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Series Code: GFF
Program Code: GFF000003S
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00:01 ♪ ♪ Subodh K. Pandit, M.D.
00:56 Welcome, again. Now we have come to the second session and 01:01 remember what we have said we will do? We'll do a Pan Process. 01:05 But you know before we get to the Pan Process there's one 01:10 concept we need to address. It is a very common response to the 01:15 question does God exist and it is called agnosticism. Now to 01:22 the question does God exist the obvious answers are yes and no. 01:28 So is there a real true clear option called agnosticism? 01:34 Let's look at the word first. What do you mean? A means 01:40 without. Gnosis means without knowledge. So when applied to 01:45 our discussion it means an inability to make a decision 01:51 because the information and the knowledge is simply not 01:56 sufficient. This is the most honest response to this big 02:02 question and you know it also has a mathematical base? The 02:08 Austrian mathematician Kurt Godel described what he called 02:13 the Incompleteness Theorem. The Incompleteness Theorem says 02:19 if you are ever going to call a theory as the truth of the 02:24 matter then you should have in your hand every piece of 02:28 applicable information that can be considered for that theory. 02:34 Unless you know all of the pieces of information that apply 02:39 you cannot call it the truth of the matter. Now you and I will 02:45 easily confess that nobody on earth has all the information 02:50 related to the existence of God. So everyone, you and I, and 02:58 everyone else is by mathematical certainty an agnostic. However, 03:08 some people say they are believers and the others say 03:13 they are atheists. We just said that everyone is an agnostic. 03:18 So when you put all those two together, all the factors 03:25 together you come across a very interesting situation in which 03:29 there are six options. I'm going to put them on the screen and 03:33 we'll look at them. Do you notice something, 1,2,3,4,5,6. 03:40 All of them are agnostics. Agnostic one if you look at the 03:46 description is convinced that God exists and he lives as if he 03:51 exists. He's a believer. Number two is an agnostic who is 03:57 convinced God does not exist and lives as if he does not exist. 04:00 He's an atheist, a disbeliever. The rest of the four are 04:07 agnostics. So when we look at those of first of all of them are 04:14 agnostics but there are some words in italics lives as if, 04:20 I want you to follow as we read lives as if. Agnostic number one 04:26 lives as if God exists. Agnostic number two lives as if God does 04:33 not exist. Agnostic number three lives as if God exists. Agnostic 04:40 number four lives as if God does not exist. Agnostic number five 04:45 lives as if God exists and agnostic number six lives as if 04:50 God exists. Do you notice something? They're all 04:53 agnostics, that's number one. Number two: There are actually 04:58 only two ways to live We live an agnostic lives as if God exists 05:06 or as if God does not exist. That is because they are the 05:11 only two true practical options. Agnosticism by itself only a 05:19 theoretical position only on paper. Consider this now. 05:25 These two options we have, God exists, God does not exist, they 05:31 are so far apart, so distinct, that we cannot bring them 05:36 together by any means possible. Now when that happens there are 05:40 three principles that apply here Principle number one: These two 05:46 are mutually exclusive. What do we mean by that? It means that 05:51 if you are on this side you definitely are not on this side. 05:55 If you are on this side you are not on this side. In other words 06:00 both of them cannot be correct. One or the other. Principle 06:07 number two that fits in is that these two are jointly 06:12 exhaustive. Meaning those who exhaust all the 06:17 possibilities that one can 06:19 think of, there is nothing else. Jointly, together, 06:26 they exhaust all 06:28 the possibilities. Therefore, both cannot be wrong. So now 06:34 if both of them cannot be correct, if both cannot be wrong 06:40 then the third option comes in, the third principle comes in. 06:44 And it's called the principle of the excluded middle. In other 06:49 words you cannot take some from here and some from there and 06:51 form a third option. It's an excluded middle. In other words, 06:56 the middle ground called agnosticism is actually not a 06:59 true option. It is the most honest answer and we recognize 07:04 that. Hey, nobody gets any marks in school for a true and false 07:15 question to which the student writes I don't know. If you say 07:19 I don't know you don't get any mark. The options are only true 07:22 or false. Similarly here the question is does God exist. The 07:28 only two answers can possibly be yes he does or no he doesn't. 07:33 You say I can't make an answer is to confess that you don't 07:39 have an answer. Therefore, agnosticism is really not an 07:43 answer to the question. So it's a startling realization that a 07:50 middle ground is not clear. Therefore, agnosticism, while