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Agnostics say they just don’t know the answer to life’s biggest question. Pat Flynn, Host of Philosophy for the People, says that, while agnostics make some good points, their decision not to decide is ultimately a mistake.
Cy Kellett:
Hey, let’s face it. Agnostics make some strong points. Pat Flynn is next. Hello, and welcome to Focus, The Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks so much for being here with us. Among those who we might contend intellectually here at Catholic Answers, what do you say to people who say, “I just don’t know”? That’s a pretty tough position to argue against, and there’s lots of good reason to say, “I don’t know.” I mean, starting with the fact that God is invisible and usual way we know things exist is we see them. So we invited Pat Flynn, who is affiliate apologist of Catholic Answers now, and he’s the proprietor of Philosophy for the People, the Philosophy for the People podcast. I hope you’ll check it out. And we said, Pat, what are the things that agnostics get right? And how should we respond to those things? Here’s what he had to say.
Cy Kellett:
Pat Flynn from Philosophy for the People and Chronicles of Strength. Thanks for being with us.
Pat Flynn:
It is my absolute pleasure, Cy. Thanks for having me back.
Cy Kellett:
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say affiliate Pat Flynn, because you are an affiliated apologist with Catholic Answers, which we’re super happy about. So I apologize if you have a title that I was supposed to say.
Pat Flynn:
You are forgiven.
Cy Kellett:
All right.
Pat Flynn:
But yes, I am technically an affiliate apologist and it is a great honor to be one.
Cy Kellett:
Recently we did a podcast with Karlo Broussard on things that atheists get right. And I think it was very, very helpful, but we were reminded that not everybody is an atheist, not everybody who doesn’t commit to a belief in God is an atheist. And so we wanted to ask you, are there things that agnostics get right? And maybe start a little bit of a dialogue on that side. All right?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Yes, sir. That sounds good.
Cy Kellett:
I was amazed the other day to read, we were just talking about him, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Right. Yeah. We talked about him last time.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So after we talked about him, somebody said, “He’s not an atheist, he’s agnostic.” And I looked it up and he says, “I’m an agnostic, I’m not an atheist.” And so I thought, wow, that’s really something, he’s pretty hardcore for an agnostic. So how do you see this relationship between agnosticism and atheism? I think we should be fair to people what they say that they are, but also we should say what we think the distinction is.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. So I don’t want to get into just pure verbal disputes. So I’ll just say, here’s how I understand atheism and agnosticism. Atheism is a position that does make a positive claim about the world. It says whatever else is in the world, God ain’t one of those things.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right, right.
Pat Flynn:
Right. And usually they’ll go further. They’ll usually say there’s no ghosts or no pixies. Atheists have something against pixies for some reason too, but that’s making a positive claim and it’s a claim about knowledge, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
That’s how I understand atheism. That’s how I understood myself when I was an atheist. Right? And of course, the good atheist, the philosophical atheists not only understand that, but then they have theories, right? They have theories of what’s fundamental and how things get explained from those fundamental of theories. And you look around, there’s no God in there, right? Because they say, God isn’t there. So it’s a positive claim. Whereas agnostics, they come in different flavors, like pudding. But I think the two basic distinctions are soft and hard form agnostic.
Pat Flynn:
The soft form agnostic is somebody who just really kind of describes their psychological state, and essentially they’re saying, “Look, I don’t know. I just don’t know.” That’s a soft form agnostic, but there are stronger agnostics who then go further and say, “We cannot know.” But now that’s making a stronger claim. And the moment you go and you start to make any sort of claim about knowledge, about knowing something, including that you know that we cannot know, you now acquire a burden of proof. So now I want to hear some reasons for why we cannot know. You see?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
So part of this is a debate about, is any position really innocent here? Or do all positions or at least most positions acquire some sort of burden of proof where they’re now under an obligation to argue for their theory?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
I want to be generous and say probably yes, theists, atheists and strong agnostics seem to all be making positive knowledge claims. Therefore we should expect that they should be able to give us some reasons for why they think their claims are true. But I think the soft agnostic, the person who just kind throw their hands up and says, “Look, buddy, I just don’t know.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
We don’t really expect much from them.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
And nor should we.
