Trent sits down with prolific Youtuber Tom Jump to talk atheism and philosophy with some magic and unicorns thrown in for good measure.
Welcome to The Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn, and it’s time for another dialogue. So I was actually invited by an atheist YouTuber named Tom Jump, his channel, I think it’s the Tom Jump channel on YouTube, and he’s actually interviewed, gosh, probably dozens of Christian apologists and philosophers and engaged them in civil dialogue. So he’s well read, he understands the subject, and so we talked about should we be atheist? We talked about, how do we know what’s true, arguments for the existence of God. So we had a wide ranging discussion. I think you’ll like it. Though a heads up though, it’s a bit more philosophical than the other discussions that I’ve had with previous guests. But I think that you’ll like that.
It’s nice to be able to show different kinds of guests and different kinds of conversations we’ll have, and I’m hoping this can be a good model for you. If you have a friend who may be skeptical, philosophical, I think it was a really good conversation with Tom. But if you’re listening through and you’re getting lost, like they’re using this word or that word, I don’t know what that means, hang in there. Next week on Tuesday, I’m going to do a debrief of the conversation and mostly to dive into the issues we brought up to give you a primer on issues in philosophy that we raised in our conversation. That’ll be next week. But for now, here’s my conversation with Tom Jump on, should we be atheists?
Tom Jump:
So Trent, thanks for coming on and taking the time to have a conversation with me. I really appreciate it. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself before we get started?
Trent Horn:
Sure. My name is Trent Horn, I am a Catholic apologist and speaker. I work for an organization called Catholic Answers, which is a media apostolate dedicated to explaining and defending the Catholic faith. I have graduate degrees in theology, philosophy and bioethics, I have authored nine books, I’m happily married, with two little kiddos at home, and I enjoy talking to people who disagree with me, especially on very important matters related to faith, morality, ethics and what I try to do. I have a podcast called The Council of Trent where I explain and defend the Catholic faith, but periodically engage in conversations with people who disagree as a way to model how we can have these kinds of conversations. [inaudible 00:02:32] is important that no matter where you stand on a belief system, I think it’s important for you to be able to share that belief system with other people and engage in critical dialogue and conversation.
Tom Jump:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think that these kinds of conversations are really important, but they’re also really fun and interesting, especially-
Trent Horn:
Oh yeah.
Tom Jump:
… when you’re talking to someone who’s as polite and interesting as you are, as opposed to some people who I know who are just really combative and just evasive. So-
Trent Horn:
Those can be more entertaining, and that’s what’s hard. I think, Tom, that we live in an age where people, they go to YouTube or they go online and they want to be entertained. So even on your own channel, it’s hard. Like, I get entertained when you talk to somebody who’s just completely bonkers. There’s fun in that, but it’s almost like a guilty pleasure. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m enjoying this, but I really shouldn’t because these aren’t the kinds of exchanges we should be having.” But I don’t know if you can relate to that.
Tom Jump:
Oh, I totally agree. But it’s always about those… You got to get those clicks, right? So mixing in the crazy stuff with the really interesting intellectual stuff, and that seems to be what you find the right balance. That’s the way to go.
Trent Horn:
It’s candy and vegetables.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. Exactly.
Trent Horn:
So, yeah. But I guess today we’re going to talk about, should we be atheists? Well, I guess you can introduce the topic more.
Tom Jump:
Yeah, sure. So the topic we agreed upon was, should we be atheist? And my position is, yes, we should be atheist. The reason I take that position is that anything that is asserted initially is imaginary until demonstrated otherwise. So Santa Claus, well, we should probably think there is no Santa Claus until there’s evidence to believe there is such a thing, because… The reason we do this is because there’s infinitely many things that we can imagine existing and people assert as existing, but we don’t just give them the possibility from the get-go. We usually just think, “Okay, that’s something that person came up with in their imagination, and until I have good reason to believe that it’s more than that, I’m just going to conclude it’s just a part of their imagination.”
So my perspective is that God is kind of like Santa Claus, the leprechaun or the spaghetti monster, just a thing that we should think is being asserted by someone’s imagination rather than existing in the world until demonstrated otherwise. So until we have a good reason to believe there is such a thing, we should probably conclude there isn’t, and that’s usually my starting point.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So I think this is important, that when we talk about questions about whether anything exists, whether it’s God or whatever it may be, epistemology is going to come into play a lot, and that would be a branch of philosophy dedicated to understanding how we know things, what is knowledge, how do we know things. So I’m trying to grasp your… It’s a little bit of metaphysics and epistemology, like how do we tell if something exists, and what should we conclude about the existence of something given the evidence that we have? I’m having a little bit of trouble with your presupposition, that we should presume that something is imaginary unless proven otherwise. I think it would be more prudent to suspend judgment on whether something exists or not until we are given good reason to believe that thing exists.
Because if we presumed that something was imaginary until otherwise, that could lead us to have a high number of false beliefs, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. For example, that’d be like Europeans in the 17th century, they would presume that black swans are imaginary until proven otherwise, but that’s false. I have seen black swans in Australia. To me, I don’t see the benefit of presuming something as imaginary, rather than just suspending judgment until proven otherwise. What do you think of that?
Tom Jump:
Well, it’s an inductive argument. The number of things that people have assumed have existed that were just imaginary and we’ve shown don’t exist, or to some significant degree, is so overwhelming that it’s more reasonable to conclude that anything someone asserts as existing is probably imaginary, because throughout history, that’s usually the case. Like all of the gods, all of the things we thought caused all the different biological things, varies and leprechauns and unicorns and mythical creatures and magic and homeopathy and all the things that we imagined existing as a part of the world, when people assert these things as being real in the world, and for the most part, they’re not. In fact, like 99% of the things people thought exist really don’t. Like, we think that objects are solid, and we realized that after we look at the object and most of it’s actually empty space between the protons and the electrons. We think of certain kinds of things is being real when they’re just illusions or delusions or misconceptions.
So the vast majority of things people assert as existing really don’t. They don’t exist at all. There’re so many things that are just fabrications by our mind. It’s usually reasonable to think that, “If this is coming from a person and the only reason that we have to consider it as being existing is because it came out of someone’s mouth, is probably because it came from their mind and it isn’t actually a thing in the world.” So it’s more reasonable to include just inductively that, well, if they asserted it, it’s probably imaginary, and so if it’s coming from a person, you’re going to need something more, some kind of like empirical basis, essentially, to give us a reason to believe it’s not just something in your head, and we have a reason to believe it’s a part of the world. Because that’s essentially the grounds of epistemology, is well, how do we differentiate between the stuff in our head and the stuff in the world? That’s like the first stage of, how do we show things exist.
Trent Horn:
I would push back a little bit against your assumption that… especially you used a phrase like 99% of what people have believed to existed, it turns out to actually be imaginary. I’m not sure I could put the number nearly that high. If you think about the large number of beliefs that people have about things that exist, most of those beliefs are relatively mundane. There is an arrowhead in my hand, there is a river, there is my child, there is a large bright object in the sky. I agree with you that people had false beliefs about the nature of some of these things or incomplete beliefs.
I would say that if I say this phone is a solid object, I’d say that’s a true statement, and it’s not contradicted by the further statement that what constitutes this phone is an atomic structure that is actually just empty space but it gives rise to a property of being solid. So I guess I would disagree with you that humanity has had such a high error rate that we should just presume error. That’s where I would have a disagreement, I think, with your epistemology-
Tom Jump:
Well, that’s already been proven without any doubt by the field of neurology in psychology. The most of what we see around us is mostly just a mental construction of the world, it’s not actually there. It’s not real in the sense that our ideas of reality or describing reality as it is, they’re just kind of vague constructions made by our mind and they’re very faulty in many, many ways. So, we know our minds are pretty much faulty in every way, which is why we shouldn’t trust and we don’t trust personal experience as a kind of reliable testimony, and why we do require science to actually demonstrate certain things exists.
