Is It Irrational to Believe in Miracles? | Thought Adventure Podcast #4 (2021-02-28) #

0:00:07 i am
0:00:39 to discuss on the thought adventure
0:00:42 podcast apologies for the slight delay
0:00:45 uh we were just waiting for one of the
0:00:47 panelists but it doesn't matter now
0:00:48 hamdi la he's here
0:00:50 so today's show we're going to be
0:00:51 talking about flying courses
0:00:54 splitting moons whether it is irrational
0:00:58 to believe in miracles so
0:01:01 if uh some of you listened to last
0:01:03 week's oh not last week but two weeks
0:01:05 ago the podcast we were discussing
0:01:07 about whether the trinity is uh
0:01:10 irrational and
0:01:12 one of the questions that was raised
0:01:14 which we thought we would then
0:01:15 discuss and tackle today was this idea
0:01:18 that well
0:01:19 if you say uh trinity is irrational
0:01:22 isn't
0:01:23 belief in like the burak the the flying
0:01:27 animal that took the prophet sallallahu
0:01:29 alaihi wasallam beyond the seven heavens
0:01:31 uh in one night isn't that something
0:01:34 that's irrational and if you can accept
0:01:36 that why can't we accept trinity
0:01:38 similarly you have many atheists who
0:01:40 will turn around and ask this same
0:01:42 type of question in regards to uh you
0:01:44 know how can you believe religion is
0:01:45 true
0:01:46 and they believe in these supernatural
0:01:48 you know these
0:01:49 you know uh legends and stories about
0:01:54 you know miracles and supernatural
0:01:56 events etc
0:01:57 so what we're asking today is whether
0:02:00 belief in miracles is irrational how we
0:02:03 should approach it how we should
0:02:05 understand it
0:02:06 and as always today alhamdulillah we
0:02:09 have our our
0:02:10 panelists we have uh yusuf pondus from
0:02:13 pondering seoul
0:02:15 assalamu alaikum
0:02:19 how are you doing good good we've also
0:02:22 got
0:02:22 jake the muslim metaphysician
0:02:25 assalamu alaikum it needs to learn how
0:02:29 to unmike
0:02:51 as always in these conversations we
0:02:53 normally have a short introduction for
0:02:55 about 20 minutes where we start to talk
0:02:56 about the topic area and then
0:02:59 what we want is we want people to join
0:03:01 muslims or non-muslims preferably
0:03:03 non-muslims who want to challenge the
0:03:05 ideas
0:03:06 debate the discussion uh so i'll be
0:03:08 after about 20 minutes or so so please
0:03:10 be patient if you want to try join now
0:03:12 i think uh the stream yard link should
0:03:14 be um
0:03:15 put a pinned in the uh comment section
0:03:18 but let me just quickly ask the first
0:03:20 question actually to brother jake
0:03:22 jake why this topic why are we talking
0:03:25 about miracles
0:03:26 are we not like uh you know on the other
0:03:29 topics that we should be getting
0:03:30 uh discussing first why is this such an
0:03:32 important topic
0:03:36 you need to unmute yeah i gotta mute so
0:03:40 yeah the reason why this topic is so
0:03:42 important
0:03:43 um from my perspective is that like you
0:03:46 mentioned in the last stream there's
0:03:48 there's sort of two issues one is when
0:03:50 we were discussing uh discussing the
0:03:52 trinity
0:03:54 uh sometimes the response we get is well
0:03:56 you guys are saying that the trinity is
0:03:58 irrational but yet you believe in these
0:04:01 strange miracles which are just as
0:04:04 irrational as the trinity itself
0:04:06 so we want to uh take that criticism on
0:04:10 board and combat
0:04:11 it to show that we'll actually know the
0:04:13 two are not analogous
0:04:15 and so maybe we'll go into more detail
0:04:16 about that the second thing is that from
0:04:20 uh muslims and skeptics typically we get
0:04:23 um
0:04:23 charged with the idea that the idea of
0:04:26 miracles
0:04:27 is completely irrational it's illogical
0:04:29 because it breaks
0:04:30 uh laws of nature and such a thing is
0:04:33 impossible
0:04:34 um so it's these two ideas as far as i
0:04:38 can see
0:04:38 that we want to address and combat
0:04:43 cool um
0:04:46 you know this this question was uh i
0:04:48 think it was leveled up
0:04:49 in one of the comments to say look you
0:04:51 know we're putting the cart before the
0:04:53 horse
0:04:54 you know we're talking about miracles to
0:04:55 atheists and
0:04:57 we should be talking about more
0:04:58 fundamental
0:05:00 you know uh discussions about belief in
0:05:03 in allah so why is it that you know this
0:05:06 is
0:05:06 an issue that needs to be addressed even
0:05:08 with atheists
0:05:10 yeah well i i think i think they come
0:05:13 hand in hand in a way because um
0:05:16 the way you look at any
0:05:19 claim to a miraculous account or
0:05:22 any event for that matter is always
0:05:24 going to def depend on your
0:05:26 prior metaphysical commitment and your
0:05:28 world view as a whole
0:05:30 that kind of determines how you are to
0:05:33 assess the evidence and make sense of of
0:05:36 what's being said
0:05:38 so i think i think in a way that comment
0:05:40 you're talking about
0:05:42 does have a point that there is a more
0:05:44 fundamental
0:05:45 issue at play here which is the
0:05:48 uh uh basically the the the lens
0:05:52 through which you're you're you're
0:05:53 assessing these matters and your
0:05:55 overarching worldview through which you
0:05:57 you um
0:05:58 you kind of uh investigate the evidence
0:06:01 but in order to
0:06:02 um i think get to that more fundamental
0:06:05 aspect of this discussion i think we
0:06:07 need to deal with these questions about
0:06:10 miracles very seriously and i think the
0:06:12 whole topic of miracles is a very good
0:06:14 segue
0:06:14 to that uh that kind of discussion about
0:06:17 the fundamental
0:06:18 nature of reality and these metaphysical
0:06:21 and epistemological concerns that we
0:06:23 have
0:06:24 in our assessment of these uh you know
0:06:27 claims
0:06:28 uh about extraordinary events
0:06:32 okay cool i think the way i uh maybe i
0:06:35 also look at this
0:06:36 is some some people think this is a
0:06:39 defeater for religion
0:06:41 so they think that i cannot even
0:06:43 acknowledge or accept
0:06:45 to believe in any religious claim if a
0:06:48 religion
0:06:49 claims to adhere to some sort of
0:06:51 supernatural event or miraculous event
0:06:53 and so if a religion claims that you
0:06:56 know the moon split
0:06:58 or that you know some other miracle
0:06:59 events people walking on water that that
0:07:02 automatically dismisses a religious
0:07:05 claim and so
0:07:06 there's more of a fundamental question
0:07:07 that we have to ask is
0:07:09 what refutes a religion what can we say
0:07:12 is
0:07:12 you know makes a religion incompatible
0:07:15 uh
0:07:16 you know to to reason and rationality
0:07:18 becomes illogical
0:07:20 is miracles a good argument for that and
0:07:22 maybe that goes on to the other question
0:07:24 i was going to ask
0:07:25 brother yusuf as well which was that
0:07:27 obviously last week we talked about the
0:07:29 trinity
0:07:29 last week last couple of weeks ago we
0:07:31 talked about the trinity
0:07:32 and we talked about the logical problem
0:07:34 of the trinity and we basically
0:07:35 in essence i think the conclusion that
0:07:37 we're trying to present anyway at least
0:07:39 is the trinity by definition
0:07:44 is illogical and as a result anybody who
0:07:47 claims that christianity promotes this
0:07:51 by definition means that the religion
0:07:52 itself we would say
0:07:54 is is incorrect because there has to be
0:07:56 some sort of rational consistency
0:07:58 logical consistency
0:07:59 regards to this but how do we explain
0:08:02 that
0:08:03 on the one hand and i don't want to go
0:08:05 over the whole discussion about trinity
0:08:06 by the way but how do we
0:08:08 demarcate the discussion about trinity
0:08:11 and miracles are they equivalent can we
0:08:14 say okay if we
0:08:15 uh you know can accept miracles we can
0:08:18 accept trinity if we have to reject
0:08:20 trinity then we'd have to reject even
0:08:22 claims within islam
0:08:23 yeah so so the the issue is is the
0:08:25 presence of an explicit contradiction
0:08:29 and so you know for example when you're
0:08:31 talking about whether or not
0:08:32 jesus is god we and we're saying that
0:08:35 it's there's a contradiction
0:08:36 a logical contradiction and therefore
0:08:38 it's illogical
0:08:40 or irrational and we're saying that
0:08:42 you're holding two contradictory
0:08:44 premises you're holding
0:08:45 um premise a and premise not a
0:08:49 or you know element a element not a
0:08:51 simultaneously and these are
0:08:53 um incompatible together in the same
0:08:55 thing
0:08:56 uh so like one of the examples uh we
0:08:59 gave can you be
0:09:00 um five foot tall if you're six foot
0:09:02 tall you know these are mutually
0:09:04 exclusive
0:09:05 um attributes and so to claim for
0:09:09 example that a being is both
0:09:11 um all-knowing and not all-knowing at
0:09:15 the same time
0:09:16 um we're pointing to an explicit
0:09:18 contradiction
0:09:20 um and therefore leading to this idea
0:09:22 that it's logically irrational
0:09:24 when it comes to miracles there's no
0:09:27 explicit contradiction um being put
0:09:31 forward like if you can say
0:09:32 for example uh or well the the laws of
0:09:35 logic
0:09:36 or sorry the laws of physics are xyz
0:09:39 so anything that doesn't do that is um
0:09:42 illogical you know if you're trying to
0:09:44 make this kind of argument
0:09:46 um then you might be able to put forward
0:09:48 the idea that there is a contradiction
0:09:50 but then you've also um you're gonna
0:09:52 have rebuttals so that i
0:09:53 um you know the laws of uh physics are
0:09:56 based on induction they're based on
0:09:58 um you're looking at the world you're
0:10:01 saying something keeps doing this so
0:10:04 therefore it's going to keep doing that
0:10:05 but there's nothing necessary about that
0:10:07 and so therefore there's no uh necessary
0:10:10 con uh contradiction
0:10:12 um and you know so the different
0:10:14 approaches here
0:10:15 um there's different you know they
0:10:17 inhabit different categories and then
0:10:19 the other issue is there's two ways of
0:10:21 approaching this um
0:10:23 conversation with regards to miracles so
0:10:25 we can say
0:10:26 um one kind of argument is to justify
0:10:30 your belief because of a miracle
0:10:33 so that the miracle therefore would be
0:10:34 like the foundation of your belief
0:10:37 and you say i've experienced x and so
0:10:40 i'm going to believe like for example i
0:10:42 saw jesus in a dream so therefore i'm a
0:10:45 christian now
0:10:46 or you know i i witnessed something
0:10:48 crazy um i saw a jinn i saw
0:10:50 whatever it is you experience something
0:10:53 that you consider to be miraculous and
0:10:54 you use that as the basis
0:10:56 for your belief in whatever religion it
0:10:58 is um you feel
0:10:59 uh is justified by that miracle and then
0:11:01 um
0:11:03 the other problem is is that while the
0:11:05 other way of approaching it
0:11:06 is not having miracles as the lynch
0:11:10 pin or the you know the reason for your
0:11:11 belief in that um but rather
0:11:14 as a secondary issue and that is you've
0:11:17 you've built your belief on a religion
0:11:20 um with you know say for example um
0:11:22 you're looking at the kalam arguments
0:11:24 you're looking at
0:11:25 arguments for the uh the oneness of god
0:11:27 you're looking at
0:11:28 arguments in favor of the quran as uh
0:11:30 revelation from god or
0:11:32 the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi
0:11:35 as a prophet
0:11:36 you know these arguments would be the
0:11:37 foundation and then as a consequence of
0:11:40 accepting these
0:11:41 you therefore then have these miracles
0:11:44 explicitly stated in the quran and the
0:11:46 hadith
0:11:47 and so then you accept them not as the
0:11:50 reason for your belief in the first
0:11:52 place but as a consequence of your
0:11:54 belief in the scripture as a consequence
0:11:55 of your belief in that particular
0:11:56 religion
0:11:57 um and so you know there's there's a
0:12:00 difference here so
0:12:01 you might like for example um there was
0:12:04 an article someone sent us recently
0:12:06 i think surely if you read for it as
0:12:07 well possibly um where
0:12:09 there's a gentleman he's arguing that uh
0:12:11 yeah he's kind of um
0:12:12 taking hume a bit further or a bit more
0:12:14 he's a bit more extreme than you
0:12:16 and that he's saying that it's not
0:12:17 possible at all for miracles to
0:12:20 happen um and the reason is because
0:12:22 there's two steps you've got to take
0:12:24 and the um i can't remember the explicit
0:12:28 argument he was giving but yeah can you
0:12:30 recall that yeah we'll get on to that
0:12:32 because i just want to really focus on
0:12:33 this particular point though um
0:12:35 when you're saying that look because
0:12:37 people will say uh
0:12:39 i know you've covered it a little bit
0:12:40 but i just want to re-emphasize this
0:12:42 point
0:12:42 when you when you say that there is if
0:12:45 there's an
0:12:45 obvious contradiction yeah a
0:12:48 contradictory statement
0:12:49 we can reject but they will say there is
0:12:51 a contradiction between what we know
0:12:53 about the
0:12:54 facts of the universe and
0:12:57 you know these claims about
0:13:00 you know people walking on water yeah so
0:13:04 these are
0:13:04 these are clear obvious contradictions
0:13:08 between what we know externally
0:13:10 and what is being claimed in these
0:13:12 religious texts
0:13:13 yeah no so that i wouldn't say that
0:13:14 that's a contradiction
0:13:16 in the sense that like your base because
0:13:19 this would be um
0:13:20 the black swan fallacy or something um
0:13:23 it might not be that one uh but it's a
0:13:25 fallacy in the sense that
0:13:27 you're saying i've experienced x every
0:13:29 time i've seen it
0:13:31 so therefore all x's must be equivalent
0:13:34 to my experience of them like
0:13:35 every time i've seen a sheep it's been a
0:13:37 white sheep therefore
0:13:38 all sheep are white you can't make this
0:13:41 generalization it's a hasty
0:13:42 generalization you can't so
0:13:44 what so what you're saying is that the
0:13:46 laws of the universe
0:13:48 are inductively derived yes so we go
0:13:51 from
0:13:52 specific observation observation one
0:13:54 observation two observation three
0:13:56 even a thousand observations and then we
0:13:58 create a generalized statement okay this
0:14:01 is
0:14:01 always the true fact of the reality
0:14:04 but we don't know it's always the truth
0:14:06 back to the reality because we've not
0:14:07 observed everything
0:14:09 yeah and and we're not finding out in
0:14:11 that exploration
0:14:12 um everything necessary about what
0:14:14 underpins these laws
0:14:16 we're basically we're basing it off the
0:14:18 experience rather than off the
0:14:20 foundation of the thing that gives rise
0:14:22 to these laws in the first place
0:14:23 and and then but then that begs the
0:14:25 question well what is it that's giving
0:14:26 rise
0:14:27 to these laws now if there is no god
0:14:30 then you've just got this kind of big
0:14:31 empty space of
0:14:33 questions that we we need to answer um
0:14:35 and that obviously gives rise to a
0:14:37 problem if you're trying to use this
0:14:39 in an argument to say that a miracle is
0:14:40 necessarily contradictory
0:14:42 that well no you can you can only make
0:14:44 that claim if you if all of this
0:14:46 unknown of all of these unanswered
0:14:48 questions had answers to them
0:14:50 well by essence of the fact that they're
0:14:51 unanswered we you know we don't know
0:14:53 anything about
0:14:54 the the the necessary fundamental
0:14:57 elements that give rise
0:14:58 to these we're still exploring this you
0:15:00 know it might be
0:15:02 um you know impossible to actually ever
0:15:04 get to the absolute bottom and
0:15:06 we've just got to deal with what's with
0:15:07 what's in our horizon
0:15:09 um now if but you know that's on the uh
0:15:12 the assumption as well that
0:15:13 there is no garden that we're just
0:15:15 having to deal with the universe
0:15:17 based on our limited perspectives now if
0:15:19 there is a god
0:15:20 um you know he's the one that
0:15:22 orchestrated the laws as they were
0:15:24 in the first place there's nothing
0:15:25 necessary about the laws he made them in
0:15:27 a particular way
0:15:28 he could make them in another way these
0:15:30 are contingent things you know
0:15:31 they um can exist in many possible ways
0:15:34 there's nothing necessary about them
0:15:36 having to be the way they are
0:15:37 and so if the one who made the laws in
0:15:39 the first place
0:15:41 um can you know say for example that
0:15:44 um gravity is whatever speed is um
0:15:48 meters per second squared uh
0:15:49 acceleration then
0:15:51 he you know if he wanted to he could
0:15:53 change the variables he could you know
0:15:55 he could make it other than what it is
0:15:57 um and so for that reason there isn't a
0:16:00 necessary contradiction
0:16:01 now when you're talking about the nature
0:16:03 of god this is completely separate fear
0:16:06 we're talking of two different
0:16:07 categories here we're talking of um
0:16:09 you know what what can we say about god
0:16:12 and his nature
0:16:13 and what can we say about contingent
0:16:15 possibilities
0:16:16 let me just really separate because we
0:16:18 only got a couple of minutes before we
0:16:20 want to bring on our first guest
0:16:21 let me just bring jake into this so jake
0:16:24 you know
0:16:24 uh the facts of the universe can they be
0:16:27 violated
0:16:30 yeah so i just want to give an example
0:16:33 of what i think the main
0:16:35 thrust of the argument is so we have a
0:16:38 miracle on one hand
0:16:40 and we have this other thing called the
0:16:41 law of nature on the other hand right
0:16:44 and the the skeptic or even in the case
0:16:46 of
0:16:48 the christian but the trinity is saying
0:16:51 that
0:16:51 the miracle and the law of nature are
0:16:54 contradicting one another
0:16:56 so in order to even evaluate that we
0:16:58 have to define the terms what a miracle
0:17:00 is
0:17:01 and what a law of nature is and then we
0:17:03 can see whether or not these two things
0:17:05 contradict one another
0:17:07 now i just want to read a quote from uh
0:17:10 jl mackey
0:17:11 who is no friend to theism he's a he was
0:17:14 an atheist uh
0:17:16 philosopher uh in the 20th century
0:17:19 in which he says this what we want to do
0:17:21 here is to contrast the order of nature
0:17:24 with a possible divine or supernatural
0:17:27 intervention
0:17:28 the laws of nature we must say describe
0:17:32 the ways in which the world including of
0:17:34 course
0:17:35 human beings works when left to itself
0:17:39 when not interfered with a miracle
0:17:42 occurs when the world is not left to
0:17:44 itself
0:17:45 when something distinct from the natural
0:17:47 order as a whole
0:17:49 intrudes into it so he's saying is the
0:17:52 the laws of nature describe the the way
0:17:55 the world is
0:17:56 when it's left to its uh natural
0:17:59 phenomenon and the way that the world
0:18:00 actually occurs and works
0:18:02 a miracle occurs obviously he doesn't
0:18:05 believe in miracles but he's saying that
0:18:07 a miracle would occur from a theist
0:18:09 perspective
0:18:10 when the natural world is not left to
0:18:12 the way it is and
0:18:14 i sort of don't really have a an issue
0:18:16 with that
0:18:17 now the claim is that these laws of
0:18:20 nature
0:18:21 cannot be violated and that when god
0:18:23 performs a miracle or a prophet or
0:18:25 whatever the example is
0:18:27 it would be an example in which these
0:18:30 laws of nature are being broken
0:18:32 or um violated now i want to give an
0:18:35 example of
0:18:36 a law of nature which is the first law
0:18:39 of thermodynamics
0:18:40 which says that the which is basically
0:18:43 also called the uh
0:18:44 law of the conservation of energy it
0:18:46 says that
0:18:47 um energy state it's it states that
0:18:50 energy in an isolated system it remains
0:18:54 constant so we've heard frequently that
0:18:56 energy cannot be created or destroyed
0:18:58 and this is what
0:19:00 this is talking about that in an
0:19:01 isolated system
0:19:03 the energy cannot be created or
0:19:05 destroyed it can only transform
0:19:07 from one form to another now a key thing
0:19:11 that i want people to understand from
0:19:13 this definition of this law of nature
0:19:16 is that it refers to isolated systems
0:19:19 so that this law of nature is contingent
0:19:22 upon the system being isolated
0:19:24 now for people who aren't familiar with
0:19:26 this
0:19:28 an isolated system is a system in which
0:19:31 energy and matter cannot be exchanged
0:19:34 so there's no causal influence from
0:19:37 outside of the system
0:19:38 now if we think of our universe
0:19:41 as a total system then the question
0:19:44 would be
0:19:45 whether or not our system is an isolated
0:19:47 system
0:19:48 because in order for the the law to
0:19:51 apply
0:19:52 you have to make a further claim that
0:19:54 our
0:19:55 universe as a whole or whatever system
0:19:57 we're looking at the earth whatever it
0:19:59 is
0:20:00 is in fact an isolated system well
0:20:03 actually you can find nowhere in science
0:20:06 the claim that our universe is an
0:20:08 isolated system
0:20:10 and so because of that the claim that a
0:20:13 miracle
0:20:14 would actually conflict with this law
0:20:17 we can't actually make that claim
0:20:19 because if a miracle were to occur
0:20:21 it would be when the system was open it
0:20:24 wouldn't be isolated
0:20:25 what i mean by that is there would be
0:20:27 causal influence from outside of the
0:20:30 system
0:20:31 now if the if the law and all of
0:20:34 scientific laws
0:20:35 only apply to or are contingent
0:20:38 upon the system being isolated or closed
0:20:42 and if a miracle were to occur the
0:20:45 system
0:20:46 would be open they wouldn't be isolated
0:20:49 then every time a miracle would occur it
0:20:51 couldn't
0:20:52 contradict the law of nature because the
0:20:54 law of nature
0:20:55 doesn't apply in that instance so my
