I watched and took copious notes on the Fireside Chat, Ep 174, hosted by Dennis Prager who conversed with Ayn Rand scholar Craig Biddle about politics, morality, theology and more. I took copious notes on the over one-hour long podcast, and below is what I recorded, and then I periodically respond to the exchanges between Prager and Biddle. Apparently, the fireside chat was aired on 3/22/2012.
"Here is what is written above the video: "God vs. Ayn Rand: A Fireside Chat with Denis Prager and Craig Biddle. TOS Admin February 18, 2021 Craig Biddle recently joined Dennis Prager for a wide-ranging discussion about religion, Objectivism and American values. This is the conversation our culture needs to have--and a model of civility with which we need to have it. Check out the video and share it with friends. This is the way forward."
Dennis Prager (Pr): "I have to have the best opponents, and Craig is that. Craig Biddle, and we disagree about God and morality, but we have the following in common: we are both crazy about liberty. I am much closer to an atheist that loves liberty then to a God-believer that doesn't."
My response: I notice two trends here. First, conservative theists and conservative atheists are uniting as transcendent of their mutual disagreements to work together to fend of the postmodernists and Marxists out to destroy America in its entirety. The cordial conversation between Dennis and Craig exemplifies the new effort to work with all traditionalists against the Progressives.
Second, only now are conservative patriots understanding that liberty is far superior and far more desirable than fraternity and equality combined. God is a free agent, and we are made in De's image, and we are instructed and expected to enjoy and apply ourselves, using our full liberty to self-realize, a living prayer of appreciation back to the Divine Couple.
Mark Levin also recognizes how precious is personal liberty, and how jealous each American adults must insist upon being to keep government, churches, cliques and big business at bay, lest they enslave the individual and rob him of his power, liberty and happiness.
Ironically, Craig Biddle, a conservative atheist that reverse liberty is spiritually and morally far superior than is a Christian Leftist who denies that there is anything special about personal liberty, and that people are not losing much to forego their freedom.
Craig Biddle (Cr): "I am much closer to Dennis than to an atheist that likes big government."
PR: "My task here is not to win but to illuminate differences. I believe in clarity over agreement."
PR asks Cr: "Do you hope you are rights or wrong about there not being a God?"
Cr: 'I never pondered that question. If God exists, then there is no free will, due to God's omniscience and omnipotence"
PR: "I have the opposite view. Only if there is a God, is there free will. I asked atheist Michael Sherman this question, and he answered, sure, why would I not want to see my loved ones after I died. Why would I not want there to be a God. I am surprised at your answer (Craig). I want evil judged for the horrible things done to others. It would bother me if there was no consequence. How would you deal with that?"
My response: I do not know that I agree with Dennis that there is no free will unless there is a God to judge and punish the wicked and reward the good in the afterlife. If there were no God, people would still have free will to choose to do good or evil, and the only difference would be that there would be no God, no afterlife, no consequence in that realm for what each person did when alive.
Cr: "It might be an ok question. Perhaps perpetrators should burn in hell and victims be compensated. I see no evidence for an afterlife. More important to ask is what is the best that we can do in this life? We should live well, be just, and ensure that people properly here reward the good and punish the criminals."
My response: I think we should ask ourselves what is the best that we can do in this life, for the sake of this world, and for the sake of living well, in the next life, if God exists (De does.) and there is an afterlife.
PR: "We agree that we need a just society. My religious principle is based on this life (not life in the next world). Now let us get to the free will question. You are a materialist. Materialism is not refusing to buy things. Materialism philosophically is the belief that matter is all that is. Consciousness is still physical. The neurons of my brain give me consciousness. "
Cr: "It is a scientific answer what gives rise to consciousness. I do not have the answer on that. I take the position that we know consciousness exists, because we are using it. We know gravity exists though we do not know what explains gravity."
My response: We need a just society for the sake of living in this world, and for the sake of our souls in the next world. The world of matter and the world are both real, and consciousness straddles the nexus between these two worlds.
Cr. “It is axiomatic that consciousness and existence exist. These constitute the foundation of all knowledge."
PR: “ Is consciousness a product of physical existence?"
Cr: "Yes, but though produced, it is not the same as physical matter. Of our conscious life, it is hard to see how it came from physical matter. Life from matter is hard to see."
PR: “Why is that not an argument for a creator?"
Cr: "Consciousness and a creator are not necessarily the same thing. First there was no existence then creator's consciousness created existence. There is no evidence for that view; it is very speculative. We see existence; we are living it, then posit something became before it. Why go back and speculate? Aristotle decried the theory of forms: senseless duplication, so there is not theory of forms if the premise is that you have to have a dimension to explain this dimension, then have to have another dimension to explain that dimension, an infinite regress.”
My response: I like the Randian ontology that consciousness exists, and existence exists because they do, and that does seem like the foundation of all or much knowledge. Consciousness likely predated or made or ordered always existing matter, and yet grew out of matter. Consciousness and a creator are just as likely as the lack thereof, and a theory of forms however logically vulnerable to the infinite regress argument, does offer an explanation of how the Logos or world of Forms participates in or informs matter as physical objects in this world, and there must be some reality to these claims.
PR: "There is only an infinite regress if the Creator was created, so there was no creator. But God existed forever, before the Bible was written, and because God is eternal, there is no infinite regress."
Cr: "Your position is that there had to be a God who created this existence. My position is this existence is primary. It is eternal. The universe is in time; time is not in the universe. The universe has always existed. Time is but a measure of motion is existence."