Cy Kellett:
My problem with Neil Degrasse Tyson at the beginning was I was confusing him with the physicist Freeman Dyson for a second. But one of the things that Neil Degrasse Tyson said was he added onto that, “I don’t really care. I’m indifferent to the whole thing. It’s not within the realm of questions that I’m interested in.”
Pat Flynn:
This seems to be an odd theme for him. Doesn’t it? Because when we were talking about the simulation hypothesis at the end of his, I thought, insane little monologue about that, Larry King asked him, “Well, what difference does this make if we’re living in a computer simulation, programmed up by some hormonally unstable teenager in his basement?” And he says, “Well, I guess it doesn’t make any difference at all.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
And at that point, I think you’ve just got to throw your hands on and be like, really dude? That makes no difference to how you live your life? I think, again, most people who really think about these matters very deeply, even the atheists that I talk to, they seem to think that this stuff makes a big difference and we should care. And that’s why they tend to think about it very deeply.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
So yeah, I guess I just don’t understand that indifference. I can understand why people might fall into certain positions with respect to belief of God in light of certain evidences, but I’ve never understood how somebody could be indifferent to the question.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So let’s take something that agnostics get right, then. With this distinction that you have made between strong agnostics who say, “You can’t know,” and soft agnostics who say, “I don’t know,” all they make is the claim, “I don’t know,” what are some things, whatever distinctions might be there that they might get right?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Focusing more on the soft agnostics, I’ll have something additional to say about the strong agnostic as well, I think one thing they get right is they realize that atheism is not a default position, that it requires evidence also. That because it’s making a positive claim, we should like to hear something in favor of that claim. And what agnostics seem to get, the ones who just say, “I don’t know,” is that even if they aren’t convinced of God’s existence, or even if they’ve looked into some of the arguments for the existence of God and maybe they were able to poke some holes in it or saw somebody else poke some holes in it, they realize that just doesn’t default you to atheism.
Pat Flynn:
And I think that’s right. I think that’s correct, is that even if you thought that all the evidence for God could be defeated or all the arguments for God could be exploded, that is not to say that God does not exist. Right? At most it would just sort of maybe undermine some of your justification for belief in God.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right.
Pat Flynn:
But it doesn’t automatically throw you into the more positive, stronger position of saying that there is no God. And so I think we can do some bridge building here and say to the agnostic, “No, I think that’s a point that you guys genuinely get that you should not default to atheism, even if you’re not convinced of theism.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. This is actually a very valuable thing that agnostic get right. Because you see strange memes, like a baby is born atheist, like all babies are born atheist. You have to teach them to believe in God. Well, I don’t know. That doesn’t strike me as sensible at all.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. So part of this has to do with who has the burden of proof in these debates. And sometimes the atheists and other agnostics will say, “Well, it’s you. It’s the theist who has the burden of proof because you believe,” well, they might say a number of different things, but maybe one of them is, “You believe the more kind of extraordinary thing.” But I mean, what’s extraordinary is really in the eye of the beholder. To me, atheism seems pretty extraordinary for a number of reasons. One is that by far, most people now, and so far as we can tell, have always believed in God. The vast majority of people have believed in God. Seems to be a very common, basic belief. In fact, the best psychology we have on this sort of tells against those stupid memes, that belief in God is something that sort of just naturally occasioned in us. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
It’s not something that we’re indoctrinated into. In fact, it’s something we have to be indoctrinated out of. So it’s sort of on the level of belief, it would seem, as many other beliefs that certain philosophers would call “properly basic,” like our belief that the external world is real, which ties into our previous conversation. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
Or belief that the past is real. All these different things. Right? And if that’s the case, if that’s right, if God is a belief like that, it’s properly basic, then it would almost certainly show that the burden of proof is on the atheist in the same way that the burden of proof would be on a solipsist or an eliminativist. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
And it would not be enough in connection to that, and I think this is something agnostics realize, to just say, “Well, since you, as a theist are positing that more things exist, you have the burden to proof,” because if we think about the solipsist, which is the person who thinks that only they exist and everything’s a figment of the imagination, well, they posit that less things exist than most people, but we still think that’s the less reasonable position to hold.
