Professor Peter Millican | God does NOT exist

Professor Peter Millican gives his argument against the existence of God.

Professor Peter Millican opens by saying he had hoped to find good reasons to believe in God by gave up looking. He says that some people need evidence for their beliefs and that he is one of these people.
The theistic hypothesis claims there is an immaterial God who's thought process can act freely of a physical body and that our thinking self can continue without our thinking brains. The human brain has been growing larger as we've evolved as a species and our heads are very large as new-born's making it dangerous for mothers during childbirth, surely if we are to go on thinking after we die we wouldn't need this evolutionary process.

He proceeds to say that every religion has a moral code but this is not surprising as humans are universally moral beings. We are moral because we are a weak species and the only way we can survive is by cooperation in society and we need a morality to be able to do that.
Filmed on Thursday 8th November 2012

ABOUT PROFESSOR PETER MILLICAN:
Gilbert Ryle Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy at Hertford College; Reader in Early Modern Philosophy at Oxford.

ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY:
The Union is the world's most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 189 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.

[thegoodgeneral]

I just love how much Michael Shermer is enjoying this. His own speech and his presence here is really complementary, I’m glad he was invited.

[walterdaems]

If god existed there would be no need to prove his existence

[TerryUniGeezerPeterson]

What's the difference between an invisible, all powerful being that exists outside space and time, and nothing at all? No difference at all.

[paullewis]

The problem I have with these debates is that the opposing sides are addressing quite different topics.

[peronkop]

What I expected in the comment section: Religious debate
What I got: People complaining about the twat in the background.

[rasmuslernevall]

Having seen all 6 videos in this debate, I have to say that the side who argued that "there is NOT a God" won by a landslide if you analyse the arguments from both sides. It was almost painful to watch at times because the difference in quality of the arguments was so clear and obvious.

[jmgj]

How can anyone defend something that cannot be properly defined? Believers can not tell us what God is, they can only tell us what God is not. "God is invisible, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and beyond human understanding".  So why are you wasting your time by trying to understand God? Why even bring God up, if God, and nothing, look exactly the same?

[sagekevin]

Guy in the Background: ”it’s not a phase mom ”

[rotorblade]

The resurrection didn’t even convince people who lived those days since they crucified him and they still think it’s a proof of god now.

[trickcyclists]

Peter Hitchens isn't a patch on his brother, who is sadly missed now.
.

[biggerissues]

A belief in god never seems to have prevented Peter Hitchens from being an odious, obnoxious, dissatisfied, and seemingly unhappy individual.

Was living in the shadow of a vastly more celebrated (not always deserved) brother the root of his unpleasantness?

[andrewdowns]

Here's my argument against the Bible:

The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego form the book of Daniel 1. If your'e not familiar, the story depicts the three Jewish men being thrown into a fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, for refusing to bow to the king's image. The three however are preserved from harm by God.

Vs

The Holocaust, which exterminated approx. 1, 1 million Jews in the gas chambers (along with cripples, redheads, blacks, and other peoples the Nazis sought to exterminate).

Same scenario, same religous belief and believers, yet the accredited story had no divine intervention. The only options are that the Jewish people weren't praying hard enough to save their lives, God was on vacation or ignored them, or God does not exist.

[dominic]

HEBREWS 11:1, ”FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN”.

[糸攴鬼㐯衣豸麻]

*This is beautiful from Max Planck - founder of modern science, read it carefully:* _As a physicist, that is, a man who had devoted his whole life to a wholly prosaic science, the exploration of matter, no one would surely suspect me of being a fantast. And so, having studied the atom, I am telling you that there is no matter as such! All matter arises and persists only due to a force that causes the atomic particles to vibrate, holding them together in the tiniest of solar systems, the atom._
_Yet in the whole of the universe there is no force that is either intelligent or eternal, and we must therefore assume that behind this force there is a conscious, intelligent Mind or Spirit. This is the very origin of all matter_

[jinestonegano]

I don't know why make a simple so complicated. Just like telling a blind man he is blind but fights no I'm not.

[terryrenehan]

"For the time will come when men will no longer put up with sound doctrine instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to hear what their itching ears want to hear. . They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." 2Timothy 4:3=4:

[Belief_Before_Glory]

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
—Marcus Aurelius

[atheism-themoststupidrelig]

*One beautiful and true saying from Pasteur:* _Too little science leads away from God, while too much science leads back to Him_

[francisgama]

What you don't know doesn't exist, according to your perception of reality. And if in fact God reveals himself to some and not to others, it is smart to understand this situation 😕

[leonausten]

My biggest question, if god was allknowing and almighty....why he didn’t just gave us all physical constants etc.?