it 07:55 is a most common response, is totally impractical in life. 08:00 An agnostic believer then lives as if God exists as it is. 08:07 An agnostic disbeliever lives as an atheist, as if God does not 08:13 exist. In other words, nobody can live as an agnostic, a pure, 08:19 unqualified agnostic. Now that we have set the question of 08:24 agnosticism aside we then turn our attention to the big and 08:30 the truly controversial debate. Does God exist or does he not 08:35 exist. I call it the Great Divide. A. We saw that. God 08:44 nonexistent, fictitious. B. The believing side, God in existence 08:51 and factual. We'll repeat the challenge. We should not only 08:55 fair and balanced in our assessment but we should make a 08:59 deliberate attempt to show that we are being evenhanded and fair 09:03 We give both sides the same chance to win. Only then can we 09:08 be sure that the real winner has won. And we said earlier that 09:13 one way to do this is to implement the Pan Process 09:17 and that's what we're going to do now. We'll start it off with 09:22 the Pan Process, a pro and a con from each side. Column one: 09:27 Arguments for A. Let's start there. Arguments for atheism. 09:32 None. Wow! Doesn't that sound amazing, startling. You know why? 09:42 Because the only proof of atheism is this proof 09:47 of theism. 09:50 So that belongs to the second column. So there's nothing in 09:55 this column. That's number one. Number two reason. Why we say 10:00 there are no arguments is that this statement is in the 10:04 negative. It's a negative statement: God does not exist. 10:08 God is nonexistent. A negative statement is valid and can be 10:14 accepted only when all the possibilities have been 10:19 exhausted. For example, if I claim that my dad was not at 10:23 home and our house has 20 rooms how many rooms should I have 10:28 inspected before making a true and legitimate claim that my dad 10:33 is not at home. All 20. If I left out even one room I could 10:39 not make a legitimate claim that my dad was not at home. So in 10:45 other words, to say that somebody is not here you should 10:51 look at all the possibilities and exhaust them. Now apply 10:57 this to our question. Look, if God is existence he has to be 11:03 somewhere. We can't say he's nowhere. If he is nowhere he is 11:08 nonexistent. So he's got to be somewhere. Honestly do you know 11:14 honestly do you know every corner of your town, of your 11:21 state, the whole world? How about the moon? How about the 11:26 sun? The sun is ony one star in our Milky Way galaxy. Do you 11:30 know how many stars there are? Two hundred billion stars in our 11:35 Milky Way galaxy. How about the number of galaxies? The 11:39 astronomers have guestimated that there are about 600 Billion 11:45 with a B galaxies in the known universe. Think? So how many 11:53 places have you really been to to come back here and say, Well 11:57 we've checked it all out. He's not anywhere. Doesn't that really 12:03 sound incredible, difficult to believe. On the other 12:10 hand, God could 12:13 possibly move about, because if we can move why can't he? 12:17 So if we went looking for him in the kitchen, he could have gone 12:23 to the living room. So what are we saying? We are saying that to 12:28 make a real credible claim that God is not anywhere we should 12:33 not only know every nook and cranny of the universe, but we 12:36 should know them at the same time. Then it is legitimate. 12:41 Now those attributes of being everywhere is called omnipresent 12:49 and knowing every bit of the universe is called omnicient. 12:54 Those are the attributes of God. So to say that there is no God 13:00 you have to have the attributes of God, but that is 13:04 contradictory can you see, or maybe you have become 13:07 a god yourself. 13:08 If you become a god yourself you can't say there is no god. So 13:13 there are no arguments in this column. What grade would 13:17 you give it. Let's 13:18 grade every column and then we'll put the grades together at 13:22 the end. I gave it a zero to one I gave it a one. That's column 13:31 one. Arguments for atheism one mark. I'm okay. How about 13:38 column two? Arguments against the claim that there's a God. 13:42 There are a few. I'm going to pick out one which appears to be 13:47 quite a strong big one. It is the argument that if there is a 13:54 loving, all loving, almighty God then how can that be squared 13:59 with all the pain and suffering and evil there is in the world 14:03 that we experience every day? There's a severe contradiction 14:08 and that is the argument. There's a severe contradiction. 14:12 All loving, almighty, pain and suffering. Mm-muh. Do you know 14:17 Epicurus was a Greek philosopher back in the third and fourth 14:22 century B.C., he said these words: Either he (God) is not 14:27 good, or else he is not almighty Can't be both. And David Hume 14:34 a later philosopher, a brilliant thinker, he emphasized that even 14:40 more. His words: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not 14:47 able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he 14:53 is malevolent (he is just bad evil heart). Is he both able and 14:59 willing? Whence then is evil? And Stendhal another philosopher 15:06 said, God's only excuse is that he does not exist. And those who 15:11 have looked at these arguments here's what they say. Wenham 15:15 said, Evil constitutes the biggest single argument. 