If you're interested in hearing more arguments for God, check out my playlist here kzread.info/head/PLlVH-ThCazKlLKXWI44mLIsMqT3zRGsMK&si=xICp0_cXb3Biy861

Nice interview! Dr. Brian Cutter is a terrific philosopher and good at explaining difficult concepts. I liked the board games analogy.

@TheAnalyticChristian

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for this video! Brian is wonderful, and I really enjoyed reading the article. Among other points to press, I wonder how well theism predicts nomological harmony. It seems like God could achieve any of his creative ends, and bring about pretty much any significant goods he might aim at, regardless of whether there’s nomological harmony. Suppose the initial state doesn’t match the governing laws. No matter for an omnipotent God! God could simply miraculously make the universe unfold in any way he wishes, with anything he wants therein (indeed, he could make it qualitatively exactly like our universe). It’s hard to see, then, how theism predicts nomological harmony better than chance, as it’s hard to see why God would prefer to bring about those creative ends (e.g. the goods of conscious, rational, free, relationship-engaging creatures) through a nomologically harmonious universe instead of a nomologically disharmonious universe. One might think there’s special value in nomological harmony - say, because it allows creation itself to take some part in bringing about later states of reality. But (1) I don’t see why that’s particularly valuable, (2) God can make creation produce later states of creation without doing so through laws, and (3) there might equally be special value in a nomologically disharmonious world that God miraculously unfolds. It makes God more intimately bound up with creation, gives God a more active role as he continuously crafts it like an artisan or sculptor, and allows God to bring order out of lawless chaos. Alternatively, one might say God would be wasteful in making laws that don’t apply to the physical world, and maybe it’s inelegant or aesthetically disvaluable or something. I’m not sure why that’s inelegant or aesthetically disvaluable; after all, there are lots of mathematical truths and laws that don’t apply to the physical world, and we don’t typically regard those as inelegant or aesthetically disvaluable. And even if it’s aesthetically disvaluable, again it allows God to bring about other values that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to bring about. And as for wastefulness, roughly the same points apply (plus it’s unclear why God would be wasteful if he’s infinitely resourceful).

@MaverickChristian

11 ай бұрын

_I wonder how well theism predicts monological harmony_ Yeah I'm skeptical of that too. _Nomological_ harmony on the other hand...

@MajestyofReason

11 ай бұрын

@@MaverickChristian lol, fixed

@muhammedshanushan3931

11 ай бұрын

@@MajestyofReason I don’t think one has give positive reason why God would prefer Harmony , How many options are there , either God wants Harmony or He doesn’t or He doesn’t even care The P(Harmony/ God ) would be 1/3 I know the above calculation is too superficial ,The question is does the number of possible ways in which it could be disharmonious affect God’s preference of Harmony? It seems to me No Suppose there are billion red and 3 blue balls in a room , we send a man to the room to pick any three balls he wishes and (E)he selected all three blue balls Now we have two hypothesis A) The man is colour blind who couldn’t distinguish red from blue B) The man is not colour blind I think E is evidence for B cuz In blind hypothesis the probability of getting three blue balls is 6/billion^3 ( aproax) , it is clearly dependent upon the number of balls and their ratio In non blind hypothesis the man can simply choose to select all red , or all blue , or select randomly , or 1 blue and 2 red etc… As we can clearly see his options are independent of the number of balls and their ratio Similarly I think God’s preference of Harmony or Disharmony is independent of the ratio of Harmony-Disharmony ratio

@andrewmoon1917

11 ай бұрын

Hey Joe! I have similar worries, and that's partly also since I lean toward skeptical theism. Did you still think that the 3rd factor view was still the most plausible?

@BetweenHeartnMind

10 ай бұрын

Hey JOE! Have him on to further discuss this argument! @MajestyofReason

37:24 Damascene proposes another argument for the same conclusion taken from the government of the world [ De fide orthodoxa I, 3]. Averroes likewise hints at it [In II Physicorum ]. The argument runs thus. Contrary and discordant things cannot, always or for the most part, be parts of one order except under someone’s government, which enables all and each to tend to a definite end. But in the world we find that things of diverse natures come together under one order, and this not rarely or by chance, but always or for the most part. There must therefore be some being by whose providence the world is governed. This we call God.- Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 13 And even the very continuity of the creation, and its preservation and government, teach us that there does exist a Deity, who supports and maintains and preserves and ever provides for this universe. For how could opposite natures, such as fire and water, air and earth, have combined with each other so as to form one complete world, and continue to abide in indissoluble union, were there not some omnipotent power which bound them together and always is preserving them from dissolution? - John of Damascus, Of the Orthodox Faith I,3 It seems that people have already discussed this argument in the past. Rob Koons has something very similar in development.

