06:01,959 --> 00:06:06,040 forty of them. And I don't count informal debates or 103 00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:10,839 TV talk show debates or radio debates as actual debates. 104 00:06:11,399 --> 00:06:13,800 So I don't count the debate I did with William 105 00:06:13,839 --> 00:06:17,439 Lane craig on National TV because it wasn't a formal, 106 00:06:17,560 --> 00:06:22,079 moderated debate. It was more like a you know, casual conversation. 107 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:25,279 So one hundred and forty debates as of right now. 108 00:06:25,639 --> 00:06:27,399 Speaker 3: I'm going to come back to William Lane craig in 109 00:06:27,519 --> 00:06:29,759 just a second because he's famous for kalam and it 110 00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:31,959 will explain for those who don't know what the colomb 111 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:34,959 cosmological argument is. Do you find it when you're talking 112 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:39,399 to just every people. They're not theologians, they're not apologist, 113 00:06:39,480 --> 00:06:41,639 or don't play in that sandbox. Some of that stuff 114 00:06:41,680 --> 00:06:45,959 gets really esoteric, especially when it comes to the lofty 115 00:06:46,040 --> 00:06:49,600 language that comes out of the mouths of the experts, 116 00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:52,600 the god defenders. They go way off into the weeds. 117 00:06:53,199 --> 00:06:55,759 Do you ever find people kind of glazing over, checking out, 118 00:06:55,759 --> 00:06:58,120 like you've got to literally rope them and drag them 119 00:06:58,160 --> 00:06:59,279 back into the conversation. 120 00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:04,079 Speaker 2: Yeah, because there are these specialty fields like the philosophy 121 00:07:04,199 --> 00:07:09,680 of religion or philosophy subfields like fine tuning, and all 122 00:07:09,800 --> 00:07:12,600 these words that are very important and useful words that 123 00:07:12,839 --> 00:07:15,759 the experts used to talk among themselves. With, but the 124 00:07:15,800 --> 00:07:18,600 people on the street aren't part of that little subculture, 125 00:07:19,199 --> 00:07:21,720 and so it sounds like gobbledygook, Which is kind of 126 00:07:21,759 --> 00:07:26,279 why when Adam Johnson used that phrase, I'm going to 127 00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:31,160 use abductive reasoning, I wanted to kind of demystify the word. 128 00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:34,360 It's just a fancy word that just means, hey, it's 129 00:07:34,399 --> 00:07:37,160 our best gas, you know, And so you can say 130 00:07:37,199 --> 00:07:41,040 the same things using simpler words. But you're right. I 131 00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:44,000 was walking by the Jehovah's Witness booth on campus a 132 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,839 few weeks ago, and this young man there was telling 133 00:07:46,879 --> 00:07:49,360 me about the truth and we get along pretty well. 134 00:07:49,920 --> 00:07:52,920 So I stopped and I asked the guy. He seemed educated. 135 00:07:52,959 --> 00:07:56,639 I asked him, oh, so tell me what is your epistemology? 136 00:07:57,360 --> 00:08:00,680 And he just stared at me. Huh, what is your stemology? 137 00:08:01,319 --> 00:08:05,879 He goes, what does that word mean? So he's college educated, 138 00:08:05,879 --> 00:08:08,639 but he doesn't even know the word epistemology. And I 139 00:08:08,639 --> 00:08:10,560 guess I don't blame him. If you're not running in 140 00:08:10,600 --> 00:08:13,560 that little circle or that circle of thought, you're not 141 00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:15,639 going to know those words. 142 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:17,680 Speaker 3: Yeah, but how much of that do you think is 143 00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:19,959 I know this is a subjective opinion, but by one 144 00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:23,000 hundred and whatever debates under your belt? How much of 145 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:26,240 that is just the weaponization of language to impress, right, 146 00:08:26,560 --> 00:08:29,160 let me use a lot of syllables, therefore I shall 147 00:08:29,199 --> 00:08:33,240 sound credible. It's almost like those you know, intelligent design 148 00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:36,440 apologists who talk about the quantum and they just go 149 00:08:36,639 --> 00:08:40,440 way off into these really lofty sounding terms to overwhelm 150 00:08:40,519 --> 00:08:42,639 people and sound credible. 151 00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:46,559 Speaker 2: Well, then they're bad debaters because the debater is supposed 152 00:08:46,559 --> 00:08:49,600 to relate to the audience and communicate with an audience 153 00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:55,159 in ways that an audience will understand. And if I 154 00:08:55,159 --> 00:08:59,200 don't think they're always obfuscating, I think they genuinely use 155 00:08:59,200 --> 00:09:02,440 those words because they're common words to them in their field. 156 00:09:03,279 --> 00:09:07,320 But it almost sounds like sometimes they're talking down to 157 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:10,399 the audience. I did an audience with Richard How. We 158 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:13,159 did two debates. I did one in Florida and then 159 00:09:13,200 --> 00:09:18,919 another one at the apologist conference for the Southern Evangelical Seminary. 160 00:09:19,519 --> 00:09:22,639 And Richard how at the first debate we did, he 161 00:09:22,679 --> 00:09:28,159 got up before that university audience, not Tampa, at the 162 00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:32,879 university there, and he had brought a big trunk with 163 00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:35,679 him and he unloaded the trunk and put the stack 164 00:09:35,759 --> 00:09:39,360 of books by the podium on the floor, and during 165 00:09:39,399 --> 00:09:42,720 the debate he was telling these students, you're not going 166 00:09:42,759 --> 00:09:45,159 to understand any of this unless you've read as much 167 00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:48,200 as I have. You know, there's so much depth behind 168 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:50,360 all of this. In a debate tonight, we're not going 169 00:09:50,399 --> 00:09:52,360 to be able to go too deep. So trust me, 170 00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:55,360 I have read all these books. Look at him, And 171 00:09:55,480 --> 00:10:01,000 of course that backfired. That was like insulting the audience. Yeah, 172 00:10:01,480 --> 00:10:04,440 you can refer to author I refer to authority sometimes, 173 00:10:04,440 --> 00:10:07,919 but mainly to quote what they say, not just to say, hey, 174 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:11,840 look at there's all these authorities. So if your only argument, 175 00:10:11,919 --> 00:10:14,519 or if your main argument is an argument from authority, 176 00:10:14,679 --> 00:10:17,559 you don't really have an argument that'll stand on its 177 00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:18,120 own feet. 178 00:10:19,279 --> 00:10:22,600 Speaker 3: You talked about the rivers that outline the states and 179 00:10:22,639 --> 00:10:26,200 how amazing it is that those were created just to 180 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:28,559 border us. Some reminded I think it was a Douglas 181 00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:32,879 Adams argument that talked about the pothole and the rainstorm 182 00:10:33,679 --> 00:10:37,120 and the water had gone up and had said, Wow, look, 183 00:10:37,159 --> 00:10:40,000 this pothole is made perfectly for me. The edgies are 184 00:10:40,039 --> 00:10:42,840 formed and the depth is absolutely perfect. This must have 185 00:10:42,960 --> 00:10:48,720 been designed with me in mind. Would that be a contraduction, Dan, It. 186 00:10:48,679 --> 00:10:51,840 Speaker 2: Would be yes, if such a thing actually happened. I mean, 187 00:10:51,879 --> 00:10:55,200 it's a good metaphor. I suppose. Another one would be 188 00:10:55,759 --> 00:10:59,000 look at the human nose. Look how perfectly shaped the 189 00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:03,639 human nose is to support a pair of eyeglasses. How 190 00:11:03,639 --> 00:11:05,919 do you explain that? Look at the perfect fit? 191 00:11:06,399 --> 00:11:06,639 Speaker 3: You know. 192 00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:11,840 Speaker 2: So that's contraduction, that's just thinking the wrong way around. 