PR: "If the is no beginning, why did Big Bang occur?"
Cr: "There can be a Big Bang without creation. An existing, dense universe that exploded did expand into an existing region. You can't get something from nothing. You can't expand into nothing."
My response: I like Dennis retort that God is infinite, so that position makes trivial the argument that there is an infinite regress is one argues Logos is built into in nature. Is the Big Bang actually God creating the world? I do not know. Is Biddle right that the infinite universe always existing so that there is something for the universe to expand into? I do not know.
PR: "Yes, you cannot understand something from nothing. We agree on that. Where we differ is that you think the something always was--you do not have a problem with where it came from. Physics suggests a beginning. If all these material factors determine me, now how do we define this free will thing. If we are only matter, there is no consciousness. If I Dennis am only a product of material events, and all that I do is explainable from genes or the environment, where is the free will? Only if I believe in God in society, can I then believe in free will. If all that I do is a product of matter, where is your free will?"
Cr: "Good question. Ayn Rand: existence and consciousness are why we have free will: we reason. She did not believe that you could do whatever you wanted at any time with no restrictions."
My response: I do not know that we could not have something come from nothing. God works miracles that defy logic. I like Craig's perspective that there was no creation because the universe is eternal. I do not accept it but it is an interesting explanation of his metaphysics.
Free will exists as soon as an intelligent animals have reason and speech. Both God and the angels have reason and speech on a much more sophisticated level, but their wills are free and transcend the iron natural laws of necessity controlling other types of animals. Free will could exist in intelligent homo sapiens even if they were the highest form of intelligent life int he universe.
Cr: "The locus of free will: the ability to focus your mind or not. To exist is to exert mental effort to understand the world or not. To refuse to use one's mind is to dim it down, turn it off. That is free will, a great thing. We utilize reason and that is free will. Now it is not total free will, not possible like running through a wall. One's exercising free will is clearly tempered by one's values."
PR: "People do have free will to violate their values. There is nothing non-material about it. Consciousness defines it. Do you blame people for their bad, even criminal choices?"
Cr: "Yes, I am unique among atheists. Sam Harris says there is no self, but I believe in a self. The mind and body are integrated and constitute the self, but physical elements remain.”
My response: I agree with the Randians that to enjoy and wield free will is to think, be conscious, make decisions and serve as the director of one's own affairs. And Craig is right: free will is not total. I cannot wave a magic wand and move the moon 40,000 miles to the right. I am mortal and will die though I might will to be immortal--which I do not. The self or consciousness exists, be it merely physical or part spiritual, which it is.
PR: "How do you explain if I took 1,000 atheists and 1,000 churchgoers off the street, which group would be more pro-liberty?"
Cr: "More religious people are more pro-liberty than atheists are, and it is that way because Ayn Rand is new and before here in the 50s most atheists were bad like the Frankfurt school. Atheism then was negative just concentrating on the thesis that there was no God. But the positive was never discussed; that a rich egoistic morality undergirds liberty, civil rights, etc."
PR: "I hope you succeed. The track record of most atheists is horrible."
Cr: "Yes, it is very bad."
PR: "I don't see a great future for moral atheism but there are good atheists like Craig. I am an Ethical Monotheist. God wants people to be ethical and follow the Ten Commandments."
My Response: Yes, religious conservatives are for more pro-liberty than are atheists, who like government running our lives. It could be that atheists, godless and lost, seek divine substitutes, and Big Government has become the deity that they worship. Those that love government, love tyranny, and hate liberty and individualism. Since the American Experiment was founded on Godly-guidance, and God grants us liberty and free will as natural capacities to enjoy and make productive, churchgoers more naturally will defend liberty.
Craig has a point that atheists before Rand were Marxists and pro-tyranny, not pro-liberty. Dennis admits that there are good atheists, but that as part of a godless, totalitarian, collective monster, people will not be moral, free, very loving or happy, and that makes them immoral.
I admire Prager's ethical monotheism, and it is objective ethics based upon the one true God. I am a moderate ethically, mostly pro-objective ethics, with some subjective ethics added in.
PR: "When I was a teenager, I spat with my parents but because I believe in God, I always honored my parents. If one does not have religious morals then one is likely to follow one's emotions, or one's therapist. Who is more likely to follow the Ten Commandments--an atheist or a religious person?"
Cr: "I can't answer that since I do not represent all secularists or all atheists. I offer objective morality. We can derive objective morality from logic and observation, and justice is one of its principles. People are judged on the basis of what they say and do and then treated accordingly. I honor my father because he is a good man not because he is my father.
We should follow the Ten Commandments because generally it is in your self-interest to do so, not because God wants you to do so. Follow commandments for their content not because God commands it--I disagree about the method not the content."
PR: “We are to honor our parents, but we do not have to love our parents. Parental authority is a bulwark against totalitarianism and cults. All dictators seek to own youth by their allegiance to the dictator, not to their parents. We are to honor parents even if we do not love them. If parents voted for Trump, their adult kids sometimes severed relations with them. This is secular ruthlessness."
Cr: "Individualism is also a bulwark against socialism. Parents and kids must respect each other--each has a reasoning mind and should expect that they use their reasoning mind. Family relations should be based on respectful mutualism or good relations."
PR: "I like individualism--it emanates from the Biblical view. Everyone is created in God's image and when that dies you get the herd mentality."
