 everybody. Tonight we're debating evidence for God and we are starting right now with CJ's opening stance or position in defense of theism. CJ, thanks for being with us. The floor is all yours. Absolutely and thank you very much for having me today. I just want to say briefly Shalom to you all and blessings to you all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you for joining me. Obviously, thank you James and Randolph both for hosting and for discussing with me today and also thank you to the audience for participating in the conversation by watching. I hope you guys are here to be pursuers of truth like we all should be rather than just here in a blood sport, which I'm trying to get better at because I've definitely done the whole blood sport debate thing before. Thesis today is does God exist or is there a God or something along those lines right as far as the thesis however you decide to word it. And of course my task today is to defend the position that God in fact does exist, that there is good evidence for God, that there's not good evidence for atheism so on and so forth. And I think that I have some pretty at least interesting arguments none of which are my own to share with you today. So I'm going to go ahead and jump right into that because obviously time is limited. And the first point I want to make is a very general one right so starting in a place that is maybe not even theistic but deistic right just to the place where there is some being of some kind that actually creates the universe and start there right. And for that I would put forward you all heard it before probably the column cosmological argument. There's a reason I put that forward it's because and I think people have frequently admitted this it's not an argument that you can really get around at best it's an argument that you can say I think might be wrong because evidence in the future perhaps there are things that you can find to be flawed with it but to actually debunk it at least with the information we have today is completely impossible. And I think that that's an important aspect to to understand as we approach this conversation the column art cosmological argument for those of you who do not know basically states that everything that has began to exist has a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe was caused. Now that in and of itself wouldn't you think get you to a theistic or deistic position per se as much as it does just to the notion that there is some kind of first cause until you start to examine what exactly would be needed in order to cause something like the universe for example if the universe is to be understood as time space and matter the flow of space time so on and so forth then the being must be space or the thing let's not assume being must be space less time less and immaterial right. Already these are things which would only indicate things like forces potentially abstract objects or minds right. The thing seemingly would have to be able to make some kind of a decision have decision making capacity of some kind why will because of some force that some you know and it's weird to say some point in time because of course time would not necessarily exist but it's some juncture right whatever you would want to call it some point the being would have to have decided or the force or whatever it is would have had to move from whatever it is that is not leading to a universal creation into the position where there is now universal creation and I tried to say that in that way so that there wasn't necessarily the assumptions of time and stuff like that which is stuff that's hard for us to even think about to begin with being temporal beings right. A lot of things that we have in the universe things such as the abstract things like the laws of nature so on and so forth and this does get into other arguments such as the teleological argument but I won't get into them too deep just say just would point out briefly that they do seem to be structured in some kind of a way designed in some kind of a way and that does imply that there is a tinkerer if you will a tinkerer would be some sort of a force that is driving toward an end goal right and that would imply some level of a mind right and you can go so on and so forth with the cosmological argument and looking at the different things that the creator of the universe or creative force of the universe whatever it happens to be what different qualifications it would have to me in order to indeed create the universe and you end up coming to something that looks very close to I think the monotheistic triomni god but of course that's just the monotheistic triomni god and that could potentially be Brahma and that could potentially be Allah and that could potentially be whatever and who cares right so we want to get a little bit more specific than that. I think you can at least make a jump from deism to theism by virtue of the moral argument and actually I think you can make the moral argument a double pronged argument I think you can on one end say just morality itself as an abstract that seemingly is grounded in the concrete but you could also go the full-on abolition of man route abolition of man is a famous essay by C.S. Lewis where he argues that all abstract things whether they be truth creativity love etc seemingly have their grounding in something concrete and he decides to turn that thing that that concrete thing the Tao in the essay simply for the purposes of not assuming his own worldview but of course knowing C.S. Lewis's worldview we would understand that the Tao in his thinking is of course Jesus Christ. This does seem to be in my opinion to be an incredibly strong argument because there are so many abstract things in the world and yet none of them appear to be actually abstract for example one exists right what do I mean by that the alphanumeric symbol that is one is obviously just something that we came up with to describe a value but that value already exists if I have one stick and over here I have two sticks there is a absolute objective and existent value of one and over here there is an absolute objective and existent value of two the value exists within reality and yet it's an abstract so the abstract seemingly is not abstract in a somewhat paradoxical fashion we obviously see this kind of stuff with morality which of course when I pointed this out I was going to originally give the moral argument right but wanted to point out that it sort of blends in with the whole abolition of man idea and morality of course is an instance that is quite interesting people often say if you can demonstrate universal morality exists you know concede the debate or convert or whatever it is and they're obviously just speaking rhetorically but the thing is it's actually quite easy to prove that universal morality exists every culture in the world ubiquitously without exception has thought murder was wrong the question is what exactly constitutes a murder for some people murder was only murdered within the tribe for some people murder was only murder of certain classes for some people murder was only murder of certain races or perhaps of a gender of some kind but all of them agreed at least killing some people is wrong likewise with fevery at least stealing from some people has been deemed wrong ubiquitously and cross culturally throughout time and at all places in other words universal morality very obviously exists people just have a tough time debating about the definitions of what exactly these things are right whether like I said it be fevery or murder or you know being disobedient to parents whatever it happens to be we'd all have the same general rules that we lay out the specifics are the things that we dispute about why is that that may that sounds as if it's something that's inherent to us in other words concrete not abstract well what can ground these sorts of abstract things you could say it could be something like moral Platonism however objects don't have anything to say about absolute values like numbers nor do they care in the slightest about what you shall not or should do nor do they care in the slightest about the creativity of things or love or anything else that exists within the abstract in other words an object just simply cannot account for the personality of the things that we see in the abstract abstracts are only understood and given by human persons therefore it stands to reason that their ultimate source must be some form of person there are other arguments that get you even closer I think to what I would consider the Christian worldview leaving deism and theism entirely and actually getting to Christianity itself for example arguments from correct bible prophecy one of the funner ones for me and more indisputable ones for me is prophecy concerning Ishmael the son of Abraham now I believe that this prophecy was given sometime around 1800 BC because that's when I believe Abraham live I believe it was written down sometime around 1400 BC because that's when I believe Moses wrote it but even if you take the hyper skeptical position that Genesis was written sometime around 400 BC the prophecy concerning Ishmael still is not going to be met for another 1000 years meaning it's impossible for you to say well this happened after the fact it absolutely did not and what is the prophecy concerning Ishmael well we see it in three different places I'll read very briefly Genesis 16 says the angel of the Lord said unto her her being Hagar Ishmael's mother behold thou art thou art with child and shall bear a son shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord hath heard the affliction he will be a wild man his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren it's important to point out that the bible when it is speaking of patriarchs of tribes which we are going to see in further passages Ishmael is it always mirrors the culture with the person in other words the people who come from the Ishmaelites will have a frequent history of fighting and they will dwell in the presence of other shemites right the Arabs who are the historical descendants of Ishmael the ones who call themselves Ishmaelites even all the way back to the Babylonian days and you can see this in works like Josephus and so on and so forth but you can go even farther back from that um are groups that have a long history of fighting and do live in the presence of all the shemites they did not leave and go elsewhere that's at least one portion but we get further Genesis 17 20 says and as for Ishmael I have heard thee behold I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly 12 princes shall he beget and I will make him a great nation so the Arabs are apparently going to be incredibly populace incredibly numerous and they're even going to be a great nation singular now not only does that mean that they're going to have mighty prosperity and stuff like that but it also means that they're going to be single at what they're going to be one group right it doesn't say great nations it says he's going to be a great nation well the Arabs did not become a nation let alone a great nation of unified peoples until after the Islamic prophet Muhammad united them and conquered the Arabian Peninsula around the year 630 AD now I do not believe that the Islamic prophet Muhammad is indeed a prophet but I am fully confident in God's ability to prophesy somebody and not buy into their religious garbage for example Alexander the great Julius Caesar Cyrus and etc but we see 600 years after the death of Christ 1000 years after even the most skeptical people will put Genesis we have the formation of one singular great nation that goes about conquering everybody else and forms eventually by the time you get to the Umayyad Caliphate one of the most powerful nations empires whatever you want to call it of all time stretching from Afghanistan all the way to Morocco even conquering Spain I would also go into Genesis 21 where we see some repetitions of that but I feel like I am probably going to be swamped on time here so I'm going to just move on very briefly you can have a few more minutes if you want that's fine with me I appreciate that um well and with that then I will I will read Genesis 21 uh and also the son of the bond woman we're starting verse 13 also the son of the bond woman will I make a nation that is once again Ishmael right because he is thy seed he's speaking to Abraham so we see of this woman he's going to make a nation he then says it again to Hagar and verse 18 arise lift up the lad and hold him in thy hand for I will make him a great nation now if I were to say to Randolph right now Randolph the direct descendants of you will absolutely they will they will be warriors they will live amongst your own kin they will form a mighty nation they will be multiplied exceedingly very populace and they will be singular one group and then anywhere from 1000 to 2400 years past and that thing occurred I think you guys would think that was pretty impressive well that did happen in the bible bare minimum this was written 400 bc potentially this was given all the way back in 1800 bc and Ishmael's descendants did exactly as Genesis said Ishmael's descendants would do and then I would want to sort of end this with a argument from number one the ubiquity of experience and number two human experience in general which I think do need to go in with each other and there's plenty of other points to get to like the teleological argument resurrection things like that the thing is is such a broad topic that I kind of have to narrow down to things that I'm um you know wanting to put forward I guess yeah but what I mean by ubiquity is that even today in modern america modern sweden modern iceland all these secular countries we still have yet to see a single culture in the history of the world that has not had at least some and usually even the majority 30 seconds acknowledging the existence of the spiritual even feeling the existence of the spiritual um it's funny we have recently had the ufo sightings quote unquote that have come out in the you know the navy and the pentagon saying oh we saw these unidentified flying objects and everybody's super stunned about the fact that we have these we have more footage of potential spiritual encounters and I'm not even saying they're all legit um on one single website on the internet than we do of all ufo sasquatch sightings Loch Ness monster sightings and everything else combined in the entire world every culture without exception has acknowledged in some way spirituality spirits angels the dow things of that nature and I do not know of a single thing that is ubiquitous amongst cultures that does not exist and with that I would concede thank you very much zj and glad to have you back randard Randolph we want to let you know we will give you the same amount of time for your opening statement as well which is about 13 and a half and that's flexible and want to let you know folks we are thrilled to have both our guests cj and randolph are both linked in the description we highly encourage you to check out their links and randolph is president of canadian atheist and that's atheist with a lowercase a as they are working to promote the normalization of atheism and again both of our guests are linked to the description thank you randolph for being here the floor is all yours thank you james thank you cj so for this debate topic is there a god I think most of the audience probably knows by now as they've seen me before that I don't take a position that any deities exist so I'm definitely not in the yes camp on this one which is why we're here today with cj if I was to take a distinct anti-position then probabilities would be the best that I would have to work with I guess because I think when it comes to the anti-position that would be a much more difficult thing to prove which is why I don't take that either there's because I would have to part of my burden of proof would be to show that in the entire cosmos not just the universe but the entire cosmos there's absolutely no deity existing anywhere and I don't have the tools to do that and I don't believe anybody does so as far as we've explored our universe we don't know how large it really is we're still working on that so so cj of course has I think an easier position because all he has to do is to cause his deity to materialize somehow or to satisfy whatever the requirements are now cj is presenting the christian deity god with the with an all all-encompassing knowledge of the universe or omniscience and having no unlimited power being omnipotent and his omnipresent is absolutely everywhere but he doesn't have to show all of these things from my own criteria if I'm to be satisfied that deity exists and this has been brought up in previous debates and conversations I've had with christians and muslims and people from other religions what I did put forward that would definitely work for me now this is not my only criteria but this one would definitely definitely close the deal for me and would turn me into a believer pretty well instantly is if this all-powerful and all-knowing deity was to grant me the power of omniscience and omnipotence for a period of a fortnight for two weeks so that I could then experiment with it and there's a few things I have an ulterior motive I must admit I want to explore the cosmos and find out how big it is and see what else is out there but that would do it for me that would certainly satisfy my requirement I'm not asking for the other omni characteristics just those two and only for a short time so that that would that would be what would be required CJ did mention the cosmological argument the Calam cosmological argument the kca I reject the first premise the first premise being that everything that has began to exist has a cause the reason is because we don't actually know everything about how the universe works yet we have a pretty good idea from scientific understanding about what we are aware of because we've been able to verify quite a lot I think