 Again, I need to see, like, what those studies are, because there is such a huge bias with the UN and global liberalism that is imposing this kind of ban on child... You heard it here before, folks. It's a conspiracy. Oh, yeah, because liberal powers have never conspired to impose their values on the rest of the world. Gentlemen, it's a true treat to have you. We'll let you get the ball rolling, Mike, with your opening statement. Thank you, James. Thank you to Modern Day Debate for hosting. So this is a debate I never thought I'd have to have because I assumed that as a species, we realized the practice of child marriage was an abomination at this point. But apparently Muslims, like Daniels, think this is a practice he can defend as a moral good. The reason this debate came about was because Daniel publicly challenged me on the topic, which is fine. I've publicly challenged people. But when I've done so, I've reached out to them privately to set it up. This did not happen, which left me confused as if this debate was going to happen. But I contacted James to make sure we certainly got to this point. So here are my goals. I will argue the practice of child marriage is not morally permissible because of the harm it causes. It leads to physical abuse, bodily harm, psychiatric problems, and a high risk of death. So if you agree with Daniel, Chris Hansen would like for you to take a seat. Take a seat right over there as we dive in. Now, the United Nations defines a child as anyone below the age of 18. I suspect Daniel will disagree with this because it's not the age of adulthood historically. So for the sake of clarity, I will define a female child as anyone who has not completed puberty. The CDC says puberty is complete in girls between 15 and 17. So it makes sense the following stage, age 18, is when we grant the satisfaction of adulthood. And so I will argue no one should really marry under 18 and no girl should be subjected to motherhood until she is decided to have a child and has matured enough. Obviously, there is some variation when that occurs. Therefore, I will argue consummating marriage with a girl who has not completed puberty and forcing her to bear children is immoral. Now, Daniel disagrees with the science that supports his assessment. It said in his debate with Destiny, in Islam you can consummate the marriage at puberty. Then in his post-debate review, he said, What is so fundamentally wrong about consummating marriage at puberty? This is a question that none of these liberals can answer. All liberals can cite is like these abstract claims about what is psychologically beneficial or harmful. But this is not been established. This is not been established scientifically. It's all just what's culturally acceptable in the post-industrial superpowers. Well, that's what I'm going to answer tonight. And I'll explain why it is immoral. Because once again, child marriages lead to physical abuse, bodily harm to girls, psychiatric problems. And despite what Daniel has said, this has been demonstrated scientifically. So the first thing to note is puberty is not a boundary point that girls cross over. It's a process. It takes time for a girl's hips to widen and for her to develop into a woman. This is nowhere near complete when a girl has her first period. To treat womanhood as a boundary point for girls and not as a process is an unscientific way to understand puberty. There is no reason to assume a girl becomes a woman the moment she shows any sign of puberty, let alone she be ready for marriage and childbearing. Yet this is the Islamic teaching on the issue which Daniel has stated. Well, this study, that is marriage under 18, found that child marriage was significantly associated with delayed antenatal care, miscarriages, preterm delivery, low birth weight, health problems in newborn babies, faulty feeding practices, lack of knowledge regarding family welfare methods, and health implications. They know child marriages lead to serious health consequences. It also bereaves young girls of their childhood by overburdening them with domestic responsibility, motherhood, and sexual relations, rather than allowing them to play with friends or go to school. The study continues and says that child mothers are physiologically and psychologically not prepared for childbirth. Maternal morbidity and mortality is also noted to be high in such young mothers. The girls lack the maturity and the education to properly nurture their own children and then they make mistakes that hinder their own children's mental and social development because the girls have had their own mental and social development hindered by being forced to marry so young. So they then hinder the development of their own children. So arguing for girls to be forced into these situations is blatantly immoral. In 2007, the United Nations Children Fund reported that a girl under 15 is five times more likely to die during pregnancy in childbirth than a woman in her 20s. Another paper pointed out that girls under 18 are more likely to die from childbirth and debilitating illnesses like obstetric fistulas. In Mali, the maternal mortality rate for girls 15 to 19 is 178 per 100,000 of live births. And that is not just because of poor health care, because in the same country, the maternal mortality rate for girls for women, that is, is only 32 per 100,000. In Togo, for the same groups, the rates are 286 and 39. And the reason for these high numbers is because they're more likely to suffer from eclampsia, postpartum hemorrhage, and obstructed labor. Obstructed labor often leads to obstetric fistulas. That is where holes develop in the birth canal and can lead to leakage of urine, feces, blood, can cause nerve damage, the significant decrease in the likelihood of conceiving a second healthy child, as well as the death of the girl. The paper says girls 10 to 15 are especially vulnerable because their pelvic bones are not ready for childbearing and delivery. Their risk of a fistula is as high as 88%. Additionally, mortality rates are 73% higher for infants born to mothers than their children. Even the mortality rate for children under 5 born to child mothers can be 28% higher than those born to mothers over 20. Because as noted, many of these poor girls were not allowed to mentally mature and they lacked the ability and education to properly care for their children. A 2022 study found the girls who married under 18 were more likely to be physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by their husbands in 14 of the 16 countries they looked at with strong correlations in 6. Additionally, they noted pregnancy-related complications are the leading cause of death among adolescent girls in these regions. A review of the literature found that multiple studies have found the same result. They say the reason is because there is an extreme uneven power dynamic between the male and the female, mainly because of the age gap. The females who lack decision-making abilities constantly deal with harassment from their husbands and in-laws and are socially isolated. The review agrees with other research I cited that child mothers are likely to suffer from pregnancy-related complications, depression, and inadequate parenting skills. Another review shows evidence of stunted social development, depression, and anxiety in multiple studies. Here is another study which shows child marriages cause young girls to have more suicidal thoughts and attempts. They say the studies findings are compatible with findings in the United States that adult women married as children were 1.41 times more likely to have had a lifetime history of psychiatric disorders compared with women married in adulthood. We see evidence that younger marriages increased the likelihood of divorce. According to data from the CDC and Institute for Family Studies, 48% of those who married before the age of 18 are likely to divorce in 10 years compared to 25% of those who married after 25. Daniel has repeatedly argued he wants strong marriages that do not end in divorce. If he thinks that, he should not be arguing in favor of child marriages. Now, I could go on and on, but I can find no psychologist or medical expert that agrees that child marriages should be allowed or practiced. They are describing these studies as a human rights violation because of the problems they cause. So there really is no escape from the conclusion that child marriages likely lead to physical and mental harm. Anyone claiming a society would be better if we force young girls into these situations is either misinformed or delusional. So let's ask why Daniel thinks child marriages are morally permissible. In the same debate review he said, it's something that has been practiced historically in all cultures. Why? Because you have a limited fertility window that women have to have children and you value family. You need family, especially in most of the countries in the world, because children are going to work in the home, they're going to work for the family, bring money into your family. You need children and your society needs more and more children to defend itself because wars are on the basis of manpower. So there's all these important economic, military, societal, familial objectives with having more and more children. And that requires maximizing the fertility window. Now, let's just set aside the fact that Daniel either intentionally or unintentionally just said he was okay with child labor and children being used in wars. May not have meant it. But let's focus how on in this, he provided no argument child marriages are morally permissible. All Daniel has ever argued for is the pragmatic usefulness of child marriages, not their moral status. Allegedly, they maximize reproductivity and increase the population size, but this is not moral justification. For example, if you want to increase your society's birth rate, you can make rape an adultery legal. But they are morally impermissible despite having pragmatic value and increasing fertility. Daniel has to give a moral reason for child marriages, given the harm they cause. Do they increase virtue, decrease vice, help young girls to live flourishing lives? No. It's pretty clear from the data I cited that none of this is true. In fact, they're incredibly harmful. They increase mental health issues, stunt social development, lead to immoral acts like spousal abuse and suicide, and can even lead to physical harm and death. So it should be clear to every reasonable person there's no moral justification for child marriages. Furthermore, they may not actually help increase the society's reproductivity if they increase the likelihood of death for the mother and the children. An educated society should outlaw child marriages if they care about their people and their well-being. And most people will actually understand this. Research shows that child marriages decrease. The more people become educated on this topic. But also, if we look at the average age, women have their first children around the world, the country with the lowest age is neither with a mean age of 18.5. So most countries where data is available actually understand it's better for a woman to wait for a girl to become a woman before she's expected to have children. If Daniel was correct, it's beneficial for a society to force girls to have children. Why is it not practiced more? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. It's because most people understand it comes with all sorts of problems that actually harm your overall society. Daniel has also appealed to the past and has argued child marriages were perfectly normal before these Western Christians came along and ruined all the fun they were having with children. Well, first off, on behalf of Western Christians everywhere, welcome. But second, although child marriages have occurred in the past in many cultures, it still does not make them morally permissible. And third, studies on the Roman Empire indicate the average age women were married was still in their late teens to early 20s. Like today, many in the past understood forcing a girl to bear children led to serious complications. For the Jews of the same time period, it would vary from region to region with the Jews in battle on marrying younger. But the scholar Michael Sattlow has pointed out that the average age women would marry was still in their mid teens to early 20s and after they had matured. Some texts even speak of a woman being ripe for marriage at 20. So if Daniel wants to argue that Mary the mother of God was a child bride, I will contest that. Even medical experts before the modern era spoke out against marrying too young. In the second century, Seranas of Ephesus warned problems result if girls are married too young. And childbirth, that is. Kim Phillips in her book points out that she had been waiting until after puberty before attempting to conceive children. Gowls of Rome even said it's best for girls to wait until 18 before consummating marriage long before the rise of liberalism. Phillips also notes there's no single marker that indicated the transition into adulthood. It was understood as a process. She says, canon legal theory on women's marriageable age offers a very limited perspective. And that social beliefs and practices provided a more reliable view of girls' transition to adulthood. Now again, these books and papers do accept that girls were married at younger ages at times. But if we follow what the current science shows us, it makes sense that many past cultures had such high infant mortality rates. If girls in those societies were having children at younger ages. Of course, Daniel doesn't need to defend marriage at 15 or 14, but consummating marriage with a nine-year-old. Because that is what Daniel accepts his prophet did when he consummated his marriage to his child bride, Isham. And there's no reason to think this act set a good example for the rest of us. Now, before closing, I suspect we might see some what-aboutism from Daniel. Where you might try to argue there are child brides in the Bible. The problem is this would be confusing descriptions with permissions. The Bible describes things that happened in the past without claiming they were good actions. God often tolerated the sin of the prophets and the patriarchs and reclaimed their actions were morally good. I suspect he'll go to Numbers 31 where Moses tells Israel to kill all the Midianites to keep the young girls for themselves. And I suspect Daniel argued God was permitting Israelites to take virgin child brides. But scholars like Robert Alter and Paul Copeland note this was not a command from God. The text says this is Moses acting on his own out of anger. In the chapter, God only commands Israel to make war on Midian. And after that, Moses becomes angry and tells Israel to go one step further without God's involvement. Moreover, in doing this, Moses violates the principles of Deuteronomy 20, which says to not kill the livestock women and children in war. So Moses' anger caused him to order something that God directly argued against in Deuteronomy. And as we find out later, Moses' anger eventually got the best of him. Furthermore, Christians are under the ethics of the New Covenant, not the Old. There's nothing in the virtue ethics of the New Testament that would remotely suggest child marriages are morally permissible. Paul and Jesus taught the way we fulfill the law of God is by loving one another. And obviously, instituting child marriages are one of the most unloving things we could do. Christianity lays down a normative system of virtue ethics. And virtue ethics requires we study circumstances and natural facts to know how to properly love others. So given the science, Christianity is vehemently opposed to the practice of child marriage. And I can assure you that we Christians of the West will do everything in our power to end this obvious human rights problem promoted by people like Daniel. So I will press Daniel on this. He has to answer me on the studies I cited. Daniel, how can you claim child marriages should be practiced given the extensive harm they cause? If you argue in favor of child marriages, then I will doubt that you care about the well-being of girls. Also, you're required to give moral justification for child marriage, not just ways it might be pragmatic for maximizing fertility. If Daniel does not, his position is indefensible, and we will trust the medical experts around the world that child marriages should be abolished worldwide. Daniel was arguing against the consensus of medical experts everywhere. So the burden of proof is on him. The lives and the health of young girls are in danger. Let's see what he has to say. Alright, thank you very much for that opening. Mike, we will kick it over to Daniel for his opening statement as well. Daniel, the floor is all yours. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Just a quick disclaimer that we are debating religious doctrine, history, and ethics. Nowhere am I advocating people break the law. I strongly advise everyone to follow your local laws. Many are appalled that we're even having religious people probably have a hard time imagining how anyone could ever think that marriage to a minor is acceptable. But the reality is all people historically considered minor marriage perfectly normal. If you give me a chance, I'll explain why. The first step is to acknowledge some basic biological facts. Puberty doesn't happen overnight or at one specific age. Rather, puberty is an extended process lasting from two to five years. The start of puberty also varies. It usually begins between 8 to 13 in girls or 9 to 15 in boys. Many factors affect puberty including race and environment. For example, black girls reached puberty a year earlier than white girls. Puberty also accelerates in stressful environments like food shortages or absent fathers. But even in normal environments 1% of girls have their periods by age 8 and 4% have them by age 9. This means that they have completed puberty by ages 8 or 9. Overall, children complete puberty in the 8 to 15 age range and start experiencing sexual desires. Now here's the million dollar question. How do children deal with those desires? I want all the opponents of child marriage to give us a practical solution for all the sexually frustrated minors out there. Because those hormones hit like a tsunami creating desires that need an outlet. The outlet promoted in society today is an absolute disaster. Kids are taught sex ed as early as 9 and some experts want sex ed in kindergarten. You're barely done with primary school and your teachers are passing out condoms and telling you to get birth control. Between 40 to 55% of high schoolers have had full sexual intercourse. If you include oral sex, the percentages are a lot higher. Many children as young as 9 or 10 engage in sexual intercourse. Experts say we have an epidemic of sexting, for example, among minors with 25% of teens texting each other naked pictures of themselves. Educators have responded by teaching children to practice safe sexting. Send naked pictures of yourself to other kids safely. Also included in sex ed is pornography education because the average age a child sees hardcore porn is 10. It's just become a fact that children watch porn so let's just teach them how to do it safely. The shocking news recently is that they've started to teach kindergartners how to masturbate. Meanwhile, there's an epidemic of porn addiction that's destroying the mental health and well-being of generations of youth. These are today's socially acceptable outlets for childhood sexuality. Hopefully all Muslims and Christians here agree that fornication, masturbation and pornography are not acceptable solutions. Rather, these practices destroy the moral fabric of society and corrupt the soul. But the problem actually goes much deeper. Sadly much of the sexual activity for minors involves sexual abuse. According to the data, 28% of American children ages 14 to 17 have suffered sexual abuse. Some of this happens in churches but the majority happens in public schools. According to reports the sexual abuse of students in schools is more than 100 times the abuse in churches. Researchers conclude that by 11th grade, 10% of children have been sexually abused in school. That means that in America alone 4.5 million children are victims and none of this includes other forms of sexualizing children like drag queen story hour, the rise of pornographic educational material in school libraries, the sexualization of children's clothes, beauty pageants and on and on. The point is childhood sexual desire from puberty is an unstoppable biological force. How does one channel those desires is the question and western society channels it through fornication, masturbation and porn. In the best case and in the worst case the sexualization and fetishization of children as young as 4. But for the vast majority of history people of all religions and cultures had another solution. And that solution is marriage. Marriage is the healthy wholesome outlet for the natural sexual desire that humans start experiencing at puberty and pre-industrial religious and cultural traditions hold that marriage should be available at puberty. They don't stipulate an exact age for sex or marriage because again puberty is highly variable in terms of when it begins. So all religions and cultures have had the solution of marriage but what changed? Why is minor marriage now seen as this unspeakable crime? To answer this question let's look at the history of child marriage in the west. According to ancient Jewish norms a man can marry and have sex with a girl as young as 3. This ruling is found in the Talmud and is based on the precedent set by the Jewish prophet Isaac who married Rebecca when she was 3 and he was 40 as inferred from biblical passages like Genesis chapter 30, 23 and Genesis chapter 25 verse 20. In Numbers 31 Moses commands his armies to slaughter the enemy including all adults and male children. However female virgin children were spared for sex so some have argued they had to be forcefully married. Whether old or new testament there are many discussions of marriage and slavery in the Bible but there's never any mention of a minimum age for sex because apparently this wasn't a concern for the Bible's authors. Take Exodus chapter 27 verse 7 through 11 which permits a father to sell his daughter as a slave but doesn't stipulate a minimum age so he can sell his daughters as slaves or as sex slaves from infanthood. Interestingly this is where the Bible and the Quran actually differ as the Quran doesn't sanction selling children as slaves. The notion that it's acceptable to have sex with children whether in marriage or slavery was standard during the time of Jesus. For example the Bible doesn't mention the specific age of Mary but pre-modern Christians held she was quite young when she was married to Joseph and impregnated by Father God. According to the official Catholic Encyclopedia Joseph was 80 when he married Mary. She was 12 at the same time being Joseph's wife and impregnated by Father God. Now some Christians might question the reliability of the Catholic Encyclopedia but many other sources including archeological evidence prove that the common age for marriage in Judea at the time of Jesus was 13. This is significant because Jesus's views on marriage would reflect those of his era meaning that he would have endorsed marriage and sex with minors. We cannot find a single recorded statement from Jesus raising even the slightest objection to the child marriage that was happening all around him. Jesus has no shortage of criticism for the Pharisees and larger society but for some reason he doesn't condemn anyone for child marriage. In later period some Christians adopted flexible guidelines for marriage that they borrowed from Roman law. Roman law was somewhat unique in setting a minimum marriage age for girls at 12. This was more of a guideline rather than a strict law because there were no legal penalties for marrying earlier. Medieval Christians in the west eventually borrowed the same rule in shrining and in canon law. Christian women couldn't marry at 12 but in some cases especially among aristocrats they married as early as 8 or 9. Those are examples from Jewish and Christian history so why did things change? Two factors industrialization and feminism. Let's talk about industrialization first. In pre-industrial societies virtually everyone had to be involved with food production for their survival. You couldn't have freeloaders consuming calories but not helping produce calories. This meant that by necessity all children worked in food production. This is why you don't see any kind of extended schooling for children historically. If kids are in school they can't work to produce food but starting in the 18th century industrialization brought new technologies like tractors and mechanized irrigation. This meant a small part of the population could work as farmers and produce enough food for everyone. This led to the majority of the population moving from food production to manufacturing and service jobs. This caused a major social shift because working on the farm requires no education but jobs associated with industrialization require more education. To deal with these socio-economic changes western governments gradually introduced mandatory schooling. This went hand in hand with mandatory increases in the age of consent and marriage. This was especially necessary for girls because marriage produces children and when people have children they don't have to do that for school. To prevent this western governments established minimum ages of consent. In 1791 the French Napoleonic Code established an age of consent of 11. By 2007 the French age of consent was 15. Same thing in Australia, Canada and Western Europe. In the U.S. as late as 1880 many states had ages of consent from 10 to 12. In Delaware it was 7. By 1920 it ranged from 14 to 18 but many people were surprised to hear that today 25 states don't even have a minimum age of marriage. Between 2000 and 2018 there were 300,000 documented minor marriages in the U.S. with some brides as young as 10. So industrialization changed attitudes towards child marriage feminism did as well. Feminism aims to empower women so that they have careers and status equal to men. This means banning early marriage for girls and encouraging them to stay in school as long as possible. The fear is that girls may lose out on a career because they got married early and had children. Feminists consider such women victims who have failed in life because they haven't achieved independence and career status equal to men. The feminist thinking was impossible in the pre-industrial era because the overwhelming majority of the populace both males and females had nothing resembling a career. Almost everyone did low skill farm labor with no education. For most of history there was nothing like career advancement. So it made no sense to insist that girls delay marriage to pursue career advancement. We can track the increasing western hostility towards child marriage over time. One of the first example is the famous 1748 work The Spirit of Laws by French liberal thinker Montesquieu. Montesquieu refers to child marriage as a type of domestic slavery. Montesquieu associates such marriage with hot countries in the south. This includes Muslim countries which had child marriage. So here in the mid 18th century Montesquieu offers one of the first western criticisms of child marriage in Muslim countries. Because of this growing liberal hostility western countries banned child marriage in the colonies they occupied like India and North Africa. By the early 19th century western Christians magically discovered that their religion actually prohibits child marriage despite 18th centuries of Christians engaging in it. With this new discovery Christian missionaries traveled to these colonies and attacked the indigenous religions for allowing child marriage. An important case is British India with a population that was 75% Hindu and 25% Muslim. Due partly to Christian missionaries in 1860 the British government set a minimum age of marriage for of 10. This was raised to 12 in 1891. This is how liberal stigmas about child marriage were adopted by Christianity in the late 18th century and then globalized by the mid to late 19th century. This brings us to pedophilia. Pedophilia is not an ancient concept. The first documented use of the term is 1906. Pedophilia initially means a psychiatric disorder in which an adult fantasizes about or engages in sexual acts with a prepubescent child. Gradually pedophilia came to mean any adult who has sexual interest in a person below 18, the age of consent. And of course the age of consent is artificially set to match mandatory schooling ages. So in essence the pedophile is someone who has graduated, who is sexually attracted to someone who hasn't graduated from whatever amount of schooling the state has mandated. Now many will claim that child marriage causes psychological harm. It's interesting that premodern people understood trauma and the emotional damage that can come from certain sexual behaviors like sodomy and prostitution, but there's no evidence that anyone in premodernity viewed adult-minor relations as traumatic. Even modern research cast doubt on the existence of psychological trauma from adult-minor sexual relations. Psychologists Bruce Rine, Phillip Tromovich and Robert Bosserman have published studies critically analyzing this. What they discovered is that while there can be problems in some cases there's no inherent harm with adult-minor relationships. The only harm comes from it being socially taboo in current society rather than anything objective or inherent. These psychologists receive backlash as you can imagine and we can dive deeper into the studies later, but the point is the claim that minor marriage is bad because it objectively causes psychological harm is unproven. So it's bizarre that anyone should depict new modern norms on pedophilia as obvious or eternal invalidity. Such norms were literally inconceivable in the premodern period for the many reasons I've mentioned. All this is why attitudes for child marriage have shifted historically. The burden is on my opponent to give a better explanation for why there was such a radical change in attitudes starting about 300 years ago. If child marriage is this objective and universal evil, please explain why 99% of humanity throughout history was blissfully ignorant of this. This is even more of a burden for my opponent to explain because he's a Christian who believes in revelation. Why doesn't the Bible condemn child marriage? The Bible condemns homosexuality which hasn't been as commonplace historically as child marriage. Was the author of the Bible simply ignorant? Or is it more likely that the author of the Bible is fine with child marriage? That's certainly what countless Christians throughout history believed and practiced. Now I want to take things one step further. Not only do I believe that minor marriage was acceptable in the past, I also believe that it's an institution that society abandons at its own peril. The fact of the matter is children hit puberty in the 8 to 15 age range. When puberty hits, they biologically experience strong sexual desires and they'll express this one way or another. Either they'll express it within the safe stable bonds of marriage, or they'll express it through masturbation, hooking up, sexting, porn use, or worse. Those are the only two options. Any country that denigrates marriage for adults will inevitably encourage sexual liberation and promiscuity for adults. Likewise, any country that denigrates marriage for minors will inevitably encourage sexual liberation and promiscuity for minors, or children. The unprecedented degeneracy we see in society today is a direct consequence of preventing minors' marriage for minors. Christians of all people need to wake up and see what's right in front of them. And ultimately this is why we all need to appreciate Islam and the example of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. In his marriage to Aisha, the mother of the believers, he has provided a timeless example of this institution which is so desperately necessary for all societies. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll be going into the rebuttal section next. Mike, I have the timer set for you for 8 minutes. The floor is all yours. Alright, well I think I did a pretty good predicting what Daniel was saying in his opening statement on what I just heard there. Let's talk about some of the things he said. So he said it was perfectly normal before, you know again, Western Christians came along rudeness. No, Michael Flynn notes in Europe, European demographic system that the average age people would marry between 1500 and 1820. In Europe it was 25 to 26. Brent Shaw notes in his paper The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage that in Tuscany girls would marry between 16 and 21 on average in Florence 15 to 19. Rudolph Bell notes that in Italian communities in the 17th century they were marrying within their mid-20s. Peter Laslet says that in England the average age that women were marrying was 22. Okay, that was in the 17th century. Petor Gasłowski says in The Origins of the European Marriage that the average age women were marrying in Poland in earlier periods was around 20. And again, you can also read Kim Phillip's book Medieval Maidens, Average Age Women Were Being Married. Again, late teens to early 20s. But you brought up Bruce Rhine. I've been waiting months for you to bring up Bruce Rhine. Oh my goodness. Okay, so let's talk about Bruce Rhine here for a little while. Bruce Rhine for example, that's probably the same paper you referenced in your debate reviews, Harris Sultan of Hebafilia as a mental disorder. He says for example on page 7 child sexual abuse researches have repeatedly maintained that hebafilic interactions are innately and intensely harmful for the younger person and then he cites his own research to demonstrate that. So he is directly arguing that this is harmful to children. What he's basically saying in his paper is that the active partner the human is not suffering from a mental disorder like schizophrenia. It's something that naturally arises in humans just like humans naturally steal, murder and rape. That doesn't mean it's useful or good. He describes it as a harmfully mismatched neurologically evolved traits on page 6. But what Daniel's not told you about this paper even though he's been citing it as far back as 2019 is the paper mainly focuses on homosexual hebafilia. He is trying to say that is not a mental disorder. He says it's been pervasive in numerous cultures around the world. He's got a table in his paper that's four pages long of how homosexual hebafilia has been practiced around the world in various cultures including Islamic societies to quote from page 15 male to immature homosexuality was pervasive Islamic societies from the 8th to the 19th centuries. Boy attraction was seen just as normal as heterosexual ones. Main interest was in boys early to mid teens peaking at about 14. The appeal vanished with a beer. Adult men were scorned if they were passive partners because manly behavior was to be the active. Staggering amounts of love poetry showed obsession with boy's beauty seen as comparable to women's as well. Poets attracted to boys constitute a who's who. Desire for boys but not behavior or lust was permissible under Islam. But behavior was common nonetheless. Oh sorry impromissible. The tradition eroded in the late 19th century in reaction to western abhorrence and efforts to modernize. So because Daniel's been quoting from Bruce Ryan's paper for years he's put himself in a trilemma. Either he has not read it he's lying about what it is. Or he secretly agrees with a lot of the things Bruce Ryan says and wants to return Islam to the days before western influence when big happening Muslim men could write gay erotic poetry about boys. So I just want to say but again Bruce Ryan says this was eroded when Christians came in and basically ended it. So I'm sorry that we in the west came in and we took away your child bride and your gay erotic poetry with our western values my bad. So let's also talk about he says do girls complete puberty by eight or nine? No. According to midwifery and women's health nurse practitioner certification review the CDC as well. You don't see completion of puberty until 15 or 17 as I noted. I agree younger sexual activity for people under 18 is bad and I don't think you should have sex outside of marriage. Okay but his solution is child marriage. That's like saying oh my god I got a kitchen fire let's put it out by breaking the dam and flooding the neighborhood. We don't solve a problem with a bigger problem. I cited numerous studies showing how every expert around the world agrees this is harmful to children. This is harmful to their offspring. This should be abolished worldwide. He says we have to talk about channeling desires. Well you need to remember as you're developing as a human your brain is developing and researchers describe it as being plastic. Plasticity. As you're developing your prefrontal cortex is developing and that's the part of your brain that controls inhibitions. If we have a child who deals with rage we don't say well you got to deal with that right away but it's just door and beating people up. We tell them to control his inhibitions. When children start developing sexual desires they need to learn to control them. We should not give them the idea that they should act on them as soon as they got them because they're never going to learn to control those inhibitions when they become adults later and they see someone who might be tempting them or trying to get them to commit adultery. We get to learn to control these desires. This is why we slowly develop with a plastic brain plasticity and we learn to control our inhibitions. They need to be trained as the prefrontal cortex is developing. He cited the tau mood but the tau mood for example. I'm pronouncing this right. Kineshin 41a says it's forbidden for a man to marry off his daughter when she is a minor until she is well grown. I also cited scholars like Michael Satlow. You can also check out scholars like Amaranthroper. The average age that Jewish girls were marrying was again late teens, early twenties, earliest as mid teens. He can find no evidence Michael Satlow. The girls were marrying that young. He talks about the Catholic encyclopedia saying Mary was impregnated. She was conceived by the Holy Spirit and that's how Jesus came into human flesh according to the Catholic tradition. But also she was a perpetual virgin according to the same sources. So if we're going to go over what that says about her age, she also never had sex. It's not a comparison. Okay, there's a lot here. He said that before Montesquieu western Christians were not condemning minor marriage. No Seronis of Ephesus talked about the dangers of it. Giles of Rome Albertus Magnus. Again, Kilden Phillips talks about this in her book. This was abhorred by a lot of medical experts. Now did the common person not realize that? For the most part a lot of them didn't realize how bad it was. But today a lot of people today ignore medical experts. So what's the problem? We should go on with the medical experts of the past and the president are saying. And they all seem to point to the idea this is not necessarily the best thing to go for. Moreover we should most of all be relying on medical experts of today. All of which condemned child marriage. Again, for all the problems I cited today, I see no reason to accept this at all given all the extensive harm it causes. So if the burden is on me, I've given the burden. I have showed how harmful it is and it should be abolished. People in the past used to use leeches to treat all kinds of diseases. We now they do not treat. Okay, that does not mean we should go back to what ancient people were doing. That we now know this is not work. People used to sacrifice humans to the rain gods across the globe and hoping that it we now know that does not work. So we do not do those things just because people in the past did it. As regards to the Bible not giving an age. Again, I'll go to Ezekiel 16 really quickly here. For example, it talks about God compares Jerusalem to his wife and says, you know, and you grew up and became tall and arrived full of dormant. Your breasts were formed. Again, according to the midwifery and women's health nurse practitioner, that does not happen until 17 when the breasts have been fully formed in the girl. And scholars like Robert Alter, Mark Rooker, Mark Rooker, Ralph Alexander, all know this is talking about after purity. So God is sort of setting the standard that sex or lovemaking comes a period even after purity because it says that God even passed by her again after the breasts had fully formed. So there's another period of waiting. And again, this is what I can see from scholars like Peter Gentry, Andrew Mein, T.M. Lemma, Stephen Wellum, David Gundel, Ralph Alexander, Robert Alter, all of them are pointing to this. And I'm out of time. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll kick it over to Daniel for eight minutes as well. So Mike here is misunderstanding the argument. He's citing some average ages from different societies like in Rome at a certain period it was 16 in another place it was 20. The claim is not that the, my claim is not at the average age of marriage is 9 or 12 or 13. My claim is that child marriage was practice and was acceptable in all of these societies. Yeah, in some societies the average age was higher but it's the average meaning that there is a proportion that are marrying even younger than those averages. Find me any society, pre-industrial society that has a categorical prohibition of child marriage. You have failed to do that. You have claimed that Moses' commandments in the Old Testament where he commands genocide that was done out of anger it wasn't from God and in fact Moses violated God's commands. But did Jews in the pre-modern period say this? The Christians in the pre-modern period say this. Is this a reference to anything or are you just making it up? Also why not simply say other morally problematic commands by Moses like blasphemy punishments were not sanctioned by God. There are many things that Moses commanded that you would presumably find to be problematic. So why don't you just condemn Moses? Why don't you just say that Moses was a genocidal lunatic or a dictator because apparently he in disobedience to God commanded the slaughter of male children and taking female children as sex slaves. You made a big argument about maternal morbidity for girls between ages 15 girls under 18. But the reality is that the maternal morbidity according to the National Health Institute from age 15 to 19 is about 1% and that is right in line with the mortality for women in their 20s and their early 30s which is also 1%. The maternal morbidity rates actually doubles after age 35 and spikes after age 45 and reaches as high as 70% for women over 50. So if you're really concerned about reducing the amount of mothers dying in childbirth or forming these fistulas all of those are things that can happen after 35 and 40 at around the same rates as girls as young as 12 or 13. So are you in favor of banning women over 40 from having children? Other people are also more likely to deal with disorders affecting fertility like endometriosis or uterine fibroids and studies show that risk of miscarriage is about 10% in your 20s and your risk goes up 53% in your 40s as I mentioned. So this is all things that you should be in favor of banning because these are parallel to any kind of complications that happen at the puberty age. So let me see. What else did you say? You also did not respond at all to the point that I made about fornication being rampant. What you seem to mention is that you advocate abstinence. People should just control it. Teens should just control it until they're over 18 because if they marry below 18 that's child marriage which you're against. So does abstinence work? Does anyone here think that abstinence works? Clearly not. It's something that is widely recognized as a major failure. So really you're advocating for fornication, masturbation, porn news. Are you against all of these things happening before the age of 18 or when someone is actually mature? It would seem that your position actually is in favor of those kinds of practices because again puberty causes this huge tidal wave of hormones that creates strong sexual desire and children act on this sexual desire. What is your solution for that? That is what we need to hear from in this debate. Other than fornication, pornography, masturbation, the only alternative, abstinence doesn't work, the only alternative is child marriage and that's why it's so universal. That's why it is so universally practiced. Those of all people should understand this and should be in support of it because again, and then Jesus is not condemning child marriage. Why? If this is such a major evil that you claim does he not have a clear statement? This kind of reinterpretation from Ezekiel when the breasts are fully formed, this is an argument that Christian apologists have only made in the modern period. All of the authors that you cited as making this kind of argument regarding Ezekiel are in the modern period. There's no pre-modern scholar, Christian scholar or Jewish scholar who has made this kind of claim about a minimum age implied from Ezekiel in the Bible. In fact, and even that explanation even if that were a valid interpretation of Ezekiel breasts do form by age, even as early as age 7. 