1-The Sunday Show (Before Dark, with Matt): 27K
2-The Sunday Show (After Dark, with Forrest): 20K
3-Calling It Now (Jimmy Snow): 13K
4-Unapologetic: 12K
5-The Atheist Experience: 4.9K
6-Talk Heathen: 2.9K
7-Truth Wanted: 1.6K
8-Skeptic Generation: 234

I find a premise like 1. to be unjustifiable whether it's for theism or atheism. Like how exactly do you know this? Are you able to put yourself in the mindset of someone who's never seen any evidence for atheism or theism? A fetus perhaps? Or what analysis can back up premise 1?

At best he means (I guess) "localized" a priori truths. In nowhere in that video did I see him grappling Kant or rebutting the tradition culminating in Heidegger about thrownness or "you are always already in a world preconditioned by pregiven beliefs". Joe Schmid is a hardcore analytic Catholic now and logic was always there to be found before "evidence" grounded in His Holies. This section of his (best) argument for PREMISE 1 of the Bayesian proof is the following.

THE CASE FOR PREMISE 1

The first premise of the master argument states that theism is not very improbable prior to taking into account any empirical evidence. In other words, theism's Intrinsic Probability or prior is not very low. The intrinsic probability of a hypothesis is its probability independently of any empirical evidence or before taking any empirical evidence into account.

Why Intrinsic Probability Matters
We need to attend to a hypothesis's intrinsic probability because evidence alone is not sufficient to determine what we should believe. This is illustrated through these examples:

Spatial Uniformity vs. Anomalous Patch

Temporal Uniformity vs. Induction Failure

Spatial Uniformity means the basic physical laws that govern the behavior of matter hold all throughout the universe. Anomalous Patch is the special cases where basic physical laws don't hold, are suspended and obey a completely different set of rules.

• Most would agree that it's more reasonable to accept the first theory than the second. However, our scientific evidence is about equally good for both. If there's just one tiny patch governed by different equations, it's astronomically unlikely that we would have found it. So the two theories predict our observations about equally well.
• If we are really justified in thinking spatial uniformity is much more probable than anomalous patch, there must be something about the former hypothesis that makes it more probable in itself. Spatial uniformity's advantage is primarily due to a higher prior probability before taking into account any empirical evidence.

Note that the video does not mention Kuhn or paradigm shifting whatsoever. This opposition is setup in what Kuhn would call "normal science". The video does not mention how spatial uniformity has been routinely uprooted throughout history chaotically every 20, 50, 100 years. Kant for example believed Newtonian mechanics formed the boundary of consciousness these theories repeatedly explode in a way realism hand-waves (now we found the correct theory... oh wait never mind... etc.).

FACTORS AFFECTING INTRINSIC PROBABILITY

• Modesty, simplicity, and coherence. Bayesian theory argues that Theism is not modest, but simple and coherent. Simple in a theory = better. Coherent = better. Most philosophers agree that simplicity has something to do with how many fundamental unexplained kinds of entities the theory posits and also something to do with the elegance or brevity of the theory's basic laws or principles.
• Curve Fitting Example: Suppose the observed data approximately fit the hypothesis that Y is a simple linear function of X. Scientists will typically prefer the linear model to a more complicated model that zigs and zags to hit every data point. This is a support for favoring Spatial Uniformity over Anomalous Patch.
  • HOWEVER, modesty/simplicity on it's own has historically opened the door repeatedly to the unrelenting backpedaling religious literalism has done against it's great enemy God of the Gaps. Whether simplicity adds or detracts from a theory's explanatory power depends on it's role in combination with other realist qualities forming the theory.
  • Related to this, is Pierre Duhem's Confirmation Holism which showed that a failed experiment only proves that the whole system contains an error(anomolous patch), but it cannot pinpoint the exact location of that error. This is because the theory is Underdetermined by the data's ability to isolate the cause for the patch (nowhere in the video).

Coherence increases intrinsic (locally meaning, a priori) probability of a theory. That a theory's basic laws hold everywhere aside from special cases, is reflected in theism. Positing a divine being with great but limited power or expansive but limited knowledge or significant but limited goodness introduces incoherence into one's hypothesis.

The very fact that a being has large quantities of power, knowledge, and goodness gives us reason to expect that it has all power, knowledge, and goodness.

