Swinburne's Argument for God from the Universe & Laws of Nature (#4)

00:00 Introduction

00:58 What is the universe?

01:20 What is a Law of Nature?

02:32 Theistic explanation

05:07 Naturalistic explanation

06:30 God is the simpler than Orderly Universe

09:37 Summary of the argument

This is the fourth video in the playlist of videos on Richard Swinburne's book, Is There A God.

Click this link for the playlist

Click this link to see Swinburne's book, Is There A God?

[augustinian]

How did I not know of this channel until now? Looked through the upload history, so it may be a while until I see the outside world again.

[drserr]

Nice video, but what if someone were to object that a simpler explanation is not always a better one? For example, God might be a simpler explanation for rain, but that simplicity wouldn’t lower the probability of the water cycle happening.

[nicholasnewberg]

Nice video! The effects are getting more interesting. One thing I will say is that the naturalist could object that God's decisions could be just as arbitrary as the dispositions of the singularity's behavior. You could posit all sorts of ways God could create, but that does not justify one way of creating over another, and so perhaps God's decisions and the singularity's liability are both epistemically costly. However, I remember that God's omnipotence entails certain actions he will take, so perhaps there are not an infinite number of ways the universe could have formed, while there would be on naturalism. At any rate, thanks for the thoughtful video!

[readyfireaim]

As Leibniz put it: “If an ontological theory implies the existence of two scenarios that are empirically indistinguishable in principle but ontologically distinct ... then the ontological theory should be rejected and replaced with one relative to which the two scenarios are ontologically identical.”

In other words, if a theory describes two situations as being distinct, and yet also implies that there is no conceivable way, empirically, to tell them apart, then that theory contains some superfluous and arbitrary elements that ought to be removed.

Leibniz’s prescription is, of course, widely accepted by most physicists today. The idea exerted a powerful influence over later thinkers, including Poincaré and Einstein, and helped lead to the theories of special and general relativity. And this idea, Spekkens suggests, may still hold further value for questions at the frontiers of today’s physics.

Leibniz’s correspondent
Clarke objected to his view, suggesting an exception. A man riding inside a boat, he argued, may not detect its motion, yet that motion is obviously real enough. Leibniz countered that such motion is real because it can be detected by someone, even if it isn’t actually detected in some particular case. “Motion does not indeed depend upon being observed, ” he wrote, “but it does depend upon being possible to be observed ... when there is no change that can be observed, there is no change at all.”

In this, Leibniz was arguing against prevailing ideas of the time, and against Newton, who conceived of space and time in absolute terms. “I have said more than once, ” Leibniz wrote, “that I hold space to be something merely relative.”

Einstein, of course, followed Leibniz’s principle when he noticed that the equations of electricity and magnetism make no reference to any absolute sense of motion, but only to relative motion. A conducting wire moving through the field of a magnet seems like a distinct situation from a magnet moving past a stationary wire. Yet the two situations are in fact empirically identical, and should, Einstein concluded, be considered as such. Demanding as much leads to the Lorentz transformation as the proper way to link descriptions in reference frames in relative motion. From this, one finds a host of highly counter-intuitive effects, including time dilation.

Einstein again followed Leibniz on his way to general relativity. In this case, the indistinguishability of two distinct situations — a body at rest in the absence of a gravitational field, or in free fall within a field — implied the impossibility of referring to any concept of absolute acceleration. In a 1922
lecture, Einstein recalled the moment of his discovery: “The breakthrough came suddenly one day. I was sitting on a chair in my patent office in Bern. Suddenly the thought struck me: If a man falls freely, he would not feel his own weight. I was taken aback. This simple thought experiment made a deep impression on me. This led me to the theory of gravity.”

[somerandom]

This entire argument relies on first assuming that a god exists. You would need to show that a god exists, and provide some evidence that a god of a gods involvement in these things.

All you have done here is assumed a god exists, and asserted it has done things.

[inkyagi]

I don't believe (in anything supernatural), I am an atheist, which is to say, I honestly don't know and think that religions hold a lot of claims without great interpersonal evidence. Supernatural evidence is always personal and contradictory to other supernatural claims or evidence, which leads it to be confusing and not seem to have any sort of reliability.
0:58 Our universe also contains a great amount of energy. Distance isn't necessarily "real" meaning we have no evidence to affirm that distances exist and aren't an emergent illusory property of the universe, like gravitational "force." There are, however, mathematical discoveries that implicate that distance might be an illusion. As far as I know, this is waiting on experimental evidence.
4:50 Simplicity is also to be expected of naturalism. I would say that any universe that can be naturally formed can be created, assuming the position of a creator god. So, it's impossible to have a universe that looks like it couldn't've been made by a god. A naturally formed (or brute fact) any god would be just as justified in believing in one or more god god(s) as anyone in a universe that was naturally formed. Both gods and naturally formed universes are hypotheticals in this statement.
6:00 correct, because science isn't about speculating, and our math stops making sense when we go too far back in time (once the universe has become infinitely hot and dense and time no longer really makes sense, we realize our math is limited). Its possible that energy, direction, and resistance are the brute facts of the universe. It's possible that the universe is a blackhole in a greater universe with its own brute facts that influence the ones we observe. I'm not saying it is any of these things, I am saying we don't know. Which I think is the best, most honest answer in almost all cases.
7:22 Ockham's Razor? I've never seen it used like that, interesting. I'll agree that it's a fairly simple claim, the infallibility of the claim is where it loses its scientific validity. It doesn't help that there's no way to verify experimentally. However, I will say that it does create a more complex universe than the naturalistic universe. The naturalistic universe looks identical to the religious ones, just with less stuff overall.
8:56 I don't think you're trying to assert that the big bang (or, more accurately, the great stretch of spacetime that we can and do observe) is just a speculative guess, are you? It's pretty heavily based in a lot of math that's quite significant. You could posit that your god caused the big bang, but to outright dismiss it is absurd.
9:00 Can't we make the same assertions about your god? isn't it just as likely that a powerless god exists? This line of reason stands to imply god god again. what about the multigod theory? there's infinite gods and only the powerful ones create universes...
if you're curious what an atheist thinks, here ya go. I'll do one more tonight and if I get friendly responses, I might be back to your page. Y'all have a wonderful day.

