 Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not God exists and we are starting right now with Stuart's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Stuart. The floor is all yours, James appreciate you having me on David, a pleasure looking forward to tonight just totally wiping the floor with you. Of course, every time opening statement, we'll just get right to it. I think atheism is a faith. I don't want to trigger David or any atheists tonight, so I won't go as far as saying it's a religion, but I think it's a faith just like Christianity. There are faith assumptions, presumptions, and there are many things you cannot prove just like the starting question of does this universe have a beginning? Does God exist? You can even go to they're all philosophical questions, obviously that we're talking about at least the vast majority of them tonight. And so things like human rights, for example, one of my points will be morality. I believe that there certainly are objective morals and in thinking through objective morals that I often connect it to, okay, where do ethics come into play? Where does something like human rights come into play? From an atheistic perspective, I think atheists can be good people. I think from their worldview or you can call it a secular humanist worldview. It's hard to say that atheists should have a real motive for being great people. And when I say great people, I just mean what perhaps a lot of us think in terms of saving the lives of those across the world who have nothing to do with us, ending poverty, world hunger, whatever it might be. I think they have reasons from their secular humanism, from their worldview, their perspective to be good, to go about doing good deeds. But any type of obligation, any type of should help the impoverished, should help those who are really in trouble, I just, I think the conclusion based off of the premise doesn't really line up. So that's one of my points. I'm going to be coming from, I also believe that there's a God because I believe in science that will probably be my main one tonight. So I believe in God because I believe in science. I think from an atheistic perspective, science falls apart pretty quickly. You look in the 16th and 17th centuries, when you originally had, for example, the pioneers of science, Newton, Kepler, Galileo, on and on the list goes, they all believed in God. And it wasn't just the water that they were swimming in, like some historians would say. I believe that other historians are more accurate where if you read autobiographies of theirs, a lot of them, a lot of them were genuine followers of Christ. And that's not even my main point, though, my main point to bring them up as pioneers of science was they knew that this world, this cosmos had intelligibility. They would say it is programmed, programmable in some type of way. They would say something like mathematics. It's totally unreasonable, as one Pulitzer Prize winner said about mathematics without God, the unreasonableness of mathematics, he stated. So these pioneers of science really went after the idea, like C.S. Lewis talked about, expecting a lawgiver because they saw law in nature. So the pursuit of science in order to understand that the creator of the universe went about laying out different patterns of evidence for himself, but then also different ways where we could go about discovering how to grow not only ourselves personally, but how to do experiments, how to find ways to prevent and ultimately deal with all types of atrocities. And so the scientific issue is a big one. And sure, you can throw in into the science issue. Yes, fine tuning. I think for me personally, when I hear God of the gaps, I think of Zeus. I think of many Greek gods who certainly we thought God was behind the lightning. And then all of a sudden, a little bit of science, for example, would say, no, no, no, hold on, there's gaps here. There's a God of the gaps. There in no way can we say that God can really be a reason for the intelligibility of the universe. But obviously that's not the type of God I believe in. I do believe there are gods of the gaps. The Judeo-Christian God that I believe in is not of the God of the gaps. You look right in Genesis chapter one, created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, there was a beginning, a creator. Nothing about God of the gaps do we get in Genesis. So it's crucial to remember. I think of a big point also that there's no way molecules can create themselves. The existence of life itself is a big issue for atheists. Life at least in part kind of has this clear programmable dimension. So you think of DNA molecules, for example, 3.5 billion letters long. With all the right letters in a specific order, or as we know, there's going to be defects, genetic defects. We expect a single word, if it's lined up, say a five letter word, if it's lined up some type of mind, obviously, to have written that word. And so how could we say 3.5 billion letters on the right sequence that there couldn't be a mind behind that? And that gets me to my next point when it comes to the science issue. Think about going out to dinner, a fine diner. I always order a Philly cheesesteak at diners. Sometimes it's great, other times it's the biggest mistake of the day. But when I see Philly cheesesteak on a menu, if I'm an atheist, a reductionist, a naturalist, I have to say the information is bottom up, not top down. And what I mean by that, top down, God, an intelligent creator, creates something that's immaterial. We know the information that we get from seeing roast beef, the ink in the letters on that menu. We know for a fact that from a reductionistic, atheistic standpoint, you can't get information and say, okay, that's material. No, the ink in the letters are material. Information is immaterial. Again, that type of scientific reasoning, you need God for it. Otherwise, you're stuck with a type of reductionistic atheism that does not fit there whatsoever. So information, again, it's a physical quantity. No, it's an abstract quantity. It's an abstract quantity. And that has to have some type of response from a David or any atheist. All right, then next, morality, the big one, it's huge. A. N. Wilson, one of the top atheists over the last 50 years became a Christian because of morality. Objective morality, yes, he believed in objective morals, but he also said, look into the gospel. If God wrote this book through humans, obviously, the type of life change he saw in Christians and what Christians would do for the world, convinced him to move towards the Christian faith. So he believed in objective morals that you need a God for those, and then also drastic life change. I've seen that myself, I think in the gospel. If lived out correctly, no better self-help book in the world. Nothing comes close. And that's what A. N. Wilson, obviously this brilliant atheist was really getting at. Now, there's many different hypocrites. The Pharisees were hypocrites. Jesus attacked them, his entire ministry. So I'm not talking about, obviously there's religious hypocrisy, and that needs to be talked about as well. And I really actually, it's one of my favorite topics to talk about is religious hypocrisy, one that Christians get nailed with on a regular basis. So, you know, 95% of philosophy professors at major universities across the US today believe in objective morals. And the majority of them are Christians. That's philosophy professors. Religion professors, oddly enough, are typically not Christian, that's a strange one. But it's odd to me that 95% of staggering statistic on objective morals and philosophy professors is so different from what we see in this cultural trend of millennials, who now it's pushing 40% of whom are moral relativists. And if you sit down with them, many of them, obviously not all, many of them are actually pretty consistent with their moral relativism. As in one girl was interviewed by Christian Smith, professor, sociologist at Notre Dame. She was simply, she was asked, you know, what do you think about terrorists? What do you think about ISIS? And she said, oh, I can't judge ISIS. You know, what they think is right is right for them. And what I think is right is right for me. And so it's their prerogative. There's no objective morals out there from a God. Yeah, that's pretty enlightening. That's where we're headed. And I think there's tremendous ramifications from that. Do I think we are good without God? Yes, I believe we are good without God, at least we can be. But just like the sociologist Christian Smith talked about, if you play around too much, not just with personal beliefs in a God and the ramifications of dropping a belief in God, but if you play around too much with things like the halls of power when it comes to the educational system, when it comes to government, when it comes to this being a Judeo-Christian nation, if you tinker with it too much and remove God, the sociologist talked about how there are and will be ramifications that we cannot imagine. Jordan Peterson has talked about this. John Gray, the atheist, brilliant atheist in England has talked about this. So we obviously don't know. It's not testable, it's not quantifiable. It never will be because this nation will always be a Christian nation, most likely. Atheism has a small rise right now, but it's predicted to fall off in the next 10 to 12 years. So that's yet to be seen. What I think objective morals from a good God is tremendously important in thinking through what is going to happen in our country. Lastly, the resurrection. I think it all, obviously the Christian faith hinges on the resurrection. It's a historical faith. No other faith really is. Did Jesus, was he raised in the dead or not? And I think about things like post-mortem appearances. Post-mortem appearances are huge, whether it be James, whether it be Saul turned to Paul, this life transformation. It's interesting how secular historians now claim with Christian historians and pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt, say that Peter saw Christ. He saw Christ. And secular historians typically though come up with some type of, okay, either it's a mental hallucination, delusion, something crazy happened mentally to Peter, but he saw Christ. Okay, I think there's something to be said about that. I think we all know, obviously the women were the first of the tomb. I think if this was legend, it would have been the men. It would have been the men, embarrassing detail. That absolutely is big. And then the last one, there's obviously tons, but the last one would be just the start of the Christian church. The start of the Christian church is huge. Like one Japanese atheist once said, he said, something sparked this Christian growth in such a magnetic, gigantic way that there needs to be an explanation for the Christian church. And if it's not going to be the resurrection, then it has to be something else. But you have to bring something to the party. You can't just say the resurrection didn't happen. You got to thank you very much, Stuart for that opening statement. And I want to let you know, folks, if it's your first time here at modern day debate, modern day debate, we're thrilled to have you no matter what walk of life you are from, whether you be Christian, atheist, you name it, we're stoked to have you here. And with that, we're going to kick it over to David C. Smalley. We're thrilled to have you. The floor is all yours. Thank you so much. Thank you, Stuart, for doing this. Thank you, James, for having me. And I think after hearing all of that, I just want to thank God for making beer. Mm, the God I don't believe in. I, it's interesting, Stuart, that you went to Galileo and Kepler, and these guys were around in the, you're talking 1500, 1600s. You're talking people who didn't know about germ theory. You're talking 200 years before germ theory before evolution was discovered. I mean, they were doing their best with what they had. But one of Newton's arguments for God was that he couldn't explain how planets orbit. Like let's just put that into perspective. When we think about Newton and we think about gravity and we think about how important gravity is in our lives, it sounds great like Newton was this brilliant man and he was for his time. But we've gained so much knowledge that filled in many of the God of the gaps arguments that Newton used to justify his own belief. So if we're going back 200 years and say he was a really smart guy that believed in this thing that I believe in, that's not evidence that it's true. It's evidence that a smart guy from the 1500s was also just as wrong as you are today in 2021. So I don't know that I would tout that as a positive. You mentioned the lawgiver. You mentioned morality. And we had this discussion last time and I told you I do acknowledge and support objective moral truths. So that's also not evidence for God. There are plenty of atheists who will say a lot of moral decisions are subjective and relative, but there are plenty of atheists who acknowledge objective moral truths. So that's not mutually exclusive to Christianity, let alone any monotheism. Got another note was I'm making. Yeah, the modern scientists I think would be more impressive having modern scientists, modern people who are brilliant and studying the world as we know it, space, the planets. If the vast majority of those guys, who was 90 to 97% Christian, I think it would be worth looking into to figure out why that's the case, but we know the inverse is true. We know that roughly 90 to 97% of registered scientists are in fact atheists or agnostics. So I don't know that any of that is actually proof or evidence for the existence of any particular God. I don't think that saying atheism has a lot of failure points is evidence for a God. You're not liking certain morality within atheism is not proof that your God exists. That's just not the way it works. You can say that atheism has flaws. Okay, I can say that Chevrolet has a lot of flaws but that doesn't mean that there is a vehicle called the unicorn. And the unicorn is the best type of vehicle. And I go, well, I've never seen that vehicle I've never heard of that vehicle. I don't have evidence of that vehicle, but here's a Chevy truck. And you go, yeah, but it can only go 90 miles an hour. And that one has a tailgate missing. That's your evidence for the unicorn car. It doesn't make any sense. Like it seems that the reactionary response is to just poke holes in the best theories that exist and say, since these are imperfect, therefore magic and it's just a leap I'm not willing to take. And I don't know about this concept of atheism being faith-based. There are things that atheists don't know, but there is no system of thought collectively that is atheism with rituals or proposed demands or