Why it's silly to say atheism is silly

[@generichuman_]

My favorite part was him not knowing how decimals work, and not assigning a probability to God, which means he implicitly applied a 100% probability to an eternal, timeless, spaceless, perfect mind, capable of creating the universe, answering prayers, and sending human copies of himself down to earth to serve as a loop hole for rules he invented. Slow clap for Cameron.

[@shassett79]

But it's math! How can Cameron's chart be wrong if it is based on math!?

[@generichuman_]

@@shassett79 He was so proud of his high school React JS project. We'll make sure to put it on the fridge.

[@shassett79]

​@@generichuman_I mean... I guess it's neat that Cameron has chosen to better himself by learning a new skill? It's kind of a shame, though, if he only did that so he could misinform his viewers and keep the grift going...

[@juanausensi499]

Assigning probabilities to unknowns is just an exercise in prejudice. I don't know how philosophers don't notice that. I bet they are trained to not value maths or experiments in their reasonings, only apriorisms and intuitions. They are generally good with logic but very sloppy with their premises.

[@COOlguy-ed5bq]

this was inevitable

[@theatheistpaladin]

I am Iron man.

[@Arthkryst0]

This was iron man

[@AndrewofVirginia]

Only if you are a determinist

[@1mrs1]

Cameron Bertuzzi is not an honest interlocutor.

[@COOlguy-ed5bq]

@@1mrs1 he hosts good discussions at least

[@ethanf.237]

Agreed

[@oscargr_]

​@@COOlguy-ed5bq I don't remember one. What I do remember is him not pushing back on Goff, him agreeing with whatever Craig says, and him interviewing an exorcist.😂 Which good discussion are you referring to?

[@COOlguy-ed5bq]

@@oscargr_ i mean he hosts good discussions, and debates on his channel, even if he’s not speaking

[@oscargr_]

​@@COOlguy-ed5bqin other words.. he gets good guests on his channel. I guess that's true. But the examples I gave show he also gets bad guests.😁

[@silverharloe]

"If you let me pick the numbers, then they add up to my being right."

[@jaysmith7062]

Whenever apologists bring up probabilities, all I can think is that there is no way for them to calculate it. The only probability I can justify is historical probability, that is, based on past results. Flipping a coin or rolling a dice have discrete probabilities, that are just facts of construction. Things like lightning strikes or shark attacks can only be predicated on what happened in the past. Because we have never confirmed anything supernatural exists, the historic probability is flatly zero. This doesn’t mean god isn’t real, but is the only probability we can actually calculate.

[@user-pn8ke3kf5f]

I'm really curious to see if there's a level of content that Cameron will stoop to that eventually causes Joe to disengage. A bit surprised people still take him seriously after the Trump prophecy stuff, demons, aliens, obvious rage bating titles, etc.

[@navienslavement]

TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

[@wadetisthammer3612]

Cameron was actually critical of the Trump prophecy stuff.

[@lastnamefirstname850]

@@user-pn8ke3kf5fhe was skeptical about trump stuff and was explaining why with Jimmy akin. There is more to the world than just materialism/naturalism so a discussion about demons isn't something weird whether you believe or not and discussing alien life is a thing even hardcore atheists engage in. You just don't like the guy, but his content has a value.

[@user-pn8ke3kf5f]

@@lastnamefirstname850 Correct. I don't like him and I have good reasons for that. This sort of rage baiting is a great example why I dislike him as a person.

[@lastnamefirstname850]

@@user-pn8ke3kf5f that only confirms you did not watch much if any of his content.

[@asd35918]

“Under atheism why would we expect every particle in the universe to behave the same…” Wait I thought complexity was the hallmark of design. Now the simplest arrangement-all elections are the same-is evidence of the same?

[@GraysonHawk]

Yeah so literally every number Cameron uses for his “probabilities” is just pulled straight out from his bum Joe, you uploaded your response 2 hours before I could publish my own!! You win this round, you’re the superior Cameron-debunker, I yield!

[@biggerdoofus]

Not quite. He did cherry-pick one number from the bum of his preferred cosmologist.

[@Devious_Dave]

Agreed. (And thanks for using 'bum' - it's a fine word😀)

[@Boigotideas]

@@GraysonHawk hey do you have a discord or something? I’d potentially like to have a convo with you on trans issues. We actually might not disagree but some things jumped out at me when I watched your vid debating jimbob and Andrew

[@GraysonHawk]

@@Boigotideas KZbin keeps deleting my responses to you idk if you’ve seen them, yes I do have a one it’s just GraysonHawk

[@Boigotideas]

@@GraysonHawk Hmmm I cant find you with that name. Maybe add me? im boi4811 or it might be just boi on there. They give you a code username that comes up when you highlight the username ppl see

[@anteodedi8937]

It's definitely sensible to say that Cameron is silly, though.

[@danforsberg872]

I laughed so hard at 26:46 when Matthew asked Joe if his mind was blown after seeng what looks like a bar chart on the screen lol

[@carlosa4852]

It turns out that incompetence is cancelled out several times over by being so charming

[@Th3BigBoy]

And how fortunate for you that this is the case, my friend!

[@Altitudes]

I know you covered this in the problems of limited Gods, but I really think it's important to hammer home that theists typically have a commitment to the omni properties. It's not like PoE advocates are knocking down a strawman. Of course they can evade it by giving up one of the properties of God, but the whole issue is that they don't want to. At the very least, it's not the God that Bertuzzi believes in.

