How To Think About God's Existence | Episode 701 | Closer To Truth

God exists? God does not exist? I find flaws and fallacies in both sides. So I step away from "arguments" about God and ask how to approach God's existence. What's the process? Featuring interviews with Philip Clayton, Victor Stenger, Robert Russell, Michael Shermer, David Shatz, and Peter van Inwagen.

Season 7, Episode 1 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#God #Theology

[dawnheffernan]

I have been teaching Philosophy to University of the Third Age for 30 years - since retirement from school teaching. Closer to Truth is the most comprehensive and authoritative resource available with leading thinkers interviewed skilfully and respectfully by Laurence Krauss, on the most relevant and current questions of universal importance.

[Shane]

This is so much better than listening to an atheist and a theist debate each other.

[cindychristman]

Kudos for not having so many commercial interruptions.

[voyoffice]

This guy is very professional and ambitious. He's walking on a road of big answers.

[mr.mystery]

Pursuing Gods existance is something I cannot not do. That is exactly my experience.

[shiraz]

Wow, amazing Lawrence... You appear to have the honesty, integrity and enthusiasm of the prophets in persuit of the truth... Keep going, good man... You're a sterling example of how best to approach the God issue, I think... GOD BLESS.

[SamOgilvieJr]

Most appreciative of Mr. Kuhn's interest in a subject of such profound relevance, and his quest for answers. Speaking from the Christian perspective, it's my fervent wish that Mr. Kuhn finds the answers he seeks in a relationship with Jesus Christ, for there is no other way. The transformative process of sanctification is exhilarating, soothing, fulfilling and transcendent, though it enriches life here beyond any capacity I have to describe it. As one learns to love, and becomes rooted, grounded and inspired by its essence, which is the nature of God, relationships and the most mundane encounters with fellow humans become shared experiences with God. It's really all about love, Mr. Kuhn, and you will encounter that love in relationship with the Triune God. If you happen to read this, thanks again for your work and for including us in it.

[jonfortuna]

What an absolute joy this episode was. Absolutely blown away. Thank you.

[jjharvathh]

We have this heart within us, our deepest feelings about life, and that is something we can not betray. To betray it would be like putting your hand into hot water, and then saying, this is not hot. So, either God lives in your heart, or there is no God living there in your heart. And that seems to be, the closest to the truth, and the end of the story - more thought does not resolve this or change this for us. It has been said, that faith is a divine grace, something given to you, and either you have it, or you do not, and there is nothing you or anyone can do about that.

[rammohan]

We want a closed loop in logic with a model for creativity, complexity and consciousness, all inclusive .

[amraly]

Last statement is so well put and beautifully said. A struggle we all have.

[TOLG]

“Help! I need a sceptic.”

Put that on a shirt.

[gooddaysahead]

The spectre of death immediately raises questions about meaning.

[MendTheWorld]

This was an excellent episode of this series... possibly _the_ best, for tying all the arguments and justifiable bases relating to belief in God into a coherent summary.

I am with Kuhn in every way, both in my unwillingness to dismiss the question he is asking as “unanswerable” and therefore not worth asking, or as unresolvable through processes of human cognition, in the context of “epistemic distance” (which I find a very useful concept).

I was also able to resolve through this episode my curiosity whether Kuhn is Jewish, which I have often wondered. There is something about the style and nature of his intellectual curiosity that struck me as characteristically Jewish, yet I had nothing more to base this on than weak, circumstantial evidence.

When he showed the two pictures of himself at a young age at the very beginning of this episode, I stopped the video and backed up to look at them again, to see if there was any evidence I might be missing, but found none, so I moved on. But then, at the end, he showed the same pictures again, but indicated they were from his Bar Mitzvah, I finally had the clear evidence I was looking for. This question could have been answered in other ways, had I undertaken the effort, but I was happy to have come across it in the way that i did.

