Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Introduction
• 0:00: stru is an online training program designed to produce a particular kind of person an effective ambassador for Christ using short interactive and engaging courses stru equips Christians to make an even-handed yet gracious defense for Christianity and Christian values in the public square recently I came across an ad from stand to reason university a Christian apologetics organization which is not in fact an actual university they had just added a new course called atheism bumping into reality the course was free and aimed to equip its students to have more effective conversations with atheists so you know I had to check that out its instructor is Greg Koukl a Christian apologist I recognized but didn't know much about as per his bio on the stru site Greg founded stan theresa university in 1993 and currently serves as president of stand to reason he's debated michael shermer and deepak chopra written reportedly award-winning and best-selling books and has appeared in some mainstream media Greg received his masters in philosophy of religion and ethics at talbot school of theology graduating with high honors and his masters in Christian apologetics with honors from simon greenleaf university he is an adjunct professor in Christian apologetics at biola university he's been doing this for a while so I expected the course to be a bit more on the nuance side of apologetics was I right
• 1:25: well you will just have to judge for yourself the course consists of five video lectures each running between seven and a half and twelve and a half minutes it also had short tests consisting of multiple choice questions which you have to complete before continuing to the next lecture I’m going to take you through the course lectures one at a time and comment on their main points you won't be seeing every second of all these lectures because I’m going to skip some parts for the sake of brevity but if you want to see if I’m representing Greg Koukl's points accurately here you can check out the course for yourself so put on the full armor of God kids it's time to learn how to talk to atheists Reality on our side video one reality on our side a all of the questions that every human being asks about what's true or about what's important or about what's meaningful
• 2:15: there is no more significant question to answer than this one does God exist you know God's existence is the most decisive issue of life because the answer you give to that one question sets an irrevocable course for everything that follows this is true from a particular Christian view but remove the assumptions of that worldview and this is not necessarily the case
• 2:39: let's assume a God does exist does that tell us about its nature its influence on the cosmos if and how it relates to morality if it's alone or just one of many no the fact of God's existence doesn't tell us anything about whether its existence is in any way relevant to human life such relevancy must be evidenced on its own it is not established in a God's existence alone so is does God exist the most decisive question in life not necessarily no in our sessions together I’ll walk you through a thoughtful analysis of three of the key bumps that evidence God's existence details of reality that Christianity can make sense out of but atheism cannot
• 3:26: I’m Greg Koukl for standard reason university let's get started with atheism bumping into reality
• 3:32: I’m ready let's do this so first we need to define our terms here now we know what theism is it's a belief that there is a personal God a conviction that God exists so it's atheism it's just the opposite atheism
• 3:47: now watch this is the belief that there is no God this is a very self-serving definition of theism theism can mean the belief in the existence of a personal God but it can also mean the belief in the existence of an impersonal God or many Gods or a divinity which permeates the universe I’m not a prescriptivist I don't think words have intrinsic definitions I’m a descriptivist one who defines words according to my observations of common usage Koukl can define his theism as belief in a personal God that's fine but to say that anything but that does not qualify as theism ignores the vast majority of definitions of theism which have existed for millennia
• 4:30: this definition forces the viewer to think of theism through an exclusively Christian lens without any justification for doing so at best this is lazy teaching at worst it's deceptive
• 4:43: now before we go any further I want you to notice something else about atheism it is a standard move by atheists nowadays to simply say they are not asserting that God doesn't exist but they simply have no belief in God and since they lack a belief they don't need to defend their lack of belief
• 5:08: all right now I don't think that's exactly intellectually honest because no one writes best-selling books about their lack of beliefs
• 5:14: all right atheists are making a case and the case that they're trying to make is that there is no God that's their belief certainly they have no belief in God
• 5:25: agreed but they do have a belief about God and their belief about God is that God doesn't exist so it's not like they don't have to make a defense for their view since they're not really asserting anything they are they're asserting that God does not exist and that is their belief about God that they are holding and advancing