193 00:11:12,320 --> 00:11:15,360 I think the earliest and most powerful contraduction in the 194 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:20,440 human species is the idea or the impression that the 195 00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:25,240 sun rises every morning. The sun rises, right, Well, actually 196 00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:28,080 it doesn't. It's only because from our point of view. 197 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:31,519 We are looking at the world like I think all 198 00:11:31,600 --> 00:11:33,879 organisms have to start from their own point of view, 199 00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:36,799 and it looks like the sun is rising, assuming a 200 00:11:36,879 --> 00:11:40,440 geocentric or a flat earth concept. But actually the sun 201 00:11:40,519 --> 00:11:44,600 is not rising. That's contraductory. It is we who are rising, 202 00:11:44,679 --> 00:11:46,559 and so we use the word sun, right, even those 203 00:11:46,600 --> 00:11:49,600 of us who know that it doesn't mean what it says, 204 00:11:49,639 --> 00:11:51,919 we know the sun's not rising, we still use the word, 205 00:11:52,440 --> 00:11:55,399 which is just a convention of language, I suppose, because 206 00:11:55,440 --> 00:11:58,559 what else would we call it? Oh, look the horizon set, 207 00:11:58,759 --> 00:12:01,000 you know. I mean, that's a weird way to flip 208 00:12:01,039 --> 00:12:04,200 your mind around and the illustration I start the book 209 00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:06,519 off with, and by the way, thanks for giving me 210 00:12:06,559 --> 00:12:09,200 a good endorsement on it. Have you ever been sitting 211 00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:13,000 on a train that's not moving when the train next 212 00:12:13,039 --> 00:12:15,639 to you starts to move and you briefly think it's 213 00:12:15,799 --> 00:12:19,279 you who's moving, or on a plane or a car. 214 00:12:19,879 --> 00:12:21,559 I think has happened to all of us, and we 215 00:12:21,639 --> 00:12:24,840 get it totally backward because we're looking at it from 216 00:12:24,879 --> 00:12:27,480 our point of view rather than from outside of our 217 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:29,279 point of view. That's contraduction. 218 00:12:29,879 --> 00:12:32,679 Speaker 3: Do me a favor for those not aware define the 219 00:12:32,759 --> 00:12:35,000 Kalam cosmological argument. 220 00:12:35,879 --> 00:12:41,240 Speaker 2: So Kalam is an ancient Islamic word that for Islami 221 00:12:41,240 --> 00:12:45,200 scholars who first developed this idea that since you can't 222 00:12:45,240 --> 00:12:48,639 have an infinite series of preceding events, there had to 223 00:12:48,679 --> 00:12:51,399 be a first event, right, because if there was an 224 00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:54,519 infinite series of preceding events, we never could have got 225 00:12:54,519 --> 00:12:57,200 to now, but we have got to now, So that 226 00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:00,879 means there must have been a beginning. That Kalam argument 227 00:13:00,960 --> 00:13:03,399 has been spruced up in modern times with the knowledge 228 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:06,399 of the Big Bang and people like William Lane Craigan 229 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:08,519 others are saying, well, now the Big Bang shows that, 230 00:13:08,600 --> 00:13:13,440 in fact, indeed there was a first event, the Big Bang, 231 00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:17,879 And so the argument goes, everything that begins to exist 232 00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:23,879 has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the 233 00:13:24,039 --> 00:13:30,000 universe had a cause. On its face, that reasoning is valid. 234 00:13:30,759 --> 00:13:34,120 It's a good deductive argument assuming the premises are true. 235 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:37,919 But it turns out that the conclusion is not valid. 236 00:13:37,919 --> 00:13:42,080 The conclusion is not sound. It's well, in my book 237 00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:46,200 I explained that this really a category errors. What's happening here? 238 00:13:46,440 --> 00:13:49,320 Speaker 3: I think Kalam was added after they started with just 239 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:55,120 a cosmological position the universe has a cause, or everything 240 00:13:55,159 --> 00:13:57,559 that is has a cause or something. But then they 241 00:13:57,600 --> 00:14:00,320 added the word begins. I think because they wanted the 242 00:14:00,399 --> 00:14:03,480 starting block where they could, I guess, stick God with 243 00:14:03,600 --> 00:14:06,600 a starting pistol there at the beginning of the race. 244 00:14:06,639 --> 00:14:08,919 And it seems to be a deistic Oh go ahead, Dan, 245 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:09,559 go ahead. 246 00:14:09,320 --> 00:14:12,120 Speaker 2: Well yeah, but I mean begin. The idea of beginning 247 00:14:12,360 --> 00:14:15,679 was implicit within the early Colomb argument, is I see, 248 00:14:15,879 --> 00:14:19,159 because of the impossibility of an infinite preceding events. 249 00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:22,720 Speaker 3: You know, But yeah, Dan, isn't that just a deistic claim? 250 00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:25,879 If that I mean when I see William Lane Craig, 251 00:14:25,919 --> 00:14:29,919 and I've been to his website, it talks about everything 252 00:14:29,919 --> 00:14:32,399 that begins to exist has a cause, and then there's 253 00:14:32,639 --> 00:14:37,080 just paragraphs pages of word salad and a huge canyon 254 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:41,200 size leap to his specific deity with a proper name. 255 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:46,200 But Kalamb itself is not a theistic position, right. 256 00:14:46,360 --> 00:14:50,559 Speaker 2: It's just the columb itself, which just supports the theistic position, 257 00:14:50,879 --> 00:14:53,080 supports it in that there must have been a first 258 00:14:53,360 --> 00:14:55,159 that must have been a beginning or a first cause. 259 00:14:55,480 --> 00:14:57,559 Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean, in all these debates, how do 260 00:14:57,639 --> 00:14:59,360 they get from point A to point z. 261 00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:03,320 Speaker 2: Well, in the debate that you saw that prompted this 262 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:07,080 new book with Adam Lloyd Johnson, he was honest enough 263 00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:10,080 to say that I'm not arguing for the God of 264 00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:14,080 the Bible here tonight. I'm arguing basically for mere theism, 265 00:15:14,679 --> 00:15:19,200 whatever that means. And I'm and there's actually there's another 266 00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:21,440 book coming out about that debate, and I'm asking, well, 267 00:15:21,960 --> 00:15:24,080 what is mere theism? Are we supposed to offer it 268 00:15:24,279 --> 00:15:27,600 mere worship? You know what? Obviously he's a Christian and 269 00:15:27,639 --> 00:15:31,039 he has an organization, a Christian organization called Convincing Proof. 