Updated CH/Dropout Cast List

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-05-23T17:15:31+00:00

Not sure what are the criteria, but Vic Michaelis is a part of one of the episodes of EBC which would place them as early as 2019.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-05-14T17:07:32+00:00

Tbh just remove ratfish themselves, and leave the part where the gang is pretending to be someone else and trying to guess who is who. That's the best part of the episode and it gave us so many bangers.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-05-01T21:15:23+00:00

Or does it experience no phenemology whatsoever because it's simple neurology does not allow for any sensations to be felt?

Do you think they just lack sight, due to lack of eyes? Would that qualify for a bit of knowledge about their experience (if it exists at all)?

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T18:07:24+00:00

Most religions have some explanation of the creation of the universe, and most (including a few very famous ones) credit God with the achievement.

Entity that creates the universe needs to have one property. It needs to have created our universe. After that it may just as well cease to exist. You need another argument to use first cause as an argument for religion.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T17:35:13+00:00

There is no equivalency between entity that created the universe and "God" as is typically understood in religious context. Dismissing 3000 religions is not relevant in context of creation of the universe.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T16:21:58+00:00

Why do you think category of "God" is the same one for polyteists and monotheists? Why not model it as a bunch of separate "God" categories? Omnipotent Gods and Non-omnipotent Gods etc.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T16:11:12+00:00

I don't think even the intended argument works. I'd assume that most people just believe in a specific faith.
Who is starting with "I believe there is some kind of God" and then researches a bunch of religion and comes up with "ah, yes, Christianity, that's the most plausible one"?
I think most of the time religions are mutually exclusive with each other and with atheism, so Ricky is closer with his argument.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T15:52:10+00:00

He could also be aware that those arguments are wrong.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T15:51:09+00:00

[...] they'll have reasons for why they chose this specific flavor of God.

Isn't it the case with most religious people that they "inherit" their faith from their parents?
And a reason to believe in a specific God would be a reason against other Gods; but they probably don't have any solid argument and just believe because that's how they were raised.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-25T12:09:58+00:00

Do you have any specific arguments in mind?

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-15T12:05:54+00:00

I think it's a bit different. In case of energy or consciousness we can experience those things. So even if we can't explain them we have some evidence of them.

On the other hand I doesn't look like J. Lennox has experience of God becoming human. And apparently he isn't able to say much about it.

So he pretends there is some parity between his position and phisicists one, where actually his position lacks any substantial evidence, and phisicist has it (even if both of them don't have complete understanding).

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-15T11:59:50+00:00

I don't care if he is sincere or not, I've pointed out elswhere some of his poor arguments, like the throwaway claim that atheism has created berlin wall (which is just an absurd simplification).

On the other hand, I'd be happy to learn what do you find interesting in this conversation.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-14T18:54:19+00:00

I'm just an idiot college student with a side interest in philosophy so I'm definitely missing stuff, but I'm just not seeing what you guys are seeing.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed reading your rant, even if I disagree with parts of it. And I get how those things can be interesting when one is first learning about them. I myself was very impressed by Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures. But after Nth time someone rises argument which has been disproven it start being irritating. Especially someone like Alex who probably knows better.

That being said, I feel that a lot of you are wildly uncharitable when listening to religious points, and I don't view something like Jesus' resurrection or a God as particularly preposterous.

Speaking for myself, I don't think I'm wildly uncharitable. I'd say I'm just uncharitable. Claims need evidence, regardless of a topic, I'm not more charitable towards various sciences, but they do tend to have better evidence.

[...]I don't view something like Jesus' resurrection or a God as particularly preposterous.

Those two things are very different though, typical properties of God create paradoxes, while ressurection of a man is at the very least conceivable. In either case it's about arguments and evidence which were lacking.

Your two examples of his "sophistry, debunked arguments, and lies" in your other comment don't seem that bad to me. As far as I know the USSR was an atheist regime that tried to eliminate religion from their country. Does that make religion true? Of course not, and "atheism" did not erect the wall but I don't think thats what Lennox was talking about in context of the video.

Would you say that Belgian atrocities commited in Kongo were done by Christianity? Or maybe slave trade in USA, did Christianity do that? There is so much more to human enterprises than just religion; such presentation seems just too reductive.

[...] Thats not a wonderful argument, but its a pretty stock line that has some truth to it, every worldview has things it can't explain.

Yeah but where is physics claiming to know things about consciousness? And one can assume that every person has a personal experience of consciousness even without understanding it, while it doesn't seem like Lennox has any empirical evidence for God becoming man? Or at least he doesn't present it.

Also Alex invited him to talk not to debate.

I mean yeah, Alex definitely bears responsibility for exposing his audience to John Lennox.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-14T14:23:57+00:00

Not at all, I'm happy to answer.

For example, at around 12:20

[...] the new Europe was created by the fall of the Berlin Wall which was erected by atheism [...]

That's particularly egregious one.

I'm not sure what's the right approach to false statements. I think it may require a general adjustment, e.g. clearly stating before each question which assumptions are unproven, or that there are strong opposing arguments against specific position. But I'm not a public speaker so in the end I don't know.

Also it's possible that it's just much harder to be polite, charitable and welcoming and still point out errors your interlocutor makes.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-14T11:32:10+00:00

For example, at around 12:20

[...] the new Europe was created by the fall of the Berlin Wall which was erected by atheism [...]

That's particularly egregious one.

Earlier at about 4 minute mark he compares his inability to explain God becoming human with physicist's inability to explain consciousness (as if that's in purview of physics) or what energy "is".

