Jay Dyer's opening is a "kitchen sink" approach. There seemed to be no overarching argument, but a mass of references to history and philosophers cited as skeptics of natural theology. Trent Horn's seemed more tightly organized and structured.
The one thing Dyer did put a lot of stock in was that the word "God" is not a "rigid designator", which means that not everyone uses the word God to refer to exactly the same thing. He uses this to dismiss Horn's numerous references to saints and theologians throughout history who apparently argued from natural facts to God. But it doesn't matter if the theologians throughout history didn't agree on the precise meaning of "God." What they did agree on is that knowledge of a transcendent, "first principle of all things" could in some measure be obtained by reflection on the natural world. In other words, they thought it possible to go from natural facts about the world to facts transcending the world. Disagreement with regard to the precise conclusions of that investigation doesn't invalidate the process any more than disagreement about the facts with respect to the Battle of Hastings invalidates history as a legitimate project of research.
48:00: Horn refers to the statement "I exist" as a self-evident truth.
49:31: Dyer references Horn's submission of "I exist" as self-evident and interprets Horn in a Cartesian manner. He then subjects the Cartesian Cogito to all the skeptical arguments from modern philosophers. Horn should have objected to this and pointed out that medievals like Thomas Aquinas meant something quite different than moderns do about self-evident propositions, and that Horn meant it Thomistically and not in the manner of Descartes.
Descartes did not think his own existence was self-evident in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. He doubted it like everything else in his method of "universal doubt." It was only after arguing through his doubts that Descartes was able to affirm his own existence. This is what Dyer jumps on. He thinks that Descartes was unsuccessful in dispelling all doubts concerning the proposition "I exist", and since Descartes failed, Horn must fail as well.
But for classical philosophers like Aquinas, a self-evident truth is a truth that is immediately known and stands as its own witness, not one that can only be affirmed after surviving skeptical scrutiny. The classical philosophers were aware that it was possible, in an artificial way, to doubt propositions like "I exist." Where they differ from modern philosophers is that even if such a proposition could be doubted, they didn't think it should be doubted. In other words, they did not think doubt self-justifying (which is a modern conceit.) Doubt can be doubted like anything else. The classical philosophers did not doubt their own existence because no one in his right mind does so.
Consider the Dyer/Horn debate itself. Trent Horn and Jay Dyer go online, engage a moderater, and argue with each other for almost two hours. Now suppose after two hours of debate one of them criticizes the other's position on the grounds that he hasn't justified his belief that either one of them exists. The modern philosopher furrows his brow at this devastating rejoinder, and starts flipping through his Descartes and Kant to find an answer. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, bursts out laughing. For what greater comedy could there be than two philosophers debating whether they exist to hold the debate?
For the uninitiated, these are the lengths needed to avoid Natural Theological conclusions. The unwary clicks on a debate concerning Natural Theology and thinks it will involve doubting the existence of God. That seems like something that might be doubted. I can't see God, after all, like I can see tables and chairs or myself in a mirror, and it can't be proven like the law of gravity. But he discovers that necessary to the case against natural theology is not just doubt of God's existence, but his own existence as well, something he never considered doubtful or in need of justification. If he persists, he might also discover that the tables and chairs he thinks are self-evidently there are no longer solid. They may just be constructions his mind puts on sense data, which itself bears only a dubious relationship to external reality. They might only be presuppositions he needs to get on with life.
After all this, it might seem to the individual that the pummeling of the world of common sense is an awfully high price to pay to avoid Natural Theology. It was a price, however, that the early modern philosophers were willing to pay. People with no education in philosophy have a general impression that the modern world "disproved" the arguments of the classical philosophers. That never happened. The early modern philosophers did not engage the classical philosophers and refute them, but instead dismissed them for their own varied reasons. Descartes, for example, in Part One of his Discourse on Method, dismisses classical philosophy in these words:
Concerning philosophy I shall say only that, seeing that it has been cultivated for many centuries by the most excellent minds that haver ever lived and that, nevertheless, there still is nothing in it about which there is not some dispute, and consequently nothing that is not doubtful... I deemed everything that was merely probable to be well-nigh false.
This "argument from dispute" is an obvious non-sequitur, for arguments stand on their own merits and do not become more or less reasonable for being disputed. But it does relieve Descartes from the long and laborious task of actually reading and understanding the philosophers before dismissing them.
Whatever their motives, the early modern philosophers were united in restarting philosophy on a basis that would exclude the classical "dialog of opinion" they were convinced was fruitless. Their philosophy was designed to preclude the Natural Theology that Horn is advocating. So Jay Dyer is correct to point out that, under modern philosophical assumptions, Natural Theology is a non-starter. It couldn't be otherwise. Trent Horn should not allow Dyer to recast his arguments into modernist terms.
52 minutes: "I exist" presupposes that language has meaning, presupposes time determination". "The business of philosophy is to question assumptions." Is that one of the assumptions we can question? Classically, philosophy is the "love of wisdom", and part of wisdom is knowing when to doubt and when not to doubt.
1:00. Sense data. properly basic beliefs. Horn allows Dyer to recast his position into modernist terms.
1:01:56 Dyer: "that rests on the assumption that the external world is properly caused to impress on your sense organs"
Here we have the basic modernist position on human nature. Compare it with the classical understanding. The ordinary individual, looking out his window, sees a tree. Thomas Aquinas analyzes this occurrence philosophically. He doesn't doubt that the person actually saw a tree. He asks, what is implied about reality in the fact of his seeing a tree? He notes that this isn't the only tree the person has seen, there are other beings encountered that are also trees. What about reality answers to the fact that we can call both these things trees? The analysis of being into form and matter follows.
The modern philosopher thinks this is all terribly naive because Aquinas didn't start by doubting whether the man was actually seeing a tree at all. The modern thinks that the only thing we can safely say is that the man is seeing "sense data", i.e. blobs of color that his mind organizes into shapes and then he names. This opens a gap between the mind and reality that the modern philosopher uses to reject classical Natural Theology, but then hopes to cross himself for other purposes. The attempt is futile since he burned the bridge in his first step, and so is only left with presupposing rather than knowing that one thing or another has any basis in reality.
The difference with Thomas Aquinas is that Aquinas refused to burn the bridge in the first place. When the man looks out his window he sees a tree, not a blob of colors his mind turns into a tree. This is the philosophical truth of what is going on regardless of the biomechanics underlying the process. This is why the man can know metaphysical first principles, because he knows things through his senses.
Now someone may dispute with Aquinas on this. But Dyer seems to take modern skepticism as self-justifying. Simply because Hume doubted the relationship of cause to effect we must ourselves doubt the relationship of cause to effect. We do not. The classical philosopher is perfectly justified in rejecting such skepticism until the modernist makes a positive case for it. This is what Dyer needs to do if he is to provide an argument against Natural Theology, rather than simply assuming modernist philosophical assumptions that were designed to undermine it.
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