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People from outside their religion regularly taking their arguments seriously would be a good start. Modern Christian apologetics don't seem to be having much headway with people who aren't already looking to be sold on Christianity.
Bishop Barron has been on the Ben Shapiro Show, delivered lectures for the Heritage Foundation, been interviewed by Lex Freidman, and many more. If you look in the comments on his Youtube channel it does seem like many atheists, protestants, and members of other faith traditions watch him regularly.
On a whim I decided to watch a bit of the Ben Shapiro interview, and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. When Ben asked him what his favorite argument is for the proof of God, he says what essentially boils down to the First Cause argument, something that's been trounced in the internet atheist debates for decades. When pressed with a follow up of what caused God then, he responded with special pleading. He dressed it up with fancy words like "that which is properly unconditioned on this reality", and his presentation is polished, but he's just regurgitating arguments from a debate that was largely settled over a decade ago. After watching a bit more and hearing nothing but a few "God of the Gaps" arguments I closed the tab.
The biggest issue with that line of sophistry is that it precisely nothing to imbue the definition of "God" with other relevant properties, such as the whole omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent shtick.
Great, you've shown there "must" be an Unmoved Mover/Uncaused Cause. What exactly does find and replace with "God" for "the Big Bang" lose out on?
What does replacing the Big Bang with God lose out on? Both of them share the attribute of serving as a termination point for materialistic explanations. Anything posited past that point is unfalsifiable by definition, unless something pretty significant changes in terms of our understanding of physics.
If there's an unmoved mover/uncaused cause, that means that there's at least one non-materialistic answer that's unavoidable. Materialism's whole point is that no non-materialistic answers are necessary, that it offers a seamless answer to all our questions. This is a seam, and not a small one either. And as I argued in our last go-round, it's not the only such seam.
Simplicity, in the information theoretic sense, since you're dispensing with all the complexity involved with God. And that is the case, while waffling about omniscience and the lot might sound simple in natural language to a brain that, at the first go around, doesn't see all the glaring issues with that package deal, good luck showing the Kolmogorov complexity isn't ridiculous. And complexity needs to be justified, and boy does God not constrain expectations in the least.
Explaining "all but one" beats the alternatives on offer. Mathematics is not considered invalid because it begins from base axioms. Besides, our intuition is hopelessly flawed in such matters, whether or not the Big Bang was an Uncaused Cause remains an open question in physics, and the universe doesn't give a shit about how much of an affront it is to our sensibilities it is to have things like that around. Time itself ceases to have meaning both before the Big Bang (which started the clock), or in more prosaic entities like black holes.
Besides, why isn't the Big Bang covered by "materialism"? It can very well accept such a primitive, since nobody claims that black holes are a failure of the same. Our intuitive notions of causality went out the window the moment quantum mechanics, with all it's superposition, entanglement and reference-frame/observer dependent definitions of cause and effect arrived.
If it conflicts with intuitions or our notions of "satisfying" answers, so much the worse for the latter. The math does a better job, or at least works while our intuitions halt and catch fire.
Infinite universal cycles, simulation, and God are all equally non-materialistic, and it seems to me that information theory doesn't apply to non-materialistic explanations. In what sense would it? In what sense is God more complex than a universe looping according to non-observable physics without beginning or end? Is there math that can be shown proving one less complex than the other? You mention Kolmogorov complexity, but I'm skeptical. Wikipedia provides:
...I don't think you can write a computer program that produces either "God" or "A looping Universe" or "The computer the universe is being simulated on" as output in any meaningful sense, so I don't think you can meaningfully calculate the Kolmogorov complexity of any one of these, nor compare their complexity to determine which is the "least complex". All three concepts are, by definition, outside the bounds of observable reality, which means that whatever statements you make about them are unfalsifiable. I see no reason to presume that you can meaningfully do math on unfalsifiables.
It doesn't, actually, if the alternatives do not conflict with materialism when materialism gives answers that seem reasonable. Christians did not reject the concepts of math or gravity or the rocket equations. The whole claim of Materialism is that it was better because it left no need for anything further. It turns out that it does in fact need further things, and in addition appears to require discarding quite a large amount of solid evidence. Those realities pretty seriously undermine its claims to primacy through simplicity, occam's razor, etc, or that people are forced to it by a hard-nosed commitment to only draw forced conclusions.
There are no forced conclusions are forced. All reason is irreducibly axiomatic. We all believe as we will. We each make our bets and take our chances.
Because the math says it happened, but the math also says it can't happen. That is just another way of saying "we don't have a good explanation for this phenomenon."
Our "intuitive notions of causality" are the foundation of Materialism. Abandon those, and what remains? If you get to appeal to miracles, why shouldn't I?
The math doesn't do a job at all. It isn't supporting your conclusion. Your commitment to Materialism is axiomatic, not ultimately dependent on the outcome of a formula.
I genuinely do not see how that applies. Why is a simulation or an infinite universe non-materialistic? I'm not being intentionally obtuse, I don't see it.
If a simulation bottoms out in a basement universe, then there's clearly a materialistic explanation for everything running inside it for one.
Infinite cycles of universes, multiverses and the like do not mean that they don't meet the criteria, which I consider interchangeable with materialism for all practical purposes, of being described by the "true" laws of physics, or at least better ones than we have today, which work mighty well within the one universe we have to work with. Ignorance is not the same as incompatibility.
You can produce entities with a conception of "God" by running human DNA, plus a support structure for the same. That's how we ended up running about and uttering His name.
The Kolmogorov complexity of a concept can be much less than the exhaustive description of the concept itself. Pi has infinite digits, a compact program that can produce it to arbitrary precision doesn't, and the latter is what is being measured with KC. I believe @faul_sname can correct me if I've misrepresented the field.