0:20:58 claim is that
0:20:59 not only is there no logical
0:21:01 contradiction between
0:21:03 a miracle and a law of nature but my
0:21:05 claim is there possibly there couldn't
0:21:07 possibly be one
0:21:09 so what you're saying in essence is even
0:21:12 if we accept the laws of nature to be
0:21:14 fixed
0:21:15 yeah it is like saying we're in a room
0:21:19 and within this particular room these
0:21:22 are the particular laws and regulations
0:21:24 yeah but that assumes that all that
0:21:26 exists
0:21:28 and all that exists that has impact upon
0:21:30 the room
0:21:31 is the room itself it's closed but if
0:21:34 somebody's outside of the room
0:21:35 they can then influence what occurs
0:21:37 within the room and change it up
0:21:40 yeah right right yeah and there's no
0:21:42 like i said
0:21:43 we have no observable evidence of a
0:21:46 ideal ideally isolated system anywhere
0:21:50 in the universe
0:21:51 so the claim that our system is or the
0:21:55 universe as a whole
0:21:56 is an isolated system is not a
0:21:58 scientific claim it's a metaphysical
0:22:00 claim
0:22:01 in which most even some theoretical
0:22:04 physicists
0:22:05 wouldn't make this claim because they um
0:22:08 they give some credence to the
0:22:10 possibility of the idea that there could
0:22:12 be other universes
0:22:14 that could causally influence ours and
0:22:16 vice versa
0:22:17 and so if that's the case well then yeah
0:22:20 if something sort of just dropped into
0:22:22 our universe
0:22:23 well if ours if our universe is not an
0:22:26 isolated system
0:22:27 there's no contradiction with the law of
0:22:29 conservation of energy because we
0:22:31 what we're saying is that this is a law
0:22:34 that's contingent
0:22:36 upon the system being isolated and if
0:22:38 such an event were to
0:22:40 occur as a miracle or even interacting
0:22:43 with another universe
0:22:44 the law wouldn't apply because the the
0:22:47 condition that's needed
0:22:49 for the law to apply wouldn't be
0:22:51 fulfilled
0:22:58Laughter 0:23:02 um based on what uh jake and joseph has
0:23:06 said
0:23:06 and i know we've only got like i'm just
0:23:08 going to give you like 30 seconds or so
0:23:10 yeah
0:23:10 because i want to bring on carlos who's
0:23:12 waiting in the background and wants to
0:23:14 join us in the discussion
0:23:15 how would you define a miracle then
0:23:19 um i think a miracle is just a break in
0:23:22 a an observed regularity i i i really
0:23:25 think that's all it is
0:23:26 but i just want to see something real
0:23:28 quick i know you just give me 30 seconds
0:23:31 i think what's important at the outset
0:23:33 here in this discussion is
0:23:34 is to start with a definition of a
0:23:36 miracle and a definition of
0:23:39 a law of nature that's philosophically
0:23:41 useful in the sense that it's not a
0:23:43 question begging definition so if i if i
0:23:46 say that the laws of nature
0:23:49 are necessary connections
0:23:53 that that you know or necessary
0:23:55 connections that follow from certain
0:23:56 universal like there's a universal a
0:23:58 and a universal b once they instantiate
0:24:00 they are necessarily connected
0:24:02 if i give provide that kind of
0:24:04 definition then i'm begging the question
0:24:06 against
0:24:06 miracles and if i provide a definition
0:24:08 of a miracle as in
0:24:10 every single act of god then i'm also
0:24:13 begging the question for miracles
0:24:14 because from a theistic perspective
0:24:16 everything is an act of god so it's
0:24:18 important to start with a useful
0:24:20 definition of both what a miracle is
0:24:22 and what a law of nature is otherwise
0:24:26 like a definition that wouldn't really
0:24:28 uh have any kind of bias
0:24:30 towards either direction so that it
0:24:32 would give you the chance to actually
0:24:33 examine the evidence
0:24:35 and in that sense i think um
0:24:38 i i think it's just really important to
0:24:40 start there
0:24:42 do you mind if i have 30 seconds off
0:24:44 i'll give you 20 seconds all right
0:24:47 so i just really want to kind of hone in
0:24:49 on what abdullah just said that
0:24:50 um that when you look at like
0:24:52 definitions given by people like hume
0:24:53 or people that just basically end up
0:24:55 arguing towards the conclusion that
0:24:56 miracles are not possible
0:24:58 and they usually go off this idea of you
0:25:00 know an intervention by god
0:25:02 um but it's abdul rightly stated that we
0:25:04 believe
0:25:05 that allah is constantly intervening and
0:25:08 sustaining everything at all times
0:25:09 so what that would by definition make
0:25:12 all of creation everything existence
0:25:14 itself a constant miracle
0:25:17 and all what we would refer to as a
0:25:19 miracle
0:25:20 um when they occur the ones that
0:25:21 surprise people isn't so much
0:25:24 um something different it's just it the
0:25:26 only thing that makes it different is
0:25:27 the the phenomenological experience of
0:25:29 it
0:25:29 as amazing and what it does is it sort
0:25:31 of acts as a reminder of god's
0:25:34 existence or god's intervention um
0:25:37 because it stands out because it's
0:25:38 different
0:25:39 and so again it's you know if you're
0:25:41 trying to make it as
0:25:42 the um you know active intervention of
0:25:44 god everything's a miracle
0:25:46 and when you experience one in summary
0:25:48 it's basically a reminder
0:25:50 that existence is miraculous for a
0:25:52 moment in in a particular experience
0:25:55 i've been from uh just as a quick point
0:25:57 for myself i think
0:25:58 you've got 20 seconds so normally what i
0:26:02 use is a non-naturalistic explanation
0:26:05 that a uh a mortgage in arabic
0:26:08 would say miraculous event
0:26:11 inimitable event something that cannot
0:26:13 be imitated
0:26:14 has a non-naturalistic explanation or
0:26:16 it's beyond human productive capacity
0:26:19 if it's like like the quran as an
0:26:21 example i want to bring on
0:26:23 carlos uh now because i know he's been
0:26:24 patiently waiting in the background
0:26:26 hopefully is uh if the admins can
0:26:30 like call us in hi carlos
0:26:33 how are you doing if uh
0:26:37 good evening good evening it's good to
0:26:39 have you good to have you out
0:26:40 i think uh we we spoke a couple of weeks
0:26:43 ago a week and a half ago i think it was
0:26:44 uh last week yeah yeah yeah that's right
0:26:47 that's right that's good so it's good to
0:26:49 have it
0:26:49 i don't know if you want to just give it
0:26:50 a really quick short introduction to
0:26:52 yourself where are you from what you
0:26:53 believe
0:26:54 yeah so i've been on a couple of the uh
0:26:57 muslim debate shows i do enjoy
0:26:59 um interlocking with you guys and
0:27:03 basically putting my own beliefs to the
0:27:06 test
0:27:07 against people that are knowledgeable
0:27:09 and disagree with me so um
0:27:11 as most people that do or have heard me
0:27:13 know that i'm
0:27:14 would be classed as an atheist um i
0:27:17 don't call myself an atheist as
0:27:18 obviously
0:27:19 a separate discussion on the definition
0:27:21 of atheists but for for the most part
0:27:23 i don't believe that there are
0:27:25 sufficient reasons
0:27:26 to believe in god um that could change
0:27:29 but
0:27:30 um you know i don't think there are
0:27:32 enough and i think that's what makes me
0:27:34 an atheist
0:27:35 but i'm not a hard atheist in the same
0:27:37 saying that there are no gods i don't
0:27:38 think i have
0:27:39 enough evidence to make that claim so
0:27:43 yeah sorry carlos i was going to ask you
0:27:45 so on this topic of miracles do you
0:27:48 believe
0:27:48 miracles are rational do you believe
0:27:50 they're irrational
0:27:51 i think it's irrational to to believe in
0:27:54 anything that there's
0:27:55 insufficient evidence for and i think uh
0:27:58 miracles would fall into that category
0:28:00 yeah it depends what obviously you
0:28:02 define as a miracle or no abdullah's
0:28:04 um just defining it first there um
0:28:07 you know because i've never experienced
0:28:09 a miracle
0:28:10 um and i don't necessarily believe that
0:28:12 there's a good enough
0:28:14 justification to believe in them it's
0:28:16 not really for me to define
0:28:18 it's really for me to listen to what a
0:28:20 person's definition of a miracle is
0:28:22 and then go from there really but um i
0:28:25 what i would ask
0:28:26 on the question of a definition would
0:28:28 you say
0:28:29 that a miracle is something that um
0:28:32 can't be explained by science or hasn't
0:28:34 been explained by science or
0:28:36 could be both if i can ask if i can ask
0:28:38 carlos um
0:28:39 i'm gonna answer that but uh because you
0:28:41 said that
0:28:42 for from uh from your perspective
0:28:44 miracles couldn't possibly be proven i
0:28:46 mean there couldn't be sufficient
0:28:47 evidence for miracles
0:28:49 that would like justify you and
0:28:50 believing them i was wondering if you're
0:28:52 saying because this is like
0:28:54 an epistemological concern i i was
0:28:56 wondering if it's an
0:28:58 in-principle epistemological concern in
0:29:00 the sense that we couldn't possibly
0:29:02 have evidence for miracles or whether
0:29:04 it's a you know
0:29:05 just a um and in fact epistemological
0:29:09 concern in the sense that we just
0:29:10 don't uh as it is have evidence for any
0:29:14 miracles
0:29:15 um well i'm saying the latter i'm not
0:29:16 making the claim that there are
0:29:18 uh that miracles can't be proven i don't
0:29:21 believe that i think miracles some
0:29:22 miracles can be proven
0:29:24 depending on the nature of the claim but
0:29:26 what i'm saying is that there isn't
0:29:29 uh sufficient evidence to justify
0:29:31 believing in miracles so until that
0:29:33 changes it's irrational to believe that
0:29:36 miracles
0:29:37 uh exist or are real do you mind me
0:29:40 asking
0:29:41 is like if you got an example in mind of
0:29:44 a particular
0:29:45 sort of miracle that if you were to see
0:29:47 it you
0:29:48 you would accept as a miracle or that
0:29:50 would maybe
0:29:51 uh jog a belief
0:29:55 yeah yeah i mean for me like science
0:29:58 is the best method that we have of
0:30:01 um understanding reality um
0:30:04 so it would probably follow a scientific
0:30:07 method
0:30:08 and science i know i was on a stream
0:30:10 last week where we were discussing can
0:30:12 science prove god and i um i don't know
0:30:15 if anyone saw it but i
0:30:16 i made the claim that science can
0:30:20 not prove god's existence but it can uh
0:30:24 assess miracles um
0:30:27 if you want an example um my my best
0:30:30 example would be
0:30:32 the splitting of the moon because we can
0:30:35 test the moon the moon's there
0:30:36 uh i mean it's 250 000 miles away but
0:30:39 it's there
0:30:40 it can be tested it can be examined and
0:30:43 we can
0:30:44 uh rule rule it out or prove it to be
0:30:47 true
0:30:48 so just to sort of take it further um
0:30:50 science can
0:30:52 uh you know investigate the moon so if
0:30:55 we had evidence through science
0:30:58 the methodology of science to say yes
0:31:00 there is evidence that there was once
0:31:02 split
0:31:03 and we can date it to less than 2 000
0:31:05 years ago
0:31:06 that would serve as good evidence if i
0:31:08 can sorry if i could just
0:31:10 uh chime in there a bit uh so so you're
0:31:13 talking about scientific evidence and
0:31:15 scientific evidence
0:31:16 deals with um like as as like a
0:31:19 a matter of like methodology we have to
0:31:22 start with
0:31:23 definitions and uh your talk right now
0:31:26 we're gonna be dealing with
0:31:27 laws of nature when it comes to science
0:31:29 right because um
0:31:31 i i think that's that's really that
0:31:32 really should be the focal point
0:31:34 here um so what's your understanding of
0:31:37 what a law of nature is
0:31:38 um do you have like a rough definition
0:31:41 just off the top of your head
0:31:43 the law of nature is just uh an
0:31:46 explanation
0:31:47 of a particular way that reality
0:31:49 functions
0:31:51 yeah and what would for you what would
0:31:53 constitute
0:31:54 a break in a law of nature or an
0:31:57 irregularity
0:31:59 in a law of nature evidence
0:32:04 evidence so let's let's like for example
0:32:06 like if you're taking this on like an
0:32:08 inductive basis
0:32:09 so uh we've we've observed regularities
0:32:12 in the universe and these regularities
0:32:16 are
0:32:17 something that um don't have a necessary
0:32:19 logical connection
0:32:21 but we see a followed by b and we see
0:32:24 that very regularly
0:32:26 and that is sufficient for us to uh
0:32:29 to to infer that there is some kind of
0:32:32 law going on here now if if if that's
0:32:35 your basis
0:32:36 for for uh the way the way you're going
0:32:39 to determine that a law of nature
0:32:42 what a law of nature is and on that
0:32:44 basis you're saying
0:32:45 that you have that epistemological
0:32:48 concern that we have this background
0:32:49 knowledge of things occurring in this
0:32:51 regulated way
0:32:52 so i think you would have a scientific
0:32:55 concern here that
0:32:57 once you come up with new evidence which
0:32:59 we do come up with new evidence
0:33:01 uh scientific evidence every day you
0:33:03 would have to be skeptical of
0:33:05 the the the novel evidence as well
0:33:07 because
0:33:08 it's evidence that you haven't observed
0:33:11 so in a sense
0:33:12 it's also a break in some it's some kind
0:33:14 of break in an
0:33:15 irregularity yeah sure um but
0:33:18 you know you in terms of um experience
0:33:21 and phenomena
0:33:23 if it's in the realm of the unknown then
0:33:25 you won't
0:33:27 reach a conclusion unless you've got
0:33:29 good enough reason to reach a conclusion
0:33:31 so obviously
0:33:32 if you see an irregularity in the law of
0:33:35 nature
0:33:36 um you you could
0:33:40 posit a supernatural or external
0:33:43 something external to reality causing it
0:33:46 but because we've not had any evidence
0:33:48 of that you wouldn't
0:33:49 reach that as a conclusion but you would
0:33:52 consider it as a possibility and science
0:33:54 doesn't exclude those kinds of
0:33:56 possibilities for its methodology
0:33:59 can i ask carlos a question because i'm
0:34:01 still i'm still trying to understand
0:34:03 what your view on miracles actually is
0:34:06 um i do asked you earlier if you think
0:34:08 it's an imper
0:34:10 in principle problem or not and so
0:34:14 you're you're going to the issue that
0:34:15 you think that there's not
0:34:17 good evidence for miracles as far as you
0:34:19 can tell thus far
0:34:21 but i think that's kind of putting the
0:34:23 cart before the horse because
0:34:25 what my main concern with this stream is
0:34:28 especially with
0:34:29 skeptics is i want to know if you think
0:34:32 that
0:34:32 the very concept of a miracle and
0:34:35 law of nature contradict so what is your
0:34:39 position on that sorry say that again
0:34:44 does the concept of a miracle if a
0:34:46 miracle too
0:34:47 were to occur would that necessarily
0:34:51 contradict or break a law of nature
0:34:54 um again i don't
0:34:57 believe miracles exist so it's down to
0:35:00 what you're claiming a miracle is and
0:35:02 then we'll go from there like i said
0:35:03 earlier i
0:35:04 i don't have a specific definition
0:35:07 well that's yeah but
0:35:10 you just said earlier that you don't
0:35:12 think that there's good
0:35:13 evidence of miracles so you had to have
0:35:15 some concept of a miracle in mind
0:35:18 and i'm saying and i'll give you an
0:35:20 example so the moon
0:35:22 yeah you believe that's you believe
0:35:24 that's a miracle
0:35:25 yeah so i'm basically going off for your
0:35:29 claim that it's
0:35:30 a miracle and then i'm dealing with that
0:35:32 claim
0:35:33 in in using my epistemology yeah but i'm
0:35:36 what i'm asking though is okay let's
0:35:39 take the splitting of the moon or
0:35:40 any kind of example of a claimed miracle
0:35:42 you want to give
0:35:44 would that necessarily break the law of
0:35:46 nature
0:35:49 um no no not necessarily no
0:35:52 why why do you say no
0:35:57 because it could be part of the unknown
0:36:00 natural world
0:36:01 that we've yet to discover because
0:36:02 obviously we haven't discovered
0:36:04 everything there is to discover about
0:36:05 nature
0:36:07 so let's say it wasn't natural say sorry
0:36:11 let's say it wasn't natural
0:36:14 how would you tell well
0:36:17 this is the thing i'm trying to
0:36:19 understand from you whether or not you
0:36:20 think it's an
0:36:21 in principle problem and you keep going
0:36:24 to the issue of like
0:36:26 the evidence for the miracle sure
0:36:30 so i'm trying to understand for me
0:36:31 because this is my perspective
0:36:34 atheists will say hey you guys believe
0:36:36 in miracles
0:36:38 that contradicts laws of nature
0:36:40 therefore
0:36:41 if the law of nature is true a miracle
0:36:43 cannot occur
0:36:44 because it would contradict the law of
0:36:47 nature
0:36:48 so i'm wondering if you hold that
0:36:50 position or not
0:36:51 no no so as i said earlier um
0:36:54 if something happens that's unknown
0:36:58 is it something that you consider is
0:37:01 unexplained by science or unexplainable
0:37:05 by science well
0:37:08 let's say that it was sorry i mean this
0:37:12 is where we go back to the question
0:37:13 begging definitions because if you say
0:37:16 that i i think what i'm understanding
0:37:17 from you carlos is that
0:37:19 uh like uh going back to the whole in
0:37:22 principle question
0:37:23 what you're saying is that a miracle
0:37:25 should be at least in principle
0:37:27 verifiable through science but then if
0:37:29 it's verifiable through science then
0:37:31 it's natural and you've kind of smuggled
0:37:34 in the world i'm i don't mean in a bad
0:37:35 way i'm just saying you smuggled in the
0:37:37 world
0:37:37 word natural over there it could be and
0:37:39 there could be a natural explanation
0:37:41 that we don't know and science could
0:37:43 possibly explain it
0:37:44 but then we're going to keep going in
0:37:46 circles here because then again it's
0:37:47 natural so we don't have a useful
0:37:49 definition for what a natural event
0:37:51 would be
0:37:51 and what a miraculous event would
0:37:53 because you're saying what a miraculous
0:37:55 event to verify miraculous event i have
0:37:57 to verify it through science but if i
0:37:59 verify it through science
0:38:00 it's natural but if it's natural it's
0:38:02 not a miracle so yeah
0:38:06 so let me try and explain it differently
0:38:08 so the way i look at things is
0:38:10 in like three separate
0:38:13 what's the word tears or realm so you
0:38:15 have the conceptual
0:38:18 you have the external to what's
0:38:20 conceptual
0:38:21 which is nature reality and then you
0:38:24 could have a third tier
0:38:25 or third realm which would be the
0:38:28 supernatural or metaphysical
0:38:30 whatever you want to label it as so
0:38:33 what i'm saying is anything that
0:38:37 happens in nature can be argued
0:38:40 as natural or it could be argued as in
0:38:44 being in the third tier but
0:38:46 because we are stuck in the second tier
0:38:49 in reality
0:38:50 you can only experience things in the
0:38:54 second tier
0:38:54 so how would you tell it's not from the
0:38:58 second tier
0:39:00 yeah so that seems like what you're
0:39:02 saying is
0:39:03 we could like it's there is an in
0:39:05 principle epistemological concern
0:39:08 we don't have the epistemic tools to
0:39:10 assess what a miracle is
0:39:12 so it seems like the conversation
0:39:13 doesn't even get off the ground
0:39:15 because the way you're defining what a
0:39:17 miracle is and the way you're defining
0:39:18 what nature is
0:39:19 seems to kind of restrain the whole
0:39:22 discussion
0:39:23 and you i mean you're just begging the
0:39:25 question from the very start
0:39:27 is that whatever reasoning i could
0:39:28 possibly give you to convince you of a
0:39:30 certain
0:39:31 miraculous account at the end of the day
0:39:33 if you're convinced
0:39:34 it's not going to really be a miracle so
0:39:36 it kind of begs the question for
0:39:38 naturalism
0:39:39 this one's sorry yeah so my first
0:39:42 question was how can you tell the
0:39:44 difference between something that's
0:39:45 natural
0:39:46 and something that's metaphysical how
0:39:48 can you what
0:39:49 what methodology are you using to then
0:39:52 come to the conclusion
0:39:53 that whatever unknown event that you
0:39:55 witnessed or experienced
0:39:58 is not from this second tier
0:40:01 what methodology are you actually using
0:40:03 because if you can't
0:40:04 if you can't do that then you're stuck
0:40:07 in the second and first tier
0:40:09 and if you're stuck in the second and
0:40:11 first here basically what science will
0:40:13 do is say if you
0:40:14 if you can't evidence your claim or your
0:40:17 belief
0:40:18 in the second tier then we'll relegate
0:40:21 your
0:40:21 claim to the first tier and it's just
0:40:24 purely conceptual
0:40:25 conceptual and therefore it's just
0:40:27 imaginary yeah so if it's inexplicable
0:40:30 by
0:40:30 by by nature
0:40:34 basically a miracle would be something
0:40:36 that if god didn't intervene
0:40:39 it wouldn't have happened on its own
0:40:41 through the laws of nature
0:40:42 but in order for me to determine what
0:40:44 that is or whether it's even possible i
0:40:46 have to have a useful definition
0:40:48 for what laws of nature are and for what
0:40:50 a miracle is like based on that if we
0:40:52 have that as a good starting point i can
0:40:54 tell you something like for example the
0:40:56 inimitability of the quran i mean i'm
0:40:59 not prepared to defend that but just as
0:41:01 an example
0:41:02 if we were to tell you that no human
0:41:05 or humans as a whole if they did
0:41:08 gather their resources collectively they
0:41:11 couldn't possibly come up
0:41:13 with something like it just just
0:41:16 that claim on the surface it is trying
0:41:19 to tell
0:41:20 you that your natural resources all put
0:41:24 together
0:41:24 couldn't possibly come up with an
0:41:26 explanation for this
0:41:28 if that is true like if let's say um
0:41:32 literary critics and scholars come
