The "why" question in a universe that doesn't have a certain, concrete meaning, doesn't make sense. There doesn't have to be a why. The why question, is something humans have created in order to give meaning to life. That's what i think Ricky means by saying "why" doesn't make sense, but he doesn't explain his point at all.

Ricky's last argument ("if we destroyed all knowledge of science and God, what would we get in 1000 years ?") really only works if you accept "there is no God" as an axiom, and "laws of nature are immutable" as a second axiom. It is essentially a circular argument, therefore it is a bad argument. I really like Ricky Gervais as a comedian, though I do sometimes feel like he's a bit too confident in his own intellect when it comes to discussing serious matters. This is - in my humble opinion - the main difference between an open atheist and a believer. The believer is conscious of his limits and of what comes to him through faith rather than certain knowledge ; the atheist does not accept the possibility that he does not have all the cards in the game. I would therefore contend that while agnosticism and belief are both as philosophically valid because of the admission one could be wrong, atheism on the other hand is inferior because it is by its essence an absolutist statement.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

It's a pointless question because the only way we could know about the origin of reality is if we are able to see everything outside of the observable universe. If we discovered that outside of our observable universe we see infinite universes being born and dying then we would just have to accept that the multiverse is real. If we look further and find that the multiverse if finite but each univers makes up an atom of a larger being then that just gives us more questions. There are unlimited possibilities of what could be outside of our observable universe and it is very reductive, ignorant and simple minded to ask the question how did something come from nothing and assume that we would need to put an ancient middle eastern deity in there to solve that problem.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

How and why does this universe exist is the same question. Why have I got green paint because I mixed yellow paint with blue. How have I got green paint because I mixed paint yellow with blue.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

Glen says without a why we live nihilistic lives, this means if we don't insert god here then we live nihilistic lives. Which means that we need to make up and believe the existence of god otherwise we will live nihilistic lives. If we live nihilistic lives we can think for ourselves, this is not something we should be afraid of.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

He said that ricky gervais needs a meaningful question to be asked but he doesn't need a meaningful universe in which to ask it, which is true he doesn't.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

Science and nature can't be stripped by an imaginary character.

I love Ricky and his work. It’s his work that is an apologetic against his atheism - the idea that there might be a happy ending for the insecure and narcissistic (the office); the idea that success is not measured in dollars and fame, but in loving relationships (extras); the idea that ‘kindness is magic’ (derek); the idea that although death ruins everything, life after death is possible (after life) - all these testify to sensibilities that have been given to him by his loving Father and creator.

John Lennox had a great breakdown on "Why is my cup of tea hot". If your mind is going 1st to: Energy transfer"... all that means is that your limited in your thinking. The tea is hot because I wanted it to be. This is the answer to the WHY guestion.

@kennorthunder2428

3 ай бұрын

Christianity says: All things were created because God wanted to be glorified. What that entails is quite intricate; part of which entails an expense to ourselves as well as to God.

@11kravitzn

3 ай бұрын

I want $1M, and yet I don't have it. Wanting something can't explain why it's the case because wanting doesn't cause things. You wanted a cup of tea and so you turned on the stove and that is what heated the water. Your wanting it didn't cause the tea to be hot, but it caused you to get up and turn on the stove. Wanting a cup of tea cannot itself heat water and so cannot explain why the water is hot.

@user-tc8yj7zd7k

3 ай бұрын

​@@11kravitznI think you've missed the point of the argument here, because I think the question isn't phrased quite right. It's the answer to the question "why is there a cup of hot water here?" has two answers, the how of the stove and the boiling water etc that you've laid out, but also there is the human who wanted a drink and took the necessary steps to get one. Both are important and different ways to understand the same phenomenon, and choosing one or the other is not to fully understand the cup of drink - one is the how the cup contains water that is hot, and one is the why to do with the purpose of having a cup at all. So the analogy is, why is the universe here? Answer 1 big bang etc etc. Answer 2 God caused it for his own purposes, which he then can choose to reveal to us. They complement and do not contradict as they are two ways of looking at the universe. Atheists will say there is no purpose, because purpose isn't found in materialism and therefore doesn't exist. That can be chosen but then you have to answer the "why" question (why do we have something rather than nothing) as, it just is. And Glen deals with that in this video better than I could.

@11kravitzn

3 ай бұрын

@@user-tc8yj7zd7k Why do you think there is a purpose? In the case of kettles we can easily understand how they become hot: because a human filled the kettle, placed it on the stove, and turned it on. They may have done this because they wanted a cup of tea, but that is not necessarily true. Maybe they did it absentmindedly or because they wanted to do some experiment or because someone told them to, or who knows why. It doesn't really matter, as long as the filled kettle is on the heating element. But in the case of the existence of the universe, what leads you to expect there is a purpose, or that you can know it? Do we have other universes to look at in which we know the purpose for which they were created? It is only your misplaced expectation of finding a purpose that leads you to find what you're looking for by the vacuous pseudo-explanation of "God willed it so, and it was so." You set yourself up with a faulty question and are for some reason satisfied with a faulty answer. The universe isn't required to satisfy your demand for purpose. Moreover, how could you check your answer? You can believe whatever you want but it's not in any meaningful sense knowledge unless you can check if you're wrong. Faith never cares to check if it's wrong, which is one of its defining qualities, and hence it is never a form of knowledge.

