I dont agree with the C.S. Lewis argument at the end but I did understand it. Since neither of you did I thought I might explain what I got out of it: 1)The person which is being tortured has encountered the greatest evil of his life. 2)The evil doesn't psychologically break him but rather allows him to recognize the existence of an opposite: the "normal." Which is supposed to be pure goodness. 3)the fact that this idea of pure goodness is capable of inspiring him to not psychologically break despite all his sorroundings being designed to break him is supposed to indicate that the idea of goodness is independent of him; something that exists independent of his mind and which gives him the tenacity to not give up hope. (I completely disagree with this inference. The fact that an idea can inspire you despite your circumstances does not indicate that the idea is something that exists independently of the mind. It is only in a poetic sense that we can describe the idea as being independent of his mind in order to emphasize how it is so different from his ordinary ideas or his immediate sorroundings) The basic gist is this: In life we encounter evil. Encountering evil can sometimes make us realize the goodness of its opposite: the idea of pure goodness (aka God). That idea can give us hope despite adversity which indicates that it exists independently of us. Hence God or pure goodness exists. God is the thing that gives us hope in the face of a hopeless situation. God is the goodness that is revealed even in the presence of evil, for its presence makes us think of the opposite.

Love this!

“He’s not making any arguments, it’s just all rhetoric.” Welcome to most of apologetics

It seems Gavin has the direction between a cross-cultural appreciation of fictional stories with good endings and the Christian gospel backwards - it's not that people liking fictional good endings points to the truth of the Christian gospel, it's that the Christian gospel is one example of such fictional story.

Related to the discussion of moral experience, what would you say to someone who argued that certain emotions, such as feelings of guilt, are emotions which involve a moral experience? Can one make the case that feelings of guilt can be entirely separated from moral concerns (whether realist or non-realist)?

I think you just discovered the modern guru tactics Sam employs and the "discourse sphere" that enables people to do these sorts of things because civility is preferred above all and because you don't want to alienate potential cross follower groups and you want big names to keep coming on the show for "ratings". Decoding the Gurus podcast goes over this across a wide range of guru types, many worse than Sam.

👌

The moral argument always fails. Christian morality is demonstrably subjective, with each inventing a list of morals they claim their god wants, and yet the poor dears can't show that their god merely exists, much less agrees with them. They also have the problem that they must insist that their god doesn't have to follow these supposedly "objective" morals since they have to invent excuses why it is okay for this god to commit genocide, to kill people for the actions of others, etc. This makes their morality subjective to who someone is. it also shows their morality is little more than might equals right

Thank you, Lance!

If “morality” is the morals we see Christians displaying everywhere lately, then I can only hope to have enough kindness, decency, and integrity to be immoral by their deranged standards.

thanks for the video review! One question that came up for me is about the comments on Romans 2. If I gathered, you were saying that Paul is not talking about the MORAL law. But you do think the passage is about conscience. But isn't our conscience related to the moral law? And isn't final judgment (Romans 2:16) related to our moral actions? I would be curious what kind of law you think Paul is talking about here, if not moral law. One point I think you misunderstand somewhat is the final part of the video on moral hope. I was responding to the tendency that secular people who, as noted by Charles Taylor, want to retain a transcendent conception of love and justice, but often have not thought through how to ground such a conception. So this section of the video was about exposing that inconsistency. I discussed this at the start of that section. I think you guys missed that framing. I think its appropriate to point out that many people vaguely hope for some kind of "happy ending" but have not thought through that such a hope is unfounded in their worldview. Hope that might clarify because you guys seem puzzled haha. But I do love to preach the gospel, and you are correct that my use of apologetics has this goal in mind!

Stance Independently First!!

This might seem like a weird question, but how do you treat people like van Til, Bahnsen or Plantinga with respect, when their work is basically discrediting science and philosophy and legitimizing fallacious thinking? At first I thought that discussing their ideas and exposing the flaws would be the right way, but the worst kinds of argument seem to just get more and more widespread. I feel myself losing all respect for these people (as philosophers even) and their fanbase.

You’re doing the Lords work, Lance 👍

>> Like optimizing them in the absence of the other, or something like that, but those kinds of facts still -- in a way -- are dependent on there being agents with goals. This is why I personally root this in survival, and in a proximal fashion (I reject impartiality as it's impractical; for example, it would be impractical for parents to expect complete strangers to contribute equally to raising their children). Survival is a simple binary concept and not prone to subjective variability as with the concept of "well-being". Either my loved ones continue to exist or cease to exist, and either I'm working in alignment with their continued existence or misaligned towards their extinction. Also it's a more modest evaluation that risks less intrusions and costly errors. I can reasonably trust a government with the competence and required knowledge to protect the survival of myself and loved ones. I would find many reasons to rationally distrust a government who consistently interferes in order to optimize my family's hypothetical well-being. >> Because the agent is still going to be making these cost-benefit analyses about what it could get away with. If you could always get away with defecting and reaping all the rewards, why wouldn't you? We're habitual creatures for a start besides social. If I could hypothetically smoke cigarettes every now and then without becoming addicted, it might be beneficial even to my health to do so and benefit from the occasional focus and stress relief. Yet nicotine is extremely addictive and chain-smoking is almost certainly maladapted for survival. The safest method is to never start. Life is never absent risks but wise people invest. The foolish ones gamble and almost always guarantee their bankruptcy in the long run. It's for the same reason I don't start smoking that I don't start stealing even in cases where I think my odds are weighted in my favor of getting away with it. Also it's another matter entirely whether I would steal in a situation vs. whether I think stealing is maladapted behavior counter-productive for our collective survival. >> I would bet a lot of money that any aliens that has conscious agents interacting with each other wouldn't be constantly murdering each other, they wouldn't be constantly torturing each other, they wouldn't be constantly beating each other because that is -- in some sense -- better for them. I'd just point out that they'd likely have gone extinct long before they could encounter us if they condoned such behavior. It's not just better for them; it's functionally required for their continued existence if they are at all analogous to our species. >> I don't think there are objective facts about what food tastes good or bad, do you? No, okay, so we're we're gastronomic anti-realists. What I'd point out as a type who roots my realism in functionality is that it matters not whether you enjoy the taste of turpentine. If we drink it, everything we reliably know of our species tells us that we're going to die. An aesthetic "good" (as in "pleasing/desirable") is hopelessly subjective for sure, but that's different from a functional "good". We're not bound to unanimously agree on what type of software design is most desirable. What is objectively malfunctional is a software that crashes soon after startup. We can't even begin to subjectively determine if the software design is desirable in that case. >> It's a question I think people should pose to moral realists more: why do you care if there are moral facts? It threatens the survival of my loved ones and community if people ignore them too much. For example, if many ignored the idea that drunk driving is unethical (maladapted for survival) to the point where we have drunk drivers everywhere, then the odds of someone I care about needlessly and prematurely perishing will likely go up substantially.