[@shigototravaillez9972]

Hand waving probabilities, then calling it math: Lazy-an Statistics

[@juanausensi499]

Prejudices in numerical form

[@Elschan]

At what point does one even know enough about the arguments to assess their probabilities? I feel like it would just be a guessing game if I tried to assess those honestly by myself

[@serversurfer6169]

The problem of evil isn't meant to justify atheism. It's simply a defeater for a tri-omni deity. 😕

[@paulthompson9668]

I'm not an atheist, but I can confidently say that the Christian God is no more possible than a married bachelor.

[@anteodedi8937]

Someone can say that the very notion of God includes tri-omni attributes. These small g gods or deities akin to pantheons are easy to refute and are not taken seriously. The tri-omni conception is the high-hanging fruit.

[@diggie9598]

@@paulthompson9668 Is your god more likely to exist?

[@dukeofdenver]

You're goalpost shifting

[@lasseaukio626]

​@@dukeofdenver_"You're goalpost shifting"_ Who is?

[@Szadek23]

"Let's be generous and say 1 in a trillion" is a thing he unironcailly said.

[@PercyTinglish]

I did the math and gave theism the _very_ generous odds of 1 in 10^google. Somehow I couldn't overcome that with arguments 🤷‍♂️

[@zacharybohn8840]

I would love to a debate between Cameron and Jon, but where Jon defends Christianity and Cameron defends Atheism. I feel switched debates like this, demonstrate the honesty that each participant has.

[@PercyTinglish]

I also find it difficult to take theism seriously, but because it's been so long since I've had a challenge to my position that required serious thought. Its wild to pull out some ridiculous math to try to wriggle out of thinking about challenges.

[@theflyingdutchguy9870]

The problem of evil is not an atheist argument. Its a counter argument against the existence of a specific God. Its an argument against the God most christians believe in.

[@planetpeterson2824]

1:45:20 "Even under atheism, in a universe that is finely-tuned, life is still a staggering rarity." In a universe finely-tuned FOR LIFE, life is a staggering rarity? This guy is such a bullshitter.

[@aron679]

Cameron says there are “countless” examples of fine tuning. Even Barnes and Collins say it’s like 30 something examples. Is Cameron incapable of counting to 30?

[@serversurfer6169]

"And here's what's important here; the numbers that we see didn't have to fall into life-supporting ranges." [citation needed]

[@jordanh1635]

Joe I see the Trent Horn influence coming through in the thumbnails. Great video also 💯

[@PhiloSapience]

Has Cameron built Buckingham Palace for himself deep down that rabbit hole?

[@oscargr_]

@ 34:xx Gravity famously does NOT pull with the same force. We assume the gravitational constant (large G in the Newtonian model) is the same throughout, but the force definitely depends on the distance between the masses. So much so that even on the surface of our own planet de difference is measurable. You can't assume an apologist knows his physics if his afterlife depends on it.

[@noahmckay6481]

Good stuff. Quick note about the argument from order, though: "All 10^82 electrons obey Maxwell's equations" (to pick a random case of order) is an INSANELY immodest hypothesis, in Draper's sense of "immodest." So, even though it's super coherent, in Draper's sense of "coherent," its intrinsic probability might still be really low. (It's hard to know how to balance modesty and coherence, but my gut says modesty is important enough that the intrinsic probability of widespread order is really low.)

[@MajestyofReason]

@@noahmckay6481 Thanks for the comment, Noah! Well, it’s especially immodest if we over-specify the uniformity datum here - by specifying that there are exactly 10^82 electrons, and that they obey Maxwell’s equations specifically. But (1) we needn’t specify how many electrons there are (or even whether there are electrons) in order to specify that there’s universally applicable lawful order, and (2) we needn’t specify which precise equations are being obeyed. The datum here seems to be just the relatively modest (and extremely coherent) claim that there’s universally applicable lawful order. And contra Cameron, that shouldn’t be terribly improbable under atheism given Draper’s theory of intrinsic probability, contra

[@noahmckay6481]

@@MajestyofReason Yeah, my example was unnecessarily precise. But it's still true that, if there are lots of things in a collection, the hypothesis that they're all alike in some respect is much less modest than its negation. So, the closer a hypothesis comes to positing universal order, the less modest it is. This doesn't necessarily mean universal order is intrinsically improbable, of course -- it depends on how one balances modesty and coherence. But it does mean that universal order won't automatically be more intrinsically probable than chaos. (Although I didn't clarify this, my comment was motivated by Matthew's claim that order is evidence for atheism, since it's highly probable a priori and somewhat surprising given theism. It seemed like he was only taking account of a syntactic simplicity measure when estimating the a priori probability of order, but I think modesty should have some weight too. But I agree with you that Cameron's Bayes factor for order was too optimistic.)

[@noahmckay6481]

Also, so FREAKING pumped for a Joe + Matthew colab on fine tuning you have no idea.

[@paulthompson9668]

@@MajestyofReason Cameron's arguments are so bad that you need scientific notation to criticize them.

[@JeremyJohanson]

​@@MajestyofReasonThe problem is even more interesting. Check out Sean Carroll's lecture on THE PARADOXES OF TIME TRAVEL, or Sabine Hossenfelder on freewill. The argument from order and fine tuning rule out libertarian freewill. I don't find this necessarily a problem for theism but if Cameron wishes to use this evidence, especially Luke Barnes calculation then he must adopt a "Calvinist" approach to God if he believes his model is coherent. On the other hand, are branching timelines in an increasing multiverse with the problem that although there is no evidence for a multiverse, Sean Carroll weights the probability of the multiverse (though not a multiverse of the type I just described) also at 50%. That means Cameron has boxed himself into a corner in how he can argue his soul building without freewill. To put it another way, if you concede that Cameron is correct then Cameron must concede that he has given up libertarian freewill.