15:18 Ed Miller said, the biggest single stumbling block and James 15:23 Orr said, It is one of the most crucial protests raised by 15:28 unbelievers against the fact of God. Now those are strong. What 15:33 would you grade it? I graded this argument as seven out of 15:39 ten. But then I looked again. Is this argument against the 15:47 existence of God or is this an argument against the type of God 15:54 that he is. So look at it a little closer. Is it truly the 15:59 biggest single argument, is it the most crucial argument 16:03 against the existence of God? I look at it in a few ways. 16:08 Here it is. I found that everyone is upset 16:12 about this question of evil/ pain and suffering. 16:16 In fact those who believe that God exists also have 16:20 agreed there is horrible pain and suffering. And despite the 16:24 pain and suffering they believe God exists. Therefore, just the 16:29 existence of pain and suffering cannot be the deciding factor. 16:33 Number two: A contradiction in features like we are describing 16:39 is not proof of nonexistence. You know, if you take a metal 16:43 rod it can be both hot and cold at the same time. One end could 16:50 be sticking into a block of ice and the other could be over fire 16:54 So the same rod, cold and hot. What are we saying? 16:58 Contradictions require solutions and explanations. They do not 17:05 give us the license to discard and dissolve the whole entity. 17:09 Number three: Contradictions that we describe now is caused 17:15 by supernatural features. Almighty, all loving. Which 17:23 human is almighty. No human is ever almighty. It is God who is 17:28 almighty and all loving. So think. We are looking at supernatural 17:35 characteristics, almighty and all loving. So if those 17:40 supernatural characteristics are there, then God exists. In other 17:45 words, if there is a contradiction then God exists who 17:48 caused that contradiction by his attributes. You can't use the 17:54 features and attributes of God to disprove his existence. 18:00 That would be false reasoning. So we have a choice. Keep the 18:05 contradiction, keep God. Do away with the contradiction and the 18:11 argument dies. Number four: We do not suffer 24/7. We also have 18:20 wonderful things on the other side of the spectrum. Joys, 18:22 pleasures, wonderful life. Then those are in line with a God who 18:30 is almighty and all loving. So really if absence of God is 18:35 based on pain and suffering well then if there are joys and 18:40 pleasures God exists so both the arguments... Remember we are 18:45 inquirers who look at both. So in other words, when we look at 18:49 both sides, pain and suffering, joys and pleasures they cancel 18:52 out each other. But really if evidence for the absence of an 18:59 entity as well as evidence for the presence of an entity is 19:03 found in the same place then that entity is present. Example: 19:07 Suppose we're at sea looking for land and we have a 360 degree 19:12 view on this. And we say that if we see a puff of smoke in a 19:17 certain shape that could be evidence for land. For 369 19:24 degrees we do not see that. But at the 360th degree we do see 19:30 that puff of smoke, shaped like that. Evidence of land. 19:36 So is there land looking around? Yes there is. What happened to 19:41 the 359 degrees in which there was no land? Well here's the 19:45 dictum. One piece of evidence for presence will outweigh all 19:51 the evidence for the absence. So if evil and suffering denote 19:57 the absence of God as well as joys and pleasures which would 20:01 denote the presence of God both are present in our lives, then 20:05 God exists and He is a present here. So the question of evil 20:11 pain and suffering drawn to its logical conclusion does not 20:16 support the atheistic side 20:18 but places the argument on the side of 20:21 theism on the side that there is a God. So one of the strongest 20:24 arguments against existence of God actually points to the 20:28 existence of God. So the mark that we gave, seven out of ten, 20:32 now has to be shifted out from this column to the next column 20:36 for all theism. How about column three: 20:41 Arguments for theism. 20:44 There are a few. We'll look at one of them. It's called a 20:47 logical analysis. Logic requires two steps to be credible. Number 20:53 one: It must have a base statement that everyone agrees 20:57 to. You cannot start a logical discourse with a statement that 21:02 is itself controversial. So a base statement everyone agrees 21:06 to and on that statement we base our steps of reasoning. That is 21:11 logic. So we look at four logical analyses. Number one: 21:16 Logic Analysis number one called the Kalam Cosmological 21:20 Argument: All changes have causes and the clearest changes 21:25 are starting and stopping. So whatever begins or starts has to 21:31 have a cause. The universe had a start established scientifically 21:38 now, 13.72 billion years ago. and therefore the universe must 21:43 have a cause. It did not come about by itself. Logical 21:48 analysis number two: It's called the Pan Cosmological Argument. 