but we're still learning as a species there's still a long way to go I suspect and I think many people are on board with me on this one so to make the statement that everything has that has begun to exist has a cause is making an assumption and if you think of the black and white fallacy or sorry not the black does the black swan fallacy there was a time when people only saw white swans and they assumed that all swans must be white and then one day somebody discovered a black swan and lo and behold okay now we know not all swans they're white and the same thing here from what we can see it looks like maybe things did have a beginning at some point but we don't actually know that that's the case for absolutely everything in the universe including the universe itself there was some talk about what would be qualifications for creating universe which I think would be a very fascinating subject I'm reminded of Carl Sagan one time stating that if you want to make a pie from an apple pie from scratch you must first create the universe and he is looking at the bare bones basics more fundamentally than anybody else ever has before then I think now we're talking universes here creating a universe so what would be required one of the things that CJ did point out was that it would make that it would be I guess the universe creating universe the qualifications for creating universe would lead to a monotheistic god a single male deity and he even jumped into deism a little bit I do have a question about that but it's not really important so I'll leave it for later but the I'm curious why people such as yourself CJ will try to put it into being a single deity creating absolutely everything and how you might go about ruling out multiple deities working together to create the universe as a project between them all together they could certainly don't see why they couldn't share omniscience and omnipotence in so doing and I'll be on the same page for doing this and then take on different duties to make sure that their their areas of specialization come up with a better result so I would like to to see some some reasoning behind this at some point you also mentioned universal morality I guess I suppose you're meaning objective morality in that sense you you did you did give some examples of I guess let me see sorry I made some notes here I'm just looking at you mentioned at least killing some people is wrong or at least stealing from some people is wrong and yes we do agree on those things and I think it's very easy to find plenty of people who will agree on those points if it's going to be universal or objective morality though I think that the criteria needs to be more specific than that because to say at least some is intrinsically localized or intrinsically subjective and so for something to be universal or objective especially universal then it should be all-encompassing so it will need to apply to all sentient beings everywhere throughout the cosmos in our universe especially for at least our universe to be universal so that's kind of my objection there one other point that you talked about which was interesting was you got into some biblical prophecy about and you mentioned these limit groups taking over a big portion of the Middle East as being some sort of fulfillment prophecy I'm curious if the Bible prophesied specifically that a different religious group would be taking over or if they predicted it would be Christianity or they were just being unclear about it thank you very much I know I've thrown a few questions in here at you but hopefully that will do okay for my opening statement thank you thank you very much Randolph and we are going to go into the open discussion portion for tonight's debate folks we are very excited this is going to be a lot of fun want to let you know before we do jump into it you will see at the bottom right of your screen modern-day debate is a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from Christian atheist democrat republican black white gay straight you name it folks really everybody we're glad you're here and so with that we're going to jump into the open conversation and also want to mention our guests are linked not only in the youtube description box for this you could say episode but also for our podcast episode so if you're listening to this via podcast as we upload all of our debates onto podcast roughly a week after and we're trying to tighten that gap but our guests are linked in the description for each podcast episode as well so with that thank you very much gentlemen and the floor is all yours so couple things that i would want to i think um point to so the first thing i would want to say is in regards to the morality um okay now i would think it is first off interesting to note um i you probably could say that every human individually thinks killing at least some person on the planet is wrong i don't know if i would go that far but i have a feeling that even jeffrey dommer thinks killing jeffrey dommer is wrong right um right however i i think we i don't think we need to necessarily get that specific to prove the ubiquity because of the fact that culturally uh we all seem to come to the same conclusions and to give an example of that right if an individual because that person happens to be mad comes to the conclusion that all technological devices are in fact bananas right um well chances are there are going to be a significant amount of people around him who don't come to the same conclusion and if we go to japan there's going to be a significant amount of people there who don't you know and so on and so forth um because it is an objective fact that indeed telephones are not bananas or cell phones i think i said originally uh like they're technology whatever i said it doesn't matter they're not bananas right we'll call it cell phones that's fine right um in other words there you know we do absolutely allow for the exception right the the potential dommer or something like that but when you get ubiquity cross culturally like if all nations understand that phones are not bananas on a on a cultural scale that would indicate to me that there's very strong evidence if i was unaware of what either of these things were the phones indeed are not bananas right um now that's a little a little bit of a redacted you out absurd in a way but i i think it makes the point in that um you know when we look at things like universal morality um the things we disagree on are almost always the details right it's not the actual law um it may be i think because i live in a very aristocratic society that perhaps killing a surf is okay but killing an aristocrat isn't but there's still something within me that says killing at least some people is not morally correct right um and i think that that well let me not say what i think because i don't want to go too long what what do you say about that yeah so i i think uh first of all um i'm going to guess that you've never owned a banana phone before right so but seriously um that's probably a better question for somebody like ray comfort anyway uh he seems to like bananas um the uh i i've digressed um when you're talking about um even if all cultures across the world set up laws forbidding murder and things like that um that's still a subjective uh standpoint from my perspective because um it is still culturally based and the fact that laws need to be set up to to to uh to make it clear that this is illegal and there is going to be a consequence to committing this act of murder um then therefore uh that pretty much makes the case for saying yeah this is not objective the law is setting uh setting a standard and if people all agree with it then um then objective uh or say non-subjective determinations can be can be made from it i still don't think it's entirely uh universal though because there are still some outliers there there could be we see suicide bombers who will go and kill a number of people indiscriminately very often and they know that they're going to die in the process um so they're actually okay with being killed over this uh and i think that's a pretty powerful example or should i say explosive example uh for um if in favor of it being still being subjective well i think even you know even with the suicide bomber i do think very often whether it's for nationalistic purposes or religious purposes um there is still something they are seeking to and usually even someone that they are seeking to defend right um and i and i do think you know it is interesting we bring up a serial killer or or a terrorist or some kind right and yet we can still find someone there's someone on the planet that they think is not okay to kill right but even still i still think that's still um i just said the word still like four times i apologize it's okay um it's uh the word is moving so it's moving on now um that still is uh making the case for it being subjective because it truly was objective and universal uh then it would be um innately known by everyone and there wouldn't be anybody disagreeing with it that that's my view on this so how would you account for the madman um and i know i use the the the phone banana example but there's much more having fun with the banana comment don't worry oh no you're fine my my only point was just to say that you know we do we have very real life examples of that right um people who believe that they are seeing things that aren't there or that they are a certain level of powerful that they are not or you know whatever it happens to be certain um psychological traumas can cause you to believe very strange things um but a lot of the things that these people believe are objectively wrong right like in other words we would agree that when a schizophrenic person has a conversation with somebody else or even sees the shadow of something a lightly scared person right it's objectively not there even if the person does think that it's there um right so exceptions play a role for sure right so if we can have something that's objective that isn't understood universally in this case it may be because of trauma or a mental defect or something along those lines but doesn't that doesn't in other words doesn't the madman prove that that doesn't actually account for um morality right like just because the person exists doesn't mean that there isn't a violation of this rule in fact no because if it is universal and objective then uh even the madman would still agree with it because they're still a human being they're still a sentient life form and that that's my view on this and i'm curious how this uh morality uh consideration uh leads to uh proof that there is a god uh well i would argue when it comes to morals i would argue the morals are by their very nature personal um because morality is essentially i agree with that yeah i appreciate that um because it seems to me morality is essentially a combination of various has and uh various shouts and shall nots um and objects for example which is one thing that people typically bring up for objective morality uh objects don't have any care whatsoever when it comes to what you shall or shall not do and neither do impersonal forces and neither do uh you know and so the so on and so forth right so the very fact that murdering is wrong seems to me to be indication of a personal giver uh in other words if something is only understood and given by person given and understood should reverse those by persons it seems logical to me to assume that the ultimate giver and understander of those things is also a person um and if that person needs to be greater than humanity uh then obviously that leads to some level of divine person right because by greater than humanity i would say the aliens just to clarify right wouldn't wouldn't count it would have to be greater than humanity in a sense of like uh transcendence right like they are able to actually give us laws that are transcending us and therefore we must all agree to them kind of thing okay that would seemingly indicate to me a a mind excuse me and so are you is it your position that um morality must be given by somebody greater such as a deity yes i would say there there must be a um some level of greater mind or personhood that gives it and greater mind or personhood would be basically a fancy way of saying a deity right i think that you're taking a a dim view on humanity because i i think much more highly of people than that i i think people are quite capable of coming up with these determinations on our own um myself i'm i've never held a belief in any deities i've never uh described to any of that um any religions or anything i just always been like this and i've i look at what other philosophers have written people like john ralls in particular uh with his theory of justice uh he uh he introduces the concept of the veil of ignorance uh which is um a systemic form of empathy you could say uh where it's main mainly for lawmakers to consider if their laws are put into place the laws that they're writing um and then they were to be randomly thrown into society with any gender any sex any role any race any health conditions any economic position and so on criminal record or not uh things like that any different possible variable so they could determine it's a thought exercise to help them to determine if their laws are going to be uh fair and equal for everyone or if they're going to be putting somebody at a disadvantage arbitrarily so with with with the hope of avoiding it now of course this this depends on the practitioner the lawmaker actually applying this exercise adequately and so we it's still not a perfect process but it's it's part of the progress that i see and i i see this as being a lot better because it is um it is focusing on what um individual people in society need rather than what somebody uh from a book from 2000 years ago is dictating what the rules should be without any understanding of what's going on in modern day society so i think a morality is something that changes culturally as well and i i think it really depends on the individuals i i don't see evidence that it's coming from god i've certainly never received any from anything from any deity as far as i know um so i i put myself out here as a counter example to to your position here so let me say i i certainly do understand the position but i think it slightly misunderstands mine and let me explain i apologize oh you're totally fine you're totally fine um when when i say that morality must be given and grounded in some way in a personal mind i do not think that that means that persons who are outside of the path if you will of this personal mind cannot themselves form a uh a level of coherent morality uh to give you sort of two examples that illustrate the point very briefly um you obviously have a canadian flag in the background so you're a citizen of canada right oh yeah now the laws of canada exist whether or not you decide to follow them but if you decide not to follow them that doesn't mean that you're incapable of coming up with a system of laws that exist within canada right um to use an example point out the laws have changed over time yeah well that that's true and we'll of course um definitely want to address that because i think legalism or legality rather uh and morality together is a certainly interesting topic when it comes oh yeah they don't always align yeah no kidding right um but um to give an example that i think doesn't assume my own worldview um and i've given this example to some atheists in the past now first let me just ask very briefly um not that it'll change the example but i'm just curious because it will change how i argue after uh are you a moral realist or subjective i consider morality to be subjective um i don't consider to be objective does that answer your question yes sir okay yes sir um so assuming for a moment that it was just for the sake of an example okay um let's say that i did not base the philosophy that i have here in um god but rather in human flourishing of some kind right okay now you could agree that since i am a human person uh since i am somebody who seeks my own flourishing by nature it's almost inherent within me as it is with all living creatures right um that i could still not only have a system of morality but also seek human flourishing even if my foundation was not human flourishing however that's only because human flourishing pre-exists as an objective fact right in other words i totally grant that you could have uh morality and creativity and all the different things that i would say are grounded in a god but they're because god exist and created us together as in humanity not because of my adherence to the deity per se right and i would i would point out in c.s lewis's abolition of man i'm not sure if you're familiar um he talks about he's for sure well so he replaces the term god with dao just to be less philosophically loaded right as in the dao de ching um because it is interesting there is sort of a um you know other cultures do have the same kind of idea even when they don't have it as a theistic idea which i think is interesting in the form of the dao the logos dharma things of that nature this sort of idea of like a transcendent force of reason of some kind uh that bounds all of our morality that bounds all of our um you know creation and stuff like that um not creation but creativity uh and as lewis points out in the abolition of man you can build something upon you build a foundation upon a foundation that is not the dao actually and it'll still exist there daoism does have multiple deities no i understand that the point that he was making is just the concept of the dao itself as a sort of trans exist not trans existent transcendent self-existent force that you needed to like get yourself more in line with uh in order to be uh you know more i don't know what the word even would be but because righteousness per se isn't so much of a concept in daoism um but more in line with your purpose in life i guess is the way you would put it in other words to be in line with the dao in