270 00:15:31,440 --> 00:15:34,879 But he came to the debate unwilling to defend his 271 00:15:34,960 --> 00:15:38,080 own personal God. He just wanted to defend this concept. 272 00:15:38,639 --> 00:15:41,240 So the kalamb argument and some of the and the 273 00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:45,399 fine tuning argument, other types of these arguments are really 274 00:15:45,519 --> 00:15:50,480 just an attempt to give a scientific plausibility that that 275 00:15:50,759 --> 00:15:53,600 that God could then plug into. It's not those arguments 276 00:15:53,639 --> 00:15:56,080 don't prove God. But what they do is they show 277 00:15:56,200 --> 00:16:00,120 that their theism is not incompatible with science. There for 278 00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:04,600 you are justified in making the leap if you want 279 00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:06,960 to go further like and believe the Bible or believe 280 00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:09,320 all those things. 281 00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:12,679 Speaker 3: More on thinking upside down and then trying to flip 282 00:16:12,720 --> 00:16:16,320 it right side up with my guest Dan Barker. Next, 283 00:16:20,720 --> 00:16:25,759 Continuing now my conversation with author Dan Barker about his 284 00:16:25,919 --> 00:16:30,919 new book, Controduction, Dan. I just released a speech to 285 00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:35,679 YouTube where I take on God the intelligent designer with 286 00:16:36,080 --> 00:16:39,240 some ideas for improvement. So I was talking about bad 287 00:16:39,559 --> 00:16:42,360 design that you know, those who are talking about fine 288 00:16:42,399 --> 00:16:46,200 tuning and optimization. I mean it was everything from the 289 00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:49,960 appendix to harmful UV rays, to the birth canal to 290 00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:53,519 blind fish with eyes. I mean, you name it. But 291 00:16:53,799 --> 00:16:57,519 when you get into the concept of controduction, you get 292 00:16:57,559 --> 00:17:00,679 into fine tuning, how do you approach someone says, well, man, 293 00:17:00,720 --> 00:17:03,559 if the Earth was this much closer, this much further 294 00:17:03,639 --> 00:17:06,599 from the sun, we would either fry or freeze. How 295 00:17:06,599 --> 00:17:07,640 do you explain that? 296 00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:10,319 Speaker 2: And that is the essence of the fine tuning argument. 297 00:17:10,720 --> 00:17:12,680 And it's important to point out that the fine tuning 298 00:17:12,759 --> 00:17:18,279 argument is based on natural laws, natural principles, natural probabilities, 299 00:17:18,319 --> 00:17:22,720 and real mathematics in the real world. So, yeah, it 300 00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:26,079 does seem improbable if the universe were tuned for life, 301 00:17:26,839 --> 00:17:30,240 any one of those twenty or so parameters or constants 302 00:17:30,839 --> 00:17:35,119 that could be the forces like force of gravity, electroweak force, 303 00:17:36,319 --> 00:17:39,559 the cosmological constant, and so on. There's about twenty or 304 00:17:39,599 --> 00:17:42,119 so of them. If any of them were off by 305 00:17:42,160 --> 00:17:46,440 the tiniest amount, then life would not be permissible. That's 306 00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:49,799 assuming that life is the aim right, It's like the 307 00:17:49,960 --> 00:17:54,079 rivers and the borders, right, it's assuming you've got it backwards. Yes, 308 00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:56,759 life would not be permissible. But who in the world 309 00:17:56,799 --> 00:18:00,000 said that the cosmos has to be aimed at life 310 00:18:00,119 --> 00:18:04,720 being permissible? And in Victor Stanger's book The Fallacy of 311 00:18:04,759 --> 00:18:06,920 Fine Tuning, he was a wonderful man. He died not 312 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:12,119 too long ago. He was an astrophysicist. He concludes the 313 00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:16,319 universe was not fine tuned for us. We were fine 314 00:18:16,359 --> 00:18:20,119 tuned for the universe. It's like the glasses in the nose, right, 315 00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:22,799 You've got it backwards if you think the universe was 316 00:18:22,839 --> 00:18:28,119 fine tuned for us. And he shows that actually it's 317 00:18:28,119 --> 00:18:30,920 true that if you miss with one of those constants, ooops, 318 00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:33,160 the whole thing falls apart. But he shows in his 319 00:18:33,200 --> 00:18:37,039 book that if it's like dials, imagine God stumbles upon 320 00:18:37,079 --> 00:18:40,200 this primordial soup of constants that he has to like 321 00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:43,319 twist them until he finally makes life up here. Victor 322 00:18:43,319 --> 00:18:45,720 Stanger shows that, yeah, if you twist this one off 323 00:18:45,720 --> 00:18:48,519 this much, then life's not permissible. But if you twist 324 00:18:48,599 --> 00:18:51,319 this one this way, like writing a bike, you could 325 00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:54,119 stay in balance. You could have a universe that is 326 00:18:54,200 --> 00:18:58,640 life permitting, maybe not necessarily carbon based biological life, but 327 00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:02,640 you could have a life permitting universe with other variations 328 00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:05,480 of those constants being tuned in a different ways. And 329 00:19:05,519 --> 00:19:08,119 he gives examples of it, and I can't even understand 330 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:11,200 his all of his equations, but he gives the exact 331 00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:14,279 examples and then Lawrence Krass comes along and he said, well, 332 00:19:14,319 --> 00:19:16,400 you know what, some of those constants are not that 333 00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:21,640 fine tuned. The cosmological constant is very tiny, but it 334 00:19:21,680 --> 00:19:24,680 could have been less. In fact, as Krous points out, 335 00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:28,119 if the cosmological concept were even smaller than it is, 336 00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:33,720 life would be more probable. So there's all those ways 337 00:19:33,720 --> 00:19:35,640 that you can approach it, but I think the basic 338 00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:39,079 way is just to go like, you know, like Gilda 339 00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:41,880 Radner on Saturday Night Live, she realized, oops, I got 340 00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:45,440 it wrong, and she says, never mind. We were thinking 341 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,200 about it the wrong way around, like we're looking through 342 00:19:47,200 --> 00:19:50,200 the wrong side of a telescope. Oops, never mind, I 343 00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:51,759 got it wrong, and flip it around. Then you can 344 00:19:51,839 --> 