• 5:50: okay don't be caught by that trick all right this is a hot button issue that pops up in atheists and Christian circles pretty regularly many on both sides somehow think that defining atheism in a particular way is a victory for their tribe as if defining the word a particular way proves either the rationality or irrationality of self-described atheists it doesn't if someone calls themself an atheist and you say that atheism is defined as believing there is no God but that person clarifies saying that they simply lack belief responding with but the definition of atheist is doesn't somehow prove that the person's actual position accords to your definition of atheism you cannot define another person's position into existence just by defining the label they use differently than them
• 6:41: now in philosophy the definition of atheism typically used in formal scholarship is the belief that there is no God it's an assertion a claim if I were writing in an academic context I would not call myself an atheist but rather an agnostic in my day-to-day life though calling myself agnostic often gives others an inaccurate perception of my position where I come from
• 7:00: people often take agnostic to mean that someone is sitting on the fence about whether the Christian God is real or not
• 7:06: I am not sitting on that ultra specific fence though and describing myself as an atheist usually communicates that adequately situations like these are why colloquial definitions of belief positions are often different from their scholarly definitions there are people in the world who call themselves atheists who would say they believe that God does not exist there are also people who call themselves atheists who say they lack belief in God
• 7:31: if you want to know what someone means when they describe themselves as an atheist just ask if the definition of atheist is more important to you than someone's actual position sure go ahead and just assert to them that the word has one true immutable definition that will endure forever just don't expect them to continue to act like you're worth talking to because you're probably not your fixation on this definition which is almost definitely related to a notion of the superiority of your tribe is incompatible with constructive dialogue on God belief focusing more on establishing your favor definition of atheism than on what your self-described atheist interlocutor actually believes will only reveal to them that you care more about scoring points against them than actually having a real conversation
• 8:22: the reason that we believe in God is because he's the best explanation for the way things are you see things in the world and you're simply asking the question what best explains these significant features of the real world and if you have an idea that explains them well and a contrary idea that doesn't then the first idea has better explanatory power and therefore is more likely to be true
• 8:53: now just a little hint here I want to let you in on a strategic insight for us as Christian theists we have a powerful ally and what is that we have reality on our side
• 9:03: all right the rest of this introduction video either repeats itself or foreshadows points coco makes in subsequent videos so we will move on from here video two the bump of stuff
• 9:15: The bump of stuff coco starts video two by saying that if you were to walk into his workshop and saw all the stuff in there you'd assume that someone put it there he then asked the viewer to think about that in regards to God's existence and presumably the existence of the universe
• 9:34: so here's the question why is there stuff why is there something here rather than nothing here where did everything come from or put more specifically what caused the beginning of the universe
• 9:52: now I want to show you how this line of thinking can play out tactically in a conversation because once I was faced with a challenge in a question and answer session from a person in the audience and the challenge at least initially was proved to me that God exists
• 10:03: all right and what I said to the challenger is that there are a couple of problems with the challenge the way it was worded you might want to keep this in mind if somebody says prove God well unless you unpack what they mean by proof you're not going to get anywhere you can give evidence all day long and at the end of the day they're just going to say that's not proof okay so you're stuck there he also said prove to me so now you've got a psychological element come in give me the evidence that will convince me and I don't know if I can convince that person
• 10:38: so I explained this to them and I said can you reword your question
• 10:50: and by the way when someone says prove to me this is what you want to ask of them too I generally agree that asking for clarification to better understand your interlocutors questions and expectations is helpful so not a bad piece of advice there
• 10:55: and here's what he said he said okay can you give me any reasonable evidence that God exists oh much better okay I can work with that so I began to ask him
• 11:06: questions which is my tactical style all right and I’m setting up my point with the questions and I started out by asking and I let him know these were going to be kind of simple questions at first but bear with me I asked him the first question
• 11:23: do things exist is there stuff and he said yes great I agree with you
• 11:30: all right here's the second question I said all the stuff that exists however it exists has this stuff always been here or was there when nothing was here now
