Debating an Atheist - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

what I want to talk to you tonight about is that the title says how to argue with an atheist I think that there are certain ground rules that should be laid down and defended and then if you if you um follow those ground rules and get the your interocular The Atheist to follow the ground rules then I think you can have a discussion that's logical reasonable and one where the outcome may be somewhat surprising to The Atheist number one you will hear it said that not all positions are equal one person says Q exists the other person says Q doesn't exist you'll be told only the one who says Q exists owes an argument the default position is non-existence you can believe in non-existence unless and until someone proves to you existence only the one who believe that something exists owes an argument indeed I've met people for whom this is almost an aient now I don't know what to do when I'm fighting with somebody else's Axiom other than to provide another Axiom which I think is even more convincing when does a person owe an argument for what he thinks whenever he takes a position if you take a position and you claim it's right you owe an argument whether the position starts there is or the position starts there is not not makes absolutely no difference if you are claiming that something's true about the world then others have the right to ask you why are you claiming that what makes you think so what reasons do you have for your position if you have no reasons for your position then you expose yourself as a kind of not serious person makes the difference whether you're arguing that God exists or God doesn't exist let's take it in ordinary examples of life where we talk about existence and non-existence let's talk about a viral infection one person says he has an infection one person say he does not would we would we follow the following path well let's see the one it says is infected it says there are viruses in his blood that's a claim of existence the one that says he's healthy says there are not viruses in his blood that's claim of non-existence so non-existence wins by default unless and until you have convincing evidence that there are viruses there would anybody do that of course not being healthy and being sick are equally claims to have to be defended if you haven't checked his blood there's no default position surely he's healthy because we haven't checked his blood that's ridiculous if you haven't checked his blood the right position is I don't know whether he's healthy or not that's the right position the symptoms of EA don't show till after a week this person's been in the area and he's he's left there three days ago has he is he is he is he infected or isn't he would anybody say well we have no evidence so for sure he's for sure he's clean that would be ridiculous we would say we haven't checked his blood so we don't know let's check his blood and find out so a Believer owes an argument that God exists an atheist owes an argument that God doesn't exist if we have neither then we are agnostic ICS and we say we don't know whether God exists or not zero argument means zero conviction I would get it so far okay now when you have a conflict someone believes Q someone disbelieves Q really in the debate each one owes an argument for his side I have a recommendation that I I make passionately and I believe is extremely important for clarity let one person do the arguing at a time not both get one to agree okay you have a position you're in favor of Q you believe Q is correct let's hear your reasons for Q and when you respond to him just ask are those reasons genuine are those reasons valid do those reasons produce conviction that Q is correct don't argue for the other side just let him bear as what we call in legal circles the burden of proof let him try to show that Q is correct as this discussion proceeds one of two outcomes can be achieved either he will give you adequate reason to believe Q is correct then you'll accept it or he fails to give you adequate reasons that Q is correct from which we draw what conclusion we don't know whether it's correct or not all we know is he has failed to support it so so far I have no reason to accept it I don't know that it's not correct if might correct there might even be other reasons showing it conclusively to be correct we just haven't found them all we know is that he has failed to defend his claim that Q was correct what ought to happen What ought to happen is he ought to be demoted in his certainty instead of claiming Q was correct he admitted he's ignorant like the rest of us he doesn't know whether it's correct or not is his reasons didn't work his argument failed so then he should reduce himself to the position of ignorance along with the rest of the crowd his fa doesn't make me right but it means he should reduce his certainty that he's right he should admit that he doesn't know that he's right then I could try I try to present my arguments against Q if I succeed then he should change he change he should acknowledge that I'm correct if I fail then we're both ignorant and we end up in the pile with everybody else we just don't know what's right that's a very important strategy I think cause what happens often in debates like this and not only in questions of God somebody's trying to support his position he puts forth his evidence puts forth his arguments and it's really not going too well and there are weaknesses and certain counter examples he didn't consider and there are certain problems with the logic and when he gets desperate he says to the other guy okay show me wrong that's a foul that's a foul that wasn't in the discussion to defeat your