00:19:55,680 see how things are. It's only because we humans think 345 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:59,200 the cosmos must be aimed at us, because we are 346 00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:02,359 all human centered, that we tie ourselves in knots, kind 347 00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:05,119 of like what Ptolemy did with this solar system. In 348 00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:07,480 the second century. Ptolemy came up with what's not as 349 00:20:07,519 --> 00:20:10,880 the Toolemac solar system. He couldn't understand the motion of 350 00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:14,200 the planet, so he invented this weird Rube Goldberg machine 351 00:20:14,759 --> 00:20:18,200 concept of spheres within spheres to account for their retrograde, 352 00:20:18,519 --> 00:20:21,200 and this really complicated thing. When all he had to 353 00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:24,640 do is realize the Sun's and I rising, we are, 354 00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:27,839 that whole thing just disappeared. You don't even need the 355 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:30,680 argument because there's no question there in the first place. 356 00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:35,680 Speaker 3: When you were an evangelical pastor. How much of this 357 00:20:36,039 --> 00:20:38,880 was I guess what Carl Sagan would have called the 358 00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:43,319 folly of human conceits. How much of this was I 359 00:20:43,359 --> 00:20:46,200 want to be superior, right, I'm feeding the ego, I 360 00:20:46,279 --> 00:20:48,799 am the center of all things. Did that feed some 361 00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:50,759 of your perception about the universe? 362 00:20:51,599 --> 00:20:56,160 Speaker 2: Maybe in retrospect, looking back on it, maybe at the 363 00:20:56,279 --> 00:20:59,799 time I didn't think that. At the time, I thought 364 00:20:59,839 --> 00:21:03,720 we humans were worms, We humans were small, We needed 365 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:07,240 to bow down, shackle our wrists, lower our head before 366 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,240 the Great Master, and that the Great Lord was deserving 367 00:21:11,240 --> 00:21:15,559 of worship, and he's all powerful and so and so 368 00:21:15,640 --> 00:21:18,279 we're sinners and we're little and we need his grace 369 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:22,519 all of that. So that's what I was thinking as 370 00:21:22,519 --> 00:21:25,519 I was preaching that how great thou art? You know, 371 00:21:25,559 --> 00:21:28,400 we were created for His glory, you know the Westminster 372 00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:32,759 Confession to worship. We're here to give glory to God. 373 00:21:33,519 --> 00:21:36,720 So you know, what is the end of man? So 374 00:21:36,799 --> 00:21:38,799 that's what I thought, that there really was a being 375 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,559 who was deserving of our worship. And the next book 376 00:21:41,599 --> 00:21:44,799 I'm working on is going to address that question. Why 377 00:21:44,799 --> 00:21:49,880 do we have this innate instinctive need to worship anything? 378 00:21:49,920 --> 00:21:52,480 And I think there's a good adaptive explanation for that 379 00:21:52,519 --> 00:21:55,400 which I'm going to argue this whole idea. If you 380 00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:58,839 look at the postures of prayer, you know, prayer, Your 381 00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:02,000 hands are shackled, your head has bowed, your kneeservent, you're 382 00:22:02,039 --> 00:22:06,119 prostrate on the floor. They're the same postures of slavery, 383 00:22:06,599 --> 00:22:09,440 exactly the same if you look at it. You go 384 00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,359 to the airport and you see the chapel signed as 385 00:22:11,559 --> 00:22:14,400 a person like this, kneeled down like this, humbled little, 386 00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:17,799 like I'm praying before the big, great Lord. So in 387 00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:22,759 my mind, I had a very negative perception or a 388 00:22:22,799 --> 00:22:26,119 negative image of human nature. We were bad, we were little, 389 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:29,240 we were small. We deserve damnation and we can't do 390 00:22:29,319 --> 00:22:31,319 it on our own because we're just not good enough, 391 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:33,960 and we needed the grace and the goodness of this 392 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:35,240 wonderful God. 393 00:22:35,680 --> 00:22:39,599 Speaker 3: There was no one worthy, no, not one. Yeah, you 394 00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:44,759 get into eternal life as a contraduction. Hope you understand 395 00:22:44,799 --> 00:22:45,599 that where are you going? 396 00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:49,359 Speaker 2: Well? So I have a chapter in the contradiction called life, 397 00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:53,160 And a lot of people think life like it says 398 00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:55,599 in the Bible we have this treasure in earthen vessels, 399 00:22:56,039 --> 00:22:58,519 that life is something that comes from the outside and 400 00:22:58,799 --> 00:23:02,599 inhabits this physical being of ours. And a lot of 401 00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:05,359 religionous think that that we are something that transcends, we 402 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:10,880 are souls. And there's even some non religious people who 403 00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:14,480 think life is some kind it's called vitalism, that there's 404 00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:18,160 something alive that comes into us, as if these boxes, 405 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,799 these physical boxes call our bodies, are receptacles for this 406 00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:24,680 thing that comes into us. I think that's the contraduction. 407 00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,039 Life is not something that comes into us from the outside. 408 00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:32,000 Life is something that emanates out of us. We measure 409 00:23:32,039 --> 00:23:36,680 life by body temperature, at least we measure life by 410 00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:40,200 the movement of the organism. And when the body dies, 411 00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:43,680 people ask, when the body dies, where does the soul go? 412 00:23:43,759 --> 00:23:47,359 Where does the mind go? Well, mind and soul, if 413 00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:50,720 you can use that word soul, mind and consciousness are 414 00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:55,759 really just functions of an organism that's working. The brain, 415 00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:59,680 right When the brain is working, nothing's coming into it. 416 00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:03,119 When working, it's creating this whatever you want to call it. 417 00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:05,640 In fact, we are aware of things, and then when 418 00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:08,519 we become aware of the fact that we are aware 419 00:24:08,599 --> 00:24:11,200 of things, we create these loops. That's what I think 420 00:24:11,279 --> 00:24:15,000 is consciousness what Daniel Dennett called the center of narrative gravity. 