[questionasker]

Doesn’t theism just move all these “problems” up one level and multiply it by infinity? For example, explaining flawed human consciousness with an infinitely more powerful Godly consciousness? How could that ever be the “best” explanation?

[richardshane]

The simplicity you speak of is pure logic based in infinity or not with rules of this reality, of our creation, observed in different modulations described as science....with this mathematical construct derived from time whether it's infinite or a cyclical modulation of a granularity we describe as elementary particles with everything in-between described as a molecular reality bridged for some reason as biological entities built on a hierarchy described as a biological platform with the power of observation @ the wavelengths of reality which I contend is a modulation of frequencies creating our simplistic logic yet highly complicated closer we get to the granularity of the reality we are trying to observe....from the infinite spiraling trajectory... cyclical or not or existence is the observation derived from cellular molecular logic the granularity we describe as life...in pure logic of observation it really doesn't matter how or why...'we are finite' as entities but you could argue that our existence is infinite with the reality of time either way the time of biofeedback is now... enjoy your trajectory through space and take care the best you can your hitchhikers whether it has a conscious or not is really only relevant it seems in the nutritional aspects of this reality.... enjoy your observation one time on planet

[kravitzn]

An honest ignorance is preferable to pseudo-knowledge. Better not to know than to believe a falsehood. And if God can explain anything, how can he explain anything? You may as well say "magic" is a simple explanation. Whatever is or turns out to be the case, the explanation is "magic".

[fwdbias]

I do find it hard to believe that a being with powers, thoughts, desires, etc is a more simple explanation than basic constituent components that combine to form more complex entities. We observe that happening everywhere in testable and repeatable ways and we construct our own creations in similar ways (simple basic components that can combine to produce great results in a whole). We don't observe is any way other than in our imaginations a being with powers, thoughts, desires that exists entirely outside of all known existence.

[cultofscriabin]

It may be reasonable to grant that a being with a mind created the universe. But there is nothing to substantiate that this being is omnipotent, omniscient, and there is even contrary evidence to the fact the he would be morally good.

So maybe 'mindism' is a good explanation, but theism ain't

[trafyknits]

The world owes a huge debt to the late, great Christopher Hitchens who so eloquently and devastatingly exposed the utter nonsense and stupidity that makes up the world's religions...all of them. His brilliant refutations of Islam and christianity are legend. We need hundreds more Hitchens in our society to carry on the work of the enlightenment. Thank you, Mr. Hitchens. You are sorely missed.

[LaCafedora]

If the prime mover is the Simplest Person (we'll call this God), and God has any reasons at all for doing anything, then God has some kind of non-trivial internal structure that produces these reasons through whatever process is beyond our mortal understanding. If God has any internal structure whatsoever, then it is not the most fundamental thing in the cosmos. And if it is the most fundamental thing, then it must be irreducible and thus have no internal structure.

[rogermills]

Can you make predictions with theism? No. You are simply asserting that a God you worship has certain features and these features are capable of doing what you claim. That’s not an explanation at all. It’s wishful thinking.

Christianity is a grift from day one. Paul and the apostles converted people into their cult and then coerced money from them.

I’ll stick with the scientific method.

[shambles]

Ouch, if this is "academic" theism I'd rather go to hell XD

[crabking]

Very nice video! Swinburne's arguments are compelling and make it rational for people to be theists.
I would like to give brief pushback on whether it would be expected for God to create a physical universe. For one thing, what if someone doesn't share the relevant intuitions that moral freedom is good? Of course, for anyone who does, it is still rational for them to accept Swinburne's argument, but it could be a potential obstacle for convincing a non-theist. Second, it's not clear that God couldn't acheive all his goals in some sort of immaterial spirit world as opposed to a physical universe. For one thing, it seems possible to create disembodied souls which are limited in nature such that they can only do, think, or say certain things. And to solve the problem of being able to grab hold of each other and effect one another, couldn't God just make it so that certain thoughts which disembodied souls have either harm or benefit each other to varying degrees depending on the thoughts?

[somerandom]

"God dun it" isn't an explanation, its a cop-out.

Come back when you have some actual evidence of a god existing, and having anything to do with any of this.