• 11:42: this is a question about whether the universe came into being or not and there's hardly anybody in the world any scientist or philosopher actually who thinks the universe is eternal anymore for good reason because the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe is really strong okay big bang if you will or that's the way they see it I know it's controversial in Christian circles but essentially they acknowledged there was a beginning to the universe okay which is our view
• 12:14: actually no physicists and philosophers do not all acknowledge that the universe had an absolute beginning we can trace our universe's expansion backward in time to a point where our understanding of physics breaks down but not to a point of absolute beginning Christian philosophers like William Lane Craig who defend the kalam cosmological argument constantly claim that contemporary science is largely in support of an absolute beginning to the universe but this is simply false models of cosmology where in the universe did not have a beginning or where the beginning of the universe was not the beginning of the cosmos are seriously entertained I’ll let anyone interested learn more from my sources because I’m a layperson here I think I’m qualified enough to say though that if you get your physics from current leading physicists you'll get a very different picture from the one Christian apologists paint
• 13:09: so when I asked him if everything has always existed he's going to tell me no which he did no it came into being at some point in the distant past I said okay here's the third question and this is the one that really matters what caused everything all the stuff to come into existence
• 13:28: then I mentioned him rationally reasonably thoughtfully there are only two choices either some thing or no thing by the way separated those words not something or nothing because sometimes people will treat nothing as if it's something
• 13:45: now what's he what's he going to do with that if he's an atheist he doesn't want to say something because the something would have to be outside of the natural universe it would have to be something pretty powerful pretty smart personal and now you can see we're getting really close to the g.o.d answer right
• 14:04: you don't want to go there but what's his only other alternative all he can say is no thing caused the universe to come into existence okay
• 14:11: let me explain a few reasons why using this line of reasoning with an atheist will probably get you nowhere
• 14:17: first if asked what caused the universe to exist a valid answer which coco completely and suspiciously fails to mention is I don't know it's not obvious that our intuitions about causation which we've all gleaned from our experience inside the universe can generalize to questions of causation regarding the universe itself which is why I think systematic inquiry like the scientific process is better suited to reveal reliable information on the subject theoretical physicists as I’ve said have devised various models of cosmology based on our current understanding of physics but we simply don't know enough to determine which if any of them accurately describes reality
• 15:01: for me it would be dishonest to say anything other than I don't know when asked this question
• 15:08: second the conclusion that a powerful intelligent and personal being created the universe does not follow from the premises laid out here
• 15:15: this is a non-sequitur when some Christian apologists make this argument they'll attempt to justify this conclusion with supporting arguments for why all these characteristics are necessary for the cause of the universe
• 15:29: I guess coco didn't see that as necessary for some reason though regardless the argument is not sound given the premise that the universe began to exist can't actually be demonstrated
• 15:39: third what atheist is saying that they believe Everything came from nothing everything came from nothing this is one of the most common misconceptions about atheists and it's one which atheists have been correcting for as long as Christians have been spreading this misconception
• 15:49: I myself have corrected this idea multiple times in my work and so has every atheist content creator I’ve ever known
• 15:56: if coco wants to educate his audience on how to have real productive conversations with atheists he should listen to what atheists have to say about the claims he and other apologists make about us
• 16:10: frankly there is no excuse for still spreading misconceptions like this it indicates an extremely severe lack of interest in an informed perspective on the people you're talking about or a refusal to integrate new information into your views on this topic
• 16:29: unfortunately conservative religious families which are Christian apologetic's main audience will likely cling to what Koukl is saying here and any non-believer within that family will suffer as their loved ones inform their perspective on them with falsehoods and stereotypes instead of what the non-believer themself has to say your misconceptions are hurting us coco and we've been saying this for years but it's painfully obvious how little you care
• 16:53: Your misconceptions are hurting us let me put it really simply all right and directly a big bang needs a big banger
• 17:01: that pretty much covers it especially now that my channel is bigger than I ever anticipated I try to engage at a higher standard than the mockery which would probably get me views but not actually benefit anyone but sometimes that is very difficult