0:41:34 together and they
0:41:35 they they do say that yes this is in
0:41:37 fact true that we couldn't possibly
0:41:39 through
0:41:40 our uh natural means come up with
0:41:43 something like this or our
0:41:45 uh uh our epistemic tools that are
0:41:49 constrained by uh within the the let's
0:41:51 say like the scientific method
0:41:53 are incapable of explaining this
0:41:55 phenomenon
0:41:56 then we are warranted in saying that
0:41:59 okay
0:42:00 this is a miracle but you're not going
0:42:02 to really accept that right because
0:42:03 you're going to say that
0:42:04 no maybe there's something else that's
0:42:06 going to explain it in the future and
0:42:07 it's natural
0:42:09 sure why not carlos can i just uh
0:42:12 call us can i just uh sort of maybe
0:42:14 explain a few points
0:42:16 obviously i think sometimes what we have
0:42:18 to do is we have to sort of
0:42:19 there's two issues here one issue is to
0:42:21 do with whether
0:42:23 in principle can we accept that miracles
0:42:26 could potentially occur
0:42:27 that's one question or is that a logical
0:42:30 contradiction
0:42:31 the second question would be is in
0:42:34 principle
0:42:34 can we assess the potential that a
0:42:37 miracle has occurred
0:42:39 yeah and then there's a third one which
0:42:40 is okay so how do we know which
0:42:42 uh miracles have occurred and which ones
0:42:44 haven't had we make that assessment
0:42:47 going back to the first question or the
0:42:49 foundation question
0:42:50 is we believe that all universal laws
0:42:54 are quote-unquote acts of god yeah the
0:42:57 they
0:42:57 are you know the universe or contingent
0:43:00 realities
0:43:01 has to have a necessary foundation to it
0:43:04 so in origin there is generally
0:43:08 the intervention of god in terms of
0:43:10 creating regularity within the universe
0:43:12 yeah
0:43:13 because it's not necessary for things to
0:43:15 exist within the universe
0:43:16 and have the particular attributes that
0:43:18 they exist the second issue then
0:43:20 is is that okay there is not going to be
0:43:22 a violation now if
0:43:24 god then changes those uh
0:43:28 those laws in a particular way how do we
0:43:31 identify this when we would then
0:43:32 identify this through profits so a
0:43:35 profit would turn around
0:43:36 for example and say look at that moon
0:43:39 i'm going to
0:43:39 will you believe me if it splits and
0:43:41 then he will
0:43:43 what we say by the permission of god
0:43:45 split the moon or raise the dead or walk
0:43:47 on water
0:43:48 he will make that claim to say i'm going
0:43:51 to do
0:43:51 x and he's then going to do x by the
0:43:54 permission of god
0:43:55 as a miracle and as a sign that's
0:43:58 different to saying
0:43:59 i've just seen an event decontextualized
0:44:03 to anybody
0:44:04 claiming that this event will occur and
0:44:06 then suddenly it occurred and then me
0:44:08 trying to retrospectively
0:44:10 uh explain it does that make sense
0:44:11 carlos that there is a distinction here
0:44:14 and there is a way to identify it
0:44:16 if somebody turns around and says
0:44:18 tomorrow i'm going to split the moon and
0:44:19 then tomorrow he splits the moon yeah
0:44:22 and every single test that we do
0:44:24 demonstrates that it was split that
0:44:27 would be a miracle wouldn't it that's
0:44:28 something we could identify
0:44:30 um yes and no so again like i don't
0:44:34 believe in miracles so
0:44:36 um i don't think it's rational to
0:44:38 believe in them but if
0:44:40 if the moon was split and and it
0:44:41 happened then science would probably say
0:44:44 okay we don't we've never experienced
0:44:46 this before
0:44:47 we now need to do some further
0:44:49 investigation and they would they
0:44:51 wouldn't
0:44:51 say it was a miracle they wouldn't
0:44:53 resort to that as a next
0:44:55 as a reasonable conclusion they would
0:44:57 just say
0:44:58 we don't know we need to do some more
0:44:59 work on it
0:45:01 no no the thing i'm saying is this i'm
0:45:03 saying that the universal laws
0:45:05 themselves
0:45:06 are found founded upon a necessary being
0:45:09 upon the creator
0:45:10 yeah so the violation aspect is not a
0:45:13 problem
0:45:13 it can be violated the violation of
0:45:16 regular
0:45:19 is not just something that occurs
0:45:21 randomly or something
0:45:23 an event that occurs it occurs because
0:45:25 somebody a human being
0:45:27 said he's going to do this particular
0:45:29 act in order to
0:45:30 prove that he is a messenger from god so
0:45:34 it's not the case that you know we walk
0:45:36 in a you know we go to the local river
0:45:38 and it's split and we're thinking what's
0:45:40 going on there it's the case that
0:45:41 somebody made a willful
0:45:43 intent that willful intent cannot be
0:45:47 from his own productive capacity so this
0:45:50 is
0:45:51 a yes beyond human capability yeah
0:45:54 because it's beyond human capability and
0:45:57 you've identified that this person has
0:45:59 you know raised the staff or whatever it
0:46:01 is and done the act
0:46:03 and i'm not saying therefore you know we
0:46:04 believe moses did a miracle i'm not
0:46:06 saying anything like that i'm just
0:46:07 saying
0:46:08 if we were to see that we would identify
0:46:10 a miracle it's not the case we're not
0:46:12 going to say well
0:46:13 you know there's an epistemic problem
0:46:15 here of
0:46:16 in principle we don't know if a
0:46:17 violation's taking place he's done
0:46:19 something that we know
0:46:20 because laws are outside of human
0:46:22 productive capacity
0:46:24 natural laws we can only operate within
0:46:26 them so he's done something that's
0:46:28 outside of natural human production
0:46:30 capacity which violates regularity which
0:46:32 he said he would do
0:46:34 and it did happen yeah i get what you're
0:46:36 saying i think the way that science
0:46:38 works
0:46:39 it works on uh
0:46:42 in terms of the unknown in order
0:46:45 obviously when it comes to unknown it
0:46:46 there could be
0:46:48 infinite ways to explain uh
0:46:51 the past data but if you're making
0:46:52 future predictions so
0:46:54 like to your example um if that
0:46:57 prediction was made and then it happened
0:46:59 that would actually be very good
0:47:00 evidence
0:47:01 for what that person claimed they uh it
0:47:04 shows that they understand what they're
0:47:05 talking about
0:47:07 they made a prediction that was novel
0:47:09 it's a future
0:47:11 prediction it's testable because we can
0:47:12 all see it we can test it we can observe
0:47:15 it
0:47:15 um and it's a prediction that's come
0:47:17 true so that's how
0:47:19 science progresses or corrects itself by
0:47:22 making uh novel people putting forth
0:47:26 hypothesis and then it has to be in a
0:47:29 form of a novel testable prediction
0:47:31 if you meet that criteria and as your
0:47:33 example
0:47:34 does do that that would serve as good
0:47:36 evidence for that person
0:47:38 uh and and science would likely
0:47:41 um not accept maybe the whole claim
0:47:45 but would certainly accept that that
0:47:47 person knows what they're talking about
0:47:50 and then they would probably do further
0:47:51 investigation from there
0:47:53 so that that is for me the threshold is
0:47:55 if you
0:47:56 if you can make a claim that uh meets
0:47:59 the
0:48:00 scientific criteria of making novel
0:48:02 testable predictions and you can surpass
0:48:04 that
0:48:05 that's how science progresses
0:48:08 but do you get carlos that if you do
0:48:10 make a normal testable prediction and it
0:48:12 does
0:48:13 work um again we're basically back to
0:48:16 the whole idea that it is natural
0:48:18 because the
0:48:18 novel testable predictions the reason
0:48:20 they work is because they work
0:48:22 you know based on i don't think i don't
0:48:24 think carlos is necessarily saying that
0:48:26 he are looking for a naturalist
0:48:28 explanation i think he's just using
0:48:30 the hypothesis is i'm going to do x
0:48:34 and then we can see that he's done x
0:48:37 therefore it's a sign that this person
0:48:39 is claiming that he's from god
0:48:40 is that right
0:48:44 jump in as well so carlos really quickly
0:48:46 yes the only distinction is obviously
0:48:49 the person making the claim obviously
0:48:50 believes
0:48:51 a bigger truth okay and they've provided
0:48:54 one line of evidence
0:48:55 to support that to be true the
0:48:59 skeptic or the scientist or whoever
0:49:01 who's trying to be convinced
0:49:03 would be convinced of the individual act
0:49:06 that's been proven
0:49:07 but they may not be convinced of the
0:49:09 whole truth and they may need
0:49:10 more lines of evidence more predictions
0:49:13 to be made
0:49:14 to basically build up a case that you
0:49:16 you know you if you come on a crime
0:49:18 scene
0:49:19 and you've got just one line of evidence
0:49:23 it might prove that what that person
0:49:25 they did that crime
0:49:27 but it's not it's it might be
0:49:29 circumstantial or it might not be
0:49:31 sufficient evidence to
0:49:32 actually go ahead and and commit that
0:49:36 person to being guilty
0:49:37 so it you need multiple lines of
0:49:40 evidence
0:49:41 to actually if you're trying to answer a
0:49:43 bigger question like
0:49:44 does god exist and did he give me the
0:49:46 power to split the moon
0:49:48 that's a separate claim that can't be
0:49:51 answered by that one thing
0:49:53 but that one thing does support that
0:49:55 claim does that make sense
0:49:58 yeah i think jake wants to jump in
0:50:00 because i i would want to respond but i
0:50:01 think jake's been
0:50:02 waiting patiently jake yeah yeah because
0:50:06 um i'm still trying to stand i think
0:50:09 brother sharif did a good job of
0:50:11 breaking
0:50:12 down the three separate issues
0:50:16 and i'm just going to reiterate them and
0:50:17 he can correct me if i'm wrong
0:50:19 the first is a sort of ontological issue
0:50:23 that
0:50:23 in principle a miracle and a law of
0:50:26 nature
0:50:27 cannot a miracle would be by
0:50:31 definition breaking a law of nature a
0:50:34 law of nature can't be broken therefore
0:50:35 it could never happen
0:50:37 that's the first thing the second thing
0:50:39 is to concern
0:50:40 what you were saying earlier carlos
0:50:42 about well
0:50:43 if a miracle did happen how in the world
0:50:46 would we even know that it happened
0:50:48 how would we be able to distinguish that
0:50:50 and then the third question is well
0:50:52 if we got beyond that and we set up a
0:50:55 criteria for which
0:50:56 we could know whether or not a miracle
0:50:58 did or could happen
0:51:00 uh and what that would look like then
0:51:02 the third question would be
0:51:04 now we take that criteria apply it to
0:51:06 the
0:51:07 the uh miracles that are claimed to
0:51:09 happen and we test them to see
0:51:11 whether or not they actually have
0:51:13 happened now
0:51:16 i i want to have this as a clear as
0:51:18 conversation as we possibly can because
0:51:20 i want to understand what you're saying
0:51:23 and if you're still stuck on the first
0:51:26 point
0:51:27 i think it would do a disservice of
0:51:29 skipping over
0:51:30 points one and two and moving on to
0:51:33 explaining
0:51:34 uh the third point so i think we have to
0:51:37 take it step by step
0:51:39 do you have a problem with the first
0:51:41 step so
0:51:42 just repeat the first step again for me
0:51:47 the first step is do you think there is
0:51:49 a sort of ontological problem
0:51:52 between a miracle uh occurring and by
0:51:56 definition it would break a law of
0:51:58 nature
0:51:58 and it can't break a law of nature
0:52:00 therefore a miracle could never happen
0:52:02 do you have a pro do you have a problem
0:52:05 with that
0:52:06 first part we don't fully understand the
0:52:08 laws of nature
0:52:09 so um i mean i think in quantum physics
0:52:13 they're looking at particles that can
0:52:14 exist and not exist at the same time
0:52:16 or be in two places at the same time
0:52:19 that would
0:52:21 um defy our understanding of the laws of
0:52:23 nature or even the laws of logic a being
0:52:25 not a
0:52:26 you know so um maybe our laws of logic
0:52:30 only work to a certain extent and and
0:52:32 when you go further out
0:52:34 it starts to break down so like kind of
0:52:36 like a newton's
0:52:37 uh law of gravity it's accurate up to a
0:52:41 certain point and then the further out
0:52:43 you go it breaks down and then you need
0:52:45 einstein's uh uh explanation to
0:52:48 to actually make sense of it so even
0:52:52 i don't even know if i'd necessarily
0:52:53 agree with that
0:52:55 so carlos yeah maybe never really
0:52:56 answered jake's quest
0:52:58 yeah you're jumping to number two he's
0:53:01 asking the number one question
0:53:03 which is in principle is there a
0:53:05 violation is it
0:53:06 logically contradictory to say a miracle
0:53:09 can occur
0:53:11 which therefore breaks a law of nature
0:53:13 whatever however we've approached
0:53:15 the knowledge of the law of nature
0:53:18 because it makes a distinction between
0:53:20 carlos
0:53:21 is it possible for is it logically
0:53:23 possible
0:53:24 for a miracle to occur that's different
0:53:28 than what your question is is it
0:53:30 logically possible for
0:53:32 us to identify what a miracle would be
0:53:35 those are those are two different
0:53:37 questions
0:53:38 one is well maybe the miracle could
0:53:40 happen but how
0:53:42 in the world would we be able to say
0:53:44 okay this is definitely what the miracle
0:53:46 is
0:53:47 and then the first one is is a miracle
0:53:51 even logically possible that's the first
0:53:53 question we're trying to address
0:53:55 okay so yeah basically we're saying
0:53:57 anything's possible
0:54:00 well i don't know i mean do you think it
0:54:02 is possible that's my question
0:54:04 do i think it's possible um do you think
0:54:06 it's logically possible based on the
0:54:09 classical loss
0:54:10 yeah um why not yeah anything we don't
0:54:14 understand
0:54:14 everything so yeah on that basis yeah
0:54:16 it's not logical there's a possibility
0:54:18 here for a miracle
0:54:19 to occur okay so it's so it's logically
0:54:22 possible so we got rid of the first step
0:54:24 now moving on to the second step which i
0:54:27 think is your primary concern and you
0:54:29 can correct me if i'm wrong
0:54:30 your primary concern is that if a
0:54:33 supposed miracle
0:54:35 did happen how in the world would we be
0:54:38 able to differentiate
0:54:40 between that miracle and something that
0:54:43 was
0:54:44 either natural and just we didn't know
0:54:46 how to explain it yet
0:54:48 i think that's what your primary concern
0:54:50 is right yeah correct yeah
0:54:53 okay so i don't i i'm done questioning
0:54:56 with you
0:54:57 because i just wanted to get clear on
0:55:00 okay let's let's take this first step
0:55:03 because you have to understand
0:55:04 a lot of skeptics and atheists will get
0:55:07 so hung up on the first step
0:55:09 and i feel that theists a lot of times
0:55:12 will
0:55:12 try to show examples of a miracle when
0:55:15 it's like no we we have to go back to
0:55:17 the beginning because they're saying
0:55:18 there's an in-principle logical
0:55:20 contradiction
0:55:21 so now i think that we've we've settled
0:55:24 that
0:55:24 i don't know if any of the brothers want
0:55:26 to address the second stage
0:55:29 yeah so i you know i don't know
0:55:30 obviously i don't know if you're
0:55:31 something uh abdullah i want to
0:55:33 as well but i was going to say look when
0:55:35 we when we
0:55:36 identify a miracle see this discussion
0:55:39 about miracle the first
0:55:40 question uh which obviously you agree
0:55:43 with there's no logical problems
0:55:44 means that we cannot say that a religion
0:55:47 or
0:55:48 a claim to guidance from god is
0:55:51 irrational just because it
0:55:52 affirms certain miraculous events yeah
0:55:55 so we can't use that as a way to
0:55:57 critique
0:55:58 and dismiss a religious claim doesn't
0:56:00 mean that we believe
0:56:02 automatically that the miracle is true
0:56:04 we just can't say that it's
0:56:05 internally contradictory to affirm that
0:56:09 so that's the first thing the second
0:56:11 thing is
0:56:12 when we look at this question about uh
0:56:16 you know is there an in principle
0:56:17 problem of identifying
0:56:20 it presupposes that we believe and we we
0:56:23 you know we've proven the existence of a
0:56:26 creator
0:56:26 the existence of a necessary being yeah
0:56:29 because that allows us to understand
0:56:32 that there are regularities within the
0:56:34 universe
0:56:35 and those regularities are imposed upon
0:56:38 the universe
0:56:39 now this is a problem for atheists yeah
0:56:41 i know i'm sort of slightly going around
0:56:43 it but i think we do need to sort of
0:56:44 go around this you know address this
0:56:46 particular issue
0:56:47 which is how do we ensure from an
0:56:51 atheistic point of view that there are
0:56:52 even laws
0:56:54 there are even you know regularities of
0:56:56 patterns within the universe
0:56:59 because as an atheist you would have to
0:57:02 say there is nothing that grounds
0:57:04 regularity within the universe that
0:57:07 literally anything possible could
0:57:09 potentially happen
0:57:10 did you see that that's a problem carlos
0:57:14 um i don't know if i agree with that i
0:57:17 mean
0:57:17 everything's grounded in reality but we
0:57:20 don't understand everything that there
0:57:21 is about reality so
0:57:23 from my perspective anything do you
0:57:25 believe but do you believe the
0:57:26 foundation of reality is understandable
0:57:31 is the foundation of yeah it's
0:57:33 explainable
0:57:34 yeah understandable explainable um
0:57:37 to an approximation yeah yeah so
0:57:41 you believe that if the foundations of
0:57:43 reality of contingent beings
0:57:45 yeah so contingent beings are basically
0:57:47 things that could exist could not exist
0:57:49 could exist in different ways and they
0:57:51 are
0:57:51 impossible beings that if it's
0:57:54 not ultimately explainable then
0:57:58 nothing is explainable
0:58:04 because if you can say that a contingent
0:58:06 being
0:58:08 just pops into existence for no
0:58:10 explanation
0:58:12 and therefore the foundation of reality
0:58:14 ultimately
0:58:15 allows for things to come into existence
0:58:18 without any explanation
0:58:20 then there is no explanation for
0:58:22 anything
0:58:24 does that make sense um
0:58:28 no no because like reality
0:58:31 is reality so it's it can't not be
0:58:34 reacted just by the laws of logic
0:58:36 so everything that happens within
0:58:39 reality
0:58:40 is part of reality by definition yeah
0:58:45 but that's yeah apology right yeah i
0:58:47 mean you're not really saying much
0:58:49 yeah i mean reality is reality on the
0:58:52 existence of god too
0:58:53 i mean god is god reality is reality it
0:58:56 doesn't really it's not i'm not trying
0:58:57 to
0:58:58 it's just not very very useful we're
0:59:00 trying to explain the ultimate nature of
0:59:02 reality of course reality is reality but
0:59:04 sure we're trying to we're trying we're
0:59:05 trying to explain what we see
0:59:07 yeah so for example what some people say
0:59:10 carlos
0:59:11 is there can be things that exist which
0:59:14 have no explanation
0:59:16 and we would say yes there can be the
0:59:18 only thing that exists without
0:59:20 it without an external explanation
0:59:23 would be a necessary being
0:59:26 yeah so the necessary being becomes the
0:59:29 foundation to explain
0:59:31 all other non-necessary things within
0:59:34 the universe
0:59:36 okay but are there any possibility other
0:59:38 possibilities for that
0:59:41 no there is no other possibilities
0:59:43 because existence
0:59:45 those two types of existence there will
0:59:47 be a necessary existence
0:59:49 and there'll be a non-necessary or
0:59:51 contingent existence
0:59:52 those are the two camps that we have but
0:59:55 no
0:59:56 it's either going to be necessary or
0:59:58 it's going to be not necessary it's
1:00:00 either going to be limited or
1:00:02 quote-unquote unlimited well i agree
1:00:04 with that that it can either
1:00:05 it's going to be necessary there has to
1:00:08 be some necessary
1:00:09 existence but you then went on
1:00:12 to say that it has to be a being
1:00:16 as if no when we say yes so when we say
1:00:18 being we're just using the word as in
1:00:20 that which exists
1:00:22 yeah right so we're saying there is a
1:00:24 necessary foundation to reality
1:00:26 that provides an explanation for all
1:00:29 contingent things
1:00:31 yeah right but as a reality is
1:00:34 the foundation that's the argument i'm
1:00:36 making what if reality itself is the
1:00:38 foundation
1:00:40 yeah but we have to define we have to
1:00:42 define what reality is the question
1:00:43 is there is like so is reality
1:00:47 descriptive or is it a thing in and of
1:00:50 itself like
1:00:51 are you talking from say like a
1:00:53 pantheistic sense there that
1:00:55 because we kind of touched on this when
1:00:56 we were having a discussion about um
1:00:59 the the arguments for unnecessary
1:01:01 existence like
1:01:02 we we made mention of the fact where you
1:01:04 have the set of all contingent things
1:01:07 is saying reality itself
1:01:10 putting it into context with regards to
1:01:12 this argument when you say reality
1:01:14 itself could be the necessary existence
1:01:16 are you saying that the the set of all
1:01:19 contingent things
1:01:21 is the necessary existence or are you
1:01:24 referring to reality
1:01:25 in in a way other than this sort of a
1:01:28 pantheistic
1:01:29 idea so reality
1:01:32 when i refer to reality i'm just talking
1:01:34 about existence itself so existence
1:01:37 itself
1:01:38 um is the necessary or could be the
1:01:41 necessary
1:01:42 uh thing or the foundation yeah carlos
1:01:45 let's try and define it specifically if
1:01:47 i turn around and i say what i
1:01:48 sense the the reality quote
1:01:50 quote-unquote i live in
1:01:52 is the sum of all finite things would
1:01:54 you agree with that
1:01:55 is that what you're saying existence is
1:01:57 are you talking about existence as