Like if you take your example of the phone when you hold it up and you say, this is solid, and then you take the second example, well, this is actually mostly empty space, if you just have that claim on its own, that the phone is mostly empty space, before knowing anything about science, you should reject that claim. It’s like, meaningless. Like, how could it possibly be empty space? It’s clearly solid. But then once you have the empirical evidence that bolsters the claim to no longer be just an imaginary claim, it’s not like… You wouldn’t just give it a 50-50 and say, “Well, it could be mostly empty space,” or, “It couldn’t be mostly empty space.” We’re going to say, no. I’m going to reject that it’s mostly empty space, but once you provide the empirical evidence, I’m like, “Oh, okay, that may have been a false belief, but I had reason at that time to reject it, and now I have reason to accept it.”
The same kind of thing applies to the existence of a God or the existence of anything that comes out of people’s imagination, it’s just we have to wait. It’s imaginary until demonstrate otherwise, just like Zeus or Thor fairies or leprechauns or anything. Because everything the world we perceive comes through us in the form of our imagination. Most of our imagination is false in some sense. So we need some way to differentiate, is this an imaginary thing or a real thing, and if we don’t have it, well, then it’s reasonable to inductively infer, well, it’s an imaginary thing.
Trent Horn:
Well, I guess then I’ll still disagree with you about the starting point of the presumption. I think it is a far safer thing to simply suspend judgment on a proposition on whether something exists, especially if the evidence is either completely non-existent or, or 50-50. In the absence of defeating evidence, if we lack both supporting and defeating evidence, then I would just say we should suspend judgment. So for example, like the proposition… I can think of two propositions. There is biological life in the universe beyond the planet Earth, and then the other one would be there is intelligent life in the universe beyond planet Earth. The one that there’s just life in the universe, I’m willing to say the probability of that is greater than 50% given just only the size of the universe, even in the absence of any supporting evidence to that.
But the proposition that there is intelligent life, it’s a higher barrier to cross, but I’m not willing to say like aliens are imaginary until proven otherwise. Like, I’m just going to do, well, it’s 50-50. I suspend judgment on the question. I’m not convinced by accounts of alien abductions, not convinced by the lights over Phoenix, where I used to live actually. But I’m still going to suspend judgment on that. So I guess I’ll disagree with you on the presumption of the starting point-
Tom Jump:
Let me pick up on that a little bit.
Trent Horn:
Go ahead. Sure.
Tom Jump:
I totally agree with everything you said there, but the only reason that’s reasonable is because we have an empirical basis for life and how life forms and the size of the universe. All of those factors combined with the hypothesis or the proposition that aliens and intelligent life exists make it reasonable to not just simply reject that out of hand. The only time you would reject it out of hand is, the only reason you have to believe it exists is if it came just from someone’s imagination and there’s nothing else. So like if I said I saw a unicorn, you shouldn’t believe that, because there’s no back knowledge there, entailed in that evidence, entailed in that claim of any kind of evidence outside of my imagination.
Like if I told you I saw a dog, that would be reasonable to believe because dogs have an implicit empirical basis. There’s lots of scientific stuff we know about dogs like their taxonomy, their phylogeny, their genetic makeup, chemical composition, how to train them et cetera, et cetera. All of that exists in the claim, dog. So when I say I saw a dog, it has my conceptual testimony of what I imagined and the empirical testimony or the empirical evidence of all the stuff we know about dogs. But in the case of a unicorn, if I said I saw a unicorn, since the unicorn doesn’t have that empirical basis, it would not be reasonable to believe.
In the case of aliens and intelligent life, since we have a basis of a life and intelligent life and how it can form in the universe, not rejecting that out of hand is reasonable because we have reason to believe it is possible in this universe, and so there’s a reason to infer that it may be in other places. But we don’t have that for unicorns. We don’t say like, “Well, there could be unicorns out there.” Like, no, we’re just going to say it’s probably just in your imagination. There’s probably no unicorns out there.
Trent Horn:
Well, do you think though… And this is a problem. I think whenever theists and atheists talk about God and we’re trying to create analogies, we always got to try and get our analogy spot on. I hear unicorns a lot in the literature or at least in online discussions about the existence of God. This kind of gets into the problem of cryptids. So a cryptid is a term just for an undiscovered kind of animal. So if you think about it, from the perspective of human beings, all animals were cryptids at one point, we didn’t know what they were then we found them and then we made discoveries about them and taxonomy and records and things like that.
But it seems to me that with some cryptids and some things, we dismiss out of hand because there is some kind of intrinsic implausibility to it. So I’m guessing by unicorn, do you mean the medieval Victorian concept of a horse that has a horn that resemble a Narwhal’s tusk that has either medicinal or… Well, the more problematic thing would magical properties, I’m guessing.
Tom Jump:
Essentially, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. Because some descriptions of a of the unicorn, you could say, well, if it’s a large animal that has one horn, a Narwhal or a rhinoceros could be a unicorn under those definitions. So I’m guessing you mean… And not even just like medicinal properties, you could imagine an animal that has a horn or has a body part that when ground down has medicinal properties. But usually, we associate unicorns with being able to do magical things, and we find magic to be implausible, and henceforth magical creatures are implausible and we reject them out of hand. That seems to be where we would put fairies, leprechauns.
Imagine were are in 17th century Europe, like the set of magical creatures, like you would say unicorns, fairies, leprechauns, that’s different than other animals that have not been discovered, like black swans or animals in the new world, for example. But I think the difference here is not lack of evidence or empirical evidence, because in both cases, you would lack empirical evidence, it’s that one set has magical properties, and we think magic in and of itself is implausible. [inaudible 00:16:20].
Tom Jump:
No, I wouldn’t say that.
Trent Horn:
Okay, go ahead.
Tom Jump:
The way I would address that is, in fact, the empirical evidence thing. That we have empirical evidence for all of the parts of dogs, like we can… It’s made of X and Y chromosomes, DNA. All of the parts of dogs are just things that we have an empirical basis for. But the magical part of the unicorn, we have no empirical basis for. The only basis for magic we have is, somebody said magic and they’re claiming this magic stuff exists. But there’s nothing outside of what people say to actually believe that magic exists. So anything that has this magic property is going to lack that empirical basis, which is why it’s not reasonable to believe. All we have for it is just people’s testimony, and that’s it. People’s testimony, because it doesn’t have that additional, can we differentiate, is this an imaginary thing or a real thing, then we just lean towards, it’s one of the imaginary things. So the reason we reject magic out of hand isn’t because we just find magic implausible, it’s because we don’t have an empirical basis for magic.
Trent Horn:
Well, I don’t know if that’s the case. So if my friend came back from Australia in 17th century Europe, and he told me that he saw a swan… No, that’s Australian. I’m not going to do accents. People always get [inaudible 00:17:34] that I can’t do accents correctly, so just fill in the accent. “Hello chap. How was your trip to Australia?”, “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, I saw a swan, but he was completely black.” I might be waiting to see if he’s telling a joke or something like that, but it would seem to me… Or you can take the other example of people in Tahiti meeting a British explorer and he telling them that you could walk across a frozen lake, for example, even though they had never seen ice before. Would they be justified in believing that kind of testimony, or would it not be sufficient?
Tom Jump:
I would probably say it would not be sufficient, but it is… They wouldn’t necessarily be able to just dismiss it out of hand, whereas if he said, “You could go across a magic lake,” then they would just be willing to dismiss it out of hand. That would be reasonable.