421 00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:18,720 So when the body dies, when the stomach dies, nobody 422 00:24:18,759 --> 00:24:22,839 asks where did the digestion go? Or when the heart dies, 423 00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,400 where did the circulation go? The word mind and circulation 424 00:24:26,559 --> 00:24:30,599 and digestion are labels for the functioning of the living being. 425 00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:33,920 If you see a plane flying over, how does the 426 00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:36,960 sound of that airplane travel with the airplane? How does 427 00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,799 that happen? Well, it's not because the sound is something 428 00:24:39,839 --> 00:24:43,839 outside of it is produced by it. So death basically 429 00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:46,880 is the cessation of all the organs of the body. 430 00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,920 And nothing has left, nothing has gone, Nothing spooky went 431 00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,200 out of us somewhere. We just died. When we eat 432 00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,799 a piece of steak. If you're a meat eater, do 433 00:24:56,839 --> 00:24:59,279 you think you're eating a soul when you eat steak? Well, 434 00:24:59,319 --> 00:25:02,400 what happened? Where did it go? Well, that's backward thinking, 435 00:25:02,559 --> 00:25:04,839 that's thinking that life it comes into you when actually 436 00:25:04,839 --> 00:25:07,960 life emanates out of you. This contradiction. So therefore I 437 00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:10,359 can't live on. And I have a whole chapter in 438 00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:13,319 the book about time too. The whole concept of eternal 439 00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:16,599 life is an incoherent concept, just like it's the same 440 00:25:16,599 --> 00:25:18,920 with the concept of time travel is also incoherent. 441 00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:23,200 Speaker 3: I remember looking at eternity in the Bible after I 442 00:25:23,279 --> 00:25:26,119 left the faith. I didn't really thought it through when 443 00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:28,680 I was a believer, except wow, I get to go on, 444 00:25:29,039 --> 00:25:32,000 because I was afraid of death, and I had this 445 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:35,799 very nebulous idea of a happy place with color and 446 00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:38,759 light in the family, dog and music and mansions and 447 00:25:38,799 --> 00:25:41,480 all those things. I hadn't thought about those verses where 448 00:25:42,039 --> 00:25:45,160 essentially I sit around and just say, Holy, Holy, Holy, 449 00:25:45,279 --> 00:25:47,559 is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and 450 00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,599 is to come forever, Which does not sound like heaven 451 00:25:51,680 --> 00:25:54,519 to me. Dan, And do you explore the concepts of 452 00:25:54,559 --> 00:25:57,480 eternity your own concept when you were a preacher? 453 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:01,160 Speaker 2: Well, when I was a preacher, it did sounds nice 454 00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:03,160 to me because I was in love with that Lord, 455 00:26:03,559 --> 00:26:05,039 you know what I mean. I was in love with 456 00:26:05,079 --> 00:26:08,680 that God. I truly worshiped, and unlike a lot of believers. 457 00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:10,960 I actually got goosebumps when I was praying. So I 458 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:15,759 felt this loving, parental, guiding father figure that was with 459 00:26:15,839 --> 00:26:17,720 me and that someday I was going to be with him. 460 00:26:17,759 --> 00:26:20,519 I mean to me, that was attracted. I didn't think 461 00:26:20,559 --> 00:26:25,000 through all the details about. Like Woody Allen asked, the 462 00:26:25,039 --> 00:26:27,160 trouble with eternal life is when does it end? 463 00:26:27,279 --> 00:26:27,519 Speaker 3: You know? 464 00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,799 Speaker 2: It just there's no end to it. And in my 465 00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:34,000 book Life Driven Purpose, I point out that real purpose 466 00:26:34,039 --> 00:26:37,799 in life, purpose and meaning comes from trying to solve problems. 467 00:26:38,039 --> 00:26:40,759 That's where purpose comes from. We have challenges, we have problems, 468 00:26:40,759 --> 00:26:43,880 and whatever they are, we work to solve. That gives 469 00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:46,759 us meaning. But in heaven there won't be any problems. 470 00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:50,640 Heaven will be meaningless and purposeless. And if you believe 471 00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,400 the Book of Revelation, and a lot of Christians didn't 472 00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:56,559 in the early days and some still don't now, heaven 473 00:26:56,759 --> 00:26:59,440 is just this big cubic city that comes down and 474 00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:02,279 sits on the earth, which is fifteen hundred miles across. 475 00:27:02,839 --> 00:27:06,359 It's a cue basically with one street because there won't 476 00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,200 be vehicles. I suppose the street of Gold is for 477 00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:12,160 the king to promenade, you know, to watch out and 478 00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:16,039 basically we we'll spend the whole time just praising that king, 479 00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:19,119 which I used to find an attractive thought into it. 480 00:27:19,279 --> 00:27:20,839 Like you, I thought it through and I realized that 481 00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:23,160 that's kind of pointless, and it's kind of like you're 482 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:25,599 not even a living being anymore. And there's no sex 483 00:27:25,599 --> 00:27:28,240 in heaven, there's no marriage given in heaven, and there 484 00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:30,000 won't be any sleep in heaven. So what are your 485 00:27:30,079 --> 00:27:32,319 rooms going to be? Like? What are these mansions going 486 00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,119 to actually be? Like? Do you have to eat? Do 487 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:36,240 you have to defecate? 488 00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:36,559 Speaker 1: You? 489 00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:39,039 Speaker 2: Will there be waste management in heaven? I mean, I 490 00:27:39,079 --> 00:27:40,960 think through the details of it, and it becomes a 491 00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:44,079 sort of nebulous, immaterial idea that our souls are going 492 00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:47,599 to just blissfully go up to me. That's the absence 493 00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,599 of life. That's not life after death, that's like death 494 00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:51,359 after death. 