My response: Dennis maintains that religious people, more than secularists, are more likely to follow the Ten Commandments, and I believe that is correct. Craig counters that he follows objective morality as a Randian, so therefore, his reason and logic propel him to follow the Ten Commandments for their content, not because God ordered secularists to do so. I do not much accept his theory, but I like Rand's commitment to objective morality, and, yes, following the Ten Commandments is reasonable, and yet their come from Yahweh and they and He are good.
Prager offers parental authority as a bulwark against totalitarianism and that is wise. Craig offers individualism as a bulwark against tyranny, and he is smart too.
Prager offers that individualism emanates from the Bible, that everyone is made in God's image, and this is close to the divine spark in each individual that Jordan Peterson alludes to.
Pr: "Murder: if there is no God, then murder is not wrong. Catholics converted Europeans to Christianity, and the hardest group to convert were German tribes. The Germans rejected Christianity by asking why it is wrong to kill--we are the toughest so by killing we conquer and dominate--the survival of the fittest. Where there is an absolute, objective moral point, there is no killing."
Cr: "We must use observation and reason not revelation and faith to reach the obvious conclusion not to murder. To talk about morality, we need a standard of value. Dennis's standard is God's will. Craig's standard: he does not accept God as the objective source of morality for two reasons:
First, God does not exist; Second, if God did exist, He is still a consciousness giving a command, and any consciousness is subjective, so its moral command is subjective morality.
Here is the Randian objective moral standard: the factual requirements of human life on earth compels us, a rational animal, to use reason to survive. Human life constitutes the standard of human value, the requirements of the kind of animal we are and reference to those requirements will tell us if an action is objectively good or objectively bad,"
My response: Dennis is offering an objective morality that is God-based: if God does not exist, there is no absolute standard of right and wrong--all replacement ethical standards are mere personal feeling or opinion, so then who is to say that murder is not good or desirable? With his example of pagan German tribes, Prager suggests that without objective morality, murder is widespread. Only in godly countries is killing rather rare. He is more right than wrong.
Craig refutes religious objective morality, citing that God does not exist, and if He did, his subjective consciousness would entail that his moral pronouncements are subjective.
His objective moral standard is secular and worldly: human life is the standard of human value, and our reasoning will inform us as to which action is good or bad as we compare/contrast each action to see if it preserves and enriches human life or leads it to be degraded or even perish.
I like objective ethics and would blend both religious and secular ethically objective codes together, more Prager than Biddle, but both, with some subjective ethical, and feeling-based elements included.
Cr: "Freedom is objectively good because the human needs to live and prosper. He must be free to act on his judgments, to produce goods, to trade them voluntarily to mutual advantage. If he can't be free, he can't live as a human being. He must be free to be happy. This is a fact (moral) is an observable fact. Rand's entire moral theory: a right is a recognition of the fact that to live a human being must act in this way--he must be free to enjoy his right to life, liberty, property, etc."
My response: this is accurate and eloquent Randian ethical stance.
Pr: "All of that is your opinion that freedom is important. Admirable view but not absolute or objective. You have no argument against critics."
Cr: "I do have an argument that works. 1. How do you make clear that the requirements of human are objective and correct, not just opinion? 2. Rand offers this fact: Her morality is the philosophically worked out proof of what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. What she means by that is the rights to life, liberty, and happiness. Rand says about each of these rights that not only do you have a right to each of them but that it is morally correct that you pursue them. She can prove this with reason, observation and logic--prove it objectively in a standard of value.
Take life: You have the right to live but not to murder as self-evident or granted by the Creator or both. Rand wants you to live your life in your self-interest while not violating the rights of others.
Life is the fundamental right because it is also the standard of moral value. Why is that? Life is the only reason we can pursue values--i.e., we are alive, and why we need to pursue values. Rocks, rivers can't pursue value. Humans are alive to pursue value and that is a necessity. Human life makes values possible, necessary to human life is the moral standard."
My response: Prager attacks Biddle as a ethical subjectivist morally, that his claim to be ethically objective is mere opinion, however commendable its content. Biddle is more right here than Prager, in that Biddle is advocating an objectivist ethic, but he lacks the power of God's authority and command that we obey the Ten Commandments.
Biddle offers human life as the ethical moral standard, and those values make that life worth living, I concur.
PR: "Your view is commendable. But many don't agree. It is still opinion. It is your leap of faith. I made a leap of faith to believe in God that said to protect life. Your view is not provable. Many chose death. So on pragmatics: who will be more effective preventing murder? Those that die and that is the end for us, or those that die, but heaven or hell awaits them? Which is more likely to keep people moral if punishment for wrongdoing after death is real, or there is no consequence for sinning?"
Cr: "Yes, if consequences, it is a moral deterrent. I know you do not believe in hell."
PR: "No, I believe in hell though Jewish secularists don't. Maimonides, the greatest Jewish intellectual ever, said reward and punishment after death, was one of the sacred Jewish principles."
Cr: "If nihilistic or atheist view of the world, then anything goes, nothing matters versus God and afterlife alternatives, the historically people behaved, when good for fear of hell. A third alternative is the Ayn Rand view of no afterlife but behave anyway in this world.
My response: It seems likely to me that there is an afterlife, and that for some believers, perhaps most people, a fear of going to hell is a deterrent on their this-worldly behavior. But people that believe in heaven in the afterlife also behave well in this world, out of love and respect for God, a willingness and determination to please God, and perhaps receive a reward in heaven for a life faithfully and morally well-lived.