• 17:18: next up we get to hear a story of an encounter coco had with an atheist which he says proves that atheists actually do believe in the commonsensical notion he's presented so far
• 17:32: I was at a dinner party once where during the party there was a young man sitting across from me who was from a religious family and announced that he no longer believed in God and he was a little bit uh feisty about it
• 17:51: okay and so I was willing to engage him a little bit across the table I was making some of these points but he didn't really want to talk about it he just wanted to just spout off about how belief in God is irrational it makes no sense there's no good reason to etc etc and so I made this point about the big bang needing the big banger and he was pretty dismissive of it he didn't really want to affirm the common sensibility of it so I just I kind of finished with this last question
• 18:15: listen if somebody knocked on the door across the living room there from where we were eating there was the front door I said to him if somebody knocked on the front door would you think that the knock knocked itself is that reasonable well he like I said was dismissive so I gave up the chase but about 15 minutes later we're eating dessert and as God as my witness over there at that front door I heard there was a knock on the door he lifted his head and said who's that and I said no one
• 18:47: here's the key though the key is what he did he got up and he answered the door turns out it was some of his friends okay because even the atheist knows that the knock didn't knock itself
• 19:05: so let's act like this story is actually true and not a story invented or exaggerated to make the storyteller sound correct which is a tactic preachers and apologists are pretty well known to use the implication here is that the fact that an atheist did not believe that a knock at the door was uncaused proves that atheists are being inconsistent when they don't agree that the universe must have been caused by God
• 19:30: I don't buy it that atheist directly observed the cause of a knock countless times that's it silly stories like this are not arguments and if you believe them more readily than what atheists actually say they think I beg you to ask yourself why that is
• 19:42: why is listening to an atheist describe their own beliefs rather than projecting your ideas onto them so difficult
• 19:49: if you want to have a productive conversation with an atheist you'll have to solve that problem first
• 19:55: so regarding our first bump the bump of stuff Christianity Christian theism has superior explanatory power
• 20:07: in other words we can explain that better than the atheist atheists can't explain where stuff came from it doesn't even they don't even try but Christian theism can and it does so in a way like I said that is consistent with our basic intuitions about reality
• 20:26: no atheists like myself can't explain exactly how the universe came to be because we refuse to consider unfalsifiable narratives like the infinite variety of supernatural causes religions propose to be factual without hard evidence
• 20:38: Christianity proposes an explanation but so do countless other faiths none of these actually has explanatory power though until they can actually demonstrate their explanations to be true presentations which rely entirely on human intuition to solve the mysteries of cosmology just don't suffice
• 20:58: also to say that atheists don't even try to explain where the universe came from implying that only theists have any means at their disposal to answer this question is telling
• 21:09: again theoretical physicists many of whom are actually atheists work on this constantly refusing to acknowledge this suggests that Koukl simply doesn't think scientific inquiry is even worth considering
• 21:21: acting this way in a conversation with an atheist absolutely screams I’m unwilling to consider any ideas not 100: in line with my cherished beliefs this is not a sign of strength and will not only get you nowhere in conversations with atheists but it could seriously hurt your relationships with non-believers
• 21:39: productive conversations demand that both parties be willing to do the bare minimum listen to their interlocutor
• 21:46: okay on to the third video video three the bump of bad The bump of bad
• 21:53: coco begins this video by discussing a broken tool in his workshop eventually saying if there is no purpose for a tool it makes no sense to say that it's broken an idea relevant to his next point I’m sure
• 22:06: so I got got rid of my broken scroll saw so we can focus in on a question I want to ask you what is the most frequently raised objection to theism to the existence of God you
• 22:16: think about it for a moment it comes to mind immediately the problem of evil
• 22:23: in other words the problem of evil is part of reality that we bump into all the time
• 22:28: human beings doesn't matter what your view is but since human beings are bumping into it all the time atheists are bumping into that part of reality
• 22:38: the evil that's in the world and they are quick to point it out and so they raised the objection how can there be a good powerful God if there is so much evil in the world
• 22:52: I’d agree that this is the most common objection to the existence of the Christian God
• 22:58: plenty of other conceptions of Gods don't include an omnipotent omniscient omni-benevolent nature so since the problem of evil does not apply to them
• 23:05: I’m not sure if it's the main objection to the existence of Gods in general
