Paulogia is so annoying
Atheist apologetics are often quite poor
Atheist apologists are super annoying. Not all of them, I quite like a few. I would consider MonsterTalk one of my favorite podcasts, and while they consider themselves science advocates not atheist apologists per se, I think those are kissing cousins. The atheists I’ve had on my own podcast are all people I like a lot. But there’s a few of these AAers that just really annoy me. But youtuber Paulogia is one of them. I don’t know if it’s the cartoon (that looks nothing like him) or the fact that he treats Christians who are much smarter than him (like William Lane Craig) with such disdain when they say perfectly reasonable things that make sense in context, or his constant “let me rephrase what they just said in materialist atheist” speak, but the total package is just too much for me sometimes. I’m not easily annoyed, but he just really annoys me. Probably a sign that he’s just better at internet than I am, because I think he’s trying to annoy people like me. Well he wins.
Maybe what annoys me most is just how one sided his “let me show you why this perfectly reasonable claim is stupid” approach comes off. If we were talking I’d probably find myself not annoyed, because we could actually talk it through. But that whole view from nowhere, I’m going to explain everything to you drives me nuts. I’m sure it drives other people nuts when I do it to them.
In any case in a recent video he made he used Tucker Carlson as his lead in. I’ve never been a big Tucker guy, he seems like a super weird guy (not in a good way, like in a I’d still get beat up alot in High School way) and is definitely a leading figure on the weirdo right. In the clip Tucker claimed that scientism was the official state religion of the west. I don’t think Tucker is correct about this, because scientism is not a religion it’s an epistemology. I think the ideology that gets closer to the official “religious worldview of the west” is something like individualism. Obviously there’s no actual state religion in America, the few countries that do still have state sponsored churches in the west are so infected with heresy (due to individualism) that they’re Christian in name only. But there’s lots of ways to take apart what Tucker is saying, he’s very imprecise because his audience is populist. But they understand what he’s saying to them perfectly. In any case, as usual with someone like Tucker, I think he’s both right and wrong.
Paulogia is an apologist (no matter what he says) for, at the very least, anti Christianity. He is an anti Christian apologist. He can deny that all he wants but its the truth. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him, or that his contribution to internet isn’t important. I just think it’s interesting that when left wing intellectuals go after Christian intellectuals they call them apologists (because they often unapologetically are apologists) as an openly discrediting slur, when they are doing the exact same thing while presenting themselves as completely objective and scholarly. Dan McClellan is the best example of this. He is an apologist, primarily it seems for LGBTQ ideology or maybe just critical theory in general (it’s impossible to disentangle the two anymore) who presents himself as completely objective. Robert Gagnon has completely dismantled any semblance of Dan’s objectivity with his devastating recent barrage of video’s destroying Dan on issues relating to homosexuality and the Bible. But Dan’s attempt to use critical theory as a means to objectivity is the power play of all power plays, because all his own critical arguments can be used to dismantle everything he’s saying. That’s the problem with Dan’s worldview, its foundations remove its own foundations. And we’re going to see something similar here with Paulogia.
Paulogia starts out his response to Tucker with a sort of word salad explanation. He does this a lot. He’ll sort of re frame what’s been said in atheist materialist speak without disagreeing with it, as if the atheist speak is a rebuttal. Like if someone refers to morality he’ll say “don’t you mean things people don’t like” as if we don’t understand what’s being said.
I think the claim Tucker made about scientism can be stripped down like this: scientism is the driving epistemology of the elite segments of the west. This is almost certainly true though the way Tucker phrased it has a lot to be desired. There’s a lot going on in western cultural thought, especially at the elite level, but in general I think it’s safe to say that our cultural elites pretty much all agree that if “science says so” it is so. I would say many non elites think this way as well.
Paulogia’s response:
“To be real is to possess properties, to exist independently of perception or thought, and to manifest in an intelligible way. The scientific method is one great way of demonstrating what’s real but if you have others that fit the bill I’m all ears.”
In essence he does two things here.
1: makes philosophical claims he can’t prove scientifically about the nature of what’s real
2: says the only good method we know about for determining what is real is science
He’s phrased 1 in such a way that it’s difficult to disagree with, because we understand what he means, but I’ll point out a few glaring problems with it. This is part of the problem when pseudo intellectuals do philosophy unknowingly with little philosophical training.
Plato couldn’t accept this definition of reality, in fact I would dare so most cultures (especially non scientific ones) would not recognize this as an accurate definition of what is rule. In a platonic metaphysic properties are real, the most real things that are, but properties don’t possess properties. Red is real for Plato but red doesn’t possess or exemplify red. So there’s a lot of philosophical naivety being expressed here, and it’s not being expressed in a humble way. Paulogia is telling you, like a prophet, that these three things philosophically constitute what is real without displaying any knowledge of metaphysics, aka the discipline of what is really real.
That’s a big problem.
The next part (exist independently of thought or perception) would apply to Plato because red would exist independently of perception or thought, but then Paulogia contradicts this quality with the next one: manifests in an intelligible way. Things could be completely real in that first way and not manifest themselves intelligibly at all. Take for example the property of red. Red never needs to instantiate itself for the platonist in order to be real, and if it doesn’t then it won’t ever be intelligible, except of course to God’s mind.
I’m not a platonist, but you don’t need to be a platonist you see that the concept of red has some kind of existence beyond Paulogia’s definition of what counts as real. Because you can recognize red in multiple instances you have a concept of redness that is non instantiated. This is similar to laws of logic, which are necessarily real but again Paulogia’s definition does not account for necessary truths or laws of logic, because both are non materialist and they are not intelligble as part of reality. Without them the world itself becomes unintelligble. His definition of relaity is inherently materialist. He can deny this but its logically undeniable. Doing philosophy without actually doing any philosophical work or at least saying something like “my working definition of what counts as real is the following” is a dangerous game, especially when you’re presenting yourself as the all knowing (except when he’s conveniently agnostic) Paulogia.
But the bigger problem is that ultimately his response to Tucker’s claim, is basically to admit Tucker is right. That’s why he reframed scientism the way he did, to make it sound less stupid than it is. Because Paulogia’s second idea says that the only way to know, to really know, whether something is real is with science. He’s trying to leave himself an out by not actually claiming that it is the only way to know (maybe there’s another way but we haven’t found one yet) but functional scientism is scientism, just like the racist who says I’m not actually racist I just enforce racial quotas at my day job. If you function as a scientismist that’s what you are. Now of course scientism is so absurd that you really can’t find a consistent one, this is another thing that is infuriating about guys like Paulogia. They are walking, talking contradictions.
He’s already done some philosophy, poorly, with his definition of what is real then he’s done more philosophy, again poorly, with his epistemic claim for how to know what is real. You know what is real because of science, until another method can be shown to be effective.
The conclusion is a philosophical one: science is how we know what is real. That’s not a scientific claim, that’s a pre scientific claim. So then your conclusion literally contradicts your conclusion. Science and philosophy are not the same thing. This is THE problem with modernity and scientism. Scientism is a philosophy that says philosophy can’t lead to knowledge of the real world, yet it’s entirely dependent upon philosophical claims. If scientism is true then it’s also false. Seems like a bad way of doing business.
If Paulogia and I were sitting down discussing this I’m sure we could make actual intellectual progress here, because I don’t actually think he really believes scientism despite basically putting it forward as the only way to know what’s real. He makes lots of historical claims in his videos and history is not science.
In any case I’d love to have him on my podcast someday to have a discussion, but until then I will find myself relentlessly annoyed by his videos.