Cy Kellett:
Exactly.
Pat Flynn:
Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
So, no. I want to say if anything, atheists have the burden of proof, but I’m willing to be more neutral just for the sake of argument or debate. And again, this is something I want to say that I think agnostics realize, that if there is a burden of proof, yeah, the theist has it no more than the atheist does, and the atheist position is not the default.
Cy Kellett:
Right. So there’s a basic insight that if you make a positive claim about reality, about the nature of the world, that it has God or that it doesn’t have God, that it’s big, that it’s small, whatever, you have taken on a burden of providing evidence and the agnostic sees, at least says, “I don’t have that evidence. I’m not taking on that burden. I just don’t know.”
Pat Flynn:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. And they also seem to understand that we have to kind of separate the data to be explained from the theory that explains the data, right? It’s not like the atheist just has the world and the theist has the world and God. No, the atheist has the data of the physical world, but then they have their theories to try and explain that data. And the theist has the data of the physical world and their theory to try and explain that data. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
And these theories are competing and they both require arguments and evidence in their favor. And again, I think the agnostic rightfully sees that.
Cy Kellett:
Is there anything else the agnostic gets right? It seems like in a certain way you could say to the average enquirer, “Well, I’ve got this guy over here who says he knows God exists. This guy over here who says he knows God doesn’t exist. This guy over here says he doesn’t know. I’m going to go with the doesn’t know guy.”
Pat Flynn:
Sure. Yeah. I think one thing that agnostics seem to appreciate, which I think is a general good rule of thumb, we could call it, is this sort of idea of safety when it comes to our beliefs. And it seems like a lot of agnostics want to say something like this. “Well, why take on more beliefs that I could be wrong about? Why not just stick with the stuff that is certain or highly probable?” And then they take that generally safe principle, and they think that sort of translates to agnosticism. And I want to give them the first part. I want to say, yeah, that first principle is worthy of consideration, but I don’t think it automatically translates into an endorsement for agnosticism as being automatically the safer and more reasonable position, because once you start to think about agnosticism in relation to certain positions, it becomes complicated fast. So we can dive into that here, Cy, if you want, but they have a good principle, but a poor application is what I want to say.
Cy Kellett:
And the principle is, don’t take on lots of beliefs that you have no support for. Is that the basic principle?
Pat Flynn:
We call it a principle of a playing it safe. Why take on more things that you could be wrong about if you don’t have to, if there’s no reason to?
Cy Kellett:
Gotcha.
Pat Flynn:
Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
And the idea is they might think that agnosticism, because it’s a logically weaker claim, it has less content, like, “I just take the world, not the world and God,” or something like that. That’s why it’s safer and more reasonable. And so I want to push back against that, and I’ll borrow an example from my friend Lydia McGrue. She’s a good epistemologist and she’ll argue that just holding to whatever is sort of the logically weaker position, whatever has sort of more content, doesn’t automatically mean that you’re holding to the safer and more rational position. So here’s an example to illustrate the point. So Christine Flynn, my wife. I think you’ve met her, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
If you say that Christine exists, well, that is less of a commitment, technically speaking, than if you say Christine exists and is married to me.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I’ve taken on another commitment. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Right.
Pat Flynn:
You see that?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
But surely it would be definitely irrational for anybody who’s sort of familiar with my wife and I to say, “Well, look, I’m just going to hold to the proposition that Christine exists, since that’s a simpler and safer position, than Christine exists and is married to Pat Flynn, because the latter involves more commitments.” It’s logically stronger. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
It entails the weaker thing. But the weaker thing doesn’t entail that. So why take the risk?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
I’ll just be agnostic. Less things I could be wrong about. Right? It’s safer, they might say. But I think all of us realize, well, that’s just really foolish, because now what you’re doing is you’re taking a stand in relation to evidence that pushes powerfully in favor of the stronger commitment. Not only that my wife exists, but that she’s actually married to me. And so the confusion here is people seem to be confusing, and I think this is a mistake that agnostics make, they’re confusing that Christine exists and has a higher probability than Christine exists and is married to Pat Flynn with the idea that it’s safer and more reasonable to be agnostic about the stronger claim.