The "laws of nature" is not what governs how particles work. It's the four fundamental forces (weak nuclear energy, strong nuclear energy, gravity and electromagnetism). The "laws" is just our way of describing how these forces interact. I would be curious to see you fellas have this discussion with an actual physicist.

@kensey007

11 ай бұрын

Exactly. Of course the laws match reality. This is because the laws *describe* reality. If reality was different, the laws would obviously be different. I'll give the speaker credit for acknowledging his argument won't work on this view of laws however (which I assume is Humeian).

@TheAnalyticChristian

10 ай бұрын

Sounds like you opt for the humean views of laws. Is that accurate? If so, what are you thoughts on his objections to the humean view? He states them at about the 30minute mark.

@TheAnalyticChristian

10 ай бұрын

@@kensey007at around 30:00 he gives objections to the the humean view. He thinks the humean view gets one out of this problem of Nomological harmony, but then the humean view faces an even deeper problem. Thoughts on that objection he raised to the humean view?

@gear24x

10 ай бұрын

​@@TheAnalyticChristian there's no "view point" this is how modern science understands nature. It is governed by the fundamental forces. If you think this is incorrect, please provide evidence that is able to disprove every physicist and scientific discovery to date. Scientists create "laws" (they're actually called theories) based on observation. Theories can be wrong hence the "laws contradicting each other." what makes "laws" (theories) plausible is that they have predictive power. Now for your 30:00 argument. That doesn't disprove anything because it is a disingenuous argument to science. Everything in the universe is relative in relation to everything else. For example, the force of gravity is everywhere but it's not the same everywhere (the moon has less gravitational pull compared to the earth) that's why it's called the theory of general relativity. I'm sorry but your nomological harmony argument is just utterly meaningless.

@kensey007

10 ай бұрын

@@TheAnalyticChristian I'll have to think about that more. It's a fair question you raise. I'm just an amateur KZread philosopher.

I find his response to the ensamble solution very dissatisfying. He doesn't address the fact that physics is ultimately experiment-driven. The ultimate confirmation of the existence of a physical law comes from an experiment. And an experiment can only operate on what actually exists. If there are millions of laws about some non-existent particles, we will never be able to discover them. The self-selection effect is very strong by nature of how science operates. We can only discover the laws about the objects which exist. There is only one exception which poses an even greater defeater to this argument. Magnetic monopoles! The existence of magnetic monopoles is predicted by the standard Big Bang theory and the theory (or, really, a hypothesis) of cosmic inflation has been proposed as a possible explanation for why they don't populate the universe (this is not the only reason why cosmic inflation is postulated). But, if a magnetic monopole were to exist, we would know perfectly well how to describe it (the laws of electromagnetism show remarkable symmetry between electric and magnetic fields and we could incorporate the notion of a magnetic charge perfectly well into our existent theories). We can justifiably say we have a good grasp of the laws of magnetic monopoles, except they are never observed (and to the best of our knowledge they don't populate our universe). This undermines the very premise of this whole argument which stated that there is a match between the laws and the objects described by these laws. The matter of magnetic monopoles is a clear counter-example. There is no such match here! Actually, a second challenge to the main premise would be to say that there are objects which obey no laws. One could conceivably interpret non-deterministic behaviour as the absence of a governing law. So if we see a particle behave in a non-deterministic manner, we could say that this is because there is no law constraining its behaviour. Same goes for free will. In this case we could argue that quantum mechanics, as well as the arguments for free will provide evidence against the claim that there is a perfect match between what exists and what is governed by laws. In conclusion, magnetic monopoles are an example of non-existing objects for which laws are readily available, while non-deterministically behaving objects are an example of existing objects which are not governed by laws.

"Laws" are artifacts of science: they are the based on our interpretations of our observations. What if we could mathematically infer laws for "schmassive" bodies that would elegantly explain the behavior of massive bodies AND the behavior of charged particles, both? Would it really matter whether "schmassive" bodies actually exist?