• 23:11: what I’d like to do here this session is I want to show you how you can turn the problem of evil into an advantage an ally and there's a sequence here if you're talking to somebody first in your conversations with atheists think of the most morally grotesque thing that you can imagine
• 23:28: first you get this thing in view this really ugly atrocious thing and then you ask them what do you make of this that is what your assessment and if they think about it for a moment they're going to come up with a couple of different things
• 23:39: they might say hey that ain't right okay now once they weigh in with their assessment here's their third question and this is the most important one you need to ask them are you describing those things themselves out there or are you describing what's in here your emotional response
• 24:04: I want to know whether they think the the badness of the actions that we're describing is in the actions out there themselves or is the badness just some assessment we make on the inside of ourselves and project out there
• 24:23: okay if the second then nothing is bad in itself if the first then those things are bad in themselves
• 24:29: okay objectivism relativism all right all right that's quite a set up for this point so why is it so important to establish objective morality here
• 24:34: the problem of evil the bump of bad people bring it up all the time that requires things actually to be bad out there it requires objective morality okay
• 24:46: and the existence of evil then needs to be a detail of the external world to be a problem it can't be just a matter of our own personal opinions okay
• 24:57: some things have to be wicked or bad or evil in themselves regardless of personal opinion in order for there to be a problem of evil the theist has to answer
• 25:14: no actually not not at all the problem of evil is a critique of the internal consistency of Christian theology it assumes a Christian moral paradigm that evil exists and pits it against a Christian conception of the nature of God it suggests that those things are inconsistent with each other since God's supposed omnipotent omniscient omni-benevolent nature should not allow for the existence of evil
• 25:37: no moral standard outside of Christianity is required to raise the problem of evil because the problem of evil deals exclusively with a Christian moral standard
• 25:42: you can raise the problem of evil regardless of your views on morality because to raise the problem you must first grant a Christian moral standard hypothetically
• 25:54: maybe I shouldn't be at this point but I’m honestly shocked that coco doesn't know this
• 26:00: how do you work in Christian apologetics for this many years and still not understand the basics of the most common objection to Christianity
• 26:08: coca continues to discuss moral relativism for a bit here repeating his point a few times eventually he sets up an argument for God's existence from morality because in order for there to be laws that are broken there has to be laws and in order for there to be laws there have to be law makers and in the case of evil out there in the world transcendent evil if you will there have to be transcendent laws that are broken to create a real problem of evil and if there are transcendent laws there must be watch this a transcendent what law maker
• 26:45: so you're following me as I said the problem of evil is an internal critique of Christianity it assumes a Christian moral standard for the sake of argument so it doesn't require the person using it to hold to any particular moral standard generally that huge misunderstanding aside I can appreciate an observation cocal makes here
• 27:04: humans regardless of time place or culture do tend to share their perception that moral structure exists possibly even outside of their own minds or groups
• 27:16: that suggests a root cause behind this phenomenon in human psychology where Koukla and I differ is that I don't just jump to the conclusion then that like a guy must have done it that some transcendent intelligence is behind it
• 27:29: I think natural selection and extremely well evidenced process acting on a social species which humans are could produce this phenomenon
• 27:34: coco anticipates this response from atheists though so let's see what he thinks about it
• 27:41: now I want to alert you to a move that the atheist is going to make on this point because what we're saying is if there is if there is morality then there must be a God and what the atheist is going to do is he's going to try to explain how you can get morality without God and he's going to go to Darwin all right Darwinian evolution can explain this
• 28:02: what if somebody said well my evolution has caused me to believe I should go 75 miles per hour on the autobahn
• 28:16: all right uh would you actually be breaking any law if you went a hundred now I understand it wouldn't be what your evolution compels you to want to do but would in fact you be breaking a law if you went over 75
• 28:30: of course not that is your belief on the inside cannot create a law on the outside all it is is a belief on the inside is it evil to disobey your revolution I mean that makes no sense
• 28:36: this is why the Darwinian evolution answer can never solve this problem because according to Darwinism let's just say even if it were true I don't think it is but even if it were the best it can do is give you a feeling on the inside about morality