[@scottpiepho9736]

Given that, at least according to the eye test, the overwhelming majority of theistic systems through history have been based on a polytheistic pantheon instead of a strict monotheism, why wouldn't a pantheon have a higher Baysean prior than a single omni god?

[@scottpiepho9736]

Bonus points - most pantheons have a god like Shiva or Loki who resolves the Problem of Evil.

[@aron679]

Joe is right: Cameron has obviously shifted his strategy from his first video. He started off arguing that atheism is silly because even if the problem of evil succeeds, it only disproves certain types of theism, and not theism generally. Now, Cameron has shifted his argument to simply say that evidence like fine tuning is super duper good. This is a tremendous backpedal, and he’s acting like this was his argument the entire time. I have to think that Cameron saw Joe’s initial response video and had no choice but to abandon his initial argument.

[@shassett79]

@31:05 "Tweaking the priors is not really going to change the result," says the guy ostensibly using Bayes theorem to produce a definitive, final result on a debate that's been raging for thousands of years.

[@biggerdoofus]

I think it's also important that the cosmologist Cameron cited, Luke Barnes, used straight-up invalid math to calculate the fine tuning probability. Barnes uses an argument from popularity along with a reference to an irrelevant other type of math to justify using a constraint of 1 on all the constants, regardless of the nature of the constant. In doing so, he also guarantees that the probability will change by merely converting to different units. He's not even subtle about it. The resulting formula ends up as basically just multiplying the constants together.

[@juanausensi499]

It is not possible to calculate the likelihood of the universe, because nobody knows if the constans could be different, how much, and with how much probability. Every one saying he has calculated that is just lying.

[@biggerdoofus]

@@juanausensi499 I agree, though I think it's worth pointing out why the attempts by physicists (which Luke Barnes technically is) are not valid from the perspective of modern physics so that philosophers are less tempted to believe the idea. For example, Matthew made a few comments in this video that make it seem like he's accepted the probabilities as valid from a certain viewpoint. In this case, Luke Barnes' math is invalid because his method like calculating the number of pixels on your screen based on the fact it has a height of 1080 and 1600 is a very common width for monitors.

[@juanausensi499]

@@biggerdoofus Well, apologists are still tempted, that's for sure.

[@GusSchultzPlays]

After updating my probabilities on the evidence of the last 12ish months of Cameron's work, my most likely hypothesis is that Cameron is not someone to be taken seriously. Only he really knows if this is willfull deception or honestly misunderstanding nearly all of philosophy, but at this point I almost feel like Cam endorsing a position is a good reason to view it with extreme skepticism.

[@SmellySquid]

Honestly, I think Fine-Tuning as it's often presented with God just optimizing the parameters you plug into our theories of physics would be evidence for Limited Theism and evidence against Perfect Theism; in a lot of traditional views of God, He isn't just adjusting some preset collection of twenty to thirty some-odd dials but can pick from some truly immense collection of structures of physical laws and we'd have no reason to expect the hyperparameters to be that way, whereas obviously any God who can just adjust playing with preset dials or has to use very particular law structures would definitionally not be omnipotent.

[@goldenalt3166]

Yeah, is Cameron really ready to reject the catholic view of God to save his opinion on atheism?

[@paulthompson9668]

@@goldenalt3166 Fine tuning is an argument against the Christian God. The non-existence of an all-powerful god is hard to prove. But the non-existence of the Christian God is easy to prove.

[@goldenalt3166]

@paulthompson9668 All powerful God is a meaningless concept since the laws of the universe are exactly the same as the desires of that God especially if it is consistent and unchanging.

[@goldenalt3166]

@paulthompson9668 I don't believe in the concept of the "Christian God" or "Christianity". There is boo such thing to disprove.

[@paulthompson9668]

@@goldenalt3166 An all-powerful God could have set the universe in motion with the properties that it has, just to let it develop on its own, right?

[@fanghur]

Not gonna lie, I've never understood the appeal of regarding the idea of 'perfection' as anything other than a subjective value judgement on the part of the individual. The fact that there are many commonalities between how people tend to broadly imagine a "perfect being" is entirely explicable by the fact that humans are all broadly similar beings with many shared core values. But if you were to ask some alien species with a radically different psychology than us what their idea of a 'perfect' being would be like, it would plausibly be quite different. So for that reason if no other, I have a very hard time taking so-called "perfect being theism" seriously. I simply don't see any good reason to grant the foundational assumption it has to make to even get off the ground, namely that 'perfection' is some kind of quantifiable, metaphysical property wholly aside from any sort of value judgement.

[@juanausensi499]

Of course. 'Perfect' means something that can't be improved. What is an Improvement is a value judgement. There is no such thing as 'objective perfection'.

[@Boigotideas]

Something tells me CC doesn’t actually believe anything he said in “I don’t take atheism seriously” video and the video being reacted to here. I think he’s playing the KZbin ragebait game and is hoping atheists will react to his videos in order to gain more publicity and engagement. If the goal is to make money, I think he’s doing a good job, and unfortunately, it’s also not clear that if the goal is to convert the most people, that he’s failing using this ragebait method.

[@paulthompson9668]

I think that generally speaking, I think the goals of apologists are to (1) keep believers believing and (2) help reinforce the beliefs of those who just started questions. However, once the needle on you belief-o-meter makes it half-way from "Christ is my Lord" to "wtf was I thinking", then apologists actually help someone deconvert.