495 00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,000 Speaker 3: There you are in the pose of the slave, right 496 00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:57,519 here on your knees with your hands together, and you 497 00:27:57,519 --> 00:27:59,920 were bowing to the Great King as he parades. By 498 00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,559 total digression. This is not in the book, but maybe 499 00:28:02,559 --> 00:28:06,160 it relates. Somebody had said they were talking about why 500 00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,119 it was an apologist like an armchair apologist talking about 501 00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:14,480 why there's so much awfulness, so much suffering on this planet, 502 00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:17,319 and one of the sort of the knee jerk responses 503 00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,519 is free will. Well, God gave us free will, and 504 00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:25,359 we chose poorly and things went to hell literally, And 505 00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,920 so then the next question is, well, will there be 506 00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:31,680 any strife or pain or cancer or abuse or any 507 00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,480 of those things now infant death, Will any of that 508 00:28:34,519 --> 00:28:36,960 stuff happen in heaven? And they say no, Well, then 509 00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,759 are you saying that there is no free will in heaven? 510 00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:43,200 And then their brain explode. No, no, No, is that a 511 00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:43,839 bad argument? 512 00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:49,599 Speaker 2: Dan, Well, I guess it's not incoherent to make that argument. 513 00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:51,200 I mean, if that's. 514 00:28:51,039 --> 00:28:56,000 Speaker 3: A compliment, thanks, Dan's totally incoherent. 515 00:28:56,440 --> 00:29:03,119 Speaker 2: No, I'm saying their argument is not, oh not yours. Yeah, 516 00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:06,079 your point is very very good, but their argument, i think, 517 00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:09,759 is within the context of their faith system, is not incoherent. 518 00:29:09,799 --> 00:29:13,039 But yeah, you're right if they're saying, and I don't 519 00:29:13,039 --> 00:29:15,400 think they would all say this, that free will exists 520 00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,119 so that we can deal with these problems in life, 521 00:29:18,519 --> 00:29:20,440 and there won't be any free will in heaven, because 522 00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,880 if you're going to worship God for eternity, would you 523 00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,960 have the freedom not to? Apparently that's what happened with Lucifer. 524 00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,599 Lucifer was a creative being who somehow had the free 525 00:29:29,599 --> 00:29:32,200 will to change his or it's or their minds. So 526 00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,920 I do have a chapter in the book about free will, 527 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:41,640 which I think is also an illustration of contraductive thinking. 528 00:29:42,519 --> 00:29:45,000 And to make a really long story short, it's kind 529 00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:46,680 of like looking in a mirror. When you look in 530 00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:48,519 the mirror, you think left and right or reversed, but 531 00:29:48,559 --> 00:29:50,839 they're not. It's really front and back that's reversed in 532 00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:53,839 the mirror. And if you can flip that around, you're 533 00:29:53,839 --> 00:29:56,480 actually not looking at yourself in the mirror. You are 534 00:29:56,519 --> 00:30:00,920 looking with yourself in the mirror, and so the goes away. 535 00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:03,839 You imagine that person's looking back at us, but actually 536 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,200 looking through the paper with us. So with free will, 537 00:30:08,279 --> 00:30:12,279 the analogy I use is that looking backward, looking to 538 00:30:12,319 --> 00:30:15,799 the past. I think, and many philosophers and scientists think, 539 00:30:16,119 --> 00:30:19,119 it's obvious that there's no such thing as libertarian free will. 540 00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:21,160 It's all determined if you look back, and you can 541 00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:23,240 look at all the previous causes that led to you. 542 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,839 But flipping around, like looking in the mirror and looking 543 00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:30,319 forward looking into the future. Since we don't know the future, 544 00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:32,640 we don't know what it's going to be now, we 545 00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:36,160 will later will know what happened. We have this illusion 546 00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,119 that that mirror is looking back at it. We have 547 00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,599 this illusion that since I freedom make my choice between 548 00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,400 now and then, even though looking backward will know you 549 00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,039 were not, at least for now. We have this illusion, 550 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:51,519 I think, and some people think it's a pernicious illusion. 551 00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:54,279 I think it's a beautiful illusion, kind of like the 552 00:30:54,319 --> 00:30:57,160 illusion of depth perception, which helps us navigate the world. 553 00:30:57,720 --> 00:31:01,079 I think free will is an illusion, but it's a 554 00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:05,200 useful illusion in the meantime, as we before you make 555 00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:09,039 your final decision, you have that gap. And by the way, 556 00:31:09,119 --> 00:31:13,319 if there's a God who knows the future, he also 557 00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:17,160 knows his own future decisions. He cannot look forward and 558 00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,759 have a period of uncertainty during which he's going to 559 00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:23,880 what should I do? He knows in advance. Therefore he 560 00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,000 doesn't have free will, like God who knows the future 561 00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:28,599 cannot have free will. I know. They try to argue 562 00:31:28,599 --> 00:31:30,839 out of that by saying, well, he's a timeless being, 563 00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:35,000 whatever that means. He exists outside of time, but free 564 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,559 will in the illustration you gave, I think raise is 565 00:31:38,599 --> 00:31:42,200 another serious problem. And that God created Adam and Eve, 566 00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:44,720 and God is a perfect being and he can only 567 00:31:44,759 --> 00:31:47,799 create perfect things. And yet he gave Adam and Eve 568 00:31:47,839 --> 00:31:53,319 free will, And for some reason, Eve chose wrong eve 569 00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:57,359 exercise for supposed free will, and she made the wrong choice. Ah, 570 00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,319 Now the human race is damned because she made this 571 00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,559 wrong choice. Seems like we inherited that, doesn't it. It's 572 00:32:03,559 --> 00:32:06,119 like I say, in our genes or something. But why 573 00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:09,119 did Eve make the wrong choice? There was obviously some 574 00:32:09,279 --> 00:32:12,880 flaw in her nature if you believe the story. I 575 00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:16,279 don't believe a story. But if the story's true, why 576 00:32:16,319 --> 00:32:18,880 did Eve make the wrong choice? There was something wrong 577 00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:23,319 with her before she made that wrong decision? Who created 578 00:32:23,359 --> 00:32:27,680 that flaw? If Eve was created by God with a flaw, 579 00:32:27,759 --> 00:32:30,480 who created that flaw and who's responsible for it? So 580 00:32:30,559 --> 00:32:33,039 what good is the free will defense in that case? 581 00:32:34,079 --> 00:32:37,799 Speaker 3: I'm going And this is again a digression. I'll come 582 00:32:37,839 --> 00:32:39,400 back to the end of the book in just a second. 