Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Crash Course Series

**Posted by Timotheos** 4/12/2016 4:15 am

So there's this YouTube series called crash course, which is a fairly popular series of videos, and they have recently started a series on arguments for God's existence.

They started with "the" Ontological argument, and have moved on to "the" Cosmological argument, which I linked to below.

The video was very brief, but it basically summarized the first four ways, and made some objections, without trying to develop how Aquinas might respond to them.

As was expected, they trotted out the old "then who caused God" cliche, and made the classic mistake of thinking that Aquinas rejected infinite regresses because he thought there just must be a beginning of time.

I mention this video though because I think the author was making honest mistakes, and that means we might be able to contact him and get some corrections made; his videos average around 100k views, and the channel has about 4M subscribers, so providing corrections to these common mistakes could potentially reach a wide popular audience.

It could also be a PR boost for our site (although I don't know if we want quite that strong of such a boost...)

http://youtu.be/TgisehuGOyY

Last edited by Timotheos (4/12/2016 8:29 am)

**Posted by iwpoe** 4/12/2016 7:22 am

Tim, this is a great idea. I want to confer with staff if we're going to be doing it as a forum so that we have a unified approach.

Last edited by iwpoe (4/12/2016 7:22 am)

**Posted by Dennis** 4/12/2016 9:11 am

I'm all on-board with this project. The staff here is eminently competent to do this. CrashCourse is very famous, and I do like the videos at times. But all these channels on Youtube seem to me at least, to be lacking in their approach when they do approach topics. But, it's youtube. I can't expect the analytic philosophy to be found in every video. But I still dislike that.

Last edited by Dennis (4/12/2016 9:11 am)

**Posted by AKG** 4/12/2016 9:12 am

Well, I was planning to link their video for this week's humor but your idea sounds much better Tim.

**Posted by Dennis** 4/12/2016 9:36 am

"He thought that out of 5, one was bound to stick." I dislike such remarks about Aquinas.

EDIT: This video is total hogwash. I cannot believe that sophism is entertained at this level.

"Aquinas's cosmological arguments also don't prove the existence of a sentient God. . . but it might also be an egg, or a turtle, or just a big block of stone."

"Aquinas was wrong in his insistence that there can't be an infinite regress of anything."

"Aquinas takes it as a given that there had to be a starting point, for everything."

And oh, the argument is self defeating.

I'm so livid by this sophism. Thankfully, I never liked CrashCourse's attitude. This drama.....

We get the 5th way's treatment as well! Oh my gosh. This was dreadful.

Last edited by Dennis (4/12/2016 10:12 am)

**Posted by AKG** 4/12/2016 10:11 am

Y'know hammiesink has stated over on reddit he and some other guys are planning to make a counter video to this guys video due to how poor it was. But seriously I can't wrap my head around why someone does not even bother to research guys like Aquinas yet take it upon themselves to tackle his ideas. I mean I don't know jack about quantum physics, but you don't see me making videos trying to explain/critique it. Do people really think theistic philosophers are so stupid that anyone can take them on?

**Posted by iwpoe** 4/12/2016 10:46 am

They do it because they already don't really take theism seriously, but they need content for their work. It seems respectable to try to go after an argument rather than spending all your time griping about the Westboro Baptist Church or something stupid. Some of them might have even managed to convince themselves that this is in fact what they're doing, because after all a lot of the easily available coverage on the five ways is dismissive and bad. I think Ed recounts an early academic experience where he's going over the five ways and he comes to realize that all of the introductory material on them is obviously wrong if you pay attention and he slowly has to work that out with his students. If all you're doing is trying to create some middlebrow intellectual YouTube content, you're not going to question the introductory bad criticisms very much if at all.

**Posted by AKG** 4/12/2016 10:52 am

@iwpoe
Ugh. This is really a pet peeve of mine. The straw mans of classical theism are so integrated into modern philosophy. This brings bad memories of my TOK class were my teacher straw-manned Aquinas so badly and dismissed my attempts at telling her to understand Aquinas you have to go back to Aristotle and his metaphysics. I gave up when she said that(not that I don't dislike her, she's a nice person, but on that day she made me want to hit my head against the wall for 20 minutes).

**Posted by iwpoe** 4/12/2016 10:59 am

Modernity contains within it a dialectical rhetorical tool purposely constructed for overthrowing the classical view. It probably needs to be detected in great detail historically, but it is easy to recognize superficially in our regular assumptions about knowing.

**Posted by Timotheos** 4/12/2016 11:37 am

Yeah, the guys that run the channel are brothers, Hank and John Green.

The guy in the video I linked to was Hank, and I'm not sure what he is, if anything; I know for a fact that his brother John is an Episcopalian, albeit a rather liberal one.

So I presume he is in the same broadly liberal Episcopalean to Agnostic range, which I tend to think actually are more dangerous than their Atheist counterparts; if even theists or open agnostics are this dismissive of the classical conception of God, and it's proofs for his existence, how much more will the atheists be?