Cr: "We both know it is true that you can act anyway you want and be happy."
My response: I disagree with Craig here completely. If I was a sadistic Buchenwald guard herding Jews into gas chambers, and I found extreme pleasure in hurting and killing them--I am capable of this, as Jordan Peterson admits about himself and 98% of the rest of society--I would enjoy and be addicted to my sick pleasure of killing innocent victims, but that would not make me happy. An evil, vicious act committed again and again in an institutional setting could not emanate from the psyche of a happy person, I suspect that happy people are loving, creative and spiritually good. Those that habitually commit acts of great wickedness are acting out something rotten that they feel about being and themselves internally.
Cr: "We would tell our kids be moral for that alone will make you happy. Being immoral guarantees unhappiness."
My response: Biddle here is talking about the connection between being ethical and being happy that is roughly equivalent to my paragraph just up above objecting to his remarks on personal happiness.
Cr: "Ayn Rand: Life is the standard of value and happiness is the moral purpose of life, and that makes this a science. Happiness is the state of consciousness that arises from achievement of your values, and it has to be a state on non-contradictory joy, values in harmony, not at war with each other in your soul. Your Ten Commandments to be obeyed in your self-interest. I say do it for self-interest, not for the sake of the Ten Commandments."
PR: "We need God for objective morality and for the practical needs of the community. We used to have secular communal activities: bowling, Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis. Now the only communities in America are Jew of Christian religious gatherings. I do not know of any atheist communities. I enjoy my Jewish religious gatherings. Community is a value; do you not agree?"
My response: Ayn Rand's understanding of happiness is moral and based upon achieving one's values and that seems realistic to me. Our values should be in harmony, and we should follow the Ten Commandments out of self-interest, and for God's sake, and for the sake of the community, finally.
Though I am a staunch individualist, I know better than to downplay the value and richness emotionally from communal ties and events, most of which are absent from my life, not so much by choice, as being ostracized by non-individuating joiners for refusing to cease maverizing.
Cr: "Yes, of course, but not all religious communities are life-affirming, life-serving values. We do get together."
My response: Most atheists are likely academics isolated from other academics so weekly communal services to uplift each other would be rare but desirable. And not all religious communities are life-affirming, if by life-affirming one means each person in the community is existing as a self-actualizer, dedicating her life and achievements to God and the betterment of the world.
PR: "There are no credible proofs for God's existence. Can you clarify a proof for God's existence or evidence for God's existence, as there is no proof or argument for God's existence? We both exist. It came from rocks, a leap of faith that is absurd. DNA is information--how could it not have intelligence behind it? The complexity of the eye is another example. It is not likely so that everything came from matter as atheists insist. Charles Krauthammer--Atheism--everything came from nothing."
Cr: "It seems incredible the rise of life (from nothing) or did life always live? It is a logical fallacy: If you can't say where life came from scientifically, ergo God. This is the fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Evolution is good science."
My response: proofs for or against or evident-based arguments for or against the existence of God cannot be definitively determined or dismissed, so I enjoy them all, side with the believers over the atheists, but am willing to admit we all need to keep open-minds over these controversies and continue to tolerantly agree to agree to disagree with freedom of conscience enjoyed by all.
PR: "A pattern exists but we cannot explain it--it may be explainable scientifically how it exists but cannot tell why it exists, which religion does."
Cr: "It is an axiomatic issue that existence is something rather than nothing. Why do we need to assume existence wasn’t always here. We know we exist because we can observe it.
Here is a question? Are the multiplicity of religions a proof against God?"
Pr: "People yearn to know the Creator; we have universal ideas with many interpretations"
My response: It is probably true that something can't come from nothing, and that we can say nothing about nothing but the ontological moderate in me does not agree with these statements. Usually but not always something cannot come from nothing, and usually but not always we can say nothing about nothing.
Craig is suggesting the existence of one Absolute God is disproven by the multiplicity of religious interpretations contradicting each other and conflicting with each other? Dennis is right in that the religious search for meaning and a personal relationship with the divine is universal, but people are individual so their interpretation of such an intimate encounter will vary without being self-contradictory.
Also, God and De's angels are individuals, so though they are on the same team, their personal account of how to relate to the Divinity, and the name attributed to that Divinity, will vary widely. These are moderate strengths not wishy-washy, subjective weaknesses. Collectively and cumulatively the insight gathered from the varied inputs will enrich all to provide for the most objective interpretation possible about the state of being that God is.
Cr: "Religious factions do not happen in science."
My response: Really. There are not Leftist scientists alarmist about global warming and reputable scientists among the opposing climate-deniers? Professors in college do not in factions claiming to be objective scientists? I think that Craig is offering that, scientists, ideally and at their traditional best, are logical, intellectually honest and open, and geared to the evidence, will accept the truth and even change their theories should the evidence rule out their favored previous theories.
Cr: "Scientists use reason to debate and the best reason over tie wins. Religion is based on faith so no easy way to handle disagreement."
PR: "If there is no God, anything goes."
Cr: If faith is how we gain knowledge, anything foes."
PR "How about abortion?"
Cr: "Abortion is a woman's right right up to the day of birth." The right to life applies to a human being is a social context and the fetus before birth is not yet an individuated human being."
PR: "Life is the basis of living. Eugenics is rational thinking, get rid of those unworthy of life."