[@igbo925]

The point of this video in particular was to show off (and sell) his new toy. As Matthew pointed out it was completely unnecessary for Camerons demonstration. His actual "argument" also doesn't bring anything new to the table. He's just saying the typical "if atheism true life arose by chance!" except with some math terms and a fancy bar chart.

[@HammerFitness1]

The fact that he isn’t even getting the basic decimal points correct show that he doesn’t understand what’s going on with the math, he’s kind of just plugging in numbers to some already tuned outlet

[@EitherSpark]

i think calling something silly is more related to not having intellectual humility than having a low credence in that view (pretty much what joe and nathan said)

[@kbaumgarten2151]

View #1: "Unicorns exist, and live among us." View #2: "My name is Albert. When I walk faster, time slows down." Clearly view #2 is sillier. So I have to assume view #2 is false, because nothing in nature can be silly or preposterous. I believe Einstein proved this.

[@DigitalGnosis]

Debate Jay Dyer

[@MajestyofReason]

Sorry, I cower in fear at his towering intellect.

[@igbo925]

​@@MajestyofReason Finally, someone who admits that they cannot defend a paradigm which attempts to ground the categories of transcedental preconditions without the God of Orthodox Christianity!

[@shassett79]

How can anyone defeat a philosopher so powerful that they tower over the space without even publishing anything!?

[@harlowcj]

@@DigitalGnosis I would enjoy that insanely much.

[@chrishemswortth2669]

@@MajestyofReason😂😂😂

[@angmabangui]

Cameron has proved beyond almost all doubt that he believes in God.

[@angmabangui]

And as a corollary to that, the overwhelming majority of theists also believe in God.

[@Rogstin]

The problem of evil is a great argument for atheism. Of certain gods. Obviously the problem of evil is not a great argument for an evil all-powerful god. The general problem would be the problem of the existence of things that are counter to the nature of a given being, provided that being is all-powerful. Cameron has, like all of us, experience with only one universe. Which makes all attempts at guessing the probabilities of universes under different paradigms an exercise in Wild Ass Guessing. We also have no objective experience with any kind of god being, so again, we are WAGing about the intent, perception, desire, and abilities of such beings. This is a masturbatory, and offensive to rational decision making. Using Bayes like this is what is silly. It serves only to assuage one's own doubts. _"Look at how rational and justified I am!"_ Still have zero testable, repeatable claims; still have zero verifiable, objective evidence; still have many claims in conflict with testable, repeatable experiments. Believe in God, or Anubis, or whatever if you want, but don't try to make it anything more than _faith._ Because it isn't, and your time, Cameron, is better spent discussing ethics and how believers should steward God's world and flock. Who is this God? That needs apologists? So feeble that He cannot see his Will fulfilled except through such clumsy efforts? Perhaps He is a fan of slapstick. Edit: I agree about ants and liver cells, but those are things we can look at and measure and get estimates and have experience with. We cannot, at this time, do this with gods and universes.

[@chandir7752]

Isn't consciousness inevitable? These discussions about how finely tuned our universe is often strike me as trivial. Because of course we are in a universe that is compatible with us, otherwise we would never have been. Consciousness is even more inevitable than certain natural physics constants.

[@bobmiller5009]

Great video!

[@unfairlive2]

I think Matthew should probably revisit his idea that plugging numbers into an excel sheet ought to convince him that theism is probable let alone possible. After all, I can come up with a great many numbers, but until those are grounded in reality what do they mean? I think 1:48:50 illustrates it very well. THe universe appears to be deterministic, if you roll a dice, one hundred times, then it appears to us that there's a distribution. Yet the outcome of each dice toss is not at all 1/6, if you knew how to toss a dice perfectly, and you knew all the circumstances around it (physics) then you would always be able to throw a 6, 100 times in a row, and thus have an impossibly improbable event. Equally so wit hhis royal flush example, if we did in fact know everything there is to know about physics, and we could simulate it flawlessly (we can't of course, it'd take a computer biger than the universe) then we'd be able to figure out who would pull 10 royal flushes in a row and even when.

[@MinedMaker]

A response video from Joe was necessary. In all possible worlds.

[@fatfrankie]

Question for Mathew. I'm super interested, you said you are a theist because you were convinced by the arguments for gods existence. How did you decide which god exists? Assuming you're a Christian, even if Christ rose from the dead, it doesnt follow Christianity is true. This is because we dont know if the creator of the universe is the only being with the power to resurrect people

[@deliberationunderidealcond5105]

I'm not a Christian and believe in a fairly generic God.

[@bengreen171]

say what you will about Cameron's silly statements - his use of colour is fantastic.

[@theatheistpaladin]

Uniformity of nature is trival to explain. Law of identity. Every electron in the universe is identical. The only way to distinguish one from another is the orientation of spin relevative to the measuring device. Why would you expect there would be variation over space or time? Laws in physics is not top-down command, but bottom-up descriptions.

[@goldenalt3166]

Why would you need to explain something that is constant?

[@theatheistpaladin]

@goldenalt3166 Ikr? Theists are just baffled by it.

[@paulthompson9668]

@@theatheistpaladin I think the biggest problem is that theists interchange different definitions of the word "law" without knowing it.

[@lowbarbillcraig3689]

The guy who became a catholic after interviewing exorcists needs a rebuttal? seriously?