1:01:59 something separate from the sum of all
1:02:00 things some of all contingency separate
1:02:04 so when you say existence itself is the
1:02:07 foundation
1:02:08 you're not saying that by the word
1:02:11 existence
1:02:12 you mean all existing things
1:02:15 no right so then this is a problem
1:02:17 because now what you're referring to is
1:02:19 a description of of the way something
1:02:23 can exist but you're talking about it
1:02:27 as though it's a thing in and of itself
1:02:31 which then leads to this idea of it
1:02:34 being a distinct
1:02:36 necessary being that isn't the sum of
1:02:38 all contingent things
1:02:40 which ends up sounding a little bit like
1:02:41 what we were talking about when we were
1:02:43 talking about god
1:02:44 but instead of calling it god you're
1:02:45 just calling it existence
1:02:48 but then you're conflating the idea of a
1:02:50 necessary being
1:02:51 with this descriptive idea of existence
1:02:56 yeah what can you tell us what do you
1:02:57 mean by reality because you're saying
1:02:59 it's not the sum of all
1:03:00 contingent beings you're saying the you
1:03:03 have the sum of all contingent beings on
1:03:05 one hand
1:03:06 and then you have something called x
1:03:07 which you're going to call reality on
1:03:09 the other hand
1:03:10 and x is the cause of the sum of all
1:03:12 contingent beings
1:03:15 is that how are you understanding
1:03:16 reality well reality is
1:03:19 i suppose the only other word i could
1:03:22 use for it is just a general
1:03:24 a generic nature so um
1:03:27 it could be the laws of nature
1:03:30 and the way that nature functions that
1:03:33 might be the necessary existence
1:03:37 but would you agree that laws of nature
1:03:40 are contingent things as well
1:03:42 they're not necessary they could be the
1:03:45 another way yeah but
1:03:48 i'm just giving you possibilities also
1:03:51 yeah
1:03:51 but but the issue is is that like you're
1:03:55 you're pointing at things um
1:03:58 like did you get my criticism with
1:04:00 regards to your using
1:04:02 the word existence in its descriptive
1:04:05 sense to then
1:04:06 talk about it with regards to as
1:04:10 as a as its itself some sort of distinct
1:04:12 being
1:04:14 um because you're using it one minute
1:04:18 because you're using it one minute you
1:04:19 were saying what if existence is
1:04:21 um itself the necessary
1:04:25 thing um so but the problem is
1:04:28 when we're talking about like something
1:04:30 existing we're talking about a quality
1:04:32 of a thing like
1:04:33 if this phone exists you know it's a
1:04:37 descriptive elements the the fact that
1:04:40 it exists
1:04:42 uh isn't and a separate entity separate
1:04:45 from this
1:04:45 it's a way of describing this thing yeah
1:04:49 and if it doesn't exist if i throw it
1:04:51 into a volcano and it ceases to exist
1:04:53 we say it lacks existence this isn't to
1:04:56 talk about existence
1:04:57 as an entity with independent existence
1:05:01 yeah this is this is a descriptive term
1:05:04 like
1:05:04 you know if you call something red or
1:05:06 that's a red book that's a yellow
1:05:08 book you know this person's tall
1:05:10 dispense is short
1:05:11 carlos i'm worried just regardless if if
1:05:14 we're if we're just
1:05:15 if there are too many people jumping in
1:05:16 here and you feel like you're getting
1:05:18 ganged up on
1:05:19 no no no no i think we might be
1:05:22 diverting a little bit from the top of
1:05:23 this
1:05:23 exactly precisely what i wanted
1:05:27 but the reason why colors are sort of
1:05:29 slightly dark and i did say it was maybe
1:05:31 a slight diversion is because
1:05:33 if you understand that the sum of
1:05:36 contingent beings
1:05:37 yeah and we need to really define and
1:05:39 get get down to what we mean by
1:05:40 contingent so continued basically means
1:05:43 it it doesn't it's not synonymous with
1:05:46 dependent
1:05:47 dependency is the conclusion of
1:05:49 contingency contingency basically means
1:05:52 its explanation of why exists the way it
1:05:55 does
1:05:55 is not self-contained like when we say a
1:05:58 red triangle
1:06:00 the fact that the triangle is red is not
1:06:02 contained
1:06:03 in the existence of a triangle yeah
1:06:06 whereas if we
1:06:06 turn around and say a triangle has three
1:06:08 sides we say well that's
1:06:10 existent within the very definition of
1:06:12 what triangle is
1:06:14 yeah so when we identify
1:06:17 something is not necessary to its own
1:06:19 existence like
1:06:21 laws of the universe yeah uh or laws of
1:06:24 nature
1:06:25 or bodies that exist within nature or
1:06:28 you know energy yeah equals mt squared
1:06:31 why can't it be equals mc
1:06:33 cubed yeah all of these things are
1:06:36 contingent realities carlos
1:06:38 and because of contingent realities
1:06:39 that's why i asked the first question
1:06:41 do all contingent realities is a
1:06:44 necessary explanation
1:06:46 that grounds them and if there is then
1:06:49 there is a necessary
1:06:50 being for it otherwise the opposite of
1:06:54 that would be to say that
1:06:56 things that exist but don't have an
1:06:57 explanation as to why they exist
1:07:00 even in and of themselves just do
1:07:04 by by some sort of magic by
1:07:06 non-explanation
1:07:08 so the foundation of reality is not
1:07:09 explainable whereas i think we agree the
1:07:11 foundation of reality has to be
1:07:13 explainable
1:07:14 and the only explanation would be from a
1:07:16 necessary and not another type of
1:07:18 contingent being
1:07:21 yeah yeah i just don't think you can
1:07:23 come to any
1:07:24 reasonable conclusion because if you go
1:07:26 back to what i was saying before about
1:07:27 the three tiers
1:07:29 like what you're talking about is
1:07:30 something that lies in the third tier
1:07:32 what i would refer to as you know the
1:07:35 fundamental nature of reality or
1:07:37 you know truth of the capital t you know
1:07:40 just
1:07:41 onto logical trees that's in that third
1:07:43 tier and in order to
1:07:45 to um come to any reasonable conclusion
1:07:49 on what the answer to that is you need
1:07:52 evidence from that third tier
1:07:55 yeah no no no yes sir really quickly
1:07:58 sorry
1:07:58 carlos i think we can agree that there's
1:08:01 a necessary foundation to reality
1:08:02 whether you believe it's a conscious
1:08:04 being or not
1:08:05 in essence what we agreeing upon is that
1:08:08 the reason why
1:08:09 contingent beings behave that the way
1:08:11 that they do the reason why we have the
1:08:13 laws of nature
1:08:15 the way they are is because this
1:08:17 necessary existence or necessary
1:08:19 foundation
1:08:20 this necessary x as we're going to call
1:08:22 it is the thing that's causing this
1:08:25 it's not us it's not the nature of the
1:08:27 thing itself
1:08:28 i contingent things it's not nature
1:08:30 that's causing its own
1:08:31 you know rules and laws and regulations
1:08:34 it's rather this necessary x that's
1:08:36 causing it if the necessary
1:08:38 x if a person turns around and says to
1:08:41 you
1:08:42 i am going to make a change to
1:08:45 contingent realities
1:08:47 yeah and the reason why i'm going to do
1:08:49 that is because necessary x
1:08:51 who defines that contingent reality will
1:08:55 allow me to make this change and then
1:08:58 this person does the action you're now
1:09:01 identifying that that person
1:09:03 has done something which has a
1:09:05 non-contingent or non-naturalistic
1:09:07 explanation
1:09:08 meaning it's beyond the contingent thing
1:09:10 and the only explanation then would be
1:09:13 is that this person has got a you know
1:09:16 violation if you want to call it of
1:09:18 regularity or a non-naturalistic or
1:09:20 beyond human productive capacity
1:09:22 and therefore it must be from the
1:09:24 necessary being or necessary x
1:09:27 yeah does that make sense yeah that's
1:09:29 not unreasonable
1:09:31 that that type of prediction would serve
1:09:33 as good evidence for the claim being
1:09:34 made
1:09:35 yeah one thing's really important as
1:09:37 well carlos
1:09:39 is as muslims we don't just believe that
1:09:41 prophets
1:09:42 came with like some you know strange you
1:09:45 know
1:09:45 uh extraordinary event we believe that
1:09:48 the the
1:09:49 the miracle that they brought was a
1:09:52 miracle that the people could
1:09:54 testify to yeah i they could understand
1:09:57 because they knew what was within human
1:10:00 productive capacity
1:10:01 and the knowledge levels at that time
1:10:03 and they
1:10:04 the prophets brought numerous examples
1:10:08 to demonstrate that miracles it wasn't
1:10:10 just one-off they
1:10:11 the prophets would say i'm going to do x
1:10:13 to prove that i'm a prophet
1:10:15 and then the people could assess it and
1:10:18 then he would
1:10:18 say i'm now going to re-emphasize this
1:10:21 point i'm going to prove another
1:10:22 this another miraculous non-naturalistic
1:10:25 explanation event that's going to take
1:10:27 place
1:10:27 and then he would do it bitterness by
1:10:29 the permission of god and then
1:10:31 people could recognize it so therefore
1:10:33 there was
1:10:34 clearly you know repetition and a
1:10:37 challenge to a people who could
1:10:38 recognize
1:10:40 that this event cannot be within
1:10:43 human productive capacity or cannot be
1:10:45 explained by naturalistic explanations
1:10:47 as they understood the regularity at
1:10:49 that time
1:10:51 yeah fair enough i mean as i say you
1:10:53 know i gave
1:10:54 yousef an example of the moon and how
1:10:57 science can actually
1:10:59 um it falls in the purview of science
1:11:01 because
1:11:02 it's a a supernatural claim about
1:11:05 something
1:11:06 in the natural world the moon so if we
1:11:09 because the moon
1:11:12 could have we don't i don't base my
1:11:14 faith
1:11:15 in islam because the moon split
1:11:18 reports about the moon split yeah i
1:11:20 don't know
1:11:22 islam sorry so i'm not claiming that i'm
1:11:24 just referring to the claim itself so
1:11:26 anything that branches off of that
1:11:28 is neither here nor there we're just
1:11:29 dealing with the claim itself so
1:11:32 on the basis of a moon being split if
1:11:34 science
1:11:35 studied the moon and found that it was
1:11:37 once split
1:11:38 in the way that you understand it in the
1:11:41 way that it
1:11:42 you know obviously it was predicted to
1:11:43 you yeah yeah so if that was
1:11:46 we loved it are you trying to say carlos
1:11:48 we've got
1:11:49 are you trying to say cars we've got
1:11:50 powerful telescopes so we're going to
1:11:52 try and see the crack in the moon
1:11:53 and if we can see the crack in the moon
1:11:55 therefore that's evidence that it could
1:11:56 have split
1:11:58 i'm not saying that that we do or don't
1:12:00 have the technology
1:12:01 because we obviously have studied the
1:12:03 moon we know what it consists of
1:12:05 we can we can test those kind of things
1:12:07 with i think was it
1:12:08 the same kind of things that you can
1:12:09 test earthquakes for
1:12:11 but to be honest like it whether we have
1:12:14 the technology or not the point
1:12:16 i'm making is that because the moon
1:12:18 exists in the natural world
1:12:20 it can be tested by science and your
1:12:23 your claim can be proven true through a
1:12:27 methodological way what if the moon was
1:12:29 split and put
1:12:30 back together so that you didn't see a
1:12:32 crack
1:12:33 yeah that's still that within the yeah
1:12:36 that doesn't change my argument but i
1:12:39 mean yeah it does because you wouldn't
1:12:40 you wouldn't be able to investigate it
1:12:42 meaning that it was for that
1:12:44 the people at that time to witness it
1:12:48 yeah our faith is not basically it's
1:12:50 it's yeah it's slightly annoying for the
1:12:52 empiricist
1:12:53 that needs something like this in order
1:12:55 to believe
1:12:56 um but you know like for example as
1:12:59 sheriff was saying
1:13:00 we've come to believe this independently
1:13:02 so whether or not like even if you went
1:13:04 to the moon and scoured every square
1:13:05 inch of it and couldn't find a crack
1:13:07 that wouldn't affect my faith in islam
1:13:10 because of the fact that it's still
1:13:12 possible that that miracle
1:13:13 was done in such a way so that the moon
1:13:15 would split and then put back together
1:13:17 so that it was in the same condition it
1:13:19 was prior to the splitting
1:13:20 um that's still like
1:13:23 something to carlos because i think
1:13:25 we've gotten like like um
1:13:27 well i think what brother sharif
1:13:28 established here is that i think what he
1:13:30 was trying to establish if i get him
1:13:31 right
1:13:32 if i understand what he was saying is
1:13:33 that the laws of nature are contingent
1:13:35 upon the necessary being
1:13:37 and and and by being we don't
1:13:39 necessarily mean something that is um
1:13:41 conscious uh as he explained so there's
1:13:43 a necessary act
1:13:44 although obviously we believe in a
1:13:46 conscious being we of course of course
1:13:48 yeah so we're going to get someone in
1:13:49 the comments for the sake of the
1:13:51 argument yeah
1:13:52 yeah for the sake of the argument so we
1:13:54 believe in a necessary x the laws of
1:13:56 nature are contingent on
1:13:57 the necessary x so depending on what the
1:14:00 necessary x
1:14:01 does or causes uh that's going to
1:14:04 reflect in the laws of nature but i
1:14:06 think there's a there's a deeper point
1:14:07 here because we don't want to get
1:14:08 too off track and this is i think where
1:14:11 brother
1:14:12 uh colin's criticism actually uh comes
1:14:15 in right
1:14:16 the the i think if if i could just
1:14:19 explain to you that what i was going to
1:14:21 say is i just need to switch my
1:14:22 headphones because uh
1:14:23 i need to uh i'm going to go on mute
1:14:25 keep talking i'm just going to go on
1:14:26 mute for a second
1:14:27 okay okay so so the the basic point
1:14:30 here i think should be this that uh
1:14:34 your assessment of a miracle is going to
1:14:36 depend
1:14:38 on your world view and how you choose
1:14:41 to to to you know uh assess
1:14:45 these these uh uh these these events or
1:14:48 these claims it's going to depend on
1:14:49 your prior commitments
1:14:51 and the questions these f these
1:14:53 questions about the fundamental nature
1:14:55 of reality are significant
1:14:57 because they directly influence how
1:15:00 you're going to
1:15:01 uh uh uh you know look at these miracles
1:15:04 and if i
1:15:05 like to give you a a simple thought
1:15:07 experiment
1:15:08 if you were uh to you know
1:15:12 be if you were able to teleport outside
1:15:15 of of of space-time and see the this
1:15:17 necessary thing and you witnessed god
1:15:20 in all his glory and you were you you
1:15:22 you were able to
1:15:24 to reach like 100 certainty
1:15:27 about the existence of god and the
1:15:29 omnipotence of god
1:15:30 and and his creative capacity and you
1:15:34 came back here on earth and you heard
1:15:36 about this flying horse
1:15:38 you wouldn't necessarily believe in it
1:15:40 but it wouldn't be that far-fetched
1:15:42 because you already believe in a
1:15:45 creative agent who has the capacity
1:15:49 to do whatever he wants to do so the
1:15:52 point i'm trying to make here is that
1:15:54 within that world view if you do believe
1:15:56 in god in the thought experiment
1:15:58 obviously you're 100 certain
1:16:01 but bringing that back to reality if we
1:16:04 can be
1:16:05 rationally justified in our belief in an
1:16:08 omnipotent
1:16:08 being then these reports it doesn't make
1:16:11 them
1:16:12 uh believable or rational it doesn't
1:16:14 make us rationally justified to believe
1:16:16 in any claim
1:16:18 about a flying horse or a talking snake
1:16:20 or whatever but
1:16:21 it does make the these claims less
1:16:24 far-fetched in the sense that that's not
1:16:26 a big deal
1:16:26 and that's why from within an islamic
1:16:28 perspective and this is where i'm going
1:16:30 back to what you said carlos about
1:16:32 um you know that miraculous event
1:16:34 happening if the guy predicted he's
1:16:36 gonna do x and then he does
1:16:38 x it would verify this particular event
1:16:41 and you would be justifying
1:16:42 that this okay this spooky thing
1:16:44 happened but wouldn't necessarily verify
1:16:47 his other claims
1:16:49 i totally agree with you from within an
1:16:51 islamic paradigm a miracle
1:16:53 isn't something that on its own proves
1:16:57 the religion
1:16:58 there could be several miraculous
1:17:00 accounts or several strange
1:17:02 things that happen in the world and we
1:17:03 would just say they're unexplainable
1:17:05 miracles in in in this strict sense of
1:17:08 the world are
1:17:10 the word are a more peripheral thing
1:17:12 that are a byproduct of your belief in
1:17:15 the religion
1:17:16 for example if if we were to talk about
1:17:18 the
1:17:19 miraculous accounts that are reported to
1:17:21 have happened with
1:17:22 uh with jesus prophet asa from a
1:17:25 christian perspective
1:17:27 and uh we let's let's grant that he rose
1:17:30 from the dead
1:17:32 he he did all these miracles he did and
1:17:34 he made all the claims that the
1:17:36 christians
1:17:37 think he made that wouldn't make me
1:17:41 believe that he is safula the son of god
1:17:45 right why because miracles have to be
1:17:47 assessed
1:17:48 within the overall theology that's being
1:17:51 presented
1:17:52 and if the theology that is being
1:17:55 presented
1:17:56 is incoherent and is not in line with
1:17:59 our with the reason that helps us arrive
1:18:02 at the existence of god
1:18:04 and gives us a rational basis to believe
1:18:06 in god
1:18:07 then the miracles aren't going to do
1:18:09 much work because as you said it could
1:18:10 just be an
1:18:11 unexplainable irregularity or it can
1:18:14 just be a one-time thing that doesn't
1:18:15 justify the overall claims of the person
1:18:18 so just in principle i think carlos if
1:18:21 you can understand this it would be
1:18:23 very helpful at least we can reach some
1:18:25 common ground you can see that at least
1:18:27 from within
1:18:28 our perspective there is no
1:18:30 inconsistency
1:18:32 in belief in miracles because we believe
1:18:34 we are rationally justified in our
1:18:36 belief in an omnipotent creator
1:18:39 and we believe that our religion is
1:18:41 perfectly in line
1:18:43 with the rational basis of our belief in
1:18:46 god
1:18:47 therefore we have more of a cumulative
1:18:49 case
1:18:50 that takes us to the truth of islam
1:18:53 and these miracles are more of a
1:18:55 peripheral thing
1:18:56 that just come along with it like if i
1:18:58 were to see
1:19:00 a a an image right now in the sky of
1:19:03 let's say a hindu god telling me hey i'm
1:19:04 the true god
1:19:06 i would not believe that because it
1:19:07 doesn't comport to the rational basis
1:19:10 of my belief in god so um yeah
1:19:13 i think does that mean does that make
1:19:15 sense carlos because what abdul rahman
1:19:16 is saying is saying
1:19:18 we approach a very systematic way
1:19:21 of our belief so we what as muslims what
1:19:25 we tend to do
1:19:26 is we ask the first question why is it
1:19:28 important to have belief
1:19:30 any belief yeah whether secular
1:19:32 religious then we ask the next question
1:19:34 is what is the nature of reality
1:19:37 is there a creator or not and then once
1:19:39 we establish that there's a creator that
1:19:41 exists
1:19:42 then the next question i with the you
1:19:44 know the
1:19:45 conscious you know has a will and
1:19:46 intentionality to create
1:19:48 then the next question is well what's
1:19:49 the what is it that the creator wants
1:19:51 from me
1:19:52 yeah how do i know that well people
1:19:55 claim to have a message of communication
1:19:57 and so then i start to test whether that
1:19:59 message that they have
1:20:01 concords with the rational understanding
1:20:03 that there must be a
1:20:04 creator a singular creator and also
1:20:08 in addition to that we believe that they
1:20:11 bring
1:20:12 a sign or a miraculous
1:20:15 event which has beyond which is beyond
1:20:18 human productive capacity
1:20:19 and has no naturalistic explanation for
1:20:22 why it came about
1:20:23 we then use that as a way to
1:20:25 substantiate this person's claim
1:20:28 so we have this process that we we go
1:20:30 towards
1:20:31 i don't know if that that makes sense
1:20:32 carlos
1:20:34 yeah can you still hear me yeah yeah can
1:20:36 hear you yeah
1:20:37 cool yeah uh yeah i understand what
1:20:40 you're saying
1:20:42 um i think you know if atheists come
1:20:45 along and say
1:20:46 you know where is your evidence for god
1:20:47 and then you you give
1:20:49 one example of why you you believe what
1:20:52 you believe
1:20:53 um normally they say well that's not
1:20:55 convincing enough and obviously
1:20:57 i think it's it's a fault on on the part
1:20:59 of the atheist because
1:21:00 like i said before you need multiple
1:21:02 lines of evidence to answer big
1:21:04 questions like the existence of god
1:21:06 so it's a if they just thinks that you
1:21:10 believe
1:21:10 on a whim or on one line of evidence
1:21:14 and i i think that's a wrong way to go
1:21:16 about things so
1:21:17 you know the fact that you're saying you
1:21:18 have other reasons
1:21:20 for why you believe it's rational then i
1:21:22 would expect that um
1:21:24 and i would i myself would want to
1:21:27 investigate each
1:21:28 line of evidence that you have on its
1:21:30 own merits
1:21:31 and you know when i you know give the
1:21:34 example of the moon that is
1:21:35 me examining it on its own merits
1:21:39 regardless of what the answer is to the
1:21:41 bigger question
1:21:42 um you just uh go through the claims one
1:21:45 by one
1:21:46 can you can you prove it to be true or
1:21:49 or
1:21:49 is it reasonable to be true um
1:21:53 and then you move on to the next and you
1:21:54 go for a systematic way
1:21:57 or approving them see carla carlos for
1:22:00 us
1:22:00 and just so you're really clear about
1:22:02 this we believe there's
1:22:04 there's like two types of miracles if
1:22:06 you want to say or two types of signs
