Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Alex O'Connor recently did a QA because he's reached 1.25 million subscribers, which is richly deserved because his channel is perhaps one of my favorites, uh, if not my favorite, and uh he gets into some very interesting things in this QA discussion, which tells me that he is on a journey and he's not exactly where he was a few years ago. And let me describe what I mean. First of all, he's asked this question about which philosopher from history he would most like to meet, and he gives perhaps an expected answer, but I think it's quite encouraging.
SPEAKER_04If you were to meet one philosopher from history in your podcast for an hour or have a debate, anyone from all of history, which one and why? I think the boring but expected answer here is probably Jesus of Nazareth, not just because I think he'd be an interesting guy to talk to, but I would be super intrigued to work out who he really was. Obviously a lot has been said about the man, and the most interesting thing for me would be working out who this probably most influential human being of all time actually was, and what he was actually teaching. And indeed, what he thought of himself. So perhaps people would expect me to say that uh but it's the God's honest truth, if you like.
SPEAKER_03So he would most like to meet Jesus Christ. Uh, later on in the Q ⁇ A, people ask him what he would ask Jesus Christ if he had the chance. And first he gives uh an unexpected and perhaps less serious answer. He would like to know whoever it was who ran away naked in the Garden of Gethsemane. But then he gives what I think is the more serious answer, which is who are you? No, seriously, who are you really?
SPEAKER_04Um I would ask Jesus if he was God. I would ask if he claims himself to be God or not, because the most interesting question to me that jumps out of the Gospels is who does Jesus think that he is? He thinks he's the Son of Man, uh, he thinks that he's the Messiah, all of this kind of stuff. But I want to know how much of that is tied to the historical person of Jesus, and I also want to know, did he claim to be God? A lot of people think that there are instances in the Gospels that indicate that's what he thought of himself. I'm not entirely convinced by that, so I'd want to clear that up.
SPEAKER_03Having admitted that the question of Jesus' identity is like the central question that humanity has been wrestling with, having admitted that Jesus is the most significant figure in history, yeah, it does boil down to that question of who is he? And Alex seems to think that in the Gospels that this is unclear or that his own teaching within the Gospels is unclear. I don't think that's true within the Gospels. It's not even true in the Synoptic Gospels, let alone in John's Gospel, let alone in the letters of Paul, which predate both the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. But I mean, how about this from John chapter 8, verse 58, which was said to him by a debater in the Jubilee debate.
SPEAKER_01What piece of evidence do you now need in order to believe that Jesus claimed to be God? Like what do you what is it for you that you would be like, you know what, that convinces me.
SPEAKER_04Jesus in his own words saying that I am God.
SPEAKER_01Right, but he does that in John.
SPEAKER_04Where?
SPEAKER_01Before Abraham was, I am.
SPEAKER_04Sure. So before Abraham was, I am. First, as I've said, it only appears in the Gospel of John. We don't know if the history of the Peter.
SPEAKER_01But he at least said it once, and the claim is that he never did.
SPEAKER_03If he actually said that. And look, even if you go with some of the historical Jesus seminar kind of people who really want to strip things back, be incredibly skeptical about the identity of Jesus. He is, in their eyes, simply uh a preacher of the eschatological kingdom, um, but he always teaches himself as the king. In all the stories he tells about this eschatological kingdom. Um, who is Jesus in these stories? Well, he is the king, he is the judge, he is the one who is wrapping up history as we know it in that eschatological sense. So you get uh an incredibly exalted view of Jesus, even from the most skeptical of scholars. And that really helps with the question that I think was the most meaningful of all the questions in Alex's Q ⁇ A. And the answer that he gave is perhaps the most heartening answer that I've heard from Alex. Alex is asked, What is the most valuable thing in life? And here's his answer. What is the most valuable thing?
SPEAKER_04More specifically, what object or concept should be regarded as most important in society and or day-to-day life? Time, money, pleasure, knowledge. Uh love, man. Um gosh, that's a bit soppy, isn't it? But like really, I mean I'm thinking of like an empirical analysis here. If you look historically, when somebody experiences love or even like claims to experience love, it it it drives people crazy. And and all of the things that you've listed, so uh time, money, pleasure, knowledge, these are all things that people have regularly been willing to just sacrifice in a heartbeat for love. Uh and there are kinds of love which I've never experienced, like I've never experienced the love that somebody has for their children, right? I don't have children. Uh but I have no doubt that if I have a child, like, yeah, I'm gonna give up time to raise that child. I'm gonna give up money because I'm gonna put that money into raising my child. I'm gonna give up pleasure because it's gonna suck in many ways, there's gonna be lots of late nights and that kind of stuff. Um Knowledge, I don't know if I would have to sacrifice that to raise a child, but like I probably would once I had that child, right? And so just looking at how easily people have given up basically anything else ever for love when they experience true love, it seems to be the the thing that's most valuable.