[@Jcs57]

Well we know from the past and present theists are the bedrock of honesty integrity and rationality so anything they tell you is a solid foundation from which to establish a framework for life. 😂

[@Sóumit-q6z]

Thanks for your video ❤❤❤

[@GusSchultzPlays]

Really like Matthew's short assessment of limited god hypothesis as being the worst of both options. I feel like that's something that isn't getting enough attention in this surging debate about limited theism in the wake of Goff's "conversion".

[@NTPodcast7]

Wow, that was quick! You responded impressively fast haha

[@qazrockz]

A question for Joe: how do you assign probabilities to disjunctions. You do make a point that limited theism is a specific view, and it is a disjunction of many views and thus you cannot employ probabilities the way Cameron does. But isn't any view that way? Axiarchism is a subset of naturalism, and is a disjunction of many value-oriented hypotheses. Multiverse theories are disjunctions of many universe theories. Naturalism is a disjunction of many "naturalisms". And so on. So how should one update probability spaces, given so many disjunctions under these umbrella terms? And if you start eliminating views under your umbrella terms, doesn't that hurt your priors? Like if I were forced to pick limited theism due to the evidence. Then my case for theism lives or dies with limited theism plausibility. A more general theory which would include more views is a safer bet, it seems to me. Also, where would one put Spinozan or Neo-platonist views of God, in this probability space. It seems that these views are neither natural or theistic.

[@goldenalt3166]

34:19 Starwars is a galaxy far far away. I can't take Cameron seriously if he's going to get that wrong. 😂

[@mistyhaney5565]

Do you explain on your channel what convinced you to become a theist? Because I am really interested in how that process played out.

[@serversurfer6169]

me: Err, how did you determine that probability? 🤔 them: Well, what do _you_ think it is? 🤷 me: 🤦‍♂

[@jamesavis1]

First 2 minutes of his video and he's completely ignored everyone in his comments correcting him on his misunderstanding of the problem of evil.

[@6MaxSix6]

Cameron read "The Grifters Guide to Promoting a KZbin Channel" and content creators are going with "Hey bro, we can help you with that shit!"

[@shassett79]

True but, then again, replies to Cameron also generate views for better channels like this one.

[@insanetester1015]

Convinced of theism by philosophical arguments!!?? Dear lord....

[@COOlguy-ed5bq]

what’s wrong

[@soonerarrow]

Someone, please.. Help me out here. Why are these guys even trying to engage with Cameron's mental self-gratification? Atheism is defined as simply _"a lack of belief in a deity or deity's?"_ It doesn't have explanatory powers. It doesn't genetate hypotheses. It doesn't promulgate all this crap that Cameron is measuring. Cameron is just trying to shift the burden of proof by presupposing his deity exists and then contrasting his beliefs with unproven and unprovable hypotheses that he claims we non-believers have some kind of shared beliefs in. I just don't see why we don't tell them that they clearly don't have anywhere near sufficient evidence for the existence of their deity and it doesn't help their case any by pretending thet we non-believers have to justify why we don't believe them.

[@ChrisTaylor-616]

Joe's channel is a philosophy channel where he offers critiques of theistic views. That's why he's engaging with Cameron's video and his attempts to use Bayes.

[@soonerarrow]

@ChrisTaylor-616 Thank you.

[@PercyTinglish]

That is the KZbin definition, but not the philosophical definition. That definition does have expectations (different ones depending on the specific take).

[@soonerarrow]

@PercyTinglish That's the definition out of the dictionary, not YT. I'm aware now that this is just an exercise in mental self-gratification using subjective opinions in lieu of empirical evidence and there's absolutely no truth anywhere in here.

[@PercyTinglish]

@@soonerarrow what kind of a dolt looks for empirical data for definitions? 🤣 And "the" dictionary? Really? Either way, you're on a philosophy channel, interact with the philosophical definition. Completely unsurprisingly, it's the only one that's relevant to the conversation.

[@jaysmith7062]

Even when I believed in god, I would have thought he was just pulling numbers from his butt.

[@Bhuyakasha]

Someone should make a 'robust' Bayes calculator where you can assign a probability of 50%+-40%.

[@jsin3127]

I would really love some clarity on this, because videos like this confuse me no matter the speaker. I thought Bayes' theorem is mathematics to a point. But i don't see anyone ever showing the work for how the probability of a thing is being achieved. I understand it's usefulness in visualizing one's own scale of certainty on a topic. But as for Cameron's "software" it sounds and looks like an excel sheet with an output column chart. He never shows work on how he knows something to be very likely or unlikely. Why should one take content like this serious? Why should I trust the evaluations of anyone presenting a version of Bayes' theorem in this fashion?

[@qazrockz]

Isn't fine tuning actually a reason for theists to say, order isn't "unpredicted" on naturalism? The simplest way for the universe to be, is to be only one type of thing. Everything is made of "A" fundamentally. All As are equal and follow the same laws. It's very simple and orderly, and I'd say theists would argue, if they're using the fine tuning argument correctly, that this universe is more expected on naturalism than theism. Since this universe doesn't predict life or anything of value. So the fine tuning argument is actually an argument for naturalism predicting order.

[@Arthkryst0]

Stripping Joe Schmid doing Philosophy would be engagingly hot!!!

[@K4gumy]

Bro..

[@flurry1337]

Hey joe, I just heard an interesting point made and it seems true to me on face value. Would love you to give me your take: If we have a certain probability for general theism let’s say 50 % and a specific type of theism like perfect being theism is a part of this category of theism then the propabiliy can only go down an not up since it is a subset of theism and if theism has 50% then it can at best have a part of that probability. Why is this not true?