A Big Bang is defined by extrapolating backwards from the laws of physics, as well as additional supportive observations. If you posit a God that's responsible for the Big Bang, then he's got that much complexity and much, much more.
Further, it's the combination of complexity and no added value when it comes to constraining expectations that severely disprivileges claims of God being a more succinct/favorable/supported explanation for anything, let alone the origin of the universe.
Abiogenesis? Evolution? Don't tell me there isn't a sizeable number of Christians who deny either/both. At the very least, I presume you believe that God set up the parameters to produce either.
No, it can be better because it's better than everything else on the table.
I see no reason to disagree. As Yudkowsky said, there's no argument that can convince a rock.
"Our explanation is better, even accounting for incompleteness"
No? I mean, to hell with the initial reasons for why people adopted materialism, that is irrelevant in evaluating its truth value, or if not entirely irrelevant, then hardly the most pressing aspect.
I fail to see how the Big Bang counts as a miracle, as the word is commonly used.
It predicts the universe originated from a pointlike singularity, which both conforms with observational evidence, and is more than the Bible gets right.
Because "materialistic" means observable, falsifiable, testable, quantifiable, connected to the unbroken chain of cause and effect. Previous loops of an infinite loop universe are not part of that unbroken chain, cannot be observed, tested, quantified, or falsified in any way.
If you cannot access the basement universe, you have no evidence of anything about it at all. If you could access it, and its physics didn't present a break in cause and effect, that would be evidence for materialism. But if it had the same physics we do, it has the same break in cause and effect that we do, hence the same problem. You are of course free to posit that the other side of the break in cause and effect is just more Materialism, but such a claim has equal evidentiary support as belief in God or the Karmic wheel, which is to say, none. You have to take it on faith, axiomatically, because the break itself gives you zero evidence to support such a thesis. In fact, if the other side were identical to this side, one wonders how the break could exist at all.
And I can argue that the "true" laws of physics consist of the ontological necessity of God, but I wouldn't expect that to persuade you. Likewise, you should not expect unfalsifiable claims of a "true" physics that you can neither describe nor test to be persuasive to those who do not choose to be persuaded.
The fact remains that you do not believe in such a "true physics" because evidence has compelled you to do so, because that evidence does not exist. You believe in such a "true physics" because your axioms, if true, necessarily imply that they must exist, even if you cannot see them. Your axioms are supported by evidence you do have; they are not idle fancy. But being axioms, they are chosen, not forced. You believe what you have chosen to believe, and you interpret and weight evidence from the perspective of that choice. Axiomatic certainty has little persuasive value to those who do not share the axioms.
Indeed not, but neither is it knowledge. I can claim that we each will have perfect knowledge of God, eventually. You could reasonably reply that you will believe in God when you see him, and not before. I can argue the same about "true physics" for the same reason.
The fact that we can't observe or test how the support structure got here is the entire problem under discussion.
And yet I am confident that neither you nor anyone else can actually produce a rigorous algorithm for any of the non-material unfalsifiable concepts discussed above, of the sort needed to actually perform a comparative test of Kolmogorov complexity. If you could access these things, they would by definition be observable. If there were observables that provided answers to these questions, we would have mapped the clockwork as we intended, and there would be no need to go fishing in such dark waters for answers to the unanswerable. To use Kolmogorov complexity as evidence, you need to actually run the numbers, and I'm pretty sure you can't, because they don't exist.
Unless you have falsifiable evidence for how the Big Bang could cause itself, Materialism demands it have a cause. God is no more complex a cause than "true physics" causing a looping universe or any other unobservable, unfalsifiable hard break in the chain of causality. If God could be demonstrated rigorously to be more complex, that would be an argument against it being the simplest solution, though I'd be interested to see whether Boltzmann brains, solipsism or simple denialism come out simpler still. But again, I see no reason to believe that you or anyone else can write rigorous algorithms for things that are fundamentally unknown and unknowable.
I'm agnostic on abiogenesis, as I'm not aware of it being demonstrated in the strong sense, but it seems plausible enough. Evolution, sure. And likewise, certainly there are a number of Christians who deny either/both. I disagree with them, but on the other hand, there are a number of Atheists who have believed "Science" that was entirely fictional, so it seems to me that it more or less balances out. People, generally, often believe things that are demonstrably not true for a variety of reasons. All we can do is attempt to minimize this tendency.
In what way? It can't be in explanatory value if its explanations are shared by its opponents, and the disagreements are over things it can't actually explain. One might argue that it is unsporting of people like myself to accept science that can actually be demonstrated, while not accepting "science" that cannot, and limiting my speculations to areas where speculation seems to be both the only option available and also warranted by the evidence at hand. Yet why should I do otherwise?
There are arguments that could convince me: close the loop on physics, resolve the contradictions, demonstrate Determinism of the brain. Scientists believed they'd do these things for hundreds of years. Maybe they'll do it still. Maybe AGI will bust the whole business wide open. And yet, until the evidence can actually be observed, science itself demands that results be demonstrated, that claims be testable, that we keep a clear delineation between what can be proven and what has merely been asserted. That demand must come before the preference for Materialism.
Were you to be convinced that Kolmogorov complexity cannot be meaningfully applied in the way you suggest above, would that change your conclusions? In any case, "better" is a value statement. Better how?
Then explain what caused it. This is the basic method of science. Claims must be tested. You don't get credit for an explanation if you can't show your work.
All this is rather missing the point, though, because my argument is not that Materialism is disprovable. My point is that Materialism is axiomatic, and that like all axioms it is chosen, and that this fact can be trivially demonstrated by backtracking to the point at which evidence terminates at the chosen axiom, itself unsupported.
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