First third of a video by Mr. Zod against CSL as Apologist · Same Video on CSL as Apologist, Roughly Up to Rest of First Half
Same video by Zod.
11:05 I think you are trying to make the analogy of "global qualities" ...
Like the roundness of a vinyl disc doesn't reside in any given atom or molecule.
The problem is, in undisputed examples of global qualities, in examples that we Christians for instance agree with, there is in each detail a thing corresponding to, if not identic to, the global quality. Like a part of that global quality.
Say I weigh 150 pounds, this doesn't mean each and every molecule in my body weighs 150 pounds and these somehow coincide instead of adding up. On the contrary. But it also doesn't mean each and every molecule in my body weighs nothing. The category mass is common to my global 150 pounds and the partial nano-grams or whatever.
So also the category limited geometric extension is common to the roundness of the vinyl and the shape of the single molecule.
The problem is, atoms moving, even in a brain, don't seem to have any even part of the quality of being a valid argument.
So, I noted that you avoided the category "valid argument" and only used the category "ponder" ... if you know the argument, which you could qualify as "presuppositionalist" of Miracles chapter 3, you know what CSL was giving in a very brief shortcut. And that makes the omission misleading, perhaps consciously willed to be so. Because, CSL was in fact not denying that a cat's pondering of a mirror image or a bird outside the window could be a global quality of atoms in the cat's brain. He was stating that unlike the cat, we can make valid deductions about things. More precisely, universally valid ones. And hence also account for things.
11:24 We can make meaning of material things that they don't have in themselves, for instance ink on paper or pixels on screens.
This doesn't mean the ink could do so or that the pixels could do so, without us.
And this is pretty fatal to an idea that ultimately makes us a parallel of ink and pixels.
You are skirting around the definitions, you are pretending atoms in our brains, that in themselves have no inherent meanings, can rise above their own nature and create the meaningful and meaning conveying thing that is us.
That's your lazy thinking, not his.
"Uh the thoughts themselves 11:37 are not true or false just because 11:39 they're made up of atoms. Those atoms 11:41 when they generate thoughts are 11:44 generating thoughts that can maybe 11:46 accurately understand and reflect and 11:48 predict things about the physical 11:50 universe. That's meaningful"
So, where did the atoms get this ability to generate thoughts from?
From their speed? Their direction?
And where did the thoughts that got generated by atoms acquire an ability of accurate understanding?
Because, the point that CSL is making is, atoms being deterministic causes, and atoms being generators of thoughts, these together mean, thoughts are generated deterministically, which is at odds with them being generated in a way giving them freedom to explore sense, or giving them the non-deterministic dirrection of valid logic.
We presuppose reason works whenever we reason.
The problem is, materialism, when analysed in relation to individual human reasons, gives us no reason to believe that reason works.
One could scrap the reasoning (including materialism) or one could just (as CSL does) scrap the materialism.
By 12:02 we have two issues.
"We can 11:52 observe the universe, notice things 11:54 about it, and have thoughts that are 11:56 more or less accurate."
Can we? Especially on a Heliocentric view?
Even as a Geocentric, in order to have the daily motion match my observation that we aren't moving and son, moon and stars are, I have to deduce that there is a part above the stars that doesn't move. Because, without this unmoving container, it would make more sense to say the earth were moving inside the whole.
Because movement is predicated about the thing contained, not about the container.
But you also have to deduce things you do not see, like a Solar system with Earth orbitting the Sun (or a common centre situated outside the centre of but inside the Sun or sometimes just outside it) and Earth turning around itself.
These things are also unobserved in themselves, as much as my Empyrean Heaven.
No, we cannot observe the entire universe, and we can only observe at close hand a very tiny fragment of it.
Logic means, from observations made within that tiny fragment, I can deduce about the unseen outside the observations.
THE UNIVERSE, any universe, Geocentric, Heliocentric, Acentric, BigBangish or whatever, is a piece of abstraction and deduction.
"Um and to say 11:58 that that can't happen because those 12:00 thoughts are being generated by atoms is 12:02 just plain nonsensical."
What isn't nonsensical though is to say this couldn't happen if thoughts were just being generated by atoms.
You do acknowledge a difference between "can't" and "couldn't if", right?*
"This 12:27 is just kind of by the book stuff and 12:29 it's just using word play to get 12:30 yourself to conclusions about God."
No, you are using word play to avoid conclusions about God.
Like equivocating about "can't since" and "couldn't if" or about "atoms generate" and "only atoms generate" ... they kind of sound similar, but have different meanings. You sound as if you had a gotcha on CSL, but you haven't.*
13:35 I think your most honest assessment of CSL's view of his past Atheist self is, he did not reflect very well.
He certainly was an atheist.
But he wasn't one of your type, meaning, presumably, from your pov as an Atheist he didn't reflect very well.
To some of us, including me, he made up for it when coming out of Atheism.
"Just and unjust 14:18 are just words we use to describe 14:20 whether people are being treated fairly, 14:22 to put it roughly."
That's precisely the kind of word analysis he never stooped to as an Atheist.
His reasoning remains valid. As an Atheist he asked if Theism shouldn't mean a God who treats people fairly. As an Ex-Atheist he added, he could not have had an universally valid idea of "fair" from an Atheist universe, or from atoms in his brain.
* Even Chinese makes a distinction. I translated (on Google) the phrases "I can't swim" and "If I hadn't learned, I couldn't swim" and I get: "Wǒ bù huì yóuyǒng." vs "Rúguǒ wǒ méi xuéguò, wǒ jiù bù huì yóuyǒng." In other words, the irrealis conditional is marked by to "I can't swim" / "Wǒ bù huì yóuyǒng" adding at the right place a "jiù", making it "...wǒ jiù bù huì yóuyǒng."
Just don't ask me to pronounce it, please, I don't speak Mandarin Chinese!