Pat Flynn:
Do we see that? Because those aren’t the same thing, and that’s the confusion. So it might be the case that given your evidence, you think that it’s 99.99999 percent likely that Christine exists and only 99.99 percent likely that she exists and is married to me. So yeah, the former has a higher likelihood, but it does not mean that it’s safe or reasonable to be agnostic about the second commitment. Right?
Cy Kellett:
That’s right.
Pat Flynn:
In fact, it’s insanely unreasonable, to be agnostic about the second commitment, even if it has a lower probability. Does that make sense? Do we see why that’s a basic confusion that’s being made?
Cy Kellett:
Yes, it is, because it seems to me that underlying, that is a false sense of security in a very simplistic understanding of probability. Like, if I took every man on earth and said, “What’s the probability that Christine is married to Pat Flynn?” That’s a really low probability. I’m staying out of this one. But probably doesn’t and work that way. Like, Christine and Pat Flynn, I know them. There’s tons of other things I factor into the probable likelihood, including the fact that they tell me that they’re married to one another and I see them together and all these other things. So it’s kind of a cheesy reliance on probability that has nothing to do with actual experience of the real world.
Pat Flynn:
That’s right. It’s a dumb slogan. And the problem is that if you just say, “Christine exists,” yeah, that’s logically weak. Right? But if you move then to the claim that Christine exists and we should be agnostic about her being married to Pat, that is not necessarily logically weak, nor is it rational to believe that, because now you’re taking a stand in the face of our evidence pool. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
And I’m assuming that the people are in the relevant evidence pool. And in that case, you’ve now just taken on a position that is extremely unreasonable. And I would say it’s not at all a safer position. It’s an unsafe position.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. And now that applies to the existence of God, because we actually do have experience in our life. Like even if I say, “Well, I’m one of those people who has no direct experience of God. I’ve never felt God’s presence.” Okay. However we might argue about that, we just take that on face value. But you have millions of people who tell you that they do have direct experience of God. You see the evidence, you can intellectually engage with the arguments. So simply saying, “I’m going to flee to safety here and say I know as little as I can possibly know. I affirm as little as I can possibly affirm.” It doesn’t necessarily comport. Like, your marriage is a real thing in the real world. Well, okay. So I could do a probability thing that doesn’t acknowledge the real world, but that’s not real probability then.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. Part of the problem here is, again, whether we’re talking about a sort of softer or harder or stronger form of agnostic, and the point I’m making is if somebody’s sort of saying we should be agnostic because it’s safer, well, I’m saying whether agnosticism is safer or more reasonable, depends on the evidential state.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, gotcha. Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
It is not automatically so. So the minute somebody endorses agnosticism, and they’re not just describing their psychological condition. Right? But they’re endorsing agnosticism, they’re moving beyond the logically weak position, and they might very well be committing themselves to something that might be extremely irrational and unsafe considering the evidential state. And of course I’m going to be with you, Cy, and say that the evidential state concerning the existence of God is enormous.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
It would be irrational to be agnostic in the face of that, but that just takes us into a different debate. So I’m just trying to deflate the general slogan. And then if we want to talk about what that evidential state is, certainly we can do that.
Cy Kellett:
Gotcha. Got you. Okay. Now the last one that you mentioned to me of your things that agnostics get right, it’s not really so much an argument. It’s a quality of the agnostic.
Pat Flynn:
Yes. And this is that, in the agnostics that I talk to, I do want to circle back to a previous thing though, but I want to say that agnostics that I talk to tend to be more susceptible to productive disagreement and dialogue. But I want to hit pause. I want to come back to the safety thing one more time, real quick, if you don’t mind, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Sure, sure.
