Transcription
Unless you're raised in a Baptist Sunday school, you probably think that if you believe in God, you should be able to explain why. Luckily, Christians and other philosophers have been answering this question for over 2,000 years.
Evidentialism tries to argue for God by giving evidence of supernatural events. For example, a lot of Christians think the resurrection of Christ can be historically proven because there were a lot of eyewitnesses who all died for their faith, and generally, people don't die for something they know isn't true. Sometimes, people give evidence of super superatural things like demonic possessions, where people start speaking in languages they don't know, or near-death experiences, where people see things outside their body that they shouldn't have been able to see.
The moral argument is basically: objective morality is only real if God is real, but objective morality is real, so therefore God is real. Question: Is cannibalism good or bad? I think it's good. I think it's bad. I think it's good. I think it's bad. Which one of them is correct? Now, I'm assuming you agree with this one. If you don't, please stay away from me. But how do you know that he's actually correct? How do you know that these aren't just different opinions? Our little friend here can only be objectively correct if there's a supreme authority that says cannibalism is bad, and that supreme authority is what we would call God.
The cosmological argument is basically that something must have caused everything else. Everything that happens has a cause, and that has a cause, and that has a cause. So where does this go? Does this go on forever? That's not possible. At some some point, there needs to be a first cause of everything else. There needs to be an unmoved mover, an uncaused causer, an unchanged changer. It needs to be eternal because if it ever starts or stops existing, that's change, and it can't do that. It needs to be outside the universe because everything in the universe is caused. It also needs to be all-powerful because if it can't be moved but it can move anything else, that means it's all-powerful. And this is what we would call God.
I don't get it. Okay, let's make it even harder then. Everything is a mixture of act, meaning what it is, and potency, meaning what it could be. For example, a baby actually is alive, and it could be an adult. An apple actually is red, and it has the potency to be eaten. So if you eat an apple, you're actualizing its potency to be eaten. But you also are a mixture of act and potency. For example, you have the potency to be strong, but you're not. Anytime something changes you, it's actualizing a potency in you. Anytime a change happens, you have one thing actualizing another. But you can't go back forever. So eventually, you need to go back to an unactualized actualizer, which we call God. God is the being that's pure act, meaning he is everything that he possibly could be. This means he must be eternal, because if he's not eternal, that means he has the potential to not exist, but there is no potential in God. So that means God must always exist. Also, if God is everything he could be, he's also all-powerful because he cannot change, and that means nothing else could possibly do anything to God.
This argument is the most complicated. It's originally from from Aristotle, and it's also used by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles.
Pascal's Wager is much simpler and it's more of a thought experiment than an argument. Let's say you're an atheist, and atheism turns out to be correct. Nothing happens after you die. Well, then you don't really gain or lose anything. It's just kind of neutral for you. But let's say you're an atheist and it turns out you're wrong, and God is real, then it could be very bad for you. Now, let's say you believe in God, and it turns out atheism is correct. Well, then you still don't gain or lose anything. It's just neutral. But if you believe in God and God is real, then you could gain everything. So between these two possibilities, which one do you want to bet on? This one gives you a much better chance, so it's better for you to believe in God.
The theological argument says that stuff in the universe seems to have a purpose, so that means the universe must have had a designer. If you found a machine lying around, you would assume that somebody designed the machine. So the theological argument tries to argue that the universe works like a machine, so somebody must have designed the universe. Things in nature like the human cell or the the ecosystem of the world are very complex and they work like a machine. Now, Darwinian evolution can explain why that is, but there's also things Darwinian evolution can't explain, like the four constants of the universe. There are physical constants like the gravitational constant and the electron charge, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force that are perfectly fine-tuned such that if they were even the slightest bit different, the entire universe would immediately collapse in on itself.