7% of young girls have developed breasts at age, are they fully developed? No, but they're developing their breasts. This is puberty. So I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what puberty is. In medicine they call them the tanner stages. There are five stages of puberty and the period actually happens at the end of the puberty process at the fourth stage. So breasts develop pubic hair growth, all of these secondary characteristics, the body shape changes by tanner stage 2 and 3. By tanner stage 4, that's when puberty happens and once that happens all that's left is for gaining fat. The female gains fat at that stage of puberty and grows in height. So she might get slightly larger breasts, slightly larger hips and more fat, but the 90% of puberty has already occurred by the period. And then you have girls 4% of girls who are gaining their period at age 4. So even that kind of far-fetched explanation from Ezekiel still would be in favor or advocating child marriage according to your definition. Do you think that you don't develop your breasts as a girl until you're 18 years old? Like that's ridiculous. So even according to the Bible argument that you painstakingly laid out for us, that passage would be in favor or endorsing child marriage according to your definition. Because you arbitrarily set it so high at 18. Like why? Like you're so concerned about moral arguments. Why is 18 the line? Like what is so special about 18 that no one in history has ever prior to industrialization, prior to these mandatory age limits, prior to this idea that we have to go to through 12, 12 grades before we're fully mature, before we're fully adults. Like where does that come from? You haven't provided an explanation for that. Why there's this radical shift? My explanation is very clear. There's industrialization, there's feminism and that is what has over the past 300 years created these taboos of child marriage that you can't find anyone else express. Like isn't this bizarre to you? Like isn't this such a big red flag that what you're describing as this kind of objective moral principle is not actually very objective or universal? Like especially like for Christians to say this. Like because your Bible seems to endorse it, your prophets in the Old Testament seem to endorse it. Jesus has nothing to say to condemn it. Canon law. Canon law has the minimum age of marriage of 12. So are you going to condemn Canon law? Are you going to condemn the church fathers? Are you going to condemn all of those? Okay, yeah, you're shaking your head, yeah. So you're repudiating your entire religious tradition. How do you even know what the Old Testament or the New Testament is or the Old Testament for that matter? It was passed down by these pedophiles according to you. These reprobates that you are condemning right now. They're the ones who are they morally capable to transmit revelation if you're their pedophiles according to you? And time. We are going to jump into the cross examination. This is where each speaker will get the opportunity to ask questions of the other speaker. We're going to start with Mike asking questions to Daniel and ideally this is strictly questions and then strictly answers from Daniel. Mike, the floor is all yours. Okay Daniel, I've noticed a lack of studies in your opening statement Revelle. Do you have any studies that speak of anything good coming out of child marriage? So child marriage is something that is so taboo that no such study could be published. So that's a no? No, I am not aware of a study that is advocating child marriage because it's illegal. It's something that's illegal in western society because of the mandatory schooling ages. There are no studies that can get funding to advocate something that's illegal. Are you aware that most of these studies and many I studied were actually done in places like India or Sub-Sahara Africa, Middle East. Those studies are funded in the west by western universities. You mentioned the period comes at the end of puberty. Are you saying someone can marry and have sex with someone prior to getting their period? So according to Islamic law when the body is fully formed because of puberty, the period comes at tanner stage four which is the end of puberty. So yes, when a child signs a physical maturity then it becomes permissible for the husband in Islamic law to have marital relationships or consummate the relation with his bride. And this is the example of the prophet, peace be upon him. Before the age of monarchy. Before the period. I thought your argument originally was this is about maximizing fertility. That's why we need to have child marriage. How can you maximize fertility before a girl is ovulating and menstruating if it's years before then? You're telling me that what I'm trying to get at, I'm trying to ask is like, so you can have sex, marry and have sex with a girl years before she has her period. If that's the case how is this about maximizing fertility and not about just sadistic pleasure? Well I didn't make an argument about maximizing fertility but I'll still give you the courtesy of addressing your question. What evolutionary biologists suggest like David Bus is that this kind of attraction and wanting to, because they've done studies where they show body outlines without ages of females. And they show a body outline like a silhouette of a female at age 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. And they ask adult men which body type do you find most attractive? The men don't know what the ages are they just see the silhouette and when you tally all of the responses the most popular or the most attractive silhouette body shape is of a 14 year old. So that's something that is explained evolutionarily I don't believe in evolution I know that you do but they explain it that this is an adaptation because if you can start fertilizing a female as soon as she becomes, as soon as she's showing signs of an imminent fertility, the period, monarchy, then that will maximize because you secure the female right at the beginning the start of when she will potentially give you self-sex before you start maximizing fertility right? When the body is physically mature according to Islamic law. Do you know what precocious puberty is? Yes I do. What is it? It means starting puberty unusually early, beyond averages. Is there anything in Islam that prevents you from marrying a 5 year old that started precocious puberty? No, marriage can happen you can arrange a marriage even as an infant but that doesn't mean that sex is allowed. Could a man have a marriage to a 5 year old consummated if she started precocious puberty? If she starts showing signs of physical maturity then yes that's permissible as I stated that's the principle. What about age 4? If there are signs of so this is something that becomes biologically impossible because precocious puberty there are no... I have a study that shows it goes as early as 11 months. Alright well that's something that the parents would not see the thing about Islamic marriage is that parents are involved at these ages and when you look at the marriage of the Prophet, peace be upon him, to Aisha her parents were involved and so she was not living with the Prophet, peace be upon him even though she was married to him so the parents have oversight and sometimes Qadi or a judge can have oversight if the guardians are not capable to make sure that the right and the physical well-being of a child or a minor are not harmed by that marriage. Because you've tried to justify sexual slavery after a war so what if a man finds a 7 year old let's say, he started her period could he take her back as a sex slave? So that's a whole different debate on slavery and concubinage. I'm just talking about the minor aspect, would that be fine? Yeah so if a girl finds any age she can be taken as a sex slave, right? Yeah as opposed to being left to die after a war. So women can't take care of themselves, they would need to be taken by the men because they're too capable of caring for themselves. Only about 10 seconds left? Yeah, a 4 year old, a 7 year old and an 8 year old. Yeah this is the topic of sex slavery which is also endorsed in the Old Testament and practiced by Moses and other prophets like Joshua so that is a practice found in the Bible, it's found within Islam within the Quran and it's practiced again universally. I'll give you a chance to wrap up that sentence and then we've got to go to the next portion. Yeah so if you want to condemn Islam for these kinds of practices you have to condemn Christianity and your entire religious tradition for exactly the same practices if not worse so I don't see the logic of this. We'll jump to Daniel asking questions of Mike this is going to be 5 minutes as well Daniel the floor is all yours. Do you think fornication is prohibited? No. So you think fornication is allowed by God? Oh no I'm sorry I misunderstood no I do not think fornication should happen. So God has prohibited fornication? Yes. Clearly in the Bible. Sex outside of marriage is wrong. And it's condemned by God? It's condemned by God. So which scenario is more immoral? I'm going to give you two scenarios. Scenario one, a 10 year old girl gets legally married with the consent of her parents to a good believing Christian man who is 25 years old. That's scenario one. Scenario two, a 10 year old girl has a 10 year old boyfriend and they fornicate whenever they want. Which is more immoral? I don't have to answer that because that's an either or situation. No both are immoral. Both are immoral Daniel. Okay so fornication so fornication is happening rampantly. Do you have the same kind of feelings about being evil and wanting to stop it and you put that big slide about Christians are going to stand against fornication? I can also put a slide up that says Christians are going to stand against fornication that's happening rampant throughout society. Yes we condemn it. Where? I'm condemning it right now, hear me. But you didn't think that was more immoral? The child marriage scenario was not more immoral than the fornication. We're debating child marriage and I'm pointing out it's immoral. I can also be fornication. I'm not saying that was more immoral. I have no reason to say one or more. Well according to the Bible you do have a reason to say it because the Bible explicitly condemns sex out of marriage which has nothing to say about child marriage. According to some Christian sources Jesus' mother was either 12 or 14 when married to Joseph when it comes to child marriage what do you think is more likely? Option one Jesus held views similar to those found in the society of his time and thus had no objection to child marriage or option two Jesus held views similar to the United States in 2023 and thus view child marriage as very evil. Which one is more likely? Again I quoted scholars like Michael Sattlow that argued the average age was not 13 especially in Palestine. Was there any pre-modern scholar who has this opinion? Yeah, Siranus of Ephesus as I cited in my opening statement. Gals of Rome. What do you say? Siranus of Ephesus as you want. Let me pull up his quote here. Siranus of Ephesus within regard to the birth passage difficult labor takes place when the uterus is either a narrow orifice or a small one or a small neck. He goes on to say a small orifice or a small neck occurs for many reasons for obtains whenever women married before maturity can see and give birth while the uterus is not fully grown or fundus of the uterus expanded. Where is that condemnation of marrying before 18? He is basically going on and saying that these are problems when there is a small orifice of results in problems. Now you're making the descriptive prescriptive error because where is that prohibiting or speaking out or condemning child marriage? We didn't see that in that reference. So is there any other pre-modern scholar who condemns child marriage? Again, quite a Kim Phillips book, Albertus Magnus. They're not pre-modern scholars. Where is the citation? You're writing in the 1300s. Find me a quote. What is a quote from a scholar that says child marriage is wrong not a descriptive statement? You're asking me to give you exact wording but I can quote them basically condemning it in their own words or talking about the harms of it. Again, I quoted for example Kim Phillips' book. She says Albertus Magnus stated that while the physical changes associated with pure and enabled boys and girls to feel desire in intersexual relations, the scene of both parties with him too weak and not admitted so the weak offspring nonetheless were all result. The notion that intercourse and child marriage at too early in age had deteriorous effects however in some use of aerosol to transcribe gals of Rome and they were translated by John of England. She goes on to say the knowing of women in kind and childing condemns sex before 15 for example. She quotes again Albertus Magnus gals of Rome. None of what you quoted was a condemnation of child marriage. There are deleterious effects for that could there are more likelihood of complication at that age but you also have more complications at age 40 or 50. So is that just as immoral? The medical experts say that's non-comparison. Where? Which experts? You cite mortality and you cite uterine tears. Those are just as likely at age 90. No they're not. Yes they are. I can cite you that. I can cite them as well. Pull up the National Health Institute and we can show you exactly the charts that show that. My opening statement literally at study showing that no it is not. It is much, much worse. It's five times more likely at age 15. Or you compare 15 to 25. You didn't compare 15 to 50 or 45. Age 40. A woman at age 45 having a child is also very highly likely to get uterine tears. Okay then they should probably retire at that point. What's your point? Your argument implies that that is as immoral as child marriage. Having a child at that age, it's going to cause those kind of problems. But does it cause the psychiatric problems I mentioned? Does it cause the high rates of divorce? I can give you a chance to finish this question that you just started Daniel and I'll give Mike you a chance to respond. That's it. I can condemn child marriage because again I gave a cumulative case from all sorts of problems it causes. All the things that you cited have holes