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Tom Jump:
So-
Trent Horn:
Sure. What do you mean by the term magic, I guess? What would that term mean to you?
Tom Jump:
Well, it just means some other kinds of class of things that we don’t know about yet, essentially. So if miracles, magic, mythical creatures, the paranormal, anything that doesn’t have an empirical basis in physics, essentially.
Trent Horn:
Doesn’t have an empirical basis in physics.
Tom Jump:
I don’t actually know what magic is. It’s just an abstract concept of some other kind of laws that could be applicable to the world that can do other kinds of things other than physics.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think the reason that we’re skeptical of magic, most people don’t believe in magic, except in a young girl’s heart when the music is playing and whenever it starts… Sorry, now the song is totally stuck in my head, but… I think you and I can think of examples in our head, but then it’s like, how do we get a definition out of that? Like if I just say abracadabra and a phone pops in my hand, we would call that magic. We see stage magicians doing these things, but there’s always a trick revealed to it. Because it seems like magic would be some kind of process of manipulating the world apart from the use of physical laws or causation. Seems to me like that’s what people mean by magic, I guess.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. Essentially just a supernatural in some way.
Trent Horn:
I don’t know if I would equate supernatural and magic in the same thing, in the same way-
Tom Jump:
Well, if it’s outside of physics, which is essentially the natural, and it can manipulate reality outside of physics, that would just be super natural.
Trent Horn:
Because I think that a lot of people would make a difference between, like when we talk about magic, what human beings do. If they cast spells or they do certain things, it’s hard to follow the causal chain and get a sound reason, whether it’s a reason based in physics or a reason based in metaphysics as to why that effect is… it’s possible to produce that effect. Whereas I think that if you look at, if God creates the world and sustains it, there may not be a physical explanation, because God is not a physical being. There may be some metaphysical explanation for why God is the reason the universe is sustained or some reason like that. I’d like to ask you a question though about being an atheist and holding to this position. Is there a way that atheism could be falsified?
Tom Jump:
It depends on what you define as atheism. My version, yes. So I define atheism as just, there’s no reason to believe in a God. So if you presented evidence, then that would falsify my position, and I’d become an agnostic.
Trent Horn:
Okay. What do you mean by the term God?
Tom Jump:
Usually, like an internal, all-powerful, conscious being of some kind.
Trent Horn:
Okay. As that is the necessary foundation of reality?
Tom Jump:
Essentially.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So it is possible to do that. What might be a hypothetical example of a kind of evidence or a scenario that would falsify atheism beyond just… Because with any situation, we could say, “Can your position be falsified?” A person could say, “Sure, if you give me evidence for it.” But if there’s actually nothing that would satisfy the set that we call evidence against this, then it’s kind of a fruitless endeavor. Is there like a hypothetical situation you could think of or?
Tom Jump:
Well, sure. I can think of a lot of them, just any novel testable predictions. So if you say if there is a God and he answers prayers and I pray for a gold brick and a gold brick appears in front of me and it’s repeatable and we can do it again and again, that would be good evidence. Or if we can say, if there’s a God and I pray to him and he’s going to regrow this limb and it happens repeatedly and we can do it again and again, that would be good evidence. Or if we could go back in time or look at a powerful enough telescope that can see the light going around a black hole and we can just look back at the resurrection of Jesus and see it happened, that would be good evidence. Any just novel testable predictions is what I use as a basis for anything.
Trent Horn:
So it sounds like what you’re saying is that if we can observe, in a repeated situation, something occurs that we cannot explain naturally, we’re-
Tom Jump:
No, I wouldn’t say that. So the fact that we can’t explain it naturally is… We could always explain it naturally, we could always just say it’s an unknown natural thing. So what makes it evidence is if you can make a prediction that we don’t know yet, and you get it right, and we haven’t predicted it, that’s good evidence for your hypothesis over mine. Yours can do something, mine can’t, so that’s good evidence that your hypothesis is correct more so than mine. So all you need is novel, testable predictions. You can say, “I believe there is a God and this God is going to do X, Y, and Z.” If we do certain kinds of testable predictions and we get those results consistently, that’s evidence. It doesn’t matter if we can explain it naturally or not, you do that at first, you get the evidence.
Trent Horn:
But wait, I don’t understand. So just the fact that if someone makes a prediction and that prediction is able to be born out, that would prove it. Because I’m not seeing how you have Jack, who predicts God exists and because he exists, he will always create a gold bar in my hand every Saturday at 3:00 PM and then that happens. It seems to me all we could derive from that is there is some kind of cause that creates a gold bar in Jack’s hand every Saturday at 3:00 PM. Like-
Tom Jump:
No, just how science works. [inaudible 00:24:07] will I predict that general relativity in all of these things therefore we’re going to see a slight curvature around the sun. It’s not like we conclude, “Well, all we can conclude is just there is a slight curvature around the sun.” Well, no, it’s because you got that right and no one else got to predict it, it means that we’re going to infer that all of those other things you predicted also, a part of your model, are also probably true. Like, what caused that? It was the curving of the space time. So we’re going to assume, okay, there’s probably the curvature of space time also.
Trent Horn:
Well, wait, that’s a little different though, because even scientists will disagree [inaudible 00:24:36] they’ll make predictions and things will come about, but then they have to interpret the data and the conclusion. That’s why we have, for example, in quantum physics, there’s not one single interpretation of the equations and the findings of quantum physics, there’s like a dozen of them.
Tom Jump:
It’s because none of them have made predictions. The reason there isn’t a consensus in quantum mechanics is because none of them make novel predictions. They’re all just post-talk explaining the same predictions. But if one of them made a new prediction that the other ones didn’t and it got it right, then we would essentially accept that one. Just would be done, and that would be the only interpretation of the majority interpretation.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So when it comes to understanding true beliefs to see whether… Like let’s say we want to determine if a proposition is true, so whatever proposition may be, it seems to me the way we do that, there’s multiple tools to determine if a proposition is true, some more reliable than others, but some more restricted than others. So I would agree with you that one method you propose, which is making testable predictions, that’s a very reliable method, at least in the physical sciences like chemistry or biology. We’re noticing recently we’re having a bit trouble of doing that with the social sciences. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the replication crisis.
Tom Jump:
Yup.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. So where people make testable predictions, especially in the social sciences, about what human beings will do, sociology, psychology, and they can’t replicate what they’ve had from experiments. So that’s kind of a crisis people are trying to work through right now. But I agree with you like water boiling at a certain altitude and temperature and things like that. Pretty gold standard stuff. But at the same time, it’s really restricted because in our day-to-day lives we believe things. I believe that you are going to… I’m speaking to you on the other end of this call, that you are going to come through for me, I’m here in a studio, my car is white. It seems like I believe that William Wallace of Braveheart was based on an historical figure recorded in the [inaudible 00:26:47]. It seems like we have a lot of other things we believe that are not born out of testable predictions. Would you agree with that?
Tom Jump:
Well, no. I’d say all of that that you listed, except for like the social sciences stuff, all has an empirical basis, like the claim, I saw a dog. Like, in the statement or the proposition, I saw a dog, there is no empirical evidence there, it’s just my testimony of me claiming I saw a dog. But the statement, dog, itself has an implicit empirical basis. As we know, there’s a bunch of empirical stuff entailed in that word, dog, like its chemical composition, bones, et cetera, et cetera. The same thing applies to all of your examples. Like the white car, we know about white, white has an imperial basis, cars have an empirical basis, televisions have an empirical basis, the internet has an empirical basis. All the things that you mentioned have that, so it’s reasonable to infer because we have that combination of things, both the testimony and the implicit empirical basis.
Trent Horn:
So it doesn’t have to be… I don’t have to make testable predictions. Are you just saying that either testable predictions have to have been done in the past or at least they are a possible thing to do with this thing I’m talking about?
