 So, let's get to the main event. Tonight we have Dr. Tyrone Wells in. He has a PhD from Georgia Tech and is a biochemist and he's going to talk to us a little bit tonight about street epistemology and how to talk to people. Let's give him a big hand. He promised he was going to tell the story about how I saved his life. It was very risky. I had to use all my Iron Man powers. By the way, I'm also Iron Man. Yeah. Anyway, I just want to let you guys know thank you so much for turning out. I really appreciate it. This is way more of a crowd of people that I would ever expect to ever be able to talk to about this hobby. I fell in. Deals with just talking to people, having good time with them, actually having good conversation with them and trying to figure out how they arrived at their deeply held beliefs. I guess what we can probably start with is some basic introductions. How about that? Hi. My name is Dr. Tyrone Wells Jr. You guys can just call me Ty. I'm working on a way to talk to anyone about anything. What that means basically is that I will take a table and set up at parks, campuses, churches. I've done pet shelters. I've done rallies, political festivals, you name it. I'll go there and I'll have conversations with people about what they deeply believe is true. My goal is to try to have conversations about these really sensitive topics with people in a way that doesn't turn the conversation into a debate or an argument, fist fight, whatever have you. I'm looking into trying to find a really good way to have people critically assess how they arrived at their conclusions without turning anything into a philosophical fight. You can still have those philosophical, critical thinking opportunities, but you don't have to do it in an aggressive format. There's ways that you can do it in a really positive and productive way. I want to tell you guys about that today. It's easy and it's actually really fun. It's a fun hobby to get into. Before we begin, just big thanks. I'll take an atheist, Jim, Greg, where's all my grows? Chris, on the mics. Appreciate you, Matt. Everybody else who helped me get over here really appreciate it. Jim gave me the Google Maps address to come up here. When I looked on Google Maps, I was like, show me nearby places. They said there was an event nearby here. It was like for separation in church and state. It was on the same day. I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to totally check that out, but it's not the same time I'm talking. Dang it. a guy talking about street epistemology too. That's fantastic. Oh, his name is Terran. Oh, it's me. That's fine. So when I say I'm in the right place, I really mean it and I really appreciate it. Anyway, also try to stay free thinkers. You guys are great. And I met you guys, a lot of familiar faces that I was seeing from the last time I was doing talks at the ARC Museum protest. Yeah. In fact, I got to talk to some of you guys here and I'm just really happy to see you guys again. I just want to make one quick point. This talk that I'm having isn't like a lecture for me to you. If you see anything that I can prove them on, if you see anything that I can elaborate better, make more clear, please let me know. I'm a really big believer in critical feedback growth and I want to try to get better at this. This is only about the second time that I've done a street epistemology talk. And anything you guys think that I can improve on, let me know. I'm open doors on that. You can get in touch with me. I have a card for like a business card, a hobby business card, whatever you guys want to call it. And on the back is my details and you can feel free to get in touch. It also has a link to the YouTube channel. You can check out all the rest of the talks that I do and approach one out every week. Yeah. All right. So let's get to the real meat and potatoes of the conversation. So the way how I turned into an atheist is kind of cool. I was originally very much a Christian believer, very much deep in the cloth all the way into my graduate experience, graduate school, where I was going to Georgia Tech as graduating or getting my degree in biochemistry. I realized that I had a lot of religious answers, but not a lot of religious explanations. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about? Okay, cool. It's nice crowd here. But this was the issue for me because I was, I liked, I was beginning to like the explanation that I was getting from a secular, not necessarily secular, but a scientific point of view. And I was having a hard time fitting them into my religious perspective. I was trying really hard to figure out how could how I could stick that how into like my biblical frame. And I couldn't do it. And so I was just like, Okay, well, then I'll just put the religious point aside and have two basic minds that think about things. I can say sciences here and religions, you know, somewhere else. Hey, what's up? I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. What really did it for me is when I started meeting other people from different faiths as part of my graduate school experience and starting to get exposed to different kinds of new perspectives, new people, new religious ideas. And I'm realizing a lot of people are confident about something, but they don't agree with each other. And only one of us can be right. And that's what I'm starting to realize not only that, but the answers that I would had were no longer satisfactory to the standard of evidence that I now was beginning to develop and that scientific explanations that I was getting raise or improve my standard of evidence. And so what I was looking for was this brilliant moment where I told all my friends, Hey, guys, check it out. I'm an