 Hey everybody, tonight we're debating secular humanism versus Islam, which is best for society, and we are starting right now with Matt's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us, Matt. The floor is all yours. Awesome. Thanks so much, James. Thanks everybody else. My apologies that this debate didn't happen when it was originally scheduled. I had a snake issue here at the house with unfortunately a dead snake and it got in the way of stuff. I'm happy to be here because normally in the debates that I do here, it's me just saying now you don't have good reason for that and this time it's Islam versus secular humanism with regard to which is better for the world. And so I'm defending position. First of all, let me say that this debate could be over in a few simple sentences. Humanism has as its focus the betterment of humanity, while Islam has as its focus adherence to a God. If Islam or any other religion could ever demonstrate that the adherence to its ideas would demonstrably contribute to the betterment of humanity, then those ideas would be consistent with humanism. That hasn't happened. It simply cannot be the case that Islam is better for humanity than humanism when the focus is entirely different. Nothing could be better than humanism as anything that could have hope of being better would already be included. Secular humanism is only secular in the sense that because there are many proposed gods that haven't been demonstrated, our foundation for humanism is one of us being forced to address and solve problems on our own without appealing to the supernatural entities. Unfortunately, that ends the debate, but perhaps not in the most convincing fashion, so I'll do a bit more work. The temptation is to look at data comparing Islamic nations to secular humanistic nations, except that no nation is founded on secular humanism. The United States is supposed to be a secular nation, but in practice it isn't, and even if it were properly secular as it should be, it still isn't explicitly humanistic. So the next temptation is to look at the lives of secular humanists and compare them to the lives of Muslims, but we simply don't have enough good data to do a fair comparison, which means we have to look at the ideals. Secular humanism is a principle that was essentially built in response to religious claims with the first humanist manifesto in 1933, which identified humanism as a religion. The first secular humanist manifesto had 15 points that they were putting forward as here's what we think, here's why we think it, here's how we're going to live in the world, and that stood for 40 years. In 1973, there was a secular humanist manifesto too and updated longer and more robust secular humanist manifesto. Of the three, there's a third one coming, but of the three, the second one I think is generally my preferred one, although I have disagreements with all of them. In 2003, there was a shorter version brought forward by, there's a number of also secular humanist organizations, the Council for Secular Humanism, the American Humanist Association, World Humanism, et cetera, and these three manifestos describe basically the trend of secular humanist thought from 1933 to 2003. In a nutshell, whether a god exists or not, we have problems to solve and we have to do this without appeals to the supernatural entities or intervention. We must utilize the best methods, meaning reason and science, to assess reality and reach conclusions. We have, as foundational principles, autonomy, justice, fairness, and equality. This life is the focus, not a hypothetical afterlife that we're trying to improve. Various studies on religiosity and societal health have been cited over the years, but we simply don't have a dataset or methodology to make comparisons fair. For example, Muslims in the United States have a different life than Muslims in Bangladesh or Iran. Are they benefiting from secular society or Christian society? Or do the secular or Christian societies benefit from its Muslim members? Or neither? Or both? We could take a look at a country like Iran before and after the 1979 revolution and compare rights, freedoms, societal health, wealth, et cetera. Is that a good example of Islam being better for humans? We could look at large secular nations and notice a higher suicide rate or a lower reported happiness, but there are many factors involved in that and we're constantly going to be making flawed comparisons. So for me, the beginning is what's the focus? With secular humanism, the focus is on humanity. With Islam, the focus is on God. So what factors could we potentially compare? Health care and access to health care, education and access to education, equality, lifespans, technological advancements, liberty, autonomy, self-guidance. We could take a look at those things, but we don't have a secular humanist model where this has been put in place to compare to which, I don't know which Islamic model to compare it to because different Islamic nations are going to have different results and different models. How about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948? Most Muslim majority countries that were then part of the United Nations voted for it. Saudi Arabia abstained stating that the positions on changing religion or belief and the position on equal marriage rights violated Sharia law. Iran voted for it, though I don't think anyone would argue that post 1979 Iran is in compliance with that document. As in 1982, the Iranian diplomat called it a secular understanding of Judeo-Christian traditions that was in conflict with Sharia law and in June of 2000, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation supported the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which is a competing document that says people have the freedom and right to identified life in accordance with the Islamic Sharia. If we want to compare Islamic regimes, Islamic law, Islamic governance with secular humanistic governments, we are stuck. We have to stick with the ideals, but we can look at how different individuals under each of those ideals have lived their lives and what has or hasn't happened. There is no sect denomination or secular humanist group that has ever required someone to believe something that is not empirically verifiable. No sect denomination or secular humanist group has ever ordered the death of any person ordered or acted to attack or destroy property of any person or government overthrown a democracy to impose a secular humanist regime, been connected with terrorist cells and activities, advocated for treating people with differing genders, with disparity of rights and freedom, advocating for treating people with differing sexuality, with disparity of rights and freedoms. No sect denomination or secular humanist group has ever denied freedom of speech or expression. They've never called for the deaths of people for drawing any picture of any person, called for the deaths of people for criticizing secular humanism or any religious view. They've never advocated for or inspired suicide bombers or terrorist attacks. Those things simply are not consistent in any way with the principles of secular humanism. Islamists from 1979 to 2019 have been responsible for over 33,000 attacks and over 160,000 deaths. The temptation is to say that's not representative of the best principles of Islam and that may be true. But how do you know and how do you avoid it? If Islam is better for humanity with, for example, Issa's version, how does that not lead to a more Islamist version? If the focus is on personal interpretation and seeking the will of a law, that includes considering that will, whether real or not, to be paramount in its focus. Doesn't that conflict with what's better for human beings? And even if Issa's version of Islam is better than other versions of Islam, that still doesn't make it better than secular humanism. So what would make it better than secular humanism? Well, nothing, as I noted at the beginning, as secular humanism already advocates for the best. Anything sufficient would be included. But let's give this the best shot possible. First, it's wouldn't need to show that there is a God, that this God wants what is best for humanity in this life, and that adherence to this idea can achieve that. Two, show which parts of Islam must be thrown out and disregarded as incompatible with a better world for humans. Three, show which parts are essential to the betterment of humanity and how those factors are not consistent with secular humanism. Because secular humanism has the goal of getting better at making this life better, it embraces the dignity of autonomy, liberty, cooperation, and freedom. Under a secular humanist regime, you would still be free to be a practicing Muslim or Christian, and the only limits would be when your practice infringes on the rights of others. Under an Islamic regime, I see no such similar guarantee for secular humanism, Christianity, Hinduism, and depending on which version of Islamic regime is in control, perhaps no such guarantee for other versions of Islam. While there may be some version of Islam that isn't problematic or awful, that doesn't mean there's a version that's better for humanity than secular humanism. There's a great quote from a Sufi woman whose name I will not butcher, that says, if I adore you out of fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I adore you out of desire for paradise, lock me out of paradise. But if I adore you for yourself alone, do not deny to me your eternal beauty. And that's a sentiment that I fully agree with that I think is largely, granted I don't make appeals to paradise or hell, but is largely consistent with secular humanism. And yet it still has that focus of another world. And then you have Surah 9-5. And when the forbidden months have passed, kill the idolaters wherever you find them and take them prisoner and beleaguered them and lie and wait for them at every place of ambush. Even if that verse doesn't actually tell you who to kill, it certainly seems that way on a plain reading. And there's absolutely nothing comparable to that within the principles of secular humanism. Thank you. Thank you very much for that opening, Matt. And I want to let you know, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from, Muslim atheist, Christian, you name it, we're glad that you're here. And a couple of quick housekeeping announcements before we go over to Esau for his opening, as well in particular. Folks, if you have not known, if you have been living in a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, Modern Day Debate live and in person is one week away that's in Houston, Texas. If you can, if you were in the state of Texas, Louisiana, from there, it's going to be live and in person. You can check out the link in the description box below for in person tickets. 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So to make sure that they're actually doing what they say they're going to do, which is help orphans across the planet. So excited about that. If you have a question, feel free to submit it in the old live chat, super chat preferable as 100% is going to charity tonight. And with that, thanks for being with us. The floor is all yours for your 10 minute opening as well. I'm going to share my screen. Thank you. Just let me know if you have any difficulties with my audio. All right. Greetings, peace and blessings. As-salaamu alaikum, shalaamu alaikum. PAX. Just want to welcome everyone in. So today, this is going to be my third debate here on modern day debates. And I kind of wanted to focus in on a particular aspect within Islam, because in the previous debates, there was a major focus on kind of looking at all the different spectrums of Islam that makes it kind of more difficult to cover. So I want to engage how Sufism takes a different place is better for society than secular humanism. This is what is going to be engaged tonight. So first, we have to have our definitions. What is Sufism? What is secular humanism? Okay. So I want to make sure to cover the whole basis here. So Sufism comes from the word Tasawuf, which is to dress in wool, which deals with asceticism and renunciate and being like of a renunciate. It could also come from the word Sophia or wisdom, which is a great word, but it's a kind of mystical spiritual teaching. It is a mystic path where Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are destined to ascertain the nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world. And this is found in Cyclopedia Brachanica. I actually wanted to bring up something that Matt brought up in his opening, which is he brought up Rabirah of the Wea, who is this mystic, this female mystic, and this is it kind of aligns with exactly this type of situation. So definitely appreciated that and we will continue. So what is secular humanism? So I want to get a kind of a quote to kind of get us an idea of what we're looking at. Is a life stance or what the Council of Secular Humanism, Paul Kurtz has termed as a Upraxophie, a body of principles suitable for orienting a complete human life. As a secular life stance, a secular humanism incorporates the Enlightenment principle of individualism, which celebrates emancipating the individual from traditional controls by family, church, and state, increasingly empowering each of us to set the terms of his or her or their life, their own life. And this is found in free inquiry. And the idea can