Tom Jump:
In the past. So we’ve done testable predictions about dogs, so dogs have an empirical basis, and now it’s just reasonable to say, “Okay, we have dogs,” and we can just say they’re a part of the world and use them as puzzle pieces.
Trent Horn:
Well, but then it seems to me that there’s other kinds of knowledge that we have, statements that do not… things that we believe that are true without having an empirical basis. So I think that if we’re going to believe… talk about whether God exists, because God is not made of matter and he’s not part of the temporal order, we’re dealing with something that would fall under the category of metaphysical truths or things that are not detectable through an empirical method. So is it possible to come to a knowledge that’s of certain statements or truths without testable prediction, that they’re what we would call metaphysical truths?
Tom Jump:
Other than, I think therefore, I am, no. There are conceptual truths that we can come to reasonably conclude without an empirical basis, just like I am thinking of a unicorn. That’s reasonable to believe without an empirical basis, or something like those lines. One plus one equals two, A equals A, the laws of logic. All of those things are just in our heads, they’re conceptual. You don’t need an empirical basis for those because they’re all imaginary stuff. The point of an empirical basis is to differentiate, is this imaginary or is it a part of the world? So we can just grant a logic in math, and I I’m imagining the unicorn, well, all of those are just imaginary conceptual things, and so we don’t need to differentiate them between imaginary in the world because they’re just imaginary.
But if you’re claiming that there is this thing outside of your head that exists in the world, then you need some way to differentiate, is this an imaginary thing or is it a real thing in the world? If you can’t do that, then it’s reasonable to conclude it’s imaginary. So in the case of God, if there’s no empirical way to demonstrate it’s not imaginary, you need some other way to demonstrate it’s not imaginary. If you can’t do that, well, then again, I would fall back on, it’s imaginary until demonstrated otherwise. And demonstrated, I don’t necessarily mean scientifically. If you can come up with a different way, that’s fine too.
Trent Horn:
Right. That’s where I would say that if you’re going to talk about whether an immaterial thing exists, then we’re beyond the realm of the empirical, I think. I believe that’s possible, especially there are statements that are true or false that don’t refer to objects that we can test in an empirical way. So I think for example, beyond [inaudible 00:30:10], I think therefore I am, there are a fair number of other metaphysical truths that we can determine just from basic reasoning. So the first would be analytical truths. These seem just pretty obvious to me. Like a married man is not a bachelor. That one’s just pure set, and it seems to be logically true to me. Well, before I go down that road a little bit further-
Tom Jump:
Well, just to clarify, you called that a metaphysical truth, whereas I just call that a conceptual truth. It’s true by definition, it’s not like it’s a fundamental truth of the universe. It’s just truth we made up.
Trent Horn:
No, I wouldn’t say so, and that’s where I want to go back to you. You used a distinction between what is imaginary and what is in the world. I think it would be better… I like the terms, what is mental and what is extra mental.
Tom Jump:
Okay. I’m happy to grant the terminology.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. So there are concepts that exist in our mind, and some of those things are purely a concept we form in our mind, and some of those things are concepts in our mind that also correspond to something that exists in reality. I think we’re probably tracking [inaudible 00:31:32] you agree with all that. But what I would say is I would be cautious about saying that a reality that it corresponds to is always physical. That-
Tom Jump:
Oh, right, right. So I grant that completely. So the only point of the empirical sciences is just, it’s a way to differentiate, is the stuff just in our head or does it correspond to the thing and the reality? Now, there could be other methodologies, it doesn’t need to be scientific or empirical, that’s just the only method I know of that does it. So if you can come up with a different methodology, one that can demonstrate science or the miracles, magic of the supernatural, and it can differentiate between, is this an imaginary thing or a thing in the world, then I’m happy to grant that too.
But the thing I’m missing from the theological arguments is that I don’t see that. They claim that there are these things, but there’s no way to differentiate them between the other imaginary things. So as far as I can tell, they don’t provide that basis to differentiate, well, is this an imaginary thing or is this a real thing in the world? Science does that, but it may not be the only way. I’m not going to just say-
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Tom Jump:
… it has to be empirical.
Trent Horn:
I think another way though is just by examining truths, and some things are just true upon reflection. So one of those things would be those logical truths, like the law of non-contradiction. I don’t think that’s something we have to discover empirically. I also would disagree with you that it’s just something that we came up with. Because when we create things, when we create concepts as human beings, we’re always free to change them later. I can think of the concept of Robin is Batman’s sidekick, but I could always change that later to be something else. But things like logical truths related into the definitions of things or the law of non-contradiction, to me, those seem to exist in a kind of permanent, immutable way that put it beyond just something that human beings invented. It’s more like something human beings discovered.
Tom Jump:
Well, I would sort of maybe agree with that, but we can actually change the laws of logic and we do all the time, because standard logic isn’t the only one. There’s intuitive logic, mini-valued logic, quantum logic, fuzzy logic. There’s all kinds of different versions of logic that reject the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of-
Trent Horn:
Yeah. Well, I would just say that my view of logic is true and their view of logic is true also.
Tom Jump:
Right. I agree, but that’s because logic is a language like English or Japanese. I can use the English language, there is a tree outside my door, and that statement is true, and I can just say it in Japanese and it’s equally as true. So the logic is just a formal language. If you just go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for Classical Logic, it’s the first line, logic is a form of language. Form of languages also include like Visual, C++ and Linux and things. So logic is just a language we use, and certain kinds of logic accurately correspond to reality and certain kinds don’t. Like if we use A does not equal A or something like that, that kind of logic does not correspond to reality. It’s just like saying there is not a tree outside my door. It’s just doesn’t work.
Trent Horn:
I agree with you that the logic is a language that we use to describe aspects of reality, but I think it describes trues about reality that are not physical truths, they are these metaphysical trues about the way reality is. Sometimes the statements we use to describe reality are contingent, things could be different, it’s possible we could have not had this conversation today. But it’s not possible for us to be having the conversation and not having the conversation at the exact same time in the exact same way. So I’m not trying to make an argument that we’re getting straight from the laws of logic to God or something like that, by the way, that’s not a route I want to go. I’m just trying to figure out…
Trent Horn:
For me, a belief in God, I think, makes sense if you start with very basic metaphysical principles about the nature of existence and the nature of causation that I believe we can determine just by reflecting upon them. So I think there are those analytic truths where if you know the terms, you can discover if the statement is true or false or contradictory. I also think that there are synthetic truths that you may not be able to see the necessity right up front, but the more you think about it, like, “Oh, I guess that is a necessary truth,” about reality, any kind of reality we’d be in. So one of those might be anything that is red has a shape. Like I think that’s a necessary truth, but I don’t think that that’s contained within the concept of red. I don’t know what you would think of that.
Tom Jump:
Well, I would say that red is just a thing in our brains, so not necessarily. But I don’t want to be too pedantic on that point. I’m happy to grant it.
Trent Horn:
Sure, sure, sure. I think another one, going from the laws of logic, might be that nothing can cause itself to exist. If we’re understanding the way reality is, that seems to be some kind of a logical impossibility. I don’t know if you would go with that.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. So the way you phrase it, nothing can cause itself to exist?
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Tom Jump:
So just things can’t cause themselves to exist?
Trent Horn:
A thing cannot bring about the beginning of its own existence.