beliefs or anything really. Atheism is just the generic answer to one question. Do you believe in any of the gods who have been proposed and to say, I don't know if any God exists, but so far probably not. And if you say, does God exist, my answer is, which one? Which one are you talking about? And still probably not, but which one? So there is nothing that atheism has to suppose or presuppose or demand or state. It's just, I don't really believe in the evidence that is being presented because it doesn't seem to be falsifiable. It doesn't seem to be scientific. It doesn't seem to be realistic. It seems like fairy tale. And the book that comes with it has a lot of literal talking animals and anti-scientific nonsense. So there's so many things in the book that we know are false. Why would we then believe the things that are probably false to suddenly be true when the book has shown itself to be untrustworthy and uncontradictory? The main reasons I do not believe in any particular deity is because it's simply illogical. It doesn't make logical sense that the most powerful creator in the universe would make us and then have such a fragile ego that if a few of his tiny creation didn't quite believe in him, he would torture them for eternity because his feelings are so hurt. Really, this is the creator of the universe. This is the most intelligent being who has ever existed who has always existed, the Alpha, the Omega. And he's so upset and has a fractured ego because a little atheist named David C. Smalley doesn't quite believe him. That he then sets me on fire for eternity. It's just completely illogical. And any evidence that ever is presented about this so-called God, it always ends up being in faith. Stewart mentioned the resurrection. And then he says, the resurrection, this guy claimed to see him, claimed, wrote down in a language you don't read, translated, passed down hundreds of years, thousands of years. This is you just believe the people who wrote stuff down. That's really what this means. That doesn't mean that evidence is true. It means you believe the guy who wrote this down who you don't know. You don't know if he had any political persuasions. You don't know if he had opportunities to take over and be in power. You just don't know. Another big one is the problem of evil, the immense amount of suffering in the world. If there is a God who loved us, and Stewart just mentioned that our morality is evidence of a good God. I think the Bible is evidence that God is anything but good. If he does exist and morality came from something, it seems like that morality, as good as people are most of the time, did not come from God. Because every most people, actually every person I've ever met is better than the God of the Bible, morally speaking. And we can get into that if you want, Stewart. But the amount of immense suffering that goes on and on and on is evidence against there being a God, probably. And then divine hiddenness, which I believe Stewart and I got into as well, either on my podcast or on the show previously, it all runs together after a while and so many beers. But I'll say that divine hiddenness is quite curious because I'm this puny little human being on a planet that God created. And God finds it to be my responsibility to seek him with my fallibility and tiny human brain with limited understanding. Yet he knows that both of us exist, but he doesn't reach out to prove to me that he exists in a way that I would understand and begin to worship him. I had a psychic on my show a few months ago. And he told, my daughter was with me in studio. And he told me that my daughter had spirit guides standing behind her, looking at my face, laughing at me and mocking me because I didn't believe in psychics. And I said, so her spirit guides are looking at my face and laughing. And he said, yes. And I said, well, I just wrote a word down on this note pad and I pushed it in front of my daughter. Have your spirit guides tell me what word that is and I'll believe you. Do you think he did it? No, he couldn't. When it came time to actually prove it in real life, he backpedaled, well, they know you're testing them. That's not how this works. They're not giving me any signals. They're upset that you're not believing. If they were just mocking me and laughing, why won't they show themselves to the person with an audience calling bullshit on this entire thing? So God has every opportunity in the world to show himself to me in a way that I would believe. And I would tell my thousands of podcast subscribers, this is a real thing and here's my real experience. And finally, God's just not necessary. He's just not. We're not perfect, but if you look at human progress over time, the things that we have done, egalitarianism, women's rights, ending slavery, stopping the brutal sex trafficking and human trafficking and all these terrible things that humans have done, we are also correcting over time. God had every opportunity in the world to correct these things with a single commandment and did not. He allowed slavery. He allowed women to be subservient. In fact, he ordered both, take slaves from these people, do not rule over your own people ruthlessly. It's all throughout the Bible that he was condoning it and okay with it. And this is not some indentured servitude. If you look in Leviticus, it specifically says that you could pass down your slaves to your children because they are your property. Humans fix those mistakes. Humans corrected the things that God never addressed in the Bible. So my position when asked, does God exist? Which one? I don't know, probably not. Stewart's answer is, oh yeah, definitely I know he exists. And by the way, he agrees with me on everything. And by the way, here's who you should sleep with and here's how you should behave. That's how much I know God exists. That to me is a gigantic leap of faith that requires an extraordinary amount of evidence. And clearly, since this question has been debated for thousands of years, nobody has sufficiently answered that question. Thank you very much, David, for that opening statement as well. And with that, folks, we are going to jump into the open conversation. Well, as you know, upcoming debates, we got a juicy one tomorrow on Saturday nights. It gets weird sometimes. We are debating whether or not giants in the past existed. It's going to be an epic one. You don't want to miss it. So hit that subscribe button so you don't miss it, as well as a lot of other juicy debates coming up. And last, before we jump into the open conversation, our guests are linked in the description. I highly encourage you, folks, if you haven't already checked them out, those links are waiting for you and that includes, if you're listening via the podcast, we put our links for the guests in the description there as well. So with that, we'll jump in open conversation, gentlemen. The floor is all yours. Thank you for wiping the floor with me, Stuart. I appreciate it. So, you know, I, fascinating, a lot of fascinating thoughts right there. One to begin with right out of the gate, because it was the last thing you said. I believe in a God who agrees with me on everything. That could not be further from the truth. This is not a God I've created in my own image. God disagree, if I had to put a number on it, I probably disagree with, in terms of my comfort and how I'm hardwired and my desires, I probably disagree with like 80% on what God commands me to do. Give me an example. I would say a strong 80. Hold on, I don't believe you. Give me an example. Sex, lust, God's- No, no, no, hold on, hold on, no, no, no. You have the desire to have sex, but you agree with God that it's immoral to do so out of marriage. So, what's your point then? What's your point? You still agree with God. You having the desire doesn't mean you disagree with God. It means you wish you didn't have the desire because you agree with God that it's a bad thing. Sure, but this is Thomas Nagel and Grace. Tell me something that you disagree with God on. I'm getting there, but you're getting at psychology now. So, all these guys would say, Nagel and all these guys would say we're strong. Nagel's considered arguably one of the top academics like in the world right now, strong atheist. And he said to your point on psychology, we all have intense reasons to not want there to be a God. And so for me, you're getting at, okay, I have intense reasons that I want there to be a God and he agrees with me on everything. My whole point is, yes, you're right. He agrees with me on everything in the sense of, I do believe that that's the correct world view and that he is all good and all loving and all knowing. But in terms of what he calls me to, that goes against the grain completely. That's why this whole idea of this father figure in the sky who's gonna protect little Stewie and get me safely to heaven so I don't have to worry about anything doesn't really line up whatsoever. Well, for now there's a level of that. But there's way more of he gets in the way. Just God gets in the way. Yeah, yeah. By the way, from now on, I'm calling you little Stewie. I think that God's putting rules and laws into place that go against your natural born instinct of sex or attraction or working on the Sabbath or whatever you wanna say, you're not disagreeing with God that it's bad. You're not saying that you know better than God. You agree with God on all of the things that he has set forth as far as these moral laws that are in the Bible. You agree with him on all of those. You believe same sex marriages are immoral, right? God said so, you believe that, correct? The ethics in scripture. Yes, I agree with that are laid out. Okay, I don't agree with any of that. I think that there are basic biological scientific understandings for why two men can fall in love with one another. I'm not one of those men, but I totally get it. And I understand how I couldn't force myself to be attracted to a man any more than a gay man can force himself to be attracted to a woman and want to marry a woman. So I understand the science behind it and the medical journals behind it, but you latch on to an ancient biblical text written by Bronze Age fishermen and say that your God knows better than modern-day science and medical professionals. And so you're willing to label something as immoral that has been understood for several years now, like 30 to 50 years now, understood medically and scientifically, but you think God agrees with you. So once again, you may look at a rule and say, oh, I'd really like to have sex with all these other women, even though I'm married. And God says that's immoral, so I won't do it, but you also agree that that's immoral, right? You think that God agrees with your political opinions, right Stuart? Like you, whoever you voted for, you're pretty sure God is good with that and that God agrees with your moral decisions around voting for. If I were to look at that God, I would say he probably disagrees with almost everything that I do, because I think he's a terrible, terrible being if he exists. So one thing, there was a lot there. Okay. Good stuff, good stuff. That's what I do. Give you a couple there. I would say one though, I mean, you're one on sex ethics breaks down because if you wanna take it from an evolutionary standpoint or even modern medicine, I mean, look at Sigmund Freud and how he changed the culture. Look at the whole hippie movement. I mean, polyamorous marriages, thank God are increasing because they should be from a scientific standpoint like you say, because the Christian faith is repressive and I should be spilling my semen with any woman out there, despite me being married, any woman out there that I see, I mean, from your perspective, why wouldn't you do that just because it's unfair to your wife or because it's a marriage couple, like piece of paper. No, no, no, it's because an agreement between two consenting adults to remain exclusive is a bond between those two people. And if they agree that it's an exclusive relationship, then that's the right thing to do objectively to stand by your own agreement. Period. So as a sensible maid though, which you can become a free rider, I would be a free rider from that perspective right there. And if my wife is never gonna find out if I cheat on her, I'm gonna do it every time. I mean, seriously, she's never gonna find out, man. So who cares? What, oh my conscience. Oh, wait a second, I don't have a conscience. Oh, wait, moral objectivity. Wait, wait, wait, why would you not have a conscience? Why would you not care? Why is it, Stuart, that you believe God is required for you to do the right thing by your wife? Break that down more because that could go in a number of different directions. Well, what you're saying is if your wife would never find out and there was no God, you would cheat on your wife constantly because there's no consequences. I'm telling you that if I were married and in a committed relationship like that, when I make that promise to that person, my loyalty, my integrity, mean something to me. And the fact that I made that promise to her mean something to me. So if I go and cheat on her, I'm not going to feel like myself. I'm gonna have guilt, I'm gonna have compassion, I'm gonna have sadness, I'm gonna feel dishonest, and I'm gonna feel disconnected from her. I don't want those things to happen. So I avoid that behavior and I remain loyal to my wife, no God required. The fact that you need a God watching over you to make sure you don't go cheat on your wife, I think says more about you than it does the God. So I would agree with some of that. I think parts of that you could take and say, it gets back to my point on good without God. Dostoevsky when he talked about, if you're an atheist, if there's no God, all things are permissible. He's saying objectively speaking, all things are permissible, but he's saying that doesn't mean atheists are bad people. Just like right now, I'm not saying atheists are bad people. I said, David, from your perspective, from your worldview, you could be a good person, but not a great person. I don't think the conclusion matches up with the premise because I think it's beautiful of you to be loyal. It's fantastic. I think that's nice. So then answer my question. I can wait out in a more... So then answer my question. Why is it that you need an overseer for you to do the right thing, but I don't require an overseer for me to do the right thing? I'm glad you asked that because I don't need, it doesn't require, there's no requirement there. Instead, it's what is going to give you the real motivation to not cheat? And where do you get, because you said right, it's right of me to not do that. Right. How do you get right? See, because I'm getting my rightness, you're probably an atheistic Platonist of some