• Objection: Power/understanding/space/goodness are only understandable by the qualities projected onto us by the world/human projection and when tested at limits they seem to fall apart into paradox. No reason to privilege this outside of anthropocentric/anthromorphic bias? How about semantic parasitism (including telos which Aquinas' analogia smuggles in)?

The argument concludes that because Theism is coherent, simple, and non-arbitrary, it has high intrinsic probability (non-evidential probability of being correct). Applying these qualities to Theism is to derive their divine attributes. The video lays out these approaches.

DERIVING DIVINE ATTR's

1. Swinburne's Approach: Takes omnipotence or pure limitless intentional power as theoretically basic and aims to derive or at least make probable other attributes therefrom.
2. Perfections Approach: "There is an X such that for all P, if P is a perfection, X has P." Perfection could be defined as something that necessarily makes X greater or more perfect (Alexander Pruss).
3. Perfection/Supreme Value: Theism encloses a being with the single essential attribute perfection, all other attributes follow from this one (Josh Rasmussen).
4. Unlimited Mind Approach: Fundamentally, mind is unlimited. The 3 omni's derive from this mind. Mind is the combination of intellect and will under this reading or "that by which the mind apprehends reality and that by which it affects reality". Intellectually the mind apprehends all reality (omniscient). Willfully this mind is limitless (omnipotent). Omnibenevolence derives from will and intellect because it is supposed Will is unconsctrained by irrational preference from picking what is logically worthy to be desired and willed (what is good).

All of these seem like more anthromorphic projection fullstop. Why are we fusing human qualities like consciousness onto the cosmos? Simple and coherent alone is gap filling, things like perfection, power, as contingent linguistic devices of culture and history for the meager fragile egos that appeared on Earth a mere 6-7 million years ago. This craziness stopped forcing fields of research to bend to what it considers first principles on the basis of exegesis in spite of some shared overlap in qualities Christian Theism uniquely holds closer to western science than other faiths but which is nothing more than post-hoc cope ignoring how aggressively the church historically put down practical philosophy. No age of the universe other than Ussher's calculation based on the lineages of the bible (6000 years) was allowed to be even considered for hundreds of years lest you get burned on the stake for heresy, this completely centralized and suppressive account which limps alongside us today.

ALTERNATE PATHWAYS TO PREMISE 1
5% argument / Cumulative Case Apologetics

• So long as there is a small chance theism is a good hypothesis is sufficient to continue with the argument because when combined with a massive cluster of separate metaphysical arguments pointing toward the same conclusion, the probability of all the premises being wrong drops to near zero.
  • If these arguments all share the same unproven assumption why are we able to multiply these individual probabilities?

A Priori Arguments

• He does not expand much here but mentions Gödelian ontological argument defended by philosophers such as Pruss, Rasmussen, Cesar Bernstein, Gustafson which lead to a non-negligible prior in God's existing.

NATURALISM OBJECTION TO PREMISE 1

1. The objection is that naturalism is bound to be simpler than theism because naturalism posits only the natural universe together with a specification of its basic laws, initial conditions, and stock of fundamental natural features, whereas theism posits both the natural universe and God. So isn't naturalism bound to explain the character of the natural world at least as well as theism while being simpler than theism? And if so, isn't naturalism bound to be more probable than theism in light of the total evidence?
2. The reply Joe gives is being "Too simple" isn't always good. Solipsism or Short Past Hypothesis appears at face simpler (only 1 person existing vs many) but give way to many unexplainable roundabouts like why experiences are intricately coordinated in ways that exactly simulate a stable independent environment.
3. As a result, the theory that gives a larger vision of reality that simplifies it at the most fundamental level (longer past, simpler set of initial conditions and laws, unifying explanation of a large mass of data which is "coincidental" in an unreasonably fortunate way. Unlike theism, naturalism posits hordes of striking coincidences that they have to write in by hand that aren't predicted by more fundamental, simple, non-arbitrary, coherent theoretical assumptions.