in them. I have to go to the next portion. There is no pre-modern scholar that actually condemns child marriage. All of the citations that you just read show that they're making medical descriptions. They're not condemning, they're not saying this is immoral. So you're making the same prescriptive fallacy that you accuse me of. I'll give you a chance to respond Mike as this is open dialogue time. Okay, yeah. Again, I was going to cite the medical expert moral treatises on this issue. And the medical expert's all agree this is harmful. So again, I'm making a evidentiary type argument where I say look at all the evidence showing this. And again, we see this reflected in the society. Kim Phillips again in her book, Medieval Maidens points out that there was a lot of people concerned with having children too young. She cites kings and different rulers, different barons basically saying please wait until my daughter is this age before the marriage is consummated. So at one point this girl Elizabeth she cites in her book was married young but her father says you cannot consummate the marriage until after 16. A king over Aragorn said I have to wait until after 18 for example. So there was this concern and they were basically trying to up the age at that point. At what point were they upping the age? In the middle ages, medieval period. Yeah, they settled on the age 12. That was the minimum age. Kim Phillips's canon law is not a good representation of that. She says canon law is a very limited understanding of what was going on. It's like today's citing that... Well, so cite me in another example of a law of that prohibited marriage. I never said it was necessarily prohibited. I'm typing cultural aspects. That's my point. It was not prohibited. The debate is not did people in the middle ages allow child marriage? I read in my opening statement, yes they did. And it was still harmful when they did. And a lot of people at the same time were like hey, maybe we should up the age and they were encouraging girls to wait many more years. Yeah, but the debate is about the acceptability and the morality. So you have to explain why is 99% of humanity engaged in this grave, grave evil. That's how... Why is 1% of humanity in the modern period magically only within the past 300 years discovering, oh, this is such a terrible traumatic thing. This is so evil. There's so much harm coming from it. When you cite medical experts, for example, this is an important point, and you say that oh, well, there is these harms that come from sexual relations with minors at the age of puberty or right around that age of pubescence. Those are likelihoods. When you say morbidity, mortality, those are likelihoods and if you're going to pin your argument on medical harm, then there are all kinds of sexual behaviors that cause medical harm. I cited having sex or being pregnant and having children with women over 35, over 40, over 50. Those are also extremely harmful. So if we take your moral argument, all of those kinds of sexual acts and reproduction should be also outlawed and should also be considered a grave moral evil. What about sodomy? What about... Can I respond to the two things there? For one, you said why should we not ban it if it's harmful? And the other one was it's been so pervasive in cultures. Well, again, let's go to your own source, Bruce Rine, who noted that there was he's got four pages of homosexual interaction between men and boys happening in cultures around the world for generations. Well, I could just say the same thing to you. If 99% of cultures before Western including, let me finish, including Islamic societies were all okay with it, why don't we just let it go rampant again? We know it's harmful, according to Bruce Rine. Islamic societies did not consider sexual relations between men and boys as acceptable. They did condemn it. They consider a grave evil. It was practiced. Of course it was practiced. And yeah, there was poetry about it, but that was seen as a perversion and heresy. You're ignorant about Islamic history. Islam has a complete rejection and prohibition and you can't actually respond to some of these points. But you're making this claim that is nonsense. Okay, first of all, my point was not that Islam did not condemn it. I agree Islam condemned it. I quoted Bruce Rine saying that. My point was, again, you're saying that child marriage was so pervasive, therefore, what's wrong with it? Well, again, homosexual, hemophilic interaction was just as pervasive according to your own source. Where does it say that was equally pervasive? He literally says this throughout his page. Child marriage is as pervasive as... He does not break up child marriage. Then what comparison are you making? You're the one who quoted Bruce Rine. Yeah, in a different context, for a different purpose. You saw it in a governing statement. Yeah, but I didn't make that point. I'm not saying everything Bruce Rine has ever said is correct. I'm saying this meta-study that Bruce Rine did with others showed that the sexual act between a minor and an adult is not inherently traumatic. It doesn't inherently cause psychological trauma. Of course. I'll read you the abstract since this is a point of discussion. I have the actual study I can read from that. It suffices to read the abstract. Page 7, child sexual abuse research has repeatedly maintained that hemophilic interactions are innately and intensely harmful for the younger person. That's what he's disputing. No, that's what he's saying. It's true. Look, here's what it says. Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with this kind of child sexual abuse were on average slightly less well-adjusted than controls. However, this poor adjustment could not be attributed to the sexual interaction because family environment was consistently confounded with that behavior. Family environment explained considerably more adjustment variants than the actual sexual act. So what he's saying to summarize is that you can't isolate the sexual act. What's happening is children are getting molested. Children are getting abused by their family members or in this bad environment and that bad environment or this abusive parent, that's what's causing the slightly lower adjustment levels or the trauma. It's not the sex itself. It's not the sexual act itself. And again, Ryan is not looking at marriage. He's not looking at these kinds of relationships that have existed again throughout history. You're right, he's not looking at child marriage, so I don't know why you've been studying it for four years. But again, he says what he's saying in his paper is that it's not harmful to the active partner. It's not a disorder. It's not like schizophrenia. Not this study. Where did this study mention the active partner, the abstract that I just read? You've got to read the actual study. Are you studying the same study? What's your test study? It's the Tromovich, Ryan Tromovich and Brosserman. You're studying the 1998 one? I'm studying the one you said in your hair is Sultan one. Why are you debating a previous debate? Debate me and this debate. You bring up stuff that your opponent has cited. That's how you prepare Daniel. Now the problem with that study is it's an outlier. What he brings in the opening statement, that's what you should debate. What he decided is an outlier. Anna Sattler notes their findings in her book Predators. She notes that their findings are truly an outlier. And she cites numerous other men analysis that have found other results. A meta-analysis of the relationship of child sexual abuse to adult psychological adjustments from 1995. The long-term sequel of Childhood Sexual Abuse of Women, a meta-analysis review from 1996. A meta-analysis of the published research on the effects of child sexual abuse as well as the prevalence of child sexual abuse and student samples. Furthermore, Ryan even says in that 1998 meta-analysis that it was actually harmful to the girls. It wasn't harmful to the boys as his argument. And he is still an outlier. So the irony of this is, again, your own study says it is harmful to the girls. Ryan is saying that 1998. He's saying that the harm is caused by the family environment. I just read the abdomen. He's saying that the girls report harm in the 1998 meta-analysis. Yeah, and he attributes that. He does a correlation analysis and he finds that it's more correlated with the family environment as opposed to the sexual act. That's why this study was so controversial. That's why it was... And an outlier. Yeah, of course it's an outlier because look at the stigma. Look at the social stigma. If you want to live and die by these psychological studies, then all the psychological studies right now say that the dominant studies all say that if a child at age four, a boy, feels like he's actually a girl, then he should be put on hormone blockers and perhaps even get sex change. So do you accept that? Do you agree that psychological conclusion? No, I think there was actually research that challenged that. But again, we're talking about the dominant research. Do you disagree that the dominant research says that Gender Affirming Care is necessary for... I do not agree that the diet and dominant research says that. Okay, so in some cases the dominant research can be very wrong, right? I get. What's the evidence that's the dominant research? What studies? Okay, so you're disputing that the dominant research today in psychology says that Gender Affirming Care should be provided to children as young as four years or three years old. You're denying that. If you're doubting research, why aren't you even signing Bruce Ryan to begin with? Are you just cherry picking the ones that support your view? I mean, you could just say we can just doubt it when it's useful for us or I'll just pick Bruce Ryan. It's useful. I'm just countering the point that you made that whatever is the dominant claim about a certain topic then we should just take that and ignore other kinds of factors. I'm not making it as simple. All you're doing is caricaturing my arguments. If a child marriage was common, therefore it's okay. That's not my argument. What is your argument that it is okay? My argument is a challenge to anyone who claims that it's not okay to explain why the attitudes shifted so radically. One of the reasons why the attitudes changed so radically is because of industrialization, is because of feminism. That explains the radical shift. Not something inherent. What study shows that? Many studies. Look at this. What study shows that the reason we started condemning child marriage was not because of the medical efforts I cited. The Anthropology of Childhood by David Lansey. Discovering invention in the history of adolescence published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Children in adolescence as sexual beings a historical overview by Vern Bullo 2004. How many more studies do you want? All of these studies show that these practices were pervasive. All you did to respond to that is the average age was 22 at a certain point in Europe. My question was where do these studies say the reason we started condemning child marriage was because of industrialism and feminism? Do they say that? Freedom. I cited Montesquieu. The first Western expression against child marriage happened in 1748 with Montesquieu. Because again, I have medical experts saying the reason it should not be practice is because of all the harm it causes. Mental, physical, emotional, sexual. We're talking about every single factor and your arguments don't make any sense. Like what? Like the fact that there's some likelihood of physical harm, like 2% chance of mortality for a child at age 12 or 10, you have the same mortality rate for a woman over 40. No, girls to ages 10 or 15 are especially vulnerable. But you have no problem with women over 40 having sex. No, if they're going to cause problems and the medical experts are telling them not to have children and listen to the medical experts, I'm perfectly consistent with that. If there were a taboo against women over 40 having sex I bet the medical experts would say oh, look at the mortality rate is the same for 12-year-old and 40-year-old. So therefore both should be condemned. But you don't see that. Most women are basically hitting menopause and so they can have sex just fine in their marriage without risking that kind of thing. Well, we're talking about women who get pregnant. The risk of mortality, the normalized risk of mortality for those women is higher than women who are at puberty. Your doctor tells them not to, then they shouldn't. Quite simple. Okay, but why are doctors condemning one type? Do you think it could be why are doctors condemning one side of the spectrum? Could it be because of social stigma? Because of being illegal? No, it's because of the medical experts. Because your argument basically boils down to medical researcher, child marriage is immoral because it's illegal. That's begging the question. You're asking why is it illegal? Why is there a social stigma? Because it's severe mental and physical harm. Where's the evidence for that? Did you pay attention? The physical harm, whenever I cite, you keep repeating physical harm and I say the same kind of physical harm occurs with women who are over a certain age. And then you hand wave that and say oh well, but doctors aren't talking about women over 40. Well, why not? If a doctor tells a woman over 40 she should not have children No, why? You're changing the scenario. You're changing the scenario. Why are doctors writing so much about mortality at this bottom end of the age spectrum, but not at the top age of the age spectrum? That's what you're not explaining. I have an explanation. It's because of the social stigma. Okay, because again, the research shows that women at this age they're still psychologically and emotionally developing. When you force them into marriages too young they have increased anxiety, depression, psychiatric disorders, increased risk of suicide. They're more likely to die. They can't raise children properly because they've not been educated enough they've not been able to mentally mature enough. So again, the studies I'm citing show you have an increased risk of death or even their offspring and how they're raised up to the age of 5. The rate of psychological maturity is also very contextual. It's very environmental. Children who are or women at age 12 year olds in Africa or 10 year olds in Africa are considered adults. Like this category of adolescence is something that is a modern western construct. The research I cited was done in Africa. Yeah, I know. So that's that kind of stigma that's attached from the West. That is what affects these health outcomes. Then why do they have the same problems in there? Like what are the same problems? What problems? The higher rates of depression, suicide, mental disorders, psychiatric issues. They're all having these. And in fact we also increase increased risk of intimate and partner violence. Again, I need to see what those studies are because there is