583 00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:43,000 But it becomes infinite regress, doesn't it if we don't 584 00:32:43,039 --> 00:32:46,240 have free will? But then we ask God to change 585 00:32:46,279 --> 00:32:50,160 what his will is then we're asking a perfect plan 586 00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:52,880 to be altered. So was it imperfect to begin with? 587 00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,119 Or was God expecting us to pray because he fore 588 00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,559 knew we would drop to our knees and petition him 589 00:32:59,599 --> 00:33:03,880 for some alteration, some miracle whatever. And then he's holding 590 00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:06,640 the answer hostage. But he meant to do it. I mean, 591 00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,759 you've gone in this sort of hamster wheel, right, it's 592 00:33:10,799 --> 00:33:11,960 maddening after a while. 593 00:33:12,359 --> 00:33:15,960 Speaker 2: There's a big theological word kenosis, which just means that 594 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:21,759 God emptied himself when Jesus came, And so God created 595 00:33:21,799 --> 00:33:26,519 this physical universe with risk in it, with problems in it, 596 00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,599 and with suffering in it, so that we could then 597 00:33:30,799 --> 00:33:33,880 test our free will against that. If God had not allowed, 598 00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:37,319 not created this big mess of the universe, then we 599 00:33:37,359 --> 00:33:39,480 would just be robots. We would just be like the angel. 600 00:33:39,559 --> 00:33:43,720 So God is temporarily willingly allowing the universe we live 601 00:33:43,759 --> 00:33:46,960 in to be a degraded state within which then we 602 00:33:47,079 --> 00:33:49,960 can exercise. And those few of us who do turn 603 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,200 around and say yes to God, He's going to bless them, 604 00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:55,039 and the rest, of course, are either abolished or go 605 00:33:55,079 --> 00:33:59,160 into eternal torment, depending on your theology. So it's all 606 00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:01,680 done for a test in One of the theodicies that 607 00:34:01,759 --> 00:34:06,000 some Christian apologists the theologians offer is the what's called 608 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:09,199 the character building or the sole building analogy that the 609 00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,440 reason we have suffering and evil is so that we 610 00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:15,480 can grow from it it becomes stronger. And how in 611 00:34:15,519 --> 00:34:18,880 the world could that happen unless there were challenges and 612 00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,559 obstacles and threats and risks in the real world. 613 00:34:22,199 --> 00:34:25,079 Speaker 3: I know Doctor Norman Geisler used to say that you 614 00:34:25,159 --> 00:34:27,639 have to have the crooked line so that we know 615 00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:32,119 what the straight line looks like. And his argument partially was, well, 616 00:34:32,559 --> 00:34:35,840 how would we know what good is unless God contrasted 617 00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,239 it against evil, and then with the evil he can 618 00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:43,000 demonstrate his great goodness, So evil becomes a utility. I 619 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,480 think it was in Isaiah forty five or it was 620 00:34:45,519 --> 00:34:53,440 said that God created evil. This conversation about contraduction continues 621 00:34:53,639 --> 00:35:01,880 in just a second. Hang on. My special guest for 622 00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,639 the show today, Dan Barker, co president of the Freedom 623 00:35:05,679 --> 00:35:10,960 from Religion Foundation, author of many books, including his latest Contraduction. 624 00:35:13,119 --> 00:35:15,440 I remember I was I'm trying to think of the university. 625 00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:19,199 It's about half an hour east of here, Northeastern State. 626 00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:22,000 Maybe it was a debate. It was an atheist and 627 00:35:22,079 --> 00:35:26,239 an apologist, and the apologist said something fascinating. He said, 628 00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,320 you know, if I wasn't a Christian, I'd probably be 629 00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,920 a murderer. I mean, he just said something like that 630 00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,000 on the stage. You know, if it wasn't for Jesus, 631 00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:34,800 who knows why I could be a rapist or a 632 00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:38,159 murderer or something like that. And I remember the atheist 633 00:35:38,199 --> 00:35:40,519 guy said, well, in your case, I'm kind of glad 634 00:35:40,559 --> 00:35:43,960 you're a Christian, right, I mean, your case might be 635 00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,480 a good thing to be a Christian. But I find 636 00:35:46,519 --> 00:35:50,639 that claim a bit insulting. If you didn't have my God, 637 00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:53,320 you could be I saw one on Twitter this morning, 638 00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:57,800 you would be a criminal. So you get into ethics, morality, 639 00:35:57,840 --> 00:36:00,719 how do we know right and wrong? In the book contraduction, 640 00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:02,679 you want to give me just a primer kind of 641 00:36:02,679 --> 00:36:03,239 set it up. 642 00:36:03,639 --> 00:36:05,440 Speaker 2: Well, first of all, if we look at the example 643 00:36:05,519 --> 00:36:08,880 of God in the Bible, he himself was the genocidal 644 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,880 murderer and what I would call the immoral character. But 645 00:36:14,199 --> 00:36:17,039 I think morality is one of the chapters in the 646 00:36:17,039 --> 00:36:21,239 book Contradiction is an example of contraduction itself, and that 647 00:36:21,519 --> 00:36:25,639 we think morality should be top down, when really morality 648 00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:29,159 is bottom up. We don't measure our actions, or we 649 00:36:29,159 --> 00:36:32,280 shouldn't measure our actions by the decrees and the commands 650 