@kensey007

11 ай бұрын

Agree. Consider this argument: 1. There are laws governing schmassive bodies. 2. Schmassive bodies do not exist. 3. This lack of nomological harmony suggests there is no God. My above argument seems terrible. Why isn't the argument presented in the video parallel?

long story short, I fart, therefore here is the proof of God

Really Interesting argument! Thanks.

@TheAnalyticChristian

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! Have you seen my other videos related to this argument?

@commandtheraven9324

11 ай бұрын

Psychophysical Harmony but not Nomological Harmony. Luv ur channel!@@TheAnalyticChristian

@TheAnalyticChristian

11 ай бұрын

@@commandtheraven9324 so psychophysical harmony is distinct from Nomological harmony. That’s good. That means we have different pieces of evidence both pointing to God. I pinned a comment on this video where I link to a playlist of videos on arguments for God. You might want to check it out.

@commandtheraven9324

11 ай бұрын

@@TheAnalyticChristian Thanks Jordan!

I find the response about moving the coincidence into God really forceful. I'd be glad to read some publication that argues against the force of that type of response, could you perhaps point me in the right direction?

Saying laws vs patterns is semantics. Humes patterns are the laws of God. The scientific "laws" of nature are simply our feeble attempts at summarizing the patterns. Yes the patterns govern.

@muhammedshanushan3931

11 ай бұрын

If laws are descriptive ,then they don’t explain regularity

@TheAnalyticChristian

11 ай бұрын

Since you think the patterns govern, (a) do you accept the fact of nomological harmony? and (b) do you accept that nomological is strong evidence for God?

Totally fascinating to see different views of laws and states of the universe. Thanks!

@TheAnalyticChristian

11 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching!

only 1:52 in and can tell after listening to his examples of nomological harmony this is going to be a bunch of misguided nonsense

@joebazooks

11 ай бұрын

there are "laws" that govern activity because there is correspondence in and throughout the universe. its really as simple as that

correspondence is literally ubiquitous, yet this guys theory is basically "correspondence could be limited." how about giving us one example of one thing in the human experience that does not correspond to anything else in the human experience. 50 minutes of naval-gazing. cool.

Nomological Harmony = bunch of word salid. Is it evidence for anything? Nope. Oh its just fine tuning reduxed. Get some new arguments mate.

@TheAnalyticChristian

10 ай бұрын

By “word salad” do you mean something like “a combination of fancy sounding words that are ultimately meaningless”? If so, I don’t see how Nomological harmony qualifies as word salad. Dr. Cutter defined the fact of Nomological harmony as the fact that the laws that govern the universe match the contents of the universe. That is a meaningful sentence. You then asked if Nomological harmony is evidence of anything and said “nope.” Why not? Evidence for some hypothesis is anything that raises the probability of the truth of that hypothesis. Dr. Cutter explained why the fact of Nomological harmony raises the probability of theism. If his argument works then yes, Nomological harmony is evidence for theism. You then said Nomological harmony is just fine tuning reduced. No, there is a major differences. Even if life did not exist in the universe, there could still be nomological harmony. There could still be laws that match the contents of the universe but those laws are not capable of producing life. Thoughts?

@DeconvertedMan

10 ай бұрын

@@TheAnalyticChristianwow! the laws of the universe match the universe! NO WAY! only a true genius would figure that out! That sure took a lot of words to get to that conclusion but its 1000% worth it! I was so wrong its not word salad after all! So even if there was no life the fact that the laws of the universe match the things in the universe would be proof of god somehow? Wow! That's some presup! I said "reduxed" not "reduced" redux = brought back; revived. Anyway... nothing new here. One more PHD wasted. Ah well.

