Stuff Happens so God Exists (SCCC pt 10)

In this video, I lay out the argument from Nomological Harmony for God's existence.

0:00 - Intro
1:52 - 1st view
4:37 - 2nd view
5:55 - Multiverse
7:28 - Quick note
7:59 - Scoring

[lukegorman]

Hey Squared, it seems that there are a lot of people in the comments who aren't exactly reacting kindly to your video. I just wanted to encourage you by saying that I loved it! Please keep making them! You do such a good job of taking new and interesting arguments and breaking them down on a level that people like me can easily understand. So please don't be discouraged by the comments, they are just evidence that your videos are reaching new people who aren't used to these kinds of arguments!

[KacenTheChristian]

This is my favorite type of fine tuning arg. Not rlly sure why

[danielrhouck]

Iʼm not sure it actually *does* make sense to have a universe full of masses and charges but no laws of physics that mention masses or charges. What would a mass or charge *be* in that case? (My very limited understanding of QFT makes it *even more* impossible but that doesnʼt mean much). Masses and charges are only properties of things *because* of the way things behave. Suppose that in addition to mass and charge (and “color” which is not the same as the ordinary English usage, and spin, and all the other properties physics talks about), some particles also have florp. However, no laws of physics talk about florp. What does it even *mean* to say that quarks have a florp of 1/3 while electrons have a florp of 1/𝜏? Physicists will certainly never detect or write about this florp because it *never does anything* and we might as well say it does not exist. (We can actually tell given modern physics that it has to be the same for all particles of a certain type; we could detect it if some electrons had florp 1/3 while others had florp 17i+23, because they would not interfere with each other in quantum experiments. But that would also make it mean something and no longer apply to this video.)

[diamond_assasion]

A problem with the first view is that we have no reference for how many properties there are. We could be in a hypothetical universe where properties 1, 2, 3, 4 ..., N, and N+1 do not interact and properties N+2, N+3, ... N+100, and N+101 do interact. Depending on N, our universe could only have a small handful of the possible properties interacting. As such, a universe where stuff happens would be far more likely than a universe where stuff doesn't.

A way to state the second view is that it is possible that there is stuff that the laws of physics do not effect or laws of physics that govern stuff that does not exist. A problem with that is, by definition, the laws of physics is a list of how stuff interacts, prescriptive or descriptive. A law of physics that governs nothing in our universe would simply not be a law of physics. And stuff that the laws of physics do not apply to would simply require an expansion of our understanding of the laws of physics. ie matter attracts matter except for matter with property X.

And the fact that we cannot tell if we are in a universe with for example "tricky mass" does not provide an argument one way or the other. It just changes the question from "Did a god create the universe?" to "Did a god create the universe with tricky mass in it?" Tricky mass would certainly completely upend our understanding of the laws of physics, but the laws of physics themselves would be the same as they've always been.

Even taking the arguments to be true, they are still probabilistic and hypothetical arguments. We have no basis to say whether or not the alternative universes could exist. A universe where nothing interacts could be entirely impossible by some unknown method. We can imagine them certainly, but that does not lend any credence to the possibility of them existing. And even if they could exist they simply mean that the universe we exist in is unlikely, not impossible without a god. If the universe didn't exist we wouldn't exist to know that. My existence as a person to be watching this video is incredibly unlikely. My birth, 1 in millions, my life so far, 1 in billions, this video being recommended and made by you, 1 in trillions, and me clicking on it, 1 in tens. And yet I am here commenting.

[adamchristensen]

Behold this six-sided die that I just rolled. It shows five pips. We can all imagine that it showed two, six, even one pip...but it shows five, therefore god exists.

The fine-tuning argument is great at kicking the can down the road, but not at being convincing in regards to the existence of a god or gods. Much less the abrahamic or any other god imagined by the various cultures of history.

