{ "version": "1.0.0", "segments": [ { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "0.08", "endTime": "18.855", "body": "I think philosophy shares with theology the ultimate concern, the concern about ultimate things. And so even if a person who studied philosophy may not end up with theism, but I think he will at least end up with an interest, right, to explore these big questions. What if" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "18.855", "endTime": "20.855", "body": "the beginning doesn't imply a god?" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "21.015", "endTime": "26.935", "body": "It does if the first premise is true that whatever begins to exist has a cause. It logically follows the... Yeah. But doesn't..." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "26.935", "endTime": "28.93", "body": "But but the cause hasn't got to be God." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "28.93", "endTime": "37.17", "body": "Well, remember I gave an argument for thinking that this cause is timeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, and personal." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "37.17", "endTime": "38.45", "body": "I think it's a computer." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "39.01", "endTime": "42.29", "body": "Well, that wouldn't... Computers are designed by people. I mean No." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "42.29", "endTime": "44.364998", "body": "No. This is a self designing computer." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "44.364998", "endTime": "45.565", "body": "Uh-huh. Timeless." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "45.565", "endTime": "48.125", "body": "Timeless. Well, that's a contradiction in terms." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "48.125", "endTime": "50.445", "body": "Why is it tie... What's contradictory about it?" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "50.445", "endTime": "52.045", "body": "A a computer has to function. It takes" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "52.285", "endTime": "55.805", "body": "Oh, no. This is a special computer. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "55.805", "endTime": "60.78", "body": "But it has to be logically coherent. Oh, it's logically coherent? Yes. You have to be logically coherent." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "61.019997", "endTime": "62.859997", "body": "This computer is amazing." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "62.859997", "endTime": "70.14", "body": "No. Besides, it it would have to be, as I said, a personal being. No. And a computer is a physical." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "70.365", "endTime": "72.924995", "body": "Not this computer. Oh, no." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "73.005", "endTime": "91.27", "body": "Okay. See, what you're doing is you're actually... What you're calling a computer is really God. A non physical, non... It's just it's just another word if you rob it of all the attributes that make it a computer." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "92.31", "endTime": "127.07", "body": "That's the 2009 debate, is god a delusion, between the American analytical philosopher William Lane Craig and well known atheist and biologist Lewis Walton. We'll put a link both to the video and the transcript in the show notes, of course. Much of the debate revolved around whether the universe had a beginning. Spoiler. Both of them agreed pretty much there was a beginning, but they were sharply divided over whether that beginning, that first cause was personal or conscious." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "128.545", "endTime": "171.82501", "body": "The so called first cause argument has been around for, well, two and a half thousand years at least, and it hasn't been an exclusively religious question. That's the interesting thing here. It didn't begin with the so called scientific mind either. The question of whether the universe has a beginning or, more properly, a foundation and what that origin might be has sort of been the bread and butter of philosophers ever since there were philosophers, which is to say you don't have to be particularly religious to search for someone behind the universe. The existence of God can be pursued purely as a logical question." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "172.52", "endTime": "197.18501", "body": "But the first cause argument brings a whole lot of other questions. What explains motion? What explains change, causation, and the contingent existence that we see all around us? Why is there something rather than nothing? Taken together, philosophers call all of this stuff the cosmological argument." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "197.425", "endTime": "211.62", "body": "It's a family of arguments united by the conviction that the universe and the things in it can't explain themselves. So let's look deeper. I'm John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "229.145", "endTime": "236.29001", "body": "I started off in medicine, actually. Yeah. So I was treating patients, curing diseases, and also having a lot" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "236.29001", "endTime": "248.355", "body": "of interesting conversations with my fellow doctors about problem of suffering, for example. And one of my good friend was a Buddhist, and" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "248.355", "endTime": "267.15", "body": "another good friend was an atheist. And we used to discuss questions like, you know, whether there's a God, and if there's a God, why would he allow suffering? And they were trying to convert me to their worldview while I was trying to share with them the gospel. And so after all these discussions, I began to realize that actually all these big questions, you know, they are not answered in medicine. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "267.15", "endTime": "288.21", "body": "But they are addressed in philosophy. And I became very interested in philosophy. So I began to read a lot of books in philosophy of religion, such as those by William Lane Craig. And I found that many of the big questions have already been addressed by philosophers prior to us. And there are, in fact, good answers that can be given to these big questions." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "288.21", "endTime": "294.13", "body": "And so I became very excited, and that starts me on the journey to study philosophy." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "294.61", "endTime": "333.23502", "body": "That's doctor Andrew Loke. He's an associate professor in the department of religion and philosophy at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He specializes in the philosophy of religion, the intersection of science and faith, and is an elected fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. Andrew's authored a bunch of academic articles and monographs, including one that's pretty important for this discussion, natural theology, a reassessment. He reckons you don't need the bible or to be religious in any way to arrive at the conclusion God exists." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "333.795", "endTime": "350.47", "body": "I think philosophy shares with theology the ultimate concern, the concern about ultimate things. And so, if a person who studied philosophy may not end up with theism, but I think he will at least end up with an interest to explore these big questions. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "350.78998", "endTime": "362.965", "body": "Right. So you don't see philosophy of religion as like a tiny offshoot of philosophy? Do you think it sort of is a basic idea within philosophy?