atheist. Look, science is best. Isn't this great? No, no. Didn't work out very well. Didn't work out very well. So what I actually realized I didn't have a good reason to believe in a God anymore. It was a troubling moment because it was a really big realization of my part realization that I didn't have a good reason to continue to believe not so much that God didn't exist, but that I couldn't get to that belief via reliable thinking process. And when I tried to tell my friends that it really kind of even in a scientific setting, this is like, again, a scientific lab, a lot of those people had religious beliefs or were spiritual, had some sort of supernatural holding that kind of challenged them when I brought this up to them. And I couldn't no longer have a peaceful conversation with them. In fact, conversation starts to turn bates, arguments, and, you know, whoever came out of the winter of that we both kind of lost because there was always that heated environment. And I realized that it wasn't worth the trouble anymore. It wasn't worth the stress to talk to people about what they believe to be true. And it started to make me feel more isolated because I felt like I couldn't get to anybody. My mom was still Christian at the time. My sister was also Christian. So I had my family that I couldn't talk to co workers I couldn't speak with. I was afraid to bring it up to my friends. And I started to feel like those this invisible wall that separated me from all the other people that I cared about my friends, my family and co workers, people I respected. And I didn't know what to do. I had an issue that I needed to connect with people, but I couldn't have a way that I didn't know a way to do that. And so what I'm here today to do and I know this is a long time for the cell. But what I want to do is show you a really cool technique that I found to talk to people that helped me get out of a hard situation when I was an atheist, particularly after I just transitioned. But I think it'd be really helpful for you to help you get make those connections with other people as well. Anyway, so methods called street epistemology. What we're going to do is talk about it in this really cool outline. Well, I want to do the animation one more time. Check this out. Isn't that cute? Okay, so what we're going to talk about is what is street epistemology or SE? Why use SE? Why empower yourself with this conversational technique that allows you to be able to talk to people again, without making debates or arguments, but let them critically assess how they actually reach their conclusions. And then finally, we're going to talk about how SE works. And it's really, really simple. You don't need microphones. You don't need a camera. You don't even need duct tape on pedestals. You can do this and it's easy and it's fun. So what is SE? When I first saw this word or I first saw this term, I was like, okay, well, the thing that's sticking out to me the most is this bottom word right here, epistemology. I mean, what's going on there? I don't know, special club, moon speak, what's going on? It turns out it's just a fancy word for basically the study of how we've come to learn things or how do we figure out stuff that we believe is true. And the street part is just a reference to informally asking someone how they figure that out. You don't need to wear a tie. There's no suit. When I'm doing my stuff, I will go out to a park, run some laps, and then set up afterwards. And I'm sweaty. The people I'm talking to are sweaty. We're just having a fun conversation. And what we're trying to do is basically combine, find a informal way to talk to people about what they believe is true or how they reach the conclusions. Questions in street epistemology look kind of like this. How did you figure that out? What's a good way to reach that conclusion? Is that method reliable? How can we test that? These are all fantastic questions to ask. And what they begin to do is start to make the person that you're talking to feel invited into a conversation where they can start to critically assess how they arrived at their conclusions. And it's not so much you try, you can't change a person's mind, but you can empower them to do so when you give them the opportunity to. And it turns out a lot of the people who have these really deeply held beliefs never have the opportunity to question how they arrived at their beliefs. And if you do that, you can do some really amazing things in very, very short periods of time. Let's see. Why use SE? Why have this chance where you can allow people to think about how they arrived at their conclusions and do they use a reliable way to get there? Well, for one, it's an unbiased approach. SE doesn't have an ideology behind it. It's not a tool for atheists. It's not a tool for any kind of religion out there. It doesn't have excites. It's a fair approach to try to get two people to really come to terms with how they understand what things are true and what things aren't true. And it's always good to ask questions, and it's an unbiased approach, as I said. Always good to ask questions. And it can work for any belief. I've had the longest talk I've had was a five-hour conversation at a park that ranked the worst and best Marvel movies that have come out over the last seven years. And it only lasted long because I'm very passionate about it. But we came up with a definitive list. I'm actually really proud about it. The other guy, complete stranger, went from 5.35 p.m. to like 10.35 p.m. When we left, he was like, I feel like I'll never see you again. We came really good friends in that short moment. But from that to, you know, hey, I believe in a God. I believe... The question-and-answer period is after the