certainty that you're right we don't have to show you're wrong all we have to show is that you haven't got enough evidence to convince us that you're right that's much easier than showing he's wrong it's a false defense to say I'm going to hold my position until you prove me wrong it's illogical if I can't support my claim that I'm right then I ought to give up my claim I ought to say I don't know whether I'm right or not that would be the honest thing to do if I say to you prove I'm wrong I'm throwing up a smokees screen as if to make me give up my certainty I'm right you have to prove me wrong that's incorrect you don't have to prove me wrong you have to do something much easier just show that my reasons are not good reasons by the way in an American court of law you have this in Spades a person is accused of a crime what's the job of the prosecutor prove him guilty say again to prove him guilty to prove him guilty prove in American law means doubt Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Beyond A Reasonable Doubt there could be a doubt but we wouldn't call it a reasonable doubt what's the job of the defense attorney create a reasonable doubt any doubt to create a reasonable doubt that's all the defense attorney does not have to show that he's innocent that's not his job just to create a reasonable doubt if the defense attorney wins at the end of the of the trial usually we don't know whether he's guilty or not but I'm not sure this is true but in American law the two verdicts are guilty and not guilty there's no verdict of innocent there's a verdict of not guilty if that means not proven guilty I think that's great that's exactly what it ought to mean the prosecutor failed to prove him guilty so he goes free they're not symmetrical the prosecutor and the defense attorney one has to prove that something happened the other has to show that the proof offered was not a good proof that's all I'm suggesting to set up that kind of asymmetry in the discussion whichever side starts whoever starts let him bear the burden of proof to show that he's right and the respondent should simply examine whether his proof is a good proof or not now this happens in questions of theism when I ask an atheist to give a good argument there is no God very quickly he sees it's not going well as I'll show you and then he says well prove there is a God at that point you call foul that's a foul to defeat you I don't have to prove there is a God all that have to show is you failed to prove your atheism then you have to give up your atheism because you have no good reason for it this happens in values some people believe in absolute values and some people are relativists so the you ask a relativist to show that there aren't any real values that all values are relative and when he runs out of arguments which happens very quickly he says well you prove that there are values no that's wrong that's wrong if he can't show values of relative then he's got to give up saying values of relative he's got to give it up I don't have to prove values are absolute to get him give it up I just have to show he hasn't got a good argument for his position then he should give up his position he has to come over to my side doesn't have to do that but he has to admit his position is not defended okay so my recommendation is if a person comes across and says I'm an atheist because I know there is no God put the burden of proof on him and say okay please show me your argument your reason your evidence that there is no God having read the literature almost all of it is I can show you what's wrong with all the arguments for God that's totally irrelevant it's totally irrelevant that's just a smokescreen that's just passing the book you're telling me there is no God what are your positive arguments that there is no God so for example if we had a complete scientific explanation of the origin of the world or of the non-origin of the world and how the world works could explain everything that happens in detail that would be an argument against the existence of God that would be an argument of course we haven't got that we haven't got anything remotely resembling that but it's the kind of thing that you would want from an atheist to produce the argument from Evil is an attempt to do the job there's so much evil in the world there couldn't be a God who knows everything and who is has the power to run the world and is morally perfect okay that's an argument and indeed when You Face an atheist who wants to make an argument like that so then you have to respond to it and I will show you tonight a few ways to respond to that argument but don't allow the athe is to shift the burden on you and say well prove there is that's a foul declare that out of court and simply get him to say why he thinks there is no God I can tell you that if you're talking to your fellow students talking to most of your professors if you're reading the new atheists the vast majority of what they write is illegally Shifting the burden of proof to the other side and therefore it's strictly speaking out of court are we together so far if I have to convince people that God does exist then I owe an argument but right now we're testing whether the atheist has a position that he can defend now let's take a look briefly anyway at the argument from Evil the argum from Evil is supposed to show there is no God the way Judaism and Christianity and Islam describe God of course to say there is no God you have to have a description to know something about what it is you're talking about his existence or non-existence and the three features of God that are used are that God is all knowing and he's all powerful whatever those exactly mean and he's morally perfect and the