The ontological argument says God exists because of the way he is. Bruh, no seriously. God is defined as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. That means God must be all-powerful because being all-powerful is greater than having limited power. God must be all-knowing because being all-knowing is greater than having limited knowledge. God must be all-good because being all-good is greater than being flawed. And God must exist because existing is greater than nonexisting. Way, just because we can think of a greatest possible being doesn't mean it actually exists. Well, actually, it does, because existing in reality is greater than just existing in the mind. Okay, but I could use that to argue for the existence of the greatest possible pizza. Well, actually, no you can't, because the definition of pizza implies limitations like a limited size and able to be broken. If you had a pizza that was indestructible, eternal, all-powerful, and infinitely large, it wouldn't be a pizza anymore. It would just be God, basically. If your pizza gets infinitely great, it'll turn into God.
There is also the argument from personal experience. It may sound silly, but everyone does see the world through the lens of their own personal experience. A lot of people are convinced God exists either because of supernatural events they've seen or because of answered prayers or just coincidences in their life. So this is very good at convincing oneself that God exists, but not very good at convincing other people.
The transcendental argument basically says without God, nothing can make sense at all. There's a lot of things we assume, but we can't prove. We assume that logic works. We assume that there's consistency in the natural world. We assume that truth exists. But we can't prove any of these things scientifically because these are the basic assumptions we need to make to even do science. All of these things make sense if we presuppose a worldview where God exists, because then we can say all these other things are grounded in the mind of God. But if God doesn't exist, then we have no justification for the things we assume, and everything just collapses.
There is the argument from the mind or consciousness, which says consciousness cannot be explained naturally. Generally, the atheist explanation of consciousness is that our brain is just a very advanced biological machine. But unlike our minds, machines can be reduced to their parts. Now, our brain can be reduced to its brain cells, but that's not the same as the experience of consciousness. For example, you could find a part of our brain that sees the color yellow, but that's not the same as the experience of seeing yellowness. You cannot study consciousness scientifically because one can only observe one's own consciousness. For example, there is no no way to know if we all see the same colors. Who knows, maybe yellow looks like this to me. For all you know, you could be the only person who exists. A single atom is not conscious. Two atoms are not conscious. A bunch of atoms are not conscious. So even if you have a complex system, it's still just a complex arrangement of atoms, which are not conscious. So where does consciousness come from? So this isn't exactly an argument for God, but it is an argument for the human soul because it shows you need something immaterial to explain consciousness.
Then there's the argument from mathematics, which says there's an infinite reality higher than our physical universe. So basic math isn't all that special. For example, the number five corresponds to five apples, and 5 * 3 corresponds to three groups of five apples. But the more you get into advanced math, the more math starts to get disconnected from our world, but it still works. For example, there's real numbers, which are numbers that correspond to real things. But there's also imaginary numbers that are just as mathematically real, but they don't correspond to the real world, which is why they're not called real numbers, but they still exist mathematically even though they don't exist in the real world. Let's look at the five most important numbers in mathematics. One is obviously important because it's the basis for all real numbers. Zero is very important because it's necessary for doing Algebra. I is very important because it's the basis for all imaginary numbers. E is very important for doing exponential functions, and Pi is necessary for doing math with circles. Now, all these numbers are seemingly unrelated to each other, but they fit together beautifully in this equation called Euler's identity. It was discovered by Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians in history, and he saw this as proof that math was designed by God. Also, Euler was a devout Calvinist. More evidence that math has a designer is the Mandelbrot set, which is generated by a very simple equation in the complex plane, but it produces infinite detail. You can keep zooming in on this shape, and it will will keep generating more and more complexity, even though nobody designed this. The Mandelbrot set is infinite and it's not found anywhere in our universe. So that means whatever created it must also be infinite and not from our universe.
So those are the common arguments for God. And by the way, this video wasn't intending to make any of these arguments. It would take a much longer video to do any of these arguments justice. It's just to give you guys an overview of these arguments so you can look more into them yourselves if you want. And now it's time for the best argument of all, which is: "Is trust me, bro."