top. But keep it in mind. It really goes to how reliable the rest is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. This is going to be a great after-party. I can tell you that. So the most hardcore things would be like, hey, I don't believe transgenders are a real thing, or I believe God's true, or I believe, you know, very, very controversial political topics, very controversial beliefs. You can get through all of them with this really cool unbiased approach. Let's look at this other point. SE works really great. One-on-one, one on a large group of people, you could have even SE done on yourself by yourself. I use SE to self-examine beliefs that I have that I may not necessarily be as confident in, or that I might be absolutely confident about. And I found that it's a very good way just to assess if I'm using a good way to get to that conclusion. Is that reliable or not? And then, of course, my favorite part, it avoids drama. I am not a fan of drama. I am anti-drama as it gets. And I found that SE is a very good way to have productive and positive conversations with people, particularly about religion. I know that there's a lot of examples where we don't necessarily have the best street cred of having those. I'd love to show some examples of what conversations look like. Typically, on YouTube, when I searched Atheist conversation, it kind of looked a little bit something like this. I'd be a lot freer if people like you were put in prison as retaliation for the collective crime of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia. God blesses me. You judge men all. How do you deal with sharing your life? People like you perpetrate this every day by telling people what their rights are and what they aren't. People like you are ruining this world. You judge men all. Christians are responsible for slavery. Do you know why you're getting upset about it? I'm getting upset because you are stepping on the right. This is a freedom to me. You judge men all. You are lost in a fantasy. Preach what? I'm... Sir, you can't spit on me, sir. Well, I know this. I can look at that sun. I can look at the sky. I can see the trees. And I know there is life. So if there is life, there has to be a creator of life. No, there doesn't. All you have to do is provide evidence. Can you provide evidence? I'm about to. Okay, provide evidence. Evidence. Providence. Providence. Providence. Providence. Who calls God? Listen. That's the key point. Right. I can accept you every time. But of course you know what I'm saying. Your arrogance is a Christian. You know how old are you? You don't have to believe it if you don't know it. If you don't know it, then think about it. Do you think God gave you a break? Again, how do you deal with the new breaking the law of God? How do you deal with that? How do you deal with this delusion of yours? There's some invisible man in the sky sitting on a cloud. Well, it's not just that. So you don't believe that Jesus walked the earth? No! Impressions are responsible for slavery! Absolutely. To mock. Okay. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Mock your religion into extinction. That's exactly what it should be. It's already happening. It's already happening. It's not a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale. I'm a born again Christian. Oh, born again. Baptizing Jesus' name. How old are you? Phil with the Holy Ghost. Jesus too. It's God who works in me. Jesus too. It's a bull sport. It's not true. It is wrong. Then your parents teach you men. Is he right next to you or are you holding his hand? Yes, I am. Oh, you need some medication, my friend. Thank you. Hitler. Who designed God? You're caught in a trap now. It's a logical trap where you would listen. I'm the ignorant one. I use reason and logic. The Bible is no more proof than God exists. Then a comic book is no more proof than Superman exists. You are sick. You need Jesus. You're a sick person. Thank you very much. You're welcome. You judge mental. It's not going to be a two-way conversation. There's no point. Why? Why? He is a brother. What is interesting here, actually, is that we've got people from different faiths and who all believe in some kind of heaven in a different sense. But every single one of them believes in this heaven on the basis of faith. And faith, by definition, is believing in things without evidence. And personally, I don't do that because I'm not an idiot. Whoa! Ow! So whenever I show that video, I'm always, like, in the back of the room, just crossing my fingers, hoping that you guys laugh at it. Because that means we kind of probably see some of ourselves in there. I know I do, especially, like, three or four-ish years ago. I see... I've done that before. I've looked at people and said, I caught you in a logical trap. Don't you feel bad? It doesn't have any effect. Why? Like, right? What I want to do is show you guys what Essie looks like, what some examples are. And there's people doing this all around the world. This is my friend, Reed Nice Wonder, and myself, cut together some clips of us doing a variety of different talks with various people. I want to highlight the change in the tone and the degree of productiveness that you might notice. All right, that's right. Yeah, so, yeah, I just have this hobby where I chat with people about anything. Is there a particular belief you want to chat about? Is there what? A particular belief that you want to chat about. Something you really think is true? Christianity. All right, anyway, yeah. Ty's my name. I've got a five-minute timer. Okay. I believe if any two people can talk about anything, is there anything that strongly motivates you? Anything that you think is true? God. God? Yeah. That's a heavy topic. You want to talk about that for five minutes? Sure. Yeah? Yeah, I can talk about... I mean, I was... My background is Christianity. I was raised Southern Baptist. I believe in God. So that would be the thing I'm the most certain about. Okay. First, got to get a sense of your confidence that God exists. Okay. Say on a scale from one to ten? Ten. Ten for sure. Ten. I mean, I am 100% certain that the higher power exists. Okay. Um, 95. 