Tom Jump:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
So, okay. It seems like the reason we were able to settle on that is just that we understand the way reality is and there’s certain features of it that seem to be necessary that even if the world were kind of different, that truth would still hold. So it’d be some kind of a necessary truth, so-
Tom Jump:
Right.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So I think then for me, that’s helpful that if you can come up with these kinds of metaphysical truths, you could assemble them into an argument, the conclusion of which is that there is some kind of necessary cause or explanation for the entire universe itself. So like for me, when it comes to looking at reasons to believe that God exists, to borrow from [inaudible 00:37:29], he once said that two things continue to fill him with wonder, the starry heavens above and the moral law within. So to me, I think that things that exist require an explanation for their existence, and that road would go down to a necessary explanation like God, like a contingency argument.
Another one would be particular features of the universe that I think are best explained by a being that we will call God. One of those might be morality, not all of morality. I think you can get a lot of morality just out of understanding what is good or bad for us as organisms. Nutritious food is good for us, cyanide is bad. But I think there are certain moral facts that are kind of universal that require us to accede to, that there are these kind of necessary truths. I wonder what is the explanation like for, there’s necessary, synthetic and analytic truths, but necessary immoral truths. That really baffles me because morality is a property of persons, and if there was a truth like, it’s always wrong to rape people or torture children for fun, that to me seems to have a ground in kind of like a necessarily moral person, I guess. So I don’t mean to dump a lot on you, but I guess we were talking about should we be atheists? The two routes is, there’s not enough reason to say no and there might be reasons to say yes.
Tom Jump:
So my position is, is that I agree there has to be essentially a necessary thing depending on the definition of necessary. That grounds all of existence in reality, and I just think that’s a part of reality. I don’t think there’s a being, like a conscious being, required for any of that. I think that morality can be explained as essentially like a synthetic [inaudible 00:39:16], it’s the function of emergent properties of the universe. I don’t think there’s any reason to have a God for that. Morality definitely involves persons, like it interacts with persons, just like pain does or hunger. Like you can’t have a hunger without, essentially, a brain to experience it. But that doesn’t mean there is a… hunger is grounded in some metaphysical being that created the universe, it’s just an emergent property of things in the universe. So morality is the same way. You don’t need some kind of a being that grounds it as a core fundamental feature of the universe, just like you don’t need one for hunger or pain or pleasure or any sensation we have that are just emerging properties of interactions in the universe.
Trent Horn:
Well, I think there’s a difference between the examples you give. I think there’s a difference between what we do and what we ought to do, and the ought to do part is what makes morality distinct. That beings, organisms will experience a different kind of emotions and sensations and desires, hunger, pain, different kinds of stimuli. I think morality also manifests itself in kinds of emotions or feelings people have, but it’s not identical to those things. Those feelings are what alert us to particular kinds of moral truths. The existence of those truths and their nature, I don’t think could be explained in such a way as just being a part of a physical universe.
I’m reminded of in Mackie’s book, J.L. Mackie’s book, The Miracle of Theism, he said that moral properties are so bizarre that only a God could have made them. So Mackie’s around it was to say, “Well, I’m still an atheist. I’m just going to say these moral properties or illusory or I’m an air theorist. I just don’t think they really exist.” But I think people do think they exist, and there are these kinds of universal moral prescriptive truths that have like an imperative power over us. I think the most logical place to put that would be with persons, because what would you think… I agree with you, we share things like hunger and pain with other animals. Do you think moral responsibility though is a property that is exclusive to persons?
Tom Jump:
Well, yeah, but moral responsibility is exclusive to interactions between persons. It doesn’t come from person. Grounding morality in a person doesn’t give us ordinance, it’s just another subjective view of is statements. So just the humans is our distinction. G.E. Moore’s… what is it, open question argument?
Trent Horn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tom Jump:
It doesn’t matter if you try to ground morality in a person, that doesn’t get you to oughtness. So that doesn’t solve the problem. Essentially, it’s still an open question in philosophy, how to solve ground objective oughtness. So grounding that in some kind of a being doesn’t get you a solution anymore than grounding it in an undiscovered law of nature or just some magical moral particle. It’s just kind of an assertion. So moral oughtness comes from interactions between persons. I ought do or not do this to some other person, and the oughtness is entailed in the interaction, not in some third being above me who’s a judge of some kind that does nothing to add or take away any oughtness regardless of whether that exists. So I don’t think that grounding this in a mind helps you at all to get oughtness any more than just grounding it in an undiscovered law of nature.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Well, how would you define morality? What would you say morality is?
Tom Jump:
I would say morality is the ways in which we should [inaudible 00:42:42] to make the world better, essentially. The ways in which we should act to make the world better.
Trent Horn:
Make the world better. Knowledge is power. I don’t know if that is a definition of morality or a particular moral goal within what people would call what morality is. Because I think there’s people who would also believe in morality, but they might disagree about making the world better. They might believe in morality, but believe in a moral rule like to the strong go the spoils, to the weak go servitude, something like that.
Tom Jump:
Right. That’s just the definition I came up with off the top of my head.
Trent Horn:
No, no, no, it fine.
Tom Jump:
[crosstalk 00:43:24]. Morality is just a system of values for some end or something like that [crosstalk 00:43:30].
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think what I might say is morality is, morality refers to actions that are praiseworthy and blameworthy.
Tom Jump:
I’m not sure I would agree with those, because I think praiseworthy and blameworthy are kind of arbitrary. Because again, you could just define those in any way you want. Many people see different things as praiseworthy and many people see different things as blameworthy.
Trent Horn:
Sure. But I think everybody recognizes that there’s a difference that some things are praiseworthy and some things are blameworthy even if they don’t know what should fall under those sets.
Tom Jump:
I don’t think so. I think that those are anthropomorphisms, where you take an action which is morally good and then you say, “Well, we can judge it’s moral goodness by whether or not I think this person should be praised or blamed for it.” But the praise and the blame is irrelevant to what makes it good. The goodness, would seem, would be intrinsic to the action regardless of how anyone would see or judge it. So I wouldn’t necessarily use the pro-blameworthy, praiseworthy. That seems more like a secondary kind of consideration to judge the morality, but isn’t it the morality itself.
Trent Horn:
No. No. I agree with you that the property that something isn’t good because it’s praiseworthy, that’s a tautology. If it is good, then it’s going to be praiseworthy. I’m just saying to identify particular kinds of acts. So when I take my kids to the zoo and they see the tiger eat the bunnies on Sunday feeding day, the bunnies are already dead. But like if they were alive, we would not consider that blameworthy. But if we did see a zookeeper push their ex-girlfriend into the tiger cage and have them be eaten, we would call that a blameworthy action. So we would say that that would fall under a moral sphere. So, to me, I would say that because it’s related to persons in this way, it makes sense to me that if there are these universal norms that prohibit certain kinds of conduct, that it would make more sense if they come from some kind of universal moral guide. I think that morality can’t be divorced from persons if we see it as related to praise and blame and things like that. Do you think that there are universal moral norms at all?
Tom Jump:
Yeah, I’m a moral realist, so I believe there is objective morality. But again I would say that the morality comes from the interactions between the people. Like the guy and the girlfriend he’s pushing into the tiger pit, the morality comes from that interaction. It’s true, regardless of whether or not there’s a God or not. It’s completely independent, it’s its own thing. It has its own essence, essentially. So you don’t need a God in any way to give that immoral and immorality to it. So having a God there does nothing to change the situation at all one way or the other, it’s moral or immoral regardless of whether or not there’s a God.
Trent Horn:
Well, okay. So you’re saying that the moral truths exist.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. I’m a moral realist, so yes, I believe there are-
Trent Horn:
So would you just say that they’re brute facts then, they just exist?
Tom Jump:
I would say that they are more like a triangle or something, an emergent property of interactions in the universe, not necessarily brute facts. Because I’m not really sure of my position on brute facts exactly. I know they’re just facts with no explanation, but I don’t really know how that fits into my ontology.