21:51 No effect or product causes itself. Nobody says that this 21:56 pointer is the cause of the pointer itself. Nor do we say 22:00 that the metal or the plastic is the cause of the pointer. 22:03 You could say that the manufacturer is the cause of the 22:07 pointer. But as soon as you say that you will agree that the 22:11 manufacturer is distinct from the product. So the cause is 22:18 always distinct, separate. The cause then of this universe 22:23 which they say is made up of matter, energy, time and space. 22:28 It has to be separate. In other words, we can't appeal to matter 22:32 energy, time and space to be the cause of matter, energy, time 22:38 and space. The cause has to be distinct and separate. How about 22:46 logical analysis number three: It's call Order Principle of 22:51 Science and Chronology. Chronology means in relationship 22:55 to time, which comes first and which comes second. All causes 23:00 produce effects. All effects have a cause and the cause 23:06 always precedes the effect. So if the effect and the product 23:12 is the entire universe then the cause of the universe preceded 23:16 the universe. Logical Analysis Number four: The Order Principle 23:23 of Science Number Two: This time it's not which came first or 23:27 second. This time which is bigger and which is smaller. 23:29 A specific corollary of the order principle is the law that 23:34 no effect can be quantitatively greater or qualitatively 23:38 superior to its cause. In other words the cause is always 23:41 greater that its affect. Now let's look around to see what we 23:46 have. The world has: Life, Thinking, Matter, Energy, Time, 23:50 Space, the Laws of Nature. So the cause of all of these would 23:56 have to have abundance of life, A giant intellect, huge amount 24:01 of power, massive power, full control of all the universe, able 24:06 to harmonize all the laws. Let's look at just two of those: 24:09 Intellect and power. Here are the words of Albert Einstein: 24:15 His feelings take the form of rapturous amazement at the 24:19 harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such 24:24 superiority, that compared with it, all the systematic thinking 24:28 and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection 24:32 In another place he called it an infinitely superior mind. 24:36 Infinitely superior mind? It could be omniscience. How about 24:45 power? Do you know a penny, if it is completely converted into 24:51 energy would provide the full energy of the atomic bomb that 24:58 was blasted over Hiroshima. Imagine one penny if you convert 25:04 it completely into energy would be that much energy. What if we 25:09 converted this whole room into energy. Wow! What if we 25:13 converted all the stars. Two hundred billion stars in our 25:18 Milky Way galaxy. Six hundred galaxies, about a hundred 25:26 billion stars each. Woo! And that is only less than ten 25:32 percent of the 25:34 total mass. The rest is dark energy, dark matter which we 25:38 can't even see. So the enormous amount of energy required to 25:43 produce such a stupendous quantity of mass is mind bending 25:47 The clear conclusion of that is that this cause may be called 25:52 infinite or omnipotent. So Aristotle, father of modern day 25:58 logic who said: That the cause of this universe or the cause of 26:03 the world has to have theistic like omnipotence and omniscience 26:08 See those bolded letters and bolded words. So what's the 26:11 conclusion of the logical analysis? Four points: The 26:16 universe has a cause. The cause is separate and distinct from 26:21 the universe. The cause preceded the universe and the cause could 26:27 possibly be called omnipotent and omniscient. This cause then 26:35 could be reasonably called God because he has all those 26:40 qualities. Think now of what we've just said. This conclusion 26:46 was reached by evidence and logic alone, without a single 26:51 reference to any religious writer or founder. Are you 26:56 willling to say Wow! What grade would you give it? I gave it 27:02 an eight out of ten because the arguments really now you will 27:09 agree tend to be strong. We've done three of the four columns. 27:14 We will do the fourth in the next session. So don't go away. 27:18 Come back and we'll do session number three of 27:22 God Fact or Fiction 27:24 If you have enjoyed this presentation with Dr. Subodh 27:28 Pandit and wish to watch more of this unique 13 part series for 27:32 free online visit the website GodFactOrFiction.com. That's 27:38 GodFactOrFiction.com. If you would like to order this 27:42 fascinating series on DVD it is now available from White Horse 27:46 Media:... 27:52 Dr. Subodh Pandit has written two eyeopening books entitled 27:57 Come Search With Me: Does God Really Exist? and Come Search 28:01 With Me: The Weight of Evidence which further explore the topics 28:05 of evolution, theism, atheism and religion. 28:08 To order... 28:26 ♪ ♪ |
Revised 2021-08-16