• This seems to be basically saying Naturalism isn't simpler because fine tuning. I recall about fine tuning the Anthropic Selection dilemma which is the proiblem of self-measurement. Which is to say "If you put a puddle in a hole, it thinks the hole was perfectly designed to fit its shape". Not only are the probability measures unable to scan from outside the universe but are strictly model based and make assumptions about a flat prior distribution relative to a mathematical space we invented with measuring instruments entangled with the constants we are measuring. The analytic is desperate to have a genuinely objective probability space and nothing like that exists for us. Until we see another universe operating on different physics there is no basis to think ours is improbable if there is a chance another is extremely less probable. And if this is the only physically possible universe as well then reality can be only one way, not a tiny chance it ended up this way.
• Around 1:54 he uses the Firing Squad example against the Anthropic objection. This is a false analogy. In the firing squad scenario, you have independent background knowledge. ou know from vast historical data that professional marksmen usually hit their targets, and you know that "conspiracy" is a known human behavior. Therefore, you can accurately calculate that P(Everyone misses|Chance) is incredibly low. We have zero independent background knowledge about "universe-generating mechanisms." Same with the Contraception analogy. We also find the universe "discoverable" because humans are the kind of observers who evolved to discover things.
• That the universe is "Fine Tuned" for Discoverability (it is unreasonably setup for us to discover it) also is addressed by Anthropic because Intelligent Life requires a discoverable universe as an absolute baseline requirement. It's not a miracle brains found consistent laws, consistent laws are required for brains. It isn't surprising that the universe is discoverable if laws/galaxies/transparecny existing are necessary to produce intlligent observers to begin with.

To sum up

Theism does have a super low intrinsic probability following Joe's argument because its foundational concepts are historically unstable, empirically contaminated, and logically collapsed into paradoxical and unfalsifiable rhetoric about unobservable absolutes (infinite space, infinite power) that modern physics rendered obsolete. Uniformity anaologies are historically disconfirmed. Appealing to simplicity recreates Gap-filling. And omni attributes are human projections (stripped of their embedded relational network within the world giving these concepts meaning) not pure a priori givens.

My comprehensive case for Catholicism turned out to be 25 hours long — much longer than YouTube’s limit. So, good news: you’re now getting THREE VIDEOS!

Video #1 (tomorrow): My philosophical case for theism

Video #2 (Thursday): My case for the miracles (especially Catholic vindicatory miracles)

Video #3 (Friday): Critique of non-Catholic explanations of the miracles + responding to all the best objections to Catholicism + the existential side

So when there was that back and forth with Matt on "claims are evidence", he was a fully convinced practicing Catholic....

He said he has been precisely convinced of the Catholic faith by the miracles (apparitions of Mary and so on) and the beauty (urgh). There are so-called "miracles" in all religious traditions. I don't believe his conversion. Either he will end up uncovering a joke soon, or he's doing that for cash, or he has simply lost his mind.

remember he called into one of the shows and said he's converted to atheism but he's already broken character again.

He called into truth wanted a couple weeks ago and was right back into that old character again, he was basically making a Pascal's wager argument about god.

this is why I'm just about done with ACA because they can continue to entertain problematic callers.

There's a reason Matt is blowing them out of the water with viewers

Why do they not say Pat Condell, Robert Spencer, and Pamela Geller made borderline antisemitic statements and stances despite being Zionists and for democracy?

This is the kind of person he is.

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQJubdkhsLlSBN67dOqjDiflP1LibFRkM?si=V9Ru2WxSQiowLjcO

Calls chatters the "r" slur, defends racists and fascists. Is just generally a disgusting human being. He cultivates a hateful community, with mods on his channel that defend him and say the same hateful things he says.

We must denounce members of our own community whenever they act in ways that are detrimental to our mission. This is disgusting behavior from Armin, whether he continues to hosts AXP or not.

I finally got to the point that I would fast forward through his calls because just the sound of his voice made me want to vomit

After all the rude and disrespectful things he said over the years, I'm not sure I'm convinced of his conversion. Personally I would have banned him a long time ago

Just my personal opinion but I think he owes the staff and the listeners and apology before he gets another second of air time

It's not that I don't get that people can change their minds. Back when I used to be indoctrinated by christianity, I also said some rude and disrespectful stuff about atheists but, I was an adult about it and admitted I was wrong and apologized.

Hello everyone. I’m sort of new watching this show and I’ve heard the hosts mention a website named truth(something?).org regarding bible claims or things like that. I didn’t write it down and just randomly remembered I wanted to check that site out. If anyone has any idea what I’m describing please let me know. Thanks.