[@devos3212]

I’m an atheist and I’m silly…

[@rooruffneck]

Does Majesty still do videos with Cameron?

[@rooruffneck]

@@lucasiano I haven't been watching their stuff for a while. But a few years ago they seemed to always enjoy going back and forth on video.

[@noahstory267]

Sorry Joe. I made a bar chart and assigned atheism’s silliness factor to 100% based on my opinion and so I’ve mathematically proved you wrong.

[@methodbanana2676]

Cameron seems to be channeling Donald Trump in his speech patterns (... "It's going to be beautiful!"). Odd

[@alexmarkadonis7179]

There are two of them.

[@wilkielai]

people can debate about how a particular probability is too high or too low. perhaps it is more productive to evaluate on a range basis. say, the prior for theism is not 0.25, but maybe it is quite reasonable to say it is between 0.1 and 0.6. do every probably with a range, and test the highest and lowest ranges and see the best case and worse case scenario. if it turns out this method end in statistically insignificant difference between the views, then we would be more confident that no particular view is "silly". however, if we find that the worst case for theism is still better than the best case for atheism, significantly, then we might have reason to say atheism is kind of silly, like how commercial santa claus is silly. the word, silly, is just rhetoric. i don't think anyone, including Cameron, is thinking that we can assign a probability to what counts as "silly".

[@lendrestapas2505]

Hey Joe, is there any change that you‘ll make some shorter videos every once in a while? I personally find it very demotivating to have to commit to completing 1.5-2.5 hours of video, even though I‘d really like to to watch your videos. But it‘s difficult when having so much other stuff going that you cannot calmly sit down for such long videos.

[@MajestyofReason]

Thanks for the comment! Your concern matters. Here's the bind I'm in. I will, to be sure, make some 15-40 min videos, and sometimes short clips between 1 and 15 minutes. The difficulty is that I generally find short videos to be unsatisfying (both as a viewer, but also -- and more importantly for the present case -- as a creator). The reason is that they almost inevitably offer a superficial analysis of the issue or issues being covered. They leave out lots of very important considerations (e.g., objections, rejoinders, etc.). And so on (*sniff*). I was brought up to see these traits as features of bad philosophy, and I want my channel to be good, high quality philosophy. Hence the longer videos. I can also make some hopefully helpful suggestions for you. I agree it can very often be tough to sit down in front of a screen for 1.5-2 hours and watch a KZbin video. But that's why I take a different approach to my consumption of long-form content. I almost never sit-and-watch. Instead, I listen when doing other things -- working out, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, walking or biking between classes, driving, eating, and so on. I also tend to listen to things on at least 1.5x speed to make them quicker. I can consume a lot of quality content this way without having to devote time to sitting down and watching KZbin. Thanks for the comment, and I hope all this is helpful!

[@lendrestapas2505]

@ i understand, thanks for the detailed response:) thanks for the tips, too!

[@PercyTinglish]

Who sits down for the video? I don't think I've ever watched on, there isn't much going on on screen. Just listen to it. You can do that when you're working out or cooking or whatever. And you don't need to commit to a full video to start watching a video 😂

[@shassett79]

A real _tour de force_ from Cameron "if you grant that all of my assumptions about theism and atheism are accurate, then God is awesome, and atheism is dumb and wrong" Bertuzzi.

[@qazrockz]

About the commentor at 2:24:00 ish - I'm not saying Joe does this, however isn't there a sense in which "undercutting defeaters" is a deficient way to approach this? This is an analogy from one of my favourite films, 12 Angry Men. To cut the story short, a young man is under trial for murder, and the jury is convinced that he did. Juror #8 disagrees and brings his reasons why. All of Juror #8's reasons are undercutting. Some of them are pretty bad: one of them is that the lady witness wouldn't have worn spectacles before bed because she is vain about her appearance and people usually don't. There is a lot more to be said about this film, but it doesn't seem to me that a bunch of undercutting defeaters, by itself, make a conclusion wildly implausibile. At best that case should have gone for a mistrial. Or a more real-life example being OJ simpson's trial. If the glove doesn't fit, he must acquit etc., are all undercutting defeaters in reality. The entire OJ case was built on undercutting defeaters+ racism by the police + racial tensions in US. I think most people think it's likely that OJ did in fact commit the murder even though there are some holes in the case. Craig uses a similar rhetorical strategy in his debates (you haven't decisively responded to all my arguments, so God exists). I think what I'm trying to say is that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways to use undercutting defeaters in a cumulative case. There is a methodological difference here.

[@serversurfer6169]

I think you're misunderstanding what Joe means by an undercutting defeater. If someone claims that God is the only explanation for a thing, and Joe offers alternative explanations, he has already cut their claim off at the knees, for there are in fact multiple ways to explain it. It's now on them to stand it back up, by explaining why Joe's alternative explanations cannot be true. Cameron's response is to say, "Fine, there's about a 0.0000000001% chance that one of those things is true, which means there's still a 99.999999999999% chance that I'm actually right." But those probabilities are all ass-sourced. 😜

[@qazrockz]

@serversurfer6169 right I'm not talking about Cameron's abuse about probability. But how this strategy of using a plethora of alternatives via undercutting defeaters, is more like a rhetorical move. I don't like stuff like "hey, now you have the burden of proof!" Sure, that's ultimately what happened in the OJ case as well. We have to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate ways of doing this. As we have to distinguish legitimate ways of doing probability from whatever Cameron is doing

[@shirube313]

You seem to be confused at a pretty basic level about what an undercutting defeater is supposed to do. And also about what the justice system is supposed to do, possibly? Undercutting defeaters aren't support to prove that the argument they're undercutting has a false conclusion, just that the argument itself doesn't work. And that's all Joe uses them for. Also, criminal trials in the US use the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of evidence; the guilt of the accused doesn't need to be "wildly implausible" for them to be acquitted. In fact, it's their innocence which needs to be wildly implausible for them to be convicted, at least if the jurors are properly fulfilling their responsibilities. None of your analogies really work because Joe isn't really arguing that there is or isn't a theistic God. He just analyses, and often argues against the validity of, arguments both for and against the existence of a theistic God.