sort, right? Am I right? Maybe. Yes. All right, I got lucky. I got very lucky. So there's these nice virtues just kind of hanging in the air, supposedly coming down to rest upon us, where there's a form of justice and love and peace, but there's no personhood. There's no person attached to these. When we think of justice, loving somebody, you always attach that to a person. To have a personal creator, who you can call God or just a personhood makes entirely more sense, not just because when we think of these virtues, we don't just think of some vague, ethical, hanging, transcendent principles. No, we think of a person that it's always connected to, and then connected to that, there's obligation and duty to go about seeking justice, to go about loving your spouse and not cheating on her. Does that make sense? I don't see that it comes from outside, though, Stuart. That's the difference between us. I don't see as it being a lawgiver or providing us with a set of rules, and that's why I have to follow them because it's coming from something more powerful than me. Our morality, our compassion, our guilt, it comes from within due to evolution. We evolved as a social species to meet the expectations of the other creatures we were living with. So if the two of us are out building a fence for the village and another guy who is physically fit and about our age who could be helping us and chooses to just lie around, he's gonna hear from us, right? I don't know what we would say to him, but clearly we are the ones putting in work, we are the ones more likely to have mates, to have things because we're out working for it, and he's not pulling his weight. So somewhere along the line, we developed this ability to feel guilty. We developed this concept of integrity and say, I want to be a good person. I wanna do the right thing. And for you to say, well, unless you believe in this invisible creature that apparently was okay with slavery and keeping women subservient, you can't say anything is right. That blows my mind. Like there are tons of examples and YouTube videos, TikTok videos, whatever, of animals behaving in a moral way of what we would consider low level mammals like dogs or whatever, saving another dog from traffic or a bear watching a bird drowned and swipes it out of the water to save itself. There are videos of hippos saving gazelles from the mouth of a crocodile. Why? Why would they care? Do you think they have God's laws written upon their hippo hearts? I mean, no, there is an evolutionary connection with animals that we have mirror neurons. We know that that yelping and that struggle is hard and is painful. The facts of reality show us that something suffering is not good for that thing's survival. And most people, most animals, most creatures will attempt to stop suffering. If someone breaks into your house and you have a dog and that person is attacking you, the dog will probably try to bite the person. Sometimes they run away, but they don't want you to be hurt. Now, why would they give a damn if they don't know anything about God? Why would your dog care if you're just murdered? Why would they care? I mean, this idea that we have to have a God to love one another and do the right thing and not cheat on our wives is crazy to me because God did the worst things imaginable. God did things to human beings that humans have never done to one another. The worst humans, like the worst humans still did not necessarily create the carnage and destruction that God has. If you include him watching things, allowing things, literally creating evil Isaiah 45-7, creating the ability for cancer in three-year-olds. Across the board, God is objectively horrific. Wait, cancer in three-year-olds and Isaiah? This is new to me. In Isaiah 45-7, God said, I created evil. Oh, I thought you were talking, wait, wait, wait. So my point is when you talk about morality and you talk about goodness, literally everything that is horrifically evil was created by your guy who you claim is good. If I had been in that situation, if I had been the creator, I would not have made that a possibility. He took some stuff off the table, right? We can't fly, Stuart. I mean, little Stewie. We can't jump over the buildings, little Stewie, but you know what? We could get cancer when we're three because God, for some reason, your good God put that on the list of stuff that's quite all right for humans to experience. So no flying, no jumping over buildings, but cancer in three-year-olds quite all right with your guy. And you're telling me he's the source of the good stuff I do? I don't see you saying it. All right, little Davey Crockett. I think you are completely, first of all, I have never heard somebody rip that sucker right out of context like you did with Isaiah 45-7 there. Everything in scripture clearly talks about a free will, a certain fallen angel, evil, the devil being obviously the incarnate of all of darkness and God being light. Jesus, entire gospel is written about him being light, whether it's John or 1st, 2nd and 3rd John and how he goes after goodness. I don't think you can make the argument that Jesus was all about creating evil. I mean, what do you want to go to Matthew 10 talking about how Jesus said, pick up a sword? I mean, what do you want to say? Well, Matthew 10, well 1034, we can look at 1034 specifically. You want to say, Luke, I mean, there's so many, it's just contextually speaking, that is such an easy one, it's scary. But I think let's stay on what we were talking about here. I mean, we can go to- If it's that easy to deal with it. If it's that easy to deal with it. We can go to exegeting scripture. Yeah, so Aaron Roth pushed me on this one too. He didn't push me on Matthew 10, but he pushed me on Luke nine. They are radical claims of what does discipleship look like? So when you get, no, you cannot bury your own father. No, you cannot say goodbye to your family. That is showing, not literally, Jesus is being like, hey, I hate your family. I think your dead dad is kind of a joke. No, clearly, like every commentator would tell you, any legit honest commentator would tell you, no, it's showing the extreme difference in relational integrity and desire from God down to human being. So I'm supposed to love God that much more than my dad or my family, but I'm supposed to love my dad and my family tremendously. Well, no, wait, wait, we're going back to, we're going back to your, because this is one of my main points and you were going here. So why do you think then, David, that moral values can get attached to natural states of affairs based off of your Platonism? So when I ask you a question, you just change my question, avoid it all together and then ask me one. No, this is one of my big three points. One of my big three points. Attack one of my three points. Listen, I'll be happy to answer your question, but I won't be the only one doing so. So my question to you was, who created cancer in children? Nobody created it. Read your Bible, Isaiah 45-7. Do you have it in front of you? I do, right here. Pull up the scripture, Isaiah 45-7. Absolutely, so I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. Create evil is what you're after. I don't see anything on children, three-year-old children in cancer, but you're creating evil. You think that literally God is saying that. No, he's talking about destruction, serious judgment that you have throughout the entire Old Testament. You're not actually saying that I create all different types of evil atrocity just for the sake of creating it. So, so, so something- Right, now you're gonna answer my question. So, so something- And I guess that you were a moral Platonist and you got a- I just wanted to know if something can exist without God creating it. No, God creates all things. So God created cancer in children? No, he's the source of goodness. That gets back to free will and the sin problem. You just said nothing can exist without God creating it. Cancer in children exists, but God didn't create it. No, no, no. You're contradicting yourself. No, no, no, no. Because you're missing the point of he creates things perfectly good, but then free will comes into play. Okay. And then brokenness from a cosmic, sociological, relational- Right, but cancer wouldn't even be an option had God not created it, correct? Had God not created it? See, I think, David, what you wanna be saying instead is couldn't have God created things in such a way where they could have been different, like not giving us a free will to have the opportunity to mess things up in such a way where like natural disasters happen or evil eventually comes about with something like cancer connected to it. If it exists, God created it. Cancer in children exists. Therefore, God created cancer in children. It couldn't be a more simple logical syllogism. So that's what Christianity teaches. Like, are you asking me a question because James said it's your turn to talk. I mean, I'll answer, but I don't wanna take up all the time. You want me to answer that? Well, my understanding was this is sort of a cross-exam period, right, James? Or I get to ask Stuart questions? He's more gracious. For folks, because I'm long-winded over here. Dave was putting me on the hot seat, though. I need long-winded answers, no worries. Well, I mean, I think it's clear. And I think anyone who believes in a God who created everything and anyone who believes that God, that the Bible is divinely inspired, when God says in Isaiah 45-7, I created the light and the darkness, I created evil, I the Lord do all these things. It logically follows that if something exists, God created it. Hell, God created it. Satan, God created it. The Philadelphia Eagles, God created it. All of the terrible things on the planet was created by God, right? Period. So if someone says there is cancer in this child, what your position is, Stuart, is that the most amazing being in the entire universe, the source of morality created cancer in children. And I cannot wrap my head around why you're fine with that position. And clearly you're not. And I think what we're seeing is the cognitive dissonance happening live during this feed, because you flat out said, yes, everything that exists was created by God. So I say cancer exists in children. Therefore cancer in children was created by God. No, blah, blah, free will. No, no, no. Free will can have consequences, sure. But cancer in children wouldn't have been an option unless God created it. So either God created everything or some things can be existing without God having created it. But you can't get both, Stuart. If God created everything, he created cancer in children. And you still believe that he is the source of morality. Please make that make sense for me. So I already partially gave my answer. I could go through the entire Evangicube, if you'd like me to, and answer that question. But I think the cognitive dissonance piece, David, is fully on your shoulders. Because from an evolutionary perspective, why are you getting so upset about this? Like, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Why are you, I mean, I love that you have so much righteous indignation towards evil and suffering, but why does it bug you so much from an evolutionary perspective? Because you vote. Because I vote? Expand on that. You vote. You make decisions that affect my life. You drive next to me on the freeway. And if you let Jesus take the wheel, we're both screwed. You have children and you're raising children that I think should be helping humanity in the future. And you're teaching them about demons and darkness and evil and that gays are inherently terrible and blah, blah, blah. You are a contributor to society and I share a planet with you and I need you to give a damn about humanity instead of serving an invisible, non-existent, terrible, horrific monster. Would you like to see the statistics? Would you like to see the statistics? Not only currently on who is doing the most for poverty, hunger, hospitals, giving, but also who started, who built those hospitals? For you to say that we're a leech and that all of a sudden, you know, all Christians are part of the KKK and white supremacists. I mean, it's like me going to, it's like me taking you to all of a sudden, you know, let's go back to the USSR, let's go back to the soldier who is documented, the soldier who said, I think the God that I don't believe in because I'm an atheist, I thank him that he does not exist so I can kill each and every one of these prisoner of war campers one by one. That makes it. So again, David, you just did a little bit of scooching. I think your slip is showing a little bit. No, no, no, no. Why? Why from an evolutionary perspective? You ultimately, again, you can, I'm fine with you saying, I don't think it's cognitively dissonant for you to say, hey, I just feel these things like kind of evolution gave me this, but you're speaking in such, you know where I'm going to go right now. I don't have to say it, but I'm going to say it. You're speaking from such this perspective so much indignation and you're talking about it in a way where there's moral obligation, where there's duties, like I have this duty not to indoctrinate and cataclyse my child because I'm brainwashing them and they're going to end up being homeschooled and watching the chosen. And that's just going to harm them all life long. Like why, again, evolutionary speaking from your moral Platonism connected to evolution somehow, it seems like you're kind of a mutt. You got it all there. I think that's cheating. But from that perspective, again, why are you impinging on me in such kind of this like moral obligation, these duties? Like I shouldn't have any types of duties. It should be my prerogative. That's another thing you're judging me and that's not very sexy from a secular atheistic perspective. I mean, let me live the way I want to live and I'll let you live the way you want to live. But don't be a dogmatist about it. No, because you vote. And I don't know where you got, I don't know where you got that all Christians are in the KKK like that's a, even for you Stuart, that's a new level of absolute strawman. But I'll get into your Platonist questions now if you want to, I don't care really. But I never said that. I never said you all KKK. You asked why, why I had this righteous indignation. Why does it bother me that people say this? It just because you vote, you have a say in our shared community, period. The kids and stuff, there were those were examples. The idea is that you don't live in a bubble. That's the point. If you lived in a bubble by yourself and only affected you, fine. If you want to have this utopia libertarian dream world where you only take what you make and you only build and you only eat what you grow and then you die and no one's affected by it, fine. Libertarians