1:22:08 one which is time and place specific and
1:22:11 one which is universal
1:22:13 now things like uh what jesus
1:22:16 islam did or prophet musa al-islam did
1:22:19 or what occurred within the time of the
1:22:21 prophet muhammad
1:22:24 like you know like the night journey
1:22:28 as an example yeah these are time and
1:22:30 split place specific so they may be a
1:22:32 sign for those people who are able to
1:22:34 witness it since the reality there and
1:22:37 then
1:22:38 but they're not necessarily evidence for
1:22:40 us per se
1:22:41 yeah we still have because there's no
1:22:43 way we're going to be able to assess
1:22:44 whether the moon's split or not
1:22:46 there's no scientific investigation no
1:22:49 telescopes because as jake mentioned
1:22:51 it could be the case that god put it
1:22:53 back together in a way where there's no
1:22:55 sign that it's split in the first place
1:22:57 so what we do is we investigate the
1:22:59 quran because we say the quran
1:23:01 was a more a miraculous event
1:23:04 which was beyond human productive
1:23:06 capacity something that we can sense
1:23:08 today
1:23:08 something that we can test and observe
1:23:12 and try to challenge for ourselves
1:23:15 whether it's within human productive
1:23:16 capacity there's numerous ways of
1:23:18 arguing this obviously beyond maybe this
1:23:20 particular stream
1:23:22 um but uh yeah i don't know if i
1:23:25 have to add something to that uh yeah
1:23:27 because the the the
1:23:29 what i was saying earlier uh carlos
1:23:31 about the the
1:23:33 the other line of reasoning or the
1:23:34 rational foundation for belief in islam
1:23:37 which is prior to
1:23:38 these miracles uh that rational
1:23:41 foundation doesn't
1:23:42 necessarily have to be miraculous in the
1:23:45 traditional understanding of the word uh
1:23:48 and this is where we go back to the
1:23:50 definition of miraculous because there
1:23:51 is a different usage of what miraculous
1:23:53 really
1:23:54 uh of what the word miracle can really
1:23:56 refer to
1:23:57 within an islamic context and the word
1:24:01 in the quran that's
1:24:02 used is normally sign i think it's used
1:24:05 more than miracle
1:24:06 and the word sign which is equally used
1:24:08 to these miraculous events that we're
1:24:10 speaking about here which
1:24:12 are irregularities in in in
1:24:15 in a chain of causation or in nature and
1:24:18 it's also used in a sen
1:24:20 that in reference to nature as a whole
1:24:23 so
1:24:24 uh obviously if we were to use that
1:24:26 definition it would be a question
1:24:27 begging definition but from that other
1:24:29 understanding
1:24:30 the fact that anything exists at all is
1:24:32 a sign to point to god and that's
1:24:34 basically what we do and what we the
1:24:37 the the the basic understanding we
1:24:39 utilize in these con
1:24:41 contingency arguments generally in
1:24:42 cosmological arguments when we point to
1:24:44 the observable wor
1:24:46 world as a sign and we make an inference
1:24:49 to the unobservable
1:24:50 uh uh god uh i mean obviously
1:24:54 the line of reasoning is is is very
1:24:56 nuanced but that's the the
1:24:58 general idea so this foundation upon
1:25:00 which we build our
1:25:02 belief in islam doesn't necessarily have
1:25:06 to be miraculous in that sense
1:25:08 it's a rational foundation because we
1:25:11 believe that if
1:25:12 we can rationally arrive at the
1:25:14 existence of this necessary being
1:25:16 he gave us these rational faculties our
1:25:19 rational faculties
1:25:21 should directly lead to him so if these
1:25:24 this this line of reasoning that we use
1:25:26 to arrive at god
1:25:28 is in correspondence with the teachings
1:25:30 of islam
1:25:31 with the core doctrines of islam then
1:25:33 that is sufficient reason
1:25:35 for us to accept it as a
1:25:39 true revelation from god and based on
1:25:42 that you can
1:25:43 you can you know add other building
1:25:44 blocks and get to the
1:25:46 other uh issues of miracles but the
1:25:48 point here is that
1:25:49 within this broader context believing in
1:25:53 miracles really
1:25:54 isn't irrational um it's actually more
1:25:57 of a trivial issue from from
1:25:59 from a general atheistic or more
1:26:01 specifically an islamic perspective
1:26:02 because for christians
1:26:04 i think they um they refer to the
1:26:07 miracles that jesus
1:26:08 did as something that is kind of proof
1:26:11 of the soundness of their theology which
1:26:13 i think we would just reject
1:26:17 you mind if i ask a question carlos so
1:26:20 you you know the the story about um
1:26:23 moses
1:26:25 and him approaching the pharaoh
1:26:28 can i ask you would you consider the
1:26:31 pharaoh to have been
1:26:33 a rational actor or an irrational actor
1:26:37 so you know he's he's been approached by
1:26:40 moses
1:26:41 uh who's been known to be a particular
1:26:43 kind of person
1:26:44 um he warns him listen there's going to
1:26:47 be
1:26:47 a number of plagues occurring
1:26:51 and then one after the other they keep
1:26:53 happening he keeps coming back
1:26:54 um you know he performs miracles in
1:26:56 front of him so he turns
1:26:58 his staff into a snake and he pulls his
1:27:01 hand out from
1:27:02 his cloak and it shines his light um
1:27:05 and then obviously you've got the
1:27:06 plagues occurring and you've just got
1:27:08 this like
1:27:08 this guy who keeps going away keeps
1:27:10 coming back keeps saying listen this is
1:27:11 going to happen
1:27:12 you need to start listening to me and
1:27:14 you know he's a reasonable man he talks
1:27:15 politely he walks away he keeps coming
1:27:17 back
1:27:18 um do you think that the pharaoh
1:27:21 was justified in being uh
1:27:25 i don't even know if we'd call him
1:27:26 skeptical um from our own tradition we'd
1:27:29 say he wasn't it wasn't even that he was
1:27:30 skeptical he was it was that he was
1:27:32 arrogant
1:27:33 so the truth was apparent to him he just
1:27:35 couldn't accept it
1:27:37 um but like kind of dismissing that
1:27:40 element um would you say that the
1:27:43 pharaoh was a rational actor or
1:27:44 irrational
1:27:45 would you see yourself acting in the
1:27:47 same way as the pharaoh
1:27:48 in so far as you dismiss moses as a
1:27:50 prophet and dismiss the idea of god
1:27:53 despite all of the signs
1:27:57 that were being given to him you know
1:27:59 based on
1:28:00 yeah so i mean no it's a short answer
1:28:04 um no he's not rational um
1:28:09 so so yeah no no he's not being rational
1:28:13 in in denying that when moses keeps
1:28:16 making predictions
1:28:18 and proving them to be true in reality
1:28:21 to then deny reality is irrational
1:28:25 so if you were the pharaoh would you
1:28:28 have been like
1:28:30 allahu akbar or would you have
1:28:34 remained atheistic
1:28:38 no i would have just taken him seriously
1:28:39 so um
1:28:41 i would have not necessarily um i still
1:28:44 i've still withhold belief in the
1:28:46 overall um
1:28:48 the overall question of what you know
1:28:51 god's existence or what have you but
1:28:53 in the in the fact that he makes a claim
1:28:56 he comes back
1:28:56 it happens he makes another claim he
1:28:58 comes back
1:28:59 all of those things that are happening
1:29:01 are happening in reality and
1:29:03 and i accept reality for what it is um
1:29:06 those are the things that are real and
1:29:08 if those things are being predicted and
1:29:10 then happening in reality
1:29:11 if you deny reality i would say that's a
1:29:14 rational
1:29:14 to do that okay so sorry
1:29:18 you know what it is i think uh we've
1:29:21 taken up carlos's time quite a lot and i
1:29:23 think there is somebody waiting
1:29:24 yeah so i don't know if you want to just
1:29:27 quickly uh
1:29:28 sorry can i just ask you one quick
1:29:29 question yeah
1:29:33 yeah yeah you can ask yourself
1:29:36 so yeah this dude was just one question
1:29:38 i wanted to
1:29:39 to ask myself so why do you think that
1:29:42 uh miracles no longer happen
1:29:45 in our present time and why do you think
1:29:47 it was isolated to the people of that
1:29:48 time
1:29:49 we believe the quran is a miracle
1:29:52 literally
1:29:53 a miracle it's beyond human productive
1:29:55 capacity
1:29:57 any human being can actually go and try
1:29:59 the
1:30:00 the quran challenges human beings says
1:30:02 if you don't believe that the quran is
1:30:03 from god
1:30:04 produce a surah a chapter like it the
1:30:07 shortest chapter is three sentences long
1:30:10 all we have to do in order to
1:30:12 demonstrate the falsity of the quran
1:30:14 is to produce three sentences similar to
1:30:17 the genre
1:30:18 which is uh the musicality if you want
1:30:20 to use the style of the quran
1:30:22 and at the level of the rhetoric the
1:30:25 balurha of the quran 2
1:30:28 so you know we believe that all or you
1:30:30 could even weaken so if you say
1:30:32 a verse of quran could have been you
1:30:34 know out of the seven thousands or so
1:30:35 verses that
1:30:36 a verse of quran a particular word could
1:30:38 have been replaced with another synonym
1:30:40 which would have made it better or
1:30:42 demonstrated that
1:30:44 the syntax was uh incorrect you know the
1:30:47 word ordering it could have been ordered
1:30:48 in another way
1:30:49 that uh this is the that that if you're
1:30:53 able to do that you'd able to
1:30:54 demonstrate the quran was not
1:30:56 uh inimitable it's something within
1:30:57 human productive capacity so
1:30:59 that's the answer and and another uh
1:31:02 point as well we do believe
1:31:03 that there are going to be miracles as
1:31:05 well so we don't believe they're gonna
1:31:06 stop
1:31:07 um completely so when the antichrist
1:31:09 arrives
1:31:10 one of the key points uh of being able
1:31:12 to recognize him
1:31:13 um is that he's gonna be performing
1:31:15 specific kinds of
1:31:17 miracles he's going to bring people um
1:31:20 one of them i think off the top of my
1:31:22 head someone's going to get chopped in
1:31:23 half
1:31:23 and he's going to bring them back
1:31:24 together and he's going to bring
1:31:27 people that have been passed or it's
1:31:29 going to make it seem like people who
1:31:30 have passed away he's going to bring
1:31:32 them forward so people can talk to them
1:31:33 like dead relatives
1:31:34 um you know there's going to be a number
1:31:36 of things occurring
1:31:38 um which we would consider miraculous so
1:31:40 they will occur
1:31:41 prophecies as well right like that have
1:31:43 already occurred
1:31:48 has some very good videos about uh so
1:31:50 the prophets
1:31:51 that have already occurred claims claims
1:31:53 about history
1:31:54 that are unique to the quran i'd advise
1:31:57 you to check
1:31:58 out brother uh abu zakaria's channel i'm
1:32:00 not sure what the channel is
1:32:01 one message i think is something many
1:32:04 profits many problems many profits one
1:32:06 message
1:32:07 amazing channel that that deals with
1:32:09 many of these things
1:32:10 so in essence sorry carlos go and carry
1:32:14 it too
1:32:15 yeah we'll just we've got two minutes
1:32:17 and then we'll wrap it up and then um
1:32:20 obviously not trying to guess it's eight
1:32:21 times go ahead carlos
1:32:24 yeah because because my question is why
1:32:26 don't we see miracles today i mean
1:32:28 you've talked about miracles potentially
1:32:29 potentially happening in the future
1:32:31 and the the milk of the quran which
1:32:33 happened
1:32:34 at the time of the prophet muhammad so
1:32:37 it doesn't really answer my question i'm
1:32:39 asking why don't you see miracles today
1:32:42 it's a living miracle though yeah a
1:32:43 living miracle it's an
1:32:45 ongoing miracle that is different than
1:32:47 any other
1:32:48 religious claim
1:32:51 and i would also say uh that like i
1:32:54 mentioned at the beginning everything is
1:32:55 a miracle why is there existence i i
1:32:57 consider all things miraculous
1:32:58 um yeah and the the another point is is
1:33:01 that
1:33:02 what you're specifically saying is why
1:33:03 haven't you experienced the miracle
1:33:05 and that's not to say that you won't um
1:33:09 you may very well yeah carlos there was
1:33:11 one he's a he's quite a you know
1:33:13 relatively famous uh muslim scholar
1:33:15 who was a convert to islam and
1:33:18 he heard about this quranic challenge he
1:33:20 heard about the fact that the quran
1:33:22 claims to be a miracle so if we
1:33:24 understand a miracle as being
1:33:25 beyond human productive capacity or in
1:33:28 other words
1:33:29 has a non-naturalist explanation then
1:33:31 the quran
1:33:33 claimed to be beyond human productive
1:33:35 capacity and doesn't have any
1:33:36 naturalistic explanation
1:33:38 so he heard about this and he actually
1:33:40 went and studied arabic in order to say
1:33:42 well look let me try and assess
1:33:44 whether this really is beyond human
1:33:47 productive capacity can i challenge it
1:33:48 could i weaken it could i
1:33:50 produce a free sentences similar to it
1:33:54 and he went and he engaged in this
1:33:55 process and he was unable to do it and
1:33:57 he actually converted to islam so
1:33:59 to say that why don't we witness miracle
1:34:02 that's the whole reason why we have the
1:34:04 why we believe the quran now some people
1:34:07 might say well yeah but how can
1:34:08 language be a miracle well what you find
1:34:11 about
1:34:12 moses which you said if you lived at
1:34:13 that time you would have accepted him as
1:34:15 do miraculous events and therefore a
1:34:17 sign from god
1:34:18 is that those were generally visual
1:34:20 miracles they were things that you could
1:34:22 see
1:34:22 sense through your eyesight with the
1:34:24 quran it's an auditory miracle it's
1:34:26 something that you sense for another
1:34:27 sense organ which is your ear you're
1:34:29 able to assess
1:34:30 you know it's particular genre it's
1:34:32 particular rhetoric
1:34:34 that it's using how it's constructing
1:34:36 language it's word ordering
1:34:38 word choice you know other features
1:34:40 linguistic features within the quran
1:34:42 that you can sense through
1:34:43 listening to it or reading it off the
1:34:45 page for your eyesight
1:34:46 and then you can investigate test it and
1:34:48 obs uh you know try to challenge it
1:34:50 to see whether you can produce something
1:34:52 like it so
1:34:55 it i think it fits within what we
1:34:57 describe
1:34:58 as a miracle beyond human productive
1:35:01 capacity
1:35:02 and a challenge just to end with this
1:35:03 very quick to make the weaker claim that
1:35:06 it's not as if uh what we're claiming
1:35:08 carlos is that you have to go out and
1:35:10 investigate these things yourself in
1:35:11 order to become a muslim uh
1:35:14 that that's actually the entire point is
1:35:16 that what these miracles are
1:35:19 kind of like attached to is a rational
1:35:22 foundation that can be assessed through
1:35:24 reason
1:35:25 so what what we're saying is that
1:35:28 even the weaker claim that that that you
1:35:30 can become a muslim
1:35:32 on the basis that not islam is entirely
1:35:35 miraculous in the sense that you
1:35:37 you have like visual and auditory
1:35:39 miracles that you can verify right this
1:35:41 instant
1:35:42 but in the sense that it comports with
1:35:44 your rational
1:35:45 assessment of the world let's say it
1:35:48 does and
1:35:49 and on that basis that is sufficient
1:35:52 reason for you to accept miracles
1:35:54 and we can answer the question of the
1:35:57 stream here is it irrational to believe
1:35:58 in miracles well
1:36:00 if you have a rational basis for
1:36:01 believing in islam that it would not be
1:36:03 irrational to believe in the miracles
1:36:05 that islam reports
1:36:08 cool uh carlos i don't know if you've
1:36:10 got any uh final
1:36:13 uh quick points before you know thank
1:36:15 you for coming
1:36:16 really appreciate you coming hopefully
1:36:19 you'll come on again uh
1:36:20 in future podcasts as well be excellent
1:36:22 everyone
1:36:24 yeah and i love speaking with you guys
1:36:26 well it's just it's good
1:36:27 it's good uh it's good knowledge sorry
1:36:30 um
1:36:30 but i'd say for me like my own purpose
1:36:34 in life
1:36:34 is to believe as many three things as
1:36:36 possible and
1:36:38 rid myself of any false beliefs i have
1:36:41 challenge any existing beliefs i have
1:36:43 and listen to new perspectives and i
1:36:46 think that we
1:36:47 need to have a filter a good enough
1:36:51 way a mechanism of filtering out all of
1:36:54 the things
1:36:54 that shouldn't be leave and you know
1:36:57 it's an ongoing process but now i
1:36:59 appreciate
1:37:00 that the the time that you take and
1:37:02 speak with me and answer my questions
1:37:03 and uh i'll listen to the rest of the
1:37:05 stream thank you appreciate you being
1:37:07 yeah thanks for coming on again yeah so
1:37:10 um okay guys have a good night
1:37:13 thank you carlos so just as another
1:37:16 point
1:37:16 uh hopefully carlos is also listening
1:37:18 he's there and there's a really good
1:37:19 question that yourself
1:37:21 mentioned which was if you saw the signs
1:37:23 at moses this time musa alayhi salam's
1:37:25 time
1:37:26 would you accept it as a miracle and
1:37:28 what was really interesting is that
1:37:30 when the challenge you know the the
1:37:32 stick that turned into a snake
1:37:34 pharaoh said oh that's within human
1:37:36 productive capacity magicians can do the
1:37:38 same thing our magicians could do the
1:37:41 same thing
1:37:41 and for an ordinary lay person it may be
1:37:44 very difficult to assess
1:37:45 between what the what is quote unquote
1:37:48 magic magicians and what human beings uh
1:37:52 uh can do uh and what is actually a
1:37:55 miracle a marriage is a
1:37:57 so what happened was we found that uh
1:37:59 the
1:38:00 the quranic narrative talks about sorry
1:38:02 justin's distracting me
1:38:03 the quranic narrative explains how
1:38:07 on a particular day we had the the
1:38:10 the magicians were brought before all of
1:38:12 the people
1:38:13 in order to uh test the particular claim
1:38:17 yeah and the magicians were the first
1:38:20 ones to believe
1:38:21 in the miracle of muslim
1:38:24 they were the experts they knew what was
1:38:27 within human productive capacity
1:38:29 and therefore they're able to assess in
1:38:31 the same way
1:38:33 we have experts in arabic language who
1:38:35 can assess
1:38:36 whether the quran was within human
1:38:37 productive capacity
1:38:39 or whether it wasn't and so
1:38:42 you know in a way we can affirm the fact
1:38:44 that if the expertise say that this is
1:38:46 outside of human productive capacity
1:38:48 this outside of human knowledge
1:38:50 capabilities
1:38:51 then then we can uh uh we can accept
1:38:54 that
1:38:54 justin welcome so i like
1:39:03 justin we're talking about miracles yeah
1:39:06 yeah
1:39:06 i heard i was in the chat arguing with
1:39:09 cyrus
1:39:10 kind of went off subject but uh people
1:39:12 told me
1:39:13 jump on so i jumped on
1:39:16 so what are your views is miracles
1:39:18 irrational
1:39:20 well the other night i heard jake uh
1:39:22 define what he believes as miracles
1:39:24 and how it is impossible for miracles to
1:39:27 actually contradict
1:39:29 uh the laws of nature and i am in
1:39:31 complete agreements with that
1:39:33 um now the other way yeah the
1:39:36 the way that other people would define
1:39:38 miracles as some supernatural
1:39:40 magical you know something that happens
1:39:44 that's that's outside of the realms of
1:39:46 possibility your probability i
1:39:48 i dismissed that which i think you guys
1:39:51 would too
1:39:53 yeah well carlos i mean this is the
1:39:55 point i want to bring up is that carlos
1:39:58 uh agreed with us that the sort of
1:40:01 ontological problem
1:40:03 of a logical contradiction between
1:40:07 a miracle on the one hand and a law of
1:40:09 nature on the other
1:40:11 he agreed that for him it's not a
1:40:14 logical
1:40:14 impossibility for a miracle to occur and
1:40:17 it's something i want to point out
1:40:18 because
1:40:20 when we talked about the trinity the
1:40:21 last time and the first guest
1:40:24 brought up the issue of miracles and was
1:40:26 saying well
1:40:27 you believe in these things which are
1:40:29 irrational and this is something i've
1:40:30 heard
1:40:31 plenty other times so i'm not just
1:40:33 picking on this one guy because i've
1:40:34 heard it on the other chats
1:40:36 well you guys believe in miracles which
1:40:38 are illogical
1:40:40 and we believe in the trinity so what's
1:40:42 your point
1:40:43 is basically what they would say and i
1:40:46 think we
1:40:46 we try to establish at minimum that
1:40:49 they're not analogous
1:40:50 now that doesn't mean that we
1:40:52 necessarily proved in this stream
1:40:55 uh specific miracles we introduced a
1:40:57 couple and people can go research them
1:41:00 but the the main point was at minimum to
1:41:03 establish
1:41:04 that the concept of miracles is not
1:41:06 inherently
1:41:07 a logical impossibility and therefore
1:41:11 if we were successful in doing that the
1:41:13 claim that
1:41:14 miracles are analogous to the trinity
1:41:17 fails and we still are on firm ground to
1:41:20 deny the trinity because it is
1:41:22 from our perspective and this is what i
1:41:25 argue for a logical impossibility
1:41:28 and therefore is not the same as a
1:41:30 miracle
1:41:31 so i just wanted to make that point
1:41:33 because i think it's uh
1:41:35 something that we needed to make clear
1:41:37 given the last stream
1:41:39 and that attempted analogy
1:41:42 yeah and just to read out this comment
1:41:43 as well um the cult of truth is
1:41:46 i've got it on the screen here so there
1:41:47 is no need for the theists to
1:41:48 investigate the means by which
1:41:50 god split the moon uh this is because
1:41:52 the thesis realizes that every event in
1:41:54 the natural world
1:41:55 is a creation of god so this kind of
1:41:57 touches again on that point
1:41:58 um that everything by the definition of
1:42:00 you know um
1:42:02 an intervention of god uh would fall
1:42:04 under this idea of the miracle
1:42:05 and i guess that's kind of one of the