[@qazrockz]

@@shirube313 that is the American system. I just gave these as examples. I live in different country where the burden of proof isn't as strong as you say. I would prefer if you didn't use terms like "confused at a basic level", that poisons the well. Did I say that undercutting defeaters "prove" that the argument is false? That is by definition a rebutting one. My question was, just the mere existence of undercutting defeaters doesn't lend a lot of probability to them, we'd have to individually evaluate the strength of each compared to the hypothesis itself.

[@thescoobymike]

Why is Christianity being captured? Is Cameron trying to hold it for ransom?

[@ReapersOcean]

What’s the most plausible thing to say about the problem of evil?

[@PercyTinglish]

Free will + butterfly effect + if god does it it's good

[@ReapersOcean]

@ is there free will in heaven/do angels have free will? Is something moral because god says it is, or is morality outside of god?

[@PercyTinglish]

@@ReapersOcean there is limited will in heaven, it's moral because god says it

[@ReapersOcean]

@ is there a reason there is limited free will in heaven and not in the mortal world? To make it plausible to allow the problem of evil.

[@PercyTinglish]

@@ReapersOcean you need people to have free will on earth to see what they'll do with it. In paradise, you can have the will to do what you like, but not to harm others or it will fail to be paradise.

[@seiraph]

Watching Cameron from here 😅

[@Tommy01_XO]

Why not Joe Mama 🤔

[@MicroSocialism]

getting packed

[@Tommy01_XO]

@@MicroSocialism own

[@charliecarrot]

Why does Matthew sound so eerily similar to Richard Carrier 👀

[@Greyz174]

The two of them are ben shapiro enthusaists

[@deliberationunderidealcond5105]

@@Greyz174 I am not!

[@republicadelarisa3949]

Well as long as these kids believe in themselves

[@blakeceres]

What fascinates me about your channel is how perfectly calibrated your skepticism is to whoever you're responding to. When faced with confident theism, suddenly there are endless philosophical possibilities to consider. When engaging confident atheism, those arguments for God start looking pretty compelling. Your videos are excellent - always rigorous, always thoughtful. But at some point this dedicated contrarianism starts to feel less like genuine philosophical engagement and more like intellectual performance art. It's a pattern worth reflecting on, even if somewhat unavoidable in the project of combating overconfidence.

[@inajosmood]

I like the context sensibility of this channel too. What might help with arguments for a God that starts looking pretty compelling: Ask which God. Any sign of compellingness falls away, unless the God claim becomes so vague that it doesn't really matter whether one exists or not.

[@flaze3]

I wonder what video this might be in response to 😂😂

[@shassett79]

Do you really have to wonder when the thing they're responding to is literally the central feature of this video?

[@flaze3]

​@@shassett79 yes, it was a tongue in cheek comment 😉

[@EatHoneyBeeHappy]

But what did it cost?

[@wadetisthammer3612]

1:17:45 to 1:17:54 - That somehow only makes me want to watch it more. 😂

[@chandir7752]

1:29:05 sounds like auto tune

[@Traverser17]

Perhaps you could ask him to share his software. Surely, if you used it, you would come around to his way of thinking. After all, it so clearly and beautifully shows how the probabilities update when you subjectively assign them. If you just take it step by step like he did, you would obviously reach the exact same conclusion as him and see how silly you have been. 😂

[@hippipdip]

Silly atheism is often excellent atheism.

[@IrishRover79]

Cameron’s calculations are incomplete. He needs to enter the probabilities of each view being true given the assumption all parties to the debate must share in the possibility of free, rational debate.

[@Greyz174]

Atheism would be even sillier if he calculated in the 10 with 42 zeroes for the resurrection

[@DigitalGnosis]

First

[@bobmiller5009]

Don’t think so

[@bobmiller5009]

😈

[@lanceindependent]

Zeroth! I win!

[@bobmiller5009]

@@lanceindependent just subscribed cool account u have

[@lanceindependent]

@@bobmiller5009 Thanks!

[@shigototravaillez9972]

Quick question - why are Cameron's videos taken seriously? He's a apologist. His job is to convince Christians to stay Christian. Why go looking for truth there? 😶

[@rewrewrewrewr2674]

Responding to these videos is less of an exercise of searching for truth, but more to inform viewers of the mistakes being made. The same reason why a scientist may want to respond to climate misinformation.

[@shigototravaillez9972]

Then we should start with the disclaimer “these aren’t good faith arguments, they are motivated thinking by an advocate”

[@paulthompson9668]

@@shigototravaillez9972 I thought that was a given lol

[@shigototravaillez9972]

@@paulthompson9668silly me

[@lastnamefirstname850]

The role of an apologist is a defence of some stance or worldview. If you don't want to engage with different viewpoints then by all means stay in your comfy echo chamber.

[@michaelkvalvik7358]

I usually like Cameron's videos. This one was so frustrating... I was genuinely surprised he was touting such terrible logic.