@kennorthunder2428

3 ай бұрын

@@11kravitzn Regarding money, not a fair comparison. You're embedded in a system where money is only legitiamate under conditions of multiple agreed minds. The God of creation had a why that motivated him to make the what. The best that I can alude to as HOW he made the *what* is via information theory.

Apologize for the off topic but has speak life reviewed the Baz Luhrman's Elvis movie? There's a scene of Elvis as a child going to a revivalists' service and he is taken up with the spirit and singing and dancing with the other worshippers. The movie seems to draw a relationship of his church experience to his hip wiggling while performing as an adult. I thought it was a meaningful connection. What do you think?

If something cannot come from nothing how did god come from nothing? Or who created god?

@AreEnTee

Ай бұрын

I'm Theology, "God" is often used as an eternal entity who's all-powerful and all-knowing. The key word is "eternal," meaning always existing. God has no beginning nor and end, He has always existed. That's why God is not limited to the boundaries (space/time) of our universe

@alanmill793

Ай бұрын

@@AreEnTee Hi AreEn Tee The problem with your assertion is that no one has ever supplied any credible objective evidence for the existence of your alleged god and neither will you. All you are doing is speculating on a speculation. Your alleged god is extremely complex by definition and alleged nature and abilities and the idea that something so complex can have no cause is not credible or explained with credible objective evidence, when there are other simpler alternative ideas for getting something from nothing, or rather from something uncaused. Cosmology is pointing to our universe arising from the very rapid inflation of a small piece of empty space, which is something that is nothing. Space has some interesting characteristics. As the Buddha observed 2,500 years ago, space is uncaused, as nothing does not need a cause. And no one doubts the existence of space. We don’t yet know how the inflation happened though apparently Einstein’s equations work on the other side of the inflationary period where time is another dimension of space. So that piece of space was outside of time and a candidate for being eternal, meaning space has always existed. In which case it would be something eternal that we all agree exists. The idea is that uncaused space created our universe and our universe is here because it is the natural condition of our universe to inflate, creating the matter of an expanding universe. There may be other universes where the natural condition of their creation led instead to their collapse and extinction. The benefit of this theory of the origin of the universe is that space does not claim our obedience or maintain that we have a duty to obey commands it makes, particularly immoral commands like those that abound in the sacred texts and in the practices of theist religions, as space make no commands. Space does not tell anyone to bomb and level Gaza and slaughter those inhabitants who refuse to leave and go elsewhere. Space does not tell anyone to launch missiles onto inhabitants in Ashkelon slaughtering the inhabitants there . Etc etc etc In the absence of credible objective evidence for the existence of your alleged god and with the availability of mountains of credible objective evidence that the political consequences of unregulated theist religion are appalling, resulting in chaos and destruction and the pointless and massive waste of human lives, I’ll continue with a Secular Humanist worldview that I’m attaching to a Liberal Social Democracy. Fortunately, I live in a country that has such an ordering principle and it is not necessary for me to have to know the exact origin of our universe in order to lead a happy, productive and socially constructive life, so I do not plug an alleged god into the gaps in knowledge in that direction.

Great video Glen. You are ridiculously generous to Colbert though.

@SpeakLifeMedia

3 ай бұрын

He did very well in this conversation, wouldn't you say?

9:24 This is where he took charge. We are all agnostic, " As no one knows there is a God." This is not true. Some people know there is a God.

Scientists who are ye ALL? 1ST. Thy shared "i" AM scientists in front of Thee! Indeed. Now what is who am I scientists? Thy shared "i" AM scientists will say, don't belongs sitting with all thy scientists! Well said! Likewise remind and comes with comfort unto all the Who am I scientists! Thank you and Gratitude and Honor my Heirs and my Beautiful shared "i" AM scientists upon all dry grounds nor the world.

I am not sure what is your big beef with the question anout why there is something? First i don't see how "nothing"can be an option. And option is something, which is excluded by nothingness. Nothingness is not an option because nothingness by its very definition cannot even exist. But even if I was astonished by why there is something...how do you know the answer to that question is God? You just are using a very questionable philosophical question to bring a pretedermined answer with no justification. Also, if existence itself requires a God to be explained, that leaves us the question: Why there is nothing instead of God? And also...if God preceeds existence, what do you mean when you say "God exists"?.

Hi Glen It took you about 40 minutes over two videos plus an amount of preparation time to explain that Gervais hadn't explained his points very well in the few minutes allotted to him on the unprepared fly on a TV chat show. Yes, Gervais didn't explain himself in a few minutes, but then neither did you as such a thing is difficult to do with such a topic. Despite talking about this for 40 minutes over two videos, you didn't deal with Gervais core points in his thought experiment, which with the benefit of time can be rephrased as this: When different people do theology, they get different answers for the same question and as time goes by, the divergence in those answers increases. When different people do science, the answers for the same question converge over time and then everyone asking the same question gets the same answer. No, he didn't use this exact phrasing as he didn’t have time to get around to reformulating what he was saying off the cuff as he was not expecting that line of questioning from Colbert, as you noted. I guess he was expecting to talk about his Netflix show that had just been released. But this was a TV talk show, not a monologue, a TEDx talk or a formal debate. Gervais had a five to six minute window between ad breaks and topics and half of that was Colbert talking. So Gervais had about 3 minutes to make a point and try to explain it. You needed 30+ minutes of uninterrupted monologue while Gervais did it on the fly while interrupted. And still you didn’t deal with his core points. On the beach in Gaza, water will boil at 100*C and Jew & Muslim will agree with this but they will not agree with seeing things through the lens of Jesus because to them it is clearly not a sensible idea and they will never do what you do because they reckon that you don’t know the truth and they do. Just ask them, they will tell you that your lens is badly designed. As for the outro music; Colbert told the band what to play as he knew Gervais is an Atheist and Colbert wanted to have the last say as the host has the power; the power to control how long the guest speaks for, the power to interrupt the guest, the power to direct the band. But Colbert chose a piece of music that I reckon 99.9% of the audience had no idea as to what it was. I bet Gervais didn't know. I didn't know what it was until you informed me, as it is not a generally well known tune. If Colbert had wanted to make an immediate last word effect outro, he should have had the band play something popular like “I Don't Know How To Love Him” as I bet that would be known by most of the audience including Gervais and me. As it stands, the music selection failed to make the point Colbert wanted to make and so it was just a bit of muzak, but played very well.

@SpeakLifeMedia

Ай бұрын

Gosh, is that what Ricky meant to say? (We've had a number of takes on his words in these comments. I've noticed that the more favourable someone is to Ricky, the less their interpretation sounds like his actual words). All I can say is, if he was actually trying to make the argument you're making, he did an even worse job at communicating than I thought.

@alanmill793

Ай бұрын

@@SpeakLifeMedia As I clearly said Glen, “Yes, Gervais didn't explain himself in a few minutes, but then neither did you.” As Colbert said to Gervais when he appeared another time on the Late Show, “we discuss deep subjects even if we don’t dive deeply into those subjects……there’s an audience and we are entertainers, so that influences the way we talk to each other.” TV talk shows are a scattering of topics quickly moving from one to another before the audience changes channel and the sponsors get upset with the host. Gervais was never going to get the deep dive that you can do on your videos. When you think about his thought experiment, that is the direction it was going in but he wasn’t going to get there in three minutes was he. There’s way too much unpacking needed for that, isn’t there. You showed that you couldn’t get there in 3 minutes, so why should he. As time goes by, human thinking converges and agrees on science facts except at the cutting edge. As time goes by human thinking diverges and disagrees on religious claims and continually schisms. This is what has happened over human history and the thought is that if humans had to start science and religion again, without any awareness of what we have had so far, the same thing would happen, with science arriving at the same facts and religion diverging and arriving at different claims that would still not be agreed on. Done again, people living on the beach in the eastern Mediterranean would find that they agree that water boils at a certain temperature but that they would violently disagree on religious claims as the first is dealing with objective facts and the second is dealing with speculating on speculations. Yes, working off the cuff unexpectedly, Gervais didn’t explain himself very well, but that’s not the core point to take away. Your line here is deflective and playing the man and not dealing with what Colbert called “really good”. If humans had to start religion all over again with no awareness of what we have had so far, and given humans still would have the same human nature, your response to Gervais should be to explain why the religious would all arrive at a point where everyone agreed on religious claims when history and current affairs shows that hasn’t happened and continues to diverge.

Faith Kills.

A purely material being, by it's very nature, is incapable of recognizing it's own materiality.

As irritating as Colbert can be with his progressive politics, I've always had to have a soft spot for him for his vocal faith.

@kgrant67

2 ай бұрын

@@dominionphilosophy3698 I don't disagree. But I do believe he's serious about his faith. I've heard about his upbringing and his family situation. It makes me wonder how he can hold so much cognitive dissonance between that and the rest of his views. I don't watch or listen to him at all because of it

Great intro question by Stephen , shame he’s let his brain be mushed by TDS.

Your whole argument about believing in God essentially boils down to "I _HAVE_ to believe because the alternative is just too unbearable for me!"

Two cardinals of Holy Mothet Church debatimg?

Who the HELL is giving this guys a thumbs up

He sees all things through the lens of Jesus which means he can't see the truth

@HearGodsWord

3 ай бұрын

Which means he can see the truth. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

@danielmcdonagh2889

3 ай бұрын

Truth is not a concept but a person; Jesus Christ.

@sparxhub3379

3 ай бұрын

That's a nice culty catch phrase but it true. 😂

@baonemogomotsi7138

2 ай бұрын

@@danielmcdonagh2889So incest exists because Jesus?