I watched and took copious notes on the Fireside Chat, Ep 174, hosted by Dennis Prager who conversed with Ayn Rand scholar Craig Biddle about politics, morality, theology and more. I took copious notes on the over one-hour long podcast, and below is what I recorded, and then I periodically respond to the exchanges between Prager and Biddle. Apparently, the fireside chat was aired on 3/22/2012.
"Here is what is written above the video: "God vs. Ayn Rand: A Fireside Chat with Denis Prager and Craig Biddle. TOS Admin February 18, 2021 Craig Biddle recently joined Dennis Prager for a wide-ranging discussion about religion, Objectivism and American values. This is the conversation our culture needs to have--and a model of civility with which we need to have it. Check out the video and share it with friends. This is the way forward."
Dennis Prager (Pr): "I have to have the best opponents, and Craig is that. Craig Biddle, and we disagree about God and morality, but we have the following in common: we are both crazy about liberty. I am much closer to an atheist that loves liberty then to a God-believer that doesn't."
My response: I notice two trends here. First, conservative theists and conservative atheists are uniting as transcendent of their mutual disagreements to work together to fend of the postmodernists and Marxists out to destroy America in its entirety. The cordial conversation between Dennis and Craig exemplifies the new effort to work with all traditionalists against the Progressives.
Second, only now are conservative patriots understanding that liberty is far superior and far more desirable than fraternity and equality combined. God is a free agent, and we are made in De's image, and we are instructed and expected to enjoy and apply ourselves, using our full liberty to self-realize, a living prayer of appreciation back to the Divine Couple.
Mark Levin also recognizes how precious is personal liberty, and how jealous each American adults must insist upon being to keep government, churches, cliques and big business at bay, lest they enslave the individual and rob him of his power, liberty and happiness.
Ironically, Craig Biddle, a conservative atheist that reverse liberty is spiritually and morally far superior than is a Christian Leftist who denies that there is anything special about personal liberty, and that people are not losing much to forego their freedom.
Craig Biddle (Cr): "I am much closer to Dennis than to an atheist that likes big government."
PR: "My task here is not to win but to illuminate differences. I believe in clarity over agreement."
PR asks Cr: "Do you hope you are rights or wrong about there not being a God?"
Cr: 'I never pondered that question. If God exists, then there is no free will, due to God's omniscience and omnipotence"
PR: "I have the opposite view. Only if there is a God, is there free will. I asked atheist Michael Sherman this question, and he answered, sure, why would I not want to see my loved ones after I died. Why would I not want there to be a God. I am surprised at your answer (Craig). I want evil judged for the horrible things done to others. It would bother me if there was no consequence. How would you deal with that?"
My response: I do not know that I agree with Dennis that there is no free will unless there is a God to judge and punish the wicked and reward the good in the afterlife. If there were no God, people would still have free will to choose to do good or evil, and the only difference would be that there would be no God, no afterlife, no consequence in that realm for what each person did when alive.
Cr: "It might be an ok question. Perhaps perpetrators should burn in hell and victims be compensated. I see no evidence for an afterlife. More important to ask is what is the best that we can do in this life? We should live well, be just, and ensure that people properly here reward the good and punish the criminals."
My response: I think we should ask ourselves what is the best that we can do in this life, for the sake of this world, and for the sake of living well, in the next life, if God exists (De does.) and there is an afterlife.
PR: "We agree that we need a just society. My religious principle is based on this life (not life in the next world). Now let us get to the free will question. You are a materialist. Materialism is not refusing to buy things. Materialism philosophically is the belief that matter is all that is. Consciousness is still physical. The neurons of my brain give me consciousness. "
Cr: "It is a scientific answer what gives rise to consciousness. I do not have the answer on that. I take the position that we know consciousness exists, because we are using it. We know gravity exists though we do not know what explains gravity."
My response: We need a just society for the sake of living in this world, and for the sake of our souls in the next world. The world of matter and the world are both real, and consciousness straddles the nexus between these two worlds.
Cr. “It is axiomatic that consciousness and existence exist. These constitute the foundation of all knowledge."
PR: “ Is consciousness a product of physical existence?"
Cr: "Yes, but though produced, it is not the same as physical matter. Of our conscious life, it is hard to see how it came from physical matter. Life from matter is hard to see."
PR: “Why is that not an argument for a creator?"
Cr: "Consciousness and a creator are not necessarily the same thing. First there was no existence then creator's consciousness created existence. There is no evidence for that view; it is very speculative. We see existence; we are living it, then posit something became before it. Why go back and speculate? Aristotle decried the theory of forms: senseless duplication, so there is not theory of forms if the premise is that you have to have a dimension to explain this dimension, then have to have another dimension to explain that dimension, an infinite regress.”
My response: I like the Randian ontology that consciousness exists, and existence exists because they do, and that does seem like the foundation of all or much knowledge. Consciousness likely predated or made or ordered always existing matter, and yet grew out of matter. Consciousness and a creator are just as likely as the lack thereof, and a theory of forms however logically vulnerable to the infinite regress argument, does offer an explanation of how the Logos or world of Forms participates in or informs matter as physical objects in this world, and there must be some reality to these claims.
PR: "There is only an infinite regress if the Creator was created, so there was no creator. But God existed forever, before the Bible was written, and because God is eternal, there is no infinite regress."
Cr: "Your position is that there had to be a God who created this existence. My position is this existence is primary. It is eternal. The universe is in time; time is not in the universe. The universe has always existed. Time is but a measure of motion is existence."