thought is that if there is a God who's all knowing and all powerful and morly perfect there shouldn't be any evil there shouldn't be any evil because if he's all knowing he knows about it if he's all powerful he could correct it or even stronger prevent it and he's morally perfect then he ought to prevented so it seems to follow from those three ideas about God together that there's no evil in the world but of course the world has in it an enormous amount of evil and so the argument is that there can't be a God because of the existence of evil that's called the problem of evil is the problem clear it's a very old problem you may have heard of The Book of Job the author of the book of Job was Moses that means the Book of Job is as old as the Torah is and since then the prophets have expressed themselves about it and it's mentioned in the in the tal of the midash and Jewish philosophers have written about the problem until the present day so it isn't as if there isn't a large literature on the subject e EO that's right job is e right and the I would say normal way to address the problem certainly in Jewish and in Christian sources which I know I'm not sure about Islamic sources but I would be surprised if they didn't follow suit is to point out that some evil is deserved let's say as a response to Crime an evil that's deserved isn't the problem it wouldn't affect Mo God's moral perfection if a person committed a crime and God punished him for so doing and the punishment fit the crime was commensurate with the crime and some evil serves good future purpose it's an investment in a future Gain No One complains about the loss of his Capital when he invests it and earns 10% a year and in the meantime he can't use it for barbecue and trips to San to Sri Lanka he doesn't complained about that he's earning 10% a year so a loss that's an investment in a better return in the future is not an evil and it can be argued that suffering that's deserved by crime on the one hand and suffering that's an invest in the future good on the other hand covers the whole ground covers the whole ground there's anything left over or better to put the point slightly more sharply in terms of what I've told you up until now it can be argued that the critic can't show that it doesn't cover the whole ground it's easy enough to see that if you take into account people's failures on the one hand and you take into account the good effects that suffering can have on the other hand it will be impossible for the critic to show his leftover suffering left over outside those two categories left over where the person suffering is innocent and it serves no good purpose he can't show that and if he can't show that then he can't press the problem of evil to press the problem of evil he's got to show there's evil that can't be justified can't be justified when you take into account the extent of human failure and you take into account the way in which suffering can improve a person and create good for him it's impossible to show there's any left over human suffering that hasn't been taken account and that being the case the problem of evil can't be pressed conclusively against the existence of God that's a standard way to respond to the problem of evil yeah how can you on other our perspective prove that suffering will equal to good like I I know there's some cases that it can but other cases that it can't I mean I give examples if you want me to but saying like you know a baby getting killed baby's dead now you know okay fine we really in the world to come and so on and so forth but talking within this realm we can't use that as an as as an argument because there's no evidence for that no no you it depends upon who has the burden of proof again George is accused of a crime the process cutor has to show he's guilty what does the defense attorney have to do no no no he doesn't have to show he's not guilty he has to show that the prosecutor has failed to show him guilty that's all he has to do it's to show the prosecutor has failed to show him guilty if the defense attorney successful we may walk away and say we don't know whether he's guilty or not app to appli to I don't need evidence for my answer I don't need evidence all I have to show is that he has failed to press his case to press his case he has to show that there's suffering which is applied to people who are innocent not guilty and also serves no good purpose in the future he has to show that I don't have to show there's an alternative Al explanation he has to show that there's evidence that escapes those two categories if he can't show that he can't press his argument he has not succeeded in pressing his argument against against against God God that wasn't my job my job was only to examine his argument against God and this is the standard way of doing it people have failures that are hard to identify I was in a city in North America I won't mention the city and a woman came to me and told me a tale of psychological abuse from her husband that was really hair raising hair raising so I said to her why don't you go to the rabbi and ask him to start divorce proceedings and she said I'll tell you why because when he walks out of the house in the morning he's a different person he's a Dr Jaa Mr Hyde to everybody else is kind and friendly and sensitive and generous understanding happy friendly no one will believe me if I tell the story of what I'm suffering at his hands or from his mouth he wasn't beating her but he was torturing her psychologically no one will believe me now if he's in an accident what is the community going to say George an ideal person a wonderful person a virtuous person how could he suffer like that his wife knows why she knows why she knows