are like, I shouldn't have to wear my seatbelt. Okay, who's going to scrape your body off the road when you fly through your windshield, dipshit? Like think about other people, right? So we do share a society. So you believing that gay people should not be married gives you a right to vote on those issues. So I care that you believe true things and disbelieve wrong things. And that's why it matters to me. So it does matter. I think over what you're saying. Who would ever say that I, Stewart Connectly would vote against gay marriage? I mean, you said you thought it was immoral. So I assumed you would. I would never though vote necessarily against it. That's completely different. Now you're getting to legalities. I know so many Christians actually probably the vast majority of Christians I know who do see it as that there's, it's not the intention of what God really intended for marriage and yet they don't vote against it. To be clear, that individual topic, Stewart could be an entire discussion of a project or a debate or whatever. I was answering your challenge. Would probably win too, David. Probably why I care. The point would be why I care. Why I care is because you have a say in the society I live in. You're not in a bubble. Sure, but okay, if you're missing what I'm saying though because I didn't mean to say that because I thank God we agree on something. That's one thing we agree on. What is real tolerance I think you're getting at? What is, why do we have freedom of speech? I think you're touching on a little bit there. But my main point was again, every single philosopher, atheist or Christian or agnostic has always said unless you have a bunch of names for me right now has always said and it's made sense to me I'm not gonna force this upon you but to me you can get moral feelings, emotions, proclivities from an evolutionary based morality but you cannot go to obligations and duties and the shoulds. What you're talking about is David Hume. Well that's where I was going. You're talking about David Hume and the is, ought situation. I disagree. I think we can, but none of that has anything to do with evidence for God. Because me failing, like if you wanna come on my show and talk about morality, we could do that. If you wanna schedule and have a debate on morality we could do that. But me failing to prove, even if I failed miserably to provide moral absolutes from an atheist perspective that's not evidence that your God exists Stuart. It's not. It could be evidence of Zeus. It could be evidence of Allah. It could be evidence of Krishna. It has nothing to do with it. So I'm still waiting for halfway through this debate is for you to prove that your God exists. Well, first of all, prove. First of all, prove you need, that needs to be scientific. And secondly, everybody disagrees. The majority of people I know disagree on what exactly proof is. So you're gonna get yourself in trouble with the word proof right there, based off of evidence. I mean, it goes back to my question. Like David, David, do you believe that atheism is a faith? No. You don't believe it is? No, it's the answer to one question. You don't believe it is? I do not have a belief that it is. You have a belief that it's not. No, I don't think I'm getting at it. No, Stuart, Stuart, Stuart, you're missing the point, man. It's a belief. Well, that's for what? I like that you're moving. Hold on, do you believe that not collecting stamps is a hobby? I'm not going political, because I'm sure. Oh, now you're gonna avoid the question. I'm not gonna, it's not political. I said not collecting stamps. Is that a hobby? Is that a hobby? Is it a hobby to not collect stamps? No, I'm impartial on it. Okay, then I'm maybe Platonist. How fun is this? All right, I like that you're, I won't say skirting. I'll say I like that you're actually pushing us off the moral argument. So again, I'm glad you did not get the moral argument wrong there though, because yes, the moral argument does not mean I'm a Christian if I can prove it to be true. No, that simply is saying that there is a God. At least there's a mind, there's a mind. And whether that's Hinduism makes more sense than atheism, Buddhism from the moral perspective, moral objectives makes more sense, not the atheistic ones, obviously, makes more sense than atheism. Even heck, Islam, I would take it over atheism on the moral argument. No, then you have to get into the resurrection, which is not gonna be true. So that's the piece there. Well, I'm not talking about ethics. I'm not talking about ethics, which has better ethics. Do you think in general humanists who do not believe in a God treat other human beings worse? Then- You're missing it. No, I'm not. Then governments run under Sharia law? No, you're totally missing it. I'm not talking about the ethics of different religious groups. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the moral transcendence. Is there a mind behind objective morals? If you wanna play in the mud with ethics in different religious groups, I can do that. But you're totally- I would like what I would like to do, and I think the people who clicked on this link, they would like to hear evidence for your God existence. But you won't let me give my three points. I'm ready. You're ready, all right. Okay, so we're not doing rebuttals. We're gonna get deeper into my three points. One of them we've been doing, it's been the moral argument, but you've been a little slippery on me there. Hey, I have a napkin. I have a napkin, and I'm ready to write down your three arguments, so let's go. You should have done this. It's napkin. First stroke, you should have done this. All right, well, first of all, your original statement on beer, it actually has a very, there is a, I'm just kidding. Is this your first point? Science, science. All right, I gave all of my points. I'm not just gonna give all my points on science again. I'll go back to the ones you disagreed with. So, one of them that you disagreed with was this type of smart guy. It was a legit point you made. 16th, 17th century, when it comes to Kepler, Galileo, Newton, on and on and on, all these guys who supposedly were Christians. I'm not saying because they were so smart, which obviously they were, that we should kind of like become Christians or start considering God because of them. No, my point is that they saw something behind it all that was pushing. That's why so much of the US became deistic in the 18th century. I mean, atheism was totally on the run because everybody was saying, okay, wait a second, there's mathematics, there's all these laws. There's gotta be somebody behind it, at least some type of mind behind it. So the point is more so they saw these laws and they said law giver. I'm not saying let's believe them because they're very, very smart. No, they saw intelligibility and so they thought intelligent mind behind it all. Kind of makes sense. I mean- My point was that these guys didn't know where germs came from. So it's the same thing when like people talk about our founding fathers as though they were brilliant. I'm like, calm down. They would flip out if they saw an iPhone. Let's not act like these guys are geniuses. So I just, yeah, that's fine that they, for their time, they were good for their time, but I would be willing to have the debate with you all day that if Newton were alive today, he would be an atheist. He followed the evidence where it led and because he didn't know how the planets orbited, he was like, there's gotta be something powerful. And I'll go on out on a limb here and I'll say, if I were alive in the 1500s, I probably would have been a Christian too. There have been so many things that were mysterious to me that I didn't quite understand. Thunder clapping, lightning going through the sky, planets orbiting, me staying and watching these stars fly through the sky. I would have been like, there's something very powerful doing this, right? That's not my point though. I agree with that actually, but and that's not the point of what I was saying right there. Okay. So I won't say that again, but I agree with you there in terms of, yeah, there was a lot of mysticism. There was a lot of magic. I mean, again, I think, I think it was like one atheistic philosopher said when it came to fine tuning, he said, you wanna see the craziest type of magic imaginable to man is this type of fine tuning that the universe, it was waiting. It was like it was waiting in the most intricate way imaginable for us just to show up and say, hey guys, I was waiting for you. It's about time. I mean, I got all the laws in place, all the creativity you can imagine and here you are. And so I think when you talk about God of the gaps, again, I agree if you're talking about some of the ancient Greek gods or pagan gods, but I would say there's more of a science of the gaps than the Judeo-Christian God when it comes to something like the fine tuning argument, because there's still so many scientists are still saying there is so much that we need to catch up on. And we don't think we ever really will on the fine tuning position. Okay, hold on, hold on, stop right there, please. Scientists being willing to say, I don't know, maybe someday we will, maybe we won't is intellectually honest. Yes. But to say, I know, I know all of these. The creator of the universe talks to me before I go to bed. And by the way, here's who you should have sex with. That's your side of the camp. I'm okay with mystery. I'm okay with not knowing. I'm not okay with pretending to know and then pushing others to do the same lest they be tortured for eternity. You're on the wrong side of history, Stuart. No, no, I, that, again, that's not where I was going because I agree with all the points you just made. Okay. I'm not falling asleep at night. Fortunately, I'm not schizophrenic yet. I'm a little mentally off at this point, but I'm not hearing God's whisper, gentle whisper and touch as I go to sleep at night saying, hey Stuart, don't forget Wheaties instead of Pebbles tomorrow morning. No, he said little Stewie and you know what? Little Stewie, little Stewie and Davey Crockett. So I, you know, I agree with you on that. But again, I don't know, like, are you, you're speaking now to young earthers. I'm not a young earther. When it comes to, you're saying the Bible gives you science and it's wrong because you said that earlier and it's kind of where you're going now. Well, that's not a great, I mean, I agree it would be wrong. If you take it as a scientific textbook, it is dead wrong, but I don't think it's a scientific textbook. Do you? Okay, no, but then why do you think- I think there's history in it, historical narrative. Okay, but why do you think God would, okay, but why do you think God in a book that is designed to tell us about his message and have us believe in him in order to save our souls would allow things to be in the book that were provably anti-scientific. Yeah, which ones are you thinking of? If he wanted us to believe, why would he allow it to be sprinkled with bullshit? Like the sun stopping in the middle of the sky, the talking donkey, the story of Genesis and the Garden of Eden, the talking serpent, Jesus walking on water, rubbing mud and spit in someone's eye to cure blindness, random things like that. So your point is, because of the talking donkeys, for example, he's a God of deception, especially when it comes to modern day science. And so we have a lot of kids worrying and scared of donkeys because they might talk to them. Wow, you somehow, once again, took your own championship belt for the worst straw man I've ever had. So congratulations on that. I should just mail them to you. I gotta catch you. I gotta catch you. So what I mean by that is a book that tells me that there is a God and I go, I don't know that I believe that. Okay, let's see if the book is credible. When the book says that a man in a donkey had a conversation, I go, well, that's not possible. And later on in the book or early on in the book, when it says there were three evenings and three mornings before there was ever a sun and a moon, I go, well, that's a little weird. So I make that note. And then we just go on and on about, oh, now there were the 10 commandments. And then the 10 commandments were broken. And then another set of 10 commandments came down and Moses said they would be the same spoiler. They were not the same. There's two sets of 10 commandments and a lot of people don't know that. And then we just keep going and going and going about these crazy things that said they were gonna happen and they didn't, Bible contradictions down to the color of the scarf or the robe that Jesus had, was it scarlet or was it red? All of these different issues now makes me look at the Bible and go, we have a talking donkey, a talking snake, a virgin who got pregnant, a person who dies and then is raised from the dead after three days and then literally floats upward in sight of all men, which makes it sound like a flat earth book because clearly on a sphere, not all men could see that unless he was just being sort of vague with its terminology. Then we just start getting into this, I don't trust the book. We can prove several of these things to be scientifically false. Therefore we can go, okay, let's go back. Genesis is now poetry. It was written as poetry. It was never meant to be taken literally. The story of Balaam and the donkey, it's a fable. It's got a talking donkey. It was never supposed to be true. So then we started going, okay, let's look at it more realistically. So Jesus walking across water, it was just a euphemism. No, he literally walked across water. Wait, what, really? No, he literally rose from the dead. Oh, and he literally floated up to heaven. Where did he go past the clouds and the atmosphere, past the ozone layer? At some point did he burn up? Where did he disintegrate to? My point is all of it starts to fall apart. And I go, now that I see all of these things that are anti-scientific claims, now I go, well, hell, if I can prove these things wrong, that it claims are real, when it comes to the stuff I didn't know about, I don't believe it because the book has lost all credibility with all of this silliness. That's my point. So why would God allow there to be things in the Bible that are terribly anti-scientific if he wanted us to believe the words in the book? You would think he would be spot on with the stuff we could prove so that we would be more likely to believe the extraordinary claims, but he allowed it to be put out with nonsense in it for us to call bullshit on it and say, this book is wrong about so many things, therefore the logical conclusion is Stuart that it's wrong about the extraordinary miracles. Well, I mean, it would be nice if the Bible was more scientific, I agree. I think God would then have to update the science every two years, perhaps, to do justice to kind of what you're asking for. So maybe his finger could just kind of come down and shoot into all of our Bibles and update all the science every two years. That would be nice. That would be very nice. Like an iPhone update. There you go. Push it out. But I'm glad you did. I'm glad you were honest though, David, and saying that there are different genres throughout scripture. Yeah, of course. 