Trent Horn:
I don’t know, it might not fit in well if you want testable predictions for kinds of things. Though I do think that in the end, whenever we make an epistemology, we’re going to need a fair amount of self-evident principles. Like I’ve heard you speak with other people though, like the main self-evident principle you have is, I think, therefore I am. But the problem is like any principle we use, if it’s, well, testable predictions, then we need a testable prediction for that and then we need a testable prediction for that testable prediction and-
Tom Jump:
Wait, wait, wait. Remember, remember, testable predictions is only something you need to do to differentiate, is this an imaginary thing or is this a real thing independent of my mind in the world? So I think, therefore I am, is just a part of my mind. I don’t need that to testably predict that outside of the world. That, we can just grant as a part of my mind, regardless of whether or not the world is material or dualistic or idealistic. It makes no difference at all. I think, therefore I am, is just a part of my mind. So we don’t need a way to differentiate that from being a real part of the world. [crosstalk 00:47:57].
Trent Horn:
I’m just saying that any statement, if we need like a testable prediction for the truth of the statement, then the justifying statement before… You’re probably familiar with the problem of infinite regress in epistemology.
Tom Jump:
Right, right. That’s what I’m saying, is that that is not how my epistemology works. So you only need an empirical demonstration of things if you’re trying to show it isn’t a part of our mind. If it’s a part of our mind, like a conceptual framework or a definition, you don’t need empirical testable predictions for it. If you want to say a bachelor is an unmarried man, you don’t need testable predictions for that. You can just say, this is just how I define it and you’re done. You can say, I think therefore I am, I don’t need to provide testable predictions for that, I can just say it’s a part of my imagination and we’re done. So the only time you need empirical testable predictions is when you’re differentiating, is this thing an imaginary thing or is it a part of the world? If you’re only claiming it’s an imaginary thing, you don’t need empirical predictions, they’re just irrelevant to the conversation.
Trent Horn:
I would agree with that statement if you had amended it to say part of the physical world. But people also debate things like whether numbers or propositions exist, for example. So there’s a debate among mathematicians between Platonism and anti-Platonism, but there’s no testable prediction that could resolve the dispute that they have. The dispute is about, well, how does mathematics relate to these truth values? I would lean heavily towards the Platonist view, that that mathematical truths are not things that we invent, there are things we discover, but they’re not identical to physical things in the universe. I think that something is… That kind of ability to exist objectively, but in a non-physical way, I think that’s also the case with moral truths.
But moral truths are a lot more bizarre because you could have a very large set of moral truths. Like I gave the one earlier that the strong deserve the submission of the weak. That’s a moral truth for some people. I don’t believe it’s true. But then the question becomes, why is it the case that certain moral facts are true and other moral facts are false? I do not believe we could derive that simply from observing interactions in the universe because those are fairly neutral to have to observe from. I think that the explanation is going to be either as some kind of a brute fact, which I think would be odd that it just happened to be this set of moral facts, or that it’s some kind of a perfect moral foundation, that it’s a person that is the perfect standard of morality itself.
Tom Jump:
Well, again, to… You’ve brought this up a few times, when I say you need empirical evidence, there’s only one specific case where that is applied. I’m not an empiricist where you require empirical evidence for everything.
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Tom Jump:
Empirical evidence is only used to differentiate between what’s imaginary and what’s a part of the world for the things that we can do that. There could always be other methodologies that we could use that could differentiate between the imaginary and what’s real. Empirical evidence doesn’t show us for everything, like we can’t empirically demonstrate that there is another universe. So it can’t be used to do that, at least not yet. So empirical evidence is only like the way we have now that can clearly differentiate between what’s imaginary and what’s a part of the world. It may not be the only way, I’m not saying it’s the only way, it’s the only way I know of that works. But there could always be other ways. So I’m not a strict empiricist, and you don’t need to use empirical evidence to justify everything, it’s only the things you want to claim are true outside of our… or exist outside of our head.
So if you want definitional things, you don’t need empirical evidence, epistemologies, you don’t need empirical evidence. Those are just conceptual frameworks we use to try and understand the world. That’s where the infinite regress, it wouldn’t apply because you’re making a conceptual framework and then you’re saying, “Okay, I’m going to test this in the world,” and the conceptual framework itself doesn’t need the testing, it’s just a conceptual framework. You don’t need to justify that with the physical evidence. It’s not empirical, it’s a conceptual thing.
Trent Horn:
Right. But some conceptual frameworks could be wrong.
Tom Jump:
Right.
Trent Horn:
They may not accurately represent reality. The only thing that’s true there is that I have the framework in my mind.
Tom Jump:
Right.
Trent Horn:
So I mean-
Tom Jump:
So if you only claim, I have this conceptual framework and it’s my epistemology, I can just say, “Yes, that is all true.” Now, if you want to say, “I have this epistemology, and that applies to the world,” that’s when you need to demonstrate it. But you don’t need to demonstrate the epistemology itself, you don’t need to just demonstrate those principles, they’re just things you’ve made up.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So I think then to pull a little bit of this together, I think I would agree with you that empirical testable predictions are a highly reliable way of discerning the nature of the physical world, though I would say that they’re somewhat limited, and there’s other things we believe beyond that on the basis of testimony and things like that. I grant you that there is an empirical background to that, the things that we tend to believe on testimony. But I think a lot of that is also, we have certain self-evident principles that we follow, and I think there are the other metaphysical truths that can help us, especially when it comes to the question of the existence of things that are not constituted of materials, so moral truths, minds, mathematics, and I think God would be in that kind of category.
Let me pick up something you mentioned earlier. So we looked at the moral argument and where that kind of leads to the nature of moral truths and what is our ultimate foundation. The other argument I mentioned that I’m a fan of, our contingency arguments that try to pause at, what is the explanation of reality as a whole? You said you do believe there’re some kind of necessary foundation for reality, that many people who identify as atheist don’t actually hold to that view, but you seem to be different.
Tom Jump:
Well, they actually do, they just don’t… they use different terminology. So it necessarily just means there is a part of nature which is fundamental to reality, and that’s all you need. And that you can just call that necessary the thing. Using the term necessary is a very theistic term from like Aquinas and the different philosophers, and so atheists usually shy away from those terminologies. But we can just grant them, there’s no problem. Most scientific naturalist atheist do grant that there is some part of nature which is the foundation of everything that has always existed. As far as I know, there’s no atheist who actually think philosophical nothing existed at some point.
Trent Horn:
Okay. I think that the word necessary here, I grant you it has different meanings, but I think like the way like St. Thomas Aquinas uses the word necessary is very different from how… I don’t believe it’s just something religious. I think the word necessary, how it’s used in these discussions, is similar to how 20th century analytic philosophers use it, usually in modal thinking, which would be the idea that for something to be necessary, it’s that it exists in all possible worlds, including the actual world. That’s what I mean by the term necessary.
Tom Jump:
Right. I’d say that goes way too far. So I’d say that necessary is just whatever grounds all existence, and that is sufficient for a necessary thing. Modal logic in all possible worlds kind of thinking as… I would say, more in the imaginary category, we have no reason to think that those particular kinds of rationalizations actually apply to reality or not. If there is even such a thing as possible worlds because possibility may not be a thing, we may think of the way the world is, maybe the only way it ever could have been maybe completely determined, and so there are no such thing as possible worlds, they’re just conceptions we’ve made up in our heads.
Trent Horn:
Well, there is a difference between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility. Like you could float the idea that this could be the only way the world could be. It’s epistemic. But I have a hard time granting that it’s metaphysical. That kind of a suggestion would mean to say that every single interaction and being in this universe is necessary, and that doesn’t seem to have really any… You could float it as a hypothesis, but it doesn’t seem to have any kind of evidence behind it, so it’s something that can be kind of dismissed. But I don’t think you could do that as much with other kinds of truth. I think mathematical truths, regardless of what reality emerged, regardless of what world we are in, those mathematical truths will always be the same. So I think they do have that property of necessity.