The claim that objectively false beliefs can nevertheless be useful to our survival is an interesting one. Cases of that sort are not difficult to find. For example, we all know that objects in the distance are not smaller than objects nearby, but the illusion produced by perspectival distortion is extremely helpful in allowing us to gauge distance. Similarly, colors, sounds, flavors, and smells do not impart information that is objectively true, but these sense perceptions are nonetheless useful in a variety of ways. So, despite the fact that the most (all?) of the deliverances of our senses are objectively false, having them nevertheless provides us with information which is highly beneficial for our survival.

I always rooted this functionally in collective survival combined with epistemic humility in the face of enormous epistemic uncertainties. P1: For an ethical system to function, its followers must persist. P2: Humans that follow an ethical system contradictory to survival cannot persist. C: A functional ethical system must be harmonious with the collective survival of its followers. A group of philosophers who conclude that it's "bad" for human beings to breathe oxygen will perish within minutes of asphyxiation along with their malfunctional ethical system, for a blatant example. When we acknowledge this root prerequisite of a functional ethical system, we can derive many other functions, like so: P: Neglecting our children's needs is maladapted for collective survival. C: We ought not neglect our children. P1: Unjust societies lack societal stability and devolve into vengeance. P2: A vengeful and unstable society is counter-productive to its collective survival. C: We ought establish a just society. P1: Starving humans often behave in desperate and forceful ways. P2: Forceful human behavior is counter-productive to our collective survival. C: We ought seek measures to prevent famine within our society. P: Letting blind and drunk people drive is counter-productive to human survival. C: Blind and drunk people shouldn't drive. We can even arrive at human rights unless my premise is objectively wrong, and the data we can gather around the world and throughout history seems to support my premise: P: A society that protects the rights of its citizens is better-adapted for collective survival than one that violates them. C: We ought to protect human rights. We can also ethically justify the need for undercover law enforcers despite their need to habitually lie in ways that might pose ethical conflicts for deontologists, virtue ethicists, and theists. P1: Undercover law enforcers are functionally necessary to stop organized criminals. P2: Organized criminals threaten our collective survival. C: We ought to have undercover law enforcers to stop organized criminals. At the end of the day, we're objectively either moving towards our preservation (ethical) or extinction (unethical). Determining which direction can be incredibly complicated, demands epistemic humility and risk-aversion in the face of the sea of uncertainties, and even contextual -- as with determining the optimal human diet for a given person (but that doesn't mean that excess sugar consumption is only malfunctional when it's misaligned with someone's preferences or cultural values). "Complicated" isn't the same as "subjective". "Subjective" implies a judgment towards something which has no functional requirement. Humans have a functional requirement, as with human societies and their systems of ethics. Malfunctional ethical systems are prone to premature extinction, as with a maladapted species, and as buildings constructed on faulty foundations are doomed to collapse.

"If morality emerges from evolution" That sounds like moral knowledge

Where can I learn about not being able to reject multiple premises at the same time? Sounds interesting

It seems to me that human eusocial instincts are the product of evolution, but the actual prescriptions and mores observed are products of culture and history. This does not make these norms ‘objective’ in any sense.

Great video. I like to try to work out explanations for the things you covered on my own and check in with moral philosophers. It's very cool that we were aligned through most of the video. I love your perspective and content. Thanks!

Love the show. A suggestion is to watch the clips beforehand. Then just make your points once. There seems to be a lot of reptition (e.g. valued vs valuable)

31:22 why does it matter one way or the other if the debater knows what they are saying? The important thing is if they make good arguments. Chatgpt could make good arguments. It doesn't understand them though.

Been waiting for this! Awesome!

20:00 eh, give bad faith arguments, get bad faith responses. I take lance to actually be trying to understand other people's points of view and suggest problems with those views. Matt Walsh I take to be trying to evangelize and be mainly rhetorical in his stances. His goals are mainly political, the theology, the arguments he makes, are all in service to that. I think that these are different approaches to the conversation, and Matt Walsh's goals involve heavy use of innuendo. The response that Atheists can be moral is against such an innuendo (normally through normative entanglements), and his move is then to retreat by saying "well I didn't say that, you're stupid for thinking I was trying to say that" in a "heads I win, tails you lose" game. He's being rhetorical, and I don't think giving him the benefit of the doubt here and agreeing with his criticisms of those he disagrees with here is warranted.

2:13:00 The building is so beautiful because people spent literal lifetimes on these buildings. And these single buildings were such resource sinks that they are often the only surviving structure. So basically we got such beauty by making everyone's lives miserable and their own homes barely standing shacks. It's basically a product of extreme oppression.