SPEAKER_03And that's very heartening to me because a number of years ago he did a debate with Michael Jones, aka inspiring philosophy, in which he said this about love and about why we prize loving relationships. And in the answer that he gave about five years ago, uh he really seems to instrumentalize love and relationships, and he really seems to only be able to prize love because of what we get out of those love relationships. Uh here's what he said back in the day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, um, I would I would just say that in my view, uh, if something like the development of a relationship is good, it's good insofar as it brings people pleasure, right? Um this is kind of a it's a very basic psychologically utilitarian point to make, but I think it roughly holds, which is that it doesn't make much sense to talk about intrinsic goodness of something like a relationship. Um I think what we mean to say is that we derive goods from having that relationship, right? My relationship with my friends, my relationship with my family, the reason I value those things is because of of all the things that flow from them, because of the conversations that flow from them, the pleasure I get from that, from the from the feeling of safety and the feeling of friendship that I that I feel, the pleasure of that. But not that the thing itself, the act in isolation of just two people entering into a social contract by which they say they both like each other, intrinsically doesn't have any moral component to me.
SPEAKER_03Do you see how relationships on this understanding are instrumental and we engage in them for utilitarian reasons, and we want to extract certain goods, certain feelings from the other person? And and I I think we can all recognize, and perhaps the older Alex O'Connor now recognizes that this is uh an incredibly instrumental way of using people to get what we want. And however much you might dress up that kind of language, it it is utilitarian, it is pragmatic, it is instrumentalizing, it is using people. And in 2025, Alex wants to say, no, love is the greatest thing. Love is greater than happiness because you sacrifice happiness for love. Love is greater than even knowledge, because you know, if you're gonna have kids, you're gonna get baby-brained, aren't you? And you'll sacrifice that. Love is greater than money because we sacrifice money for love. We sacrifice health for love, we sacrifice ourselves, our very lives for love. Love is the greatest thing. And I guess my only question is then do we have a metaphysic that allows for that kind of deepest intuition? We all have the intuition, we all feel the strength of that intuition, but what is it that grounds it and makes it meaningful? Well, I would say the reason why we think love is the greatest thing is because God, the greatest thing, is love. This is the Christian metaphysic that before there was anything there was love, because there was a father loving his son Jesus in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And everything has come from love. We've been shaped by love, determined by love. We are intended for love. Love really is the meaning of life because love really is the deepest reality. In Deuteronomy chapter 33, Moses says, Underneath are the everlasting arms, underneath everything. If you dig down to bedrock reality, what you get is love. And I guess I just want to say to Alex and to those who think like Alex that love is the greatest thing. Do you really believe that? If you really believe that, I would say pull at that thread, and what we will find is good news at the other end of that string. You will find a God who is love. I was very heartened by one of the answers that Alex gave to a question, um, do you believe in deism? And actually he doesn't have a lot of time for this understanding of a distant clockwork god who winds up the universe and then sets it running. Here's what he says about deism. What are your thoughts on deism?
SPEAKER_04Uh, okay, so deism, generally speaking, is defined as the idea that like God or some kind of creative power created the universe, but then had nothing to do with it. So it undermines traditional monotheisms like Christianity or Islam, because these imagine a God who interferes with human affairs, who sort of sticks around to govern. Whereas the deist says, well, something set it all off, but then had nothing more to do with it. The reason deism can be attractive is because it allows you to get around like arguments for the existence of God, the calam cosmological argument or whatever, by saying, like, yeah, okay, there was a first course of the universe, but that's it. Like, then it was hands-off. I am not particularly attracted to deism because I think that some of the best arguments for the existence of God point towards a consistent godly presence in the universe.