be being good without God. So I actually extremely respect secular humanism. I think secular humanism is a great viewpoint and a great worldview. And there is a little bit of a difficulty as Matt brought up in his opening. There's this issue that a lot of people are not necessarily going to go with a space of atheism. A lot of people do have faith. So this is going to be a great difficulty as a worldview for all of society to embrace if people are connected and do care about these things for a society to kind of govern that. So this is something that we need to kind of think about as we're going along the course of this situation. Of course, this path that we're on together. Okay, so let's look at Sufism as the transformative path. So this is an important thing to kind of engage with secular humanism. Secular humanism is about the individual. So it's this important element. It's this engagement with the self and each individual may have different values. So if someone is vegan, if someone eats meat, there's going to be a differing opinion. So how can this be a governance for everyone if people have differing views points on what is ethical or not ethical? This is an important thing that we need to consider. And what is the path of cultivation that you have as a secular humanist? How are you guided in becoming a better human being? You could say it comes from yourself. That's a great situation. But there isn't really some kind of standard that we can implement on everyone else unless it's a very superficial standard, which would be like, don't steal, don't lie. But even those things in context can change. If there's a Jewish person in my house and a Nazi comes, am I going to lie? Yeah, I probably will because that's the more ethical path. Ethics are complex. They're nuanced. It's a very difficult situation. So if we're taking an individualistic path, this may be a difficult element that we would have to look into. So Sufism is a path of more self-cultivation. There are stations within Sufism, which is the Sharia, which a lot of people, that's probably the only word that most folks know here. And because it has a lot of stuff laden within it, that it's this really toxic, horrible thing. But it really just means to bring to the watering hole. So that's literally what the concept is. So we have to consider that. So the idea of the Sufi is that they're going on a spiritual journey. They are constantly transforming themselves and becoming a better human being. And there's a system in the way to do this. So you have a path. As you can see, it's sort of like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. You have Sharia, Tariqa, Hakika, Marifa. So Sharia is your basic path. And one thing I didn't mention before is when we're looking at Sufism, Sufism can be an aspect in all different forms of Islam. It could be in Ahl-Sunnojima, which is called Sunni Islam. It could be in Shiatul Ali, which is called Shia Islam. It could be a person who may not identify with either, like an activist. It's a kind of an Islamic tradition that you'll see many different folks from different strokes coming into. And it's not this hard liner space. It's really focused on what is called the energy hat. And I wish I brought this up, but there was a spiritual guy named Sheikh Ahmed Umba from Senegal. And that was his kind of path. Instead of combating the French, what he did was he said he did a focus on writing spiritual odes and doing intermoral self-cultivation to not be taken in by the colonialistic effort. So Sharia, Tariqa is the path. Haqqika is the kind of the realization of truth. And then the Marifa is the gnosis. And then you might have like over spurring of the Sufya, which is like the kind of the wisdom and the kind of cumulation of that all. So there's a lot of literature on this that can be looked into. So that's something that I definitely think we should research. I would promote to the audience to consider researching further. Next, how Sufism focuses on a tolerant and universal philosophy. This is what's stated. In Muslim cultures, there are some terms used by mystics, theologians and thinkers, both in text and an everyday communication, which in the broadest sense circumscribed non-interference and the acceptance of differences as well as acceptance of plurality. The Arabic word tasamwa means roughly forbearance and indulgence. This corresponds to the Turkish word masmua, for which the Sufi poet Yunus Emre, there's a whole series, a Turkish drama, if folks want to see that. And also Eritral is another great Turkish drama that actually encapsulates Sufism as well. Also used the expression host gormek, accept everything in Persian alongside tasamwa, the less positive term to resign oneself to put up with is used. In religious contexts, in the Sufi tradition of South Asia and also Afghanistan scholars favor the North Indian term derived from the Persian wada, permitted, tolerated for letting things happen. In this sense, Pakistani Indian Sufis often use the expression abna akhida chodol nahin, dusveika cedol nahin. Keep your faith and do not interfere with those of others. This why saying in Urdu is based on the Quranic verse to you, your religion, to me, mine. And that is towards the end of the Quran. And this is quoted by Frembegin 2016. So what's going on in Sufism? What is the kind of thing that is kind of offered that secular humanism doesn't necessarily offer? There is a position of a master in discipleship. If folks in popular culture know Star Wars, that's exactly what you see within the Jedi religion. It's exactly, this is where it's coming from. It's coming from Tosa'uf and it's coming from Buddhism and the fusion of them together. There is a relationship between the Sheikh and the Mauryid. The Sheikh is the teacher and the Mauryid is the student. And how it begins, this is like a lot of fraternal organizations. There's like an initiation process where you make a contract with that teacher. And through this process, you have a thing, a spiritual training called tarbiyah. So in this training, you have things like dhikr, which is like remembrance. There's like spiritual kind of things that you say, like la ilaha illallah muhamma rasulah. You might say something like that. You have certain incantations that you may say as remembrances. There's the uses of fasting. There's the use of halwa. Halwa is a seclusion. So a part of Sufism can be a kind of element of like there's a renunciation where you can go into a space and you eat like a kind of a vegan diet and you kind of pray that whole time and you focus on that. And there's a focus on reciting the Quran. All of these things are doing are a part of that. And the biggest thing is there's a focus on spiritual transformation and moral self-cultivation. So that's the biggest thing that you see here. This whole path with this shake in the disciple is this path of morally self-cultivating and becoming a better human being. Okay. So the spiritual journey. So in the spiritual journey, and we mentioned this before, there's a tariqah, a tariqah is a path. So these are all very, lots of different tariqahs that exist. Some of these tariqahs are not necessarily following the most traditional Islamic element as you see towards the end of the last three. But the other ones, you know, they fit the traditional Islamic model. You'll see that, of course, throughout. So a lot of them are Turkish, like Mevlavi, Jarahi. A lot of folks may be familiar with Jalaluddin Rumi and his poetry. So he is kind of a founder of this. So a lot of these orders, they have founders, these spiritual shakes that are founders. And there's this continuous path for people to get moral self-cultivation. And through that, they are able to, okay, cool, I'll go through it quickly. So there are different spiritual stations. We could see these are the different kinds of spiritual stations that exist. And this comes from Britannica. And I will go quickly. There is the unveiling of, you know, the Kashf is the unveiling of the mystery. So this is a spiritual ode. We could see Al-Bizali, and we could see what Sheikh Mustafa has says here. And so here are some of the teachings that we can see. I'm not going to read all of them because we have just a little bit of time. But you can see this is what Sheikh Baba says about not being arrogant and moral self-cultivation and focusing on positive words. We could see Shirdi Sair Baba, Abdul Qadir Jalani, Sheikh Ahmad El-Kabiri Fai. So we could see all of that. And this is the last part. So secular humanism focuses on the individual. Doesn't necessarily have a complete focus on moral self-cultivation. There's pros and cons because of this amorphous space. And just as Matt said, we haven't seen it being implemented in a nation. And I will not do the global of saying, you know, look at Pol Pot and stuff like that. You know, I'm not going to take that position. But, you know, someone might take that position. And secular humanism is pluralistic. So how would you change that? So there we go. Thank you for hearing my Pol Pot. Thank you for that. And we're going to jump into the open dialogue, folks. I want to let you know, as I mentioned, in case you missed it, we're excited. Modern-day debate, live and in-person, is one week from today. That is next Saturday in Houston, Texas. You won't want to miss this. Folks, we're excited. A couple of things. One, you can buy tickets at the link in the description box. We tried to keep it as affordable as possible. Man, if you can't make it, and you're like, James, I can't make it, all of these debates are live-streamed for the public. So there's no paywall. You can watch them all live this time without even putting in two bucks. We have that crowdfund, if you'd like, to get some of those perks that help support the event. So check that out in the description box as well, as we are giving away cool perks in any go-go, depending on which tier you give at. And then last but not least, thanks for your donations via Super Chat. 100% of donations are going to charity tonight, in particular, Worldwide Orphans. Link to the description box below, too. For that, thank you very much, Matt. And Issa, the floor is all yours for open dialogue. Sorry, I was muted. I kind of wish that Issa had a little bit more time, because right when he was getting to the specific teachings of Sufism, I'd love to know what those, maybe we can discuss some of those and what they add. It's a good thing you didn't mention Pol Pot, because Pol Pot wasn't a secular humanist, so it was completely irrelevant to this. But since you brought it up, I figured I'd address that real quick. If Sufism is the mystical path where Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge, what is it about divine love and knowledge that necessarily leads to the betterment of humanity? It's a really good question. I think the way that you can address that is that God's love is for all people. And so this idea of the spiritual path can help people become better human beings. And there's this interesting book. I wasn't able to really cover it, but it's a book called The Conference of the Birds by Faridudun Attar. He's a great mystic from Persia. And the whole story is about these birds that go on this quest to kind of find themselves. So the quest is searching to become, you know, to find their truth. And then when they come to the end, they see themselves. And then that end of itself is kind of seeing the manifestation of God. Yeah. But so the question is about seeking the truth of divine love. How does that lead to the betterment of humanity? And all you said was that God's love is for all. I don't know how you know that or how that's true. But also, I don't know how that leads to the betterment. You just said it can help people become better humans. I don't know how we determine that it can help people become better humans or why it would be essential to that. Is there is there something that you as an advocate for Sufism can do to be a better human that's impossible for me as a secular humanist? Well, the what the path of Sufism offers like in the presentation is that there's this kind of teacher-student relationship. So that's something that's offered within this kind of the Sufi path that there is this kind of guidance that helps the person as opposed to taking more of an individualistic way. Yeah, you mentioned that too. And by the way, I'm happy to take questions from you as well. But I figure would go down this list that I have, maybe we'll make some progress. You mentioned that master, disciple thing like Jedi, but that's also true of the Sith and any cult. I don't need a master to understand things as long as they are factual, empirical and subject to exploration. So I could, I can certainly agree that having a teacher can help a student, but only if the teacher is a good teacher and what they're teaching is good. That seems to be an assumption being made. Like for example, if the goal is to seek divine love, aren't you already presuming that divine love is a good thing before you found it? Yeah, I would say that the way to look at divine love is, so you're saying is there like an assumption that the divine love is a good thing, right? Is that fair? Yeah, first of all, I have no idea what divine love is. I don't know if divine love exists and I don't know how anybody can assume it exists and that it's good in order to seek to find it. I think you would have to find it first to then know how good it is