40 different authors, probably even more. 43. 43, sure. And so I think it's important to obviously look at that. I think it is important to give the Bible credit where credit is due on, say for example, if you go over to Israel, you're gonna go out with a Sherpa to look at some of the ancient ruins. I guarantee you the one you go out with, Christian or not, will take the book of Acts with him or her. Sorry to gender them. With him or her, they will take the book of Acts because of the reliability of the archeology and what is there in the book of Acts. Now, again, I don't see people when it comes to what you're talking about right now. I don't interact with many Christians who are like so lost in the science. Like, now wait a second, the sun, where are we at now with the sun? Are we rotating around the sun? I mean, obviously there are flat earthers out there, but I wouldn't say the vast majority of flat earthers are Christians. But I get your struggle because it did. There was a paradigm shift that it took, but just like Aristotle. How long did the Aristotle paradigm shift take? The, I've never met a flat earther who was not a Christian. Wow, Kyrie Irving, one of the best point guards in the NBA. Is he not a Christian? Definitely not a Christian. Oh, definitely not. All right, I'm interested now. I had to look him up. I mean, I barely come across any, so I would want to talk to the Christians, you know. Regardless, the overall point that you're making, which again is a legitimate one, I think the moral repugnancy of some of the Old Testament is tougher to get out from underneath. But I think it's still a bigger issue that you look at, for example, like the book of Exodus or Judges in Exodus, or you went to Genesis. Well, do Joshua, do Joshua 10, 13? No, but I'm giving examples right now for one way of interpreting because you brought up interpretation. Well, Joshua... Here are the examples, because you went to Genesis. And we can go to Joshua. But Genesis is poetry. Genesis is poetry. I don't know. Genesis chapter two is written as a little bit more history. And people actually got on the ball scientifically in terms of saying, oh, wow, maybe there is a pattern there. But they would be contradicting each other if you weren't right on Genesis one being song and poetry. But this also gets at in terms of interpretation. If you get Exodus, for example, or the book of Judges, you have in Exodus the crossing of the Red Sea, very anti-scientific, by the way. And then you have a song afterwards that is very artistic and it's very irrational. And you can say the crossing of the Red Sea is rational. Yes, I would say a miracle happened. David Hume was wrong right there. But then it makes even more sense when it comes to the book of Judges, where you have Miriam, or excuse me, no, it's Ezra. Ezra in, because it's Miriam in Exodus, Ezra in Judges, where the Israelites are fighting the Ammonites. And the historical account is right there given by Ezra talking about how this battle went down. And then the next chapter, you have the stars fighting for the Israelites. I mean, how anti-scientific the stars are fighting for the Israelites? No, no, it's poetry, it's song. And that comes just like I stated. Genesis one and two, Exodus 18. I believe it's Exodus 18, check me on that. And then Judges three and four, where it's the historical event song, historical event song. So it's so important to look at the literary style before hopping to like, wait a second here, those stars aren't supposed to be singing. I think they were talking about the Dallas hockey team. What about Joshua 1013? You know your scripture brother. Let me know, what does that one say? I'm impressed. It's about the sun stopping in the middle of the sky. The moon stopped, the sun stopped until the nation avenged itself. It was a whole, in the presence of the Lord, oh sun stop in the sky and then the sun stopped and said, the sun's gonna stay here until you avenge this nation or something like that. And so we know that that's literally impossible, physically impossible. If the sun stopped, I talked to Neil deGrasse Tyson about this, one of the times he was on the podcast and he was just like, yeah, that would, do you realize the catastrophe that would happen if the sun froze in our skies? There would be nothing left. Like we would just completely be, you know, destroyed. So yeah, and Joshua, so Joshua's not written as poetry, I don't believe. I think Joshua's supposed to be taken as historical truth, yet there is this extremely anti-scientific account of the sun and moon freezing in the sky as though the earth's rotation has stopped. So once again, to my original question, why would God, if he wanted us to believe this book, allow anti-scientific nonsense to be put into a book that we are supposed to believe? Well, I thank God for the Galileo types who come around and fix the theology to match natural science. And I think there are countless examples. There are so many, you know, I want to add to your good one, is there, more churches probably than you realize that have snake handling going on. I mean, is God a God of deception there? I mean, come on, maybe. And so I think all of these again, there are questions. I would say like women to be silent in church. All right, I know contextually I can make sense of all that. But why is that in there? Because some people have gotten that wrong and misogyny is a real thing. Some people have used that. So here's what I'm agreeing with you. Have used that in a way to say, here we go, I can be sexist now. And you have to shut up. And John MacArthur, by the way, says that a seventh grade girl can't even teach a boy younger than her. And that's John MacArthur pastor of a gigantic church. So I agree with you on the frustrations there. But if you look into contextually speaking in the New Testament, because we have to go back, I mean, you know this, David, 5,800 copies, probably even more now in the New Testament, what do we have like a hundred of the old? And what do you have? I mean, how much closer are we in terms of years to the New Testament era than the Old Testament? So obviously we're gonna look at the New Testament, say, okay, this is history in a pretty clear way, is it not? But then you have to say, Jesus took the Old Testament pretty importantly, he stated it, so should we? But I wouldn't hop right to Joshua with the grade type. What do you mean? What do you mean? There was no New Testament in the time of Jesus. No, no. What I'm talking about is the gospel writers and take Jesus out of what I'm saying right now in terms of how are we digging when it comes to looking at things historically and whether they actually occurred in the way it's stated. Like they occurred. For example, you're not gonna have apologists, you're not gonna have apologists coming on your show anytime soon and be like, hey, let me debate you on, I mean, James is able to stomach it in a way that's pretty impressive. Let me debate you on a lot of these Old Testament archeological topics. No, typically you're going to have the resurrection and that's smart of an apologist to do because we're so much closer to that time period and we have so many more manuscripts, it's scary. Okay, so back onto your point about Paul and misogyny, you look at 1 Corinthians 1434, you look at 1 Timothy 2, 11 and 12, both of which written by Paul are where he's talking about women should remain silent in the churches, a woman should not speak. It is shameful for women to speak in the church. If she has questions, she should ask her husbands at home. A woman should not assert authority over a man but to remain silent and submissive for the man as the head of the household throughout 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, every bit of this is Paul. And then you get into Romans where he talks about it more than gets into Romans 126-32 where homosexuality is akin to bestiality and is akin to thievery and robbers and backbiders and anyone who does that is worthy of death and people who support them are worthy of death. All of that came from one guy, Paul, and it's considered New Testament, right? So yeah, we're really close to that stuff. God still, and if you believe, what is it first, Timothy 316, where Paul said that all scripture is God breathed. So maybe a second Timothy 316, I don't remember, it's one of those, but he says all scripture is God breathed. So what he was saying is the stuff that I'm writing came from God. So if God and Malachi 3.6 says that I the Lord do not change. So if God breathed into life, the scripture that Paul was writing about women and God does not change, he believes that today that women should not speak in the church, that the man is the head of the household as Jesus is the head of the church. This was a common theme throughout the New Testament. And that's where these Church of Christ preachers and these mega church pastors, that's where they get this from. And I think biblically, their arguments are sound. I think from a humanist perspective, they're atrocious from an egalitarian perspective, they're atrocious, but these people that are modern day guys out there doing this stuff, they have a biblical reference and they're kind of right when it comes to that. And my point is if God wanted us to believe this book and trust this book, it should make a lot more sense. There should be a lot less horseshit going on and egalitarianism to prove that he in fact is a good God. But in fact, when he instead allows Paul to write this misogynist crap about women and allows the scriptures about slavery and putting people to death over working on the Sabbath and all of these terrible things, it makes it very difficult for guys like you to come onto a debate like this and say not only does God exist, but he is the source of morality. He's the source of good. And you don't even get to use the word good until you believe in my God. It makes it very difficult for your position to be believable because the book has lost all credibility. I didn't say believe in my God, remember? I said, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhist sex that are not atheistic, any transcendent moral order makes more sense in terms of moral objectivity coming to us where we have oughts, where we have shoulds, not just feelings, I feel this way. So I'm not, no, that's missing the argument, right? It's not a feeling, it's an acknowledgement of a fact of reality. And again, I won't get into the moral argument because it's really not what we're supposed to do today. But I will say that it's more about the fact of reality. If there is pain and suffering going on, it's not, you don't have to believe in a God to watch something suffer and know that that's not good for that thing. So something throughout our evolution has told us that the dog whimpering is a bad thing. Do you know why dog toys squeak? Wait, Darwin wouldn't say that. How do you know? Darwin talked about suffering, the point I was making, and C.S. Lewis makes the point too. That's why C.S. Lewis became a Christian as well. Darwin makes the point that he struggled with this whole idea, I mean, he made a lot of points against their counterpoints to a lot of the atheistic thinking. One was the whole idea of, okay, we just evolved from monkeys from a completely blind understanding of how things come about with no orders, because the atheistic worldview. So why are we trusting our minds even to have this conversation? And then he talked about how, why does suffering bother us so much? Even though we are evolved more so, we are taking part in species and we're giving ourselves this incredible type of bravado as more well-formed and higher evolved types of monkeys. I don't know why we give ourselves that much credit and value. And so that's where he's going. And I think to say, C, you took a jump there, because I think again, like one philosopher put it, we all evolved from apes, so let us love one another. That reminded me exactly of what you just said. We all evolved from apes, so let us love one another. Talk about cognitive dissonance, baby. Oh my word. We evolved from apes, raised red and tooth and claws. This is an atheist philosopher, by the way, saying this. Chicago's a cause, totally butchering his name. So let us love one another. No, at what point are all of a sudden we're just evolving into, hey, I would sacrifice my life for you, David. I love you so much and you're so different from me in the political arena and heck, you were out to get my family even at one point, but I still love you and I would sacrifice for you. So that's what this philosopher's saying, it just, it doesn't add up. Wow, no, that's not what he's saying. What he's saying is kind of like Carl Sagan got into with the pale blue dot. I read commentaries on what he's saying, so I know what he's saying, but you can disagree with what he's saying. Okay, what I'm telling you he's saying is that we are all, what differences we may find with one another. We still just all got here by chance and we all evolved and we're all just modern day apes. So take that into perspective when you say, I hate that guy. Just stop and think about, he's another evolved being like you. He's not better or worse or he's not a lower life form. You're not better than him. We're all apes, so let's just love each other. I don't think it's some existential argument of existence that he's making. He's making kind of a philosophical peaceful worldview. When I, have you seen Carl Sagan's pale blue dot thing on YouTube, have you heard? Yeah, a while ago. It's just basically that I think we sent a satellite off towards Saturn or something and it turned around when it got right to a certain point and it took a picture and you can see us in this little bitty blue dot way off in the distance. And he has this beautiful pale blue dot and if people watching, if you haven't seen it, when this debate is over, please open up a new tab, type in pale blue dot. It's gonna be one of the first things that come up. It's beautiful. It's like everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever feared, every leader, every killer of men, every leader of men, every tyrant, every criminal, every love lost, every breakup, everything, every child born, every dictator, everything happened on that tiny speck of dust in the light. It just puts it into perspective that maybe sometimes we