why nobody else knows we look at the world and we see see tragedy and we say PA he didn't deserve that do we know he didn't deserve them there are lots of ways in which we could fail to know that he Des deserve that now you rais the question of baby zy it is a cardinal belief of Judaism I'm glad you're all sitting down you may not know this in reincarnation and no we didn't get it from India they got it from us we're older than Indian religion indeed says Abraham before he died took his six Sons that he had after Sarah died and sent them off to the east east of Palestine and he gave them certain mystical doctrines to take with them and as one person said I'm not sure how serious this is but the highest cast in India is the Brahman cast Brahman Abraham brah you hear that see does doesn't sound like peanuts doesn't sound like peanut butter you know or pickles Bram sounds like AB Bram anyway reincarnation means that when the baby dies that baby had a soul and that Soul was here before and that Soul had a very checkered career and it may have been here 10 times before or 20 times before and had a checkered career and this won't be the end of its career either it'll be incarnated in this baby and die and then come back again so what you're seeing is one chapter in a biography is as if person lives to 100 has a 10 chapter biography each each uh chapter gets 10 pages 100 page book and you read chapter 4 and you think golly why did that happen why did this happen why did that happen nothing here makes sense it's not doesn't connect to anything sure you read one chapter out of a 10 chapter book so of course it doesn't make sense so since this is a cardinal accepted belief of Judaism and the critic can't disprove it he can't disprove it so he hasn't failed to make his case that the evil is beyond explanation he hasn't made his case have I shown there's an alternative no but I have to show anything I'm asking whe whether he can make his case and he can't make his case okay that's the problem from Evil now there's another type of problem which is and and gets a similar explanation and that is when the laws that God lays down seem to be unjust laws unjust morally questionable laws about this there's a lot of complaint in atheistic sources um the connection to atheism is assuming that God is morally perfect then at the very least he couldn't be the author of these laws because these laws are not moral and if whoever you believe in is the author of these laws then he's not God he's not the God we with offered he's not the god that's on advertisement because these laws are clearly morally deficient now here there are two sorts of issues one issue is this and this is a crucial issue across the board when you talk about a concrete moral judgment what should be done in a case like this you are relying on two foundations One Foundation is what your moral principles are another Foundation is what you think the facts are two people may disagree about what the morally right thing to do is in particular case not because they disagree about their moral principles but because they disagree about the facts in that case there's no moral disagreement they just disagree about the fact I'll give you some illustrations of what I mean you are probably aware that in the ancient world human sacrifice was very very widespread we read about that and our first reaction is these people didn't understand the value of human life they understand how precious it is they understand how wrong it is to kill people how could they possibly believe in support Human Sacrifice however you do a little more reading a little more research and you find out they believed that if you don't offer sacrifices to the gods there won't be any reain won't be any rain if there won't be any rain there'll be a drought if there's a drought then people will die of thirst dying of thirst is not a pretty way to go and many more will die than I called for in the sacrifice so the calculation is we're sacrificing one to save many now let me ask you is that a barbarian Savage uncivilized uncultured point of view well let's bring it up to date most democratic Western liberal Advanced societies have armies and most of them at times of War have a draft and people are drafted into the army they're not asked for they don't ask for volunteers they're drafted into the army to die to to save the majority of the population I know they're a pacifists I could argue with them also I think that's absolutely immoral but aside from pacifist if you believe in the Army then you do believe in sacrificing the few to save the many and if you happen to be a pacifist I'd invite you to consider the following example what about the overcrowded lifeboats the ship goes down the Lifeboat is overcrowded it's going to swamp what do modern sophisticated educated moral people do they cast lots and throw a few over so as to save the rest they sacrificing a few to save the many what is the difference between us and the Ancients not the principle of sacrificing few to save the many the principle the differ difference between us and Them is we don't believe that human sacrifice will change the weather patterns we don't believe it works but morally they aren't so distant from us than it would appear and that's because the real difference between us and Them is the difference in a belief in the facts not a belie not not our moral principles there is an example Anthropologist use I'm not sure that it's real some people told me it is real or whether it's just an example of cultural variations either way it makes the point there are supposedly some Eskimo groups where when parents reach a certain age the children kill their parents children kill their parents you think they're monsters