such a huge bias with the UN and global liberalism that is imposing this kind of ban on child. You heard it here for a book. It's a conspiracy. Oh yeah, because liberal powers have never conspired to impose their values on the rest of the world. Yeah, well, we just won't. Because the liberal West never made up stories about children being abused in Afghanistan to justify bombing them or going to war invading Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that we know Saddam Hussein have. The West never has any kind of conspiracy theory to go and invade and bomb and colonize and take over Muslim or non-Muslim lands, right? All my studies are a conspiracy. All my studies are a conspiracy. I cited so many studies that go directly contradictory to the things that you cited. What studies did you cite mentioned child marriage? Modern studies on the effects of it today? I will read them again. The Anthropology of Childhood by David Lansing. Discovery and invention in the history of adolescence. Journal of Adolescence. Yeah, today is part of the historical progression. You can't get funding to show, can you get funding to show that child marriage is a great thing? Well, probably, yeah, outside of the U.S. and certain countries, but they all find harmful effects. Outside of the U.S., you don't have research universities. All of the research universities in the Muslim world, for example, are funded by western grants. And they're deputized, and those universities are deputized to push U.N. standards, western liberal standards. So you think there's a massive scientific conspiracy to fund institutions around the world to show child marriage is harmful? Do you know, do you realize that there are all kinds of research, again, that shows that gender affirming care needs to be given to children at age four? No, the dominant research shows that you need to give this gender affirming care to children as young as four. And increasingly, you're not going to find any studies that contradict this. Why? It's because of a conspiracy. Two reasons. One, there is research to contest that. And one, this is a very recent thing. It's not been studied that much. Child marriage has been practiced and studied for decades. We know the effects. It's been taboo. It's been taboo. And it's been illegal for centuries in the West. Yeah, good thing, because of all the harm it causes. No, the harm it causes is also something. Again, the same kind of thing with the harm that's caused by preventing a child from exploring his gender sexuality and gender fluidity. That's the harm that's being caused. Again, you're comparing apples to oranges. No, it's the same exact thing. The dominant research today says that it's harmful and those studies, like the contradictory studies that you're saying, oh no, children shouldn't be exploring their gender at age four. Those are studies and they have to be condemned. And those professors that have those studies are being pushed out of their departments. So you're basically saying it's wrong just to dismiss the study. Do you think that's happening? I'm not asking you a question, sir. I'm asking you a question. Do you think there's any pressure on professors who say that gender affirming care should not be given to kindergartners? Are they facing any pressure? Yes or no? So you're basically saying the studies that they're arguing that this is wrong are basically being dismissed as transphobe and that's bad. You seem to be doing the same thing. You're just dismissing my studies that I said as a Western conspiracy. Why do you get to dismiss all the studies you want as a Western conspiracy? But it's bad to dismiss other studies as transphobe. No, I'm not dismissing those studies. I'm just showing the dynamics within these kinds of departments within universities and what you're describing as a conspiracy. Yeah, conspiracies do happen. Things that are socially taboo. Like right now, there's a social taboo that you should not prohibit children from exploring their gender fluidity. That is the dominant status quo now, increasingly. And I'm saying that the status quo is sometimes very wrong. Just like there's been a status quo because of Western dominance against child marriage, minor marriage. The mere existence of the experience. Someone like you prefers children to fornicate to their hearts content as opposed to getting married. That's the false psychotomy, sir. You're trying to say the mere existence of a conspiracy. Like, you know, the moon landing is a conspiracy and we all accept the moon landing happened. I mean, we know that's nonsense to deny the moon landing. We know just because there's a mere existence of a conspiracy is not evidence the conspiracy is true. You're just stating there's a conspiracy against child marriage. That doesn't make it magically the case that child marriage is okay. Just like we know the moon landing happened, right? No, I'm just citing because you're making a big point about how there are no studies that show the benefits of child marriage. And I'm saying, yeah, no duh, because it's something that is a stigma. It's something that's illegal. If you look at the systematic reviews, there are outlier studies. So a lot of times these researchers, if you read a lot of the studies I studied, will say, yeah, there was like 15 studies that showed that child marriage correlates with intimate partner violence and one found no correlation. So there are studies that always are outside of the outlier. For example, I could cite a meta-analysis right now on religiosity and depression. 444 studies. Okay, 6% actually show a positive correlation between religiosity and depression, but 6% is still the outlier. In these studies, in these reviews, you can find outliers. Every now and then you'll come across a researcher that'll be like, okay, so in this study we found child marriage was mentally harmful in this way. So then it's a wash. Then why are you staking so much of your claim on these studies? You're acknowledging that there are outliers and you're acknowledging that sometimes it's the outliers that are correct and the dominant status quo is incorrect. So why are you... My argument wasn't based on showing that there are studies that prove that this is psychologically beneficial. That wasn't my argument. My argument again was that this is a childhood sexuality is a reality. Your only response has been abstinence. You should just control yourself until you're 18. You think, yeah, so this is a failed model. This does not work. You can't have children, teenagers with raging hormones practice abstinence. That's why we see such high levels of fornication, which according to in the cross-examination, is as bad as child marriage. I didn't say it was bad. I said they're both bad. I don't have to give them numbers or rate. Yeah, you don't want to say which one is worse. That's convenient. Well, because I'm a virtue ethicist and we don't do that kind of thing. But the point is that you can't condemn fornication that's happening rampantly. And you have no solution for that kind of child for that kind of behavior of a children. My solution again is not putting out a kitchen in the fire by breaking the dam and flooding the neighborhood. What is the problem with the problem? Well, what is? Stop grandstanding and tell us the solution. A better solution would be increased religiosity, more education, more extra activities. Sex education? Education does show that there is a better understanding of sexual activity and it does prevent the increased sort of fornication of this sort of making better decisions in their life. So there's no actual evidence that shows that this works. There's no evidence that shows that abstinence is something that has reduced fornication, reduced the levels of child pregnancy or teenage pregnancy. Do you think child marriages would reduce premarital sex? Yes. Wait, but your own study for Adam, your last debate with Noreum, you studied a study from Adam. No, talk about this debate. Don't bring up my previous debates. No, no, no. I watched all my debates, but let's talk about the studies in this debate. Okay, let me cite a study then on this whole issue. Amy Adamsic, religion and sexual behavior notes that in Islamic societies, which you cited last time, notes they have lower premarital sex. However, an earlier age at marriage does not appear to explain the relationship. So earlier marriage did not decrease premarital sex according to your own study that you cited last time. She says what about child marriage? Okay, so I'll read you directly from that. See, we find that we find that ever married Hindus and Muslims are less likely to report having premarital sex than ever married Jews and Christians. In an earlier age at marriage does not appear to explain the relationship. So marrying as a child or as early marriage did not decrease premarital sex. Also, I left an important detail in one of the studies I cited. Child marriage correlates with an increase in STDs cervical cancer. But the rates are much lower in Muslim countries. Yes, Adam Zick is the one who cites that. Yes, but again, child marriages correlates with more STDs. How does she define child marriage? Because the age of consent is much lower in Muslim countries. Number one, and number two, no, I agree that there is an entire culture that prevents promiscuity. But marriage and chastity are encouraged in Islam. Gender roles are encouraged in Islam by law, and by custom. But those things don't exist in the free, liberal West. The countries that are blessed by Protestant Christianity. Are you advocating the same kind of restrictions on gender mixing? Are you advocating for hijab? Are you advocating for all of these kinds of Islamic solutions to prevent the kind of child pornication that is so rampant in society? We didn't explain the relationship. My point is that early marriage, child marriage did not cause a decrease in premarital sex. So, you can have an Islamic society without early child marriage and still decrease it. You can have an Orthodox traditional Christian society with low premarital sex without encouraging child or minor marriage. Also, again, in the studies I cited in my opening statement, what comes up a lot is an increase in STDs among the relationships where one is a child. Typically the girl, because that simply happens. It's child molestation, because it's stigmatized. STDs, because marriage is stigmatized. So, STDs are being increased because of child marriages. That's more promiscuity. Child marriages or child sex, because you're equivocating. Child marriages. The studies I cited show that there is an increase in STDs when a child marriage, when a society is aligned with child marriage. Which countries? Muslim countries? Sub-Saharan African countries. Bangladesh. Sub-Saharan. Bangladesh. Those are the ones they were looked at. Child marriage increases STDs. STDs. Bangladesh has extremely low STDs. Not among the child marriages. Also in India as well. What is the study? You're citing things that I've never heard of before. That go contrary to all of this other evidence. So the study is reproductive, I put in my opening statement, reproductive health reproductive and sexual health consequences of child marriage, a review of the literature, and they say that here are the results. Child marriage is a result of poverty as many adverse consequences on reproductive and sexual health of girls. These include death during childbirth, physical and sexual violence, isolation, depression, cervical cancer, a risk of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnant women are at a high risk of preterm birth as well as neonatal death more than other women. Look, the thing with STDs with all these kinds of problems that come that you're citing, preventing harms at this level, psychological harm, etc. It comes at a macro level. There's an entire system that Islam endorses, of patriarchy, gender roles, chastity, high fertility, loyalty to the husband. These are all values that Islam has a whole endorses, and these are all things that are being attacked by liberal modernity, which liberal Christians like you endorse and support. And that's the problem. Yeah, if your solution for this dilemma that I post for you of child fornication is just adopt all of these Islamic values or adopt patriarchy. But that's what you're implying by saying that there are Muslim countries who have low rates of pre-marital sex without child marriage, right? So how are they preventing pre-marital sex? I'm giving you the answer. It's because of all of these other patriarchal values. So what is your solution? I'm perfectly fine with saying that Islam has some good things in it. I've never denied that. Again, I wanted to read another study, Bob, before. But those good things are solving the problem that you're not able to solve, that no Christian modern Christian is able to solve. Health consequences of child marriage in Africa says, a common belief is that child marriage protects girls from primiscuity and therefore disease. The reality is quite different. Married girls are more likely than unmarried girls to become infected with STDs, in particularly HIV. So this idea of arguing that somehow we need to have child marriage is going to reduce primiscuity. Let me finish my sentence. This idea that you're promoting that we need to allow child marriage because this to prevent fornication of primiscuity in the West is false. We see an increase in STDs. We see an increase in HIV, cervical cancer. That's what these studies I decided are kind of going over. Sub-Saharan Africa is notorious for HIV. It's notorious for child rape. It's notorious for all kinds of war. And by the way Sub-Saharan Africa is Christian. There is a huge disparity between Muslim Africa and Christian Africa when it comes to HIV specifically and STDs. So you are citing very biased or non-representative studies when you're citing Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are Christian Africans, not Muslim Africans. Muslims are in North Africa, not in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah, I know. I'm pointing this out to show you how bad child marriage is. You're the one saying child marriage is great. It's going to lower fornication. No, I didn't say that child marriage is the magic bullet that is going to solve fornication. But it's definitely a factor as a part of an entire system of patriarchy and gender norms and chastity that liberal Christians like you are opposed to. And again, your own study shows that early child marriage does not help to reduce premarital sex. It did not mediate in it. Nothing shows that. You cited Sub-Saharan Africa. Again, those aren't Muslim countries. We're going back to Amy's study. Yeah, and I explained to Adam's study that it's not just again, child marriage that prevents the premarital sex. They say it's nothing. It doesn't mediate the relationship at all. Yeah, because it's banned. It's outlawed. In Muslim countries, it's banned as well. Not in the country she was looking at. Where does she say that? Let me pull it up. All of these Muslim countries are under UN international law where child marriage is banned. It's a human rights violation. It still is practiced in a lot of these countries. Okay, so if it's practiced, then that would be the explanation for why there's lower rates of premarital sex. She says that's not. You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth. No, I'm pointing out what she said. I'm pointing out that it's illegal. Just because something's illegal doesn't mean it's not practiced. They do lots of things that are illegal. Where was her analysis that child marriage specifically did not reduce premarital sex? In all of the countries she looked at. How was she able to determine that? The countries she looked at were Nigeria, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Azerbaijan, Namibia, Moldova, Haiti, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, excuse me, Madagascar, Cambodia, where does she say that child marriage did not prevent premarital sex? I already quoted it for you. What was her explanation though? The point is that when they run the box Can you read the explanation? It does not mediate it. The explanation is child marriage or early marriage did not mediate a relationship that reduced premarital sex. Where is she making a causal claim? That it does not cause less that does not cause less premarital sex. That's why I'm looking for it. Otherwise it's just, again, descriptive. Yeah, that's what you have to do in these studies. You can't, even as you've admitted in your past, you can't necessarily find a causal relation. Correlation does not mean causation. Your client causation, you're saying that child, you're countering my argument by saying that well child marriage does not cause lower rate of premarital sex. Yeah, and this is a study that shows evidence of that. She's saying that there's no correlation. She doesn't say anything about causation. She doesn't say anything about causation. She says correlation. Exactly, yeah. But you're making a causal claim. I'm saying that's evidence to use your own friends. It's, you know, like when you were debating Tom Jump, remember when you were debating Tom Jump, you said you don't believe in the harm principle, but the harm is evidence of something that is bad. Right in these studies, this is evidence that once again doesn't mediate the relationship. You're saying that there's a, there's no cause, there's no cause between child marriage and a decrease in premarital sex. I'm saying there's no relationship. I'm saying there's no relationship. There's no relationship. Yeah. So you're saying that this one study doesn't show a relationship, therefore there's no relationship. I'm saying there's no evidence of it. Okay, there's no evidence that you know of. Yeah, and you don't have it. You're not provided any. Right, so that, my claim, my claim to you was not regarding the evidence of that or not. My claim was provide a solution. Why, how can you reduce the rates of fornication that you're supposedly so, so much against? Increase religiosity, more education, better parenting. Why don't you just ban it? Why don't you just ban it? You're in favor of banning child marriage, so why can't you ban fornication for anyone not married? We do. You can't sleep with a minor. It's against the law? It's called statutory rape. No, no, between 10, two 10 year olds. Why can't two 8 year olds have sex? We're going to throw 8 year olds in prison because they are, they can't even consent to each other. Is that your argument? No, no. Are you in favor of laws that ban two 8 year olds fornicating? I would be totally in favor of preventing it. I don't know how you'd make it out of law, because again, they can't even consent. Why not? You have a law against child marriage, so why can't you have a law against fornication? Let's walk through this. For 10 year olds. Let's walk through this. 9 year olds, why? Let's walk through this. Yeah, let's do it. You want to say, okay, so let's, we're going to ban two 10 year olds for having sex. What happens if they have sex? They, they are punished for that. How? There are sanctions. They, they could serve prison time. I don't know. There's some punishment on the law that makes it illegal. So we're going to throw 9 year olds in prison. Yeah, it's hard for you to imagine. It's hard because they had sex. But by the way, this is Mosaic law. By the way, this is what Christianity has advocated. By the way, this is what Canon law advocated. If two 10 year olds fornicate, they are punished according to Christian law, according to Mosaic law. This is so hard for you to imagine. It would be quite simple for me to say they should go and they should be separated. First of all, they should have to go through some sort of like rehab type thing where they learn that they should not be doing this at 10. Judy? No, not Judy. Why not? Why not? So why are you so hard? So someone who, so someone who practices his child marriage, like a 25 year old with a 17 year old, he should be locked up, right? Yeah. But two 10 year olds fornicating, that they should just have some nice rejuvenation. 20 year olds cannot consent. They're consenting with each other. They don't know what they're doing. Yeah, so what are you going to do to punish them? Again, rejuvenation. In the same way that you're going to punish the 25 year old. Okay, 25 year old can consent and knows what he's doing. That 17 year old doesn't know what sex is. At that point, a nation has to be defined by laws, Daniel. We just can't be like, oh, well this person's down there. But you're in favor. Can I finish my thought before you interrupt me? For once, maybe? Once again, we have to be a nation of laws. We cannot just have every single child go to a judge and a medical expert get a brain exam to know. We know puberty is complete in most people by 17, so the next age we grant is 18. This is a much simpler system. Sure, it comes with trade-offs, but when you're building a political system, there's going to be trade-offs. And so we sent the Asian consent at 18, age of adulthood at 18, because that's when puberty is complete in almost all individuals. Got just two minutes left. All I heard is a bunch of rambling, but no explanation for what kind of punishments or what kind of laws you would impose to curb fornication amongst children. The baby is not what laws can do. It's about child sex marriage. Yeah, exactly. You're in favor of laws that ban child marriage and have very severe consequences for child marriage. But I asked you about fornication and you said that is immoral. You're not going to say it's more or less immoral than child marriage, by the way. But I'm asking you, what kind of laws would be parallel to prohibit fornication and curb that problem? Okay. I think adultery is wrong, but I don't think it should be illegal. Then why is child marriage, why do you think child marriage should be illegal? Because you're harming a child, as I explained in my opening statement. Are two children fornicating, harming each other? Yes, they are, but they don't know what they're doing, because they can't consent. So how do you curb that? How do you create a stigma about that? Thirty seconds. How do you make it illegal? How do we make it illegal? You don't have a laissez-faire attitude about fornication, but you want the hammer of the law for child marriage. You want the hammer of the law for child marriage, but fornication is something that, oh well, it's unfortunate, but these are kids, they don't know what they're doing. Yeah, kids do. That's inconsistent. Kids don't know what they're doing. That's the way kids typically are. Kids know what sex is. Rehabilitation is much better for this kind of thing. Kids, we have to move. It's not like they're adults or like they're committed murder or something. Gentlemen, we have to move into the five minute closing statements. We'll start with Mike. These are closing statements, folks, so if you have a question, get ready in 10 minutes. We'll start the Q&A. Mike, I've got it set for five minutes. The floor is all yours. Okay, so it appears that we have seen no evidence that child marriage is moral or should be permissible by any standard. Everything we've just heard tonight is well. I've seen people in the past do it. A lot of people in the past did it. Therefore, it should be okay. That was most of the evidence of what I've seen him give. I've seen no evidence to say that it should be allowed based on any data. Once again, child marriage leads to all sorts of harmful things. Leads to all sorts of psychiatric problems with these girls. They develop depression, isolation, anxiety, loss of identity. They develop all sorts of psychiatric issues that stay with them for life when they're forced to these situations. They also increase the likelihood of divorce when you're becoming someone new constantly until you're about 25 or so. This is why we see divorce rates stagger and basically drop to the lowest level between the ages of 25 and 30. Prior to that, they slowly, slowly increase back up. And when you're in your teens, you're very likely to get divorced if you marry that point. If we actually want to favor decreasing divorce, we should be outlawing child marriage because the data is quite clear on this and it's across the cultures. We also see evidence that child marriage is one of the physical problems. Daniel tried to argue that, women over 40 have these issues as well. Again, if you go to a doctor over 40 and the doctor says, hey, you probably shouldn't have any more children. You could have some serious issues. Then you probably shouldn't have a child. That's quite that simple. I couldn't be consistent and disagree with that. The difference is when you're under these ages, it is quite clear that you also have all these psychiatric issues. There's a point where you're good at delivering children. And even early medical writers like Seronis of Ephesus noted this. Child marriage is extremely harmful mentally, emotionally, and physically for these girls. There's a reason why we're outlawing. It's not some vast conspiracy. It's because medical experts routinely in country after country come out and say, this is harmful. We've conducted studies and interviews and psychiatric evaluations of these girls in India, Africa, Southeast Asia, throughout the Middle East, this always leads to harms one way or another. There are outlier studies, no doubt. So, if there was some vast conspiracy, why are there outlier studies? Christianity is vehemently opposed to the practice of child marriage. He brought up the fact that Jesus never condemned it. Well, Jesus never condemned boiling cats. But we can still arrive at the conclusion that's probably wrong. Christianity is not like Islam. It lays down principles for us to be guided by. It doesn't have to give us an entire list of every do and don't. Bible's clear. The way you fulfill the law is by loving one another. We now know from the day that child marriage is harmful. So guess what? It's wrong. And a Muslim should know about the fallacy of presentism. Just because people in the past may not have known how harmful it was, just like they didn't know that using leeches to try to cure diseases was wrong does not mean we necessarily condemn them. We can still say it was wrong. They just had a lack of information. Christianity, according to experts like Robert Woodbury, Tom Holland, Rodney Stark is responsible for a ton of scientific moral progress that has led us into the future. It's constantly saying, let's study the science, find out what's best for society. For some reason, when I'm debating Muslim apologists, they want to drag us back to the 7th century and leave us with the ethics there. Christianity wants to take us into the future. Islam wants to take us into the past. Now, I can agree there are a lot of harmful things about modern Western secular society. But we do not solve a problem with the worst problem. We're not going to replace the liberal dystopia we're in with handmade's tale Islam style. That would just be a worst or equally bad dystopia. Child marriage is harmful and trying to solve problems in society like kids sometimes fool around with each other by instituting something we know to be intently and innately harmful by, according to every expert, then that's not the solution. That would just be another problem we have to deal with. It's quite clear we have seen no evidence that child marriage increases virtue, helps young girls to flourish. It leads to all types of harm. All types of issues that ruin these girls for life. Any educated society will outlaw child marriages if you care about your population. You're not going to install a handmade's tale dystopia where children are forced to these marriages, except from psychiatric problems, which they then pass on to their children. Because the evidence, once again, as I cited shows that they lead to complications when raiding their own children. There's a reason why every medical expert agrees with me up here and not with Daniel. The evidence is abundantly clear. And I barely scratch the surface. There are dozens of other studies I could have cited, but I don't have the time. There's just so much evidence that this is harmful. And we honestly should outlaw this around the world and start helping girls to flourish better lives, not forcing them into the marriages where they're going to suffer a meds harm. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll go over to Daniel for his five minute closing as well. Daniel, the floor is all yours. Okay, so Mike is talking about, well, for 40 year olds, older women they should just ask their medical doctor to make sure it's safe. Well, why can't you say that for children as well? You can ask, you can have minor marriage and before any consummation of the marriage you ask the doctor, you have a full physical examination and then you make sure by the medical professionals that it's physically safe. Then would you be in favor of it? In favor of child marriage, then would it be morally acceptable? Mike talks about psychological harm. Again, I cited studies showing that the psychological harm is due to a family environment, due to molestation, is due to other kinds of social stigma and not due to the actual adult minor relation. There's emotional damage as well. Again, the status quo now is one where child marriage is stigmatized, minor marriage is stigmatized. There's no stigma with children fornicating. Why is there psychological damage in marriage if you have like a 20 year old and a 17 year old getting married which Mike considers to be morally unacceptable. Why is that so emotionally damaging but to 17 year olds fornicating is just fine or to 10 year olds fornicating is just fine. Is it a surprise that there are no medical studies showing the emotional damage that comes with all kinds of sexual promiscuity that comes with all kinds of behaviors that are socially sanctioned or socially acceptable in society? We don't find those kinds of studies in abundance. Why? Because it's determined by the culture. It's determined by the status quo. He also says that every medical expert agrees with his position well every medical expert now is saying that gender affirming care for kindergartners is something that's important and if you prohibit gender affirming care then that is psychologically harmful for children and it causes emotional damage for children. So again all of these studies that Mike has cited it just takes a very little bit of analysis to show that they're full of holes in overall contention of the debate on whether child marriage or minor marriage is morally acceptable. Mike also talks about Jesus never condemning boiling cats. Boiling cats wasn't an accepted widespread practice in the time of Jesus but child marriage was and child marriage was sanctioned by the Jewish rabbinic authorities at that time. Nowhere does he condemn that. Nowhere does he even come close to making an explicit statement condemning it. So overall Mike did not give us a solution for childhood sexuality and all of these children fornicating he hasn't proposed any outlet for these raging hormones starting from children at age 8 or 9 did Mike explain how attitudes towards child marriage radically shifted in the last 300 years. No, did Mike explain why Jesus didn't condemn the child marriage that was rampant in his time. No did Mike explain why the Bible never comes close to condemning child marriage and in many cases actually seems to command it. No Mike has failed on all of these points. Overall my opponent has refused to answer some of the very basic questions on this topic and his overall approach is full of inconsistencies. So finally as a Muslim I want to conclude by saying that I'm proud of the Prophet Muhammad and everything he did he was the most moral man the greatest example for humankind and his marriage to our mother Ayesha is not a source of embarrassment or something for Muslims to be defensive about rather it's something that is an inspiration to the world a sick world increasingly sick world that is destroying itself and doesn't even realize it my opponent here has nothing to say about that overall trajectory he called it progress in his concluding statement it is so bizarre for a Christian to be promoting these kind of liberal materialistic atheistic values of progress while also condemning his entire tradition. A couple of months ago the name of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaikum was trending on Twitter and it was because people were insulting him and attacking him especially his marriage to Ayesha our mother Ayesha and when you looked at the kind of people who were the most vile and bitter in their venom against the Prophet there was a clear pattern these were people who were fervently against God they hate God they hate religion they hate marriage they hate family they hate tradition they hate gender norms they hate everything that is decent and wholesome and good and just advocate this progress which is really debauchery and degradation so all of these haters consider the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaikum to be enemy number one what does that tell you about this man thank you very much with that let's give a round of applause before we start the Q&A thank you very much gentlemen Ladies and gentlemen if you queue up here for the Q&A reminder again please hold the microphone close to your mouth I will hold the microphone with the cord for the stream you will hold the microphone for in here keep it close to your mouth make sure you're asking a question asking a question not making a lengthy statement or anything like that and we will get you through this so first person come on down stand on the table so when Muhammad married Ayesha right the Abu Bakr actually resisted saying that you're my brother and then when Muhammad said you know it's the will of Allah he agrees right and after that and Abu Bakr actually proposed marriage to Fatima the daughter of Muhammad right he says too young she I mean she's too young don't you think that Muhammad was worried about his own daughter versus when it came to Ayesha he just went ahead and did it no I don't think there's any such implication you have different levels of maturity amongst girls who even might be the same age so saying that well oh my daughter is too young but another girl is not too young that's not an inconsistency there alrighty so in Genesis 24 verse 19 it says about Rebecca the 3 year old when she had given him a drink she said I'll draw a water for your camels too until they've had enough to drink so she quickly went through her jug into the water and dropped him right back to draw water for the camels she then says a little later I'm the daughter of Bethel well she replied to my grandparents our Nakhor and Milka yes we have plenty of strong feet for the camels and we have room for guests you know correctly if I'm wrong that's a really lucid 3 year old so my question is have you ever met a 3 year old yes I have a 3 year old or I did 2 years ago I was 5 so yeah I understand that ages can vary maturity can vary across time but the point is what is established by the Talmud and by Jewish law and so their interpretation of those verses are what they are so you have to argue with them and argue with those rabbis obviously with modern interpretation they want to try to explain that away but I don't find that very compelling but others may disagree so may I so yeah sorry so Rebecca being 3 years old is tradition not something that is like fully backed by Scripture well what do you mean by backed by Scripture because when you have whatever interpretation and anyone 1800 years after purported revelation can come and say actually I don't agree that this age was 3 I think the minimum age of marriage is based on this passage which seems to indicate breast development if that's your understanding of what is backed by Scripture then yeah I agree you're going to be hard pressed to agree with you'll be hard pressed to find any pre-modern position that is backed by Scripture so it says later on in Genesis that she covers her head most 3 year olds did not and I can't find any 3 year old that would cover their head if they were married then that would be the law that they have to cover their head so that's begging the question thank you questions to Daniel and Mike to Daniel as one of the evils you mentioned that are brought about by the lack of child marriage was masturbation and I specifically want to ask about non-porn masturbation so you seem to imply that non-porn masturbation is sort of clearly worse than child marriage and it's an evil that must be eradicated by child marriage I'd like to expand on that point if I've got it correctly and for Mike on our question I'm assuming you're also against non-porn masturbation in adolescence so my question is the dominant literature on that would probably be that non-porn masturbation is not harmful at all so why can you disagree with the scientific consensus on that subject completely and get reliant on it so much when it comes to child marriage I need a mic yeah so in Christianity we believe there are different types of sins there are sins that harm others there are sins that harm yourself or your own spirituality I would say that's more of a sin that harms your own spirituality as it directs you more to focusing on women as objects in a lot of ways but no it doesn't harm others that doesn't mean necessarily as good either I mean using Daniel's own criteria that he used in his debate with Tom Job harm is evidence that something is bad and so child marriage is severely harmful much more than masturbation as we can see from the data but again there are things that can be harmful like lying I don't think that I lie to like David or something I don't think I should be thrown in prison for something like that I don't think adults should be thrown in prison necessarily even though I think it's wrong so there's different types of sins different things that are wrong I would just say that child marriage is Jesus talked about a greater sin at times so yeah it's your answer I think that the solution as I mentioned I think what I said is completely consistent that marriage is better even for my own children according to what is the minimum age in our locality I want them to get married as early as possible I want them to get married I have boys and I want them to get married in their teenage years if possible because masturbation is something that has incredible amount of harm psychological harm emotional harm things that Mike is blissfully unaware of because his understanding of what is harmful is just dictated by liberal morality that is enshrined within a very liberal scientific establishment so that's why he's kind of has this blind spot for things that his own religion condemns as extremely harmful like masturbation but is just taking up the mantle for child marriage even though the Bible that he claims to advocate for condones it so I mean this is an inconsistency his position not an inconsistency in my position I think that getting married as a teenager is much better than being masturbating whether with pornography or without it it's harmful it's spiritually harmful it's psychologically harmful it's emotionally harmful question for both so let's imagine that that we have a society with Sharia and would you guys say that it would be productive for a society to actually do that like wouldn't there be more possibility for a harmful situation let's say like there's a lot of stranded kids that are orphans that are not in an orphanage they're just out there and if we sexualize children wouldn't that just make it much more plausible that sexual abuse would happen which we do see in Islamic places and wouldn't this let your turn to keep it for example in the inside of marriage but you believe in Muta for the audience Muta is a is a short term marriage where people can marry for say like two days or a very short period of time and then instead of prostitution they just do a very short marriage so would you like for example your kids to be married in Muta with a 52 year old yeah so Muta what was the first question I'm confused on the question too what was the first question sorry so the first question was what would be the implications in a society if we would accept Sharia and Islam and fully accepted in a society what would be the consequences on whether more children will possibly be harmed if we sexualize them and it was that and the second one if you live in marriage but you believe in Muta would you let your children be given marriage in Muta for let's say two days with a 52 year old and then just consume their marriage and then just everybody goes away would you allow that so first of all I'm not Shia and Muta is a Shia practice but you know for the sake of argument let's say that you do have Muta marriage is something acceptable not something that happens with a two year old as you said in your question marriage is with parental consent when it's when you have a minor or someone who hasn't gone through puberty so that Muta wouldn't even apply to a two year old in my example I said some children are orphans so they're guardian it doesn't matter like they're guardian or parent or guardian there's just trend in kids there's a lot of pedophilia so kids that don't have parents so that would just having sex with a child you're just adding more questions so the thing is that the kind of sex that's allowed is only within the bounds of marriage or concubinage so that's something that does not you can't mix that with Muta Muta is a different practice and it's for Shia not for Sunnis and the second question so yeah you'd have more child marriage and so there would be less of these kinds of degenerate practices that we find with children fornicating right left and center and the second question yeah so I think I answered both questions so Mike presented a whole bunch of evidence that child marriage was harmful specifically physically do you disagree with those at all I explained in my in the rebuttal I explained that there is a likelihood or a chance of harm in any kind of sexual interaction so for example mortality yeah there is slightly higher mortality for children if they're having sex at say age 10 that's happening regardless without marriage no one seems to have a problem with 10 year olds fornicating it's only a problem if you know if the person that they're fornicating with is one day over 18 as opposed to one day younger than 18 so you and Mike you have no problem or especially you as an atheist have no problem with a 17 year old fornicating with a 10 year old it's legal you're not advocating for that to be illegal the thing is that 17 year old is below the age of 12 okay change the a 13 year old with a 10 year old like it's not illegal there are within the age of consent so statutory rape is when you're over the age of consent having sex with someone under the age of high schoolers you can have a high schooler a senior fornicating with a freshman it's not illegal so people need to get you know familiar with the law the thing is that so the thing is that you have that kind of fornication that is completely allowed that's completely permissible within the law and you atheists have no objection to it if you want to talk about likelihood of medical harm there's all kinds of medical harm associated with homosexuality with sodomy there's all kinds of harm associated with this gender affirming care there's all kinds of harm associated with women over a certain age having sex you have no kind of condemnation or moral argument that because of this likelihood of harm those should all be banned those should all be considered unacceptable you have nothing to say about those kinds of sexual practices that have medical harm because you're not actually guided your morality is not guided by an objective evaluation of health and harm it's just determined by these social stigmas by a liberal status quote that has been created in the past 300 years as a reminder to the audience please keep your comments to yourself unless you're up here at the microphone if you want to ask a question come up and ask a short pity question that they can answer do not do it from the audience when it comes to the marriage of a very young girl does the girls consent matter at all or is it only her fathers so there is the parent giving consent so within certain schools of thought if she comes of puberty and then she decides that she is not she does not want to stay in the marriage then some schools of thought within Islamic law give her the option to leave that marriage it's a complicated legal scenario but yeah so I mean I don't have a position that I'm saying this is the Islamic position I'm just saying that within Islam there's a diversity amongst the classical scholars on that specific issue I'm not going to comment on Islamic law we're a little bit over time so what we're going to do is we're going to get to that intermission and then we'll come back with our final debate we want to give one final applause thanks so much Mike and Daniel it's been a true pleasure