[unstablepc]

This argument really smells like, I'm being generous, a highschool understanding of physics. It has two major flaws.
1) Physics aren't just a set of matching or mismatching "interactors" and "interactees" which can be arbitrarily permuted. For example, the electric field can be derived as an emitted flux. This leads to Coulomb's law and the appearance of charges. There are no charges without the electric field and no field without charges, therefore a mismatch between the two is impossible. This emerges from very basic geometry and a few fundamental assumptions such as isotropy. The laws of physics are derived from assumptions and math (logic). We can imagine a "solved" physics where these assumptions have been whittled down to the lowest possible number and we have the exact set of laws of the universe. There are two possible results which I note 1A and 1B.
1A) We are left with a few arbitrary assumptions, such as the values of some constants. This is because the possible laws of physics are limited by what logic allows. This case leaves space for the variation of these constants in the way your video suggests permuting the laws of physics. However, the allowed permutations are already with our current understanding of physics are already far more limited than your video implies.
1B) The laws of the universe are entirely emergent from logic. No permutation is possible, unless you consider the possibility that logic itself could somehow be altered.
In all, your argument rests on a rather poor understanding of physics. You can't have a Universe with an electric charge and no electric field. Likewise, you can't have a non uniform electric field and no charge. Because your argument depends on an impossible idea of iterating the laws of physics, it's straight up wrong.

2) The probabilities are dependent on a arbitrary assumptions. There is nothing that tells us that this probability should go to zero. You assume that the probability for each would be somehow inversely proportional to the total number of interactors/interactees. It could grow or be constant. You assume that there is an infinite number of possibilities. There could two, or one, or six million. These are arbitrary assumptions on which you rely for your argument, but they are utterly unfounded.

[Chris-opyt]

you pull your probabilities straight out of your behind. do you know what kind of universes are possible? is it an infinite set of any combination of things?
christianity/islam/voodoo always give the right answer, as you make it up as you go. the answer is..magic, specifically by your particular god.

[raphaelfeneje]

Heeellloo!! Quite a while, boss! Trust you and your family are doing great? Bless🙏❤️✝️

[OceanusHelios]

I always love videos like this. I saw Godzilla in a movie and math and things happening means that Godzilla has to be real and the same goes for Quetzlcoatl. Praise Mohahmed and his magical sky horse that took him to the big heaven place in the sky. Theism be great!

[nsinkov]

"you could have a universe just having x"

You're assuming an "alphabet" of possible properties and some kind of "mechanism" that's randomly drawing from these properties to make a universe.

What reason do we have to think that this actually happens?

Furthermore, your "alphabet" of properties would be infinite, would it not? The odds of any particular universe drawn from an infinite selection of properties is zero. It doesn't even matter if those properties interact or don't interact.

If our starting point is that our universe was randomly selected from all imaginable universes, then yes, the odds of our universe being selected are always literally zero. There's no need to even discuss physics or cosmological constants.

[otiyrmu]

Wake up babe! Apologetics squared has just uploaded a new video.

[mesplin]

"Given naturalism, nothing makes one particular possibility more probable than any other pairing."

Citation needed.

[deliberationunderidealcond]

god IZ a fallacy--trying To prove God through God. Circular argument. Debunked!

[authenticallysuperficial]

By the anthropic principle, we do not live in the universe in which nothing happens.

[Jodogio]

Hey squared, can you please make a video on the transcendental argument for God? Russ manion and Fr Deacon Ananias have really great papers on it.

[Nickesponja]

This argument has the same problem as all fine tuning arguments. There is no reason to expect that God would desire a universe where something happens. God's desires aren't caused or explained by anything, they are brute facts. So, this argument is not a tie-breaker between theism and naturalism.

[goldenalt]

Amazing how God exactly matches what you think of as God.

[kravitzn]

It is a law of nature that theists will eventually offer theistic arguments that are indistinguishable from parodies of theistic arguments. "Stuff happens, I could imagine it otherwise, therefore God exists"

[TheLlywelyn]

Am I correct in observing this as a completely new philosophical argument? The observations about interrelationship between properties is a fascinating angle and very strong, particularly in light of the convergence of fields required for the universe as we know it.

[SolveEtCoagula]

Of course God exists. Sri Krishna tells us so in the most beautiful text on the planet - the Bhagavad Gita. In fact, not only does Krishna tell us that the Absolute, aka Brahman, exists but also how it can be directly experience.