Tom Jump:
Well no, I’d say the point of that analogy is to show that this idea of possibility is just an idea. There’s no reason to think that possibility… there is such a thing as metaphysical possibly. There may be or there may not be. It may just be, everything could be metaphysically necessary, we don’t know. So when we think of modal logic, modal logic is just a system of things we think about in our head, it’s just a another language. It has no application to metaphysical way the world is or not. We have no idea. We have no connection there. It’s just a system of thinking about things. We don’t actually have a connection to the metaphysical laws that govern reality, we’re just kind of making assumptions and guessing. So the way reality is may or may not be a possibility. Possibility, as far as we know, is just a thing in our head that we’ve made up. We imagine things could be otherwise, but it doesn’t mean they could have actually been otherwise.
Trent Horn:
I agree with you that not all epistemic possibility is a metaphysical possibility. So for example, there’s a mathematical truth called Goldbach’s conjecture, which is the idea… I’m trying to make sure I get this right. I think it’s at any even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers. I think that’s the conjecture. Like I can imagine the conjecture being true, and I can imagine it being false, but it can’t be both because it’s necessary. So if it’s true, it will always be true and it could never have been otherwise. But it seems like this conversation could have been otherwise. We tried really hard to get the tech set up and it barely didn’t work. So I really think that intuitively, for most people, they’re going to see there’s a difference between mathematical truths and the contingent truths of everyday reality.
Tom Jump:
Well, I’d agree with that, but I just think that’s a property of reality. That’s not some kind of other thing, it’s still just a property of reality.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And I will agree with you. It’s so funny, I will agree with you on that too. I agree with you when we talk about reality, like capital R, but for me, reality includes a lot more than just the world we happen to inhabit. Like truths of reality for me, those necessary truths, cover other kinds of possible worlds, and then ultimately there is a foundation that explains why this possible world exists when it did not have to exist. So like what would your… Do you have an answer to the question, why is there something rather than nothing, I guess?
Tom Jump:
Well, I would essentially steal the theist answer and say, why is there a God rather than no God? And you’d say, well, it’s necessary. I would say, okay, the reason there is something rather than nothing is because it’s necessary. There is a necessary core to reality, which is what exists.
Trent Horn:
What exists, exists, that’s a tautology. Yes, things that exist do exist. The question is more, why does a particular thing exist? When I ask the question, why is that triangle blue, I could get a multitude of answers than it makes sense to ask the question. Whereas if I asked the question, why does that triangle have three sides, it’s kind of a nonsensical question to ask. It’s because, well, because it’s a triangle, that’s what it’s going to have. So when we ask the question, why does the universe exist, I don’t think that existence is a property of the universe and that’s necessary like a triangle’s three sides, it’s more like the color blue. Now of course-
Tom Jump:
Oh, oh, gotcha. Because you asked why he was there something rather than nothing, you didn’t say with the universe specifically. So why would I say why this universe exists? Well, I’d say that in the same way the theist does, there is this unnecessary thing which has some properties which determines it to produce reality as it is. So let’s say the universe or whatever causes the universe, the fundamental necessary thing, has properties and those properties determine reality as we experience it.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So I’d like to broaden it a bit. So it’s not just this universe, the way it is, like you and I talking, this world, earth one, earth prime. Maybe there could be earth two, earth 96. So I got sucked into watching The Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it’s terrible, but I still get sucked into that even though it’s not very good, frankly. We could ask why this particular world as opposed to any other, but my question is a little bit broader, why any physical reality at all? Is the existence of nothing possible on your view?
Tom Jump:
No.
Trent Horn:
Even in the future?
Tom Jump:
Yes, because even… If there was like a nothing, that is still a set of reality. So I think that nothing is impossible. I think a philosophical nothing is like literally impossible.
Trent Horn:
Really?
Tom Jump:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
So you don’t think it could have been the case that there was just no contingent realities or physical realities at all that that just could not be?
Tom Jump:
No. It absolutely could not be because we exist. So that could not have been, ever. Not a possibility.
Trent Horn:
Well, no, I agree with you. It can’t be the case that there is absolute nothing, given that we know we exist right now. My question was more, could it have been… like it could have been the case you or I I did not have this conversation. Could it have been the case that there was actually nothing that ever existed?
Tom Jump:
Right. My answer is no. The fact that we exist at all means there has always been something. There could have never, at any point or any point in the future, ever be an absolute nothing.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Oh. So you might disagree with people who believe that there could have been absolute nothing, and the universe through some naturalistic process emerged from that?
Tom Jump:
No one believes that. No one in any physicist ever believed that.
Trent Horn:
Well, maybe not a physicist, but like David Hume talked about imagining something coming from nothing.
Tom Jump:
I would imagine he… I don’t know what he meant by that, but I would say that, no, there can’t be an absolutely nothing and something popping into existence from that.
Trent Horn:
Hmm. That’s helpful. So I guess then if the theists were successful with the kiloohm argument to prove that… and I’m not going to try to do it here because we’ve already gone long and I’m about to lose my studio time. If a theist were capable of showing that the set of temporal events in the past were finite, what would you make of that if something can’t come from nothing then?
Tom Jump:
Well, I’d say there was something else before that. Like even in the theistic case, there was a God and he created the universe.
Trent Horn:
Sure. So then it becomes, if there is a foundation of all reality, it explains why reality exists. We’ve got to figure out what its properties are.
Tom Jump:
Right.
Trent Horn:
So what I guess it ultimately comes down to is the theist derives properties that are consonant with a being that is worthy of worship or divine, and an atheist does not do that.
Tom Jump:
Essentially. But I would go one step further and I’d say that invoking a being to be the grounds of morality doesn’t solve the problem. It’s just essentially an asserted solution that doesn’t work, kind of like asserting morality as grounded in an undiscovered law of nature. That’s my objection to the argument you made earlier.
Trent Horn:
Right. But it’s not asserting, it’s deriving. It seems like you both agree there’s some kind of necessary foundation, we’re just trying to figure out what are the properties of this foundation. If you ticked off enough boxes… because you had even… I think even ticked off a few properties that theists believe in God, though you’re not committed to being God, like being eternal or factually… By eternal, do you just mean indestructible?
Tom Jump:
There’s lots of different ways to mean that. I’m essentially just using the theist terminology to get as close as possible to make the conversation go as smoothly as possible. So I’m granting as much of the theist terminology as possible. So like eternal, all powerful and necessary, I just grant all those terms and just take them and say, we’re going to grant those. But yeah, the one I definitely disagree with it was, even if I grant moral realism, saying that morality is grounded in the being doesn’t solve any of the problems with what morality is, it doesn’t give us a solution to the [inaudible 01:04:33] problem or the G.E. Moore’s open question arguments. So trying to ground morality in a being doesn’t get us anything. You can grant-
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think there might be ways around that with… Moore’s open question argument deals with the nature of good and whether good… I think it’s whether it’s used in like a univocal or an equivocal sense. Because I could say that you’re a good interviewer. I could just mean you’re really good at doing interviews. But you could also be a good interviewer, and that you donate your Patreon to starving children in Africa. You’re a morally good interviewers. So they’re different in that regard. But I think there might be an analogical way to speak of good to cross that divide. So like when I look at if a property is something that’s necessary to be the ground of all existence, I would see another property that would come from that, would be that whatever this cause is, it could not be composed of parts itself, it would have to be… I don’t know if you’re familiar with divine simplicity as in theology.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. Aquinas’ simplicity and [inaudible 01:05:44] and all those different properties.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. It would have to be, whatever this causes, it couldn’t be composed of parts itself. Because if it were, it would be dependent. Like to be necessary means to not be contingent. If you depend on something else, you’re not necessary… or at least you’re not ultimately necessary. So I think that whatever this is, it would have to be a simple… it couldn’t be composed of parts that had to be united by something else, because then that’s something else would be the necessary thing. I don’t think it would have limits to it because then that would have other kinds of dependencies. So if it’s like unlimited and simple, I think it would also be kind of like a manifestation of like the good itself. Because I would define good… and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this. That something is good… Goodness would be a possession of being in accordance of the proper nature.