PR: "If the is no beginning, why did Big Bang occur?"
Cr: "There can be a Big Bang without creation. An existing, dense universe that exploded did expand into an existing region. You can't get something from nothing. You can't expand into nothing."
My response: I like Dennis retort that God is infinite, so that position makes trivial the argument that there is an infinite regress is one argues Logos is built into in nature. Is the Big Bang actually God creating the world? I do not know. Is Biddle right that the infinite universe always existing so that there is something for the universe to expand into? I do not know.
PR: "Yes, you cannot understand something from nothing. We agree on that. Where we differ is that you think the something always was--you do not have a problem with where it came from. Physics suggests a beginning. If all these material factors determine me, now how do we define this free will thing. If we are only matter, there is no consciousness. If I Dennis am only a product of material events, and all that I do is explainable from genes or the environment, where is the free will? Only if I believe in God in society, can I then believe in free will. If all that I do is a product of matter, where is your free will?"
Cr: "Good question. Ayn Rand: existence and consciousness are why we have free will: we reason. She did not believe that you could do whatever you wanted at any time with no restrictions."
My response: I do not know that we could not have something come from nothing. God works miracles that defy logic. I like Craig's perspective that there was no creation because the universe is eternal. I do not accept it but it is an interesting explanation of his metaphysics.
Free will exists as soon as an intelligent animals have reason and speech. Both God and the angels have reason and speech on a much more sophisticated level, but their wills are free and transcend the iron natural laws of necessity controlling other types of animals. Free will could exist in intelligent homo sapiens even if they were the highest form of intelligent life int he universe.
Cr: "The locus of free will: the ability to focus your mind or not. To exist is to exert mental effort to understand the world or not. To refuse to use one's mind is to dim it down, turn it off. That is free will, a great thing. We utilize reason and that is free will. Now it is not total free will, not possible like running through a wall. One's exercising free will is clearly tempered by one's values."
PR: "People do have free will to violate their values. There is nothing non-material about it. Consciousness defines it. Do you blame people for their bad, even criminal choices?"
Cr: "Yes, I am unique among atheists. Sam Harris says there is no self, but I believe in a self. The mind and body are integrated and constitute the self, but physical elements remain.”
My response: I agree with the Randians that to enjoy and wield free will is to think, be conscious, make decisions and serve as the director of one's own affairs. And Craig is right: free will is not total. I cannot wave a magic wand and move the moon 40,000 miles to the right. I am mortal and will die though I might will to be immortal--which I do not. The self or consciousness exists, be it merely physical or part spiritual, which it is.
PR: "How do you explain if I took 1,000 atheists and 1,000 churchgoers off the street, which group would be more pro-liberty?"
Cr: "More religious people are more pro-liberty than atheists are, and it is that way because Ayn Rand is new and before here in the 50s most atheists were bad like the Frankfurt school. Atheism then was negative just concentrating on the thesis that there was no God. But the positive was never discussed; that a rich egoistic morality undergirds liberty, civil rights, etc."
PR: "I hope you succeed. The track record of most atheists is horrible."
Cr: "Yes, it is very bad."
PR: "I don't see a great future for moral atheism but there are good atheists like Craig. I am an Ethical Monotheist. God wants people to be ethical and follow the Ten Commandments."
My Response: Yes, religious conservatives are for more pro-liberty than are atheists, who like government running our lives. It could be that atheists, godless and lost, seek divine substitutes, and Big Government has become the deity that they worship. Those that love government, love tyranny, and hate liberty and individualism. Since the American Experiment was founded on Godly-guidance, and God grants us liberty and free will as natural capacities to enjoy and make productive, churchgoers more naturally will defend liberty.
Craig has a point that atheists before Rand were Marxists and pro-tyranny, not pro-liberty. Dennis admits that there are good atheists, but that as part of a godless, totalitarian, collective monster, people will not be moral, free, very loving or happy, and that makes them immoral.
I admire Prager's ethical monotheism, and it is objective ethics based upon the one true God. I am a moderate ethically, mostly pro-objective ethics, with some subjective ethics added in.
PR: "When I was a teenager, I spat with my parents but because I believe in God, I always honored my parents. If one does not have religious morals then one is likely to follow one's emotions, or one's therapist. Who is more likely to follow the Ten Commandments--an atheist or a religious person?"
Cr: "I can't answer that since I do not represent all secularists or all atheists. I offer objective morality. We can derive objective morality from logic and observation, and justice is one of its principles. People are judged on the basis of what they say and do and then treated accordingly. I honor my father because he is a good man not because he is my father.
We should follow the Ten Commandments because generally it is in your self-interest to do so, not because God wants you to do so. Follow commandments for their content not because God commands it--I disagree about the method not the content."
PR: “We are to honor our parents, but we do not have to love our parents. Parental authority is a bulwark against totalitarianism and cults. All dictators seek to own youth by their allegiance to the dictator, not to their parents. We are to honor parents even if we do not love them. If parents voted for Trump, their adult kids sometimes severed relations with them. This is secular ruthlessness."
Cr: "Individualism is also a bulwark against socialism. Parents and kids must respect each other--each has a reasoning mind and should expect that they use their reasoning mind. Family relations should be based on respectful mutualism or good relations."
PR: "I like individualism--it emanates from the Biblical view. Everyone is created in God's image and when that dies you get the herd mentality."