95. All right. Very confident. From like zero to 100%. 100%. 100%, you don't need any more evidence. You're absolutely close on the position. I think that's absolutely true. Yep. Okay. 100%. What got you to that 100%? Really, well... So I go to a Christian school and I've learned I've taken a bunch of classes on theories and all these different things and it just makes sense to me. It kind of like hits home. I... And for me, it's just a meditation thing. Okay. It's just a full on total goodness of the earth, all the plants. I believe that there is something that has been working on my behalf in this universe. Whatever is here had to come from somewhere. Okay. It's hard to imagine coming from somewhere without some sort of first cause. Okay. Yeah. I know it's hard to think that, yeah. Okay. How does something making sense to relate to the actual truth of it? Like, could someone actually be mistaken about a belief that makes sense to them? Yeah, I think they could. Okay. That is a very good point. I would say... So you... Oh, that's an interesting perspective. So you believe that, wow, I've never ever heard that before. That's an interesting... You know, we've come around to an interesting point that... Oh. I've never verbalized to myself before, but I do see that, you know, I'm starting to see just from this discussion. And the benefits I get from it? Right. Right. Right. That's good. Yeah. That's a good perspective. I would like to believe it if it's true. Right. But because nobody can question it, nobody can prove it. You can't prove faith. You can't prove any of these things. It's like, why am I believing this? Hmm. You may be onto something, man. Yeah, so... That's powerful stuff, man. Thanks, yeah. It's just stuff to think about, maybe. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that. That's really enlightening. I never thought about it like that. That's true. Right. That's a good way to look at it. I like to think about it that way. And anything that puts you in a more reasonable position. Well, thanks. Yeah? All right. Have a good evening. It was good chatting with you. Good chatting with you as well. All right. Have a good one. Excuse me. If you're in an environment that doesn't train you to, you can't be expected to. And coming from a person who was religious, even went up to, like, my second year of grad school, there are things that I realize that I've never been expected to do. And critical thinking isn't just something that you're given or you wake up with and you have it. You have to exercise it in order for you to use it well. And if you never get the opportunity to use it, particularly in an unbiased environment, you never get a chance to be able to ask yourself those questions in an environment where you feel safe. And what has he kind of specialized himself in? Again, I'm not trying to sell that they're wrong. I'm just trying to give them the opportunity to ask those questions to themselves. Do you guys see any difference between those two kinds of videos? What stands out the most? I'm always interested. Don't be shy. Come on. Absolutely. Exactly. And when people feel that you're not listening. Listening is like the biggest thing. Yes, it is. But it's so important if you want the person to at least be able to consider why they think. Because sometimes people will say stuff, but they never process it. And they need to have someone stand in front of them and they'll be like... And then they're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't say, what are these words that are coming out of my mouth? It's a really, really cool thing to just be able to listen to someone, maybe even rephrase back the things that they've said. And give them a chance for them to process what they've been saying with their mouth, with their ears. And see, is that really what it sounds like? Is that really what my beliefs are? Let's actually get into how SE can work for you guys. So how does SE work? The way I see it, and there's a lot of different kind of models for this. This is my personal model. This is the way I've made sense of it. But there's the person, the method, and the conclusion. The person is the people that we're talking to. The conclusions are maybe the God belief that they have. But the method is the thing that connects those two. It's the through line. And the way how I see this isn't so much in a straight line, but actually a curve like this. And I know it's like this because people tend to closely identify with their conclusions, almost to the point where they will identify with their conclusion. You'll hear that when you see these people say, well, I'm a Christian. I'm a Baptist. I'm an atheist. It goes both ways. But because they invest so much in themselves and their conclusions, they basically become one and the same. And when you ask or question the conclusions, you'll get responses as if you had targeted the person specifically. It's very, very similar. You get that kind of backfire effect. What's available to question or target is the methodology that they use to reach their conclusion. The methodology has very little ego invested in it. And as mentioned, not many people invest a lot of time examining how they got to their conclusions. And when you ask questions about the method, how the person reached their conclusion, one