Trent Horn:
So, something is evil, whether it’s physical or moral, when it lacks goodness of some kind. So I don’t know. It’s funny, we should have another chat actually. I was hoping to talk to you about your moral theory, because it’s original, I’ll give you that. We didn’t get into that that much because I find it really interesting. I’ve only heard you describe what’s wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about what you consider the good to be. I don’t know how you would answer that.
Tom Jump:
Well yeah, there’s a bunch right up there.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, sure.
Tom Jump:
The first is that simplicity has… I would say there’s no ontological relevance to simplicity. Simplicity is just a usefulness tool for us. So I wouldn’t say that the necessary thing has to be simple. Saying that it’s not limited is, in fact, a contradiction with simplicity. You’re redefining simplicity to be the exact opposite of simple just by saying it’s not limited. And then to say that the goodness is also a part of its properties would be an unnecessary addition to the properties that you don’t need for anything. Defining it simply as good is that which has some quality of being in accordance with nature, its nature or something, that was just circular reasoning. Because then if it has that particular definition more than anything in accordance with its nature, whatever that happens to be, whether it’s good or bad, would just be defined as the good.
So there’s a lot of problems I take there, especially with all the different [inaudible 01:08:07] properties. I think that most of them are just kind of made up. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe they correspond to reality at all. And there’s no reason for them to, we don’t need something perfectly simple. You could have an incredibly complex thing be the necessary thing, there’s no contradiction there, and it doesn’t need to be grounded in anything. We don’t really have an understanding of what it means to be necessary, it’s just kind of a made up property in our heads. Even though we know there has to be some fundamental thing, there’s no reason to think it has to be simple. So those would be my initial criticisms of that take. For what I define as moral goodness, I would say helping someone to achieve their will would be how I define moral goodness, and immorality would be involuntary in positions of will, would be how I define immorality.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So the good is the achievement of will.
Tom Jump:
Helping someone to achieve their will, I would say is morally good.
Trent Horn:
Well, if I achieve my own will, is that good?
Tom Jump:
I would say no. I would say that that’s just amoral.
Trent Horn:
Well, what is the difference between if I open a door, so I achieve my will, if Nick opens the door when I leave the studio, that suddenly becomes morally good. I don’t understand the difference.
Tom Jump:
Right. So if he’s doing something to help you, that’s moral, but you’re doing it yourself wouldn’t be moral, it’s just amoral.
Trent Horn:
Well, wait. That seems a little… I don’t want to eat up too much of our time because your moral theory could be fascinating and it’s not germane to our whole discussion about whether we should be atheists or not. But I do think that for me, goodness, because I think the word good, because you were talking about the open question argument, I think that when we understand it as the possession of being, that helps across the divide and allows us to use good in both moral and nonmoral senses. So we talk about things like a good microphone, a good Apple tree, a good human being, a good teacher. We can use it in those ways. So goodness is possessed in a way that to me, and that in all of those examples, it seems like something is good when it possesses being in accordance with the way it ought to be, what we call nature.
When it’s bad, like a bad tree, a bad microphone, it’s lacking or missing something that’s essential. It seems to be like a common denominator, including with bad or evil human beings, they’re lacking something like empathy or justice or things like that. So for me, and I apologize that I don’t have a more laid out philosophical argument to give you, it’s just to put out there, I think that if you have a necessary foundation, if it has that full possession of being to explain why things are necessary, I think both goodness and the nonmoral and moral sense would accompany it. So I guess that’s the route I go with that.
Tom Jump:
I tend to take the classical philosophical route there and just say, well, that’s just circular reasoning, and you apply that, you just essentially define good as whatever you want it to be. It kind of just works for anything. You can take the same argument and say, “Well, that is just an undiscovered law of nature and it is the ground of being and it’s being is the apex of what morality is, and anything that is not in accordance with it becomes immoral.” Just kind of like the argument from, well, if God was evil, would killing people be good, kind of a thing. If you define morality as just the ground of being and whatever its nature is as that being, well, then morality becomes arbitrary and you have to come in with some kind of secondary, well, this being is some certain way for some other reason, and then it becomes no longer about this being, it’s this other reason that justifies the morality.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I would just say there’s a difference there between moral epistemology and moral ontology. Even if you don’t know who God is, you have a moral sense to determine what to locate particular moral truths. We seem to both agree these moral truths exist because we’re both moral realists. Even if you have not plumbed the depths of understanding what makes those truths true, just like people can intuit mathematical truths without being able to perform the proofs and find the ultimate foundation for those truths. So-
Tom Jump:
Oh yeah, I totally agree. I’d say that the way we know about morality is independent of the ontology of what it actually is. My objection is, is that the ontology you’re presenting and the definition of saying the ontology of morality as if a being is in accordance with its nature makes mortality trivial. It makes it just whatever happens to be the nature of the thing for no reason, and that’s kind of the objection.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Well, we could keep going back and forth here, but I have one last question, I guess, to wrap up. Before I wrap though, I do, Tom, commend you for having these dialogues. You’ve had an impressive number with different apologists and Christians. I wish you could get as many atheists on my show as you get theists on your show, frankly. So kudos to you. Keep that up. [inaudible 01:13:15] for our listeners to find interesting. If your listeners wanted to say, Hey, where could you go to get the best defensive theism, where would you point them?
Like for me, like the best defenses of atheism, I would send them to somebody like Graham Oppy as a philosopher at Monash University, I think Steven law is good. He can be a bit surly sometimes, but I like him, and then just older works, maybe like Mackie and others are good. When I talk to people, a lot of times I like to ask a question to see if they looked into an issue, what do you think of the other side? For anybody, it’s an interesting way to gauge how well someone’s looked into an issue. So I guess that’s I’d offer for the other side from my perspective. How would you take it?
Tom Jump:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate you having the conversation with me. It was a lot of fun. But yeah, I would say depending on what kind of theism they’re interested in looking into defend, I’m a big fan of Richard Swinburne, but he rejects free will, so I don’t know how many theists would agree with that. And then Alvin Plantinga-
Trent Horn:
He can’t help it.
Tom Jump:
Yeah, you can’t help it. Exactly. Alvin Plantinga, his arguments are usually the most used in apologetics, so I think being familiar with him is very useful, even if I don’t agree with a lot of them. I really like Pete Enns, Pete Enns is like my favorite theologian ever. I just agree with everything he says, pretty much, like, yes, yup, yup. But he’s still a theologian. I think his position is-
Trent Horn:
Is he [inaudible 01:14:42]? P.N., that sounds very familiar to me.
Tom Jump:
He’s a professor, I’ve had him on.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Jump:
Those would probably be the big names who I personally think are the most respectable apologists that I know of.
Trent Horn:
Okay. Okay. Cool. Well, thank you for having me here a little longer than I thought, but no harm here in our studio. I think we’re still good. Thanks so much, Tom, and hopefully we get to chat again sometime.
Tom Jump:
Yeah. Thanks for coming on and having a conversation. I really enjoyed it.
Trent Horn:
Alrighty
Tom Jump:
Talk to you later.
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