My response: Dennis maintains that religious people, more than secularists, are more likely to follow the Ten Commandments, and I believe that is correct. Craig counters that he follows objective morality as a Randian, so therefore, his reason and logic propel him to follow the Ten Commandments for their content, not because God ordered secularists to do so. I do not much accept his theory, but I like Rand's commitment to objective morality, and, yes, following the Ten Commandments is reasonable, and yet their come from Yahweh and they and He are good.
Prager offers parental authority as a bulwark against totalitarianism and that is wise. Craig offers individualism as a bulwark against tyranny, and he is smart too.
Prager offers that individualism emanates from the Bible, that everyone is made in God's image, and this is close to the divine spark in each individual that Jordan Peterson alludes to.
Pr: "Murder: if there is no God, then murder is not wrong. Catholics converted Europeans to Christianity, and the hardest group to convert were German tribes. The Germans rejected Christianity by asking why it is wrong to kill--we are the toughest so by killing we conquer and dominate--the survival of the fittest. Where there is an absolute, objective moral point, there is no killing."
Cr: "We must use observation and reason not revelation and faith to reach the obvious conclusion not to murder. To talk about morality, we need a standard of value. Dennis's standard is God's will. Craig's standard: he does not accept God as the objective source of morality for two reasons:
First, God does not exist; Second, if God did exist, He is still a consciousness giving a command, and any consciousness is subjective, so its moral command is subjective morality.
Here is the Randian objective moral standard: the factual requirements of human life on earth compels us, a rational animal, to use reason to survive. Human life constitutes the standard of human value, the requirements of the kind of animal we are and reference to those requirements will tell us if an action is objectively good or objectively bad,"
My response: Dennis is offering an objective morality that is God-based: if God does not exist, there is no absolute standard of right and wrong--all replacement ethical standards are mere personal feeling or opinion, so then who is to say that murder is not good or desirable? With his example of pagan German tribes, Prager suggests that without objective morality, murder is widespread. Only in godly countries is killing rather rare. He is more right than wrong.
Craig refutes religious objective morality, citing that God does not exist, and if He did, his subjective consciousness would entail that his moral pronouncements are subjective.
His objective moral standard is secular and worldly: human life is the standard of human value, and our reasoning will inform us as to which action is good or bad as we compare/contrast each action to see if it preserves and enriches human life or leads it to be degraded or even perish.
I like objective ethics and would blend both religious and secular ethically objective codes together, more Prager than Biddle, but both, with some subjective ethical, and feeling-based elements included.
Cr: "Freedom is objectively good because the human needs to live and prosper. He must be free to act on his judgments, to produce goods, to trade them voluntarily to mutual advantage. If he can't be free, he can't live as a human being. He must be free to be happy. This is a fact (moral) is an observable fact. Rand's entire moral theory: a right is a recognition of the fact that to live a human being must act in this way--he must be free to enjoy his right to life, liberty, property, etc."
My response: this is accurate and eloquent Randian ethical stance.
Pr: "All of that is your opinion that freedom is important. Admirable view but not absolute or objective. You have no argument against critics."
Cr: "I do have an argument that works. 1. How do you make clear that the requirements of human are objective and correct, not just opinion? 2. Rand offers this fact: Her morality is the philosophically worked out proof of what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. What she means by that is the rights to life, liberty, and happiness. Rand says about each of these rights that not only do you have a right to each of them but that it is morally correct that you pursue them. She can prove this with reason, observation and logic--prove it objectively in a standard of value.
Take life: You have the right to live but not to murder as self-evident or granted by the Creator or both. Rand wants you to live your life in your self-interest while not violating the rights of others.
Life is the fundamental right because it is also the standard of moral value. Why is that? Life is the only reason we can pursue values--i.e., we are alive, and why we need to pursue values. Rocks, rivers can't pursue value. Humans are alive to pursue value and that is a necessity. Human life makes values possible, necessary to human life is the moral standard."
My response: Prager attacks Biddle as a ethical subjectivist morally, that his claim to be ethically objective is mere opinion, however commendable its content. Biddle is more right here than Prager, in that Biddle is advocating an objectivist ethic, but he lacks the power of God's authority and command that we obey the Ten Commandments.
Biddle offers human life as the ethical moral standard, and those values make that life worth living, I concur.
PR: "Your view is commendable. But many don't agree. It is still opinion. It is your leap of faith. I made a leap of faith to believe in God that said to protect life. Your view is not provable. Many chose death. So on pragmatics: who will be more effective preventing murder? Those that die and that is the end for us, or those that die, but heaven or hell awaits them? Which is more likely to keep people moral if punishment for wrongdoing after death is real, or there is no consequence for sinning?"
Cr: "Yes, if consequences, it is a moral deterrent. I know you do not believe in hell."
PR: "No, I believe in hell though Jewish secularists don't. Maimonides, the greatest Jewish intellectual ever, said reward and punishment after death, was one of the sacred Jewish principles."
Cr: "If nihilistic or atheist view of the world, then anything goes, nothing matters versus God and afterlife alternatives, the historically people behaved, when good for fear of hell. A third alternative is the Ayn Rand view of no afterlife but behave anyway in this world.
My response: It seems likely to me that there is an afterlife, and that for some believers, perhaps most people, a fear of going to hell is a deterrent on their this-worldly behavior. But people that believe in heaven in the afterlife also behave well in this world, out of love and respect for God, a willingness and determination to please God, and perhaps receive a reward in heaven for a life faithfully and morally well-lived.