take this shit too seriously and we should just experience happiness while happiness is here, spread love, spread positivity and don't try to live our lives according to some ancient invisible overlord that gave us laws through an ancient book with tons of flaws in it. I would rather go on loving my fellow human beings and treating people with respect instead of using this ancient book of fables to divide us. That's the bigger meaning. I don't know where our time is at, but I wanna get to a final question for you. Or it's not a philosophical theoretical. I wanna speak to your heart because I like when you talk about this subject I'm gonna talk to you about. James, how much time do we have? Say this, should definitely be our last question before we go into Q&A. Okay, I'm gonna take a cheap shot before I get too personal here. It's not a cheap shot, I'm just kidding. See, I think it's nice what you said, David, and I'm not totally in disagreement with it, but I think it makes more sense to live by the selfish gene if there is no God. I think it makes more sense for me, at least for me, to really alpha dog it up and really beat out my competition. I mean, if they're drowning and just stick a hose in their mouth and turn that hose on from an atheistic perspective because ultimately it doesn't matter and we came, we evolved from very selfish primates. So why not just continue that way? I know we wanna come together as group. We didn't, you're wrong. And group morality, I know that's important. But again, I think the selfish gene is just as important as what you're stating in terms of, don't try and convince me to be kind. Why do I need to be kind? I mean, okay, I'll be kind again back to the sensible nave. I'll be kind in order to get what I want from you, David, I'll be kind. So we did not evolve as an atheist, I will free ride. We did not evolve from selfish preachers. If you watch, bonobos are our closest relative. I probably have more in common with bonobos than I do you. Bonobos are very kind. They help one another, they feed one another. If one bonobo gets sick, the others help take care of it. They watch each other's babies. They warn each other if there's a predator. They teach each other what fruits are good. They fight wars with other clans for territory because they want there to be food and safety for their own tribe. If someone, if a bonobo or a chimpanzee is caught stealing food from another bonobo, they're punished, they're hit, they're beaten, they're attacked. If they do it repeatedly, they are ostracized from the troop. They're not allowed, they don't get the comforts and the safety of living in a bonobo or chimpanzee troop if they're going to steal. So there is a sort of camaraderie. There are same-sex couples. There are initiations when if the troop is moving along and they come across a female that's out by herself, they check her out, they inspect her, they look into her, they check her for the bugs, they groom her. If they want to accept her into the troop, other females will have sex with her. This is very common. You can look this up and then clear your browser history, obviously. But there is a sense of morality and care among bonobos, among chimpanzees, among gorillas. The silverback gorilla will walk out into the street on his knuckles and stand there and looking at humans as his entire family walks across the street. Why doesn't he just walk off and not give a damn about his kids? Why does he stand there with his chest out, looking at you saying, I dare you to come over here? He's protecting something. He loves something. He cares about something and he's willing to put himself in harm's way for something. We've heard quite often about the mama bear, right? A bear will almost always run away from you, even grizzlies, they'll walk away from you. But if a female bear has a cub with her, she will rip your face off. Why does she love her kid? Why does she give a damn? Because she read the Bibles to her? Because God gave her some sort of morality? Why does anything care about anything according to this worldview? It's absurd. We clearly evolved love and compassion and kindness and it takes God and the Bible to start undoing it. Geez, this turned into an animal activist seminar. I like that, David. I mean, it's good to know that there's goodness out there in animals. I knew there was in dolphins, but I mean, you're kind of motivating me to go hunting as well. Cause I got a hunting side to me too. I'm just kidding. I don't hunt. Lots of gays, gags and dolphins too. You should be. Check that out. So my last question, my last question for you. Put it right in the blow hole. I don't know if you do that. Last question for you is based off of, because I don't know if you're as dogmatic of an atheist as you lead on to be. Cause I know you've had some serious suffering in your life that you shared on here. Last time we were on here together, serious suffering. A lot more than I've been through. Now, does that suffering, I mean, just personally speaking, does that push you away from God and make you angry at any idea of a loving God? You don't even have to answer that part. Well, what I'm more interested in, what I'm way more interested though in getting your response to is like, if you want to see your child again, which I'm guessing you'd want to see your child again, does that shake you out of any type of atheism that you're closed off to theism? Or are you always gonna be wanting and searching and hopefully evidence will come in one day that there is a God, an eternal life out there where you can see your child again? Yeah. First of all, I appreciate you asking the question. I think a lot of people would think that and not want to say that for a fear of using a personal tragedy of me losing my son in a debate. I think a lot of people are gonna be angry at you for that and I hope they're not. Cause I think it's a real problem. And I'm a genuine person, my life is all out in the public and I don't mind you asking, I just want you to know. For anyone who's upset, let's do it for that. Please don't be. I want to be clear that a lot of this today has been like you saying, well, I don't like atheism therefore it makes me feel better to believe in God. But what I want to happen regardless of even if I did has no bearing on the evidence itself. So even if I did answer in such a way that is, yes, I would love to see him again, me wanting it to happen doesn't mean that I now suddenly believe the evidence. Either I believe it and it exists or I don't believe it and it doesn't exist. But to answer your question, I'm completely indifferent to the concept at this point. Stuart, I don't, me losing my son just meant I lost my son. It didn't mean God didn't play a role at all in that for me. There were a series of decisions that led up to his death and it's unfortunate and it's sad that we lost him but I never even considered God throughout that entire thing. It definitely doesn't push me away or pull me toward. This is something I talk about on a regular basis but it had nothing to do and no bearing whatsoever on my decision regarding God because I follow the evidence where it leads and sure it would be great to have him again but it would be great to have him here in my home. It would be great to meet him for dinner to think that he would be existing right now in some other plane of existence, worshiping at the feet of a tyrant would be heartbreaking to me. I would rather him live on in the memories of those of us who loved him than to be with a bent knee to a tyrant in heaven. I feel like that would be a little bit like him becoming a slave or some sort of minion or robot to a dictator and I wouldn't want that for him at all. So I think non-existence from a moral perspective is actually morally superior than existing forever worshiping a tyrant or existing forever in eternal hell because he didn't go to church or didn't believe the right things. So I'm at peace with him being gone it's sad, I wish it wouldn't have happened but it has no bearing whatsoever on how I value or evaluate I should say the evidence concerning any specific God that has been proposed. And my question was just desiring eternal life. I do not desire eternal life. Yeah, I don't, I do not desire eternal life. I think eternally living would be torture even if it was in paradise. I don't wanna go on living forever. Sounds terrible. Well, with that folks, we will jump into the Q and A. Wanna remind you we appreciate our guests so I wanna mention a couple of things. One, that they're linked in the description. You can hear plenty more from our guests as well as their philosophy, their thoughts on life by clicking on those links in the description. And that includes if you're listening via podcast we put all of our guest links in the modern day debate podcast description as well so you can find them there last. Wanna encourage you folks, I wanna say, I wanna give praise to the people who leave good comments. You could say ways in which whether it be the live chat or the comments they are attacking the argument instead of the person. We appreciate that more than you know folks. And so we wanna say thank you to the vast majority of you who do that. And we also wanna say folks as a reminder we wanna discourage you from attacking the person as you really do wanna help each other. Help me as well if you ever see me do it. We wanna encourage each other, help each other to get into the habit of attacking the arguments instead of the person. So with that, we're jumping into the Q and A and thanks so much for your question. This one coming in from as Ruck Cole, thanks very much says if God exists, is it not plausible that we are a forgotten creation? I have personally created and abandoned many projects. Yeah, if that's for me. That's right. Yeah, clearly. Yeah, there's certainly potential for that for sure. I think that is in line in many ways with kind of the blind watchmaker, the understanding of deism, Thomas Jefferson's God where the God is so aloof, so distant. It's ridiculous to think that he has us in mind whatsoever, but he'll create the universe. And so the suffering, it's kind of how we ended with David, I wanted to hear more from his heart because he's got an excellent heart. And I think he kind of hit on it where the toughest issue for a Christian to answer, I think if any Christian is honest, is the suffering God allows and why do we feel like an abandoned project at times? The answer though is no according to scripture obviously. We aren't abandoned, even though it feels at times like we are. Gotcha. I think God's a no call, no show and we should get a new one and I would like to run for God. You got it. You got a responsibility there. I can handle it. This one coming in from Bar and Von G says, this can be easily settled. There's no evidence for God nor evidence against God. Debate for thousands of years, no one wins. I don't know why these people watch, but we'll give you guys a chance to respond. Dave, you wanna take a crack at that excellent question? I agree, this is stupid. I'll never do it again. You know what? This one coming in from Eddie Crume says, David going to kill this and they say they're a Christian. You have a Christian fan out there, it sounds like. Thank you, Eddie. And then Bar and Von G says, David see smally as a limited being. How can you say that existing forever after death could be positive or negative? It's just my opinion. With the knowledge that I do have, I think existing forever would be horrendous. And if you wanna explore this, this is gonna sound really bizarre. There's a television show on Netflix called The Good Place. It's a comedy, it's a sitcom, but it does broach these topics in a really interesting way. What would it be like if each individual person had their own particular idea of heaven and they existed in this sort of collective environment where they saw their loved ones interacted in an afterlife, how would you continue after 500 years or a thousand years or 27 trillion years? At what point would you be like, I'm done, like I've done everything. I've done everything a thousand times. I'm just, I'm done with this. How, what then what? On year 27 trillion five, what do you do that morning, right? It's an interesting thought experiment. I think everybody should go watch all three seasons of The Good Place, not a sponsor, but a great idea and a great show. It's got Kristen Bell, it's fantastic. It's a fun thing to think about. Thank you very much. And Barron Von G strikes again, says, David C. Smalley, as a limited being, how can you say that existing forever after death could be positive or negative? That's exactly what they already asked, so. Dear gosh, that was my fault. So sorry, I'm a little bit, it's been a long day. It's funny that you delivered it in the exact same way. You had a little bit of a Ron Burgundy moment there, James, and I'm never gonna let you forget that. You're right, I'm sorry. I'm just, I was about like five o'clock, I was shot today and I could feel it where I was like, man, I'm like, my brain is just dead. But, okay. Shirt Son, thanks for your question, says it's, it's, now I'm like reading, double checking to see if I read it. Shirt Son says it's funny that he thinks faith or religion is bad. That's the intention of calling atheism a faith or religion, right? Okay, so what they're saying is Stuart is using faith as an insult by calling atheism a faith. If so, is his own faith not all so bad? I think that's actually a challenge to use to it. Right, I think you're right. David, that was beautifully restated. Can you restate the last part again? You said atheism was a faith as sort of an insult to atheism. Oh, oh. So it seems like- Why don't people on this show take things so personally? It seems like- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It seems like you're admitting that faith is inherently a bad thing by attacking atheism, by calling it faith. Therefore, you're kind of insulting yourself. It's one of those, if you point one finger, there are three pointing back at you, you're kind of showing your cards by going, ha, ha, you have a faith. Yeah, you're a Christian. What do you say for that? So that dear person maybe is on their fourth or fifth drink or sixth or seventh, because it's not an insult whatsoever. It's not, you totally missed it. I'm not saying atheism is a faith. The little joke I made was, do you believe if it's a faith? And so I was connecting the believe and faith, but it's not to insult atheism. My larger point was that we all jumped to certain conclusions about things. So even this discussion right now as a philosophical one or debate right now as a philosophical one, where there are leaps of faith involved, we can't prove why we should go about seeking after human rights. I mean, how can you prove that? A question like human rights. No, there's evidence and from David's perspective, he drew evidence out of evolution and saying this is what makes the most sense in terms of whether it be group mentality or look at these other animals and how they behave. So there's another leap of faith would be back to the suffering question, like a faith position, an atheist would say to me, Stuart, a good God does not allow suffering. And the question back, even though it sounds callous, is, wait a second, how do you know an omniscient good God or just an omniscient God is not allowing suffering in a way that simply you don't see fit, but is allowing it in a way that actually it's going to benefit. We've all been obviously in some type of suffering but so far and suffered in a way that actually there was a greater good that came from it. So see that's Alvin planning is the great philosopher Alvin planning his point where he calls it and the no seums, which he's simply saying, you cannot say for certain that there aren't potentially good reasons that God is allowing certain types of suffering to happen. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. I can say that he's wrong. Good luck. I have no problem with being wrong. Are you ready? I'm going to blow your mind. You're blowing Alvin, the top Christian philosopher alive today. I'll do it. Got it, go for it. Blow him away. Are you ready? Yeah. Because saying that God has a prerequisite to allow evil in order to accomplish something else is to say that he is not all powerful because if I need to change my oil, I have to use the little tool to get my oil filter off. Otherwise I can't do it. So the tool is a prerequisite because I'm not all powerful. If I were all powerful, I would go mecca, lecca, hi, mecca, honey, ho and the oil is changed, all right? So for God to say, for you to say, God needs to make this evil happen. Let's say it's cancer in children or a tornado of a church or whatever wildfire that burns everything up in California. And you go, oh, what is the reason for this? God has a reason for the suffering. You mean God requires a tool to do something else? Then he is not all powerful and he is not a God. You're missing it. You're limiting God's power. I agree with God's power by saying that he requires something. But again, you're totally missing it. But that's, no, the illustration that I gave is not to indict God in that kind of way. No, the illustration is simply to say that God could have reasons for something we don't know about. Gotta move on. That's planning his point. It's not all that you just said right there. He's wrong. Which a lot of with is a decent point. I would disagree with that point too, but no, that's Alvin's point. Alvin's wrong. You must move on. Baron Von G strikes again, says, oh Stuart, just stop. It literally states right next to your name that you are a Christian. That means you believe everyone else goes to hell. Everyone else. I'm the only one who's gonna go to heaven. You'll be lonely. I'm God, I guess. I'm the only one who's gonna be in heaven, huh? I think it's ironic that we have give me an answer over your shoulder, yet you give so few. Oh, he was waiting for that one. He was waiting. Yeah, he rarely answered. I know five for that one. It should say, sidestep, avoid and deflect. That's what it should say over your shoulder. Did you see this one? Well, but I think they're going at the exclusivity of Christianity. Go ahead. Yeah, I don't believe so. Some literalists, extreme literalists, we could call them, take the book of Revelation and say there's 144,000 people that will be in heaven. No, no, it's not supposed to be taken literally. You gotta just, it's easy to look at context, for example. And again, that comes back to genre as well. So, no, I don't believe everybody's gonna be burning in hell. No, I think that, again, it gets back to God respects your free decision whether to spend eternity with him or not. And if he's the ultimate source of all goodness, then, yes, heaven would be a little bit more enjoyable than hell. And the Bible itself, don't take it from me. Read the Bible, Luke chapter 16, the blind man in Lazarus, the rich man in Lazarus, excuse me, the rich man is just called rich man. His identity is made up in wealth. He doesn't even want, if you read through the interaction with Lazarus, for example, he doesn't even want to come out of hell. It says he's suffering and he's in pain, but he wants to stay in hell and that's because he's created an identity apart from God. But there's no, everything about Christianity is supposed to be based in grace? Grace, it's nothing I'm by our good doing. So it's not like I'm morally superior to David. And I'm gonna be in heaven and David's gonna be in hell. Now, the whole understanding of tossing people into the lake of fire, screaming and revelation, that has been ripped terribly in different ways in English literature and it's been horrible. If you, I want, all I'm gonna say is this very briefly, Christians who think Christianity is built on grace, read Matthew 10, 34, read 1 Corinthians 14 and read Luke 14, 20 through 28. Just do that. Just take that note, read it. And then read two thirds of every single gospel on the passion narrative after you read those isolated verses. We'll jump into the next one. Thanks so much for your work question. This one coming in from Michael Howard says, Stu, are those three reasons that what convinced you that God exists, would you believe if those reasons weren't there? If not, will you share the reason that you believe? Oh, that's a great question. No, obviously, well, I can't say obviously. This may be his first time watching. I would say obviously in the sense of, I think debating on YouTube, debating college campuses or debating at churches, I have different, I'll do different arguments or I won't even do arguments. I'll just do a mashup, which is kind of what it turned into tonight with David. Like I had my three arguments and then we kind of just mashed things up, which is enjoyable. That's how David and I typically do it. And that's kind of what I did with Dilahante. We debated twice, but no, we actually stuck to the points more. So no, with Dilahante, I use different points. And with the upcoming debates, I'll use different points. Dilahante, I think I use mainly meaning and purpose, ultimate meaning. And then I think we talked about suffering, hope, a lot of these different issues and whether they make sense of life in such a way where it demands a God. But for me personally, I would say, personal revelation, certainly. So like when I was in the hospital, for example, supposedly having many strokes, I had an encounter with God where, again, I wasn't hearing his voice audibly or any of those types of, I wasn't like the little boy who had the near-death experience, but I had an incredible experience where, yes, the type of revelation I had from God absolutely made some pretty good evidence that he existed. Others was, I just did a ton of reading of all different worldviews and I tried to give them all a fair shake. I came from a Christian home, so I know I have a level of bias, just like a lot of my atheist friends who came from atheist homes. And you gotta shake off your bias and you gotta look at different worldviews and say, okay, which ones add up? Which ones make sense to me? Not just intellectually, but emotionally, sociologically, relationally. So that's kind of how I did it. You got it. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from beautiful Joe says, Exodus 411, verse concepts. The Lord said to him, quote, who has made man's mouth or who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? I think this is for you Stuart, going back to whether or not God, for example, it creates cancer. Again, it's another piece on judging. God has the right to judge and thank God for that. I think if everybody is honest, they want a judgment day at the end of time and all of the Pollyanna tremendously flower boys and girls right now are like, oh my gosh, it's terrible for him to say that. But I think if you think about abuse, if you think about terrorism, if you think about any of the major atrocities and how people have been ripped off in this life, you want some type of justice. You don't just want the world to end and be like, well, I got a fair shake here as my white six foot two male in this wealthy suburban area. Life was okay. I don't really need a judgment day. I wasn't like the slaves a couple of hundred years ago. So that was a long-winded answer again. Yeah, we have a number of questions to get through. So we have to maybe keep them a little bit more short. This one, well, thanks for your super sticker from both Rich Devman as well as anti-big foot biased. Thanks so much for your support. Beautiful. Oh, we got this one. Poofy, thanks for your question. Said, why wouldn't Stuart substantiate his personal claims with a real example of his own disagreements with God? Either mention the claim and substantiate or don't mention the claim. Ooh, I feel like substantiate with sub points. I mean, maybe just one even. You said you disagree with God. Back on you saying you disagreed with God. You then just talked about how God doesn't want you to do things that are part of your instinct, but you never gave an actual disagreement that you had with God. Where you think something is right and what God did is wrong, or that God did something right that you think is wrong. You never clearly stated that you actually had a disagreement with God, yet you made the claim that you did. So they're saying either don't make the claim or substantiate your claim. So if that's where you were going, I missed that then. So I'm glad we're here. The closest I've ever come to disagreeing with God is actually some of the judgment in the Old Testament. Some of the times that God judges in the Old Testament, the Canaanites sort of like, whoa, that's a little, that's a little strong there. Right, but you believe that he has a reason to make it good, so you don't disagree. Not to make it good. Hold on, now you're going back, not to make it good. I mean, it depends what you mean by that, but that sounds a little slippery there, sort of smally. I think instead it's a level of, yes, if God's, again, the ultimate source of good. Do you think God does bad things? Do you think God does bad things? Is this a question for David or Stuart? Do you think God does bad things? Do I need to go into chat and pay $5? No, I do not think God does bad things. I'll open a new browser. I'll pay James $5, and if you'll answer the question. Jesus. Oh, that's rich. Does God do bad things? I said no. No, he does not. Okay, so then if he did something, it's good, even if you disagree with it. Yes, I would say I'm a fickle messed up news. You think there's something. I think, you said you would be a good God, I would not be a good God, I can promise you. Hang around me for a day, David. I believe you, little Stewie. There you go. This next question from Matthew Steele says, Stuart, how do you justify altruism and integrity, as in a morally correct thing for its own sake when you believe someone is always watching you? Yeah, so Freud, again, back to Freud or others, would say we always have a watchdog that's gonna push us to the super ego in order to do good things. And there's gonna be some type of coercion and manipulation, right? So for us, it could be if there's no God, even if there is a God actually, Gossip, Slander, the police, there's gonna be different things that are going to deter us from doing bad, at least I hope so. Then you take God, okay, God, it's a little bit bigger because now you're talking eternal ramifications and you're talking about there is always a one-to-one correlation with good and evil, punishment and reward. And so, if the question, again, back to what he said, human rights, right? It was about integrity and altruism. Yeah, what about the two, though? How do you justify them if there's a God that's watching you? In other words, he's saying like, doesn't it undermine- Oh, I see. The idea that there can be altruism or integrity because you're doing it for God instead. Right, exactly. And I would say that's not, I mean, that can be just like Martin Luther was pegged for all of his writings for simply because of his fear to get out from underneath God's thumb and have eternal life. I think there always can be different forms of motives, but at the same time, no, if we grant God a God of all goodness and love who sent his son to die on the cross for our sins, the reason why human rights and the reason why equal rights for women spread from the Christian movement, read the book by the academic, I think it's the last thing to rant in, shame and sin, or Tom Holland's new bestseller. Look at where women's rights came from. Just check it out. Check out the Roman Empire. And so the purpose for human rights was, Jesus Christ dying on the cross for us, the motive there is humility, not just fear of God to do this, humility and then to see everybody on the same plane and worthy of protection and love and then to go out and even sacrifice yourself for them. Gotcha. And this one coming in from Adam Albilia. I have to read these. James is so hot that any attempt to stop global warming is nothing but a lost cause. Thank you so much, the checks in the mail. This one coming in from A.V. Newman says, after show at my channel, which I put in the description, if you wanna check that after show out, and that link is right below our guest links. Folks, if you've been listening, you're like, hmm, I like this. I wanna hear more from this person. You can by clicking on their links right now. This one from Mark. Oh, they had a question as well. They said, question for Stuart on a scale of zero to 100%. How sure are you that a God exists? What would it take for you to go down to 5% in terms of your belief? This is a street epistemology person. What is it Stuart? Are you familiar with that Stuart? Street epistemology? Street epistemology, yeah, a little bit. But I would say, I mean, again, fide, when you get at faith, when you look at the book of Acts, it's more so trust. So if it was faith, just a type of mental ascent and feeling, I don't know, like 90%, but it's obviously not that. Fide is connected to trust. That's what Christianity is based out of, trusting God and Jesus Christ. And so, if you're gonna ask that question of me and my wife, it's gonna be a tough one to answer because I fully trust my wife and yet there can be reasonable doubt, I guess, at times. So no, if it's a trusting versus that mental ascent understanding of faith, that question kind of dissolves. I have one brief response to that before we move on to the next question. I think everyone should go check out my comedy shows. It's davidseesmally.com. Click on comedy and you can see all my tour dates. That's all. You got it. Ann, I'm putting that link in right now. I think I already put your YouTube link, but I'm gonna add that as well. And so, thanks for mentioning that, David, seriously. Ann. Sure. Oh, go ahead. In addition, folks, we'll jump into this next question. A juicy one from Mark Reed, who says, Stuart, are you actually happy that you think the world will end? What motivation do you have for preserving the world and society if that's the case? That's great. Yeah, I don't think the sun's gonna cool. And I don't think we're just gonna fall through a trapdoor into nothingness. I think evolutionary, just evolution in general points to death overall. And I think all of that is very nihilistic. I think we could dress it up and have cognitive dissonance in a way where, for example, when I had my conversation with Susan Blackmore, a fantastic atheist, she was very honest in saying, when suffering goes wrong, I try and pick myself up and say, get on with it, girl. Doesn't really line up too much. I think it's not consistent with the fabric of the universe and how we operate. I think we all want eternal life in the best sense of it, because I agree with David. If it's this life, I don't want eternal life. Oh my gosh, I mean, I got vax today. I mean, that's proof right there that obviously I want eternal life. And so I think that the understanding is important to remember. Why do you want life to go on? Why do you find meaning? And do you find hope instead of optimism? And Christianity makes sense from that perspective. You got it. This one from Silver Harlow says, did my comment to Stuart come into early to make it into the Q and A? No, I still just haven't gotten to it. Ron Neckadnezz says, the first genomes were very small, made up of DNA slash RNA hybrids. How do you like them, Apple, Stuart? Yeah, the human genome, that's what you're getting at. 35 billion letters. And the head of the human, David's not gonna like this. He made the comment earlier about modern day scientists and their Christian faith. He got the stats wrong. Nature magazine, 40% agnostic scientists, 30% atheists, 30% Christian. And agnostics are basically the ones who just said, we're not sure. Then you have to look at, since you brought up the human genome, Francis Collins, Fauci's boss, strong Christian. Not one of these Republican Christians that David was talking about, strong Christian. And I check out all of his books, by the way, because they're the best apologetics books out there. You got it. Thank you very much for this question. Coming in from UDFHUQ, thank you very much. It says, Stuart assuming Anne Frank kept her religious and cultural convictions. Where will she spend eternity? What about a truly converted NAZI? I believe that's Nazi. This is for you, James. I think the direct question for Stuart is, Anne Frank was a Jew, do you think she's in the hell? Nobody knows the decision that Anne made on her deathbed. Nobody knows any- If she maintained- If she maintained- If she made it there, I was thinking the same thing. Don't you worry, my friend. And nobody knows anybody's final take. We know though that deathbed conversions as much as many atheists don't like them. When I ask you a lot of- I see a lot of them. As a pastor, I see a lot of them oddly enough. Your side stepping and deflecting- And there was- Bobbin and Weven. Bobbin and Weven. This is Stuart right now. And there was a great, there was a fantastic- You're so- I'm getting there. Miss me with that question. Miss me with that question. You believe she's in hell, just say it. You believe Anne Frank is in hell. Say it, look into the camera and say it. I don't believe she's in hell. Cause I believe that there are a lot of Christians, like Hebrews chapter 11 talks about who never heard of Jesus Christ and are in heaven, Hebrews 11 says. The patriarchs, look it up. Boom. It's actually an easy answer. I should have, I apologize, James. So you think she had a deathbed conviction or conversion? No, I don't- We don't know the exact take she had on Jesus Christ. For sure. There's Jews for Jesus out there. You're side stepping. You're clearly side stepping. That's a correct answer. Jews for Jesus. No, Anne- But I have to say, you asserting that Anne Frank had some sort of deathbed conversion doesn't surprise me because you choose to believe things without evidence to make yourself feel comfortable all the time. Oh, jeez. No, because that's- Talk to the court. Talk about David playing God. That would be me playing God in the best possible way. If I stood here, sat here and said, Hey friend, Anne Frank's in hell burning. That's playing God. No, let's be honest about it. This one coming in from Silver Harlow says, actually Will Stewart says, Stewart, premise one, God created all that exists. Promise two, evil exists. Therefore God created evil or did not create all that exists. Only one choice is logically and theologically possible. I would say evil is the absence of goodness. God is the source of all goodness. If he created human beings with a free will, with the option to sin or not, that free will has a lot to do with that option, either to sin, to love, to obey God. And that sin, he set it up for an opportunity to, yes, the logical consequences are, evil enters the world. Gotcha, and this one coming in from Chad Martin says, Arguments can easily be made against Yahweh of the Old Testament being God. He has too many ungodly qualities, such as anger and jealousy, but what about the absolute in general, a causal force of some sort as a creator instead, Stewart? No, no, because he has to be personal. We didn't get to that tonight when it comes to the morality issue. Gotcha. You need a personal God, yeah. Matthew Steele says, David, can you explain to Stewart that the hundreds of thousands of years of human experience and evolution that happened before the Bible was written? Okay, Stewart, there were hundreds of thousands of years of human existence before the Bible existed. Thank you very much. Hey, that was well said. No problem. Thank you. I thought of it myself, guys. I'm very proud. His point is how to be complete, Dick. His point is that if we hadn't evolved compassion, we would have had no care whatsoever that the baby was lying in the dirt hungry. So the fact that we picked the baby up and fed it and nursed it back to health got us to this point. So we wouldn't be here to have the discussion if humans hadn't had morals first. So morals came first and then religion appeared and then religion attempts to take credit for creating the morals. And what we're saying is, and a fairly popular quote of mine, is saying that morality came from the Bible is like saying words came from a dictionary. Both only recorded what already existed. Gotcha, and get Stan. I've got to give David the last word on one here, but get Stanfield says, as an atheist, I think it would be helpful for Stewart to read Thomas Aquinas and maybe go from there in terms of arguing for God's existence, et cetera, instead of arguments about dogma or the character of theists. What do you think, Stewart? Yeah, basically, I think what he's saying, one of the problems I had with Stewart's arguments today is that Stewart just said atheism has this problem and here's a famous atheist who said something ridiculous. Here's another famous atheist who said something really stupid. Here's an atheist who admitted I was right about something. Like we're not all on the same team with a jersey, bro. Like we don't have the same logo on our heads like you guys, we don't wear the same chains. Like we don't consider ourselves in groups with other atheists. Like we may all meet up to dump on the Bible or have some kind of night out where we make fun of Christianity for fun, but we don't all ascribe to the same worldviews. There are homophobic atheists. There are racist atheists. There are atheists who believe in spirituality and that they can control rainbows and talk to the dead. There are atheist flat earthers. There are atheist Trump supporters. We don't all share this big common bond. We are, atheists is an answer to one single question. So for Stewart to pick apart, one atheist said this crazy thing or this person agrees with me and I'm gonna attack it and atheism fails is doing nothing for providing proof that his God exists. It's just sidestepping and deflecting. What is what I'm hoping he changes his logo to. Gotcha. And then Barron Von G says, where is Stewart's companion? At least he wasn't, let's see. Oh, they said, where is, they're asking, where is Cliff? They said he doesn't beat around the bush. He'd simply say, God gives cancer to children. So what? I don't know if you'd really say that. We'll give you a chance to defend Cliff Stewart. No, Cliff's famous adage is I do not know. I should have used that a couple more times tonight. David would have enjoyed that, but it's 1115 here. Cliff would have been tucked in around eight o'clock. Gotcha. And this one coming in, by the way, folks, we definitely, we don't have time for more questions. I'm so sorry. So please don't submit any more questions. We're gonna try to get through the rest and then wrap up and Jared A says, Stewart is Christmas the day Jesus was born or was it stolen from Pagans? No and no. Gotcha. And Adam Elbilia says, Stewart is something quote unquote good because God says so or freely chooses to do it. Let's see. Youth of Rome? I think they say, or does God choose to do something because it's good by some objective, yeah. Because he wills it. It's part of his very innate, his character and he wills it. That's what comes out of it. Just to be clear. I mean, when you say that, let's see. I mean, those are two, not trying to press you but those are like, are those synonymous? So what you're saying, namely because he wills it or by control. I'm saying his character, so his character is good. It's all good. And when he wills something, that is good as well. So it's coming out of his character when he wills the good in all situations. Okay, and then this one coming in from Will Stewart says, David, the fact that the God of the Bible doesn't meet your human standards of right and wrong is not evidence that the God of the Bible is evil by his standard as a triumny God. Right, so then what you believe is that God created morality, gave me morality to understand good and bad and then behaved in a way that is bad according to the scale he gave me but attempts to convince me that he is in fact good and direct contradiction to his behaviors. So he gave me limited understanding of morality but then behaved in a way that looks as though he is bad according to that scale. And you're blaming me? You got it and this one coming out of the Bible. You got it, experiments in prebiotic chemistry says morality works like anything else. Once you define what morality means the definition becomes the objective standard. Who gets to decide what blue or red means? I think they're meaning like who gets decide what morality is right or wrong, right or wrong. That's an entire three hour discussion on morality. That's huge, I don't know who that was for. I'm not sure either, this one might clear it up. They say I can substitute any imaginary being in my head for quote unquote God and the argument still works. Okay, so maybe it's for Stewart. So maybe they're saying Stewart, if you just define it as being the case that morality is objective and rooted in God, well they're saying they can come up with any sort of deity they want such as the flying spaghetti monster to be the you could say standard for right and wrong. Yeah, if it's a mind outside of our plane of existence. So if it's a transcend, yeah, like I've said over and over, if it's a transcendent God, even if it's a spaghetti monster, that makes sense of objective morals more than if there is no God. Okay. It doesn't make, it's not evidence for the Christian God, just to be clear. Gotcha, and brute facts podcast says David will you debate me in a friendly conversation on here on the same or similar topic? Yes. Juicy, and by the way, David's link is in the description already. I already had it in there, like I said, little brain fog on my part, but. Yeah, just so you know, you can go to davidsseesmally.com and click be a guest. And if you fill out the be a guest form we always give Christians preferential scheduling. So we want to stack the show with people who disagree with me as opposed to people who agree. So go to davidsseesmally.com. If you're not gonna buy comedy tickets, click on be a guest and we'll have you on the show. Juicy, and hey, tag us on the tweet. I mean, if you'd like, we'd love to retweet it and let people know about that conversation. So let's see, Barron Von G, thanks for your question, says, oh Stuart, just answer this. It's always oh Stuart, oh Stuart, will you go to hell if you say, will anyone go to hell if they say don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God? I already answered that one. No, even though you get that elsewhere in the New Testament, so Romans I think, unless you believe in your heart, confess your mouth, so you get that. But then you go right to Hebrews 11, Romans two, but especially Hebrews 11, where there's gonna be tons of people who have not said Jesus Christ, who are going to be in heaven. You got it, and then made by Jim Bob says, David, any argument against God's existence can be used against truth. Why do you have faith and truth without evidence? Such a bizarre, ambiguous question. I don't, I think we find truth scientifically. I don't think any argument against God could be made against truth because there are some truths that are empirically provable and falsifiable from a scientific perspective. God is neither of those. He is not falsifiable. He is not testable by science. So I think the premise of your question is completely flawed. There can be things that are true that we can know for certain to be true. And the same is not true for God. So I reject your entire question. Gotcha. And then Eddie, last person who asked, if you'd be willing to have a conversation with him, said, let David know this is Eddie, and that's brute facts podcast. I think I've already had him on, I think I've had Eddie on before, but yeah, I'll do it again. You got it. And with that folks, want to say thanks so much for spending time with us tonight. Thank you so much to our guests, David C. Smalley and Stuart. It has seriously been a true pleasure. I told you guys, this is super fun. I just really enjoyed it. So thank you for spending your time with us. We've really enjoyed it. And we, as mentioned folks, have linked them in the description, whether it be here on YouTube or at the podcast, you can check out those links right now. What are you waiting for? But again, thank you very much, David and Stuart. It's been a true pleasure.