• 28:53: but the problem of evil isn't about our feelings on the inside it's a about a failed obligation on the outside it's somebody's really breaking the real speed limit
• 29:05: I don't think anyone is defending the problem of evil by explaining how morality could arise through evolution they're just explaining how a naturalistic process which we know occurs could account for the existence of the moral nature of humans we are social species and those within a social species who are more willing to cooperate with other members of a group are selected for as cooperation provides a survival advantage over members of the species who act independently out of self-interest this is an evidentially well-supported hypothesis for how morality arose
• 29:34: it is not a defense of the problem of evil because again the problem of evil is an internal critique of Christianity assuming its moral paradigm in order to reveal its inconsistency with a Christian definition of God
• 29:46: all I’ve done by discussing evolution here is provide a naturalistic hypothesis for morality's origins which proposes a specific observable mechanism operates on falsifiable premises and enjoys the support of empirical evidence
• 30:03: it's not a definitively established fact in my opinion but it's better supported than the God hypothesis which it renders completely superfluous
• 30:15: how do you explain objective morality things that are actually good or bad in themselves how do you explain objective moral obligations that we have a we have a moral duty to do certain things and not to do other things
• 30:27: okay how do you explain any of that in a world where all that exists is matter and motion
• 30:32: I don't believe in objective moral facts in the supernatural sense that coco does so I don't need to explain their existence
• 30:38: I do think humans have a common moral nature and that that nature is most likely a result of our common evolutionary origin
• 30:50: this explanation of morality is not entirely certain no but I think an explanation with some supporting empirical evidence is better than one which relies upon little more than the anthropomorphic intuitions of human psychology a hypothetical narrative which explains a real phenomenon is not true simply because it explains that phenomenon hypothetically
• 31:08: there must be some logical argument or preferably empirical evidence for a narrative's validity before we can consider it true if this were not the case we would have to consider an unlimited number of explanatory narratives to be true because all it takes to invent abstract narratives to explain something is imagination
• 31:26: religious narratives which contradict Christianity could be considered true using Koukl's reasoning here this is why when we devise narratives to explain real world phenomena we must give the most credence to those which best conform to the data doing otherwise leads to absurdity or in Koukl's case the acceptance of a narrative no more accurate than those found in any other religion
• 31:53: this concludes coco's points in this one so let's continue
• 31:58: video 4 the bump of me this is the bump of me and it's a bump that has to do with the need that our souls have
• 32:03: so I want to talk about the soul this time and the hungers of the human soul that are unique to humanity but are very real and they're not physical
• 32:16: all right the first point I want to make is that souls are real all right a lot of people want to deny this but we know they're real
• 32:21: all right we're going to need some strong evidence for this one I wonder what coco's got for us this time
• 32:26: all people know they have souls they haven't thought of it that way but we're aware of them constantly you are in direct contact with your own soul every conscious moment and some of your subconscious moments too like when you're dreaming and you are the only human being who is in contact with that by the way you have private access to the contents of your own soul you know that you are not simply a piece of meat in motion this is just obvious on self-reflection
• 32:58: most people feel significant in some vague sense I’ll agree but I’m not sure if that feeling is in conflict with a naturalistic view of humanity or what coca calls being a piece of meat in motion maybe naturalism scares cocoa but plenty of naturalists like myself get by just fine feelings of significance sufficient enough to enjoy life totally intact
• 33:18: what I’d like you to do right now is just close your eyes and I want you to imagine in your mind your mom doing some work maybe she's she's in the kitchen cooking something maybe she's at the computer whatever I just want you to imagine her working and when you see her there in your mind's eye so to speak I want you to notice what color blouse she's wearing and when I ask audiences I get all kinds of different colors
• 33:41: what's interesting to me is that when I ask them where was what you saw they don't know how to answer it wasn't in their brain because you couldn't crack their brain open while they were doing that exercise visualizing their mom with a yellow blouse and see the mom in there with a yellow blouse it wasn't in their brain
• 34:03: oh that's just my synapses firing there and my central nervous system
• 34:10: well maybe your synapses were firing but that's not what you saw you didn't see synapses you who are watching this class who did the exercise you didn't see any of that you saw an image of your mom wearing a blouse of a certain color where was that image
• 34:26: I’ll tell you where it was as in your soul