they're monsters like how can you deal with that that's not you know maybe they have arms and legs and eyes and ears but they're not human but then you find out that according to their beliefs when a person dies he goes into an eternal Afterlife with the mental equipment he has at the moment of death and they're familiar with cility and it would be an eternal tragedy for a person to lose the sharpness of his mental faculties before he dies so all our modern super liberal fellow citizens who talk about euthanasia mercy killing and all the rest here it's an act of kindness to the parents who might not have the courage to make sure they have a superb eternity and don't have the courage to end their lives early enough and the children do their parents that wonderful kindness are providing them with a superb eternity all of a sudden it doesn't sound so Savage so Barbarian so inhuman maybe there are nuances here there are people who are against euthanasia in general there's s slope arguments and so for and so on all right but it's certainly within our moral discourse because it's the belief that's behind it that makes the difference okay now what are we supposed to think of laws that we regard as immoral well presumably they're immoral because they have bad effects or maybe unjust effects or whatever but then maybe we don't know what the effects are maybe we don't know what the effects are we don't know what the effects are maybe we're not equipped to determine that it's really immoral maybe this law that requires us to do something in a certain case in those circumstances preventing something much worse only we don't know that after all we're not running the world and the world doesn't develop in halfhazard terms it doesn't develop in accidental terms in random terms we believe in Divine Providence which means that when you act on a Divine Law that fits into a structure of Divine Providence for running the world the standard example which second philosophers give imagine you knew that that baby was going to grow up to be Hitler would you strangle it in its crib well most people wouldn't hesitate unless you're a believer in historical determinism you know that the person has nothing to do with the development of history and it's the times and somebody else would step into the role that's a myth that's common in some quarters but you don't believe that if you believe you could stop the tragedy of the second world war in which 65 million people died including six million Jews you thought you could st stop that by strangling one baby don't know about you but I wouldn't have any hesitation in strangling one baby but suppose nobody else knows only you know so then to everybody else is going to look like a vicious crime if we don't know the consequences of our actions if we don't know the circumstances under which the actions are are taking place it's very difficult to convict the law of being Immortal that's one obstacle it's going to be very difficult for the for the atheist to climb over the other is a more subtle obstacle this one yeah um one would isal picture um it's a almost Universal Democratic value that all roles in society should be open to all people there should be no legal restrictions on roles open to people you develop develop your talents you earn it this Fair open competition for roles in the society and that's the way it should be decided but we have kohanim leim and Jews who are not a Cohen and not a Ley no one other than a Cohen can offer sacrifices in the temple you just can't do it if I have to bring a sacrifice I come to the door of the temple Co says what do you need it done for have you got the right ammo thank you buy we'll take it from here and I just have to give it over no Democratic believer is going to going to tolerate that should be open for free competition it looks like arbitrarily restricting the opportunity of people to occupy roles in society now of course there's a factual assumption behind the Democratic picture and that is either there are no systematic differences between people people which could determine which roles are good for them or if there are systematic differences we can't tell what they are we don't know what they are and we can only discover them in open competition and experience and performance that's a factual assumption that's a factual assumption th telling you you don't know the truth the truth is that a Coen has a special kind of soul and a Ley has a special kind of soul and a person who a Israel who doesn't is not a Le has a different kind of soul and the soul of a kohin is made for the role that the Torah puts for Koh and the same for a so without the information that souls are different and designed for different roles the value of the believer in democracy I think is quite Justified once you put in that extra fact it's quite unjustified so the difference between us is not whether we believe in uh depriving people of opportunities and and so and so on what we disagree about is whether there real opportunities or not whe opening the opportunity to a person is going to be bad for the person and bad for the for the society as a whole now there's another way another problem that you have and is similar and that is this I'm not going to go into the whole issue of feminism it's a long and complicated issue and there's wonderful books on it if you're interested in I can give you a reading list but many women and by the way in our Outreach programs always the majority of participants are women always I don't know why some people think that femin is such an issue and so and so on but don't like our ability to attract women because of the supposedly misogynist character of the of the Torah um but many people complain as