daoism is to be fulfilling your purpose in life and the purpose in your creation in life right um at least according to my understanding of the dao to be changed now the point of that though is just to say that you can build a foundation on something that is not this transcendent force in uh his abolition of man right but it's going to be flawed somewhere number one and number two without the pre-existence of the idea of foundations and so on um you wouldn't even have the idea to begin with you know what i mean and so and i think i'm doing a poor job articulating it to be honest with you but it sounds like you're you're assuming that uh our ideas like this must be learned from somebody else am i correct i'm not quite so it's more like i am doing a poor job articulating it so i apologize it's more like the idea that um you can build on the wrong foundation right but that doesn't mean the right foundation doesn't exist nor does it mean that you aren't borrowing from the right foundation in building on the wrong foundation does that make sense yep i agree with that it's uh how reality works right so and that's yeah and i'm glad we agree there so that would be sort of my uh way of explaining why you could be a perfectly moral person um at least from human standards of course uh because philosophical morality i think it's a different question but um and not be a theist right or a christian to be more specific um and i would say the bible is even quite clear in the explicitly stating that when it says things like um you know uh roman's one that the men have an inherent understanding of creator or all men are made in the image of god which is even more specific um and the idea just being that the bible is certainly saying that it believes you Randolph Richardson are made in god's image even if you don't acknowledge it right now i would grant that you don't believe that but the point is it does account for you having morality and all these different things while not being a christian so if i am in god's image in that respect uh that basically means i'm following uh my morality is based on uh god's morality is what you're saying i would say yes i would say you and all humans indeed and i'll give you an example of why that is actually incorrect um for my case because uh there is a there are examples throughout the bible of of god um ordering or causing immoral acts to occur or allowing them to occur and not intervening um or even for example uh with the with abraham being ordered to kill his own son isaac i have a big problem with that as a parent myself i would not follow such an order and um like abraham just went along with it instead and was going to carry it out right to the end it wasn't god who intervened but it was angels and then what's left out of that story which is also additionally disturbing um to me it fails to teach any lesson that's really really meaningful in morality there because it doesn't get into the psychological ramifications on isaac's life after his father tied him down and tried to kill him you know that would be a horrific experience for any child i think um who is depending on their father to look after them and then their father suddenly tries to do this like to me this is pretty powerful evidence that um that's on the contrary of what you're saying um i am clearly not in god's image if i'm not following his moral path well i think there is a difference between the path and the commands itself and let me actually give what i think is a perfect example of that from the bible itself so i'm not flooding planets right so nor do i have any desire to do so and i think that actually the the fact that you said that i think will help illustrate the sodomy and gemora example because if you read the story of sodomy and gemora abraham who is god's faithful servant and indeed is considered the father of faith right um he actually is fighting kind of tooth and nail really um for sodomy and gemora in other words he's advocating on the part of the center right saying like don't destroy them what if you were to find 50 righteous would you spare the city then and so on and so forth until he whittles it down to five or ten excuse me just to um kind of bring it back to the main category of theism more generally just because that's what i promise people if you're able to tie it together that'll be good enough but otherwise i want to redirect i was just about to ask how this all ties into proving there's a god because he got into morality yeah and so um the the point there i guess just being that it does appear that biblically speaking god does expect that you are going to feel certain ways about even his own actions and even expects that of his own servants which would be in our particular example myself but in that example abraham um the indication there being that i think that there is you know there's no contradiction that they're at least biblically speaking because of that explanation god has made us in such a way that we are to feel that way about our fellow man the question then becomes though okay now why do you feel that way about your fellow man right what is it about human life or even life in general that seemingly has this idea of sacredness and that goes into the whole idea of morality where we all tend to have different definitions about the same things but they're all the same things that we all tend to reverence and that we all tend to not reverence and hate and those things to me indicate because laws are only understood by virtue of persons and are only given by virtue of persons some level of a transcendent mind or person um and you did you know you do have to take a couple steps back to get to that point i'll admit the moral argument is not just morality exists therefore god you do have to certainly explain where you're going there um but that's sort of the general point yeah i i just don't see how the morality motivations factor into to proving that a god exists because from what i can see people are developing different moral standards throughout the world without referencing a deity there are many who do reference their gods or goddesses for whichever religions they're in and there are many who don't and and laws have been formed in many different ways and i take a look at a country like Saudi Arabia that has laws that um they will categorize you as a terrorist if they discover you don't believe in Allah if you're not a Muslim and they will torture you to death that's how people get sentenced there for that and that that's a law that the the Dawkins foundation recently reported on a few years ago when it was first introduced to Saudi Arabia society um and then there's others that are operating this way too and i take a look at the the state of Georgia which recently made it to penalty i guess 99 years in prison for anybody involved in causing an abortion or anybody who is having an abortion and there was a person one lady i think was it was reported in the news after that law was put in effect that somebody shot her and then she was sentenced to 99 years in prison for uh for an abortion basically because her baby died she was shot in the stomach and uh it was somebody else who did the shooting but that person there didn't seem to be any reporting on that going on like what happened to them so uh there's this is uh in Georgia these are people who are relying on Christianity and the christian god as their guidance for morality there and we see in society throughout the us and canada and other places too that there are different people with different views on abortion so i am as far as universal or objective standard coming from an all-encompassing deity i'm not seeing evidence of that so i have good reason to not believe it in in that respect alone i do have a cj just to i think there is a little bit of confusion someone in the chat has asked are you making in terms of your moral argument this might clarify are you making a moral argument for the existence of god based on objective moral values or based on like common human motivation like you could say universal human motivation for why you do things because those are conceptually distinct and i think the at least one person in the audience is confused about that and i'm frankly not clear either absolutely so to clarify i'm making an argument for objective morality as a case for god and i'm evidencing the objective morality in the fact that humans come to the same conclusions about certain acts but they don't come to the same conclusions about the details of those acts so in other words murder is ubiquitously wrong but what constitutes a murder is not ubiquitously understood but the fact that it's ubiquitously wrong proves a level of objective morality and objective morality in my opinion proves a transcendent being yeah and i disagree partly with this point because there there is a consensus on what qualifies as murder not just in the details but in major ways abortion here in canada is is not illegal it is it's it's regarded as a standard medical procedure but there are many people in the us who view it as murder so there there's different attitudes about that and for another example to get away from abortion i take a look at how states like texas in the us have the death penalty i see that as systemic murder because they're as far as people on death row who don't want to die who are proclaiming their innocence and end up meeting that deadline and being put to death anyway to me that's systemic murder and we don't have death we don't have capital punishment here in canada so we have life in prison but we don't have capital punishment so at least people here are if they're wrongfully convicted they don't end up facing a death it's still not a great situation but there's some issues with the way morality and what is qualifying as murder is perceived i'm sure that many people who favor capital punishment do not see it as a murder right but that that kind of falls right into my point though right texas has laws that say murder is wrong and yet there is a death penalty in other words what's what is actually discussed here is what constitutes a murder but they all agree that killing at least some people is wrong right and that's why i say like the ubiquity of the thing itself is indeed ubiquitous it's a matter of when i call it the details it's what specifically constitutes that thing right um that we tend to dispute about and that's pretty common for you know things that we are not quite aware of the source of like for example there was nobody who was arguing that we don't stick to the ground but we didn't know what gravity was at that one point in time you know what i mean in other words these are just these are scientific facts these are not moral statements now well i would argue that um that morality is a fact and that we just simply haven't proven it yet per se um but it's the same general concept that i'm saying right like the we all knew that we stuck to the ground in some way but there might have been different arguments as to whether or not uh or as to why that actually happened because things were unknown right and i think in the same way you can see that with uh murder but to even get to a book because i wanted to jump really quickly you have defeated your own argument by using the phrasing at least some killing is is wrong because that that's automatically sets the scope to being local or subjective see but not if they all again that's why i say you you have to account for because basically what you're what you say when you say that is that the madman um the madman disproves objective objective excuse me objectivity in general because because the madman being a human being still has a different opinion on what qualifies as murder and what doesn't and that's why we're having problems with this calling this an objective standard right but not even like that though right because the madman might have a different idea as to what constitutes a telephone like we were saying earlier but that doesn't change the objective idea of what a telephone is right in other words the exception on an individual level doesn't really have the same weight as the objection on a cultural level right if an entire culture came to the conclusion that cell phones were bananas that might be something that'd be pretty strange but one person doing it isn't really all that crazy we know mad men exist yeah the banana thing is a technical and phones is is technical definitions it's uh i don't see how that relates to morality morality is is how people are treating or mistreating each other and that that's a you're dealing with life versus life when you're dealing with morality well so let me let me jump to a different abstract real quick to see if we can get any farther with a different abstract so same argument but sort of a different yeah um so numbers do seem well let me just ask do you think numbers exist they're concept they're they're concepts for quantifying things and they're useful they're they're a sophisticated form of labels so uh if you want to say a quantity of something a specific quantity of something exists then yeah i agree with that i can tell you uh zero is is definitely uh abstract um number one or number two or number three would uh be representative a way of labeling a quantity of something that we're holding in our hands so so in other words we would agree that the value that is one exists even if the symbol that is one or what the concept of one is might be a human thing in other words if there's no humans around one tree still holds the value of one tree and the concept is a fact um the of reality the uh the way the symbols that are used are just a label a means of communicating it exactly right so if indeed numbers do exist um i think there uh is an immediate question which of course philosophers and mathematics that have asked for thousands of years at this point which is how exactly like show me one and paint it red you can't do it right um it's in other words it's an abstract and yet we know that that abstract is in fact not abstract the value like i said if there's no humans on the planet and there's one tree on the planet that tree holds the value of one tree regardless of if anybody perceives it um so how do we account for that abstract existing would be my first question if if um and well not if anything just how do we account for the abstract it's an intellectual exercise how does this lead to proving there's a god well that's actually uh precisely where we're trying to get at right so when we have some level of an abstract people have tended to explain these things with some level of uh the metaphysical understanding right um so when we're looking at these abstracts um one of the things that we consistently notice with these abstracts is much like morality reason creativity even numbers uh they're only understood by given by persons and personal minds um even to uh animals seemingly like if there's the the border colleagues that learn math but they learn math from humans right as far as the actual structure that is numbers and stuff like that right okay um so persons seemingly are what communicates this so if there has to be something outside of humans that concrete that makes concrete those abstract numbers but also that thing has to be personal because only persons understand things like numbers what does that indicate it indicates human capability are you are you saying that the the dogs that can learn math that have to learn from humans that it's a similar it's a metaphor for humans having to learn this stuff from a god oh well i do think there is certainly a metaphor to go there um but the point that i'm actually uh making more specifically is just to say uh if numbers exist outside of humans okay but are only understood and conceptualized by persons and that implies a extra human person right in other words a person who is outside of the human so that's just how we uh understand the universe it's it's an intellectual tool for us the way i see it but you so you i don't know if you if you notice though you just said so implying well yeah that's true well so then you what's your implication then by that is okay yeah so a transcendent mind seemingly exists so what well a transcendent mind would be because that's what an extra human person would be right a person outside of humanity greater than humanity would be a transcendent mind so if math indicates a transcendent mind i'm i don't don't believe that such a being exists so you know i'm i'm still looking forward to uh something that's going to be able to prove this uh outside of the criteria that i laid out in my opening statement well i don't mean to be you know too abrasive but i i think you're actually in the process of proving it right now because you just admitted right no i didn't it's just the way i speak i must have misspoke well i understand that and if you if you want to you know you can maybe rephrase the answer that's perfectly fine however right get rid of the word just granted numbers do exist concretely and outside of persons meaning the values the value of one tree is one tree regardless of any person is there right well i said these are facts yeah if there's three uh if there's three trees in my yard then the fact is there are three trees in my yard whether i communicate that with anybody or not whether anybody is there to notice that or not the fact is that they are there so so we agree that they exist which means that they're apart from humans right it's a labeling as i said early on it's it's one way that we can label things it's a sophisticated way of labeling because it has a function to it of uh helping us to understand the quantity right but that's still saying essentially the same thing right because if again no humans exist but one tree exists the value of one tree still exists it is one tree objective of any mind to understand that it's one tree right yeah that's what i just said right exactly so it's greater than outside of humans but that has no reference to a deity hang on because that's where the now we get a second part