• 34:31: so today I wanted to see an image that I saved to my computer I saw it on my computer once before but today when I went looking for it I couldn't find it
• 34:36: see I cracked the computer in half and then just dug through its components but I was never able to see the image
• 34:48: naturally I concluded the computer must have stored that image in its soul which is why I didn't find it sure when I saw it the first time you know the computer's disk drive and graphics processors were running but that's not what I saw it was the computer's soul
• 34:59: obviously this reasoning is nonsensical it makes an observation proposes an untestable explanation for this observation an incorporeal soul then throws out any naturalistic explanation like brain function without giving any reason for doing so finally it concludes that since no natural explanation exists for this observation the untestable explanation must be true
• 35:23: this is God of the gaps or rather soul of the gaps in an instance where there's not even a gap
• 35:30: that's an argument from coco's own personal incredulity
• 35:37: it was in your soul in fact you can immediately experience Soul is real all five senses just using your soul so you can see your mom's blouse you can uh you can taste a strawberry you can feel fur you can uh smell a rose you can hear beethoven's fifth how many you just heard it right now
• 35:55: it's not as vivid as what your physical senses can deliver to you from the physical environment but they're still there they're all real but they're not in the physical world they're in the non-physical world of your soul so your soul is real
• 36:09: simply asserting that there is no physical or naturalistic explanation for a psychological experience does not prove that psychological experiences are non-physical
• 36:20: you aren't justified in simply saying the soul did it or God did it when you don't understand something
• 36:26: I don't say the following to be mean or to put anyone down but if you use this line of reasoning and conversation with a naturalist they're pretty likely to stop taking you seriously
• 36:36: if you want to convince us of a huge claim like the soul exists you'll have to actually provide evidence for it but here's another thing and it's the second thing that we all know about
• 36:48: all human beings who have human souls and we haven't always made the connection but I’ll make it for you here there is something wonderful about us and the wonderful thing about being human is not in our physical bodies but we all consider that humans are equal in some significant way and the way they're equal is not physical because we're not equal physically we are equal in our souls and that's what makes us special as human beings that's what makes us valuable
• 37:18: this is why we don't treat human beings like animals this is why we can gas termites but not jews
• 37:31: okay let me just jump in there uh I don't want this video to get restricted again a claim is not an argument I agree that humans tend to value humans I just think this is explainable through the process of natural selection on a social species those within a species that value their own life tend to survive better both in groups and independently
• 37:50: now I disagree that humans inherently believe that all humans are equally morally valuable we typically value the lives of those we perceive to be a part of our group and are quick to dehumanize those outside of our group various forms of tribalism such as racism religious discrimination and warfare exemplify this
• 38:07: humans and our ancestors spent at least hundreds of thousands of years living in relatively small groups of hunter-gatherers whose main competition for resources were other small groups of humans
• 38:20: a moral nature which sacralizes the in-group and demonizes the out-group is exactly what we would expect natural selection to produce within a social species living in this environment
• 38:25: after all if your group survives you and your genes are more likely to survive
• 38:32: also what about psychopaths humans who lack any sense of the moral value of other humans my explanation of morality doesn't preclude the existence of these people because it assumes variation such as slight differences in brain function happens in reproduction that's just necessary for evolution to occur
• 38:49: as for cocoa's view isn't it implied that humans incapable of morally valuing others don't have souls so did God create some people without souls mean that'd be a yikes
• 39:01: in atheism do we have any reason to believe that human beings are special
• 39:06: no we're just evolved creatures we're the result of accident and chance and this is part of the existential crisis for those who are atheists because atheism reduces us to cosmic junk
• 39:19: we are just biological accidents we're the ultimate unplanned planned pregnancy our physical parts are just stuck together without any reason without any purpose human beings are nothing
• 39:36: you can still feel special and value human life as an atheist almost all people including atheists do and I think I’ve provided a tenable explanation for how that came to be meanwhile
• 39:47: Koukl has just dismissed all explanations for that besides Christianity without giving any reason for doing so then concluded that Christianity is true if you simply believe a religious proposition is true because it makes you feel better than any alternative
• 40:04: please just admit that don't give impressionable people the idea that your views are based on reason if you're just going to forego rational arguments and simply appeal to emotion