SPEAKER_03I totally agree with Alex about deism. I don't find that to be a compelling vision for reality or to have the explanatory power that something like Christian theism has, in which God is love and he is involved intimately in his creation, so intimately that in the Bible's understanding, the Son of the Father filled with the Spirit comes and joins us. He becomes our brother to live our life and die our death and rise up again. He takes on everything that is ours, that we might be given everything that is his, and that there might be a profound oneness, a profound union of love between God and ourselves. That is the ultimate love story. That's what Christianity is all about. Deism is this barren vision of a clockwork God, and Alex rejects that. And if you embrace this God, the God of Christianity, the God of Jesus, then um here are six things, right, that I think you can then say. You can, first of all, say that love is ultimate because God is love and he is ultimate. Um, secondly, you can see an inherent worth for life. Um that was something else that was spoken about in this debate between Michael Jones and Alex O'Connor back in the day. Uh Michael Jones was was saying that it's worth all the suffering in the world because life is worth it. And he tried to make this this argument that, you know, the Amazon rainforest, just its very existence. I know there's an ecosystem and I know that there's death and predation that's going on in there, but life is worth it, isn't it? And certainly Alex from five years ago did not agree. He did not think that life is worth it because of the pain and suffering. Here's what he said.
SPEAKER_04The reason why I think it's worth keeping the rainforest is because if we get rid of the rainforest, it will cause ecological disaster that will cause more animals to suffer than if we kept it. If that weren't the case, if it were really the case that if we just got if we just tore down the rainforest, it wouldn't produce more evil, wouldn't produce more suffering, more ecological disaster. Um, but the only downside was that we wouldn't have something like the aesthetic beauty of the of the forest, then I would be on the first plane over there, chopping it down with an axe. I wouldn't allow the rainforest to uh stay up because of its aesthetic beauty if it meant that billions of human beings were dying and suffering as a result. And so I'm certainly not going to allow a rainforest to stay up just for the sake of its aesthetic beauty uh because a bunch of animals are dying as a result. Um I absolutely don't think that it has any intrinsic worth outside of the effect that it has uh on suffering, except for maybe a minimal worth with things like aesthetic beauty, which are nowhere near as important as the suffering that it's inflicting. Um besides, I've never seen the rainforest in person, uh and and so kind of I doubt how much the aesthetic beauty of the rainforest or something like that actually should play into a consideration like that.
SPEAKER_03But if the Christian God exists, then life has been justified because the one who is able to make a judgment about whether life is worth living, he came and sacrificed for us. He bore the suffering of the entire world, and Hebrews 12, verse 2 says, For the joy set before him, he endured that pain. Apparently it's worth it. Even the suffering of the cross, even the suffering of all the world that's burned down on Jesus to a single point on Good Friday, even that is worth it for the joy that is coming. Life has been justified by Jesus who enters into our life that we might share in his life. And that gives you the grounds for thinking that life has an inherent worth and value and dignity, even if it is a veil of tears, and even if we walk through this valley of shadow, it's worth it. Life is worth it. That's the that's the second intuition that I think it affirms. It affirms love, it affirms life, it affirms consciousness. Alex is very good at describing the the hard problem of consciousness. Like, for instance, when he when he talks about if you have an idea of a triangle, where is that idea?
SPEAKER_04When I close my eyes and see a triangle, there really is a triangle there, you know? Like I can see it. It's there. And I think, well, where is that triangle? The materialist has to say it's reducible to just somewhere in your brain. But if I cut open your brain, I'm not gonna find a triangle inside of it, right? It's and people thought that this was a bit silly because it's kind of like oh well, um it's kind of like if you cut open a computer, you know, you're not gonna find the thing that it's displaying on the screen. But you still have the screen displaying the triangle, right? Like in in your mind, you just have the mind. There is no interface, it's just the computer. It's as if the computer itself, somehow there was a triangle in the computer's own first-person subjective experience. Like, where is that triangle that you can picture in your head? Where the hell is it? I mean, if it's just in the head, then then that that I mean that's a great mystery, like you say. And and that's that's the simplest mystery of all. I mean, let alone sort of NDEs or weird personal experiences that you might have. I mean, those are a different story altogether. Just just reflecting on the on the nature of of being able to see things with your mind. I mean, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_03It seems like mind and matter are very different things. And even though that still leaves unanswered the mind-body problem, it does show you that mind and body are different. Brandon Maguire got into that with Alex O'Connor recently, and and I think he brought up a really interesting analogy that Alex quite appreciated.
SPEAKER_02Would you say because we know that an author's mind can generate a novel, then there's a bridge that's established, so it's equally as likely that a novel would create an author?
SPEAKER_04That's a great that's a that's a really great question. Um I do think it's not and and it functions I know you're asking a question, but it's kind of an objection because obviously a book can't create an author, but an author can create a book.