right if it's outside of persons but abstract are only understood by persons then that implies the existence of an extra human person right i'm not saying it's only understood by humans we don't know that to be the case uh but it is an example of non-personal agents understanding things like the abstract it is well i'm not going to accept the shift of burden of proof here because i'm i'm not making that claim but you know it's i did acknowledge that this is a capability of the human mind to be able to count things and and what not um there is uh some suspicion that crows can count things as well it's a different species and so you know it may be possible that crows can do that i'm not sure i'm not an expert in that area well and i guess i don't know anything necessarily about crows to be honest with you it's not my particular um but we can keep going on this as long as we before long so no worries if we keep going on this particular argument but i know that uh people want to hear at least one person i've seen wants to hear a response to the column if there's any more points to hash out regarding the column cosmological yeah i'm i'm thinking that this isn't really getting us to uh to proof of a god it's just it's talking about human capabilities so well and i guess i'll just sort i will wrap up then just because obviously i don't want us to get stuck going you know in a back and forth but yeah i think my only point there would just be to say that um it you know if things which are only understood by persons exist outside of persons to me it implies a person outside of humanity meaning a meaning a transcendent mind of some kind and if that is indeed not something that is um uh you know accepted i guess perhaps i didn't do a particularly good job of describing it whatever it happens to be perhaps i didn't know you know who knows comments will say who okay well let's give the let's give the club right comments are always great well you know the the dark side of the moon um we guess that it's there and uh just because we can't see it but we can still kind of make up these ideas on our own and then perceive it and then eventually china sends uh space equipment out there to take pictures of the dark side of the but um we we've eventually got to that point but before then all we could do is guess that the moon is spherical turns out that it is but um no surprise there based on other things we've been able to draw conclusions from yeah let's go to the column absolutely so um well i mean i put forward the column so perhaps i should actually ask you if you have responses to it first so yeah the the thing with um the three like the three points you made with column cosmological argument i'll just call it kca from malon i think to save time um you stated the first premise was that everything that has began to exist has a cause that's a claim i reject that um i or i say i don't accept that claim i don't accept that premise and because i don't accept it um that's that's it for the column cosmological argument for me um the reason i don't accept it is because we um are still as a species learning more about the universe we don't know everything about it uh there's also consideration in quantum physics apparently that there are things that um that materialize on their own um that just seem to materialize out of nothing that's what it looks like to people you know the problem with the column with the kca is that it also uh it seems to be making an assumption that um the universe hasn't always been here but the cosmos hasn't always been and uh that's a pretty big claim to make it is um one that i'm not convinced by well and i think there are a couple things that need to be noted you mentioned earlier that um you didn't want to shift the burden of proof and don't get me wrong i accepted the burden of proof so i understand that well you made the claim so that that burden comes with you yeah that that's normal yeah um but i do think it's important to note though that when you know when we make this reverse claim like okay can you give me an example of x y and z because when you say oh well i don't accept x because of the potentiality of y and z well if you don't have necessarily good evidence to say that y and z exist there's no reason to reject x and to give a perfect example with the black swan analogy right well so what you're saying is that i need to accept it if i can't come up with an alternative not not necessarily it's one of those things where it's like if these so if the evidence first off the evidence is good right that's a thing entirely of itself but it seems to me like your rejection of it isn't simply that the evidence isn't good but that there's a possibility that it may not be the case and there's a possibility that i could float off of the planet tomorrow but i'm 100 percent sure that it won't happen the problem is that the calam suffers from the same thing that the antiposition to god existing suffers from um that i clarified the beginning that i i can't take for that reason i'm not i don't have the tools to explore every corner of the cosmos and let alone our own universe and uh to prove that every single thing out there had a beginning and how do we determine that everything began you know um it's uh it it's a problem um and of course the other points in the calam don't in the kca don't tell us don't seem to lead to the existence of the deity they just make a claim about the universe see but i just i don't see how that can be a solid form of argumentation if i just you know just to be blunt well um and the reason i think black swan fallacy is what i cited to explain why there's there could be a potential problem there you're right it is potential i don't know for certain uh of the other but i cannot also rule out the the opposite see but i i think that so let's take the black swan and why does the why does the kta get a special treatment here to be able to rule out the opposite well it doesn't so and let me let's why i say let me get the the swan right because the swan i think is a good let's say all known swans have been white let's say that work was the case right if that is the case there is no reason to assume that a swan would be black if you happen to see a black swan sure right but there is no reason to conclude outside of that if you have nothing but white swans and you're able to um you know deduce that okay hey i just went and asked over there in japan and they had nothing but white swans and i went over down you know and so on and so forth traveled the world let's say okay right uh in fact that's how we deduce all facts right uh we know for example the um terminal velocity because every single time we drop two things on the planet earth they eventually hit terminal velocity unless there's certain uh you know things that uh like for example feathers will float down at a slower rate but i think i don't know faster on the moon apparently okay interesting i didn't know that actually but but the idea right just sort of being that um even using the the black swan fallacy as an example there's still no reason to conclude a black swan exists if you have nothing but white swans and you're able to go over to other people and they can also say hey no we also have nothing but white swans right in other words you're arguing simply because uh because and the reason i say this is important is because literally almost anything is potentially possible right it's potentially possible that my nose could turn into a tomato and fall off but i'm certain that it will not occur because it never has occurred right likelihood of that is extremely low right it's probably pretty close on bordering too impossible right exactly um the the point of the black swan fallacy is pointing that out and i normally don't like to bring fallacies into these things but it was for brevity i mentioned it mainly um to get the point clearly across so it's just it is about saying that we should not be close to other possibilities what the kalam is effectively doing is telling us that we should be close to other possibilities and it is it is reasonable to to deduce that certain things are a fact like uh back in the time when only white swans were knowing about that swans are normally white yeah and until a black swan was discovered but um the same with the the kalam if we've not explored the entire universe it's still reasonable to to be open to other possibilities there's still things we're learning there's there's stuff that we're still learning about all this and i don't think we're at a point where we can definitively say for certain that um that the the first premise in the kalam is something that we should accept as a fact i'm not willing to well and to be honest with you though even if we doctored it to account for your objection so for example we could say all known things have a cause to exist or maybe all things are all known things that began have a cause to exist or in other words all things that are known to have began have a cause to their existence right maybe we could word it that way um sure and that would be i think you know even still if we word it that way we still get to the same conclusions all things that uh all things known to exist um have a cause right the universe appears to have began to exist therefore the universe appears to have been caused right why do you think that the universe began to exist uh well i think there's a couple instances my uh i think the best argument personally is um what i have heard termed the mathematics argument i don't know if this is particular uh i don't know how popular this is but basically the idea is um one is the first number two three four five six seven and so on all come from one therefore there must be a original one and then originally that's Aristotle's idea right the unmoved movement um the idea that there has to be the uncaused first cause but i think uh the reason that i think that whoever it is that eventually turned this into mathematics uh did that was because mathematics is a real world example that proves the point i think that there is a starting point where all things seem to begin even mathematics start with one or you could say zero if you prefer though i would argue this is how we see how people typically see the world and this is quite common because we're used to things being manufactured plants growing from seeds and things like that and all this stuff that goes on in our world so it is quite common for us to make this assumption just like the people originally did when they only saw white swans to assume that there were only white swans in the world and uh it is not an unreasonable uh conclusion to draw but uh it does carry with it that caveat that there could be more out there and so uh the universe let's say with the kca that uh we decide to follow it through and say that the universe was caused how does that bring us to a god existing uh well i will admit i think kalam only gets you to some level of deism i think you have to go farther to get for example the abrahamic christian god um the reason i would say some level of deism rather than maybe like pantheism or something like that um is because number one i think uh spacetime and matter are all um you know if they are the things which are to be created right um then obviously whatever is creating or causing let's go with causing that way i'm not assuming anything um whatever is causing must be timeless spaceless and immaterial why um because spacetime and material don't yet exist so um if if there's no time then how can that how can anything be created because the time is the passage of time is denotes change and to create something is is change excuse me um be a sticking point here it well and i i wouldn't pretend that it's not there certainly is a aspect of time and in fact i'll even i'll even give you one right uh christians have the same problem in the afterlife too like how do you understand eternal life yet also being there and not being there before it seemingly is a difficult thing to understand um but what i would simply say is that i don't think there's any way to get out of that in other words assume that the you know let's say we prove that the universe does exist or not does exist excuse me does begin to exist um and at that point whatever the arguments that are brought up by atheist philosophers and cosmologists and so on are brought up right okay um we when we were um at that point oh shoot i hang on i kind of lost my train of thought man what was i saying i'm up kca and uh talking about how the universe began to exist we're hypothetically accepted i'm hypothetically accepting the kca so you can make your argument about how that leads to god existing right so um if we were to prove that the universe began to exist or at least get to within a mathematical certainty right it's where it's like it's theoretically possible but it's a mathematical certainty that it did begin to exist right um we would still have to account for the question of you being an atheist me being a christian we'd still have to account for the question of how then did this begin when time itself does not exist if time space and matter is what is beginning to exist right um then how did this begin in any real way and to be honest with you i think created without the passage of time initially yeah exactly and to be honest with you i think the fact that that would be a problem for both of us if the universe was indeed proven to begin to exist yep um to a certain extent believes me of the burden you know what i mean because i don't i don't have an answer i'll fully grant that but i don't think that anybody does because that's something that's so outside of our temporal understanding that i don't i don't even know if you could i can give you something that might actually be helpful to you um it's uh i don't consider time to be something that's ever stopped it is uh just uh a characteristic of the universe i don't see it as a traversable dimension like x y and z in our 3d space that we live in um i think it's just something that we're able to as pattern match pattern seeking um mammals that we are uh able to see patterns in cesium atoms and in clockwork and whatnot that we can use to predict um that tomorrow at about this time the sun's going to be in about the same position we're going to get roughly the same metal light unless there's a change in the clouds or something and we're able to use this for scheduling and all sorts of events things like this um compared to just the very rudimentary basic of what time is and so i i the flow of time and science fiction exploring time travel and all the paradoxes that are inherent with that um are fascinating and interesting but i think they have a tendency to mislead us to think of time as uh as a fourth dimension and and i don't see that way i see it as something it's expressed as a fourth dimension as a matter of convenience but um it's just uh it it's really a non-issue um before um the big bangs i'm i'm saying that plural because i'm taking into consideration uh hawkings and penrose updated theory on the matter that takes quantum physics into consideration and uh moves on from it just being a single big bang um that um before our universe existed at all let's assume that it did begin um there's still time even though there's uh time could still be observed if we were there to observe it and so that's kind of my attitude on this but i know this doesn't help my case very much it's probably more helpful to yours but that is how i perceive time um as something that's just uh just a very um uninteresting and normal characteristic of the universe that doesn't have any special traversable properties like three-dimensional space does yeah and i think i'll uh withhold from commenting just so i don't put my foot in my mouth um just because these are topics yeah it's and it's kind of off topic a little bit here and i'm still not seeing how the uh how the kca brings us to god and i know other people have made this criticism about it so there's a bit of a leap there for you well and so and like i said i do think it does only get us to a deistic god but i i do or a deistic force i even should say because i i do want to specify what i think it honestly does get you to um but like i said i i do think it does indicate for us some level of um extra universal being which at least classically speaking would be uh timeless spaceless and immaterial now obviously if we have a theory of time that basically makes time eternal in a way um then i i don't know i guess how i would address that i just have to think about it more um it's a new thought for me for sure okay um i like i like dealing with people who are considering new things thank you absolutely i'm curious about you're mentioning deism um i understand that there are two fundamentally uh different deist tracks um one is that um the the deity or deities uh no longer exist and the other is that they are just um no longer focused on us but they still exist i guess you're in the second camp am i right yeah okay um and and so yeah and even to be fair even in the one thing i will say about the potentiality of uh pre-universal time is that um that's not necessarily actually not jiving with the idea of a god per se uh spaceless and timeless are really the big points of kalam just because time is such a misunderstood topic to begin with um but nonetheless it is still something that i won't like i said comment too on just because um you know i want to be respectful of people who know certainly much more than i do who i'm sure in the live chat right now so i think i think the big gap that i'm seeing here is uh the conclusion of the kca uh the kalam being therefore the universe was caused um and then god exists though that's where i'm seeing the gap and i'm not i'm having trouble connecting those dots well and i think what it really kind of boils down to is just our understanding of which thing now granted it is it is theoretically possible i will i will totally grant this it is theoretically possible that some uh unknown thing could account for