• 40:11: this way you'll at least preserve a bit of your integrity instead of coming off as coco does here as someone who can't be bothered to even consider any view apart from his own
• 40:23: from this point coco talks about how hopeless atheism is for a while and then eventually talks about how and why humans feel guilt for wrongdoing
• 40:30: Guilt yes everybody feels guilty so I asked him why do we feel guilty well maybe society made it up
• 40:36: okay well that's a possibility I guess but how about this maybe we feel guilty because we are guilty maybe we feel guilty because we are guilty and denial is not going to help
• 40:47: that's relativism that's not going to answer the problem of our genuine guilt
• 40:55: the answer I told them to guilt is not denial the answer to guilt is forgiveness and this I said to the audience is where jesus comes in
• 41:07: maybe humans feel guilt because those who don't are less cooperative and can lessen their group's chances of survival and reproduction so natural selection favored humans who feel guilt
• 41:18: sometimes maybe that's not the case but at least this hypothesis is based on a mechanism which we can demonstrate empirically natural selection and a premise we could test group cooperation being hindered by a member's inability to feel guilt
• 41:30: so I want you to see something important here atheism cannot explain the beauty and wonder of being human it can describe it but can't explain it atheism has no answer to human brokenness so there is no consolation and true forgiveness
• 41:51: but we do Christians do we have the answers that fit our worldview so here again our worldview fits the way the world actually is
• 42:03: there's a nice hand in glove relationships that has certainly been claimed but no evidence for this has been produced in this video and the arguments presented have consisted of little more than the dismissal of any naturalistic explanation for the observations made and the assertion of untestable claims about the supernatural
• 42:20: but atheists all they're left with is to build their lives on as the great british atheistic philosopher bertrand russell put it the firm foundation of unyielding despair all they have left is richard dawkins's universe of blind pitiless indifference that is the world that is consistent with atheism
• 42:38: I have an entire video taking on this claim as presented by William Lane Craig go watch that video if you want to hear more
• 42:45: but here I’ll just say if atheism for you precludes your ability to feel hope and happiness fine don't be an atheist then
• 42:55: your discontentment with atheism though doesn't mean that everyone must feel the same way
• 43:00: atheists are perfectly capable of happiness and hopefulness as the psychological research I discussed in the video I just mentioned does demonstrate
• 43:07: again if you believe certain religious ideas because it makes you feel better please just say so that's far more respectable than telling others that if they disbelieve your religion they will be miserable
• 43:20: alright that's pretty much the end there's one more video in the course but it's just a summary of the others so we'll conclude here
• 43:33: honestly I did expect more of this course I didn't expect to agree with its points but I did think the arguments presented would be a bit more fleshed out given the format
• 43:39: seeing what passes for substantive content within the realm of Christian apologetics it just makes me sad there are some Christians out there such as in the community I was raised in who see men like Greg Koukl as decorated intellectuals and arguments like those presented here as iron-clad philosophical proofs of God's existence
• 44:01: naturally when someone they know leaves the faith they consume materials like this and use it in conversations with their non-believing loved ones
• 44:14: speaking from experience all this does is damage the relationship as we've seen here apologists are still spreading harmful falsehoods about atheists such as atheists believe everything came from nothing morality makes no sense as an atheist and atheism causes hopelessness and despair even though atheists have been correcting them on these things from the beginning
• 44:32: if you're a Christian watching this let me give you some advice that will get you much further in a conversation with an atheist than anything Koukl said here
• 44:43: ask them for their thoughts rather than assuming you know them already and when they speak listen they'll almost definitely state an opinion different from the atheists which apologists invent
• 44:54: your atheist interlocutor knows themselves better than any apologist ever could be willing to have an unscripted conversation with and listen to them rather than letting an apologist dictate what you say and what you think the atheist believes
• 45:11: if you're unwilling to do that then you're not prepared to have productive conversations with atheists
• 45:18: thanks for watching I’ve been drew of genetically modified skeptic special thanks to my patrons for their constant love and support if you want to hear more from me subscribe and follow me on social media at the handles below as always if you are an apostate in need there are resources linked in the description to help you find community and mental health support remember to be kind to others in the comments and until next time stay skeptical

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