follows I see the t's rules for living they don't allow me to achieve what I want to achieve and therefore it's prejudicial therefore it's injurious therefore it's unjust and unfair now one of my teachers pointed out there a certain slippage of logic here the rules of Judaism don't allow let's say a person to achieve Los Angeles values well um is that really surprising were the rules of Judaism designed to achieve Los Angeles values could you say what poor design what sloppy design what lack of insight the rules of Judaism don't achieve Los Angeles values they weren't designed to achieve Los Angeles values that wasn't their purpose that wasn't their goal Torah comes not only with a set of rules but it comes with a set of values you want to critique Jewish rules VIs V the achievement of value show that Jewish rules don't achieve Jewish values that would be an Insight that would be a piece of relevant logic there you could say there's poor design sloppy design lack of realism because they don't achieve their own values but that Jewish rules don't achieve Los Angeles values that's not a critique okay so what can the beli in Los Angeles vales say could say it's just not for me it's not for me because I believe in my values and and I want to achieve my values that's fine there's nothing logically wrong with a position like that but remember we were worrying about a critique of the Jewish position a critique of the Jewish position that the laws are not morally right if he says Live and Let Live which is what they do say in Los Angeles you know how do my thing you do your thing you're happy your way I'm happy my way that's fine he's not making a critique of me if he want wants to make a critique of me on the grounds that my rules don't achieve allow him to achieve Los Angeles values then you'd have to show that Los Angeles values are right and my values are wrong I suggest to you that's a tall order it's a tall order morality ethics is not in such a strong position that it's able to show conclusively matters like that for system systems of values it's an interesting subject to discuss there could be points here and there but it's going to be very difficult and the person you meet won't be able to do it you're probably not going to meet a philosopher whose specialty is ethics and who knows enough about Jewish values to talk about them so that's not going to be your problem person there if it's a question of the values being immoral Vis A his morality that's simply an irrelevance so again we we arrive at the at the result that there's no good argument for atheism another thing that people try to press is historical and archaeological arguments against statements that are in the Torah other places in the tanak about historical events that the Torah has described and they want to claim that they are incorrect I'll say a few words about that and then I'll have some time for questions if there questions we can quit um what do you think of the following methodology we are going to test whether or not the torist view of history is true true we don't want to be biased so we're going to put a question mark on the Torah is it true or isn't it true then we're going to use other sources of ancient history and see if the Torah agrees with them then we have confirmation that it's true if the Torah disagrees with them then we have evidence that the Torah is false that's an unbiased Fair objective method I don't think so because if the Torah disagrees with some other text of ancient history maybe the other text is wrong maybe the other text is wrong if it's going to be unbiased and fair when they agree then you have confirmation that they're both right when they disagree then you have to decide which one's more likely to be right you don't have direct evidence that the Torah is wrong now I'll give you an example of the kind of consideration which can play an important role here ancient texts ancient historical texts that means writings that portrayed the history never reported the failures of their own group they were histories of their own group there were no world histories those they the first group that started to catalog the histories of other nations were the Greeks thousand years after the Torah was given before that each Nation kept a a list of its own history and they only kept a list of their successes not not their failures indeed when you're trying to reconstruct the the history of countries A and B sometimes sometimes read like this country a has a record that it won Wars and subjugated in tacts country B at which time it's country B's historical records have a blank and then 100 years later you have country B we rebelled and threw them off and we overcame them and we're taxing country a at which point country A's records have a blank and you just melt the two blanks and you get the picture of the countries the two countries sanv was a great a great General and he conquered the whole area except Jerusalem we have his Memoirs his Memoirs read like this I surrounded the city I battered Down the Walls I defeated the Army and I looted the treasury onto the next city surrounded the walls battered down the surrounded the walls battered Down the Walls defeated the Army looted the treasury then comes his entry for Jerusalem I surrounded the walls I locked up up the king of Judah like a bird in a cage end of Entry no batter I me down the walles no defeating the Army no looting the treasury just on to the next next city what happened he lost his whole Army in a night he doesn't write that down he wrote down what he accomplished he locked him up in a cage but that's all next city got another Army surrounded it battered Down the Walls defeated the Army looted the treasury they're all the same except