My screen name on YouTube, MendTheWorld, is adapted from the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, a dictate I constantly strive to fulfill, and part of the way I have done this is through the pursuit of science and scientific understanding, which I have long regarded as having a religious dimension. (and NOT in the disparaging way that science deniers describe what they incorrectly perceive as unwarranted belief as “religion”. They understand nothing about science _or_ religion.)

I also appreciated the reference to abductive reasoning (referred to here not by that term, but as “inference to the best explanation”. This is essentially the _only_ form of reasoning used in geology, which is the branch of science in which I was educated, but I’ve concluded (as others have as well), that abduction is the _only_ form of logical reasoning that is actually available to us. As a form of inference (perhaps better described as a concatenation of inferences), it is subject to all the inherent limitations of inference in general, as described definitively by David Hume, yet remains our only option for acquiring what we perceive to be “knowledge”.

It never occurred to me that abductive reasoning might be used as a means of inferring God’s existence. I’m not sure i’m sold on that conclusion, but that’s why a good geologist uses both arms when looking for answers. (On the _one_ hand it could be.... But on the _other_ hand...).

Thank you, Dr. Kuhn, for sharing your peripatetic quest for understanding.

[MrSimonsmoke]

Found this channel made me cry with joy🎉

[bipolarbear]

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
- Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE)

[Shougun]

This is a wonderful analysis, checking the temperature on the larger discourse on the existence or non-existence of God. My only concern with this show is how americentristic its presuppositions are. The idea of God is taken to be "the bearded man in the sky", "He" who has a will and a plan for all of his children. There are countless other notions of entities that would like to compete for the definition of "God". How can this issue not be addressed, not even en passant? "The God question", as presented here, is only entertaining to the minority of people across the world who ascribe to a belief in the Abrahamic God-narrative. If one truly desires to establish wether or not there is a god, one must take great care to pose the question correctly. Otherwise the entire enterprise is pointless, due to a flawed research question.

[jacobatienza]

Enjoyable series, but I think the discussion can do with more exploration of Eastern spirituality and conceptions of "God".

[thegoodlistenerslistenwell]

Here is a question to all religious people. First a note about myself. I have schizophrenia, it means I cannot use faith to determine my course of action. When I do, I often harm myself or others. I had to come up with mental training I learned from epistemology to help me. Here comes the question. After reading many religious books, asking many people, I have never found a way to be sure of anything. The question is, if god is real, loves me, knows what I'm going through, knows what I have to do just to make a simple decision ( I dont work, I can't) then how do I get guidance from god that I can truly separate from a normal schizophrenic episode. Second, why would god risk me never knowing him if he loved me. I want to know god, and I want to show appreciation in a way god would be happy with. But, one day moment im philosophical, next I'm a sex addict, then I'm homicidal, these arnt just moods, whole beliefs systems are adjusted. Typically only the philosophical and scientific mind sets are aware of the depths of the changes. That's why they are so dangerous. They deeply impact what I might do to myself or someone else. So I have to keep my self mostly isolated.

[Rishiverma]

This is one of my favorite pieces on YouTube. I find it amazing how far we’ve come as a species in terms of technology, but how little we actually understand.

When I heard the third speaker, I was disappointed how narrow his view on god was. I don’t think it’s logical to think of god as some bearded man or as a blue four armed man. We as humans inherently need to assign a definition to something in order to “understand it”. Just like when you write code, you have to define your variables in order to call them. But how to you call something that is undefined by current understanding?

I think of god as something that cannot be understood by our current level of consciousness. I think of god as the fabric that connects all of us. People who report their experiences after psilocybin all seem to have one common theme : that we are all one and that we form one collective consciousness. I feel like that’s more likely to be “god” than a character from a book or epic.

As a side note: If you subscribe to the multiverse theory, you’re left with the same question times n^∞. Who or what is creating the precursor to those? Anyway, if you’ve read my brain chatter, I hope it was of interest.