of two things will happen. One, they'll either get a better method to get to their conclusion. And as atheists, I think we should be totally open to that concept, that people are getting better methods to reach their God of belief. Even if we don't necessarily agree, they are getting better at finding better, more verifiable, testable ways to reach their conclusion. I think we should be open to that. As an alternative, they drop the method completely. And now there's nothing connecting the person to the conclusion anymore. And then what you end up with is a person that no longer has an ability to reach that conclusion anymore. They are now a person that's still very much happy. They can be believing in most things that they had before. But now they have a higher standard of evidence. And they're working to try to figure out what can meet that and won't accept anything less. Let's look at some examples of questions that target the person, the method, and the conclusion. This is Tim. He was one of the first people I spoke to when I was doing my SE talks. He believed in a God very much so. The reason why he believed in a God was because of his personal experiences. He says, I know my God is real because I had this very personal dream that was really true to me. And I felt like God was talking to me one-on-one and I know it was so real. And if you never experienced that, you will never know what that's like. I'm like, okay, that's cool. There are a lot of different ways you can tackle that. And you've probably heard personal experiences before if you've been talking to people. What does questions look like if you target the person? Remember, we don't want to target the person. So these are examples of common pratfalls. But if I were to target the person with my question, I'd be like, well, you know, your personal experiences doesn't make your God real. That's a common response that I used to give. The reason why it doesn't work is it doesn't really extend the conversation much. Another example is, hey, people say that all the time. What makes you any different? Some experiences for Hindus, like, what's the difference there? It's a judgment that the person who you're talking to is going to see or feel or react to as if you're challenging them. And they're going to close up. They're not going to have that opportunity to critically assess how they came to their conclusion if they feel like they've been challenged. Another example is, you're not making any sense from a top of a mountain just echoed. It doesn't do a lot of work either. Okay, so what if you were to target the conclusion? For example, by targeting the conclusion, you could say, hey, that's not good evidence. Your personal experiences, that isn't really reputable good ways to figure out that. It's true, and I agree with that point, but it's not a good way to get that person to critically assess how they came to the conclusion. Remember, Etsy's not about changing someone's mind. It's about giving them the opportunity to do that themselves. And the way you do that is by opening up the conversation, peeling back layers of how they believe and trying to figure out, can I give you an opportunity to think about how you came to this conclusion? And can we assess together if this method's reliable or not? You can't do that if you target their conclusion because they'll treat that as a personal attack. Another example is, well, I don't believe that, but I respect it, but we can both go along ways. It's fine. Again, it can be seen as another judgment. What you're trying to do is, again, be open and make comments that are like an open door, things that continue a conversation and extend the amount of time that they'll have to discuss how they got to the conclusion. And, of course, you can say, hey, that doesn't make any sense. Again, it doesn't really get anywhere. So what does it look like when we target the method? If we were to target the method, if someone said, hey, I know my God is real because of personal experiences, you can say, hey, could that method ever lead someone to a false conclusion? That's a fantastic question because now we're not targeting the person themselves. We're not targeting their conclusion. We're asking them, what is that method that you use in a richer conclusion? Can it ever lead you to a wrong one? And if it can lead you to wrong ones, are we really justified in being so confident in this method that can potentially lead you to a wrong conclusion? Do other people use personal experiences and always get to right conclusions? What do we really know about this method and can we verify how reliable it is together? That's an open thing that both of you guys can work on. Another example is, hey, is there a better way to reach that conclusion, the personal experience? Get them thinking about alternative methods to get to the same conclusion. If they're out there, maybe they'll drop the bad ones. Here's another one. Different personal experiences affect your belief. I love this one because if they say that no matter what the different personal experiences or the different things that they claim that they rest their belief on, if we change that and they would still believe it at the same exact level, that's not the foundation of their belief. They're just saying it, but it's not really what they're resting their belief on and what you're trying to do is peel back the layers and figure out what is that foundational belief. So if they say, hey, if I had a completely different set of personal beliefs, I'd still believe in the Scott. It's like, okay, it's clearly, whether we keep them the same or change them, it's not the personal beliefs that's keeping you to this God conclusion. What's really getting