for this one which he just left that part out that's the way it goes now we record our defeats in glorious detail military defeats economic defeats moral defeats spiritual defeats plagues Wars which document now carries greater reliability of Truth one that records its defeats and one that on principle doesn't record its defeats isn't it obvious that the one that records it defeats has more General credibility so if you find a disagreement between two ancient documents and you know that this document has more credibility the Torah has more credibility if so the disagreement shouldn't convince you evidence against the torah's reliability who told who said so so that's not a that's not a fair argument secondly this is the last point I'm going to make this is just you have to be aware of archaeologists and and and and and historians who work together use the following type of logic the Torah says an event took place a miracle a miracle the flood of the exess from Egypt a miracle so the secular story says there are no Miracles period forget that all right now the text is recording an event of course the text is written by these religious naive people who believe in miracles but let's see let's see whether anything really happened let's look for a natural event which the author would because of their superstitions describe in miraculous terms let's look for a natural event let's look for the residue of a natural event let's look for the leave behinds of a natural event you don't find the leave behinds you don't find the residue then the event never took place and the text is false I hope you're catching the failure of logic here the text didn't say it was a natural event the text said it was a supernatural event you because you don't believe in miracles create a brand new myth that there was a natural event you look for the natural event you don't find the natural event then they say the text is wrong the text never said there was a natural event here's the example an an example the flood all the secular critics want to know where's the world World Wide mud layer that's the result of a flood there isn't a worldwide mud layer so then the word the story of the flood isn't true you see his Logic the Torah describes it as a miracle he says there are no Miracles so the text is talking about a real event it's got to be a natural event if it's a natural event natural floods lead behind mud layers there's no mud layers so there's no natural event so the text is wrong but of course the correct approach is the Torah was talking about a miracle you have no reason to think that miraculous blood leave leave behind mud layers how many miraculous floods have you have you studied after all how many have you cataloged zero we don't predict that there'll be a a a mud layer so the missing mud layer is no evidence against us it's only evidence against your fantasy of a natural flood it's irrelevant to us I you tell me that makes it hard to check too bad too bad being hard to check is no argument that it didn't happen that's not logical either this goes on over and over again The Exodus of Egypt where's the evidence of all the discarded clothes and shoes and pots and pans of three million people over 40 years in a desert well the Torah says explicitly that their pots and pans and their clothes didn't wear out they wear that we predict you won't find them and you don't find them that's bad for us you found exactly what we predicted no the secular critic says there are no miracles of course the the clothes wore out that's just something to glorify your ancestors you just invented that they wore out and if they wore out we should find them we didn't find them so it didn't happen excuse me that's not a test of my text that's not a test of my text it's a test of your fantasy that you made up because you don't want to deal with the torah's description of a miracle to be very careful about that when they offer the evidence against that the evidence against is against what we said happened not their myth that they made up to cast it in their presumed naturalistic context okay I think you can see that there's a lot to talk about and I haven't covered all the material I haven't covered 30% of the material but I think what I've covered should show you that you shouldn't be in a hurry to draw any conclusions that the atheists really have us on the run and that they really have good solid arguments and they really have logic on the their side um there's a lot to be said and certainly a lot to be criticized in the attacks that people make on Jewish belief questions yeah it's kind of in regards to the to the the intelligent design argument yeah us that you know anybody not familiar with it that there's design to the world we see systems and laws and put things in place they G one of their arguments when we say there's intellig a looking space and how chaotic it is so I was wondering what would be your response to the chaos of space first of all I I have I I've read considerably in intelligent design and I had never heard anyone talk about the chaos in space what's his just passed away he said God isn't great that's one of his books you know I'm talking about oh you're talking about someone who criticized intelligence design I thought you made argument in favor of intelligence design criticized okay look the uh let me just lay out what I think is the correct schema here there's an enormous amount as a professional philosopher I don't know whether they'll laugh or to cry when I read this stuff even supporters the mistakes on all sides are just that Legion um intelligent design works like this I see something and I think I have a catalog of all the nones explanations that are relevant to this thing all the