Cr: "We both know it is true that you can act anyway you want and be happy."
My response: I disagree with Craig here completely. If I was a sadistic Buchenwald guard herding Jews into gas chambers, and I found extreme pleasure in hurting and killing them--I am capable of this, as Jordan Peterson admits about himself and 98% of the rest of society--I would enjoy and be addicted to my sick pleasure of killing innocent victims, but that would not make me happy. An evil, vicious act committed again and again in an institutional setting could not emanate from the psyche of a happy person, I suspect that happy people are loving, creative and spiritually good. Those that habitually commit acts of great wickedness are acting out something rotten that they feel about being and themselves internally.
Cr: "We would tell our kids be moral for that alone will make you happy. Being immoral guarantees unhappiness."
My response: Biddle here is talking about the connection between being ethical and being happy that is roughly equivalent to my paragraph just up above objecting to his remarks on personal happiness.
Cr: "Ayn Rand: Life is the standard of value and happiness is the moral purpose of life, and that makes this a science. Happiness is the state of consciousness that arises from achievement of your values, and it has to be a state on non-contradictory joy, values in harmony, not at war with each other in your soul. Your Ten Commandments to be obeyed in your self-interest. I say do it for self-interest, not for the sake of the Ten Commandments."
PR: "We need God for objective morality and for the practical needs of the community. We used to have secular communal activities: bowling, Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis. Now the only communities in America are Jew of Christian religious gatherings. I do not know of any atheist communities. I enjoy my Jewish religious gatherings. Community is a value; do you not agree?"
My response: Ayn Rand's understanding of happiness is moral and based upon achieving one's values and that seems realistic to me. Our values should be in harmony, and we should follow the Ten Commandments out of self-interest, and for God's sake, and for the sake of the community, finally.
Though I am a staunch individualist, I know better than to downplay the value and richness emotionally from communal ties and events, most of which are absent from my life, not so much by choice, as being ostracized by non-individuating joiners for refusing to cease maverizing.
Cr: "Yes, of course, but not all religious communities are life-affirming, life-serving values. We do get together."
My response: Most atheists are likely academics isolated from other academics so weekly communal services to uplift each other would be rare but desirable. And not all religious communities are life-affirming, if by life-affirming one means each person in the community is existing as a self-actualizer, dedicating her life and achievements to God and the betterment of the world.
PR: "There are no credible proofs for God's existence. Can you clarify a proof for God's existence or evidence for God's existence, as there is no proof or argument for God's existence? We both exist. It came from rocks, a leap of faith that is absurd. DNA is information--how could it not have intelligence behind it? The complexity of the eye is another example. It is not likely so that everything came from matter as atheists insist. Charles Krauthammer--Atheism--everything came from nothing."
Cr: "It seems incredible the rise of life (from nothing) or did life always live? It is a logical fallacy: If you can't say where life came from scientifically, ergo God. This is the fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Evolution is good science."
My response: proofs for or against or evident-based arguments for or against the existence of God cannot be definitively determined or dismissed, so I enjoy them all, side with the believers over the atheists, but am willing to admit we all need to keep open-minds over these controversies and continue to tolerantly agree to agree to disagree with freedom of conscience enjoyed by all.
PR: "A pattern exists but we cannot explain it--it may be explainable scientifically how it exists but cannot tell why it exists, which religion does."
Cr: "It is an axiomatic issue that existence is something rather than nothing. Why do we need to assume existence wasn’t always here. We know we exist because we can observe it.
Here is a question? Are the multiplicity of religions a proof against God?"
Pr: "People yearn to know the Creator; we have universal ideas with many interpretations"
My response: It is probably true that something can't come from nothing, and that we can say nothing about nothing but the ontological moderate in me does not agree with these statements. Usually but not always something cannot come from nothing, and usually but not always we can say nothing about nothing.
Craig is suggesting the existence of one Absolute God is disproven by the multiplicity of religious interpretations contradicting each other and conflicting with each other? Dennis is right in that the religious search for meaning and a personal relationship with the divine is universal, but people are individual so their interpretation of such an intimate encounter will vary without being self-contradictory.
Also, God and De's angels are individuals, so though they are on the same team, their personal account of how to relate to the Divinity, and the name attributed to that Divinity, will vary widely. These are moderate strengths not wishy-washy, subjective weaknesses. Collectively and cumulatively the insight gathered from the varied inputs will enrich all to provide for the most objective interpretation possible about the state of being that God is.
Cr: "Religious factions do not happen in science."
My response: Really. There are not Leftist scientists alarmist about global warming and reputable scientists among the opposing climate-deniers? Professors in college do not in factions claiming to be objective scientists? I think that Craig is offering that, scientists, ideally and at their traditional best, are logical, intellectually honest and open, and geared to the evidence, will accept the truth and even change their theories should the evidence rule out their favored previous theories.
Cr: "Scientists use reason to debate and the best reason over tie wins. Religion is based on faith so no easy way to handle disagreement."
PR: "If there is no God, anything goes."
Cr: If faith is how we gain knowledge, anything foes."
PR "How about abortion?"
Cr: "Abortion is a woman's right right up to the day of birth." The right to life applies to a human being is a social context and the fetus before birth is not yet an individuated human being."
PR: "Life is the basis of living. Eugenics is rational thinking, get rid of those unworthy of life."
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