00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:34,960 of some big lord and master. That's what the masters want, 651 00:36:35,079 --> 00:36:37,079 right to know what is right and wrong, because then 652 00:36:37,159 --> 00:36:39,199 right and wrong just becomes a matter of the decree 653 00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:43,320 of the master. But real morality, and I don't think 654 00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:45,679 there's such a thing as objective moral values, but I 655 00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,360 do think the values that we hold in our mind 656 00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:52,320 that we call moral can be objectively justified, not by 657 00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:55,079 referring to this top down model, but by flipping it 658 00:36:55,480 --> 00:37:00,360 contraductively and referring to the real world. Morality is really 659 00:37:00,559 --> 00:37:02,800 a measure of harm, and the way to be a 660 00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:05,559 moral person is to act with the intention of minimizing 661 00:37:05,639 --> 00:37:08,400 harm and harm whatever it is, it's natural. Harm is 662 00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:11,440 something real. You can name a thousand things that are harmful. 663 00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,639 And so to measure our moral values, we would refer 664 00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:19,800 to the natural world bottom up. What are the actual 665 00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,679 consequences of my action, of my decisions? What are the 666 00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,639 actual fruit? Should I put this chemical in the river 667 00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:28,079 or should I use this harm? You know what I mean. 668 00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,199 That's how we determine what is right and wrong by 669 00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:36,440 actual reference, justifiably referencing objectively in the real world, rather 670 00:37:36,519 --> 00:37:37,960 than following orders. 671 00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,280 Speaker 3: I will say, you know, being I'm like you, I'm 672 00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,480 a frontline guy. I've read a lot of books, you know, 673 00:37:44,639 --> 00:37:48,159 listen to a lot of audiobooks along these lines. But 674 00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:52,679 I've never seen or read or heard anything quite like Contraduction. 675 00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:54,639 And I think that's one of the reasons that I 676 00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:57,480 was sort of glad to preview it when you'd sent 677 00:37:57,519 --> 00:37:59,679 it out, which is why I had the subtitle, because 678 00:37:59,679 --> 00:38:03,079 it's had that at the beginning. But I've never heard 679 00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:08,239 the inversion phrased and compiled in this specific way. And 680 00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:11,440 it's an easily digestible book. It's not like War and Peace. 681 00:38:11,679 --> 00:38:14,320 I mean, this is something somebody could probably read in 682 00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:15,320 the weekend. 683 00:38:15,079 --> 00:38:19,559 Speaker 2: Right well. Ac Grayling, the Eminem's British philosopher, he read 684 00:38:19,599 --> 00:38:22,599 it and one day he said, and he's read. In fact, 685 00:38:22,599 --> 00:38:24,599 he put a blurb on the book. So it is short, 686 00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:30,320 and it's spread out. It's got some cute illustrations by Marcostelius, 687 00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:35,320 who's a physician in Santiago, Chile. And so I think 688 00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,800 it's a fun book. I think it's light, and I 689 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,639 think it just scratches the surface. And I invite readers 690 00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,519 to offer examples of their own, from their own field 691 00:38:44,039 --> 00:38:47,480 of what they think is contraductory thinking. So it's starting 692 00:38:47,519 --> 00:38:48,159 a conversation. 693 00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:52,840 Speaker 3: I'm going to petition the dictionary like Webster's Dictionary. This 694 00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,199 is a word that probably should be included in the future. 695 00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,559 So any final thoughts on the book before I let 696 00:38:59,639 --> 00:39:01,480 you go, No, I mean, just give me the brochure 697 00:39:01,559 --> 00:39:02,159 real fast. 698 00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,159 Speaker 2: You should petition Stephen Pinker because he's the editor of 699 00:39:05,199 --> 00:39:08,039 the American Heritage Dictionary and he actually gave a blurb 700 00:39:08,079 --> 00:39:12,519 to the book. Contraduction is an innocent fallacy that happens 701 00:39:12,559 --> 00:39:15,239 to all of us, and not just with religion. It 702 00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:18,079 could be all sorts of things in life. It can 703 00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:20,719 be you know, free will or sleep, or it can 704 00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,000 be looking in the mirror, it can be looking at 705 00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:27,199 the sunrise. And in order to combat that and to 706 00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:31,000 minimize the risk of having faulty premises before your logic 707 00:39:31,039 --> 00:39:35,719 even begins, we have to actively look for errors and 708 00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,280 fallacies in our own mind. We have to actively look 709 00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,159 kind of like a continuity supervisor in a movie production, 710 00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:46,079 looking to make sure that in the scenes everything fits together. 711 00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,519 The viewer of the movie doesn't look for that stuff, 712 00:39:48,639 --> 00:39:52,039 but the continuity supervisor does. And so I challenge most 713 00:39:52,079 --> 00:39:56,880 readers to be their own continuity supervisors and look for 714 00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:00,760 areas where we might indeed be flipping our oppression of reality. 715 00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:07,679 Speaker 3: Thanks evangelical author hero legend brother Dan Barker Man, It's 716 00:40:07,679 --> 00:40:10,079 always good to cross paths. I'll link the book in 717 00:40:10,119 --> 00:40:13,320 the description box. All success with it. Good stuff, and 718 00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:14,519 let's talk soon. 719 00:40:14,559 --> 00:40:18,679 Speaker 2: Okay, thank you, Seth, You're a real brother not in Christ. 720 00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:22,760 Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a 721 00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,440 complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and 722 00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:30,119 t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist 723 00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:33,840 pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events 724 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:41,079 and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.