what i'm saying right um so just to get that particular caveat out of the way okay uh but based on what we know the only things which meet the qualifications of being timeless spaceless and material um are abstracts right to bring those up yet again uh and no abstracts with the uh with the exception of human thought can be said to be creative in other words your thought could lead to you know whatever some mythological story or some statue or whatever right but numbers alone which is just another example of an abstract don't actually do that uh even when numbers do seemingly create like binary code they are actually put forward by human thought um do you think memories um could be abstract uh well i don't it's interesting to say because i in the end come to the conclusion that abstract things don't actually exist um in other words things which are not to be abstract are indeed concrete so our memories knowing that our memories could be distorted over time um would at least some of our memories qualify as abstract such as a memory how to get back to our home walking through the streets uh and no i would not say so and let me kind of explain using a computer i guess uh or an engine it even be better right um if you have certain parts of the engine that malfunction you can get things to happen that are completely contradictory to the way an engine is supposed to work uh you can get a gasket to blow you can get the thing to blow up you can get it to just turn off right whatever it happens i'll take your word for it because mechanics are not my strong point so there you go um well and i have i know things can blow up though right um i see cars on fire on the side of the road from time rare but once in a while well and so the idea though right being that you can get certain things to misfire by virtue of um really breaking the system right um or misconfiguring it yeah exactly uh and that's the same thing that i would say in regards to things like mis-memory for example um uh like so for example when you're on your way home so are you saying that our memories are not abstract i guess i would say no um like i said i don't believe that i and you know i'm i'm very young and so i will grant that i could be you know still wet behind the ears when it comes to the philosophy of these terms i understand yeah um but but i don't think anything is truly abstract um i i think that all things which we believe our abstracts are actually grounded in something concrete um and in that sense i very much agree with like Platonists for example um and really just Plato in general when they say that all of these things have to be grounded in something transcendent i tend to agree to that so i would say in the case of our memories more than likely things like mis-memory um are kind of like you know putting together an engine in a way that's wrong um and creating like synapses to misfire and stuff like that or or some kind of defect that's come up later and cause me exactly exactly a small crack or something okay that's pretty fair um okay so i guess where we're at is the kca uh i it looks like it has it doesn't prove that god exists i guess is uh uh would you agree with that point i well so what i would say is because like i said in the opening statement i think that kca uh gets us to a deistic point i don't believe it'll get us farther than that and i would drop arguments farther than that but i think that uh based on what we know if something is to be uh extra universal meaning outside of the universe um that thing the only things that we know of which meet those qualifications are abstracts and the only abstract which is in any way creative is human thought um therefore i would conclude some level of thought has created the universe and of course that would again imply a transcendent mind so the deist deity created the universe is basically what your position is then at least in the end of the word that's a bare minimum and i think they will get farther than i still have the same problem with the gap because it doesn't doesn't matter to me whether or not the deity is still involved uh the claim is that there is a god and therefore the universe was caused in the kca i still have that gap there so via the deistic deity um a god i'm still having problems connecting the dots here i don't see the connection well and to a certain extent i guess um you know i i just kind of have to grant that perhaps it's not convincing to you personally you know what i mean well there needs to be a connection here and and so the kca i think doesn't even prove a deistic god well so again like i would say you have this necessity for some level of abstract being the force right um that abstract thing has to be creative because it's being the force which causes this to happen and again the only abstract thing which is anyway creative is human thought now you can say that's just not convincing to me and that's fine to be fair you're totally you know um uh what's the word um you're fair i there's a word but i'm i'm losing it you're totally fair and saying i just don't accept it and i want to wait for a further explanation that's okay um but i think that that doesn't actually deal with the point itself which is that everything that we know seems to indicate that a transcendent mind created the universe um and again to to explain that all as in a drawn out fashion uh the only things which meet the qualifications of spaceless timeless and immaterial are abstracts and the only abstract which is creative is human thought um the conclusion being that the abstract which created i.e thought implies some level of a transcendent mind and the way the reason i say at least deism is because um all abrahamic gods account for a deistic deity but no are excuse me all uh levels of deism account for an abrahamic god but abrahamic god wouldn't necessarily be deism right in other words um god is the creator of the universe and christianity just like the deist would say but deism doesn't necessarily mean that jesus christ is lord and savior right so um so the kca is dependent on the factors of being spaceless being timeless being immaterial those those properties and you're saying because those are abstract that proves god right because the only abstract that we know of that actually leads to any sort of creation meaning in a mind okay so again um have how do we rule out uh other possibilities to to know for certain that it is is a deity that created all of us well so i would say like i said earlier you know if you would like to um sort of hold your bets and say i think that i'm going to wait right that's certainly since we're in and this is a conversation mainly of philosophy and science right that's certainly within your within your uh you know it's in your mental faculties of course it's in your liberties as a citizen of a free country all that kind of stuff right um but i i don't know that it necessarily does anything to counter the view i guess in other words it puts you in a state of neutrality in my opinion where i feel like i have presented a strong case based on the knowledge we have you're saying well i think knowledge that we don't have could explain this and that's fine i can respect that but i think it puts us bare minimum at a neutral place not in a place where there's actually any argument against what i'm saying you know what i mean it does yeah it does it uh the problem that you have is uh i think that you've not ruled out um other things to know for certain that this is actually the case that that's i think that's why we have uh this point of neutrality here that's valid well we haven't ruled out at least some right like for example uh numbers is an abstract that is non-creative so we can rule numbers out as creating i think that if you were to tell me that cats did not create the universe i'm gonna go with probabilities on this one and agree with you well it's probably they created the internet but uh who knows um but but you get the idea though right it's kind of this like we do have a at least some things namely the all existing abstracts minus thought we have gone through and now we haven't gone through them in this debate but the people who worked out the cosmological cosmological arguments have right they've you know well does some level of binary code potentially explain existence like a simulation or does uh some level of abstract object potentially uh or does you know and so on and so forth and um themingly they do come to the conclusion of either what you're saying which is i don't know or what i'm saying which is a transcendent mind um and again i do think that bare minimum gets us to neutrality but i would even argue it's not necessarily neutrality because there is an argument that makes sense there's just a party that feels as if they don't want to for whatever reason it has to be feels as if they don't want to accept it but it does work conceptually right so what is what are the origins of this mind that created our universe like where did that come from i would say that the mind is origin less uh the reason i would say that is because um if something is outside of uh time space and matter namely timeless spaces and material or is in some level of time where and this is how i'll just briefly account for what you were saying earlier in some level of time that is like co-eternal with itself um that would uh indicate to me that's pretty cool okay that's awesome um that would um hang on shoot uh shoot there we are that would uh indicate to me that um this thing cannot have a cause of its existence in words it's it's the one in the number example right whereas the two can rely on the one and the three can rely on the two the one is just self-existent so i will point out that um i did give a reason for being at a point of neutrality is that because i'm at a position where i feel that i can't prove either uh that there is a god or the antiposition to that of that there is no god um and i i did uh outline why i can't prove there isn't one um and where i'm stuck there because i i don't have the tools to explore the entire cosmos um this um how do you know that uh this mind has always been i guess co-eternal i like that term um well so a couple ways uh the first way would be that i think there is a logical necessity for an uncaused first cause um the second way and now of course you could argue well potentially it's not this one right and i that's i guess a potentiality uh but at some point the buck has to stop right uh would be i think the logical uh requirement but then also okay um i would say that whatever time is within our universe um it certainly would operate differently than the potentiality of some kind of time like thing outside of our universe um and in a similar way like and not in a similar way is in a way that we could give an example that's like a microcosm doesn't do it justice but it'll give it an idea you can have a movie and the everything that happened in that movie is contained within whatever time you want it to be contained in whenever you decide to watch the movie right because it's now in a almost in a like a lower plane of existence so to speak it's metaphor right but in in the sense that you can pause it rewind it go watch again all that kind of stuff right so your time is in a sense transcending that time now it's a primitive example because we don't have any any examples of truly transcendent time um but i think you can kind of get the idea right where it's like there there does appear to be the potentiality at least of some level of transcendent time so whatever it is in our universe or outside of our universe it must operate in some way that is differently than our universe um so i wouldn't expect there to be necessarily a beginning even if there could be a beginning by necessarily i mean biological necessity right but then the other two aspects come into play there as well spaceless and immaterial would indicate well immaterial things probably won't decay obviously if it's only material that decays um things that don't occupy space can't be dispersed because there's no way to necessarily um i mean even a smoke right that's a thing that space has space right disperses yeah and so all these different things would indicate to me that uh whatever this thing is it can't stop existing um meaning and if it can't stop existing it must have always existed right and sort of just explaining it in that way it seemed to me like this um like i said co-eternal thing would have to be in some way uh exactly that code only just a few more minutes we'll go into the q&a because we're coming up on that hour and a half mark but i'll give you a chance to respond randall my last question here i guess is uh yeah how does one go about verifying that this is the case that there's this deity as you just described uh living co-eternally uh well so you can you can do all the thinking and it is interesting uh chinese philosophers indian philosophers and greek philosophers all came to conclusions that were very abrahamic i don't personally find that to be a coincidence uh well i'll give a lot of examples actually um so for example uh we'll use the greeks because the greeks were actually they were so abrahamic that the new testament even used it and utilized it within its scripture uh for example the concept of logos right the concept that there is some divine force that may even could be called maybe it could even be called divine reasoning which plenty of the greek philosophers called it that like heraclitus for example and so on that bounds the universe together and that explains all of the abstracts in our life and that what and that we must live in accordance with in order to meet the fruition of our life's purpose that sounds exactly like a monotheistic deity in the abrahamic religion with the one exception that you've now called it a force and paul not paul excuse me john was fully aware of this when he wrote john one one and in the beginning was the logos this thing everybody knew and the logos was god i've now personalized it and the logos was god i've now made it the sun um so you know obviously there is a slight bit of difference in that personality i'll fully grant that but the concept of logos itself is very foreign to greek understanding and quite abrahamic or the idea of an uncaused first cause which is also sticking with the Greeks that's Aristotle when when do you think christianity introduced logos uh well the concept of logos itself was not introduced by christianity only the uh linking of logos with uh the deity which in this case would be jesus uh was done by christianity and i believe john was written probably about the year 65 um that's my own personal argument i am way in the minority on that but it's perfectly fine with me that's the traditional understanding is that it was sometime around 65 um say that uh the chinese philosophers got that from christianity doesn't wash with me because the um chinese philosophers uh there are many who are much older than christianity itself right all the abrahamic religions not got it from christianity came to the same conclusions and there's a reason it's important to specify misunderstood what you said earlier okay so yeah there's uh um the idea of the monotheistic god and in the abrahamic religions um is also not a popular idea in chinese culture in history there's always multiple deities there are always polytheistic there um buddhism polygrantic mystic um the hindu religion is polytheistic uh vatism is polytheistic and on and on it goes so right monotheism might have closer ties to some abrahamic stuff than the others but yeah right and so that's why you know it is important to note that obviously there is um you know the the polytheism stuff like that surrounds them i certainly wouldn't argue with that uh but you know like i just um explain kind of with the greek philosophers right how the uncaused first cause and moral platinism and all that well in the case of a lot of the yeah in the case of a lot of the chinese examples right so for example the dao i mean the dao is just the logos but the chinese version if you want to talk philosophy philosophy versus philosophy yeah it's this transcendent seemingly divine force that you need to live in accordance with to meet the fruition of the purpose of your own life that dictates all things that grounds the abstract um all these different sort of things it's like your ultimate source of truth right um that and in fact once again you take john one one when you it's interesting when you translate john one one into chinese it's in the beginning was the dao and the dao was with god and the dao was god right um in other words the chinese translators seemingly understand precisely what it is that i'm putting forward right which is the chinese had a concept that's very very similar to the monotheistic abraham in that it is this force that seemingly accounts for all of our abstract that um seemingly bounds the universe together that we need to live in accordance with all these different kinds of things uh and the hindus do the same thing and i think i don't know if i'm getting dharma mixed up with something else but i believe it is i'm thinking of dharma rather than um uh the dao though because like the daoism like 4 000 bc it's about 6 000 years old and right many of its ideals are developed during china's warring states period which was um influenced significantly by school of naturalists who promoted school concepts like yin and yang and uh and whatnot and five phases of the wuxing and on and on it goes well there's a couple things i think to know with that just very briefly um super briefly the first being sorry um were you gonna say something james just to mention that we if it is tied to theism i have i'm willing to kind of uh keep going with it more in terms of the the debate topic otherwise we want to jump into the q and a pretty quick how's five minutes we can do uh five more minutes okay go ahead cg um so again i do want to specify it's i think coming to the same conclusions not necessarily because the fact that they're before in