[@shassett79]

This isn't intended at a gotcha or anything, but I'm genuinely curious to know what it is you find generally compelling about Cameron's videos?

[@michaelkvalvik7358]

@shassett79 No worries. I don't really find many of his videos, particularly "compelling," but his interviews with different people and debates that he's hosted are interesting. So I don't go to his videos to learn, but more to be entertained, I suppose.

[@shassett79]

@@michaelkvalvik7358 That makes sense. If I were compelled to say something nice about Cameron's channel, it's that some of the guests provide entertaining conversation.

[@justaway6901]

But DEMONS though!

[@lastnamefirstname850]

Nice strawman. Got anymore of them?

[@tiromandal6399]

I'm sorry brother Joe but the moment I even remotely hear someone saying "I was an atheist" I run the opposite direction. It's even worse than saying "I used to know what 1+1 is but now I don't anymore".

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

You aren’t a open minded person

[@lastnamefirstname850]

How is that even worse? You must be joking.

[@deliberationunderidealcond5105]

It takes a great degree of hubris to think that one must be irrational to change their mind from the view you hold.

[@JohnSmith-bq6nf]

@@tiromandal6399 smh

[@carsonkenney2372]

Is that Tom Holland? Lmao

[@shassett79]

Tom Holland is Joe Schmid's stage name.

[@aosidh]

I've taken to a frequentist position on fine-tuning. While we can imagine a universe with different relative values for the constants, we have only observed a single set of those values. We don't even know if they can vary at all. The prior probability that the universe would adopt our constants should therefore be 1 - there is no explanatory value here.

[@alannaluther1077]

probability isn’t just about counting frequencies but also involves assessing how well hypotheses predict or explain observed data, even if the data is unique or unrepeatable.

[@aosidh]

@alannaluther1077 probability is about a lot of things! I'm proposing an empirical prior, which is obviously quite different from some theory-derived priors

[@goldenalt3166]

​@@alannaluther1077A hypothesis that is untestable is worthless. Redefining probablity doesn't help the idea's credibility either.

[@qazrockz]

How would you apply a frequentist position to historical events or theories like evolution as it relates to common descent? It seems to me it's legitimate to use Bayesian reasoning there and predictive models even though you cannot repeat the experiment of the Fall of Rome, or humans or apes having common ancestors. We have to ask what we would expect the evidence to be, if there was a Fall or Descent. The mere problem that we cannot repeat this emperically doesn't seem to justify entirely dismissing theories on the same.

[@aosidh]

@@qazrockz that's fair! Different tools for different jobs. The examples that you give involve a lot of observations. You can develop confidence intervals about dates and make predictions about future evidence. We only have a single data point for the physical constants. The intelligent design calculation that Cam based the video on is worthless.

[@ThisCanNotBTheFuture]

Great reminder that subjective Bayes is an epistemically dangerous thing.

[@ThePaull3d]

you should really remake a succinct rebuttal to this instead of a live stream. it is very difficult to watch and your good points are kinda wasted here

[@omnikevlar2338]

Cameron will accuse you guys of having horrible horrible philosophy.

[@harlowcj]

Pol pot, Chairman Mao, and Stalin proved that atheism isnt silly.

[@shassett79]

Do you consider those people to be generally indicative of the behavior and attitudes of atheists?

[@harlowcj]

@shassett79 They are the obvious examples of atheists who attained power, so yes, I consider them indicative of atheists who actually hold power. Human rights do not exist in any atheist paradigm. Atheists on the internet tend to have no power, and thus tend to cling to Christian values so they have a basis to judge others based on some sort of grounding. Atheism can provide no grounding for even the basics like knowledge and human reason, much less morality. It can only corrupt and dismantle the epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical foundations of Western society, which all atheists I dialogue with seem eager to do.

[@harlowcj]

@shassett79 They are the obvious examples of atheists who attained power, so yes, I consider them indicative of atheists who actually hold power. Human rights do not exist in any atheist paradigm. Atheists on the internet tend to have no power, and thus tend to cling to Christian values so they have a basis to judge others based on some sort of grounding. Atheism can provide no grounding for even the basics like knowledge and human reason, much less morality. It can only corrupt and dismantle the epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical foundations of Western society, which all atheists I dialogue with seem eager to do.

[@shassett79]

@@harlowcj You dodged the question. I might just as well point out that Hitler's Christianity speaks broadly about the tendency of Christians to do The Holocaust, but I don't, because that would be ridiculous. "Atheists on the internet tend to have no power, and thus tend to cling to Christian value" This baseless assertion is just a continuation of the implicit bias in which you assume that anyone who conducts themselves in accordance with social norms does so because of Christianity. "Atheism can provide no grounding for even the basics like knowledge and human reason" Of course it can. On atheism, it's fine to think the external world exists and that we can gather information about it. Based on these two assumptions, which everyone has to make regardless of their stance on theology, we can and have obtained knowledge as well as confidence in the human capacity for reason. Do you imagine that knowledge, reason, ethics, etc. didn't exist prior to humanity's first inklings of Yaweh?

[@JsznznSnsnz]

​​@@harlowcj since when did someone need politcal power to have values? And dont athiests exist in different regions which wouldnt have such chritian values? Yes your personal exsperience perfectly captures every athiest because atheists arent humans so are unique complex or hold different postions and arent all united under the single claim that god doesnt exist. Theyre the woke mind variouse out to destroy western society.

[@boboshoddmore]

my favorite atheist spiderman

[@pompousprick6143]

The silliest thing ever in the history of silliness is thinking the universe is possible without God.