non-design explanations and I go through them one by one or in combinations and I think that the non-design explanations can't account for it that's step one step two this thing is similar to other items that I know are designed then step three is I have good reason to think that this was produced by Design now um all you're concluding is you have good reason you're not concluding that it's true for sure you have good reason if all the the the explanations that don't use design don't don't do the job and this is similar to things that are produced by Design then you have good reason to think that it's done by Design now this isn't conclusive because number one your list of non-design explanations might be incomplete there might be other ones you haven't thought of before 1859 Evolution wasn't an option and now evolution is an option the point of evolution is to explain where things that look designed came from without there being designed that was the point of the exercise so you're always open to the possibility that there'll be a new type of explanation steuart C cman of the Santa Fe Institute says that in nature there are principles of self-organization it doesn't have any doesn't have have any he just says there are can I prove him wrong can I prove there aren't principal self organization I can't prove that there might be who knows in the meantime if I want to know what I have good reason to believe I have to use the evidence that I have at hand and if there are things which fit the the conditions that I met then I think we have good reason to believe now you have to be careful with the use of the principle for example uh there was a movie about finding an abelisk on the moon something know there was some something like someplace else imagine you found a piece of metal 60t tall 20t square flat top perfectly smooth edges perfectly sh perfectly smooth sides perfectly sharp edges perfectly how do you explain the existence of that thing earthquakes probably not volcanic eruptions probably not asteroids smashing into the surface probably not they're not going to produce a slab of metal like that all the ndesign explanations available for the moon ain't going to do it cracking and boiling of of the sun and the and the cold of space that's not going to do it now is that similar to things that people produce by Design sure we produce things like that by Design then it's appropriate to say that that it was the result of design no one denies this except people who are so politically blinded that they can't see the uh you know the tips of their fingers after all there was a search for extraterrestrial intelligence search for intelligence in space how were they searching well for example if they got h a radio a radio beam which had in it the Dismal decimal expansion of Pi everybody agreed that would do it why because nothing in the world that we know of that's natural can produce the decimal expansion of P except intelligence so you ruled out all the non-intelligence describe and it's very similar to something that is produced by intelligence that's going to be enough to include that there's intelligence I don't think that can be denied I think that's absolutely obvious and that being the case if you can fulfill the conditions now fulfilling conditions is tricky each particular case find tuning argument and all the rest of they're tricky but when it comes to frogs which a certain institution wanted to make similar to the slab of metal there I think the argument is much weaker because we don't think we have a complete catalog of all the principles that give rise to life we can't trace the development of life we can't trace it in our own terms we don't know the principles that are involved principles of chemistry principles of biology they're both very very complex subjects three months ago there was a revolution in chemistry I don't if you heard about it something totally unexpected they are now making compounds that are chemically impossible so someone says but you don't have what you even think is a list of all the non-design explanations that's true that makes the argument much weaker the existence of a frog is not parallel to the existence of a slab of metal on the moon slab of metal moon is in a much more limited context where we think we know much better what forces are available to make things happen so but each each case has to be discuss discussed on its on but people who object to design arguments in principle just nuts uh Elliot sober who's a very good philosopher of Science and he actually although he's a card carrying atheist and believer in evolution he's done some good critical work on Evolution he makes the classic mistake here you can't have an inference to design unless you know the purposes of the designer because without knowing the purpose of the designer you can't predict what he'll do can't predict what he'll design next that's simply incorrect that's simply incorrect uh there's a random killing well the person kill again is he a serial killer was this a warm-up is he has he gone into Heidi has he committed suicide that the person died with a bullet it's intelligent design I can't predict what he's going to do I don't need to be able to predict the future to say it's a product of intelligence that's unnecessary it's one of his more one of his one of his errors just a pre prejudicial error you don't need to be able to predict and therefore you don't have to know what the purposes of the designer are all you have to know is there are various things making things happen in the world don't use design they ain't doing it and if they ain't doing it then this is something that's similar to what we know is done by Design that's good reason to believe it's don't by his