you to that method? What's really justifying that level of confidence that you have? So if you're open about this, we'll change the dynamic of what they're talking about. It's like, okay, well, maybe it's not personal experience, I know my God is real because of science, right? There's a lot of science backs up my God. And when I hear things like this, there's alternative things that you could do. One thing that I like to do is just rephrase back the exact same thing I heard from them. I'll ask them, like, hey, what do you mean by that? Or really, I would just be like, hey, you think you're, so it sounded like to me, you just said that you know your God was real because of science. And a lot of times, they'll come back to you and be like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I said. I meant there's a lot of scientists that believe in my God. And that is a completely different claim. And that's a different route that you would go through. But I like to ask clarification questions when I get to this point. Clarifications, questions, what do they look like? Hey, what do you mean by that? Oh, science? Could you elaborate? How did you figure that out? Or could you tell me a little bit more about that? Get them talking about it. What does science actually mean when they say these, you know, hot word topics? Do they really know what they're referencing? Do they want to have an opportunity to actually explain it to another person? And is science a reliable way to test supernatural? A lot of times I'll ask them if they give me a God belief, we'll try to define what God they're talking about as best as we can. Like what kind of sect of Christianity are you or what kind of sect of religion are you? What kind of aspects of this God are we talking about? This God's very supernatural. He writes every law of physics known to existence. I'm like, great, great, great. Is science a really good way to test if a supernatural thing exists? Like what kind of test do we have in science that can test supernatural things? And if they give you an answer, you know, that might be right. Hey, you've got to be open to that because, you know, you guys can write a paper. You can get a Nobel Prize for that, right? But in the event that they can't, they'll realize that on their own accord. And what you can ask that overall is, hey, if science is limited, what's the real foundation of this belief? Are you really using science to get to this foundation? Or is there something else that's getting you there? Oftentimes they'll rephrase again. And this is when you start to get the foundational levels. When you get to the foundation, you'll start hearing phrases like, I couldn't come to this belief without X or my confidence would drop if I didn't have this thing. Without faith, I couldn't believe in God. A common foundation. When you reach this level of questioning, when you just reach the point where they say, okay, this is in fact the thing that would change my mind if it turned out not to be true and not reliable, try to understand what they're talking about. Don't rush. Ask them, what do you mean by faith? You know, I have an idea of what faith is, but they might have a different one. If we're using different definitions for the same vocabulary, we're going to be talking past each other. So try to figure out what they mean by it. When they just try to define the foundation themselves, they'll realize that they may not have put as much thought into it. And they might give you a definition where it's just like, hmm, is that really what you think it is? It's like, let me think about that again. But is faith a reliable way to reach a true conclusion if they give you a definition for it? Well, it's just trusting no matter what. Is trusting no matter what a reliable way to come to a true conclusion? Is that a good way to reach a true conclusion? It's a simple question and it can have a really powerful effect on the people that you're talking to. Then they start to assess, hey, well, maybe it does. Maybe it could get to a true conclusion. Do different people use faith and come to different God's beliefs? Can I use faith to believe that there's no God? If I believe that there's no God using faith and someone believes in God using faith, can we both be right? If we're both using faith to get to that conclusion and we can't both be right, is faith a really good method to come to a true conclusion? There's like very, very, very simple questions that you can ask to help them assess whether or not that foundational belief that they have is reliable. Or that methodology that they have is worth having. Are there more reliable ways than faith? Can we still reach that conclusion? Like I'm not saying it's wrong, but can we just find a reliable way to get there? Because that's really what we're trying to look for. Good ways or good reasons to believe in things. And do you have one? If you have one, you can explore it if you have it. And if you don't, maybe there's a better answer out there that's more intellectually honest. Maybe I don't know might be the best answer out of everything. When you ask these kinds of questions, typically they end on really positive notes around the lines of like, hey, you'll get comments like, oh man, I'm really thinking. That was really, really great. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Or hey, you know, that's a really interesting point. I'm gonna have to really think about that. Or you might get one of the best answers, in my opinion. I don't know. In my opinion, I don't know is not only just a thing that you could say or an out, it's the best answer you can offer when you don't have conclusive information to determine if something's true or not. And if you can get to the point where someone can realize that they don't know on a deeply held belief that they have that might be supernatural based, or based in like a god belief that's unattainable by, you know, think about it. And if you do figure out something really awesome, I'm willing to continue this conversation with you. And a lot of people end on that note very happy with the recognition that they may not have the best methodology before, but are more accepting of the concept that they may not know and it's okay. Because a lot of times, they're raised in an environment where they're saying, I don't know isn't a good thing. Anyway, so let's see. I want to show an example of a conversation that I had more or less in full. This is Jacob. I met him when I was running around in Lexington. There's a place called Arboretum that's a running track. And after I did my run, sat down, set up the table, and Jacob was like, hey, what's going on? I was like, hey, I do five-minute chats. You want to hang out? And he said, yeah. And it was a really cool conversation. I'll show you guys full. That should be flashing. So hi, Ty. Nice to meet you. So I got a hobby where I set up a table to talk about whatever they want to talk about. I think it's really cool to show that, you know, any two people can talk about anything regardless of the color, whatever. Big size, how rich they look, doesn't matter. Normally the conversations that we have are really cool when they're centered around what someone really strongly believes or a philosophy they have or something they wrap their lives around. If you want to talk about that, we can talk about Marvel movies or your favorite junk food. But is there anything that you really strongly believe is true or something you're confident about? I'm going to ask your name again. Jacob. I'm Ty. That's a big question. Well, I'd say I'm a Christian. So that's probably my biggest belief. There are a lot of beliefs in this movie. Did you just say the Christian God exists, maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe in one God and that is my son. This is a really heavy topic. Yeah, it is. Okay, yeah, yeah. How confident are you that Jesus and God exists? I'd say 100%. I wanted to find 100% and just let me know because it's a number. You can change the number, I don't care. But 100% to me is like... No doubt. There's no way I can be wrong. I'm not asking questions anymore. I'm certain close-minded on the position. I'm closed on the position. 100%. Let's go 98%. I mean, everybody has those periods of doubt, right? I think so, and I think it's actually healthier to not be absolute about what you believe. What got you to the 98% confidence on this God? And Jesus. I'm just going to combine them both. Or on the existence of the Christian God. So I'm actually a medical student and I found a big interest in biology when I was in high school. There's like one big hypothesis out there called the RNA hypothesis. RNA world theory? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that because RNA can act as like a catalyst and also as a way to store information, biological information that might have been what was initially used as protein and DNA. Right. But like when they... Do you know the Stanley Miller experiment? Yes. So they show that if you put like RNA in one tube and make it rapidly produce itself, it can make like a little tiny monsters of itself. Well, simplified versions of RNA. The one I'm thinking of is that they put a whole bunch of... Nucleotide? Well, you know, you're fine. It's been a while since I've read it. So like they try to recreate the oceans of the earth in this small environment and then they would like zap it with electricity to kind of simulate the... simulate the environment and atmosphere of the earth four million years ago. And they show that they can actually make some molecules that are central to life, some amino acids. Right. And like urea, bromide, stuff like that. However, the amino acids that they make are only like lysine and very simple, nodular amino acids. They're very complex amino acids that are needed to sustain life. And they also never show that they could create DNA or RNA. Can I ask you, how does this get you to the god-belief? Like how do the experiments lead to 98% confidence in God? I just... I don't see a way of life spontaneously generating. And I don't see a way if you... like if you were to talk to my astrophysics pal. Sure. And if you talk to him, I cannot see a way of the world or the universe spontaneously generating. I'm wondering, so you have this... you have this theory that's presented in the scientific model and it sounds incredible. And you say, that sounds... I can't see how that's feasible yet. Therefore, this is my other thing. How did that... How is that your foundation? How did that become... I wouldn't say that's my foundation. That's just like part of... Or how does this being hard to believe make this 98% confident? How did that become the alternative? At a 98% confidence level? Was that the reason why you're 98%? I think that's just part of it. I think if you look into other parts of my faith, it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of all feeling, right? From a skeptic's point of view. There are some things in your life that you just kind of... you have a gut instinct. Gut instinct? That you know it's true. Are gut instincts ever wrong? Oh, all the time. If they can be wrong all the time, does it justify supporting a 98% confidence? From a logical standpoint, no. What is getting you to that 98%? I'd say... So, a belief in certain things in the Bible. One of the big arguments in apologetics is why would 12 people who followed Jesus around heard what he said and then saw him die lie