Pat Flynn:
Because I think there’s another relevant consideration here when it comes to whether we’re being sort of rational and safe in our beliefs, and that is what sort of outcome are we after, right? What is the utility that we expect or we want? And this is where I actually think that considerations, like Pascal’s Wager, play a really big role in the apologetic context, right? So if we think about what we have to gain versus what we have to lose by engaging a life of sincere religious seeking and being right about that versus not engaging a life of religious seeking and being right about that, I think it all comes out hugely in favor of theism, right?
Pat Flynn:
That what you have to gain, aside from eternal friendship with God in the next life, in this life is far, far better in terms of the best data we have on people who live a more religious, spiritual life than those who don’t, in terms of all the sort of natural facts, right.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Of natural wellbeing in this life, psychological health, physical health. It’s all better. It’s all better, right? So it’s almost all up shots to pursue God and almost zero downside at all. Then I want to say, if you actually are 50 50 on this stuff, if you actually are trying to consider the evidence and you’re 50 50, I’m going to say that the rational thing is to make theism the default position because of what you have to gain versus what you have to lose. Now that takes us again into a deeper conversation utility considerations of Pascal’s Wager.
Cy Kellett:
Oh no, but I’m glad you made that point.
Pat Flynn:
But I think it’s an important point to note.
Cy Kellett:
Right. And it does strike me that’s at least in part why there are so much propaganda around religion and maybe Christianity in particular. People will say things that are just patently not true. Like, all the wars in history have been religious. But it’s important to say that because there’s so much overwhelming evidence that the Christian family, for example, has advantages that you have to say, “Well, yeah, but you’re not looking at all the data.” And so you say things that are frankly propagandistic.
Pat Flynn:
That’s correct. Yeah. So I just wanted to slide that one in. But turning back to the third point about things I believe agnostics get right. I actually had a conversation recently with my friend, Agnostic John, on my channel, Philosophy for the People, and Agnostic John used to be Atheist John. And Agnostic John said that he realized that while he might not have had reasons to believe in God, he also came to the sudden realization, actually, that he didn’t really have any reasons not to believe in God, either. So he moved from Atheist John to Agnostic John.
Pat Flynn:
But the real thing I want to emphasize is that when I engage with agnostics like Agnostic John, the conversation tends to be really productive. It tends to be with somebody who doesn’t have a sort of prior animus against religion. Agnostic John always seems to be sincerely interested in what I believe and why. He’s willing to give sincere pushback and sincere criticism, because he’s actually, I think, trying to get to the truth of things. And I find that’s helpful for me, because it makes sure that I’m able to refine and articulate my beliefs, and we all come away better because of those types of conversations.
Pat Flynn:
Now, part of me thinks, Cy, that this sort of less tribalistic attitude of being more susceptive to productive dialogue, it might just be an automatic consequence of being agnostic in a sense that, since they’re not really committed to things, they don’t really feel the need to defend something, right? So they can be kind of genuinely more open. Whereas if you’re a theist or an atheist, you already have commitments, right? And as soon as you have a commitment, if we’re being honest with each other, it’s so much easier to raise the defenses, right? It’s so much easier to kind of be on the attack whenever your view is challenged.
Pat Flynn:
So if you don’t really have a view that can be challenged, it kind of makes sense that they wouldn’t be as punchy, right? That they might be able to be a little bit more chill and have a productive conversation. And what I want to say is that is an attitude we can all learn to emulate, even if we’re defenders, right? We can all learn to take a better, more seriously interested perspective on something, to really learn to listen when other people are talking, to try and understand what they actually believe. Right? Not just hope that we can quickly get our own points in, but trying to really understand what they believe and why.
Pat Flynn:
And I think there’s many agnostics that provide a really good model for that. And I have to say, when it comes to the dialogues I have, I think I have some of the best dialogues with agnostics, even better dialogues with agnostics than I do with other religious people who aren’t Catholic. And I think it’s for those types of reasons.