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "362.965", "endTime": "376.69998", "body": "I think that is how it traditionally used to be. I mean, most of the ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle... Plato was the one who formulated a cosmological argument about the existence of God. Mhmm. To show that God exists." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "377.02", "endTime": "385.065", "body": "But it's it's quite sad that in contemporary philosophy, many philosophers, they begin to focus on very narrow things, especially" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "385.065", "endTime": "385.225", "body": "in" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "385.225", "endTime": "394.19", "body": "the analytic tradition, for example. Right? They begin to think about how people use language and philosophy language, and they become... I think they they they lost the big picture. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "394.19", "endTime": "407.63", "body": "Many of them do. Yeah. But I think if you are a true philosopher and you think more deeply about why is there language and how how it can mirror reality, I think it still get you, right, to those big questions that is addressed in religion and theology as well." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "408.535", "endTime": "427.76", "body": "The fourth century BC Greek philosopher Plato is, of course, one of Andrew's true philosophers. Like earlier thinkers, Plato puzzled over the constantly changing physical world. Things come into existence. They change. They pass away." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "428.16", "endTime": "451.2", "body": "And philosophers in the ancient world were really puzzled by this in a way that feels a bit foreign to us. Heraclitus, for example, before Plato, reckoned everything was in flux, so you never step into the same river twice because it's a different river five seconds later, if you get the idea. Parmenides responded, no. That's dumb. He went in the opposite direction." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "451.28", "endTime": "497.70502", "body": "He said, change itself must be an illusion. All there is is permanent, unchanging reality. Plato comes along, and he's thinking about all this stuff, and he argued that behind the changing world that we see, that we realize is there in front of us, whether it's the flowing river or the growing oak tree, There must be something permanent that holds it together, eternal forms that give things their true nature. But Plato went a little bit further. He said that above all the forms was something ultimate, the form of the good, the source of all truth, goodness, and existence itself." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "497.945", "endTime": "523.96497", "body": "Now here, I'm relying on a compelling book by David Conway, who's the professor of philosophy at Middlesex University in The UK. He's not a Christian. The book is called The Rediscovery of Wisdom. It's brilliant. He argues that Plato was describing something remarkably close to what Jews and Christians meant by god, but without any influence either way." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "524.365", "endTime": "566.17", "body": "In Plato's Timaeus, we meet a supremely good divine intelligence who creates the ordered universe because he wants everything to be drawn toward his own goodness. Plato's student, Aristotle, went further in his books Physics and Metaphysics. He wasn't so sure about his teacher's eternal forms, but he did argue that everything undergoing change must be being changed by something else. A growing tree depends on sunlight, water, and soil. These things, in turn, depend on other causes behind them." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "566.49", "endTime": "610.64496", "body": "But a chain of things being changed, a chain of cause and effect, can't ultimately explain the change itself. Even if the universe was eternal, as he suspected, the links in the chain of cause and effect must logically still depend on something that isn't itself being changed, but has the power to change all the other things. Aristotle concluded that there must be something beyond this physical changing world, an eternal, unchanging reality that accounts for all this change or motion, and he called this the unmoved mover." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "613.3", "endTime": "675.51", "body": "Since there must always be motion and it must not fail, it is necessary that there should be some eternal thing which primarily moves, whether one or more, and the first mover is unmoved. Now that each of the unmoved but moving things is eternal is nothing to the present argument, but that there must be something which is itself unmoved and outside of all change, both absolutely and accidentally, but capable of moving another. And it is also clear from this that the first mover must be something one and eternal. For it has been shown that there must always be motion, and if always, it must be continuous. For what is always is continuous, whereas what is in succession is not continuous." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "676.31", "endTime": "705.12", "body": "But indeed, if it is continuous, it is one. And the motion is one, which is by one mover and of one moved. From these considerations then, and by looking back again at the principles, one might believe that there is some first unmoved mover. Aristotle, Physics, Book Eight, Chapter Six." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "706.24", "endTime": "743.655", "body": "Again, David Conway in that book has made a pretty strong case that what we have here in Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers is roughly the same basic concept of god that you find in the Judeo Christian tradition. Now Conway himself doesn't actually accept the Jewish or Christian revelation. He just reckons there's this strong, weird overlap between the god of the philosophers and the god of the bible. Anyway, all of this philosophical heavy lifting in the ancient world laid the foundations for what we call natural theology." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "754.135", "endTime": "771.09503", "body": "So natural theology is... Refers to what we can rationally believe about God and the attributes of God without using the premises of any particular religious doctrines or any particular religious text as the premise." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "772.855", "endTime": "777.575", "body": "Right. And how far do you think natural theology can take us?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "779.36005", "endTime": "787.44", "body": "Well, again, the view of traditional philosophy is that it can take us to discover that there is someone up there." }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "787.44", "endTime": "787.76", "body": "Mhmm." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "787.76", "endTime": "825.985", "body": "Like, as I said, mentioned just now, Plato was the one who formulated the cosmological argument, and also the theological argument as well. When we study, when we observe the order of the natural world, we will arrive at the conclusion that there is a supreme mind, an intelligent mind that created this order. And so we have the cosmological argument, theological argument, and also the moral arguments as well. And most philosophers throughout history prior to the time of, say, David Hume and Emile Kant, I think most of them would say that, yeah, we can prove that God exists using these arguments." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "826.225", "endTime": "829.985", "body": "Why did he ask that...... Theology fall out of favor? What happened?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "830.225", "endTime": "834.145", "body": "Well, I think Hume and Kant are two of the culprits." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "834.545", "endTime": "860.135", "body": "David Hume was an eighteenth century Scottish philosopher who was famous for his radical skepticism, particularly around the whole idea of cause and effect. Immanuel Kant came a little later, and he argued that we don't experience reality as it truly is, the noumena, but only as our minds interpret it through our senses, the phenomena." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "860.535", "endTime": "881.24", "body": "Or rather, we should... More precisely, it's the people who came after humankind who used their ideas, right, to argue against the traditional project of natural theology. So David Hume is a famous Scottish philosopher. He raised a lot of objections to the theological arguments. He thinks that the theological argument is formulated based on analogies." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "881.79504", "endTime": "905.05", "body": "Like, when we look at the world, it looks like there's an order and it looks like a machine with order. And we know that machines are designed, and therefore there must be a designer for the universe. Right? So he he thinks that the teleological argument is formulated in this way, but he argues against the reliability of using analogy, right, to arrive at conclusion. So he cast doubt on the theological arguments." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "905.29", "endTime": "932.67004", "body": "And Hume also cast doubt on the cosmological argument as well. He raised some skeptical doubts about causality, for example, which are still being used today by some eighties philosophers to argue against the cosmological arguments. And later... So so David Hume, you know, he's one of the most well known skeptic in history of philosophy. And his skeptical objections awakened Immanuel Kant, according to Kant himself." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "932.67004", "endTime": "948.925", "body": "Right? Hume was the one who awakened him from his slumber. And so Kant began to formulate his views which end up saying that we cannot know the things that are beyond the phenomena. We can only know... We only know the phenomena." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "948.925", "endTime": "967.43", "body": "Right? Things, the world of appearances. But the noumenal world that's beyond the world of appearances, such as whether there's a god or whether we have souls. Now these questions cannot be answered by natural theology, cannot be answered by human arguments. And so Kant, he cast doubts on human ability, right, to answer all these big questions." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "967.995", "endTime": "1013.39", "body": "And so these these are two main lines of objections by Hume and Kant. And philosophers after them, such as Arthur Schopenhauer, a well known atheist philosopher of the nineteenth century, Now he broadcast a view saying that, oh, you know, Immanuel Kant has already dealt a death blow to the cosmological argument, and all the theistic proofs have lost their credit, Schopenhauer declared. And so many philosophers, especially those influential philosophers of the German tradition, like Schopenhauer himself and also Nietzsche, all of them simply assumed that natural theology has failed, the project has failed. Yeah, so that led to a decline of natural theology among philosophers. And this also affected theologians as well." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1013.47003", "endTime": "1031.225", "body": "So many theologians... So prior to the time of Hume and Kant, most theologians, again, know, they affirmed the project of natural theology. That's an important first step of Christian theology, that we get people to realize that there's someone up there. And then the second step is to look at the historical evidence, which you are the expert. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1031.225", "endTime": "1058.245", "body": "So the historical evidence to show that this Jesus, he resurrected from the dead, he claimed to be divine, and he is the incarnation. Right? Someone up there has come has come down, right, to reveal himself to us, to show us salvation. So that is how it's traditionally traditionally done, right, in Christian theology. But because of the critic of human Kant, many Christian theologians have also abandoned the project of natural theology." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1058.485", "endTime": "1080.635", "body": "And that is very sad. That's tragic consequence of critic of human Kant. And because of this, I I think it it has huge consequence on Western civilization that led to the rise of atheism. So for example, you know, at the beginning of... For example, a long time ago, most people hardly anybody is atheist..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1080.635", "endTime": "1107.2", "body": "Atheist. Right? But now we see that about 16% of the population are atheist, and much of it's... Much of the skepticism, unbelief came from European philosophers and theologians who used their critic of natural theology and also their propagation of liberal theology. And so so that led to the undermining of traditional Christianity and also led to the rise of atheism." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1108.005", "endTime": "1121.045", "body": "But this is where we wanna return to the cosmological argument, the argument for the existence of God that focuses on cause rather than design or morality. So I asked Andrew to put it to me simply." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1121.88", "endTime": "1132.9199", "body": "Okay. In broader terms, it is quite intuitive. Right? So when we look at the world around us, when we look at the stars and galaxies, we will naturally ask, where did this come from? Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1133.32", "endTime": "1143.115", "body": "And if you ask me, why do I exist? Where do I come from? Right? I would say, I came from my parents, and then we have this childhood curiosity. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1143.115", "endTime": "1157.14", "body": "So where did my parents come from? I would say, oh, my parents came from my parents' parents. And where did my parents' parents came from? And eventually it became very natural to ask the question, could there be an infinite regress of causes and effects? Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1157.22", "endTime": "1177.445", "body": "And so the cosmological argument tries to show that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, and therefore there must be a first cause. Then And we can deduce that this first cause must be uncaused, without beginning, and also having libertarian freedom to bring about the first effect, which means that it is a personal creator." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1178.78", "endTime": "1189.02", "body": "Let's focus on a couple of things there. Sure. Why can't there be an infinite regress? Why can't you have an infinite number of grandparents? Why can't the universe have that?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1189.02", "endTime": "1204.065", "body": "Yes, that's a good question. So in my recent book on natural theology, I responded to the criticism by David Hume against causality and defended causality. Right? I I argued that there's... We we can prove that whatever begins to exist has a cause." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1204.37", "endTime": "1224.705", "body": "Whatever begins to exist will need to depend on causes. And so I will need to depend on my parents before I can begin to exist. But the problem is that my parents will also need to depend on their parents before they can begin to exist. Right? So if everyone is like this, then if there's an infinite regress of dependencies, then no one will ever begin to exist." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1224.8651", "endTime": "1235.77", "body": "It's just like, you if I have no money and I need to depend on you before I can have any money, but you also have no money. Right? In order for you to... And it's supposed... It is true that in order for you to have any money, you need to depend on someone..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1235.77", "endTime": "1245.685", "body": "Your your your parents, for example. But if everyone is like this, right, nobody will ever have any money. We we need to have the first source of money. Either somebody who can create money or has money. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1245.685", "endTime": "1263.5599", "body": "But we need to have someone who doesn't need to depend on another person to have money in order that he or she can have money. So this shows that there must be a first source of money. So likewise, there must also be a first source of being. Right? So there must be a first cause which does not need to which does not need to depend on another thing." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1263.88", "endTime": "1269.1599", "body": "But this first cause has the capacity to exist independently by itself." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1269.96", "endTime": "1285.1549", "body": "Now notice that Andrew was careful not to say everything has a cause. He said everything that begins to exist is caused by something else. That's a small but super important detail." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1285.635", "endTime": "1302.1799", "body": "Exactly. And this is a distinction that I often try to impress on my students. Because many of my students, they assume that everything has a cause, and they think that this is the premise of the cosmological argument. But if that were the case, then the cosmological argument will undermine itself. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1302.1799", "endTime": "1312.135", "body": "Because then we will need to ask the... What caused the first cause? Right? The first cause will need to have a cause as well, if everything has a cause. However, it is forced to think that everything has a cause." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1312.295", "endTime": "1323.4401", "body": "What is true is that everything that begins to exist has a cause. We need to ask the reason why. Well, the reason is because something does not come from nothing. Right? And so..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1323.4401", "endTime": "1346.21", "body": "And therefore, if something begins to exist, then that means that it must have come from something else prior to its existence. And that's the reason why whatever begins to exist, we'll need to have a cause. Now, however, if something does not begin to exist, then what that means is that that something has always existed. That's what having no beginning means. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1346.21", "endTime": "1356.85", "body": "Having no beginning means that it has always been there. And such a thing will not need to have a cause. Because something that is always there didn't come from nothing. It didn't come from anything. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1356.85", "endTime": "1360.255", "body": "It's always there. So such a thing can be uncaused. Right?" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1360.255", "endTime": "1361.855", "body": "Why can't the universe be that?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1361.8551", "endTime": "1375.83", "body": "Oh, that's a great question. And to answer this question, we need to ask what do we mean by universe? What do mean by the universe? Right? So usually by universe, people are referring to the totality of physical reality." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1376.0701", "endTime": "1386.9501", "body": "Right? Apart from God. Right? The totality of physical reality. And physics tells us that physical reality is constantly changing according to the laws of physics." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1386.9501", "endTime": "1400.665", "body": "Right? So physical reality consists of a series of events. But the problem is that events are things that have beginnings. Right? And things that have beginnings will need to depend on causes." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1401.0651", "endTime": "1425.755", "body": "Now, I really established just now that there cannot be an infinite regress of dependencies. Right? So what this means is that the series of events must ultimately came from a first cause, which is not an event, right? Which is not something that has a beginning, which is something that must be changeless initially. Because a change is an event that has a beginning." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1425.755", "endTime": "1444.34", "body": "That's what you need have a change. But the First Cause is something that has no beginning, which means that it must be initially changeless. And such an initially changeless thing must also have libertarian freedom in order to cause the first change, to cause the first event. And by..." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1444.34", "endTime": "1451.235", "body": "Can you explain more about what you mean? Yes. Because that's crucial in pointing out that this first course must have will." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1451.235", "endTime": "1471.8099", "body": "Yes, that's right. So in order for the first course to cause the first event, the first cause must have two capacities. The first is that the first cause must have the capacity to bring about the first event by itself. We cannot have something else that exists prior to the first cause to cause the first cause to change and cause the first event. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1471.8099", "endTime": "1493.5801", "body": "Because the first cause is the first. And so the first cause must be able to bring about the first event by itself. It must have this capacity. And secondly, the first cause must also have the capacity to be able to refrain, to be able to hold back its powers from bringing about the first event, such that the First Cause can exist initially without the first event. Why?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1493.5801", "endTime": "1507.225", "body": "Because the First Event is something that has a beginning, whereas the First Cause is something that has no beginning. So what that means is that they are not always together. Right? The First Cause existed originally without the First Event. And then it..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1507.225", "endTime": "1529.03", "body": "But it must also have the power to bring about the First Event, and yet also have the power to hold back its power from bringing about the First Event. Okay. So these two capacities, the power to bring about the first event by itself and also the power to hold back its powers, these two capacities describe what philosophers call libertarian free will. It's something that is... It must have this kind of freedom." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1529.03", "endTime": "1540.765", "body": "Right? It's something free. Right? And so this will distinguish the first cause from an impersonal, natural, physical entities which do not have free will. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1540.765", "endTime": "1548.58", "body": "So for example, if I let go of my handphone, right, it will drop. Right? My handphone cannot say, okay, choose to hold back. I choose not to drop or I choose to freely fly up. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1548.58", "endTime": "1556.26", "body": "The free... The handphone doesn't have these capacities. Neither do electrons or protons or whatever. Those entities, they follow the laws of nature. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1556.26", "endTime": "1572.505", "body": "They do have free will to choose or to hold back. They do have such capacities. And so this shows that the First is something that is not a natural physical entity, but rather it has free will and having free will imply that it is a person. Right? It's a per..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1572.505", "endTime": "1583.98", "body": "And therefore, it implies that the First Cause is a personal creator rather than an impersonal physical universe. And so this also answers your question. Right? Why think that the First Cause is not a universe? Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1583.98", "endTime": "1601.355", "body": "Why think that the universe must have a beginning in in in terms of the first event? And he also shows that the first... The beginning of the universe must be caused by a first cause, which transcends the physical universe and which has free will, which means that it is a transcendent personal creator." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1603.43", "endTime": "1621.405", "body": "The version of the cosmological argument that Andrew is laying out and of which he's a huge fan is called the Kalam argument. Before it got that Arabic name from its Muslim origins, there were some even earlier Christians who were playing with the same ideas." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1621.805", "endTime": "1633.21", "body": "I like to highlight that, actually, the Kalam argument was first proposed and developed by a Christian philosopher, John Philoponnes Ah. In the sixth century. Byzantine Byzantine?" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1633.21", "endTime": "1634.09", "body": "Greek scholar." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1634.09", "endTime": "1636.57", "body": "That's right. A Greek scholar in Alexandria. Mhmm." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "1638.8099", "endTime": "1693.3799", "body": "If the world had no beginning and the number of men living before, say, Socrates was infinite, and those living from Socrates until the present time have been added to it, there will be something greater than the infinite, which is impossible. And this is among the greatest of impossibilities. For it is not possible to be greater than the infinite, not to mention many times greater. So if these absurdities and, as we shall demonstrate elsewhere, many others necessarily arise if the world is ungenerated, it is not possible that the world is ungenerated and without a beginning, but in that case, the infinite will be traversable and will exist in actuality, and the infinite will necessarily always be growing and never stop getting bigger than itself, and be many times, not to say an infinite number of times, infinity." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1694.66", "endTime": "1736.385", "body": "John Philoponnes, four ninety to five seventy, so he lived a long life, eighty years, is a name rarely heard outside the obscure fields of Byzantine studies or the history of science. In addition to treatises on subjects like the Trinity, Philoponus produced detailed commentaries on Aristotle. He was an Aristotle expert, and he also wrote the first full blown critique of Aristotle's concept of an eternal cosmos. His argument was not that the bible says that the world has a beginning. You know, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1736.465", "endTime": "1769.975", "body": "No. Philoponos made a philosophical and logical case for a time bound contingent universe created x Nihilo out of nothing. And his work on physics and metaphysics influenced loads of the early scientists we hold up and revere, people like Galileo. He also was an important bridge between the old Greek classical philosophy and the later Islamic philosophical tradition." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1770.57", "endTime": "1772.8899", "body": "So even His writings Oh." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1772.97", "endTime": "1779.2899", "body": "Were absorbed by Islam and turned into Arabic. And even then, there was Arab Christians" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1779.7699", "endTime": "1784.095", "body": "Who were doing the first work, and then Muslim Arabs took on the work." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1784.095", "endTime": "1787.0549", "body": "Yes. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. So the Arabics developed these ideas." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1787.0549", "endTime": "1800.4199", "body": "The Muslims developed these ideas. And the Muslims also contributed to it as well. So al Ghazali, for example, he was the one who... In the the part of the argument where he tries to deduce that the First Cause has free will. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1800.4199", "endTime": "1806.82", "body": "So that came from al Ghazali, actually. So I think it's a it's a it's a it's a collaboration Yes. Between Christians and Muslims." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1806.82", "endTime": "1807.5399", "body": "Which is kind of nice." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1807.5399", "endTime": "1818.245", "body": "Yeah. Which is kind of nice. Exactly. Yeah. As for the Chinese, I think that, as far as I know, there is no version of the cosmological argument among the Chinese." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1818.245", "endTime": "1837.385", "body": "But however, there are some declarations in ancient Chinese literature which claims that there is a God who brought forth all things. Right? So in Chinese it's called... There's a saying called, Right? And this is the heavenly God." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1837.385", "endTime": "1846.665", "body": "Is? God of heaven. Right? Tru, He brought forth, all things. So that's what we mean by God." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1846.665", "endTime": "1859.0399", "body": "Right? So that is consistent with the idea of of creation. Right? Of the first cause bringer about all things. And we find this in the Shou Wen Jie Zi, which is a Chinese dictionary in the Han dynasty." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1859.12", "endTime": "1879.0099", "body": "But we don't find a very systematic argumentation, right, not in Chinese philosophy. But however, I think we do find some similar argumentation in Hindu philosophy. So the Hindu philosophers were debating against the Buddhist, for example. Right? And the Hindus are trying to show they they were also engaged in the process, but in the project of natural theology as well." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1879.1699", "endTime": "1892.1749", "body": "So some Hindu philosophers, you know, they also formulated the cosmological arguments, and they also use it together with the theological argument and try to show that there is a creator, a designer who created physical reality." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1892.175", "endTime": "1928.245", "body": "I know it's not your expertise, but I can't resist asking you about Confucius. Because I've read the famous Analects, and I admire Confucius greatly. He's often said to be a sort of atheist, but all the way through the book he's saying heaven directed me, heaven called me, heaven You know, he's using the word heaven, not Shen, not the God word. He doesn't use the word God word, does he? But do you think he means God by using the word heaven?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1928.645", "endTime": "1945.15", "body": "Well, is controversy about how to interpret Confucius on this point. Right? Yep. Some argue that he is referring to a personal god who has will to direct human beings. But others, philosophers hold to a more naturalistic interpretation of Confucius." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1945.7051", "endTime": "1955.9451", "body": "But I... But in any case, I don't think that he is an atheist. I think at most we can... You might say that he may be agnostic about some of these things. And Confucius is very agnostic about a lot of things." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1955.9451", "endTime": "1969.8", "body": "Like whether there is life beyond the grave or what? Right? So he says that, no, we can't even know what is gonna happen now in our world. Why do we speculate about what is gonna happen after he dies? So he's he's quite agnostic about such things." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "1969.8", "endTime": "1975.375", "body": "But I don't think he goes out to declare that there's no God. I don't think he's atheist in that sense. Back" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "1981.6951", "endTime": "2022.79", "body": "in Europe, the next big step in the development of the cosmological argument comes from the thirteenth century friar and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas became one of Christianity's most influential thinkers. He died before he was 50, but he produced an astonishing amount of work, including his massive Summa Theologiae, where he lays out the cosmological argument. And here's one I prepared earlier. This, friends, is the Summa Theologiae." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2031.805", "endTime": "2059.595", "body": "Anyway, his reasoning was that things are always changing, certain things, anyway. They are in motion, as he put it. And whatever changes from one state to another, from potential to actual, must be changed by something else. And nothing can be the ultimate cause of its own change from potential to actual." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "2062.155", "endTime": "2130.335", "body": "Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way, a thing should be both mover and moved, that is, that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity because then there would be no first mover and, consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers move only in as much as they are put in motion by the first mover, as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "2131.75", "endTime": "2149.0251", "body": "Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other, and this everyone understands to be God. Thomas Aquinas, Sumer Theologiae." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2150.305", "endTime": "2191.135", "body": "Philosopher Ed Feaser points out that Thomas' cosmological argument differs from the Kalam argument on the question of a temporal beginning. When Aquinas says first cause, he doesn't mean the first event in a long history right back to the Big Bang. He means first in a logical or ontological sense. Imagine a cup of water sitting on a desk. The desk holds up the cup, because the floor holds the desk, and the floor is held up, well, in this case, by another floor, then another floor." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2191.45", "endTime": "2227.18", "body": "But the whole thing's held up by foundations, and on and on you go. Everything in this chain depends on something else. Here's how Theaser himself puts it. Let me quote. Since the desk, the floor, and the foundation have no power of their own to hold the cup aloft, the series could not exist in the first place unless there were something that did have the power to hold up these intermediaries, and the cup threw them without having to be held up itself." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2228.5398", "endTime": "2240.2751", "body": "Aquinas argued that there must be something that doesn't depend on anything else for its power to hold up. And that's what he meant by first cause." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2240.435", "endTime": "2264.4102", "body": "So so Aquinas' version of the cosmological argument does not seek to establish that there's a first cause of the beginning of time. So it's not a temporal version. Rather, it is a... He he tried to argue that there is a sustaining first cause, a first cause that sustains things in existence. And then he he tried to deduce that this first cause is a pure act, pure actuality, which he thinks is God." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2265.705", "endTime": "2289.6902", "body": "And so my my argument is is different from Aquinas, because mine tried to establish that there is a first cause of the beginning of the first event. And I also deduced that the first cause is something that has libertarian freedom. And so this is different from Aquinas' version. Right? So because Aquinas' version doesn't actually deduce that the first cause has free will, it just deduces that there's a pure actuality." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2289.6902", "endTime": "2299.665", "body": "And then one might wonder why think that this pure act is God? Why think that it's a personal creator? Right? Could it be something like an impersonal Tao, as in Taoism, for example?" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2299.665", "endTime": "2309.105", "body": "Wouldn't he say that's why the teleological argument is important? Because it tells you that what you have is rational mind intending an end." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2309.185", "endTime": "2336.635", "body": "That's right. I think he can combine his cosmological argument with the theological arguments, and this cumulative case will arrive at a conclusion that there is not only a pure act, but also this pure actuality is something intelligent as well. So I think he can do that, but I think the advantage of the Kalam argument is that even without the theological argument, by itself, it is already sufficient to arrive at a at a personal creator god." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2337.67", "endTime": "2383.0652", "body": "Andrew is intellectually indebted to William Lane Craig, the American philosopher who helped revive this particular argument back in 1979 in his book, The Kalam Cosmological Argument. Craig, who studied here at Wheaton College, draws on modern physics, including the second law of thermodynamics, to say that if the universe had existed forever, it should have reached heat death by now, a state where no usable energy remains to sustain the star's chemistry or life. But clearly, that hasn't happened. For Craig, this supports the ancient argument of Philoponnes that the universe can't have had an infinite past." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2383.7852", "endTime": "2409.9602", "body": "So William Lane Craig, who is a main proponent of the Kalam argument, he will formulate the Kalam argument as saying that premise one, whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise two, the universe began to exist. And therefore it follows from the two premises that, therefore, the universe has a cause. And then we can deduce that the cause of the universe has those properties I mentioned, such as having libertarian freedom. Right?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2410.04", "endTime": "2436.59", "body": "So the argument that I presented just now, right, is in fact a form of the Kalam argument, which uses the premise that whatever begins to exist as a cause. But I formulate... I explain the argument slightly differently from doctor Craig, in the sense that I go straight to establish that there is a first cause and then deduce, explain why that the first cause is a personal creator. So that is how I formulate or reformulate the Kallam Cosmological Argument." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2437.185", "endTime": "2484.05", "body": "Up next, from First Cause Philosophy to Christianity. You don't need religion to accept that there is some kind of intentional first cause behind the universe. And the proof of this is, of course, Plato and Aristotle and a host of other philosophers who weren't interested in religion and just argued around the logic of this changing world and came to the view that there was some supreme eternal mind that is the ultimate cause of everything. Now that might overlap with the Christian vision of God, but it isn't Christianity itself. So how do you get from the God of the philosophers to the God of Jesus Christ?" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2484.4502", "endTime": "2496.105", "body": "Good question. Thanks for asking. Is that a great leap, or is it a small step? Or how do you conceive of the relation between natural theology and genuine faith?" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2497.225", "endTime": "2525.325", "body": "Yeah. So I think once we establish that there is someone up there using natural theology, that there's a transcendent creator God, then we can do the project of comparative religion. We can look at different religious worldviews and see which one fits the best, right, with the idea that there's a transcendent creator god. Now I think that Buddhism, we can exclude that because Buddhism doesn't affirm that there is a first cause creator. So we don't need to consider Buddhism." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2525.325", "endTime": "2539.6602", "body": "Right? And as I said just now, Confucianism, no, it's not very clear and it's somewhat agnostic about such things. And for... As for Taoism, right, Taoism affirmed that ultimate reality is an impersonal Tao. It's not a kind of personal intelligent creator God with free will." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2539.6602", "endTime": "2549.045", "body": "Right? So again, we can exclude Taoism. Now Hinduism, well, we find there is a variety of different views in Hinduism. Right? So, you know, there's no one clear view." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2549.045", "endTime": "2567.68", "body": "I mean, there's a variety of different views. And as for Islam, I think Islam is the closest to Christianity in that regard. Right? In affirming that there is a personal creator, God, who created the universe. But the key difference between Islam and Christianity, one of the key differences concerns the person of Jesus." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2567.68", "endTime": "2581.0352", "body": "Who is Jesus? So according to Islam theology, Jesus was a great prophet, but the Muslims deny that he was God. Right? But they they think that... They they thought that he..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2581.0352", "endTime": "2607.085", "body": "They think that he is a a genuine prophet who, you know, tell us a genuine revelation from God. However, when we look at the earliest historical evidence concerning Jesus, which are the Christian documents, the New Testament documents written in the first century, we can find that the earliest Christians affirmed that Jesus was not merely a prophet. Rather, they claim that all things came through him. Right? So he is..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "2607.2449", "endTime": "2624.51", "body": "Jesus was on the creator side of the creator creature divide. And this divide is very important in ancient Jewish monotheistic thinking. Right? There's only one creator and other things are all created by him. And the earliest Christian thought that Jesus was on the creator side of the divide." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2634.665", "endTime": "2669.5251", "body": "Let's press pause. I've got a five minute Jesus for you. In the early three hundreds AD, a Christian priest in Alexandria named Arius came up with a really cool idea to make Christianity make sense to educated Greeks and Romans. There had always been a problem with Christian proclamation from the Greek point of view. The claim that, Jesus of Nazareth, the man who, you know, suffered and died on a Roman cross, was actually the infinite god seemed absurd to many pagans who were philosophically informed." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2669.605", "endTime": "2703.79", "body": "How could the infinite become finite? So Arius' solution was simply to say, well, Jesus isn't god. He was just like a bridge created by god to help humanity climb up the ladder to the divine. And this clever idea took off. The controversy became so serious that the newly converted emperor Constantine summoned bishops from right around the Roman world to a council at Nicea, the famous Nicene Council in 03/25." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2703.79", "endTime": "2732.9902", "body": "Nearly 300 bishops came together to debate Arius' idea over about six to eight weeks. The central issue wasn't whether Arius had come up with an attractive idea. He had. It was whether his teaching matched what earlier Christians had said, and in particular, what the apostles in the New Testament had said. It turns out the bishops overwhelmingly rejected Arius' cool idea." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2733.1501", "endTime": "2771.12", "body": "It was something like 250 to 17, with some abstaining. They came out of the council affirming the language that Jesus was god from god, light from light, true god from true god, begotten, not made of one being with the father. That's the famous Nicene Creed. And it preserves the earlier, less cool idea that the infinite god, in fact, became a finite human. Now we know it's the earlier idea for a bunch of reasons going right back to Jesus himself." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2771.445", "endTime": "2809.825", "body": "A couple of generations before Arius, we know that Christians were singing a hymn that we've dubbed the first hymn that precisely praises father, son, and holy spirit as the one and only giver of all good gifts. Even earlier, around the year 02/30, Christians near Megiddo in Israel actually dedicated a table in their church, and the language of the inscription says dedicated to God, Jesus Christ. I've actually seen this inscription in situ. It's real. Actually, so have you, Mark." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2809.825", "endTime": "2810.305", "body": "That's right." }, { "speaker": "Voice Actor", "startTime": "2810.305", "endTime": "2812.545", "body": "You were there. We had to get past the guard dogs." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2813.09", "endTime": "2826.05", "body": "Yeah. Guard dogs, guards, because this inscription was actually found in the middle of a maximum security jail. Don't know how you got those permissions, Mark. Well, I don't know why you walked on it. I asked permission." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2826.885", "endTime": "2828.085", "body": "I said, am I allowed to? And he" }, { "speaker": "Debate Tape", "startTime": "2828.085", "endTime": "2831.925", "body": "said, yeah. Yeah. It's been there nearly two thousand years. It's fine. That's why..." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2832.165", "endTime": "2854.87", "body": "Yeah. Anyway, that's about the year 02/30. We can wind even back before that to the year 01/12 when the pagan Roman governor Pliny writes to Trajan, says, I'm arresting and killing Christians. All I can find out is that they get up early one day, and they sing a hymn to Christ quasi deo, as if God, as if divine. That's evidence from a pagan." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2855.27", "endTime": "2881.83", "body": "And then we can go even earlier than that. In pretty much the middle of the first century, we have a letter from Paul to the Philippians in which he speaks of Jesus, and he says, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Alright. But what about Jesus himself?" }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2882.31", "endTime": "2910.1", "body": "We know that Christians in the first generation worshiped Jesus as God, But did Jesus suggest such a thing? Now there are a couple of ways of approaching this. I mean, there are clear quotations, like in John 14 where Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. It's pretty clear. Or John 20 where Thomas praises Jesus in the words, my lord and my god, and Jesus accepts the statement." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2910.58", "endTime": "2964.22", "body": "But, actually, critical scholars who like to doubt stuff, tend to dismiss those statements because they were written in the gospel of John, which many scholars think comes from the nineties AD. So they say that's enough time for an evolved view of Jesus as God to have developed. Personally, I think that's junk, partly because we already have Jesus being praised as God in that hymn of Paul in Philippians chapter two, which predates that by a long way. Anyway, there are other less easily dismissed indications in Jesus' own life that he expected people to worship him as one with the God of Israel. One of the most striking things about Jesus is how he placed himself above the Jerusalem Temple." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2964.38", "endTime": "2991.9202", "body": "That's not like just saying I'm in... More important than the church down the street. For ancient Jews, the Jerusalem Temple was the special dwelling place of God. It was the center of the divine presence and the place where you could get atonement, forgiveness of sins. But Jesus, in Matthew chapter 12, said about himself, something greater than the temple is here." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "2992.4", "endTime": "3026.07", "body": "Well, the only thing greater than the temple in Jesus' Jewish theology was God. Then there's the way Jesus handed out forgiveness like it was his to offer. And when he does this in Mark chapter two, the religious leaders protest with very good theology, who can forgive sins but God alone? Indeed. Jesus presented himself as something like a mobile temple, the place of God's presence and forgiveness." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "3027.215", "endTime": "3055.06", "body": "The divinity of Jesus Christ was not a fourth century invention to do with politics and late theology. It was taught by Jesus, sung about by the first Christians. It was inscribed in the earliest church building we found, defended at the Council of Nicea, and affirmed by all Christians ever since. You can press play now." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3056.2349", "endTime": "3085.0698", "body": "And this is astonishing. And so in one of my publications, in my book, The Origin of Divine Christology, which is published by Cambridge University Press. So in that book, I defended a historical argument, which goes like this. Right? So premise one, if Jesus never claimed to be divine, then the earliest Christians leaders, the earliest Christian leaders who were ancient Jewish monotheists, they wouldn't have come to a widespread agreement that he was divine." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3085.365", "endTime": "3101.365", "body": "Right? I think they will at most regard him as a great prophet or a great teacher, but they wouldn't regard him as divine, that all things came through him. Right? I mean, after all, the the Jews, you know, they respected Moses, but they didn't think that Moses was the creator of all things. They respected Abraham, David, but they didn't regard this as the creator of all things." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3101.82", "endTime": "3113.4202", "body": "So why would the earliest Christians regard Jesus as the... As the true... The one through whom are all things? Right? So if Jesus never made such claims himself, the earliest Christian leaders wouldn't have come to the widespread agreement that he was." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3113.915", "endTime": "3154.0251", "body": "But then they did came to the widespread agreement. Right? So by modus tollens, right, if p, then q, not q, therefore not p, we can conclude that Jesus, he must have made some claims about himself, claiming that he was divine, and by His resurrection, provide evidence to show that He was truly divine. And so I think that once we can establish the conclusion that Jesus did claim to be divine, I think that is already sufficient to refute Islam. Because Islamic theology couldn't tolerate a contradiction by affirming that on the one hand Jesus was a great prophet, but then this prophet who told us the true revelation from God also told us that he is divine." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3154.0251", "endTime": "3168.9202", "body": "Right? So that would contradict Islamic theology. And therefore, we can also set aside Islam. And by the way, most most Muslim theologians also deny that Jesus was crucified. But again, we have very good historical evidence to show that Jesus was crucified." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3169.08", "endTime": "3182.145", "body": "So on the basis of historical evidence, I think we can exclude Islam. And then we arrive at Christianity, arrive at the person of Jesus who claimed to be the creator god, someone up there coming down." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "3182.545", "endTime": "3201.5698", "body": "That's controversial stuff. But I think Andrew's pointing in the right direction. If there is an x marks the spot indicating that the god of the philosophers has touched the world in a tangible way, it's Jesus. But that takes us beyond philosophy." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3202.475", "endTime": "3221.25", "body": "And so we need to ask the question, right, whether his claim is true or not. So if his claim were not true, then either Jesus was a liar, right, that he didn't know... He he he knew that it was not true, but he still claimed to be God, he didn't know what he was talking about. Right? Maybe he doesn't know what the word God means." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3221.33", "endTime": "3236.495", "body": "Right? And he he was somebody who was insane or lunatic. Right? Or sincerely deluded. But then a liar or a deluded person, imbecile or whatever, right, such a person wouldn't be able to rise from the dead." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3236.495", "endTime": "3257.2551", "body": "Right? And so we have good reason to think that Jesus was not a liar, He wasn't a lunatic or whatever, but that he was truly God, and that's why he claimed to be God. And so I think the claim of Jesus provide the crucial link between the someone up there and the Christian faith. Right? Because we have good reason..." }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3257.2551", "endTime": "3270.215", "body": "Because Jesus referred Himself as the one who who is the someone up there coming down. And we have good reason to think that His claim is true. And that is how we can know that the God who created the universe is also the God of Christianity." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "3271.08", "endTime": "3271.96", "body": "Thank you very" }, { "speaker": "Andrew Loke", "startTime": "3271.96", "endTime": "3273.24", "body": "much. Thank you." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "3290.785", "endTime": "3310.36", "body": "Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dickson, produced by Kaylee Payne, directed and edited by Mark Arias Hadley. Sophie Hawkshaw is on socials and membership. Siobhan McGinnis is our online librarian. Lindy Leveston remains my wonderful assistant. Santino DeMarco is chief finance and operations consultant, and her voice actors today were Yannick Laurie and Dakota Love." }, { "speaker": "John Dickson", "startTime": "3310.5051", "endTime": "3336.5842", "body": "You can become a member of the Undeceptions club and get access to special extras and an exclusive annual gift and much more by heading to undeceptions.com/club. Becoming a member is the best way to help Undeceptions help us all look deeper. An Undeceptions podcast." } ] }