SPEAKER_03Alex likes the analogy, um, but he pushes back.
SPEAKER_04The problem is that that that analogy, that example, already presupposes the existence of this divide because the author is the thinker, like he has the idea, or she has the idea, and then they write it down like on paper or they type it up. And so this problem of the idea to paper actually happens between the author, like between the author's mind and the hands that are typing the paper, right?
SPEAKER_02So so like Well, the brain or the mind?
SPEAKER_04The the mind, um, and then it's an open question as to whether that's the same thing as the brain or not.
SPEAKER_03Now, I don't think this pushback actually works from Alex. I think he's basically mistaking the analogy for the reality. I think he's basically then wanting to apply the mind-body problem to the author rather than seeing that the author is an analogy of mind working on book, just as minds work on bodies, so authors work on books. I think Alex doesn't really answer Brandon's excellent challenge here. Um I think consciousness is a huge problem for materialists. Um, a problem that's solved by Christian theism that says mind is over matter, mind comes first and then matter, the author and then the book, the triune consciousness and then the world. Um this God, the Christian God, explains love and life and consciousness. Um, also rationality. Um, why should we trust our brains? Alex has really a quite peculiar view of our rational abilities. Um, he thinks we should be emotivists, even uh about our rationality. He explains this to Constantine Kisson and Francis Foster on trigonometry. Have a look at this.
SPEAKER_04We are essentially emotive creatures, that things we think are plain, simple, propositional truths are not. People recognize this to some degree. Oh, I was hangry, oh, you need to sleep on it. They recognize that sometimes, you know, the the the way that your emotive state is can affect how you're reasoning. I I think it's like emotion through and through. Even like, you know, uh when you when you consider your your basic philosophical premises, I've I've sometimes argued in the past that we can emotivize all of philosophy. I mean, why can't P be true and false at the same time? Why is the law of non-contradiction, fundamental logical law? Why does it hold? Well, because when you try to consider P being true and false at the same time, your brain just goes no. Just goes, boo, just goes, I don't like it.
SPEAKER_03On this view, two plus two equals four is not a true statement. It's it's just that we express our um affirmation of that statement as yay, yay for. And I think this is a really non-intuitive uh way of thinking about our rationality. And if our rationality is in fact like this, um then it would be an admission that atheism is completely irrational, just as theism is completely irrational. Um and and I don't think it accounts for the way we have conversations. He's got a very successful philosophy podcast. Um if he's really such a radical emotivist when it comes even to rationality, then I think he's undermined his his entire enterprise. Whereas Christianity affirms love and life, consciousness, and rationality and morality. So he's not just an emotivist when it comes to rationality, he's also emotivist when it comes to morality. He basically thinks that moral claims are just statements of approbation or disapprobation, and there's nothing objective to it. He is explaining himself.
SPEAKER_04I think so much of what we think is emotion, moralizing is emotion, ethics is expression of emotion. I I think that so much of our thinking is emotive, and um there's nothing we can do about that. It's not going to go away, but we have to be aware of it so that we can mitigate the fact of its inevitability. Aaron Powell I do think that people should recognize the extent to which emotions dominate our ethical thinking. I mean, I I'm I take a I think it's seen as a relatively eccentric view that ethics just is the expression of emotion. This was something popularized by that same A.J. Eyer, and he said, well, the way that they're meaningful is that they are expressions of emotion. And it gives birth to this view called emotivism, which is really a philosophy of language more than a philosophy of ethics. I it tries to describe what people mean when they say good or bad. And famously he comes up with this analogy that saying murder is wrong is like saying boo murder. And saying murder is or you know, saying given to charity is good as like saying yay, charity. It's just an expression of emotion. It's not even the same thing as saying I like charity or I don't like murder. Because those things can be true or false, they have truth value. It could be true that I it is just a psychological fact that I don't like murder. He means murder is wrong, that statement is just the expression of the emotion.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04Boo murder. And I think even if you don't agree with him to that extent, as I more or less do, if you begin to recognize the extent to which emotions are dominating your ethical conduct, pay attention to what it feels like when you analyze something is wrong. I think it belongs in the same category as you've got this sort of emotion.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's a self-consistent theory of uh morality. I don't think it's particularly livable, and I see in Alex a lot of admirable moral stances that he takes, um, which I think undermine his claim to simply be an emotivist. I I don't think people in general live as radical emotivists. Um, but if your philosophy drives you to a conclusion that is actually unlivable and that actually is self-refuting in the end, um, well, probably your presuppositions are wrong and need rethinking. But the God of Jesus, the God of Christianity, is love, and therefore to live in love is to live in God, and God lives in us, as first John chapter 4 kind of puts it, that there is a moral realm because we are living in God's universe. There's a grain to the universe, a moral grain to the universe, and that's there. It's just there because God is there. I think Christianity makes sense of love and life and consciousness and rationality and morality and freedom. Um I I think our experience of every day is that we are free. Um Alex, though, because of his materialism, denies that.