@holz_name

10 ай бұрын

@@TheAnalyticChristian "the fact that the laws that govern the universe match the contents of the universe. That is a meaningful sentence." No, it's just a tautology. The sentence just means that the universe is as we see it and not different. How can the laws of the universe not match what we see (i.e. the content) in the universe?? It's like we are not seeing balls jump up and that proves God. Furthermore, laws are descriptive. Laws describe what we see in nature. "There are laws about the behavior of massive bodies, and there exist massive bodies for those laws to govern. There are charged particles, and there exist laws specifying how charged particles are to behave." no no no. You have it backwards. Massive bodies exist and we study them and we make laws to describe their behavior. I can make up laws for non existing stuff, does that means this stuff will pop up into existence? Like we have string theory, does that means quantum strings exist? Maybe not and thousands of scientists wasted their entire life. Fine, you believe in mathematical realism. That laws are not created but discovered. Like Platonic realism but for mathematical laws. That there are laws floating around in a metaphysical space and scientists are discovering them. But still you are just saying that the universe is as we see it. "These problems can conceivably come apart. Consider a universe that evolves in an orderly manner as a sheer accident, and another universe that evolves in accordance with chaos-inducing laws: the first exhibits order but not nomological harmony, while the second exhibits nomological harmony but not order." Why? In both cases laws exist that match the contents of the universe. What does "sheer accident" means here? Even accidents are done according to laws. Accident just means that something was unforeseen. The author also fails to define accident here. "In any event, the problem as it arises for fundamental dynamical laws is that of explaining why, given that there are such laws as well as states, there is a match between them." Why? Of course there is a match. How can there be not a match. You have a law of gravity that things fall down, so of course things will fall down. That is the nature of a law here in mathematical realism, that laws *prescribe* what stuff is doing. Things cannot defy the law. They must follow the law. "Just as most ways of pairing rulebooks with initial game-piece configurations would yield a mismatch, it seems that most conceivable ways of pairing laws with initial conditions would yield a mismatch." Why do we have many laws? There is one law for everything in the universe. Like the author said, "There are laws about the behavior of massive bodies, and there exist massive bodies for those laws to govern. There are charged particles, and there exist laws specifying how charged particles are to behave." So for everything there is only one law. Law for massive bodies, law for charged bodies, etc. "Instead, what's striking is that they take values that yield a special outcome (namely, life) when it's improbable that they would take values that yield a special outcome." Wrong. The outcome of life is not special. You think it's special because you like being alive. But the universe doesn't care. Life is not special. It's the same argument as a lotto winner says that she won because she is special. No, she wasn't special. She just won by pure chance. There was no higher power that guided her to win the lottery. "That's because a match between laws and initial conditions is a special outcome, just as cosmological fine-tuning and monkey-typed poetry are." The monkey-typed poetry is an example to show that it is *not* special. The monkeys didn't do anything special to come up with Shakespeare and even Shakespeare is not special. Shakespeare is special to us on a personal level, but Shakespeare is not special, it's just randomly created text just like all the millions and millions other randomly created text. "but it suggests that it would be a theoretical cost to leave it unexplained, and it gives us reason to seek an explanation." No. You have destroyed your own case by bringing up monkey-typed poetry. That monkey typed Shakespeare is neither "special" nor "improbable". It's not special because it's just randomly created text and it's not improbable, it's guaranteed. The whole point of the monkey-typed poetry is to show that improbable stuff is guaranteed to happen by chance if we have enough monkeys and typewriters. Ok I stop now. It's really not worth my time.

@muhammedshanushan3931

10 ай бұрын

@@holz_name Apparently you didn’t even watch the video entirely He clearly said his argument doesn’t work if laws are mere descriptions(this view will have other greater problems) If laws are prescriptive that dictates how objects should act , then contents of universe can exist without any laws telling them what to do , hence it’s not tautology You are wasting others time too

@holz_name

10 ай бұрын

@@muhammedshanushan3931 lol I didn't forced you to reply or to read my comment. Later in my reply I accept his mathematical realism, i.e. that laws are prescriptive. The tautology is in his argument, he says that laws "match the content of the universe", and of course they are, that is true in the descriptive and prescriptive case. Can you give me any example where prescriptive laws do not match the content of the universe? Laws dictate how stuff behaves in the universe, stuff cannot behave any other way. Balls don't fly up defying the law of gravity, because the prescriptive law of gravity dictates that stuff falls down. Later his argument is that it's "special" and "improbable" that those prescriptive laws allow the creation of life. But the monkey-typed poetry disproves this argument. Life is not objectively special, it's special to us because we like being alive. But for the universe life is the same as a rock. Your existence is as special as the existence of the trillions of sand grains on a beach. Poetry is just as special as any other random sequence of words written by a monkey. It's not "improbable" it's guaranteed like it's guaranteed that a million monkeys will someday type Shakespeare. PS: I would fully believe that there is an intelligent design behind the universe and life if you could show me one thing and one thing only: an objectively purpose. Intelligent beings create stuff for a purpose. A hammer is created to hammer nails. A car is created to drive. A computer to solve math. calculations. What is the purpose of the universe? What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose for people? The Bible doesn't answer that because the Bible is a book and people read and interpret it. People's interpretation is by definition subjective. I ask for an objective purpose.