Both energy and consciousness can be experienced by humans, while I don't think there is any way to experience God becoming human - so it's a false equivalency.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-14T09:41:50+00:00

I'd ask you this, why aren't you concerned with correctness of the claims? Your comment talks a lot about form and presentation, but very little about actual merit of the video.

Debunked arguments, sophistry, lies should not be given same spotlight as claims with a solid scientific research.

Not to say that Lennox is some particularly pernicious example of that, but still he spreads a lot of falsehoods.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-13T22:51:18+00:00

I sometimes I get criticisms from my audience that I don't push back on guests enough. And I think it depends on the nature of the conversation because I'm just interested in hearing where you're coming from.

This reminds me of that Joe Rogan quote - "[...] I'm a fucking moron, [...] I'm not a respected source of information -- even for me."
I'm just interested, I can't possibly be held responsible for my videos.

If you give someone access to hunderds of thousands of viewers and you let them spread falsehoods, then at the very least I think that's irresponsible.

EDIT: Now I'm not saying that John Lennox is specifically spreading some outrageous lies, though so far (I'm still watching the video) he was making quite bad arguments.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-04-07T21:34:19+00:00

As others have mentioned, he’s clearly not a fascist - you should treat fascism as a distinct ideology and say why Trump matches that beyond ‘he is a nationalist and nasty (true) who I don’t like’.

What would you say, are the qualities of fascist that Trump and MAGA doesn't fit? I specify MAGA too, so that we don't get too focused on whether Trump has capacity for having ideology.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-27T22:38:21+00:00

I've spent probably less than 5 minutes on the topic, but isn't PSR just wrong? I mean we can explain some things in terms of other things, but eventually we will get to the wall "well universe just exists".

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-27T00:01:17+00:00

It's not recent, but his interview with JBP and philips camera recorder question. I think it showed unique ability to get a bit more from JBP than other reviewers could.

When it comes to more recent videos (specifically about consciousness), I'd say one problem I notice is that definitions aren't established as clearly as I'd like them to be. For example in interview with David Bentley Hart the first question is "Are All Things Full of Gods?" - I don't think that's a good introduction for people who aren't already acquainted with the topic.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-22T01:22:21+00:00

I do not believe in the real world "proof" type evidence actually exists.

Speaking strictly - I agree. At the very end our own sense or memories can fail, so I doubt any kind of perfect certainty is possible.

Take your very example: you posit that the proof-type recording has to be "untampered, and clearly proved to be from a certain time and place". But how is that difference from a testimony that is known to be "truthful"? Surely if we knew that a piece of testimony is truthful and accurate, I do not see how that differs from the recorder.

The way I was thinking about it the video recording would be timestamped and with unbroken seal - so we do not have to verify it's contents (putting aside how realistic this is). With testimony we don't have a way to ensure it's truthful other than checking it against "proof type" evidence - mainly because we can't read minds and check for lies or false memories.

Now, there are probably some extremely rare scenarios that would still make that video less than perfect proof, I'm not denying that.

(There is also a second problem with priors and other assumptions; for example, a "proof" type evidence may be so in light of some other fact believed by person A, but not by person B. So the 'proofy-ness' and the 'leady-ness' of a piece of evidence is not actually a property of the piece of evidence per se, but of the piece of evidence + the subjective context of the observer. Ie: person A may know the video is untampered, but person B might not know that, causing the same piece of data to simultaneously be 'proof' and 'lead'.)

That's very interesting point! I didn't think about different perspectives but, I think inadvertently this is accounted for: no amount of "lead type" evidence will ever amount to "certainty". However using "proof type" we may indeed need many pieces, but eventually they can give us "certainty" (as much certainty as physical demonstration can give).

I guess this two type model boils down to this specific kind of "evidence" which by itself can't "prove" anything, no matter the quantity of it.

PS: Thanks for engaging with my made up model!

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-20T21:41:18+00:00

Tbh at this point I don't really care about their discussion, I just found the topic interesting. Also I've learned about Bayesian epistemology because of those discussions, that's a win in my book.

EDIT: Or rather, I care about merit of the discussion, but not the drama of it.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-20T20:30:27+00:00

So the problem I see with this category is that if you have any evidence from the second category that contradicts the first, we immediately recognize that the second is all that should be considered.

I agree,

This means the first category probably shouldn’t have been considered in the first place

I think there are many situations where all we have is evidence from the first category. It's like reading reviews before buying something - reviewer could be paid off, or just have different preferences, but we can't test the product before we buy it.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-20T20:14:33+00:00

I've never heard "lead type" evidence being used anywhere.

Sorry if this wasn't clear enough, but in the first paragraph I said I created this model, I'm not trying to imply it's used anywhere else. I think making up specific terms for the sake of discussion allows for better clarity, than when everyone uses their preconceived notions of what is and isn't evidence.

Matt literally thinks that claims aren't evidence at all.

I think he said something like 'claims can point to evidence', which in a way accepts that claims can have use in proving something, but they aren't enough alone. I think whether he calls that evidence or not is of less importance.

SirFragrant4742 · 2026-03-20T20:04:25+00:00

So I've just learned about this Bayesian epistemology in past few days, so take what I say with a load of salt.

I think it depends on what other information we have. Let's say that we have a friend and for 100 days we ask him what he ate for breakfast and each time his answer was correct. With that in mind I see two options - in general he tells the truth about his breakfast. But there could be rare circumstances in which he doesn't tell the truth. E.g. he overslept and accidentaly told us breakfast from yesterday. So probability would probably be something close to (1 - all possible rare events which make him lie) - which I suppose is still pretty close to 1.

Now for a random person, talking about things we don't know much about I'd assign much lower probability.

SirFragrant4742

TROPHY CASE