1:42:07 things that sort of
1:42:08 ended up um leading me towards a
1:42:11 religion
1:42:12 in general was just this like um this
1:42:15 sense
1:42:16 of the the miraculous nature of like
1:42:18 existence itself
1:42:19 uh it always ended up striking me in awe
1:42:22 and
1:42:23 i ended up being unable to deny the
1:42:25 existence of a god because everything
1:42:27 just screamed out
1:42:28 to me as as from a naturalist
1:42:30 perspective uh
1:42:31 yusuf that's gonna sound like question
1:42:33 begging
1:42:34 um yeah yeah yeah because yeah i mean
1:42:38 basically because if the discussion is
1:42:40 about how we can be rational and
1:42:42 believing about certain
1:42:43 miracles i think what the question is
1:42:45 basically asking is how we can verify
1:42:47 miracles and if you're saying that while
1:42:49 everything is a miracle then yeah yeah
1:42:50 yeah definitely
1:42:52 it's it's more it ties to the wisdom of
1:42:55 god and things like that so it's like
1:42:56 things have um the inherent
1:43:00 structure of something that appears to
1:43:02 have been created by wisdom not of
1:43:04 random chance uh so when you're looking
1:43:06 at the human body
1:43:07 you see like robots and like you look at
1:43:10 it
1:43:11 you wouldn't see like as complicated as
1:43:13 they are and say
1:43:14 as of that oh well you know this was
1:43:16 created randomly
1:43:17 over a long period of time whereas you
1:43:19 look at the human body you look at any
1:43:20 living structure
1:43:22 and the the complex nature of it is do
1:43:24 you guys believe
1:43:25 uh like a lot of the times people will
1:43:26 like win the lottery and they'll be like
1:43:28 it's a miracle do you guys actually like
1:43:30 believe that
1:43:30 that that could even be a miracle no
1:43:34 no no would you just
1:43:38 are miracles probable no
1:43:42 they're logically possible probable
1:43:46 i mean the prior probability of any
1:43:48 miraculous event is very low i mean
1:43:50 that's why
1:43:51 because like just because i'm a theist
1:43:53 but if someone comes to me right now and
1:43:54 says there's a flying horse right
1:43:56 outside the house i'm not gonna believe
1:43:57 him
1:43:57 because the prior probability which is
1:44:00 the probability of something being true
1:44:02 prior to investigating the evidence of
1:44:05 miracles
1:44:06 is very low i mean it should be that's
1:44:08 the point of it being a miracle
1:44:10 if it was very believable it would kind
1:44:13 of defeat the purpose of a miracle
1:44:14 that's that's that's
1:44:15 uh yeah the reason the reason i ask and
1:44:18 when it comes to that probability is i i
1:44:20 started reading a book
1:44:21 it's called the uh um
1:44:24 the probability of god something like
1:44:27 that
1:44:28 how they use mathematics to prove that
1:44:30 god exists i think it's christian book
1:44:32 but the very first sentence of the book
1:44:34 states that um before i in
1:44:36 before you get done reading this
1:44:37 sentence right now there is a
1:44:38 probability
1:44:39 that a mediterranean donkey is going to
1:44:42 basically kick you in the face
1:44:44 um is basically going to come out of
1:44:45 nowhere and there's a probability that
1:44:47 that's going to happen
1:44:48 so why i mentioned the whole lottery
1:44:51 thing is that
1:44:52 what what method do you guys use to
1:44:54 differ and use to differentiate
1:44:56 one probable thing from another probable
1:44:58 thing
1:44:59 thing is justin is that we don't uh this
1:45:01 is why i asked the original question to
1:45:03 carlos a
1:45:04 while ago now which is that is the
1:45:06 foundation of reality explainable or
1:45:08 unexplainable
1:45:10 if we believe that the foundation of
1:45:11 reality is explainable i contingent
1:45:14 things have an explanation for their
1:45:15 existence
1:45:17 then this idea of probability uh
1:45:21 you know or chance goes out of the
1:45:23 window in that context
1:45:25 there is nothing that just simply
1:45:27 happens with no explanation
1:45:32 uh basically trying to break down
1:45:34 reality and describe the fundamentals
1:45:36 what what the fundamentals of reality
1:45:40 reality is the fundamental reality i
1:45:42 would agree with with most of what
1:45:44 carlos was saying
1:45:45 uh as in reality is the causal principle
1:45:49 the reality is the uncaused cause the
1:45:51 eternal
1:45:52 um transcendent um
1:45:56 omni omni omnipresent uh existence
1:46:00 itself
1:46:00 reality is that that that is equivalent
1:46:03 to
1:46:04 god and what creation is to god
1:46:07 experience space time and matter is
1:46:09 equivalent
1:46:10 to creation when it comes to reality in
1:46:12 god
1:46:14 but how how would you define reality
1:46:16 though what do you mean by reality
1:46:19 reality is is where where we get our
1:46:23 experiences from
1:46:24 reality
1:46:30 for some reason i never say that and the
1:46:32 theist always goes right
1:46:34 well he said reality is i've never ever
1:46:36 said that yeah
1:46:37 so we already kind of
1:46:40 um went over that a little bit before
1:46:42 with the velasquez carlos
1:46:44 yeah i i guess i guess the point is
1:46:46 justin the theist believes in a reality
1:46:49 you believe in a reality too so the
1:46:50 label reality is quite meaningless i
1:46:52 mean
1:46:52 we're talking about what the nature of
1:46:54 reality is if you're saying reality is
1:46:56 what
1:46:56 while we agree well we can get a hell of
1:47:00 a conversation
1:47:00 about what what makes god like what what
1:47:04 are the compartmentalization
1:47:06 like what are what contains
1:47:09 what god is contains what your reality
1:47:12 is
1:47:12 like we can't break this down anymore
1:47:14 we're already at the most fundamental
1:47:16 level
1:47:16 so it would be irrelevant for me to keep
1:47:18 asking you questions about what makes up
1:47:20 that or
1:47:21 what makes up that so that's what i'm
1:47:23 saying with reality there is no more
1:47:25 breaking it down that is
1:47:26 it are you are you like are you saying
1:47:29 that you're agnostic about what reality
1:47:31 is
1:47:32 it could be god it could be otherwise
1:47:33 and that reality could be totally wrong
1:47:35 you guys could be right
1:47:36 no but it's not that you're right or
1:47:38 wrong you're it's that you're not really
1:47:39 making a positive claim because the word
1:47:41 reality isn't really useful as and it
1:47:43 doesn't
1:47:44 really give us any information to work
1:47:46 with it's
1:47:47 reality everybody believes reality
1:47:49 exists but what
1:47:51 what's the nature of the reality you're
1:47:53 talking about i don't even get the
1:47:54 question reality exists because that
1:47:56 would be
1:47:57 existence exists okay fine so there is
1:48:00 existence and we agree but
1:48:01 what we're talking about is the
1:48:02 fundamental nature of that what
1:48:04 differentiates your view
1:48:06 from mine that's called experience we
1:48:09 share a reality we have different
1:48:10 experiences
1:48:11 no he's asking what's the ontological
1:48:13 difference yeah
1:48:15 you're describing so what you're
1:48:18 describing that's different
1:48:20 it seems like you're saying you're it
1:48:21 seems like you're giving an ultimate
1:48:24 ultimate account i know you're not being
1:48:25 detailed about it but you're saying just
1:48:27 the ultimate uh explanation for what
1:48:30 exists or for contingent
1:48:32 reality is reality and i think
1:48:35 being charitable uh to you and ensure i
1:48:38 would interpret that as like you're
1:48:40 saying there is
1:48:40 a fundamental layer of reality that
1:48:43 accounts for reality
1:48:45 uh i think i mean that would be a better
1:48:47 interpretation
1:48:48 reality is reality though but that's the
1:48:51 point that's
1:48:52 that's exactly why the word reality
1:48:54 isn't very useful here i don't know what
1:48:55 you mean by it
1:48:56 do you just mean like the the material
1:48:59 world
1:49:01 no the material world is what's
1:49:02 contained within reality
1:49:04 like for example if we were to talk
1:49:06 about the universe well every
1:49:08 most people believe and i disagree with
1:49:10 it that everything is the universe that
1:49:12 this table
1:49:13 is part of the universe i would disagree
1:49:15 this table that
1:49:16 the phone's sitting on is a containment
1:49:20 of the universe the universe if i was to
1:49:23 walk into a room and go to a bookshelf
1:49:25 and pick up a book i'm not going to say
1:49:27 that i'm going to read the room
1:49:28 i'm going to say i'm going to read the
1:49:29 book because the book was not part of
1:49:32 the room
1:49:32 the book and the table are both within
1:49:35 the universe or within the room
1:49:37 and the universe is within reality
1:49:41 now now i know what the room is but
1:49:43 what's reality
1:49:46 existence so do but then that's because
1:49:50 reality is sort of synonymous with
1:49:51 existence so then
1:49:53 this becomes a tautology again i just
1:49:55 don't get it yeah because you can't
1:49:56 break it down anymore that's what i've
1:49:58 said multiple times and we're still here
1:50:00 trying to break it down
1:50:01 i don't know but the point is you
1:50:02 haven't given any kind of useful
1:50:05 information
1:50:05 to break down you're just saying is it
1:50:08 space and time
1:50:10 do you mean no no no space space time
1:50:12 and matter
1:50:13 and experience derives from reality
1:50:15 which is the uncaused cause the very
1:50:17 fundamental
1:50:18 the fundamental thing the the causal
1:50:20 principle is reality
1:50:22 okay perfect so you agree in a necessary
1:50:24 foundation of reality so
1:50:26 let's just cut to the chase you accept
1:50:28 stage one cosmological arguments
1:50:30 there is a necessary foundation of
1:50:32 reality now can we ask any questions
1:50:34 about that
1:50:36 nature or are you are you are you saying
1:50:38 there is a
1:50:39 fundamental nature of reality but i
1:50:41 can't say anything about it i just don't
1:50:43 know what it is
1:50:44 well i i i'm not you said before okay so
1:50:46 we've already accepted the
1:50:48 the kalam is that what you said stage
1:50:51 one which is basically takes you
1:50:53 to a necessary being basically necessary
1:50:55 existence doesn't have to be god
1:50:57 stage two of stage two of these
1:50:59 arguments is when we ask
1:51:02 further questions and try to identify
1:51:03 whether it's god or not but
1:51:05 so you accept stage one cosmological
1:51:07 arguments and
1:51:08 you're saying there is a fundamental
1:51:09 nature now i think the next question
1:51:11 would be
1:51:11 can we say anything about that
1:51:13 fundamental nature of reality
1:51:14 is it natural you don't think so you're
1:51:18 so are you are you are you agnostic
1:51:20 about in the sense that it could
1:51:21 literally be god or something natural or
1:51:24 just literally anything um yes
1:51:28 as long as as long as the perspective
1:51:31 spaghetti
1:51:37 certain things about it yeah because
1:51:40 because sharif is asking him whether it
1:51:41 could be a trinity and he said no so i
1:51:43 guess you can say certain things about
1:51:45 it
1:51:45 i mean even in the negative sense at
1:51:47 least in the negative yeah in a positive
1:51:49 sense you could say that yeah in the
1:51:50 negative sense you could say it couldn't
1:51:52 be this
1:51:53 because of this reason you can rule
1:51:54 things out polytheism yeah you can rule
1:51:57 any polytheistic
1:51:58 or tri-theistic or trinitarian view
1:52:02 of a god you can rule those out right
1:52:03 out of the way
1:52:07 well let me give you a positive claim
1:52:09 that you would agree with
1:52:10 it is
1:52:13 it has causal power that's a positive
1:52:15 claim would you agree that it has causal
1:52:17 power it has causal power
1:52:20 the ability for other things or at least
1:52:22 the power to sustain the world because
1:52:24 it is the foundation
1:52:25 yes yes yes yes that is we can say some
1:52:28 things right so it has
1:52:30 causal power it has power
1:52:33 it's a source of power right so we can
1:52:36 make some positive claims about it now
1:52:37 i think the fundamental question here
1:52:40 will be
1:52:42 how far can we go not far enough to say
1:52:45 that there's a
1:52:46 mine that exists outside of a physical
1:52:49 brain how far
1:52:50 how far do you need to go to say that
1:52:52 there are
1:52:53 other minds i know you don't like this
1:52:54 question but because um
1:52:56 there are other minds i thought we were
1:52:58 talking about god no
1:53:00 because the question is related you're
1:53:01 saying you can't make a claim about it
1:53:03 that it has
1:53:05 a mind because for some reason we
1:53:07 couldn't possibly investigate that but
1:53:10 by that same logic you couldn't
1:53:11 investigate whether i had a mind
1:53:13 but yeah but now we're shifting the goal
1:53:15 post now i'm talking about something
1:53:16 else
1:53:17 no i'm just i'm just it's the stage so
1:53:19 if you you can
1:53:20 for example if it's possible to
1:53:22 acknowledge the existence of other minds
1:53:24 i
1:53:25 i'm a mind then yeah that's the
1:53:28 necessary step in order to be able to
1:53:29 even say
1:53:30 that there's this ultimate mind do you
1:53:32 do you have a
1:53:33 guess what i'm asking justin just just
1:53:35 to clarify just to clarify what i'm
1:53:36 asking basically is
1:53:38 what is it about this fundamental layer
1:53:41 of reality
1:53:42 that uh is so different about
1:53:46 uh that that's so different in the sense
1:53:48 that we couldn't possibly
1:53:50 uh attribute a mind to it while you
1:53:52 could attribute a mind to me it's the
1:53:54 brain
1:53:55 yes you have a physical brain we have
1:53:57 never ever demonstrated a mind existing
1:53:59 outside of a physical brain
1:54:01 of some sort justin did you come to the
1:54:05 conclusion that abdulrahman has a
1:54:06 physical brain and therefore a mind
1:54:08 because you saw his brain
1:54:10 i'm agnostic on that
1:54:13 but you have to assume a physicalist
1:54:15 theory of mind in order
1:54:16 to actually definitively make the claim
1:54:18 that something with the mind has to have
1:54:20 a brain i mean no but
1:54:22 i'm not so so i'm not making a positive
1:54:25 claim in the sense that that is true i'm
1:54:27 saying that using induction
1:54:29 all that we've ever been able to do is
1:54:31 see that
1:54:32 minds exist within physical brains at
1:54:34 the intelligence level that we're
1:54:35 speaking of right now
1:54:36 we could say plants you know there's
1:54:38 certain trees that stop growing acorns
1:54:40 when they have an infestation of
1:54:42 squirrels to get the squirrels to go
1:54:43 away
1:54:44 they move to other trees and then they
1:54:45 start growing stuff again they don't
1:54:46 have a physical brain
1:54:48 but when we're talking about an
1:54:49 intelligence of some sort like
1:54:51 like we have or something that would be
1:54:53 more intelligent than us
1:54:54 as an i.e a god i i've never seen a
1:54:57 brain
1:54:58 out or uh a mind outside of a physical
1:55:00 brain no i'm
1:55:01 see i'm not trying to argue like about
1:55:03 like the philosophy of mind with you and
1:55:05 how we come to these conclusions i'm
1:55:06 trying to say in order to
1:55:08 to to say what you're saying you have to
1:55:10 assume
1:55:11 i okay not assume in the sense that you
1:55:13 don't have reasons for it but you have
1:55:15 to bring to the table
1:55:16 a physicalist reductionist theory of
1:55:19 mind
1:55:20 that you know says that only things with
1:55:23 brains can have minds right
1:55:25 that's your line of reasoning which is
1:55:28 the reason you're saying we can't say
1:55:30 anything
1:55:30 with regard to the mentality or the
1:55:34 mental activity of
1:55:35 the fundamental nature of reality but if
1:55:37 i have a different
1:55:39 understanding or if i come from with
1:55:41 from from a different
1:55:42 philosophy of mind then uh maybe i could
1:55:46 say something else
1:55:47 maybe based on the criteria that i put
1:55:49 for what
1:55:50 counts for something that has mental
1:55:52 activity is very different from your
1:55:54 physicalist account and on that basis i
1:55:56 can make a claim
1:55:57 about the fundamental age of reality
1:55:59 maybe sure but how much more baggage
1:56:02 does your view
1:56:03 come compared to mine um but with that
1:56:06 that's both bag and we both have baggage
1:56:08 you're coming with the physicalist
1:56:09 understanding
1:56:10 i'm coming with a different question my
1:56:11 question wasn't does
1:56:13 does our claims have baggage i said how
1:56:15 much more baggage
1:56:16 does yours come from so how are you
1:56:18 defining mega chair how are you using
1:56:19 baggage
1:56:20 extra extra presuppositions or extra
1:56:22 things that we need to investigate
1:56:24 oh yeah i wouldn't want any of those i
1:56:26 mean in the sense that i wouldn't want
1:56:27 any assumptions that couldn't possibly
1:56:29 be justified what i'm saying is
1:56:31 whatever claims i'm gonna make need to
1:56:32 be justifiable claims so i agree that we
1:56:35 shouldn't
1:56:35 come with baggage in the sense that we
1:56:37 bring forward
1:56:38 unjustified assumptions what i'm saying
1:56:40 is if i bring
1:56:42 if i have a justified philosophy of mind
1:56:46 that or theory of mind that allows for
1:56:48 me to
1:56:49 invest to attribute
1:56:52 a a mental activity to something that
1:56:55 you
1:56:56 couldn't possibly uh say
1:56:59 the same for because of your physicalist
1:57:01 presupposition
1:57:02 then then what i'm saying is right now
1:57:04 we're coming from different perspectives
1:57:06 and i can say
1:57:07 more things about about the fundamental
1:57:10 nature of reality so what all hinges
1:57:12 on this debate about consciousness and
1:57:15 philosophy of mind
1:57:16 justin i think the the issue that you're
1:57:18 doing is you're trying to say that
1:57:20 the reason why no mind exists is because
1:57:22 i see a physical person
1:57:24 and what we're saying is something
1:57:25 slightly different we're saying the
1:57:26 reason why we believe there's a
1:57:28 conscious being that's a necessary
1:57:30 foundation
1:57:31 is the same way we would come to the
1:57:33 conclusion that there was a conscious
1:57:34 being that wrote a book
1:57:36 even if though i didn't physically see
1:57:37 the person writing the book
1:57:39 because what i'm sensing is the fact
1:57:41 that these this book
1:57:43 contains contingent things that are not
1:57:45 necessary to
1:57:47 produce the words in the order to create
1:57:50 the particular meaning
1:57:51 yeah so the words could have been
1:57:53 arranged in a
1:57:55 potentially infinite number of ways but
1:57:57 because it's arranged in this particular
1:57:59 way
1:58:00 it required somebody to determine it and
1:58:02 somebody to have intentionality
1:58:04 so in the same way this is what we're
1:58:06 saying about the universe
1:58:08 we're saying that the universe is a
1:58:09 contingent reality which means that it
1:58:10 could have been
1:58:11 another way it could have been an
1:58:13 infinite potential infinite other ways
1:58:15 yeah
1:58:16 within potentially infinite number of
1:58:18 different laws
1:58:19 the fact that it has this one out of a
1:58:22 number of possibilities
1:58:23 means something must have selected it
1:58:26 yeah and therefore we're using the same
1:58:28 process
1:58:29 regards to um uh you know coming to the
1:58:32 conclusion that
1:58:33 you know consciousness or minds exist in
1:58:35 other human beings
1:58:36 you know i don't need to like i said if
1:58:38 i've got something written on a piece of
1:58:40 paper i don't need to turn around and
1:58:41 say well i've got to physically see the
1:58:42 guy's brain
1:58:44 to know that the mind produced that
1:58:46 that's not how we
1:58:47 come to the conclusion in the same way
1:58:49 you know i don't need to
1:58:50 physically see you to know that you are
1:58:54 in existence that has a mind because i
1:58:56 see
1:58:56 pixels of you and i know it's not
1:58:59 necessary for these pixels to exist
1:59:01 and to construct the language so i come
1:59:03 to the rational conclusion
1:59:05 through uh for rational entailment that
1:59:08 you exist and you have a mind
1:59:10 so yourself really quickly i think we're
1:59:12 gonna have to move on just because i
1:59:13 think we've got somebody else on
1:59:14 sure
1:59:19 um the comment below so i'm gonna read
1:59:21 it and then just kind of add
1:59:22 a little bit to it so by the way the
1:59:23 word mind is ambiguous at best
1:59:25 it is wrong islamic islamically uh to
1:59:28 attribute that to allah
1:59:30 subhanahu wa tala allah does not need to
1:59:32 mind things i
1:59:34 think or calculate things he already
1:59:35 knows everything so when you're thinking
1:59:37 of
1:59:37 a human mind there's probably a really
1:59:40 really good point to kind of acknowledge
1:59:41 this
1:59:42 the whole function of a human back mind
1:59:44 is this processing of
1:59:45 thinking through problems and trying to
1:59:48 come to
1:59:49 understand things um when we're talking
1:59:51 about allah
1:59:53 and we're talking about something that
1:59:54 is all-knowing so there's no
1:59:56 um thinking process in the way that we
1:59:59 have one
1:59:59 um which is also eternal yeah yeah yeah
2:00:03 and so with this um whether or not the
2:00:07 word mind
2:00:08 is is a good descriptor um for what god
2:00:12 is um is is questionable um
2:00:15 but yes all i was saying is
2:00:17 intentionality that it's not just some
2:00:18 sort of materialistic
2:00:20 force yeah that had to do the thing that
2:00:22 it did
2:00:23 yeah because even that would require an
2:00:25 explanation because why did you have to
2:00:26 do
2:00:27 this as opposed to that so then you
2:00:30 rolling into a competition
2:00:31 because you're falling into a contingent
2:00:33 being then isn't it
2:00:35 you'd have to have some sort of
2:00:36 intentionality regardless of that just
2:00:39 i appreciate you coming on really really
2:00:41 do yeah um
2:00:42 the only thing is because you've agreed
2:00:45 that miracles
2:00:46 is not irrational or illogical to
2:00:48 believe i hear you
2:00:50 uh and we've slightly gone off topic and