SPEAKER_04Any action or any event is either going to be caused by something else, that is, there are conditions under which this event will be entailed, essentially, or it will not be caused, it will be uncaused. Now, in my view, if If something is uncaused, that is, if there's an element of it that there's no reason why it happened, that is essentially a good definition of randomness. It just happens at random if there's no cause for for it to happen in that particular way. And randomness isn't something that we're in control of. So there wouldn't be any control or freedom over random events in our brain. But then or our mind, indeed. But then if our uh the the other option being that an event in our mind or a thought that we have is caused by something. Now even if it's caused by something immaterial, like like a soul, it seems a problem to me that there's still going to be this chain of causation. Because i if the if the soul causes a particular brain state or a particular event in the mind, then uh you need to ask, well, why is it that the soul caused that particular event to arise or to occur? And that itself, that that condition of the soul, whatever it was about the soul that that brought about this event, will itself be either caused or uncaused. And again, if it's uncaused, it's not in our control. And if it is caused, you end up asking what caused that thing, and you end up with a with a with a chain of causation that either terminates in randomness or something outside of ourselves. And so the ultimate causal chain of any particular mind event seems to be something that we're not in control of. And I don't see why having a soul or having an immaterial aspect to us alleviates us of that problem in the same way that it would exist uh for a material brain. I think it has a good comeback here.
SPEAKER_00Do you seem to be uh relying on uh what is known as event causation, that is to say, it's the view of causation common sense Hume. That is to say, if we say um uh the fall of the tr the tree falling down uh the tree caused uh um the car to swerve, um the correct way to spell this out is the fall of the tree or the sudden appearance of the tree or something like that.
SPEAKER_04It's the event that causes the other event, not the thing.
SPEAKER_00And um since Hume, m almost all philosophers uh believe causation is ultimately to be analyzed in that way. And of course, if you do take that line, your your line of argument uh uh comes. Um but um I don't think that's the right account at all. And actually it wasn't the right account before Hume. Every uh philosoph, as far as I know, at most philosophers, um assume that it was things that did causing um not just persons but other things as well. Um the earth causes the moon to go round it, the sun causes the earth to go round the moon, and so on. Um and um that is to say and in particular uh among the substances that do causing are human beings. Uh we cause things. And if we cause things intentionally, that is to say we mean to cause things, um that chain ends with us meaning to cause things. Um at least it may do, sorry, it may do. It's possible that it does end with us. And you're saying, well that's just random. No it isn't. There's all the difference between a coin falling heads and tails and me deciding to do something. I initiate this. Um this is not a random event. I've made it happen. Uh and I am the cause, and therefore I don't go along with this argument.
SPEAKER_03We certainly don't live like we're determined in the sense that Alexa Connor says we are. And for a lot of people, that is leading them away from materialism and towards some kind of spiritual beliefs, not necessarily Christianity, but I think Christianity explains love and life and consciousness and rationality and morality and freedom. In other words, it helps you to live rational, sane, free, loving lives in the present. And so I say to Alex and I say to everyone, um, come home to Jesus, because in Jesus these things really do make sense. Well, this must be about the dozenth video uh that I've made about Alex O'Connor. We'll have to have a conversation, won't we? Um I'll I'll keep asking Alex and uh Alex if you've ever got time for a conversation. I'd love to have you on the channel. Um, and we can talk some more about this stuff because, like I say, I love the way you think about these things. I love the clarity with which you express yourself, I love your channel. And uh I think what you most want to be true, that love is ultimate, is in fact true. And I think that truth is found in Jesus. Now, if you want to explore more about these Christian truths, you can go to 321course.com. It's our free course. You can binge it in a couple of hours, or you can do it over eight sessions. Just start an account with you. There is no fees, there's no spam. Just get into it and see life according to Jesus. You will not regret it. You will see that love is the ultimate thing because God, the ultimate thing, is love. Thanks so much for watching. Subscribe to the channel, like it, share it with others, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye bye.