or that it is, right? Sure. So the kind of the idea of how the mechanism, and this is a fair question, so you're saying like, how do you even structure this from the get go? What does this even look like? What is divine love? What is, you know, why is it good? Why do you need it? Okay. The thing is we as human beings have, there's a lot of chaos that's going on. We are complex. We have a lot of different aspects of what makes us us. Some of our inclinations are not necessarily positive for ourselves. We hurt ourselves. We do terrible things to each other and we can see that throughout history. So how do we, how do, what is the path to navigate out of that space? What do we need to do to do that? What Tisawu for Sufism offers is, and you're right, you have to have a good teacher and what does that mean? Are all teachers good? No. And I think this is the issue and that's a valid, that's a valid weakness that we could see in any type of narrative is that with pluralism, there's going to be spaces that there can be negativity in your right. In the sith narrative, that happens. If there's a negative teacher, they're teaching that. So the kind of, the safeguard for that is, the safeguard for that situation is that you are having a lineage. You have a lineage of a noble teacher who has noble students and these noble students teach their students. So this kind of, that's kind of the safeguard. And usually you have a space of many different kind of teachers that come out of these spaces. Oh, okay. What I got out of that is we're not always going to do the right thing. And if you find the right teacher, that right teacher can help you do better. I get that that's possible. What I don't get is how we can reasonably conclude that that is both a component of Sufism or that it is necessary and unachievable through secular humanist principles. So then I would ask a question to that. Sure. How do we define what a secular humanist principle is? Is there a doctrine of secular humanism that we can go to? There are three different secular humanist manifestos. So what we've seen over the course of the last 90 years or so are a number of different attempts to codify the basics of it. But secular humanism isn't a, it's not like a checklist or a 10 commandments. And I would think that Sufism isn't either. Since my understanding, and it could be wrong, feel free to correct me, is that as an advocate of Sufism could be as soon as she could advocate for Sharia law or not Sharia law, that all of these things are consistent that Sufism is more about the way, the path of finding your way through it. And I'm, if that's wrong, I'm sorry, I have no, I mean, this is my first time engaging on the specific Sufism. So I got tons of questions. Sure. When it comes to secular humanism, the principles outlined in the first humanist manifesto are things like religious humanists regard the universe itself existent not created. That's just a statement. Holding an organic view of life, humans find the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected. That's just a statement of what we believe. When it moves forward, it gets to, you know, we're convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism and several varieties of new thought. But as we move forward, what we see is that it is an advocation for reason in science to be the foundation of knowing the world through observation, experimentation and rational analysis. This is humanist manifesto two or maybe this is three. I have them out. Yes, this is three. Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humans are an integral part of nature. Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Life fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of human ideals. Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationship. By the way, I point out that part of the problem with this is that there's exceptions to all these. One of the things that you said in your opening or near the end of your opening was that secular humanism focuses on the individual. And while it does provide autonomy for the individual, secular humanism's focus is on humanity, not the individual. My actions here have consequences on all the people around me and all the people who will potentially come after me as well. And so one of the main principles from the latest humanist manifesto is working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. A position that I don't necessarily know that I fully agree with, but I certainly would agree with it in principle that working for the benefit of society certainly raises all boats so that I have more opportunities to be happy if I'm working to avoid conflict in society, to make society better than that. These are the principles that are put forth in the manifestos, which I don't think it's fair to assess them as focusing on the individual. So how would that translate? Because I lost a question. No, that's fine. You're good. How would we translate that into humanity if we have different and in your right, this could, this can flow into Suvism as well to a degree, but and I can get to that as well. And I'm curious, how do we, what is like a principle that like I had brought this up about lying? What is it kind of a principle that kind of fits all of humanity? How can we define what that looks like? I think we can try our best to figure it out, but how do we know for sure that this codified narrative is correct? I think one of the strong, there's a number of things that I think fit the bill, but I think the first thing that pops into my head that makes the most sense as an idea that all of humanity coders should agree on, somebody will, you're going to find somebody who's going to be a contrarian about anything, is that my freedom ends at the point where it conflicts with other people's freedom. So we should allow individuals to live their lives autonomously until one person's freedom comes in conflict with another or one group of people's freedoms come in conflict with another. And then we have to come up with a way to resolve it. And secular humanism's take on resolution is that it should be data driven. It should be rooted in facts of reality, supported by reason and science, and that we don't get to appeal to what a God wants, what something in a supernatural realm wants, what our imaginary friend wants. We don't get to appeal to any of those things because those aren't the things we agree on. So if you have a Muslim, a Christian, an atheist, and a Hindu all disagree about what God wants, the hope is that we can at least agree on what we want, which even within Sufism, you pointed out that it was a keep to your faith, but I lost it. Don't worry, it's Lekum dinakum wal yudin, there was two components to that quote, one of which is to keep your faith and to stay out of others or keep your faith and do not interfere with those of others, which I'm cool with the second half. I don't agree with the first half. I agree that it's an encouragement, but keep your faith is something that applies to things that are true and to things that are not true and to things that are good and to not good. So it may be a better thing to improve that, to be like, keep your faith, and I'll just use that in the blanket of the term, to the extent that it is demonstrable and good and don't interfere with those of the others, because under a secular humanist regime, you could still be a Muslim. Under some Islamic regimes, I don't have that freedom. As a matter of fact, I promise I'm not trying to paint you, you seem like a wonderful person, and I think we're going to agree on many, many things. I'm not trying to paint you this, I'm just saying that in general, if this is secular humans versus Islam, I think it's hard to deny that you go back to 2015, 2016 in Bangladesh where atheist bloggers were being killed and attacked. Now that's, I'm not saying that those people are demonstrating the best values of Islam or maybe they're not consistent with Sufism, but I don't get to say who's a real Muslim and who's not. I can only look at that system. So you may be advocating for something that would never ever do that, but I don't know how to draw a distinction between the foundation of your Sufism and that same foundation being used by Islamists who want to kill anybody who criticizes Islam. All right. It's a really good question. Do you mind if I address that point, that last point? Okay. So the first point is the thing that we have to consider is are these Muslim countries or are these Muslim majority countries? That's a very different distinction. So you have people that identify as Muslim, but are they adhering to Muslim principles? We have to realize that we're dealing with post-modernist nationalism. We've had a lot of colonization. We have a lot of poverty. We have a lot of imperialism. All of these variables are interconnected to the behaviors that these folks have. Why do Muslims in America behave differently than Muslims like you mentioned in Bangladesh? There's a huge difference. And I think the difficulty that I have when I think of secular humanism, I have a lot of family that are actually secular humanists, by the way. So I definitely respect secular humanism. I think it's a great perspective, particularly the ones that I've met, the ones that are connected to me. And the question, then the question comes up, how can we say someone who claims that they're secular humanists but does horrible things, but they say, I'm doing it for humanity. Me controlling humanity is good for humanity. Someone could take that position. I'm not making a straw man. I'm just saying that that someone could take that position and say, well, this is this thing. So how do we delineate that kind of situation? You could say, well, these Muslims are doing this thing. These other Muslims are doing something else. These secular humanists are doing one thing. These other secular humanists are doing something else. How do we say, is there a true secular humanist? Is there a true Muslim at the end of the day? Or is it just who self-identifies? Yeah. So it would be a mistake for anybody to go down and know true Scotsman fallacy on either. But it's why I included, in the list of things, I don't remotely think you and maybe, I don't know which, so without putting you on the spot for that, you can advocate for Sufism and still support Sharia law, correct? You could, yeah. And that happens at least somewhere, right? Sure. Okay. There's no way to advocate for secular humanism and also advocate for marginalizing individuals or treating people of different genders with disparity of rights and freedoms. So like, I'm not bringing this up because I don't know what your take is. We're happy to talk about it. But if you say women don't get the same access to education as men, they can't leave the house without a man, an older member of their family to go with them, they can't drive a car. These things are consistent with Sharia law in different realms. And somebody has drawn a map from or drawn a path from either the Quran, the Sunnah or the Hadith to those conclusions. And what we don't see is anything like that with regard to secular humanism, nor is there anything that could remotely be like that. If the foundations are about with a cornerstone of autonomy and equality that humanism has, you just can't get to some of those things. And that's why I included them. And what I'm curious about is like, if we look at secular humanism as sort of like an ideology, how does that work as like a nationalistic framework like for a state? How do we use a secular humanistic state? Because you brought up America, United States has certain elements of this, but it has religious, it's kind of a combination of multiple things that are involved. And then I think about the Articles of Confederation in history, where, you know, I can say here are these moralists, you know, I'm going to give you more like independent liberty view, viewpoints, but then their governance is smaller. What is going to be, how do we draw a line in the sand if we were going to take this type of point, this point of view? Yeah. So first of all, I don't think I would advocate for secular humanism, the religion, as a form of government. I don't think that's what it is or what it should be. I would prefer a secular government. I would be happy with the United States being the secular government that's supposed to be, but I'm not happy with the government. If you take a look at the humanist manifestos where they assert positions like man is a part of nature and is emerged as a result of a continuous process. Okay, I agree with that, but I don't think that should be a position of the government. I don't think that holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected. I don't think it's up to the government to say you should be rejecting mind and body. So what I would prefer is a government that is secular, such that it would allow for humanist principles of freedom, things and humanist applications for reason in science and resolving conflicts through data and debate and discussion. That would be the form of governance. What I'm talking about is secular humanism, not as a form of government, but as a philosophical position to guide someone by. So I'm not advocating, I would not want a secular humanist government. I would just like a government that's appropriately secular such that humanism is permissible. And everybody else's religious views are permissible as well. I love a lot of things about the US Constitution, particularly that the freedom of speech and freedom of religion are in there because the same thing that gives you the right to be a Muslim in the United States gives me the right to criticize Islam, which is something that I don't know that I could do anywhere and everywhere. So let me kind of ask a follow-up question on a couple of your takes from just from your perspective. I'm assuming that under your view of Sufism that women would be considered equal to men, would that be true also with regard to inheritance and whether or not they could be president? For sure. And whether or not they could get an abortion? Yeah. Actually, it's funny. Islam does have a place. It's funny. Judaism and Islam kind of have a place for abortion, unlike Evangelical Christianity. According to even traditional Islamic formatting, they have it if it's used this tradition that a hadith that says that the soul is blown in around like the third trimester. So you could technically have an abortion up to that point. We're close then, but we're slightly different because I'm going to say that nobody has a right to use somebody else's body without their consent all the way up to delivery. I'm saying that's the traditional. I didn't say what my view on it is. I'm saying that's the traditional. So I said my view is like, look, the point is your spiritual journey is between you and it could be a higher power, God, whatever word you want to use for that. That's the journey that a person goes on. It could be universe, whatever term you want to use for that. But so it's not like a person can kind of tell you how you're going to do that. Sure. But and forgive me, I got a handful more on this because I was leading to something with regard to women because I think you're probably an outlier. You're certainly an outlier with regard to other Muslims that I've engaged with. But also, there are prohibitions against women driving or maintaining their children after a divorce. Under your views, would they inherit the same? And what about if they're lesbians? Are all of those things just OK with Sufism? So there's different paths in Sufism. So some Sufis are more orthodox. They take more of a traditional orthodox position. So they might not be for that. But I said, for me personally, it's not my business. And I think if someone is controlling someone's life and path and how can they even go on their own journey, you're controlling that space. And one point I wanted to add to is when we look at these other, am I an outlier? I don't want to be mean to other people and disparage their position. I think there's a validity. But we have to understand a lot of Muslims now are taking a very post-nationalist position, post-modernist position, where it comes out of most majority of Muslims traditionally, speaking of war, Sufi, even the big shake of Salafism, Ibn Taymiyya was a Sufi. He was a Qatari Sufi. So those are different paths. I wish I could have gone to those quotes, but I can send the quotes in the chat at some point so you can see them. But I can do that here. But I think a lot of people now are saying, well, this is real Islam. And then this is the thing. It's like what you talk about, the no true Scotsman fallacy. People are saying, well, here's a true Islam. Here this other Islam is fake. Why do they get to say that? They say, well, I'm taking a Protestant Christian view of it. The book says it, so thus it is true. I said, well, that's not how any of the, if you study Abrahamic religions, which I think a lot of people haven't, if you study these traditions, a lot of people didn't even know how to read or write. That was the fact. These people kind of had spiritual experiences. And I think that's the whole point in Sufi. And I know that you can make a counterpoint, say, well, how do you know these experiences are real? How do you know there are solutions? Yeah, that is a whole other conversation. But in that particular space, that is the way it is. So there's not like this truism that folks might be trying to push. I think that's not fair when folks are doing that. I'm going to do something else that's probably not fair. Okay. And I'll say in advance that I appreciate whatever answer I end up getting out of this. I appreciate the fact that when it comes to like gender equality, your positions don't seem to be dramatically different from mine, but they are different from what I hear generally from Muslim majority countries, depending on how much, how theocratic it is. This is a little bit of cheating. Hopefully, James doesn't kick me off here for this. But next week, I'm debating Daniel Hikikachu, who is, in my personal opinion, one of the most vile people on the planet who's advocated for child marriage and child rape as young as four. And he's doing all of this on behalf of his version of Islam. Now, I'm fine with the notion that you guys are cut from completely different cloths, it seems. But there is no such disparity between any two secular humanists on the planet. And when we say, is secular humanism better for society than Islam? I don't think we can go with is Matt's secular humanism better than Issa's version of Islam? I think we have to go with kind of more normative views. And when there's nothing within secular humanism that can advocate for that stuff. And there are individuals within Islam who are advocating for this. I think at a minimum, first of all, the biggest question I still have is, what does Sufism add? Or what is secular humanism missing? That is demonstrably true and beneficial to human beings, because I think we could then include it. But if there's an, and I don't know how anybody could argue that Islam is better for humanism or for humanity than secular humanism is until we make a list of all the different versions of Islam or views on Islam, which need to be scrubbed from the freaking planet entirely, like virtually everything Daniel says. I'm gonna, there's definitely a lot of agreement with that. I think child marriage is an abomination. There's it's evil and horrible. And there's no defense for it. There's no defense. It's disgusting grotesque. And we know through cognitive development that folks don't have, you know, young ladies don't have agency. It's grotesque. We're 100% in agreement with that. There are Muslims that take a differing view. It could be a liberalistic view of Islam, which, because that narrative is coming from the Prophet of Islam being married to Aisha, who is so a lot of certain sources are saying that she's nine. And then there are other folks that she's like 15, 16, up to 19. And we're dealing with historical context. And it's, it's, it's a difficult, it's a difficult space. So how do you ask the question, you're like, well, two secular humanists, there's this kind of idea of humanity that you don't take other folks rights away, right? And what happens when you have two different Muslims who have differing views? I think the difficulty we also have with this situation is we have a lot of, we have to look at the other variables. So secular humanism is very, it's a, as a narrative, it's in a much minor space, as opposed to like Islamic, the population of people who adhere to Islam. So you have all of these views of Islam that kind of get shuffled into this box. And there are a lot of things that you're dealing with, like you have the Quran and the tradition, and how do you deal with that with spiritual tradition? How does, how does that engage? So I think if we're going to look at this, we have to look at all the variables. We have to look at economics. We have to look at culture. Culture is a big thing, how religion is coming through. There's a lot of cultural aspects that come through religious practice. They're not devoid. Like they're not divorced. Cause I think of like Christianity, and you look at a lot of Christians who come from European ancestry, they're not a lot, they're not really like Jewish people. They're very different. Even though they're reading Jewish texts, the Torah is a Jewish text. And the New Testament is also, it's a Jewish text too. It's about Jewish people. It's not about European people. So it's an interesting thing to examine that. So what is better? I think this is the, this is hard. It depends on what you want. I think that's the question. What do you want? Do you want a kind of like a path where you have a person who is like, where you have guidance and you have a teacher and that helps you through this kind of training of becoming a better human being, like having a mentor, or do you have a path which is more focused on what folks think is humanistic? I think that this could be, it could be, it just depends on what you want in this. Is one right and the other wrong? I think it just depends on what you want. I think that that's, at the end of the day, that's where it ends. That's how a person is going to decide. Wow. Christians sound different from Jews because they have a whole nother book that modifies Judaism. If they only had the Torah and the Talmud, then they'd be Jews. But they have a New Testament which adds to Judaism and changes things in the same way that the Koran modifies basically from the prophets on after Isaac and Ishmael. What I said again is like the New Testament is a Jewish. It's about Jewish people. It is, in a sense, it's a Jewish text. It's a mix. It is a mix of messianic Judaism and Hellenized Judaism, which doesn't have its or its history-tied Judaism. But in either way, the issue here is, in order, let's assume that I loved your version of Islam, and I don't, but I'm still going to have problems with it because it's still pointing to a God that I don't believe in, don't think that there's any good reason to believe in, and I don't have any reason to think that that's going to make me a better person or do anything better for humanity. But I'll fully admit right now, this is version of Islam is the best one I've ever heard. No doubt about it. But until you can come up with a path, like in your opening, one of the things that you said is that, and you didn't really dig in on this, but I think I understood it, you said people aren't going to go with atheism, which makes it difficult to go with secular humanism. But that's basically arguing that because a lot of people are going to cling to some God belief that we need some version of God belief in order to direct them to the truth, that secular humanism just can't do that. I don't know how anybody can reach that conclusion that the evidence shows that more and more people are identifying as atheist, non-theist, secularists, etc. And since there's never, since this is happening, when outside of the United States, there's pretty much, and maybe Japan, there's almost no place where secularism is being given a fair shake. And so we still got a long way to go to change the cultural aspect that you're talking about. But that's a practical argument about whether or not more people are going to find secular humanism convincing. And I would agree that if it were an immutable fact that more people would be convinced of Issa's version of Islam because it includes a God, then would be convinced of secular humanism that maybe on a practical matter of trying to change the world, you would have a foundational argument at least at the beginning. I just don't think that that's the case because it would take, no offense, I'm not trying to be an ass about this, but it would take nothing more than someone like me coming along and saying, okay, what does Issa's version of Islam add that secular humanism doesn't have? What is it add that is necessary and good for humans that we couldn't include in secular humanism? And I, and no offense, but I still have yet to hear a single thing that meets that criteria. I've heard, well, it gives you kind of like a master disciple sort of thing, but you can have teachers in secular, some would argue that's exactly what I'm doing whenever I talk about secular humanism. I don't take on individual students because I don't have the the arrogance to suspect that I know everything or have access to broader knowledge that the people need. But that is the only part of your case where there was like a practical pragmatic argument, which I think is what you're trying to do. But that has nothing to do with whether or not there's something true and good and demonstrable in your version. But we're still stuck because I don't, I think that there's less, there's fewer people who are going to advocate for your version of Islam, that the disparity between people who would advocate for your version versus all of the other versions of Islam or all of the other versions of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc, etc. The disparity between that is at least as wide as the disparity between people who are likely to accept atheism and secular humanism versus yours or versus not, I guess I should say not versus yours. I think the difficulty in the conversation is like, what is the standard? So do we have, is there, and I'm just being sincere about this, like I'm curious, like is there a kind of a standard for atheism and secular humanism? I'm like, I think there are a lot of noble and great ideas. Like I agree, probably 99% with it, but I would say that the issue that occurs, or I could even say 100%, it just depends on how we frame it. The question is, how does that look in a mindset for people? It's a very nice idea that you're saying, hey, we are pluralistic, we accept people and Sufism takes that position too. That was an argument I was making. It's pluralistic as well. So there's a lot of things that can be shared with that. I think what it can add is if a person is a theist, having a space for God is something that's important for people. So that is something on a practical level that will be beneficial for theists. So a theist will be like, I need to have God in my life. Now, the question is, you said, well, is it real demonstrably? Well, you can't, it's like un-false survival. You can't prove if God is real or not. The thing is, if a person believes it and has faith in that, do you take that away? Having that as a crux in civilization and in their lives? I don't know, could you take that away? And what Sufism is offering is the same thing that certain elements of Sufism, I can't say all of Sufism, and that's the issue that we have. There's not all of secularism, all of Sufism in certain paths in Sufism, aligned with certain paths of secular humanism, where it's this idea of pluralism, accepting people of different identities. So basically the thing that Sufism can offer is that you have this kind of path for moral self-cultivation. There's a way that's established. There's a space for God. These things are important. So I would say that's the fundamental difference. The thing that I'm supporting, it's not really different in the pluralism level and treating humanity well. So that's another kind of pragmatic case that, hey, if someone is a theist, having a space for God is important to them. But if somebody really believes in dragons, that might be important for them. But that doesn't mean that it's true or good or beneficial to them or somebody else. Maybe if God is simply a delusion that all of the people who think they need a God in a space for God within their system, maybe they're all wrong. And if they were to find out that they weren't without that space for God, that things are actually better. This is about which one is better. And I don't see how a keeping a space for something that you acknowledge is unfalsifiable, non-demonstrable, untestable, but just like a personal preference, I don't see how that is contributing to the betterment of humanity. What if it turns out there isn't a God and every single person who's leaving space open for a God is wasting time and energy? I mean, I don't know which things you follow, but I don't have to pray five times a day. I don't have to pray ever. I don't have to donate any of my money to any religious organization. I do, on occasion, to religious organizations that are demonstrably doing things that better society. But I'm donating to the betterment of society. If it turns out that there isn't a God, then all of those people who needed to keep a space for God were advocating for something that wasn't true. And every second and bit of time or currency that was spent on that was time that was wasted that could have been spent on actually helping people. Okay. And is it a waste if that person finds value in that? Does that make it a waste? If that person says, hey, even if this none of this is real, it made me feel good. Like it created that support for me. Is that I don't want to and never want to diminish the value of people's pleasure. It's one of the issue that I potentially have with some ethical vegans. For example, I think that while veganism is morally superior, that it's not a moral requirement, and that some people who would advocate for it are overlooking things about pleasure and, you know, things like that. But this isn't about are there things that are pleasurable to an individual that are not actually beneficial to humanity? And my answer is yes, there are a whole host of things that are absolutely pleasurable to individuals but not beneficial to humanity. It feels good for at least some period of time to be high on some drug. But that short lived temporary pleasure doesn't necessarily contribute to humanity. It contributes to your life. And it may be on some occasions necessary. Like if I'm just completely burned out to where I can't do another freaking talk I can't do another call in show because I'm tired of people calling in to assert a whole bunch of things that they can't demonstrate. Maybe taking a night off, watching a movie, and enjoying a drink or whatever. Maybe that's what I need to reset me. Cool. I got no problem with that. The notion that there's some value in believing something that is untestable, unfalsifiable, but makes you feel good is, I guess, fine. It's just that I care about what's true. And if we have something that people are believing because it's pleasurable, I still think there's the question of what does that actually contribute to the betterment of humanity? And so I'm still looking for, you know, what can a Sufi do that I can't do that that's actually good? And is Sufi the right thing? I'm insane. Sufi's am I. I just didn't know that's fine. It's okay. So I don't know the language, which is why I was so glad that you mentioned the name of the woman, because my Arabic pronunciations are freaking awful. And I found that quote, you know, really good. I just couldn't. I didn't want to risk saying her name and look like an idiot. No, that's fine. I was like, I'll carry the slack for that. No problem. Okay. Yeah. And this is and this is the tough question. And I think it's a valid question, what you're asking at the end of the day, what does Sufism offer that secular humanism doesn't offer? And then the question could be asked, what does secular humanism offer? And that, you know, that can that Sufism doesn't offer. So I mean, I think this is an interesting question. That's why I kind of focused on Sufism, because there's a lot of common ground with Sufism and secular humanism, or really just humanism, because that's really the, like on the Venn diagram, humanism is the thing that's in between. Humanism is what's shared in between and focusing on the humanistic in between between secular humanism and Sufism. So yes, it'd be secular humanism, religious humanism. And then that would overlap with Sufism at some point. Yes, exactly. That's it. Exactly. So really, the thing that I can say is like, it depends on what you're looking for in your worldview. So for the thesis, and you could say it's pleasurable, or it's false, it's hard because it's like, when you're dealing with humanism, is there some kind of overlying out, you know, is there's overarching narrative that controls everything, or is this a really kind of personalized space? So, like I said, I agree with the secular humanist position. I'm just like, you could say it's pluralistic, but it could be offensive to Atheist. This can be an offensive thing to as a worldview to Atheist. You could say, oh, you expect me to be offensive to an atheist. That's true. It's true. And that's the thing. That's the problem. There's this impasse that's going on. There's an impasse between the two. It also seemed like you were suggesting that, so there are the humanist manifestos, and there are basic guidelines and principles that sum up humanism. There are some things, though, that are left to individuals to some extent. But in your opening, you talked about Sufism being a path to moral self-cultivation. And so if Sufism is a path to self-cultivation, moral self-cultivation, and secular humanism is as well, I don't know how we can be critical of either for that, because we don't have, not to be insulting, because I use this term a lot. You don't seem to have any more of a foundation for your position being correct and good than anybody else who would say, hey, I like my position and it's correct and good. I mean, you even pointed this out in your opening where you said we can have rules like don't steal, don't lie, but those things can change situationally. So you and I are on the same page that morals and ethics are situational and conditional on those situations and what might be morally correct in one situation is not going to be another. So it seems like we're on the same page on that. And so the only difference here is that it's really God. I have all of that without trying to add a God. And so, for example, if this is too personal or you don't want to address it, that's fine too, because you're not here to defend Issa. But my daily routine doesn't involve wearing any particular clothing, saying any particular words, dancing any particular dances, adjusting my schedule around, you know, there's no demands from secular humanism on how I spend my day or anything else. I don't think that's as true. And so if it turns out that there isn't a God, how isn't it the case that every minute and every accommodation you've made for that component wouldn't have been better spent doing something else? Yeah, you brought this point up before. Yeah, you know, like it's a utilitarian point. Like, what is the best usage of her time? Should you pray five times a day? Should you do be fasting? Should you do be doing recitations? Is this worthy and valuable of your time? Or is it a waste of time to do it? I know it's like I'm laughing because it's just like it sounds so kind of like for some people be so offensive. But I understand it. I think it makes a lot of sense for people. It would be like, you know, I don't want to do that. And there are spaces, Sufi spaces that I've seen, that are very have like the traditional Islamic element where people pray five times a day and then people who don't pray, they sit downstairs and they're like, I don't want to do this. I believe in good qualities being a better human. I like the spiritual guides teachings. I'm interested in that. I'm not necessarily interested in doing these formal elements. I think for some people, there's a lot of performance. It's a lot of performative stuff. People do stuff because they want to look good. You know, they say, I memorized the entire Quran and it makes me look good. It doesn't actually make you good. Those are very different things. But there are, there's a lot of performance. And I think moral self cultivation is an important, and I think you made it, it's a valid point about what is, is there this path for moral self cultivation? You can see it both in secular humanism and within Sufism is this idea that you need to be a better human being and treat people better. And I think that point that you brought up from Rabi al-Adawiyah is really, really good. There's actually another story about her too, where this man, his name was Hassan al-Basri, he was a really famous scholar and he was a great mystic and had a lot of powers at that time. Yes, it's a myth, we can't prove it. So I understand that, but it's a story. And in the story, he goes and he wants to marry her because she's like the best woman around. So he proposes to her and he says, he puts his paramat out on the water and he prays on the water to show how powerful he is as a mystic. And she puts her mat up in the air and she goes up in the sky and she says, you can marry me when you come up with me up here. So it's kind of a cool story. And I think a feminist would appreciate that story because she definitely has the power in this situation. But the idea is there's a lot of of the point of going back to the point of what you were saying of this idea of how do we look at this? And I think that that is it a waste of time? I think for some people it is and for some people it has value. So it's like, it's a pluralistic space. It just depends on what you want and what you're looking for. I can think of at least one feminist that wouldn't agree with the principle of that story. But I only had two more questions with regard to things in your opening. One of them may be subject for a whole other debate. And then the other one is just an opportunity to let you finish something that you didn't get to finish. But the first one is, is it Taraka, T-A-R-I-Q-A-H? That's the spiritual journey? Path, yep, Tarika, that's right. I'm in this position where I hear people use the term spiritual all the time and nobody seems to mean the same thing by it. Nobody seems ever to be able to demonstrate that there's anything spiritual or anything that would count as spiritual. So I don't understand what a spiritual journey is. And without making you defend everybody's notion, what is spirituality to you and how does that relate to making humanity better? Okay, so the first point, let me get there. So what is a spiritual journey? What does that mean? So I think that that book that I brought up, The Conference of the Birds, is kind of a good idea of what the spiritual journey is for a Sufi mystic. This is like a very classic Sufi piece of literature. So in the book, I was telling this before about these birds that, these birds are all thinking about going this journey. They're trying to find the samurik. Samurik is like God. They're trying to find the divine being. And what happens is they go on the quest and some of the birds say, I don't want to do that. I'm interested in just taking care of myself. I don't want to do this type of thing. So a lot of what the spiritual, and then ultimately at the end, like I said, they kind of all kind of see themself and they find out that that's what the divine is. It's a very beautiful story. A lot of Sufi poetry and literature is beautiful, even I would say to secular humanists and atheists. I think without the concept of God, the other parts are good. Like the way that it's written, the style, I think a lot of secular humanists would appreciate it. So I think the spiritual journey is basically it's a quest. It's like the hero's journey that you see within Joseph Campbell's work. That's how I would just equate it to that. It's that this person has to leave their comfort, go on this quest to find themself. I think that's it in a nutshell. So you would view it more, and go ahead and correct it, but you would view it more as like a metaphor for, so I have no problem with people talking about the human spirit or the human spirit of increase, not like it's an actual soul or spirit or whatever else, but our propensity for that stuff. And so by putting it in with like the hero's journey, it seems that you're looking at spirituality as a metaphor for growth in character. Yeah. Okay. I'm with that. Then the last one I had, and I mean, you could still have plenty of questions and I'll do my best answer is you started in your opening, but you ran out of time to touch on specific teachings, like listen to your own self focus on positive words. If you have a slide that is a list of those that you could summarize real quick, I'd love to see that because when I like I would go through, I didn't bother going through all of the secular humanist manifestos. I went through the third one, the three, the six points in the third one. The second one is incredibly long with like 15 and there's, you know, I'd have to like, oh no, it's not 15, it's 17 and a closing remark. And there are some that I agree with and some that I wouldn't, but those would all count as like teachings of humanism, things like the separation of church and state and the separation of ideology and state are imperatives. The state should encourage maximum freedom for different moral political religious and, you know, I could, I'm happy to go through all those. I just want to spend all of our time on it, but if you have a slide with those teachings, I'd love to know what they are. Is it okay if I share them? Like I can go back and just share. It's just a couple. I have no objection. James. That's okay with James too. You're cool. Cool. I'm just loading it up on the screen right now. And I can share it once it pops up. I don't know why it's taking so long to load. And this might be the last thing that we can do before we go into the Q&A. We've got a good amount of questions. I want to say thanks so much, folks. For all of your questions, we're going to get to them shortly. And as I mentioned, thanks so much for your donations. As 100% of super chats are going to worldwide orphans and the 30% that YouTube takes will cover it on modern day debate side. So thanks for that. And Lisa, it should show right. Can you see it? It's almost there. It looks like it's still loading at least on my side. It says started screen sharing, but I don't see the screen. If you can't get to it, I'd be happy for you to send it somewhere. There we go. So these are a lot of spiritual features that have these teachings. And the thing that I was going to mention too that I didn't get to is that a lot of it crosses over. So you might have Muslims in the chat are like, I don't know what you're talking about, but they haven't really studied Islamic history. Like I kind of really studied this on our graduate level too. So like I've looked at this stuff on a deep level. And a lot of the folks I've saw in the chat, I'm like, they haven't done that. So it's like, you know, they might not want to take such a strong position on that. But a lot of these Sufi mystics, particularly in South Asia, there was like a hybrid culture with the Vedic space. There was a lot of that. So there are teachers, particularly South Asian teachers who taught Christians, they taught Hindus, they taught Muslims, Buddhists, they had a variety of teachers. It's very similar to kind of like the Christ dynamic with the disciples. It's similar to that. So I'm just going to go through this. Let's see. So, okay, this isn't exactly what I was going to say. But this is like, this is the thing about unveiling with light and removing veils. That was one of them. And Al Ghazali is a very famous jurist and theologian who was also a Sufi. And he said that it's important to find peace of mind and not be stuck in intellectual pursuits. And this is the teacher's book. So I'm going to go back to, oops. And those were spiritual stations. So let me go back to the main thing. I want to go back to the primarily to the teachings. So here we go. So you can see that. So Kabir says, listen, you know, my name's Kabir too. Funny enough. Listen to your own self. If you listen to that self within, then you will find the truth. So this is a very Sufi thing. Kabir is a teacher within Sikh culture, Sikh tradition, as well as Sufi, as well as in Vedic tradition. He's viewed throughout all three. The Rumi says your heart knows the way, right in that direction. I know heart is metaphorical. It doesn't mean like I got I got my objections. My objections to this go are in a completely different realm than whether or not my heart pumps blood or knows things. It's there's there seems to be some some conflict. And I'm not asking to resolve it because I know we got to go on to questions between the teacher-disciple thing and the listen to your own self. If you listen to the self within, you'll find the truth. I'm not convinced that that is actual actually good advice for many things because the number of people who've decided to listen to themselves and misinformed and ill-informed people who are now convinced that the last election in the United States was stolen is staggering. And the number of people who listen to their inner self and wind up in absolutely dire circumstances, they could perhaps benefit it from somebody who knew better. I think it's one of these many things where it's like a deepity where to the extent that it's true, it's actually trivial. And to the extent that it's profound, it's actually false. But these these kind of adages that make people Oh, follow your heart. I mean, this is this is not that different from the sort of cookie cutter. Follow your heart, follow your passion. And some people are going to follow their heart and passion and do wonderful things that help us all. And some people are going to blow up the world. That's fair. It's totally fair. I think what they're saying is within the context of this situation. I don't think it's like absolutely that. But that's a fair point. And here's another teaching where it says always use positive words and never use negative or evil words, cultivate good thoughts, not bad thoughts, make sure your intentions are constructive intentions, never be jealous, be grateful, be tolerant, peaceful, honest instead of vengeful, always be compassionate, never proud and arrogant. Praise God because God is the deserving one. You need these in your life. If you can teach yourself to follow these suggestions, you will have a good life. So do you think do you would you agree with most of that except the God part? I definitely don't agree with the God part. I think I think I'll steal something from the Bible and modify it, which is all things in moderation. I think that there are, I don't know what evil words are. I reject the, you know, I get that there are there's negativity in language. But I don't, I don't accept the notion that there are words that are evil. Languages are plaything. All languages are playthings. I don't necessarily know what bad thoughts are. I know what some thoughts are that I would describe as bad. But I think that I've had thoughts that I think are good that Sheik Bala might think are evil. I don't know because I, you know, you'd have to get into what he means or what somebody else means about that. Or maybe if I listen to myself, it's up to me to determine what your bad thoughts. But I like intentions being constructive. I think, I think jealousy in small doses like many other things can be insightful and teach you something about yourself and something that you need to work through. So if you get out to where you're no longer jealous, I would generally consider that a good thing. Tolerant, peaceful, yet a good chunk of this is stuff that I would go along with as a generalism, I guess. Okay. And there's one more slide. Thanks. Thanks for allowing me to show this, because I think this is this was kind of the crux of what I wanted to show, too. So I can read these. Sai Baba, who was a teacher who a lot of people don't know. He was in, he taught, some Hindu folks treat him like a God. But he prayed five times that he's a very interesting, fascinating character to look into. South Asia is really a fascinating space. He's not the one that they killed for claiming he was God when that's not quite what he was claiming. No, you're talking about Halaj. He said, I am the truth. So the extremist people said, they killed him. They killed him. It's insane. I don't want to laugh at somebody getting killed, but it's funny that even if he'd meant what they thought they meant, I don't think they would be justified in killing him. No. But the notion that he may not have meant what they thought he meant makes them even more unjustified in killing them. I agree. 100%. I'm glad you know a lot about the Sufi stuff. I thought you said you didn't know much about this. You know quite a bit. I don't know much. I know a couple things. Montser Al-Halaj, that's his name. So Montser Al-Halaj said, yeah, he said, I know Huck. And then according to the story, it says that his blood said I know Huck. But yeah, this is the issue. You're dealing with crazy people being crazy, fundamentalists, folks. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jalani, he's a great, he's a big spiritual guide, and he has a path called the Qadiriah path afterwards. He said, dear friend, your heart is a polished mirror. You must wipe it clean of the veil of dust, which has gathered upon it because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets. And here's the next one. Sayed Ahmed al-Kabir al-Rifai. The tongue of the Sufi is the same as his heart. He has integrity in his essence and his speech. He is far from the disgraceful trait, which is described in the verse. Why do you promise things that you will not be able to do? So these are kind of, I know you could call them pithy statements, but these are kind of the ideas that you see from the spiritual teachers. And it's funny, the last one's actually an ancestor of mine. So yeah, so thank you for allowing me to share that, that those were the points. I hate watching people run out of time right at the moment when they get to something that I think might have been important. So if you ever do this same presentation again and you want, drop your definition of secular humanism and put that stuff in, because if your definition of secular humanism doesn't match mine or whoever you're debating, it's already a waste of time, which is why I didn't try to define Sufism or Sufism. What I was doing with that was not to define secular humanism. I was just trying to showcase how we're going to have a conversation about it. And that's the thing, because I'm like, if I don't discuss it at all, then I can't play off of it. That was the point. So I'm like, let me look up for something and see how we can make there be a narrative between the two. Yep. Thanks. You got it. With that, folks, thanks so much for all of your questions. We're going to jump into the Q&A, and we're going to try to move as fast as possible. I've got to give you a heads up. If you happen to put in any more questions from this point on, we can probably get a few more if there are new ones, but I just want to give a heads up that we may not get to them, as I do want to get these guys out of here within 29 minutes. This one first coming in from the Maya Hanna's mind says, I wonder what the speakers think about Satan tampering with Allah's revelations in the Quran 22 52. Can we trust something tampered with by Satan? I guess as you don't believe it was tampered with by Satan, Matt. Well, I don't believe there is a Satan, but I would say that if you go with the story, can you trust something that was tampered with by Satan? The answer is obviously no. I mean, you got it. That's that's just the I don't think he exists. And you know, I don't think that that I don't think that the Salman Rushdie is the Satanic verses, which I think is what they're addressing. Um, but I also think it's absolutely violent or pugnant that he was repeatedly attacked and ended up getting stabbed at one point. I 100% agree. I 100% agree with that point about it's definitely repugnant. I'm like, if someone disagrees, why not just like write an op-ed? Say, look, I'm gonna first of all, read the book. Like, why don't you take the time to read the book and know what it says instead of just getting angry? Read the book. I actually read like the first portion of the book. It's very South Asian. It mentions Farishto as an angel, like an Arab person would have no idea what it is if they read it. Like it's a very South Asian text. It's East South Asian. So his own cultural narrative comes through. I agree. I think it makes sense. Like logically, I agree with Matt on that point. And also, oh, sorry. No, please. Also a minute ago, you'd mentioned seeing people in chat who hadn't studied things the same way you had. I saw somebody in chat try to claim that secular humanism is anything goes do whatever feels good, which there's absolutely no way you can reach the conclusion that that's what secular human is about after listening to either me or is it described or reading the manifestos? You know, I think secular humanism is good. I actually agree with secular humanism. I think it's good. I think the only real difference in the conversation is their God or not. That's really at the end of the day. I agree with Matt's positions. I think people have the right to choose what they want to choose in their life. You got it. And folks want to give a quick heads up. I don't think I've done a good job of promoting this because I've got to tell you, folks, if you look at the bottom right of your screen, Matt Dillahunty versus Daniel Huckigichu will be in one week. And I was telling someone earlier today, I said, this will probably be no joke. I'm expecting this to be one of our biggest debates ever. And frankly, I think it's going to be the biggest debate on modern day debate yet. So folks, here's the cool thing. If you're near Houston, the tickets are very affordable. Check out the description box below where you can get tickets to this debate to see it in person. We will have security there. And not only that, if you are far away and you're like, geez, I can't make it in person, we have that crowdfund which helps us be able to put on these debates. Check that crowdfund link out in the description box. We're going to have, for example, sign photos of your favorite debater that you can purchase in a way by giving a donation toward this. As like I said, our goal is just to break even. I've got to tell you, folks, if you're like, hey, James, you can't do that right now either. I'm stretched thin. I'm going to tell you, this debate will be live or the public. So even the live stream, there's no paywall. You don't have to put in like two bucks or anything. This is fully free. So folks, in one week, it's going to be right about this time, about 7 p.m. Central. Folks, it's going to be huge. I can't tell you enough how big this is going to be. But we're going to jump into the next question. This one's coming in from... I want to encourage everybody to watch it, because I can pretty much guarantee it will be the only time you see me in Daniel's debate. And it will not remotely be of the same tone as this week's debate. I believe it. That was sick. You guys have agreed on a lot today. Tonight's been a really peaceful conversation. I've enjoyed this immensely, but we're going to jump into this next question. This one's from Bondservant says, I'm a Christian Calvinist. I spoke to Matt 17 times. Does Bondservant sound familiar, Matt? I'm the wrong person to ask, because after 20 years of doing this, I... even somebody I've talked to 17 times, I don't know if I talked to them under that name or whatever else. My apologies for not remembering. They said, Matt, what would convince you of Christ again? So this is one of the questions I get over and over again, where my answer is probably one of the most famous quotes for me ever that I've said a million times. I have no idea what would convince me that a God exists or that Christ was God. But if Christ is God, Christ absolutely knows what would convince me and has not provided that, which means either Christ does not exist or Christ doesn't want me to know that he's God. Either way, not my problem. You got this one coming in from, do appreciate it as well. Staying with it says, Issa, I'm an ex-Muslim, Sufi, but now atheist. Do you believe that is morally permissible to beat your children if they don't pray? And are you... I'll explain what that means to the audience. So no, absolutely not. Corporal discipline is awful. It's disgusting and grotesque. If I had kids, I would never touch my kids in that way ever. No. And to beat them, no. For example, if you have to make prayers, if you think prayers are a good thing, then you have to make it positive. If you're like terrorizing children to pray, they're going to reject it. I've seen it. I've seen children reject all of this stuff. If you forced kids to do this, once they leave, they're going to throw it all away. Don't do that. Don't do that to your kids. Don't do child abuse. Just please don't do that. And the second point was, am I a Hanafi? That's an interesting question. So in Islam, there are four schools of thought. There's the Hanafi school of thought. There's the Hanbali school of thought. There's the Shafi school of thought and the Maliki school of thought. So these are the schools of thought in the Ahl al-Sunwajimah or the Sunni tradition. And then in the Shia perspective, there's the Zaidi and the Jaffari schools of thought. I think it's a good school of thought. It has validity. I mean, if someone wants to do that, I mean, for me personally, I'm pretty open-minded. So I don't really like being stuck in a box, but I can see value in it. You got it. This one coming in from Imam Al-Safat says, Matt mentioned Afghanistan, but Matt, what are your thoughts on the U.S.'s $3 billion funding of the Muqaddeen? And they say in parentheses, the eventual manufacturers of al-Qaeda in the Taliban. Is it Mujahideen? Is that what they mean? That's it. Thank you. I am embarrassed to say that I don't know enough to have an informed opinion to express, but I will say that it wouldn't surprise me to find that I'm incredibly opposed to any number of things that the United States government has done in other nations, including the fact that I am a veteran of the Gulf War Operation Desert Storm Desert Shield provide comfort, Kuwait liberation, and a number of others. And while I generally think that there was a legitimate attempt to serve good, I don't have enough information to know whether or not my participation in those resulted in things that I'm actually opposed to. You got it. This one coming in from Perk Speed says, Assuming that humans do not possess a soul or spirit, what does Sufism offer humanity? Isn't this like prescribing a medicine to treat a disease which no one can demonstrate exists? Okay. So I'm guessing the question's to me, right? So the idea, the thing about a soul is again, it's like something we can't prove or know. It's something that someone could say, I feel and resonate with. I don't know if that is the most important benefit to that. I don't know if Sufism, the whole point is about, I don't know if you would argue that the whole point is about the soul, but it could be even just your own personal moral self-cultivation. It could be defending, depending on how you define soul, like you could say your soul is just like the way you think in your internal essence, on a very literal, biological, pragmatic level. It doesn't have to be this mystical light thing that exists. It doesn't have to be that. So I think there still can be benefit regardless if there's a literalistic soul or not. You got it. This one coming in from Issa Kavir says, Thank you, Matt and James in modern day debate. Thanks for your donation. Let's appreciate that mid debate. Staying with it says, Let there be no compulsion in religion, quote unquote. They say only applies Issa for those entering the religion, not to those already Muslim. There go punishments for blasphemy and apostasy, thoughts from an ex-Muslim Sufi. Okay. See, the point is it depends on how you're practicing this situation, this faith. So there are people who I think are extreme tribalists and they are gatekeepers and they want to keep people in the box. This type of narrative is an extremely toxic narrative. And there are a lot of people who have left, there are people who have left Islam and have come back to Islam and left Islam. It really just depends on the community you're in. The people who really do these terrible things like killing people are people who have, first of all, really, this is where I actually think, where I was talking about individuals, and I think individuals are really healthier where people can kind of think for themselves and be like, look, I need to think for myself and I'm not just going to be brainwashed by other people and say, you have a person who leaves Islam, you're just like, look, I'm going to support this person. Maybe this path is not good for this person. It's not working for this person. Honestly speaking, a lot of these verses have historical context since the Quran is being brought up. In that time, you're dealing with like a ragtag group of people. You're not dealing with a very established situation. So when people left the community, it could create chaos with the community on a pragmatic level. I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'm saying I understand that. I'm saying that's the context of why this is there. So people are trying to take something that existed within a context in trying to put it now. I'm like, these people are hypocrites too. They use telephones, they use cell phones, they use cars, they use sewing machines, they go to the supermarket, they live a completely post-modernized life, but then they're trying to hold to these things from the past and they're like, well, I'm actually from the past. But you're not, though. You're not. I was thinking about Daniel Huckabee, who was pushing this position of being like the true Muslim. But I'm like, dude, your clothes are sewn. They're used by a machine. It's produced by a machine. You didn't hand sew your clothing. So you're living in a modern age and you're benefiting from modern things. So be honest and transparent about it. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Well, Jay says, James, more flatter moon landing hoax debates. Do the guests think some people are standing sideways and rain falls upwards in Australia? I appreciate that. Bond servant says, why is James so sleepy and uncharismatic? Oh my goodness. This one coming from Lord Stanis says, does your Sufism allow for criticism of the Quran, Muhammad, or Islam in general? How does Sufism present the many, quote, hell for disbeliever, Quran verses? Before he answers that, can I point out something that's come up in chat that somebody else just messed with me about? Evidently, and I'm not listening to on the YouTube, but evidently James's mic's open or something. So we're echoing during the Q&A. Okay. What it is, it's probably this snowball mic. So let me mute myself while you guys are giving responses and thanks for that feedback. But go ahead. What was that last question that was thanks for letting me know that because I can tap it on OBS. It's pretty easy for me to do that. And then from Lord Stanis, that question they had for you Issa was, does your Sufism allow for criticism of the Quran? And they say, Muhammad or Islam in general? How does Sufism present the hell for disbeliever, Quran verses? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm so glad I have to be honest in this debate. I don't have to keep talking about the beating and stuff. I just don't want to talk about that every single time. Like every single time this gets brought up and I'm like, oh, Lord, let me see. You know, nice Southern quote there. I think the way that we can engage this space is there are, I mentioned Sharia, Tariqa, haqiqa, matrifa. There are different levels of spirituality. So there's something that exists on a superficial level and there are things that exist on a deeper level. So the point is, is someone, is someone critiquing the Quran outright? Like what does that even mean? What does that look like? I think on a spiritual level, if we're arguing, I know spirituality is this amorphous thing, but I'm going to define spiritual, I'm going to try to tightly define it as being something that's kind of like beyond the surface level meaning. I'm going to try to put it to that. It's hard to like make it, like give a whole dissertation on that, but I'll try to do that. So Matt brought up a very good point when he brought up Rabi al-Adwiyah. She's considered probably one of the greatest Sufi saints of all time. She's like considered super solid and Mansur Halaj. These folks say things that might appear to be heretical and what is the point of what they're saying? They're challenging the dogma. That's the point of what they're doing and a lot of these Sufi mystics challenged the dogma. That's the point. The problem is this like a fixation on dogma and when a person is super fixated on dogma, they can't really see, I guess, more truth. I don't know if there's the truth, but getting to more truth, they can't see more truth. What was the last part of the question about heaven and hell, right? Correct. In particular about what Sufism says about the verses in the Quran that say that there is this hell and that hell for disbelievers in particular. Well, the thing is that's a very literalistic form of hell. Matt did it for me. He brought up Rabi al-Adwiyah. It shows that there's a challenge and a contention to that. So I'm like, I mean, it's already been said. So again, if a person is taking a very literalistic, superficial perspective, then there's a huge problem. But for a mystic, it's like, yeah, hell could be your own state of mind. It can be being stuck in a really terrible space. The literalistic hell and heaven, I think people get really fixated on those points and it kind of really distracts from helping support a person to be a better human being. And I think a lot of mystics would kind of present that. This one coming in from, appreciate it. Power of banana says everyone is missing the point. Power of banana rules all. Thanks for that. And then also, Justin Wilmer or Weamer, thanks so much for your donation to worldwide orphans. We do appreciate that. And folks, by the way, we always post those donation receipts on the community tab here on the YouTube channel. And if you guys would like me to forward you the actual email for the donation receipt, because a lot of people are still like, oh, that could be photoshopped. I'm happy to forward you the email. So for real, we always try to keep the finances transparent, especially with the charity stream. So Notion Slave says, if you were to follow their desires after what has come to you of knowledge, you would have against Allah no protector or helper. This is a verse they're saying from the Quran, I think they're alluding to it. They say the Muslim you're talking to has stripped away 90% of Allah's command. I think they're saying, Issa, that you're not following the Quran. Well, the thing is, there's a no true Scotsman policy. This person has been indoctrinated in their space. And so they want me to follow their indoctrination. They think that their indoctrination is the correct one. Did they actually learn critical thinking? Did they actually learn other perspectives besides that? Probably not. They probably know one narrative. So then the thing is they have their interpretation of the Quran and they're like, well, this Quranic verse says this, thus I am correct. And what they're doing is that they're trying, it's a bully tactic. They're trying to bully me by trying to say, Hey, you know, I am the true Muslim, I am going to parrot something from the Quran. I'm not a master by the way of any knowledge, but I read this verse in the Quran. And I am the true Muslim. So because I'm not parroting their point of view, I am not the true Muslim. It's a disgusting grotesque position. And a lot of people do it, but it's a very simplistic rudimentary position. It's not, and I've seen this a lot in the chat, the kind of really extreme kind of Muslim folks in the chat, they like to parrot this narrative and it makes them think that they're really smart. They're like, Whoa, I memorized and I can parrot Quranic verses. Do I know context? Have I actually studied it in like on a graduate level? No, I haven't. I haven't learned anything on a deeper level than that, but I'm so smart because I'm parroting this verse and I'm translating it to you. I'm like, no, it's not impressive. Sorry. I think to relate this to the debate, not to get another cheap point in, but I have to. Go ahead, please. I'm fine. I don't know which of the two of us is more likely to be killed by Islamists for what was said tonight, but I know that neither of us are likely to be killed by secular humanists over what was said tonight. And that to me is the nail in the coffin for the debate for now. Well, the point, that's why I didn't argue all of the whole tapestry of Islamic narratives. I think it's people killing people and it's their dogma that's doing it, but I hear your point. It was a nice, it was a nice pithy statement. I like that. It was cute. It's rare I get a get a shot like that one. Juicy, to say the least. This one coming in from appreciated cipher says Adam and Eve, pain and able, the creation story, power of Babel, Noah's flood are, I think they're saying Sumer and I think they mean Sumerian, but I'm not sure. They say Sumer myths that predate Israel by 5000 years. I would guess this is for you, Issa. The question is about Tower Babel. What was the other one, the Noah's flood? What else? Yeah, in particular, broadly speaking, I think they're saying like Adam and Eve, pain and able, creation story, Tower Babel, Noah's flood. They're saying these are myths. Issa, what are your thoughts? I think there are different levels of stories and I think in religion spirituality, you can take it as a myth. Like does that make it false? Like if I read the story of Heracles or Hercules, can I get some moral out of the story? I think you can. I think you can get sort of morals out of these stories. Does it have to literally happen? I think literalism is so unhelpful. It really doesn't get us anywhere because you can't really prove it, especially if you use archeology and if you look at a lot of these stories archeologically speaking, there's very little evidence. Like if we look into like the kingdom of Solomon or Suleiman or Shlomo Hamalek, like can we prove that he had like a thousand wives or 300 wives, 700 concubines? And he had all of this property and he could talk to in using the Islamic narrative where he could talk to animals and stuff like that. There's like verses in the ground that talk about that. Can we prove any of this stuff? You can't prove it archeologically. If folks believe it, cool, you know, but you can't archeologically prove that. You read this one from Justin Weemer strikes again and says three questions for ease. Wow. Do you believe one that there will be no sin in heaven and will there be free will in heaven? If yes to the first two questions, why didn't God just make this situation to begin with? This is a fascinating philosophical question. So is there sin? What is sin? What does that mean? So if we look at the Jewish tradition, because this is where it comes from, sin is a Greek term. The words are Avira and Chet. Chet means missing the mark and an Avira is like a transgression. So if we're looking at Jewish thought, this concept of sin doesn't even really exist in the same way. It's not the same thing as what we see in Christian thought. It's not like I think of sin sort of like Lady Macbeth in Macbeth where she can't rub the dot out of her hand. She's stuck with this dot. For Jewish people, that's not the case. Going into Islamic thought, there isn't really exactly a lateral word for this word sin. You have things like which is forbidden. You have concepts like transgression. I think if we're taking a traditional Islamic thought position, because I think this is the question. We've already kind of addressed what a Sufi mystic would say about Heaven and how we talked about Rabi Ladawi. So the question is more to a traditional Islamic point of view. It's like the traditional position about sin is like right here in this ground that we're in. It's a training ground. So you have to go through the training ground and if you succeed in the training ground, you go to the next space. So that's the kind of the traditionalistic I think view for that. What was the third part? Oh, but free will. Okay. No, I don't believe free will even exist. I think this is a faulty narrative. I don't know what free will means. If I have free will, that means I have infinite money. I have infinite resources. I have infinite choice. If I don't have all those things, then I don't have free will. Philosophically, it's a ridiculous position that it's a nonsensical thing. And I brought this up in the last conversation where I talked about Kierkegaard's position of throwism, where we're thrown into realities. We don't necessarily have a choice into this situation. Some Muslims say that maybe you're sold to have the choice, but I'm talking about just like if we're talking about this plane of existence, do we have free will? We have limited will. We have maybe some limited choices that we can make within a limited framework. And what was the third choice, third question? Just why God didn't create everything to begin with? Okay, so they're talking about predestination. They're asking a question about predestination. Like, why is this this terrible? They're saying that if so assuming that things were without sin and that there was free will in the very start, then why didn't God just, you yourself said though, you're like, well, I don't really hold to a conventional view of free will at all. Then the last question wouldn't be applying to you because they said like, if you do grant there was free will and was sinless, then why didn't God just set it up to be like that in the first place and like leave it like that? Yeah, I think people don't even think about these things. They just like these statements. They like free will. They like this word. It sounds nice. They haven't actually dissected it and thought about it. Like, what does that even mean? What does that entail? What does that look like? It's like, I have free will. That means I get to make all the choices. I'm like, but you don't. You're stuck into a cultural reality. You're stuck speaking a specific language. You're stuck with all of these realities. You're stuck with an economic class. You're stuck in all of these realities. And then you're telling me you have free will. What ridiculous nonsense is that? Thank you for that. And this one. Real briefly, if you haven't already read it, I'd recommend reading Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room, The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting because as some people pointed out in chat, there's a number of different notions of free will libertarian and otherwise. I'm a compatibilist a la Dennett. But when it comes to libertarian free will, I'm with this. I don't think there's free will of that variety either. But it's a great book that covers some of the different varieties of free will and gets to what we mostly care about when we talk about free will and how to whatever extent we have that we have the freest will we could reasonably imagine having in the universe. We clearly inhabit. I call that limited will. That's what that's my frame. That's my free device. Yeah. I had the same discussion with rationality rules, which is why I tend to just call it will and not try to apply how free it is. I agree. I'm good with that will, limited will. That's fine. It's just not free. You got it. Thank you very much for that. And that's actually, folks, got to tell you, as you can see the bottom right of your screen, one week from today, Nat De La Honte, Daniel Hageekichu, live and in person in Houston, Texas. Watch it live for free. If you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button. You'd be crazy not to. It's going to be shown live or free here on modern day debate on YouTube. If you were near Houston, we have made the tickets as affordable as possible. You have to see this. It's going to be huge and not only that, but I hadn't mentioned it earlier because we are just skimmed through, but I have to show you this one as well. As you can see the bottom right of your screen are in raw. We'll be taking on that same day. Jake Muslim metaphysician whether or not there's a God as well as I mentioned earlier, that crowd fund is linked in the description. So as you can see at the bottom right of your screen, that's just kind of an example of our signed emblem perk. If you throw in 50 bucks, you get that perk plus all the perks below it, including like the postcard and your name and the credits, the thank you credits at the end of the debates. And maybe you're like, yeah, I was like, I don't know if I can do that. You know, 50 is kind of a lot like, Hey, there's also lower tier perks. So for example, like I said, if you put in 10 bucks, if I remember right, I think it's 10 bucks. Give your name and thank you credits. Pack out that crowd fund that thermometer that you can see on the far right side of the screen is showing. We've made progress for that. And we're kind of expecting that we're going to barely break even for this. That's the hope. If we do have any surplus funds, which I don't think we will. But if we do, though, we going to modern day debates debate on conference, November 4th, November 5th, this fall. So with that, want to say huge thank you to our speakers. I'm going to check one last time for questions in the live chat in terms of thanks for your donations to worldwide orphans, folks really does mean a lot. And I'll post that donation receipt on the community tab. But want to say one last thank you to our guests, Matt and it's, it's been a true pleasure. This is if you haven't yet hit like because I've seen so much positive feedback, people were saying, Hey, like this was a really peaceful and one of the most peaceful and pleasant conversations they've seen between atheism and atheists and Muslims. So really do appreciate you guys. Thanks, Matt. Somebody. Yeah, somebody in chat made a suggestion. And on the one hand, I like it. So sorry. So I don't know if it's a good idea. But if you didn't see it, I'll toss it out there because for the next debate con, I think I would like to see a debate between Issa and Daniel Hikikachu. That is a juicy idea. I chip in for that debate. You know, I'm just saying I don't want to throw you under the busies, but I would watch that. I have a lot to say. I know about him quite well. I think there's there's a lot of things that could be discussed. We'll shoot for that. That November's debate con folks, you don't want to miss it. It's going to be a blast. But even before that, like I said, exactly one week from right now, we're going to be streaming live from Houston, Texas. This is going to be the big one, folks. We're excited about this. It's going to be huge. So thanks all for your support and the live chat. Thanks, everybody, for your support of modern day debate more broadly. We really appreciate you, folks, whether it be Muslim, Atheist, Christian, you name it. We're glad that you're here. And one last thank you to our guest, Matt and Issa. It's been a true pleasure to have you tonight. Thanks so much. Thanks, Issa. Thank you. Appreciate it. Stick around, folks. I'll be back in about 15 to 20 seconds with a couple of quick updates on upcoming debates. So stick around. I'll be right back in just a moment.