2:00:52 people are thinking why have we gone
2:00:54 completely but obviously because we've
2:00:55 had these discussions so justin you're
2:00:56 going to say
2:00:58 i'm just going to say you guys need to
2:00:59 make an episode about the omniscience
2:01:01 paradox and i'll come on here and
2:01:03 destroy every single one of you
2:01:09 thanks for having me on guys all right i
2:01:11 appreciate you justin hopefully we'll
2:01:13 bring you we'll bring you on for part
2:01:14 two of the contingency discussion
2:01:16 that we're going to have all right yeah
2:01:18 all right level two
2:01:20 uh cool appreciate that see you just
2:01:23 live
2:01:26 so i think we've got another guest
2:01:27 that's uh waiting in the wings
2:01:30 by the way i'm ready for the omniscient
2:01:32 paradox i'm ready for that
2:01:36 so uh we've got i think
2:01:40 uh advaita is that right
2:01:43 uh somebody else oh salah i thought we
2:01:46 had advaita come on
2:01:47 uh he came on after salad
2:01:51 oh okay so salah first and then we're
2:01:53 going to have advaita later on
2:01:59 he's there
2:02:02 if salah is not on we'll have to go to
2:02:04 the other guests
2:02:06 you need to um i think he might not even
2:02:08 know his mutes
2:02:09 oh my muted seller you gotta unmute your
2:02:12 mic bro
2:02:15 maybe he's not there so we okay
2:02:23 how are you i'm good i'm gonna how are
2:02:25 you guys
2:02:27 you're muslim advaita no i'm not
2:02:31 oh you're not muslim okay could you just
2:02:33 uh
2:02:34 introduce yourself what do you believe
2:02:36 in where are you from
2:02:38 i'm from india and i'm more of
2:02:41 a philosophy guy it's like a non-duality
2:02:46 and so so there there is this philosophy
2:02:50 of advaita vedanta that is like
2:02:53 but i don't believe in the virantha part
2:02:55 of it that comes from the vedas
2:02:57 that believes in god and
2:03:01 this is all the stuff i don't believe in
2:03:04 that but i believe in the advaita part
2:03:06 of that that is
2:03:08 the known duality there is just one
2:03:10 ultimate
2:03:11 reality or one ultimate consciousness or
2:03:14 one ultimate
2:03:15 matter whatever it is it's just one
2:03:19Music 2:03:21 yeah advaita we're talking today about
2:03:23 whether
2:03:24 belief in miracles is it irrational or
2:03:27 not have you got any thoughts about the
2:03:28 subject today
2:03:30 so uh i would like to before i put my
2:03:35 put my thoughts on that i would like you
2:03:37 guys to explain
2:03:38 what you call a miracle
2:03:45 jake jonah well i what was this question
2:03:49 what's the matter called a miracle in
2:03:51 definition yeah so the mirror
2:03:53 the the definition i gave earlier give
2:03:56 me one second
2:03:58 um and this is from an atheist and
2:04:00 that's why i try to give an
2:04:01 unbiased source is that a miracle occurs
2:04:04 when the world is not left to itself
2:04:06 when something distinct from the natural
2:04:08 order as a whole intrudes into it
2:04:11 obviously that's going to be a problem
2:04:12 for you as far as i can tell because
2:04:15 if there only really is one uh
2:04:18 fundamental reality in that sense that
2:04:21 everything is pretty much the same
2:04:23 that i don't see how that definition
2:04:25 would work for you
2:04:27 yep yep so
2:04:30 so maybe you can explain how you
2:04:33 understand it but
2:04:34 um if you want okay
2:04:38 so i would say from the journal
2:04:42 general definition of the miracle what
2:04:45 it's generally or correctly understood i
2:04:48 would not agree
2:04:49 that miracles can happen
2:04:52 uh at max what can happen is that
2:04:56 we do not understand a particular
2:04:58 phenomena that
2:04:59 occurs uh but
2:05:02 they in in this nature there is nothing
2:05:05 that can
2:05:06 go against the nature
2:05:11 well yeah we don't believe anything can
2:05:12 go against nature in that sense either i
2:05:15 tried to explain
2:05:16 um that natural laws in the way that
2:05:19 they're
2:05:20 explained in science are predicated on
2:05:23 the
2:05:24 idea of isolated systems and
2:05:27 from our perspective if a miracle occurs
2:05:29 the system wouldn't be isolated so
2:05:31 therefore
2:05:32 it wouldn't break the law the law just
2:05:34 simply wouldn't apply because
2:05:36 it's conditional upon something that
2:05:38 isn't met
2:05:40 yeah so i i would say yes
2:05:44 at max yeah so i'm just repeating myself
2:05:47 i
2:05:48 would say that we might not understand
2:05:50 what's going on but that doesn't mean
2:05:51 it's a miracle
2:05:53 well we would agree with you i mean we
2:05:55 don't have a problem with that if
2:05:57 yeah just because you don't understand
2:05:59 it doesn't necessarily mean
2:06:01 it's a miracle it couldn't it could be
2:06:03 or could not be
2:06:05 yeah i guess because i have seen some
2:06:07 some of the guys sustaining
2:06:09 miracles as a phenomenon that we don't
2:06:12 understand yet
2:06:14 so no we wouldn't yeah we we wouldn't
2:06:17 say that no
2:06:18 yeah yeah because i have seen some of my
2:06:21 muslim friends
2:06:22 saying that there are many things that
2:06:25 we don't understand yet and
2:06:27 that's why they we call them miracles
2:06:30 no no that's not yeah advaita that's not
2:06:33 even the islamic definition of a miracle
2:06:36 i'm not saying the islamic whether it's
2:06:39 islamic i'm sorry
2:06:40 i'm just saying you can turn around to
2:06:42 your muslim friends and you can say
2:06:43 actually that's not the correct
2:06:44 definition
2:06:45 something that's unexplainable you can
2:06:46 turn around and say the correct
2:06:48 definition is something
2:06:49 inimitable something beyond human
2:06:52 productive capacity
2:06:53 or something that has a non-naturalistic
2:06:56 explanation
2:06:57 that's what we would define as a as a
2:06:59 miracle or marge is a
2:07:00 something that challenges people in
2:07:02 terms of their knowledge of expertise in
2:07:04 a particular area
2:07:05 so that they can identify that this was
2:07:08 beyond human productive capacity
2:07:10 so we don't and i think i tried to
2:07:11 mention it to justin but i think we got
2:07:13 a little bit lost in the discussion
2:07:15 but we don't believe that there are
2:07:16 things which are quote-unquote random
2:07:18 which have no explanation we believe
2:07:20 that everything
2:07:21 has an explanation in god and so there
2:07:24 are no probabilities per se
2:07:26 probabilities themselves are explained
2:07:28 by god but rather
2:07:30 if it's outside of our control it's
2:07:32 within god's control
2:07:33 and if something occurs that's beyond
2:07:36 human control
2:07:37 and human productive capacity which
2:07:40 breaks the regularity in the norms
2:07:42 and cannot be explained by other
2:07:44 quote-unquote natural law
2:07:45 then that's within god's control and
2:07:47 therefore god caused that thing to occur
2:07:50 what do you mean by god's control
2:07:55 uh what do we mean by god's good so we
2:07:57 believe that
2:07:59 what we we live in a universe we live in
2:08:01 a reality
2:08:02 the reality that we sense are things
2:08:04 that are limited
2:08:05 finite and they're also dependent yeah
2:08:08 and the way that they have their
2:08:10 attributes and their qualities
2:08:11 are not explained by themselves they're
2:08:14 explained by
2:08:15 other things that help explain it yeah
2:08:18 so we call these things contingent
2:08:20 these contingent realities they need an
2:08:23 explanation
2:08:24 and the explanation cannot be explained
2:08:26 by other contingent realities because
2:08:28 those would also need an explanation and
2:08:31 you'd have this problem of an infinite
2:08:32 regress
2:08:33 so to avoid an infinite regress you say
2:08:35 you have to have a
2:08:37 foundation something that's eternal
2:08:39 something that doesn't need an
2:08:40 explanation outside of itself
2:08:42 and that's what we're going to call the
2:08:44 necessary foundation or a necessary
2:08:46 being
2:08:47 and it's this necessary being or
2:08:48 necessary foundation that we believe
2:08:50 explains all contingent reality explains
2:08:53 why and causes the laws of the universe
2:08:56 to exist at the way that they exist
2:08:58 and so any miracle is not
2:09:02 a violation of what we are doing but
2:09:04 rather
2:09:05 any miracle is because this necessary
2:09:07 being
2:09:08 changes for an instance the regularity
2:09:12 that he imposed upon the system
2:09:14 from the outside why would uh
2:09:17 that god do why would he
2:09:20 does that so we believe that he does
2:09:23 that
2:09:24 in order to prove uh two human beings
2:09:28 that there is a prophet that is truly a
2:09:31 profit from god
2:09:32 so we don't believe that this is just
2:09:34 you know simply uh
2:09:36 it just happens for no explanation we
2:09:38 believe that god sends down profits
2:09:41 and with the prophets he sends them
2:09:43 signs and those signs are things which
2:09:45 cannot be done by other human beings so
2:09:48 it's an indication that
2:09:49 he's been sent by this necessary being
2:09:51 who can do this act
2:09:54 so by the definition you you
2:09:57 so are you trying to say correct me if
2:10:00 i'm wrong you're saying that
2:10:01 it can only happen uh when
2:10:05 when a prophet is present
2:10:08 well we generally say we talk about a
2:10:10 specific type of
2:10:11 miraculous event we call it mojism we
2:10:13 say yeah this is for the prophets and
2:10:15 the messengers
2:10:17 so if if so right now currently as
2:10:20 if uh if i understand correctly the
2:10:23 islam
2:10:24 islam's position is that there are no
2:10:27 more prophets coming in
2:10:29 so you're saying that there are no more
2:10:32 uh we believe in one last miracle we
2:10:35 believe that there is one miracle which
2:10:37 as jake mentioned earlier is called the
2:10:39 living miracle
2:10:40 which is because there are no more
2:10:42 prophets
2:10:44 that the miracle the sign and the
2:10:46 evidence for the prophethood of
2:10:48 muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam has
2:10:51 to be ev
2:10:52 has to be to the to the end of time
2:10:54 basically to the end of human time
2:10:56 yeah so that miracle we believe is the
2:10:59 quran
2:11:00 itself
2:11:03 so we believe that the quran is beyond
2:11:05 human productive capacity
2:11:08 okay and how do we adjust that
2:11:12 so it's it's a it's we're going to have
2:11:15 a whole stream of probably on this topic
2:11:18 but in essence yeah so in essence what
2:11:20 we're saying is is that
2:11:22 any person who claims loads of people
2:11:25 claim that they're from god and that
2:11:26 they've got a communication and a
2:11:28 message
2:11:28 we're not just going to accept their
2:11:30 claim and even if we say that miracles
2:11:32 are logically possible there's no
2:11:34 illogical aspect to it doesn't just
2:11:36 therefore means that we're going to
2:11:37 accept
2:11:38 anybody's claim that something uh a
2:11:40 miraculous event has occurred
2:11:42 rather what we're going to do is we're
2:11:43 going to say well what's your evidence
2:11:45 how you're claiming to be from god what
2:11:48 evidence that you are from god
2:11:50 and if this then person then is able to
2:11:52 produce something
2:11:53 which is beyond human productive
2:11:54 capacity and has no naturalist
2:11:56 explanation
2:11:57 then the only explanation is a
2:11:59 supernatural explanation i
2:12:01 from this existent being this this
2:12:02 creator discord
2:12:06 that make sense at vader so it's
2:12:08 evidential we have to have
2:12:09 evidence for every proposition we hold
2:12:11 in belief i
2:12:12 understand but there are too many
2:12:14 questions in this one like
2:12:18 why a prophet is required to talk to
2:12:20 human beings
2:12:21 why the contact is required in the first
2:12:24 place
2:12:25 and there are too many questions in that
2:12:28 like you said they're prophets right
2:12:30 and and then yeah there's a lot of
2:12:33 questions so obviously
2:12:34 why do we in essence we say profits are
2:12:36 sent as
2:12:38 in order to provide guidance on how
2:12:40 human beings live
2:12:41 the guidance that they're bringing to on
2:12:43 how human beings should live and worship
2:12:45 is brought because this is
2:12:47 god has brought this to human beings why
2:12:50 do we seek guidance because we are
2:12:52 created with the very nature that wants
2:12:55 guidance
2:12:55 that wants salvation wants to understand
2:12:58 our purpose of
2:12:59 life and the only way to really
2:13:00 understand our purpose of life
2:13:02 is to understand whether we were where
2:13:05 we came from
2:13:06 whether we were created or not and where
2:13:09 we're going after we die
2:13:10 once you answer those two questions then
2:13:13 you can understand your purpose
2:13:14 what is it is what is good what is bad
2:13:18 how to worship how to stay away from
2:13:20 things that
2:13:21 you know are incorrect yeah okay okay so
2:13:24 now now my point is so all the humans
2:13:28 all the human beings you're saying are
2:13:31 created for just one purpose
2:13:33 they all have one purpose a common
2:13:35 purpose
2:13:37 so i'm saying this i'm saying let's not
2:13:40 even presume
2:13:41 purpose but in order to understand
2:13:44 we desire purpose yeah so i think we can
2:13:47 say all human beings desire
2:13:49 to seek purpose that's the question
2:13:52 issue the next
2:13:53 question is well how do i come to the
2:13:55 conclusion that purpose exists
2:13:59 okay let's say we desire purpose uh
2:14:02 it's okay i i can't do not
2:14:05 did you not desire purpose advaita
2:14:09 no you don't desire purpose
2:14:12 you just want to live your life
2:14:13 aimlessly i i i
2:14:16 i i i mean by live my life i change
2:14:19 forms
2:14:20 i always existed i will always exist
2:14:23 but in this life do you want to achieve
2:14:25 purpose
2:14:26 do you want it quite off topic
2:14:30 it's probably better so if you go into
2:14:34 that that would be a totally different
2:14:36 philosophy okay so
2:14:38 the point is when you're saying
2:14:42 whether i desire a purpose or not
2:14:46 depends on the time sometimes i
2:14:49 do desire purpose sometimes i do not
2:14:56 i was just going to say because we're
2:14:57 getting off topic i mean the stream's
2:15:00 supposed to be about miracles and uh
2:15:02 yeah we do
2:15:03 we do we do want to move on to the next
2:15:05 guest shortly but
2:15:06 is there anything else you have to or
2:15:09 that you would like to say about
2:15:11 the miracle topic that before you go
2:15:14 yeah so whatever what i would say is
2:15:17 the miracles in general i won't agree
2:15:20 with that miracles
2:15:23 what i can say is there's one thing that
2:15:25 always exists
2:15:27 is the rule uh a one rule that
2:15:30 that exists even before a thing exists
2:15:33 the rule exists
2:15:35 what i mean by that is let's say in a
2:15:37 periodic table
2:15:39 there there there are many elements
2:15:42 that you don't know they exist
2:15:45 but you can make places for those
2:15:48 elements
2:15:49 what are discovered or been
2:15:52 invented in a form of set up for
2:15:54 something where they will grow
2:15:56 and even before you find them or they
2:15:59 are
2:15:59 discovered or whatever happens they come
2:16:01 into existence
2:16:03 you know how they behave so
2:16:06 that rule all exists even before that
2:16:09 particular thing exists
2:16:10 so when you say miracle
2:16:14 there is no such thing as miracle
2:16:17 there are rules that exist in this
2:16:19 universe
2:16:21 and if that even has to happen
2:16:24 at some time it cannot go against
2:16:27 that particular rule even if someone
2:16:31 wants or someone doesn't want because
2:16:33 nobody can change the rules of the
2:16:35 universe
2:16:37 yeah so you're just saying when a thing
2:16:39 happens that we would
2:16:41 normally call or somebody might think is
2:16:43 a miracle
2:16:44 it's not a miracle it's just something
2:16:46 that
2:16:47 um is in line with a rule that we don't
2:16:51 really understand of the universe right
2:16:54 yes so it's a law that we haven't
2:16:56 discovered yet it's it's a law or a
2:16:59 mathematical equation we haven't found
2:17:00 it
2:17:02 so it happened it will fit in that
2:17:05 equation
2:17:06 uh if it does it in a particular
2:17:09 equation
2:17:10 then it cannot is in this universe
2:17:14 yeah i mean we wouldn't yeah because
2:17:16 we're gonna we're closer we need to we
2:17:17 need to end here but i just want to want
2:17:18 to ask you if you can answer me just
2:17:20 real quick
2:17:21 uh within this moment that you're you're
2:17:23 uh you're proposing do you believe like
2:17:25 is there a god like is
2:17:27 god basically existence
2:17:30 so when you say god does it mean does
2:17:33 that mean
2:17:34 it keeps recording is there is there any
2:17:37 intelligence or consciousness within
2:17:39 like you know this one existence
2:17:42 so even if it's there uh yeah so it
2:17:46 can exist um so okay so so just just to
2:17:49 say this just to wrap
2:17:50 up i think what what you're saying here
2:17:52 is that you could be saying one of two
2:17:54 things
2:17:54 either there is there is an intelligence
2:17:57 behind all this
2:17:59 it's it's all one fine but there is
2:18:01 there is some kind of
2:18:02 intelligent driving force behind nature
2:18:05 and that's just the way it works the
2:18:07 laws of nature are the way it works
2:18:09 if there is an intelligence then what
2:18:11 you're basically saying
2:18:12 you're basically proposing a spinosan
2:18:14 understanding of what
2:18:16 the universe is some sort of uh
2:18:19 pantheistic understanding of what god is
2:18:21 and in that sense uh i mean many
2:18:24 critiques can be can be
2:18:26 launched against that but generally
2:18:27 speaking if there is intelligence and
2:18:29 there is intentionality then basically
2:18:32 what what is a law of nature is just a
2:18:34 choice of nature
2:18:35 to do what it does and it could refrain
2:18:37 from that at every
2:18:38 at any specific moment and that's what
2:18:40 we would call a miracle
2:18:42 if you're proposing non-intelligence
2:18:44 then what you're saying is that nature
2:18:46 is just nature
2:18:47 and things happen the way they are and
2:18:49 that's what we were talking about in the
2:18:50 beginning in terms of a
2:18:51 question begging definition of what
2:18:54 nature is so i think either way
2:18:56 um i mean it's it's just not you either
2:18:58 agree with us or it's just the other
2:19:00 definition is not very helpful
2:19:02 i think we could just leave it at that
2:19:04 advaita
2:19:06 unfortunately your mind is not very
2:19:07 clear uh to the audience
2:19:09 uh on the stream uh but we really do
2:19:12 appreciate you coming on
2:19:13 and you know we would want you to come
2:19:16 back on
2:19:17 uh future streams as well uh hopefully
2:19:19 you'll get
2:19:20 the mic and everything will be sorted
2:19:22 out at that time i don't know if you
2:19:23 want to say any
2:19:24 one or two quick last words before you
2:19:26 leave yeah just keep it below
2:19:28 30 seconds over there yeah i say sorry
2:19:30 i'll keep in mind that next time my
2:19:33 mic works properly thank you thank you
2:19:35 guys thank you thank you
2:19:36 thank you very much for your time
2:19:37 appreciate that yeah
2:19:39 i think we've got uh another gift
2:19:42 actually uh
2:19:43 um and
2:19:47 yeah so we got another guest uh i don't
2:19:49 know the name of this guest sorry
2:19:51 pakistani theist oh pakistani theist
2:19:54 okay assalamu alaikum brothers
2:20:00 i think you are taking non-muslims
2:20:03 so we're talking about non-muslims don't
2:20:07 worry
2:20:08 yeah so my take on this is quite simple
2:20:10 so
2:20:11 how i see miracles is how you initially
2:20:15 defined miracles so i see miracles as
2:20:18 something else like
2:20:18 telephones which were in stone age
2:20:22 were deemed miracle
2:20:25 so if we brought our telephones to the
2:20:28 stone age they would deem uh our
2:20:31 telephones
2:20:32 as you know uh miracles so that's how i
2:20:35 see miracles
2:20:36 but yeah miracles uh
2:20:39 quite broad term so if you are talking
2:20:43 about in theology
2:20:44 so that's how uh the the conversation
2:20:48 has
2:20:48 uh shaped definition of miracle
2:20:51 quite uh profoundly so
2:20:55 so i won't you know me
2:21:00 alter definition which we are
2:21:03 uh which are which we are sticking to
2:21:06 right now so
2:21:08 so that's uh what what do you mean uh
2:21:12 pakistani theos what's your name sorry
2:21:14 what's this it's not pakistani theater
2:21:16 you don't mind me asking your real name
2:21:19 do you or john's calling yeah
2:21:22 sure you can call me abdullah abdullah
2:21:25 okay abdullah
2:21:26 so abdullah what do you mean by the fact
2:21:28 that a phone
2:21:29 in stone ages would be a miracle because
2:21:32 obviously it would be a miracle of time
2:21:33 travel
2:21:34 exactly so uh in my worldview
2:21:38 miracle has a lot of different
2:21:41 you know you can go with anything when
2:21:44 you use the term
2:21:45 uh as as a student of linguistics i
2:21:48 understand that
2:21:49 you know words can have quite different
2:21:52 you know uh
2:21:54 you know different uh pragmatic
2:21:57 you know definitions or you can have a
2:22:00 variety of definitions for
2:22:02 uh you know a single word so it all
2:22:04 depends on the context so
2:22:07 in what context you're using miracle so
2:22:10 it all depends on the context so i think
2:22:13 uh what jake and the other brothers have
2:22:15 mentioned
2:22:16 is uh i know cj can correct me but in
2:22:19 essence what we're saying is something
2:22:20 that
2:22:22 doesn't fit within the regularity
2:22:25 or the laws of the universe or in other
2:22:27 words something that has a
2:22:29 non-naturalistic explanation so we're
2:22:31 not talking about
2:22:32 you know somebody winning the lottery or
2:22:36 a person um recovering from stage four
2:22:39 cancer
2:22:40 yeah that's not what we'd call a miracle
2:22:43 because there's still a naturalist
2:22:44 explanation for these things i
2:22:46 understand you mentioned
2:22:49 imitable you mentioned imitable uh term
2:22:52 imitable meaning that
2:22:54 uh it cannot it it challenges uh are
2:22:57 our limited uh contingent beings it