my opinion is irrelevant um and the reason why is because i fully expect that the brilliant men would come to the conclusions that are similar but not identical to my own because i think my own are correct right in other words i i i don't um rely on the dow or any of the other you know or the logos or anything like that being introduced by the abrahamic gods uh or abrahamic god i should say because i was mixing abrahamic religions and god right but anyways um rather i think that because the evidence is in favor of this kind of a thing this dow slash logos slash what the christian bible and jewish bible would call god existing the fact that in the east they come to that conclusion and in the west they come to that conclusion and in india they come to that conclusion seems to me to indicate that the the most brilliant philosophers out there agreed that there was something that had to be transcendent beyond us um and the christian bible um in my opinion at least explains what that actually is uh namely jesus himself um so it's not that i think that the dow comes from christianity although to be fair there is some talk that dow derives from the hebrew root drg i have no way of confirming conforming confirming it's an isolated continent i really doubted but okay um isolated anyway isolated societies but uh yeah my understanding of the dowism is that it is very different from the abrahamic faiths there's not a lot of similarities there are some that can be drawn but there's more that's different about them that really doesn't make this a compelling case for me i'm sorry i would suggest uh reading ceus louis's um commentary on the dowdy ching um and i think that you will now well first i would just recommend reading the dowdy ching because obviously you want to get it unbiased right um but with his commentary you can see like the specific points where he starts to go through it all in okay um i don't do it justice especially in a debate but um that would be sort of my uh i don't know response to that i guess okay sure okay and to be fair i don't think that the dow really helps us because it is polytheistic and this debate is about a single deity so well and like i said i think it's the concept of dow itself right the idea of a dow is in my opinion very abrahamic it seems foreign in chinese thought chinese thought after that is certainly very influenced by it for sure but pre chinese thought like and you can see like chinese folk religion is an example of this right um chinese folk religion that traces its history back to before the 700s bc um is really really foreign to concepts that you find in in dowism and confucianism and stuff like that uh in fact it's much more similar to typical polytheism like the pantheons of greece or in hinduism or in things like that or shinto right it's just another example but um dowism itself is very weird in chinese thought and then all of a sudden it takes over all chinese thought to where confucianism and the different forms of chinese buddhism and legalism and all that they're almost looking back at lautsu um and his and his history but if you look at it before then or even lautsu's contemporaries yeah um i don't think it is you know it's it's very odd it sticks out like a sore thumb to me uh and it's the same thing of the logos in greece it seems like a natural fit but anyway i have uh my own understandings of chinese history that lead me to think that but uh i guess james wants to move on to the q and a period here um i'm i'm i'm left uh with not seeing the connection i'm sorry i just well and then you know that's certainly okay um obviously i didn't expect to convert you today so um oh i wasn't thinking this conversion i was thinking it was an exploration and and i did enjoy our conversation for sure and i appreciate that yeah i enjoyed it as well a friendly and interesting one and so thank you very much gentlemen want to mention a couple of things folks we do have some new mod rules and so just in case you had not heard one is want to say first thank you so much mods for all you do you do a fantastic job we really do appreciate you more than you know in terms of we have our old rules like no hate speech and then we also have rules like no harassing the speakers but we also have this kind of new rule we're asking the moderators to if you'd be so kind refrain from trying to debate or persuade and chat and that's just because the same way that i am trying to be that way in the moderating or host position on screen in terms of not trying to jump in the debate and take sides we also want to encourage mods in the chat to try their best to risk try to restrain themselves from jumping into debate with people in the chat as the mods are a true representative of the channel and we do want to say thank you again for doing all that you do but we have noticed that you're really good with the impartial approach thank you randall really like about this channel that means a lot seriously it really does i and it's always a pleasure to have you randolph and and cj as well you guys are gentleman and scholars and so i do want to show you guys folks we have a couple of upcoming debates that you don't want to miss so let me just pull these up on screen and let you know that oh baby they are going to be epic in particular on june 9th dr michael brown will be debating apostate profit on whether or not there is a god so same topic as this one and so i'd say hey folks hit that subscribe button if you haven't already that's going to be a juicy one you don't want to miss it live and then also folks want to show you this one coming up even quicker june 5th thrilled matt dillahunty returns to take on dr kenny rhodes christian scholar and theologian it's going to be juicy they are going to be debating whether or not there is good evidence for god that's a crowdfund by the way folks and that crowdfund link is in the description box and you can see the meter on the far right of the screen we are thrilled that we're at 92 percent for our crowdfund goal which is absolutely phenomenal and folks this is a strategy for us to basically be able to do kind of some more of those big headliner events for example we had michael schermer we hosted in january really popular speaker and we're hoping for no joke like in the future we really do want to use this kind of crowdfund strategy for for example richard dockens like no joke that's the kind of thing that we want to use this strategy for and so we do want to encourage you to join us for that crowdfund but let's jump into your questions thank you very much for your questions folks we do appreciate them my name is mud thank you for your super sticker first and then bubblegum says bubblegum gun says if you agree murder is wrong then proceed to murder an entire group clearly you don't believe what you preach you only prove that might is right and remember that's probably from earlier in the discussion and trying to think about democracy yeah any thoughts from either of you that sounds like hypocrisy to me in that example yep you got it thank you and i would just simply say i mean i i guess i'm not sure uh what it was pointed um at but yeah you know obviously that would indicate that you're hypocritical in your opinions for sure you got it in this this one coming in from raw nakedness says is there a god thank you very much for that and bubblegum i think we know your guys's answer is bubblegum gun says also universality does not equal truth power can make truth i'm confused by what they mean by power can make true power can make truth sounds like a reference to authoritarianism to me i was about to kind of say the same thing almost sounds like like i'm the king therefore yeah yeah before the magna carta yeah those old times oh i would say universality doesn't make truth but it very strongly indicates it that would be sort of one because for example i i think most humans if they were left to their own devices and didn't have any extra knowledge might come to the conclusion the earth was flat and perhaps that's not you know that's not actually remotely reasonable um but it appears to be right if you just go outside it doesn't look like it's flat but it's not um so i wouldn't say it proves it but i think it very strongly indicates it you got it and thank you very much for this question experiments in prebiotic chemistry says once you define morality then it becomes objective to identify what is morally good the objective standard is the definition of the word morality just like when you define the word quote unquote purple you can know what is purple yeah and that that talks to the subjective nature of morality in my view and this one go ahead cj did you have something oh no i i was just gonna say i guess um i guess that i don't necessarily agree to be honest i think certain definitions you have to see the thing itself first like like just as an example um like the definition for purple is a great thing i think because purple as a definition did not exist until purple was first seen right that's a reasonable point yeah gotcha any thoughts randolph because i think it was meant to challenge you this one confuse me i was yeah i'm not really clear maybe just read it one more time please yeah they said once you define morality then it becomes objective to identify what is morally good the objective standard is the definition of the word morality yeah so i did make a point earlier that um once a number of people any number of people agree on what a moral standard should be then and that would be subjective in nature but then if because they agree they can make objective or non subjective determinations on what's moral or not based on that standard because they all agree and so that's basically that the subjective agreement uh on what's moral is the foundation for making objective determinations you've got it and thank you very much for your question pancake of destiny says why bible is more trustworthy than harry potter cj um well for one um the bible at least claims to be factual so that's just a start right the harry potter does tell you this is a work of fiction so i mean just right off of the bat i think there's a big difference but no i mean if you're being serious which i must say i i'm fairly certain that the questioner is not uh because people who are being serious don't tend to bring up such examples like your first answer so far that was quite good thank you um but you know i would just say like we're talking about a story using historical figures based in historical places talking about historical events even if some of the events didn't take place let me put on my skeptic hat and say like for example the exodus didn't happen which i don't believe but let's just say that i did believe that right um it's still egypt still exists and israel still exists and saudi arabia still exists and the hebrus still exists in the egyptians you know what i mean like the story even if fictional is based in reality uh harry potter is not so wizards are not in fact existent and there is no such place as hogwarts and and so on and so forth you got it and thank you very much for this question coming in from bubblegum gun says there is nothing wrong or right with killing quote unquote murder is just moralizing killing while claiming our killing is quote unquote justified justice doesn't exist interesting nihilistic opinion i certainly disagree but it's an interesting perspective juicy and then robert summary says facts are facts so that means god exists ej yeah of course that's that's why i'm here of course i would say that i mean i don't know um i just think the arguments that i have here first that god exists right so um that would be um you know i obviously i'm just being tongue-in-cheek with it but the point is obviously you know i presented why i thought that god existed so outside of the tongue in cheek that would be my answer but tongue-in-cheek i mean sure why not well i'll play along juicy q&a after all and big thang bruce wane thank you very much for your super chat which is in the six dollars and 66 cents very trolish of you we like we appreciate your uh your trolishness uh friendly trolishness but robert summary says i accept all of cj's arguments and i am going to place thor as the creator why am i wrong cj uh well so this question gets at a deeper question but let me ask it or let me answer it as asked first off um because thor is not the creator god in norse mythology so it's really that simple you don't even know the mythology right now of course the question is trying to to hint at okay well who says it's not x god why does it have to be your god and i think there are good arguments to indicate that it is my god i think uh prophecy for example i give the genesis example of ishmael um i think that jesus's resurrection is a good example um i think there are tons of examples as far as um the way that god has told us things are expected to work the meteoric meteoric meteoric excuse me man i cannot talk rise of christianity and so on and so forth uh but that would be that would be sort of the end of that just to make a quick question was about a norse deity that is a creator deity would your answer have changed oh yeah absolutely absolutely i would i've changed because um you know there is a difference there in uh you know addressing like for example brahma i think if i understand hindu isn't correctly brahma is the creator god um if i'm wrong about that please somebody correct me but um then at that point i would start to argue more from the second portion of my uh points right which is to say that i think the bible contains correct prophecy i think it accurately describes the way the world works uh so on and so forth and i would get and that of course might even be a debate in and of itself um but yeah the short answer is yes i would address it more in depth if i was talking about an actual creator god rather than something like zoos are for i just looked it up your current brahma is the creator deity for sure i appreciate that god john jeremy creason thanks for your super chat said god is great and we're going to jump to the standard questions as this one coming in from andrew coming says referring to the it seems to me that when we refer to causes we mean material events but god is not a material thing so how does god fit as a cause so you've kind of addressed this but we'll give you a chance cj if you want to yeah um so the way that i would explain that is basically by the creative power of thought um human beings in the end we actually don't create things with hands and stuff like that um those are just the tools we use to create things but we actually create things in our minds right um for example a book that you wrote was in your head before it was ever put on the paper um and so when you're talking about things that are non-material creating the material that's how all creation works in my view um and i think that human thought is a great way to prove that gosh yeah this question from big thank bruce wane says cj i mean i'm gonna try to let's see i'm gonna look for questions for many of these in a row or for cj so i'm gonna pull up one i've got for uh randolph in a moment big thank bruce wane first though for cj says how many holy books have you read cover to cover and and compared to the new testament and one more time they said how many holy books have you read cover to cover compared to the new testament uh book of Mormon cut on um i have not read the dowdy ching all the way through um obviously the bible i don't know if you'd call them holy books but i've written a red excuse me a lot of books from um like prophetic figures uh like william brannum for example um or uh what's the guy who's really big in rostafarianism i can't remember his name now but anyways he's some big black nationalist from the early 1900s um yeah um that's that's probably about it um and then you know philosophical works and stuff like that but that'd be about it gotcha and this one coming in just now robert samar's thanks for your question said yes my point was insert x god guess you had to get the let's see uh the they thought you insulted them and then they said expand off brahma then yeah so like i said i would say um and by the way just for the record i mean not for nothing but if what i took as an insult and certainly you're comparing my god to a marvel character would probably be an insult as well but since you know moving on beyond that um i would yeah i would argue at that point from things like prophecy from things like explaining how the world works which i think the bible correctly does um you know and like i said with the the genesis example right again the example of ishmael uh that's an undeniable prophecy in other words the the best you can say with that particular argument is i don't think it's prophetic i think that they've just happened to get it right and that's fine if that's what you believe but it is undeniable the the descendants of ishmael eventually became an incredibly populist and great nation the umayyad caliphate was so powerful that anywhere from morocco to indonesia they speak arabic right um the only empire that's ever been stronger or as strong as the british and and i'd say as strong i would not say stronger um so you know when we start arguing about christianity in particular i think there's a lot of good evidences like i said prophecy resurrection so on and so forth um that definitely push us in the direction of um of understanding christianity is true gosh and thank you very much for this question do appreciate it from the batman says for andolth use let's see they said you said cj has to show a certainty that there couldn't have been anything else to cause the universe except a mind uh but do you require certainty do believe to i think they mean to believe all thing all other things i think that is what they're saying it depends on what it is that's being claimed right so because uh the claim of a deity creating the entire universe is such a big fantastic claim um the the bar is a bit higher for it what what qualifies as sufficient uh and