That's rather telling since he is incredibly dishonest

@@GrimSqueaker exactly. A stunning admission of the obliteration of Christianity. Gloriously this hateful cult will fade into nothingness. Forever and ever. Amen.

If this is the best, boy is it not gonna be a good century for Xianity.

Agreed. My own mentor Michael Tooley, atheist, during my time in academia, co-authored a book with Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga ought not to be so flippantly dismissed.

Except when there is.

Chad D Good example

In 7 days? Or 6000 years? even if we accept that "god" created everything, there is no way you can connect this hypothetical god with your god

@@anujagarwal7992 Why do you assume that the way young earth creationists interpret the Bible is the way all Christians do? The Hebrew word translated to 'day' is 'yom' which can mean 24 hours, but it can also just mean an unknown period of time. Many early Church Fathers do not think it was literally 7 days. The 3rd century(!!!) theologian Origen points out how it is unlikely to refer to a 24 hour period because the sun and moon was said to be created on the 4th day. There would be no such thing as day or night before this. The way to find out if the Christian God is the true God, assuming as you say that we accept the existence of God, is the historicity regarding the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Among New Testament scholars, both atheist and Christian, there are several facts which have been agreed upon and practically universally accepted: 1. Jesus was crucified, 2. Jesus was buried in a tomb owned by the Sanhedrin, 3. The tomb was found empty, 4. The disciples had powerful experiences where Jesus appeared to them, and 5. The apostles were martyred for their faith. Atheist scholars hold to the idea that the disciples simply hallucinated the whole thing, or that they stole the corpse of Jesus even though the theory that he actually rose from the dead has more explanatory power because it would violate the laws of nature. But if we take the existence of God into account, then not only would the resurrection have more explanatory power, but it would also be plausible to say that he was raised by God.

@@shunoinori a day is 24 hr period,it's doesn't mean before formation of sun there would no such thing as day,it's just a convention Secondly which explainatory power?at best your god has same explainatory power as magic.

Indeed

Interesting I didnt know about this! Where can I read about it? Any books or papers etc by him? I mean obviously I know that he would have defended the "problem of evil" in his career, but I wasnt aware that he was so renowned for it and that it has stood to such scrutiny. I had thought that the problem of evil (at least from a logical standpoint) had long been solved.

God, Freedom, and Evil is his most well-known book on this - not sure where to read more about the history of this issue.@@Raiddd__

Are u one?

Cool?

I think you've nailed it; this is my problem with his defeater. The ability to remember and accurately manipulate abstract ideas is hugely advantageous and I can think of scenarios where it can evolve gradually, say starting with language and group behavior. We see a spectrum of people with more or less ability to reason accurately; and it is a learned skill to a great extent. The frog example seems too far removed from actual biology and ecology to be helpful. So have you seen anywhere that AP has responded to this, or the issue is discussed. It seems fairly obvious as it came up in the Q&A as well (where he didn't exactly respond directly).

***** HI! No, I don't know if AP has more fully addressed the hypothesis I and members of the audience raised. While AP used the word "belief" many times, he did not say "memory" even once as far as I can recall. But of course a belief resides in memory. So then as I pointed out only a comparator circuit would be needed to compare present perception with the memory and then take action or not, the expected outcomes of which would also be in memory. I am aware that I am presenting a very simplified explanation. The naturalist would want to maintain that once the comparator registered "same" that a subsequent event is triggered...some simple event. But in the case of humans, whether "same" or "not same" is registered, that can trigger either a somewhat simple response, or a complex chain along the lines of " OK, it's the same, now I must consult if another input is registering "same" or "not", and on and on, where both "same" and "not" of the second input have their own decision trees. And then what if a branch in the tree is reached where 00=don't know, 01=false and 11=true. What if 00 branches no further, but 01 and 11 have branches. Which may be considered what you call abstract thinking. Now what if 00=don't know is reached and the critter's program has an instruction to jump to another part of the program which deals with 00=don't know. Now consider that part of the program is informed by memory and who knows what else, guided by what is the risk of choosing the 01 or 11 path in the case of encountering a 00. This can be very complex in the case of a human, sometimes ending in the flip of a coin. All this complexity assumes consciousness, which I think the naturalists want to dismiss as mere programs. It is true that some unconscious/comatose people, when intubated, will reach for the tube with their hand to pull it out. That is program, combined with some memory, as the gagging along would be considered pure program but knowledge that the hand can pull out the cause of the gagging has to come from memory. But if a fire breaks out in the hospital, while the comatose person will smell the smoke and may cough, he/she will not, zombie-like, get up from the bed and make a move in the safest direction. Most of those who awaken from a coma report a complete blank out for the time they were in a coma. Some, smallish percent I think, report being aware, essentially awake, but unable to control any motor functions, and even their pupils may have been unresponsive. Those patients say they wanted to get up and speak, but could not. So they were thinking, but immobile. That suggests to me that the naturalist's view of everything as reflex is in need of more explanation as it seems there is a major linkage for all or most reflexes that can malfunction even as consciousness is still functioning. It seems odd that variously evolved reflexes would all have a master on/off switch. Well I'm rambling on just to say that the naturalist simplifies things too far. AP used the example of the frog to suggest the oversimplification but did not expound on why it is an oversimplification. Now it could be that it's all meat, and with simple organisms it does seem that way. It is still a vexing question as to how simple becomes complex in a way that complex is better. In hindsight it seems that complex is better but "complex" in humans is so radically complex....can that really build up over time, accident by accident, aided by some testing and winnowing, all of that blind? O'm not a naturalist, and my comment was made primarily to call attention to AP's over-simplified response to the typically over-simplified naturalist arguments. And then there is the strange situation with humans, that we consciuosly think about stuff, and apply what we "believe" in one area of stuff to another area of stuff, at first just to see what may result, then after tons of successful results we. So we must have belief(s) at first even to attempt to transpose them. Even if one want's to argue that those beliefs are memories of what worked, we have to generalize it first in order to attempt transposition. How do human minds generalize anything? A naturalist might say that the memories of what works and what does not work somehow overlay each other and then certain common features of the memories link up to become generalizations. And the common features end up being more or less the laws of physics. So then the generalization tend to track reality. That assumes a lot that is not known. And while some generalizations come easily, other do not, and seem to anyone whose worked hard at a problem to require conscious effort often over a long period of time, with time off in-between time on. If it's all just meat, what is conscious effort that is seeking to find a rule within an array of memories? A naturalist may say that what we call conscious effort was just a random occurance once upon a time that just so happened to have good results, resulting in the usual propagation throughout the species. The naturalist proceeds with a dogma and hatches possibilities without evidence. Naturalism does not meet the modern standard of falsifiability, and that best exposes it's weakness. AP was saying something like this by asserting that naturalists can't assume their rational thoughts to be reliable.

rh001YT Thanks so much for your thoughts. It's a fascinating subject.

Why? (opposed to the idea of the supernatural being true) Terror? What of the Mandela effect, then? If not supernatural influence?