2:23:00 actually challenges continuing beings
2:23:02 rash are you know limited beings so
2:23:06 it is beyond uh anything
2:23:09 so basically it's beyond anything so
2:23:13 you yeah yeah yeah exactly so i
2:23:16 understand
2:23:17 uh where you're coming from so what i
2:23:19 was proposing
2:23:20 is that it all depends on how you
2:23:23 actually
2:23:24 uh contextualize the word so
2:23:28 i could be you know saying sunday that
2:23:30 it's just a miracle how
2:23:32 you know manchester united won the match
2:23:34 so one
2:23:35 it all depends on the context so that's
2:23:37 all
2:23:39 no it's no miracle when man united win
2:23:41 the match they're always
2:23:46 but yeah so yeah you're right but
2:23:47 obviously in this context i think what
2:23:49 we're trying to say is we're saying it
2:23:51 in the context of uh you know a
2:23:53 miraculous event or something that
2:23:55 cannot be explained
2:23:56 by nature something that requires a
2:23:58 supernatural explanation
2:24:00 in order to let me ask the question i
2:24:02 can ask this question a simple question
2:24:04 yeah you've got jk i'll answer it so i
2:24:07 have a simple question
2:24:09 if we had scientists at a time of the
2:24:12 prophet
2:24:13 or any prophet and they had
2:24:16 all the equipments and all the tools to
2:24:19 you know uh experiment
2:24:24 the miracles would they be able to
2:24:26 experiment
2:24:28 them under their limited scientific
2:24:30 framework
2:24:32 what do you mean would they be able to
2:24:34 experiment them would they be able to
2:24:37 notif uh or identify what the cause is
2:24:40 is that what your question is
2:24:42 yeah like how they you know uh
2:24:46 investigate no i don't think they would
2:24:49 be able to no
2:24:51 because the miracle the miracles outside
2:24:53 of their
2:24:54 paradigm so like the example of the
2:24:56 telephone like
2:24:58 if they went back and we had a uh
2:25:01 a time machine and we went back and
2:25:03 showed people this phone
2:25:05 people might think people might think
2:25:07 it's a
2:25:08 miracle they're saying wow what is this
2:25:11 cell phone i mean this
2:25:13 is really strange they might think it's
2:25:15 a miracle
2:25:16 right but in actuality it's it wouldn't
2:25:19 be a miracle
2:25:20 other than the point of the time machine
2:25:23 maybe
2:25:24 but i mean the difference is that
2:25:28 if you went back and the same thing what
2:25:31 we say about the quran no matter how
2:25:32 much
2:25:33 scientific you will not be able to
2:25:35 produce something like it
2:25:37 that's the claim uh likewise certain
2:25:40 miracles in the past that the prophets
2:25:42 performed
2:25:44 with any sort of technological or
2:25:46 scientific advancement
2:25:47 it doesn't matter they won't be able to
2:25:50 investigate it because
2:25:52 the miracle itself is out of the purview
2:25:54 of science
2:25:56 that's the whole point of it in essence
2:25:58 what
2:25:59 what you would do when you're
2:26:00 investigating quote unquote a miracle a
2:26:03 sign
2:26:04 for prophethood is you're trying to say
2:26:07 can this be explained by nature is there
2:26:09 a naturalist explanation to this
2:26:12 if there's no naturalist explanation
2:26:15 then you have to say well
2:26:16 okay there is still an explanation but
2:26:18 the explanation is supernatural
2:26:20 because we've already proven that god
2:26:22 exists through a rational process this
2:26:24 is presupposing this
2:26:26 then the only explanation would be okay
2:26:28 god this necessary being
2:26:30 is the thing that causes the universe to
2:26:33 exist
2:26:34 and the universe to operate according to
2:26:35 a system so it's
2:26:37 therefore god that has caused this thing
2:26:40 not to
2:26:41 uh follow this quote-unquote
2:26:42 naturalistic pattern yeah
2:26:44 yeah ultimately it comes down to the
2:26:46 metaphysical explanation of
2:26:48 the miracle if i'm correct
2:26:51 in phrasing that yeah what do you mean
2:26:54 by metaphysical explanation
2:26:56 sorry america
2:27:00 yeah in the fact that uh which cannot be
2:27:02 natural uh you know in a natural world
2:27:06 so or may not be yeah so so
2:27:09 abdullah scientists are not gonna
2:27:11 investigate
2:27:12 what the naturalist explanation is maybe
2:27:16 the most all a scientist can do is
2:27:18 investigate and find that there is no
2:27:20 naturalist
2:27:21 explanation yeah so for example when isa
2:27:24 al-islam
2:27:25 healed the sick brought people back from
2:27:27 the dead
2:27:28 there was no naturalist explanation for
2:27:30 that because it wasn't even contained
2:27:32 within the knowledge set
2:27:33 of the people at that time in order to
2:27:35 do those particular actions
2:27:37 so therefore the only explanation would
2:27:39 be a non-naturally
2:27:41 naturalistic explanation as to how jesus
2:27:43 is
2:27:44 islam brought people back from the dead
2:27:46 i
2:27:47 god uh gave him the capacity to do this
2:27:50 or it was done by the permission of god
2:27:52 etc
2:27:56 does that make sense uh
2:28:00 yeah it makes sense yeah it made sense
2:28:03 because
2:28:04 recently i was going through you know
2:28:06 some atheists who were
2:28:08 you know uh just poking fun at
2:28:13 so they actually was saying that how you
2:28:16 know jonah could be in
2:28:17 a fish stomach so i saw an apologist
2:28:21 a muslim apologist he jumped in and he
2:28:24 said that
2:28:24 it was not a fish it was a uh whale
2:28:28 which uh and he used all scientific you
2:28:31 know
2:28:31 data and he tried to justify that
2:28:35 the wrong way so i was also
2:28:38 quite skeptic about that approach so
2:28:41 you know this discussion has quite
2:28:44 helped me
2:28:45 a lot with this you know
2:28:48 explaining it's really yeah abdullah is
2:28:50 really important when we're talking
2:28:52 about
2:28:52 miracles you're right it's a different
2:28:55 uh
2:28:56 knowledge set we don't need to explain
2:28:58 miracles by
2:28:59 naturalistic causation the very
2:29:02 definition of a miracle
2:29:03 is it's beyond naturalistic causation so
2:29:06 we're not looking at
2:29:07 for example the moon split okay so let's
2:29:10 look for the crack in the moon
2:29:11 yeah to prove it to prove the miracle or
2:29:15 we have to explain how a whale could
2:29:17 swallow a human being or a fish or
2:29:19 creature swallowed a human being
2:29:20 or how is it that human a human being
2:29:23 could travel faster than like we don't
2:29:25 need
2:29:25 any naturalist explanation because we're
2:29:27 saying it's a violation
2:29:29 of natural law it's for violation it has
2:29:32 no naturalist explanation
2:29:34 by bringing in naturalist explanation
2:29:36 you cause more problems
2:29:38 because that's when they'll say all
2:29:40 right well actually you've got the
2:29:42 science wrong
2:29:43 you know the apparently the the whale's
2:29:45 throat
2:29:46 is like the size of that yeah so how's
2:29:48 the human being gonna get through that
2:29:50 so you know
2:29:50 you're gonna create more problems it's
2:29:52 simply something that has no naturalist
2:29:54 explanation which therefore means
2:29:56 that we're not looking to for science to
2:29:59 answer
2:30:00 how this miracle occurred yeah and
2:30:03 that's not the question that we're
2:30:04 looking at
2:30:06 yeah i was gonna say i don't know if
2:30:09 somebody could put uh what i just
2:30:11 commented on in the chat i put the
2:30:13 definition of miracle
2:30:15 it's the first thing you pull up uh on
2:30:17 google by oxford
2:30:19 it says a surprising and welcome event
2:30:21 that is not explicable by natural or
2:30:23 scientific laws
2:30:25 and is therefore considered to be the
2:30:27 work of a divine agency so this is what
2:30:29 we're saying
2:30:30 it's something
2:30:33 yeah it cannot be explained by natural
2:30:36 or scientific laws
2:30:37 so if you're claiming that it's a
2:30:39 miracle and then
2:30:41 the person who actually believes in it
2:30:43 is trying to use science to explain it
2:30:46 they're already doing something wrong
2:30:49 yeah yeah i get your point
2:30:53 yeah so so even if we go with jonah
2:30:57 if you go with jonah then we can say
2:30:59 that jonah was inside a fish
2:31:02 we we don't need to justify it and use
2:31:04 you know
2:31:05 uh it was inside he was inside you know
2:31:07 a whale
2:31:08 so yeah and the quran doesn't i don't
2:31:11 think quran actually mentions a whale
2:31:13 anyway
2:31:14 uh but yeah it could be a creature that
2:31:17 was created by
2:31:18 allah for that particular purpose
2:31:22 you know uh and you know it occurred
2:31:25 by the will of allah which goes against
2:31:28 anything that we could possibly
2:31:30 uh conceptualize in our own minds
2:31:33 so there's nothing any uh there's
2:31:35 nothing
2:31:36 we we're not here to explain miracles by
2:31:39 naturalistic
2:31:40 laws because that's wrong but what is
2:31:43 important is to be able to explain that
2:31:45 and
2:31:45 the violation of natural laws is not
2:31:49 in and of itself a a logical
2:31:52 contradiction
2:31:53 nor should it be as a basis to simply
2:31:56 dismiss
2:31:57 a claim from a religion so if we as
2:32:00 muslims claim that
2:32:02 you know was inside this creature within
2:32:05 the sea
2:32:06 that in and of itself shouldn't be you
2:32:08 know an atheist around say ah
2:32:10 well that can't be right yeah or you
2:32:12 know somebody who's not muslim says oh
2:32:13 that can't be right
2:32:14 therefore the religion is false it's not
2:32:17 the right basis by which to assess
2:32:19 whether something's right or wrong and
2:32:21 in the same way myself and the other
2:32:23 brothers here
2:32:24 we don't criticize christianity because
2:32:27 they believe that
2:32:28 jesus islam walked on water yeah we do
2:32:31 you know that's for us that's just a
2:32:34 possible claim
2:32:35 for somebody who claims to have a
2:32:37 miracle yeah that's not
2:32:39 logically contradictory it doesn't mean
2:32:41 we necessarily affirm it
2:32:43 you know because obviously we need valid
2:32:44 testimonial evidence to affirm it
2:32:47 but it doesn't necessarily mean that it
2:32:50 therefore
2:32:50 is false yeah so it just remains
2:32:54 unproven yeah i think yeah
2:32:58 yeah it's just lust
2:33:03 no i'm just going to say it um we keep
2:33:06 doing this so we
2:33:07 we need to really wrap up it's been uh
2:33:09 two and a half hours i need to go as
2:33:11 well um
2:33:12 so just last point you know i just want
2:33:14 to touch upon
2:33:15 really quick 20 seconds just quick just
2:33:17 quick so now so the last point was that
2:33:19 when i hear some atheists they actually
2:33:22 quite pull up this quite
2:33:24 an old contention that you know how al
2:33:26 barak
2:33:27 is illogical so when i hear this that an
2:33:30 existence is illogical that actually
2:33:33 strikes my mind and
2:33:35 and i'm you know in the thought that ah
2:33:38 existence cannot be illogical unknown
2:33:41 unless and until its identity
2:33:45 is you know logically contradicting so
2:33:47 yeah how am i
2:33:48 scaring specifically in the thing that
2:33:51 is contradictory
2:33:52 simply saying i have never experienced
2:33:54 it we've got no evidence that's not
2:33:56 a contradiction that's just the lack of
2:33:58 evidence for a positive belief
2:34:01 um in a particular thing according to
2:34:03 what they need
2:34:04 um so it's introduced like if you're
2:34:06 gonna say it's a contradiction
2:34:08 bring forward an argument show me
2:34:09 explicitly with the syllogism
2:34:12 premise one premise two conclusion blah
2:34:15 showing explicitly why this thing is a
2:34:17 contradiction um
2:34:18 and then obviously we can move forward
2:34:20 from there but just saying it people use
2:34:22 these words
2:34:23 like they'll say oh it's a contradiction
2:34:25 well where give me the argument
2:34:27 how is it just using the word isn't
2:34:29 enough
2:34:30 to prove the point and you've got to
2:34:32 you've got to show that explicitly but
2:34:34 i i think we should leave it there for
2:34:36 the moment um
2:34:37 for joining us today
2:34:43 and uh we hope we see you on uh future
2:34:45 streams again
2:34:51 i don't know if any brothers want the
2:34:52 last word yourself or jake
2:34:56 um i i thought there was somebody
2:34:59 i wanted to say something real quick if
2:35:01 i can
2:35:02 um about about the so i mean just
2:35:05 generally about the question is it
2:35:07 irrational i just i i'm not sure if we
2:35:09 emphasize enough that
2:35:10 it can be irrational believing in
2:35:12 miracles and not every miraculous
2:35:14 account
2:35:15 is something that is rational to believe
2:35:17 in
2:35:18 i think we should have more from an
2:35:19 islamic perspective it's more of a
2:35:22 top-down than bottom-up approach towards
2:35:24 believing in miracles because the
2:35:26 epistemic concerns
2:35:28 that we do share with atheists of how we
2:35:30 can know that something is true
2:35:32 is there within the islamic context so
2:35:35 it is important for
2:35:36 for it to be within a a in a
2:35:38 contextualized
2:35:40 uh rational framework for us to believe
2:35:43 in these accounts as a uh byproduct or
2:35:47 consequence of our rational basis for
2:35:49 belief and we have several examples
2:35:51 within scripture
2:35:52 of miracles supposed miracles that were
2:35:55 done by
2:35:56 uh by uh liars and false prophets for
2:35:59 example assamedi
2:36:00 in the story of uh prophet musa and uh
2:36:03 the the the magicians of pharaoh for
2:36:06 example if they
2:36:07 went and doing went doing all these
2:36:09 tricks in the streets then should we
2:36:10 just believe everything we
2:36:11 they say no so on that basis i think
2:36:14 it's very important to
2:36:15 point to the fact that within the
2:36:17 islamic context
2:36:18 a miracle should only be uh
2:36:22 rationalizable through the foundation of
2:36:25 your belief
2:36:26 and that it's not always rational to
2:36:28 believe in miracles and miracles alone
2:36:30 do not justify your belief finally the
2:36:33 quran
2:36:34 is special why because all prophets have
2:36:36 come
2:36:37 with a message from god and miracles
2:36:41 that that kind of add
2:36:44 justification to their message in the
2:36:46 case of the quran what we claim
2:36:48 is those two were put together and the
2:36:50 message
2:36:51 is the miracle in the sense that
2:36:54 you can assess its coherence and believe
2:36:57 in god on that basis
2:36:58 and also at the same time you have
2:37:02 a timeless access to its uh claim
2:37:05 of being uh inimitable and miraculous
2:37:08 and that's what from our perspective is
2:37:11 very unique about the quranic claim of
2:37:13 inimitability and i think
2:37:16 yeah an example of um an irrational
2:37:19 miracle for example if someone came to
2:37:20 you and said
2:37:21 i've just seen a miracle i've saw a man
2:37:23 going back to sherry's good example
2:37:25 i saw a man and he was five foot and
2:37:27 eight foot simultaneously
2:37:29 it's like at that point you can say that
2:37:31 that's an irrational miracle because
2:37:32 it's clay
2:37:33 it's claiming that two contradictory
2:37:35 positions
2:37:36 um are there or you know this person was
2:37:39 um
2:37:39 i saw this person and he was existing
2:37:41 and not existing simultaneously
2:37:44 or you know these kind of things they
2:37:46 would fall under the um
2:37:48 the the specific realm of a
2:37:51 contradiction
2:37:52 to opposition i mean i mean even or or
2:37:54 the non-contradictory stuff
2:37:56 without a basis for believing in it so
2:37:58 if someone told me they
2:38:00 uh believe in uh like i think maybe
2:38:03 i'll give you questions i'll give you an
2:38:05 example of drop man a few years ago
2:38:07 uh in the 1990s i think it was uh
2:38:10 there was a hindu statue that was seen
2:38:13 to
2:38:14 drink milk i don't know
2:38:18 yeah and there were people like oh my
2:38:20 gosh this is a miracle and i think what
2:38:22 you're saying abdulrahman
2:38:23 is well hold on does that fit within our
2:38:26 understanding about the nature of
2:38:28 reality and the belief in a creator
2:38:30 that's singular
2:38:32 yeah because yeah you might come across
2:38:34 something quote-unquote miraculous
2:38:36 you know or something that i personally
2:38:38 cannot explain
2:38:39 they found an explanation by the way it
2:38:41 was a naturalistic explanation
2:38:43 but if somebody comes across something
2:38:44 which is miraculous
2:38:46 it doesn't make their claim necessarily
2:38:49 true
2:38:49 from god if the foundation of it
2:38:53 is irrational yeah like belief in more
2:38:55 than one god
2:38:57 yeah jake uh we're gonna have to move on
2:38:59 so i'll remember jake you wanna
2:39:00 just sort of summarize your own thoughts
2:39:03 yeah yeah so i mean the the question
2:39:07 of the stream was whether or not uh
2:39:08 belief in miracles is
2:39:10 irrational i think we established even
2:39:13 with carlos the first
2:39:14 guest that he agreed with us that in
2:39:18 principle
2:39:18 they're not necessarily illogical
2:39:21 there's not a
2:39:22 immediate contradiction between a
2:39:25 miracle on the one hand
2:39:26 and a law of nature on the other hand
2:39:28 which from my perspective that's the
2:39:31 the claim that i get uh is like this
2:39:33 typical
2:39:34 internet ace motif uh i i get it
2:39:38 constantly online
2:39:39 and then the second thing is by
2:39:41 demonstrating that
2:39:43 there is no immediate conflict
2:39:46 between a miracle on the one hand and a
2:39:48 law of nature on the other hand
2:39:50 the claim of the trinity being somewhat
2:39:54 analogous with a miracle we can dispel
2:39:56 that and say no
2:39:57 we can still believe in the reality of
2:40:00 miracles and reject the trinity
2:40:03 just because we reject the trinity
2:40:05 doesn't necessitate that we therefore
2:40:07 have to be consistent
2:40:08 and reject all miracles um and so
2:40:12 those two things are what i had
2:40:14 consistently in mind
2:40:15 i think even our atheist guests both are
2:40:18 justin
2:40:19 and carlos agreed that in principle
2:40:22 miracles are not
2:40:23 logically contradictory so i think that
2:40:25 suffices
2:40:26 um as this stream being a success
2:40:30 uh yourself i don't know if you've got
2:40:31 any quick thoughts that you want to sum
2:40:33 up
2:40:34 yeah it's just it's literally that it's
2:40:35 um i think
2:40:37 jake's summed up pretty well that you
2:40:39 can talk about
2:40:40 um miracles like basically
2:40:44 talking about miracles in an absolute
2:40:46 sense just because you don't accept one
2:40:48 kind of miracle um or one claim of a
2:40:51 particular sort of miracle
2:40:52 that you have to reject every possible
2:40:55 miracle it's
2:40:55 there's more nuance to it than that um
2:40:58 and i think
2:40:59 it shows lack of thought on the subject
2:41:02 matter
2:41:02 um if you're saying that because you're
2:41:04 rejecting this then oh
2:41:06 why do you accept the barack or why do
2:41:07 you accept uh the splitting of the moon
2:41:10 there there is a rational or reasonable
2:41:14 criteria for why you can accept one and
2:41:17 uh reject the other
2:41:18 um and that again just fully kind of is
2:41:21 underpinned by this idea of explicit
2:41:23 contradictions
2:41:24 um within the framework of the thing um
2:41:27 that's being put forward so
2:41:28 you know with the trinity thing if you
2:41:30 go back to watch our previous stream
2:41:32 um the last one we did on on whether or
2:41:34 not the trinity is coherent
2:41:36 you you see a you know an in-depth
2:41:38 rationalist of why we would say that
2:41:40 this is logical
2:41:41 or illogical sorry or a logical problem
2:41:44 um and then at that point obviously you
2:41:46 can make this appeal to mystery
2:41:48 um if you want to but you that appeal to
2:41:51 mystery
2:41:52 um has to in some way
2:41:55 uh admit that the you know the
2:41:58 appearance of
2:41:58 a logical problem to some degree um and
2:42:01 obviously
2:42:02 that whole pulling this card i wanted to
2:42:04 pull it out i've been waiting for that
2:42:08 it's literally it's it's an
2:42:10 acknowledgement off the fact that there
2:42:11 is a problem that needs to be
2:42:13 answered and that they they have a lack
2:42:14 of an answer for it um obviously
2:42:16 the the issue there is whether or not
2:42:18 this particular problem
2:42:20 is explicitly um illogical
2:42:23 or it's just that we i lack
2:42:26 you know the problem of ignorance as
2:42:28 they say um would
2:42:30 again kind of be this appeal to you it's
2:42:31 it's funny yourself what you said there
2:42:33 reminds me of a discussion that dawkins
2:42:36 had he had an interview i think with
2:42:38 matthias and
2:42:39 a few years back and he was trying to
2:42:41 say oh how
2:42:43 stupid are muslims who believe in the
2:42:45 black and the part of sallam ascended to
2:42:47 heaven and things like that
2:42:49 and one muslim in the audience he simply
2:42:50 asked him the question he goes what's
2:42:52 more
2:42:53 incredulous the entire universe
2:42:56 from nothing yeah or somebody on a
2:42:59 barack or a horse flying horse yeah
2:43:02 because obviously a universe entire
2:43:05 universe from absolute
2:43:06 nothing is completely incredulous and it
2:43:09 reminds me of a quote i think it's a
2:43:11 quote from a particular atheist
2:43:12 philosopher i
2:43:13 can't remember the particular name and
2:43:14 now and he basically said if you grant
2:43:17 me one miracle
2:43:18 i will explain everything yeah i will
2:43:21 explain
2:43:22 the rest so i think that's in essence
2:43:23 what they do uh
2:43:25 for everybody listening next week we
2:43:28 will talk
2:43:28 next week next uh two weeks time we will
2:43:30 be talking about i think uh
2:43:32 consciousness and rationality can they
2:43:35 be grounded on
2:43:36 under naturalism uh so please uh look
2:43:39 out for that if there are changes we'll
2:43:41 make some changes but
2:43:42 we're going to discuss that next week
2:43:44 just o'clock
2:43:46 to the brothers on the panel so
2:43:47 everybody who phoned in and
2:43:49 had a discussion with us as well really
2:43:50 do appreciate that hopefully other
2:43:52 people found that beneficial
2:44:00 where's the outro
2:44:06Music 2:44:16 ah