and the nature of the claim is uh is rather absolute nature so it's uh it's it's claiming that god absolutely created everything meaning nothing else that there's no other part in and i even got some clarification that uh very often i i think cj may have i have in other debates where people have uh said it's not multiple deities it's always just one single god doing it all and so um that that's quite specific and quite absolute so i i think it's not unreasonable to have an expectation that the other possibilities need to be rolled out in such a case god yeah thank you very much for this question universal participants yeah thanks you bet and thank you very much for this one as well this one comes in from robert summer says changing the subject already yes the life is describing what we see i don't know what that was even referring to do you blinded by the light i don't know shall we say i'm not sure honestly this by the light no next one coming in from pepper talk says question for both what would change your mind about the existence of a god um well so that is a good question only because i kind of have had a lot of evidentialism if you will in my walk to begin with so it could be rather difficult um i would say so if there was some like uh false prophecy that would at least give me to reject certain books i think um if i could prove that it was a false prophecy um and even then you know i'd have to look into those sort of things because like for example people have put forward things that they think are false prophecies that i don't believe are i mean one of the big problems i'll be honest is that i already have a view that sort of a takes into account a lot of the things that are uh typically taken as true on atheism so like for example i have a pretty intense level of nihilism when it comes to most things um for i'm just as an example like baseball right i mean you hit the ball over the fence the 74th time and who cares right it doesn't matter in the end um and those ironically enough that actually makes it sort of difficult to convince me outside of christianity because so many things that you can point at point to as you know unique in atheist philosophy i kind of already grant you know what i mean because of my exception was uh because of my experience with stuff like nihilism stuff like that no i don't even know if i explained that the way that i should have but that's sort of my answer go ahead randolph Dr this one coming in from pepper talks oh we got that this was the that was the same question so we'll give randolph a chance to respond if you'd like um sorry too i i've lost uh lost scope with the uh no worries got it right here they said what would change your mind about the existence of god for both and oh oh for both okay i thought that was only for cj earlier i miss heard um the in my opening statement i did uh list one thing that would change my mind and that would be to be granted omniscience and omnipotence for a fortnight for two weeks just to experiment with it and whatnot you got it and with that folks want to say we're going to be back in just a moment with a post credit scene as we have a lot of juicy upcoming debates so stick around i'll be right back for that but we want to say a huge thank you to cj and randolph we couldn't it's it's hard to express our thankfulness we do appreciate you guys so we want to remind you folks out in the chat trying to be your regular friendly selves we appreciate that you guys do a great job of that namely attacking the argument instead of the person so thanks everybody in chat for doing that and we also ask that you do that in the comments afterwards and want to say though thanks so much cj and randolph and folks you can find their links in the description whether you're listening to this youtube or twitch stream in the youtube description we have our guest linked as well as the podcast of this episode so thanks one last time to cj and randolph thank you james and thank you cj i enjoyed our conversation today very much yeah absolutely i enjoyed it as well and i appreciate the both of you very much um and yeah god bless thank you guys and i'll be back in just a moment so stick around folks for those upcoming debates we'll talk about is there's a lot of juicy ones coming up that's embarrassing i still had myself on mute but here we are folks thrilled to have you here want to say thanks so much for being with us tonight we hope you enjoyed that debate and i do also want to mention folks we are 100 thrilled for the debate that you see on the bottom right of your screen so you can see it right over here as we are pumped you guys this is going to happen we are determined and that was if you just saw that post-credits scene picture that said post-credits scene coming that was a picture of tom jump and stephen steen myself we are determined to make this epic event happened happen in particular matt dillahunty and christian dr kenny roads will be debating on whether or not there is good evidence for god that's coming up on june 5th and you don't want to miss it folks it is going to be epic we are absolutely pumped for that and so my dear friends want to encourage you too if you have not already joined into that crowdfund i am throwing that into the old live chat right now and also that is in the description box want to let you know we are absolutely thrilled for the future and you guys this is a strategy that is going to help us like you could say take bigger risks in terms of setting up bigger headline events in particular for example i mean this one's going to be huge dr kenny roads and matt dillahunty very i mean we're excited about this one and another one we were excited about was you know dr michael schermer going against inspiring philosophy that happened back in january that was epic i mean absolutely blast you know a total blast and so you guys we're excited for it and i would say hey if you've ever been like hey you know if you haven't already i want to say thanks to those of you who have already jumped in on the crowdfund thank you so much so some people i want to let you know some people they went big and they're like i'm like throwing a hundred dollars and some people are like i can i'll give you two dollars we want to say thank you no matter how much you give we appreciate it so much that you are willing to support that event and so we really do appreciate it so much we are thrilled you guys we're at 92 percent look at this meter over here on the far right of your screen you can see that we are almost there it's close to a hundred percent folks and so i got to tell you jump into this crowdfund right now because we've only got five days left folks look at that on the bottom right of your screen as it says time is ticking so this is going to close on friday night and i think it's actually maybe friday during the day and then it's closed so we want to say please do join us and this time we're going back and forth it depends on how many people jump in on the crowdfund so we're pumped right now we have 65 backers which is huge and last time we had the live stream private so is where if you put in any amount into the crowdfund you could watch the event live and then if you had not participated in the crowdfund you could still watch the debate but it was that we would release it a couple days later and that was for you know the public would still see it but this time we're like well we want to do it where everybody gets to watch it live like that's fun but at the same time it's like if we don't see like if it's like it doesn't look like we're really gonna maybe meet our goal then we may actually set it such that if you put in the crowdfund you get to watch it live otherwise you'd get to watch this saturday's debate still but a couple days after and so do want to let you know folks only five days left and so if you haven't already even like I said if you throw in a couple of bucks and you might be like well James I don't know I mean how does this work like how do I even log in well let me show you some of the details for this debate as I mentioned the link for the crowdfund is in the description box and it's currently pinned at the top of the chat and we are exciting or excited though as that it's been an exciting week and yesterday we had our 24 or was it a 12 hour stream in which we had just yesterday a whopping number of people joined in and so if you've ever felt like oh man yeah I've like I felt like this channel's been fun like I you know I'm I feel like you guys have uh it's been fun here for me well this motivates us to take bigger risks in terms of bigger events in the future and so we want to say hey jump in and like I said for just the price of a cup of coffee folks and you could just throw in a few bucks and that helps a lot just by itself so the crowdfund platform we're using as you can see on the top left of your page right now indiegogo is just like Kickstarter which we used back in January and you don't even have to create an account because you might be like ah gee I don't know if I want to give all my information like my email and password and create a password or the you can just sign in with Facebook for one thing which is really cool but the other thing is you can actually sign in as a guest and so we do want to encourage you folks if you have found this value this channel to be valuable to you in some way shape or form like hey this is a great opportunity just throwing in a few bucks helps a ton we really do appreciate that and so we want to encourage you to jump in there with us on that and so want to let you know you might be like well I don't know I mean like is it you know you just put in like and you know why do it and it's like well if not enough people put in the event doesn't happen because I mean that that was the deal as I had told the speakers like we're you know we're going to make it to this goal and in order for the event to happen like we have to actually make the goal and the other thing though is this looking on screen there are perks so for example if you threw in at $25 modern day to make coffee mug and you might be like ah just a coffee mug I mean like I'm glad to support like the debate you know so it happens but I mean just a coffee mug I don't know man well let me show you what else because there are tiers above that I'll scroll up for a moment three dollars like if you happen to throw in three bucks the I mean less than a price of a cup of coffee that helps a ton in terms of making this event happen and if you throw in six that helps a lot and the reason is well with six I mean that's absolutely awesome because it gives us a few dollars that we can throw into advertisements just making you could say what's the way you could say making this event extra huge and then your name on screen for 12 that's the next tier and that's just in the ticker at the bottom of the screen as well as your name read out loud and we are pumped though you guys as it's going to be absolutely epic your name read out loud at the end of the debate and like I said the next tier as you can see there modern day debate coffee mug really cool now the trick here want to let you know is that you get everything at the perk level that you sign up for as well as everything from below that perk so really cool for example let's say that you were like you know what I'm going to go big I'm going to go for I'm going to scroll down just a bit you go for the t-shirt you're like I'm going to go in at that tier well you'd not only get the modern day debate t-shirt you'd also get the embossed postcard plus the coffee mug plus your name read out loud on screen and your name on screen all of those perks would be for you and so huge you guys if you're a huge coffee drinker as well which by the way I have to admit I am I might have a problem I don't know you can have your own modern day debate coffee mug even maybe if you want to put some uh what's the word I'm looking for I can't remember what's the name of the sleepy tea if you want to have some sleepy tea in your coffee mug while you're settling down for the night and watching modern day debate that's a fine idea as well but yeah we are pumped though folks as this has been awesome and so we really do want to say thank you so much for your support as we are pumped about this and so Riley S glad to see you as well as Hannah Anderson thank you for being here and mine onion good to see you says oh my gosh coffee mug you're right and we are pumped about that pancake of destiny says are you able to ship those goods to europe as of now that the challenge is it's really hard in terms of the price to get it over to europe because the shipping so expensive that it's kind of like we'd have to make the coffee mug like 50 dollars or something because with the extra costs we kind of we're we're supposed to build that into the crowdfund and so because otherwise like imagine if all of the costs of the products that we both create through teespring and then send was the same as you could say what people are putting in well then we might not we might as well not even have the you know the crowdfund so long story short i'm really sorry pancake of destiny that that is really difficult for us to ship it to europe just with the cost and we also want to say though we do appreciate you watching from europe especially given that if you're from europe and you're up this late right now holy smokes you got some endurance so thank you for watching with us and hanging out here dave hill thank you says chamomile that's it chamomile tea and site show nap says i was thinking of irish coffee touche and then chamomile tea stripper liquor and hannah anderson say thank you for reminding me and then let's see vinny anderson good to see you as well as in hacks thanks for coming by and hacks says the mug has a special ether magnet in the base to energize and purify your coffee i wish it was that high tech i don't even know what that means but good to see you in hacks as well as wrong opinion haver thanks for coming by we are pumped that you came by to visit us we're glad you're here and then mr c thanks so much for being with us as well and let's farm thanks for being with us we do appreciate you thank you so much to all of the moderators and we want to let you know folks if you didn't know we have a discord which i have to give all the credit to all the people who have put this discord together as i have not you know it's not that i don't like discord i think it's cool but frankly as such a boomer it's hard for me to learn how discord works and all that and so i do want to show you that this link i am putting into the old live chat and we do want to encourage you to join up in the discord if you'd enjoy it and then pancake of destiny says i i wanted to be badass on the street with your t-shirt that's really funny i don't think i don't know if that would make you look bad but uh but uh pegie of destiny says i don't sleep because of your debates one day i will lose my job because of you that's funny well we appreciate you being here thank you for your support and then zingari rc thanks for coming by and by the way zingari rc is this your first time here i don't know if it is or not but we appreciate you being with us i noticed um i'm like oh no i think i've seen you here before but not too often is this you rarely get to make the live show we're glad you're here thanks for being here inside show nav good to see you as well as scrolling up marshall the meat puppet good to see you again and thank you for your kind words mark reads as you're exciting too oh man mark thank you for your kindness seriously do appreciate you man i i really do and thanks for i mean not about my what was it oh not about saying i'm excited i mean i appreciate that too but um and just our our email exchange the other day thank you for your grace and kindness i really do appreciate it and then um let's see youtube surgeon general good to see you as well as amy pumped you're here as well as let's see i said i miss anybody bob sadler good to see you thanks for coming by no there's not going to be any only fans pager me i mean you're you must be thinking of t jump jenna mayu thanks for coming by we don't get to see you often is this your first time let me know cd good to see you as well as do we have a we have two cds thank you cd and cd the letters thank you for coming by as well as simply secular dav thanks for coming by and then marshall the meat puppet sorry i just saw this chat now said both participants should be congratulated for respectful and cordial debate i agree randolph and cj are class acts we really do appreciate them really professional really fun guys and so we are thankful for them and again folks they're linked in the chat or i should say the description box and if you're listening via podcast folks did you know i don't know if you knew about this but modern day debate has a podcast did you not know how about that it is awesome and a lot of i'm encouraged that some people say like hey i i actually listen to the podcast while i work out while i cook while i clean you know whatever it is and so i'm so encouraged folks pull out your phone right now and pull up your favorite podcast app and find modern day debate as we are pumped as you can listen to debates including some of our like all-time classic debates we had one with inspiring philosophy and matt dillahunty that's on there that was a juicy debate everybody enjoyed that and that one was in person as well that was a fun one if you haven't seen that one yet so yeah we have so many debates it's usually we're about a week behind in terms of when the youtube stream happens and then when the debate makes it on the podcast we're working on making it so that it's like the day after but i've got to catch up we've got a ton that we've got to let out because i'm a little bit behind after i was on the road a little bit this uh last week but mind onion good to see you and then mondah mondah skeptical thanks for coming by are you still here i saw that was like earlier in chat and then let me just catch