Cy Kellett:
This really is an affliction, though, that has increased, for some reason, as our media options change. And it really does seem like the default position for many people is to roll the eyes and make a bitter comment. And I include myself in that. I find myself like having to challenge myself. Why are you dismissing that person or that point of view? Because you disagree with it and maybe you are not enamored of it. You moved by it 20 years ago. That doesn’t mean you were right when you did that or you have nothing to learn from that person. But this really is an affliction this kind of, “Oh God, that again.”
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, you’re right. And I think we can see this in our own lives. I mean, just think about something that you really don’t care about, or that you don’t think really bears significantly on your life in any way. I don’t know, like Sasquatch. For me, I don’t see how Sasquatch would fundamentally alter any of my core commitments. So I can be very open to conversations about Sasquatch. Maybe I don’t think that I’m going to be convinced right away, but I can sincerely, in a very non defensive way, hear the case for Sasquatch. Right?
Cy Kellett:
I see. Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Because it doesn’t threaten me.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
Right? It really doesn’t threaten me.
Cy Kellett:
Until you’re on the forest. Oh, sorry.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Right, right. But if I’m being honest, that’s hard to do when I’m evaluating positions that do threaten me.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Pat Flynn:
See that, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
And so what I’m saying is, when we’re sort of genuinely agnostic about something, I think that is a posture we should learn to practice when having conversations with others, even though, of course, we’re not giving up our core commitments and we obviously should articulate and defend them, it’s that posture that I think agnostics get right that facilitates more fruitful and productive dialogue. Because they’re coming from a position where they don’t feel threatened.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
They don’t feel the need to immediately kind of jump out and try and land some counter blows or something like that. And it’s just something that I’ve just realized often in conversation with agnostics, how pleasant and how productive and fruitful those conversations are. And I think it’s largely because of where they’re coming from. And I’ve tried to emulate that when I’m engaging positions that are obviously not my own as well.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So just to kind of review, there are things that agnostics get right, and we can freely acknowledge them. The first thing that agnostics get right is that atheism is not a default position, that it makes positive claims and so it’s not just, “Well, I don’t know. So therefore I’m an atheist.” But at least maintaining ambiguity where there is ambiguity, or maintaining standards, as far as arguments goes. The second one is that there is something noble and intelligent about not being gullible and holding back and maintaining a safe position. Now you critiqued both of those to say, “Yes, those are good, but maintaining them in the face of the evidence for God can become problematic. I mean, that might be a good place to start. Okay. I’m going to start my inquiry now.” But if you’re ending up there in the light of all the evidence for God, not so good.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. I think that’s fair. I think it’s a decent principle in the abstract, but I think in certain instances, it’s a poor application.
Cy Kellett:
And then your last one, if I could kind of sum it up, is an agnostic is less likely to call you a jerk.
Pat Flynn:
I think that’s right. Yeah. The types of comment say, get on YouTube that are the nasty ones typically don’t come from agnostics, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right. Okay. Or maybe I call that less tribalism, or less partisanship or something like that. Okay. But having acknowledged these things that agnostics get right, you are not an agnostic. You believe in God. So maybe give me the elevator pitch. I hate to say elevator pitch, but yeah, elevator pitch.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, I’ll give you an elevator pitch. Well, I believe in God, because I think God is the best and simplest explanation of the wide range of data and experiences that we encounter as human beings, from the contingency of certain things, to why the universe began to exist, to why the universe is fine tuned for the interaction of intelligent life, to the objective moral landscape that we experience, to consciousness, to rationality, to teleology, to near death experiences, to religious experiences, to mystical experiences, and so on and so on and so forth. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Pat Flynn:
I think that the evidence is overwhelming for theism. I also think that God is a sort of necessary condition for all knowledge, and I do think that God is a properly basic belief. So even if I didn’t have all this other evidence that I thought was compelling and other more traditional metaphysical arguments for God, I would still be convinced that theism is the default position. And it’s easy enough for me to poke holes in any atheistic argument that I have no reason to move away from it.
Cy Kellett:
As a matter of fact, you lived it,. You lived yourself as an atheist for a time.
Pat Flynn:
That’s correct. And I actually did not stay in agnosticism long. As I came out of atheism and I really began to discover its many deficiencies, and I started to gather the wider evidence pool, right? As I sort of entered, I think, the more appropriate evidence pool, yeah, maybe I had a very passing phase as an agnostic, but I pretty quickly started to lean towards theism, and that confidence grew and grew as I con considered evidence further and deeper.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you, Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn:
Thank you, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Pat Flynn, I’m committed to this belief, is married to Christine Flynn who will have a book coming out for us here at Catholic Answers Press, I think in the fall, probably in the fall. You can find him at Philosophy for the People, and I hope you will find him at Philosophy for the People. And you can find him, is Chronicles of Strength? Is that it? Chroniclesofstrength.com?
Pat Flynn:
That’s correct.
Cy Kellett:
Chroniclesofstrength.com. Again, Pat Flynn. I’m so glad that we have this association with you. I appreciate the hard work you’ve done in explaining things to us, and I hope we’ll get to talk with you many more times.
Pat Flynn:
I hope so, too, Cy. Thank you so much.
Cy Kellett:
Our modern media rated society presents us with just an endless number of truth claims, things that we are told we should believe, that we should accept, and the truth is that it’s very reasonable for most people about most things to say, “I don’t know. I mean, I see all your commercials about Oxyclean. I don’t know if Oxyclean works or not. I’m not on the bandwagon.” And as Pat was pointing out, the Sasquatch thing. I don’t know about Sasquatch. And so there’s something very, very reasonable about agnosticism or about the person who is willing to not just fall for everything in the modern world. So much is presented to us. And the truth is a lot of it lacks evidence, or it just doesn’t require us to come to a conclusion about.
Cy Kellett:
The idea of God, however, the question of God is a different kind of question. It does require something more from us. It has a kind of value, a kind of impact, right at the very core of us, whether or not God exists. And so it requires the reasonable and responsible person to be a little more attentive here. And when we’re attentive, “I don’t know,” doesn’t seem like such an attractive answer, because there is actually an overwhelming amount of evidence for the existence of God. And that’s what we try to do here. We try to share that existence.
Cy Kellett:
Hey, if you like what we do here, we love it if you would give us that five star review, maybe hit the like button wherever you listen. Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, any of the other podcast services. And while you’re there, if you subscribe, you’ll get an update whenever a new episode is available. If you’re watching on YouTube, we’re growing on YouTube. And we’re very grateful for that. If you would subscribe and maybe hit that little bell, that way you’ll be notified when new episodes are available, that would be great as well.
Cy Kellett:
And we’d love to hear from you. Send us an email. Focus@catholic.com is our email address, focus@catholic.com. Let us know what you think of this episode or any other episode, or maybe you got an idea for a future one. And if you’d like to support us, you can support us at givecatholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.
Cy Kellett:
Now that we’re done, Pat, I have to admit something to you. I was faking it when I acted like I knew what eliminativism is. I have no idea what that is. Could you just for me personally, what is eliminativism?
Pat Flynn:
Eliminative is a position in philosophy, different aspects of philosophy. It gets the name that because they have a theory that can’t explain some data, they eliminate the data, or they explain away the data. This is most notorious with eliminativists concerning consciousness. Right? So think of strong physicalists, because they’re so committed to fundamental reality being completely mindless, and they realize that you can’t get mindedness from mindlessness, that they say that consciousness actually can’t be real. It has to be an illusion of some kind. Now, I think that position is deeply incoherent, but those who sort of hit that nuclear option, we would call eliminativists.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, yeah. Well, thanks for explaining that. And since we’re going to be working together, if you say things like that, I’m going to fake it. I’m going to pretend like I know what you’re talking about in the moment.
Pat Flynn:
Fake it. I’ll do the same. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
All right. All right. Try not to do that to me though, Pat. All right?
Pat Flynn:
Fair deal. Sorry.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Thank you.