about him coming back to life only to know that they were going to be persecuted and put to death for saying that. Does that get you to the 98%? That's kind of like the main thing. It's like the biology aspect and then that as well. I'm just going to test. If it turned out this is kind of weird. Again, I'm just stimulating conversation. If it turned out that there was substantial evidence to a criteria of your satisfaction that they were in fact lying, would that reduce your confidence and maybe 70%? Probably. Can I ask you a question? Say I had a... I don't know. I have a cat. I do have a cat. His name is Vinny. I walk him on a leash and he's a black cat. He's super cool. I used to look overseas for a while. It's very common over there. In Sweden, everyone's walking their cats around. In America, they keep them locked up in doors. That cat wants to be outside. That's why he's on the window. If you leash train them really young, they're super cool about it. But it's not so much the leash training. It's just, would you believe me if I told you how to cat and I showed you a picture of the cat and I'm holding the cat? If I told you I actually have a tiger and his name is Marshall and he's a full-blown Bengal tiger and I have a picture of him and it would be tougher. If I told you I had a purple dragon from Jupiter that came and visits me in a time machine and I had a picture of the purple dragon and there's a DeLorean in the background and it's the same picture. Would you believe that? It seems like the more incredible the claim the better the standard of evidence improves. Would you say that God is more incredible than a purple dragon from Jupiter? I would, yeah. So the thing isn't so much that I think the apologist's angle is hey, what's the likelihood of these 12 people lying? It's like maybe it's not even that they're lying it's just that that's a really low bar of evidence. It's basically 12 people saying Tyrone has a cat, you believe that. Tyrone has a tiger, 12 people say that. Maybe you believe it, maybe not. 12 people told you, hey, Tyrone has a purple dragon from Jupiter. You need more evidence to support that with. What if it is a case of not so much that they might be lying but that just may not be enough evidence to reach that conclusion as a definitive claim for at least 98% certainty that a God exists since it's way more incredible than from a dragon? What do you think about that? Can you restate that question? Yeah, it's kind of a long question. Do you have enough evidence to justify 98% confidence in God? And if it's not a 12 Apostles story, what else is getting you to that point? I'd say I can't answer that just right now. I'm totally fine with that. Can I throw one last one? Oh yeah, go ahead. If I had a coin, it's a quarter. It's not a trick coin. If I flip it and I catch it put it on the back of my hand I don't know if it's at your tails. Do you know if it's at your tails? No, that's the best answer. Until we have that for evidence. Jacob. Alright, wonderful talking to you. Nice talking to you. That was really cool. So... Yeah. Oh my gosh. So, more or less. Yeah. Oh my God. Same here. Same here. Talk to me five years ago. Yeah. Almost done with the presentation. Almost done, almost done. In fact, guys, we're in the summary. I remember when I was in church and the pastor would be like, in summary and I'd get off that pew I'd be like, yeah, let's go. I still got those vibes in me. Anyway, you guys are awesome. I just want to let you know, hey, there is a bunch of people around the world who are doing these kinds of talks. On my YouTube channel alone, I have done one video every week. There's 54 examples of guys who have those kinds of positive talks with me. Who come with me with a really hardcore religious belief or a belief that's in the supernatural realm and we have a very short conversation and by the end, they're happy. They're had a chance to think about how they arrived at their conclusion. They realize that may now have the best reasons and they're more likely to say, hey, I don't know. Or I'm going to think about that. Or you gave me an opportunity to really think about something I never really had a chance to. My entire life, I've been looking for a way to talk to people about things like this and this gone even when I was a Christian. I still had questions but I didn't really have explanations and so what I'm trying to do is show you guys a cool method that anybody can do. If you just ask questions that are focused on the methodology of how people arrive at their beliefs you don't need a camera, you don't need a microphone you can have these really engaging conversations that invite people to critically think about how they got to their conclusions. There's a quote on Facebook there's a lot of quote on Facebook. There was one that I found kind of meaningful way back when it was something like the three things that you can't talk about in public are like money, politics, and religion. Not so much that they're a taboo, but because we just don't have a method to talk about those things in a productive way. For a long time I used to believe in that but I don't anymore because I think we now have that kind of method. I think we figured out the secret and I think there's a really cool way to have these conversations with people that don't get the person challenged. Keeps them not feeling that they have to be on the defensive end and can actually get through to them in a really short time frame and allow them to critically assess how they arrived at the conclusion and if they used a reliable way to get there. My name is Tyrone Wells Jr. and I'm working on a way to talk to anyone about anything and I think you guys can too. I think we all can. Thank you.