up but what are your thoughts in chat is there something we want to ask i had shown you guys some of the sweet perks which we're excited about uh josh josh well like i feel like josh well i i must have gotten an email from you i i know i recognize your name and i'm trying to remember i i haven't caught up on my emails but anyway so i recognize your name but anyway said will there be a special link for the crowdfunded debate or will it be on youtube so as of now it's kind of up in the air if we if things look good where it's like hey we're gonna make it and you know we we keep seeing it increase then we're planning on still going where it's live for everybody like for the whole world and if we if we don't see though like if it's like eh like it looks like uh people are kind of like because like i said you can put in as little as a dollar and that helps a ton folks and if we're like eh it doesn't look like it's going up we might switch it to where what we did in last time like in january we might switch it to where you have to put in like at least a you know a dollar into the crowdfund and you know then you'd be able to watch it live we'd give a special link out and so we do want to encourage people it helps the channel a lot so i mean hey if you've ever um just people in general want to mention this if you've ever learned like hey man i've i've enjoyed this channel like it's it's been a fun time and you know it's like a lot of like free entertainment we just chill out here and it's like we want to see bigger batter debates more epic headline like main event type debates well like hey like it's super easy to join this crowdfund and it really does seriously folks it encourages us a ton as i'm really excited folks we are currently at 3241 so we are close to that ultimate goal and we just jumped up by ten dollars so thank you so much to the person who gave as i'm going to adjust the meter so we do appreciate that so much for real we really are pumped that it is getting closer and closer and so we right now are at 92 percent and adjusting that on the meter on screen hold on loading loading all right it there we go but now you can hopefully see it we had just jumped up so thank you so much to the person who gave to the crowdfund just now and what's the word i'm looking for two seconds my brain is like reloading oh yeah i would say your name out loud but um indiegogo like they tell us that i'm not supposed to like tell people's names i i want it they want to keep it private so but i do thank you so much to the person who did and throw in and then we are pumped though compliment bot thank you for coming by and human girl says lol aka beta girl and then dave hill says yesterday with it's four more to cut and print can't have helped that's right four epic debates yesterday we are thrilled about that really thrilled and you guys if you haven't seen that 12 hour stream that we did yesterday no joke have you not heard folks we did a 12 hour stream yesterday with four different debates throughout the stream we'll do that again someday that was a long that was a long one but i am so excited and i hope that you guys enjoyed that that was a lot of fun for me and then so yes i agree that's going to be a lot of a lot more podcasts jody jody dunk good to see you thanks for coming by i said do patreon members to get the live debate yes no matter what so it's this way is how it's set up we either are going to have the event so that everybody is able to see it and obviously patreon members would be included in like the whole world you know so somebody has never heard a modern day debate sees the stream that night they're like oh like what's this we might have it such that i had mentioned we if we see it's like like i don't know like if it seems like because i mean i know everybody's gonna like almost everybody's gonna be there because we usually like a matt delaney debate will have like 2 000 people watching live and so if people are like yeah but i like i want to watch live but like um if they like kind of pass on the indiegogo it's like well if we don't see like it keep progressing then we actually would probably change it to where if you put into the crowdfund or if you're part of patreon we would give you the link like we did last time so that's what we that's how we did it in january and we're like ah maybe and then we released the debate you know a couple days later for everybody to see and so i'll let you know we're still kind of mulling it over and i'm kind of like keeping in mind there's like people with more indiegogo experience than me or because i'm asking i'm like should we is this where are we good where we're at i think we have a good start like we're going well it's so we're encouraged by how many people have jumped in and so thank you for that compliment bot says james have you ever considered having a debate over the effectiveness of debating it would be very meta it would be meta and we kind of have debates like that the d platform or debate type debate is kind of like that and then second hand horizon thanks for being with us as well and then riley s says oh yeah speaking of the rewards i was going to ask you guys are there any particular oh that's what it was joshio alex said i just said i didn't need the perks for contributing to the debate thank you so much joshio alex that is super generous of you i've got to be honest folks i didn't um when i i made a rookie mistake for the for this indiegogo um i didn't actually i made a mistake i didn't build in the costs of like creating the t-shirts and sending them out because t-spring prints the t-shirt so like i don't do it in my basement or something they're they're sent out from t-spring and i forgot that like you know it's it's gonna cost money to have t-spring make them and then send them out and so don't feel bad anybody if you've ordered merch like if you got merged through the through your tier thank you joshua alex for being willing to kind of say like oh no worries about the merch that helps i do appreciate that but that's one reason why we're really pushing like we want to make the goal and frankly it would be cool to make a stretch goal because the costs of all those items like i forgot to like build into the crowd fund and so i'm like so i think what we'll probably do to help with that though is i'm going to work on basically we're gonna put out way less ads so it's probably more like instead of i think originally we wanted to put out a number of ads and now it's kind of like yeah we might maybe a little bit in terms of promo for the event we're gonna instead use more of that that funds that were originally planned for advertisements to cover the costs of when we make it the t-shirts and send them out and stuff like that but totally cool if people want the t-shirt or whatever merch that they signed up for totally okay like like that's cool and we're excited that you want to wear it or use it and so like that's awesome so i don't feel don't feel like in any way pressured to you know say that you don't need it or anything like that i don't want to make anybody feel pressured and then um riley s says could one of the rewards be a dinner with michael bubble i don't know who that is michael beehie i don't know who you mean but i do want to ask are there rewards because i had shown you the rewards or perks whatever you want to call them so these i'm excited folks we actually some of these are running out so if you look at the page that's on screen right now we actually one of these just today i realized has run out so the one-on-one zoom chat with james me namely i'm surprised that actually sold out so we only had five and then we have actually had five people sign up for it which is like super encouraging and that basically is you know if they want to do like a friendly debate and like recorded and like put it on their own channel or something or i mean it'd be kind of like a mini debate because it's only an hour but it might be like an hour of like hey james can you teach me how to do obs and all the tech stuff that you do for modern day debate to make the show like we could do that but that's uh like i said surprisingly sold out but we do still have two meet and greet with the guests which is the biggest here and so that's something that's available as well as like i said you could get modern day debate t-shirt hoodie and remember whatever perk you sign up for you get that perk plus you get all the other perks below it but let me know if there's a perk or reward or a reward let me know if you're like james you should add that if it's something that would maybe motivate you to where you're like okay if you had that i would be more excited to jump in on this crowdfund and so do give feedback like the coffee mug wasn't originally on there you can see that at the very top that we added in because somebody in chat had the idea and so we're encouraged that it's useful and then mind onion that's so funny t jump my boy my twin brother we did we had some good little friendly debates in the very start of this channel that was back before i don't know if you guys know i um a professor in my department doesn't like that i that she doesn't like the channel i don't know if i ever told you guys this um she yeah it's basically she like reported me to the chair and the chair was like chair was really friendly and kind about it and and understanding and because i was like i i'm moderated and it's like it's not even and at that time we hadn't even hosted any controversial of topics you know it was like all of them were like creation evolution and it was like what's wrong with this like why are you so upset and um so that particular professor who reported me to the chair i don't know why they were upset but i no longer debate i plan on no longer debating until i make tenure no joke like that's pretty much my plan because if i jump in if i'm debating it's just it makes it a little bit more complex it's already i think a little bit risky if i you know for you know like lord willing in a few years i want to apply to a you know um maybe even as as little as a year or two i want to apply to be a a professor at a business school and if i apply and they're like that's kind of a weird channel like what are you up to there so uh it's probably better if i'm just moderating but in hacks good to see you says 12 hours that's right yesterday was a long one and then marshal the meat puppet says irish demon reloaded is doing a live breakdown of the t-jump nathan thompson debate right now well that sounds juicy it was an epic debate we are 100 excited about that and so it was a a fun one yesterday and then to pazzle says love from the twitch chat thank you very much to pazzle for your support and surfer dude good to see you says hey youtube chat crew thanks for coming by surfer dude good to see you and then let's see here human girl cells i'm a beta that's weird why would you say that and then to pazzle says people wearing the merch is free advertising that's true but you appreciate you guys spreading the word about modern day debate and that helps us a lot as people when they share about modern day debate that definitely helps us so we do appreciate that if you if you haven't already folks hit that like button and share this debate if you think of somebody you're like oh i know somebody who might enjoy this topic feel free to share it and then farron salas thanks for coming by said missed another debate darn we're glad you're here farron and then let's see i am pumped though as we have a lot of juicy stuff coming up and then compliment bots that are you a professor no not yet uh that's my plan but it would i'm in the middle of the phd right now so i have my comprehensive exam coming up and then um yeah so it's and then i'll be abd pretty much so in other words meaning i'll have all done except my dissertation i have there's another project called the comprehensive empirical project which is another research project and for me i'm hoping it'll be kind of like the part a of my dissertation like a lot more roughly speaking and so oh you're right in hacks i'm behind on the twitch chat my dear friends in the old twitch chat thanks so much for being with us we are glad you were here i'm looking in there peachy pie lord thanks for coming by and then nicholas of house strode thanks for coming by as well as sephrin good to see you and respect thanks for coming by and then amazing brooks sparrow good to see you thanks for being with us as always and then yeah if you're watching via twitch if you haven't followed yet we have debates all the time folks we are really excited about that you don't want to miss it a lot of juicy fun stuff coming up so do hit that follow button in the old twitch as we are excited about the future my dear friends and then but yeah basically ryan phoenix arizona said so you're waiting for immunity with your job to freely speak yeah i mean roughly speaking it is amazing that even by hosting debates i mean we host some controversial topics and some people they don't like debate uh and or they don't like fair debate some people and they think that i mean really no joke a lot of a lot of times the people that i've listened like or seen like when we get tweets and stuff and the funny thing is people don't realize a lot of the tweets are the videos that people make that trash attempt to trash modern debate i can even see the statistics in terms of like an increase so for example if someone like tries to trash us on twitter i i'll sometimes see like an increase of like in our creator studio i can see stats in terms of like where people are coming in to to watch the video um and so a lot of times the ironic thing is when people make a video or a uh you know whatever it is a tweet that's supposed to trash us we're like a monster like a blob if you guys ever seen the movie the blob it just becomes more powerful and that's encouraging because it's like we never asked for people to trash us like and that's the thing a lot of times people will trash us and i don't i actually purposely don't say anything because i don't want to discourage them from giving us like basically freely sharing our stuff you know like basically building more awareness of us and so we might be known as the black sheep once in a while but i gotta tell you like they're trashing us has actually ironically helped us and so hey the old i think it's an old chinese proverb never interrupt your enemy while they're making a mistake like i don't consider them an enemy i'm not mad at them because like i said it's like hey they're only helping but uh if they knew like i said when they are uh when they do that stuff it's like if they knew they were helping us they might not and so i don't want to discourage them by trying to fire back on them just let them say let them do it but yes we are pumped as uh thanks good marion good to see you marion gran gran bruhheim thanks for your kind words as your neutral you're untrashable that's kind of you marion i'm i gotta be honest like i've got biases i'm human i've got at least confirmation bias as all of us do and so i want to encourage you to keep in mind i can be biased so don't be afraid to call me out because that'll that'll help keep us honest if we have that kind of accountability where i and i've had people i do some just people say james i think you're being a bias you know i think you're you're giving that person too much time to speak or you're doing this or that and i'm like that's good if people are willing to say that i i oftentimes you know yeah so long story short good to see you Randolph richardson says whether views are good or bad you still win this is excellent thank you Randolph we appreciate that and that's the trick is like we're radicals about tolerance like yeah we'll have flat earthers on like there's a lot of people you shouldn't give flat earthers a fair chance to make their case and it's like well i mean assuming that like let's say you're a glober and it's like well assuming that you think that the flat earther like lost like what's the harm i don't know i mean what do you guys think who won last night t-jump versus nathan what are your thoughts that was a juicy one and also pancake of destiny thank you that's right the 12 hour stream i came back from the toilet said i am pumped no doubt about it gabriel real said james thanks for coming by gabriel we glad we're glad you're here we hope you're doing well gus davis mirac curious thanks for coming by and then in haxt we are pumped to be here thank you appreciate your kind words in haxt about modern day debate dav Hill says the strizan effect that's funny i have heard of that but i can't remember what it means but we are pumped and so we want to say thank you guys so much though for all of your support of modern day debate seriously it means more than you know we are excited about the future we plan on bigger and batter more epic things and so we want to encourage you to join us in fulfilling the vision of providing a level playing field for everybody to make their case no matter what walk of life they're from so thanks everybody and we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from for real christian atheist muslim agnostic black white gay straight you need it republican democrat we're glad that you're all here so thank you for being here and keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable take care everybody and have a great rest of your sunday night by the way memorial day weekend thank you so much to anybody who has served i know that it memorial days usually thought of as a way of kind of paying respect and honor to people who have died while serving but do want to take it as an opportunity to say uh we want to honor those who have fallen as well as those who have ever served and so we do appreciate you if you happen to be a person who's served in the arm services if you're watching thanks so much for having served and so with that folks we do appreciate you we love you have a great rest of your night and keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable