Thank you very much for your time, and I'll see you in the next video.

Alrighty friends, I'm just knocking down the balance of my Starbucks vanilla sweet cream cold brew Fenty and left over from last show.

I'm still some left there and enjoying it. I'm still pondering some of these points that were brought up are questions that are on the list of calls that I I did a rather of questions that I did not get asked when I was at

Baylor then and there are a couple of ones here that have to do with science now many of you know and I'll be mentioning this time and again just to kind of so it sinks into your consciousness instead of just completing a book called Street smarts and what I'm doing is taking different areas of challenge to Christian theism and I'm addressing them with substance and then helping a form dialogues that will be so important.

That will be springboards into a conversation using a tactical approach to make this the case against those views and in favor of the Christian views.

So this is column number three that is using questions to exploit a weakness or a flaw that we see in someone else's view actually strictly speaking.

Columbo number three that would be the third step of the three part game plan is to use questions to make a point and one of the points you might make is that their view is compromised in some way and here's a way of here's a question or two or three that will get you moving in that direction.

All right and one of the things I deal with is in the book is the whole science issue I used to believe in God Michael Shermer has said many times now I believe in science now I don't know how that strikes you but it strikes me as a false dichotomy that's like I used to believe in God but now I believe in flesh toilets well why isn't it either or.

Science can help us understand the material world and use what we learn to make functional things that help us live better okay why does the ability of science to do that eclipse the need for God it isn't science that squeezes God out of the equation it is philosophy that squeezes God out of the equation.

And we've talked about this a lot but this is really important to kind of get clear in your mind science is a methodology it is a methodology that focuses on measuring details in the physical realm and therefore we have our five senses that give us access to the physical realm to allow us to discover the nature of the physical realm and then use what we discover to our benefit.

Okay it is a philosophic statement not a scientific one to say that physical realm which science explores is the only realm that's real there is nothing outside of it science does not teach you that philosophy teaches you that that is a philosophic point of view that's called metaphysical materialism or naturalism or physicalism.

Because it claims or presumes usually more to the point that the material physical world is the only world that is real and this world operates on inviolable laws natural laws that's where the naturalism comes in now I just want you to think about this for a moment I want you to think about machines.

Machines work this way don't they you given a certain energy available to a machine to operate whether it's gas powered or solar powered or electrical power or whatever the machine operates mechanistically as machines do to accomplish a certain end because there are physical laws if you will that govern how machines.

If you operate giving one set of circumstances it leads to another specific set of circumstances which leads to another that's called experimental repeatability by the way if you set things up exactly the same every time then you're going to get exactly the same result why is that it's because mechanisms mechanistic systems are deterministic.

The the prior set of physical conditions determined the next step of the physical conditions okay and those physical conditions determine the next step think of dominoes falling okay one domino in the middle of the line is going to fall because some domino fell against it.

And it fell against this domino because some prior domino fell against it so physical systems are like that deterministic now you see maybe what this what happens then if everything is if if if if philosophy philosophical view is accepted that describes the universe that way.

Close system of cause and effect in a material world governed by natural laws everything is a machine yeah everything is a machine including you now I just scratch my chin because I felt an itch but according to materialistic view I did that mechanistically as a machine I didn't choose to do that I can't choose to do that there is no freedom of choice in a mechanism.

Mechanistic world that was the result of prior physical conditions that caused this inexorably for me to cause me to do this inexorably I had no choice about it but that's what mechanistic systems are like and that's what the world is like if the philosophy that is governing the practice of science is true.

Everything's a mechanism. Now I think that philosophy is false for example one reason is that I have freedom of the will how do you know that because I am I have direct awareness of it it's just the way same way I know if I'm hungry or not because I feel hungry I'm directly in touch with that feeling I'm directly in touch with the if I get stuck with a pen with the sensation of pain how do you know what that is?

So you know you're feeling pain because I'm feeling it by the same token in the same way I am directly aware of the decisions that I'm making non deterministically about things that I do like scratch my chin.

And by the way anybody who's inclined to disagree is going to have to disagree because they have thought about the alternative and think the alternative is a better explanation that is determinism is a better explanation but they can only do that if they are aware of their own thoughts and they're making their own decisions about what to believe because they're good reasons to believe it.

In other words you have to exercise freedom of the will in order to deny freedom of the will. This isn't going to work anyway so this is just a broad picture of the kinds of things that are going on in this scientific enterprise and my predicate what I just spent talking about in the last eight minutes will lay a foundation for how I respond to some of these these questions.

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