 As I said, welcome folks thrilled to have you here at the Baton and want to say we're going to get this debate started with the opening statements to be roughly 10 minutes followed by open dialogue and a 30 minute Q&A. So we're going to take it over to our speakers. Thanks so much. Austin, Flora and George for opening. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. So the idea that we are discussing is atheism versus creationism. And I actually have to give props to Leo for taking that debate because normally people do not defend atheism per se. They are more of a skeptic of any specific claim of creationism. And then typically evolution. So I do want to cover that very quickly. Creationism versus evolutionism is a false dichotomy. So if evolution were true, that in no way substantiates that there is an intelligent agency that set it up. In fact, for there to be an intrinsic or innate property of an organism to adapt and change, that means that information was built into it. So evolution would actually be proof of creationism. So it's a false dichotomy and somewhat ironic. But that is not what this is about. So I do want to start with a quote from Werner Heisenberg. He is the winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for the creation of quantum mechanics. And he said, the first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist. But at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you. I find that to be pretty profound, although I disagree that natural science would ever substantiate atheism. Okay, one more quote and then we'll get into some more specifics. But this is kind of the meta of the debate as I see it. So Nobel laureate George Wald, which most people have heard of, of course, Origin of Life. He said, when it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution. The other is supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. So there, if we were to agree with him, that's some summary of the entire debate, basically. Is there a viability in the idea of spontaneous generation arising to evolution? Of course, he did go on to say spontaneous generation was scientifically disproven 100 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others that leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that, which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution. Okay, so obviously we can all see that that's not a very intelligent way to go about this discussion is to just deny evidence because of philosophical bias. So what we have to figure out is which one of these two options are viable or correct? And so basically it's the idea that you have nature that's unguided, that is the result of everything that we see, and then you have intelligent agency or God, a guided creation. So if you are to say that it's just unguided nature that caused everything, basically the philosophy of naturalism or realism can be debunked right from the jump because the matter cannot create itself because that would mean it would have to exist prior to its existence. Okay, so that that right there debunks the entire thing. And then we can go further into the specifics and I'll save some of them for the debate, but I'll kind of run through some of the things here. So we have the logical evidence, the antecedents for what we see the natural order in the world. You can go all the way down to physics just that things seek equilibrium, you can look at the laws of thermodynamics, if no matter can be created nor destroyed, then how is it that matter is actually here in the first place to allegedly create everything else. So the idea of atheism just defies physics. Also is morality subjective or objective? And that's not what this debates about, I'll wait for him to take a stance, but obviously objective morality or linear code of ethics requires intention. So you must claim subjective morality to be an atheist, although I've heard people not do that. Also information built into DNA, there is no way to have information without an intelligent agent. No one can name any example of it ever other than to beg the question, and that's what atheism does. It claims, oh, but this is the anomaly, this is the exception with everything, every single thing. Also, if what exists beyond the material world is the answer, nothing, nothing cannot exist. And of course, if there is a metaphysical matter itself, it's not the primary causal agent of all things that we see. And we cover the evolution would in fact be evidence of accretion. I'm not sure where I'm at on time, but I will say this, the Big Bang is typically posited as some type of viable alternative to intelligent agency. But of course, the person that proposed that invoked an ever existing or preexisting energy, which is ironic. And then there are many problems with the idea of Big Bang cosmology and those that are familiar with me know I don't believe in mainstream cosmology because it's pseudo scientific reification fallacies. But if I were to yield to them at all, the idea that there's constantly a loss of energy in the universe would mean that there is a beginning. There cannot be an infinite supply of energy coming from nowhere and then it running out over time and then it still have no beginning. It's a contradiction. So I don't know the specifics of his position. So it's hard to debate what's best for us until we get into it. But basically in conclusion, you either have naturalism, realism, unguided or you have guided intellectual or intelligent design, intelligent agency, all right, and that's void of any specific interpretation or religion. So that's about it. Yeah, just the logical antecedent to what we see as order is in fact creationism or creator. Pretty much for that opening, Austin. If you go over to Leo, floor it while you will. Alrighty, so I'm here to defend atheism in this debate, but that would be quite difficult to do because atheism is really just nothing more than either disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God. It doesn't and it's not designed to tell us anything about the world or how the world works. It's just a particular doxastic belief state belief position that people can have. So I will take the position of naturalism, which is given as subsuming atheism, where naturalism is broadly the belief that the natural physical world that we inhabit, the laws, the mechanisms and everything that are a part of it is all which exists. And there is nothing beyond that. So I'm going to be working from that position. Within naturalism, there is another feature known as methodological naturalism. This isn't really a philosophical position the way that naturalism is. This is more of a methodology. Methodological naturalism is really just, and this is a bit simplistic, but it's kind of just a fancy term for modern science, where modern science assumes, it doesn't say there can't be, but it assumes that there isn't anything but the world that we inhabit, and we're going to study that. So with methodological naturalism and with naturalism broadly, we can explain features of our reality. One thing I've noticed is creationism doesn't really ever seem to do that. We have mechanisms like the electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces, the fundamental forces of nature that are very, very well theoretically described that we can use to explain the features of our world like why we have a solar system, how stars form, the processes, the nuclear processes that go on inside of stars that sustain them. These can be explained to the mechanisms and the natural laws that we have in reality, and we do have natural laws. I don't know how creationists arrive at the idea of an intelligent designer from the mechanisms that we have or from the laws that we have. We also have something known as causation that we can use to make a variety of inferences about how our world works. These methods describe the world around us. Do we have everything figured out? No, we're humans. We've been around in the state that we exist in now for about 200, maybe 300,000 years. We don't know everything. We shouldn't be expected to know everything. We are still a relatively primitive species in the long and the big picture. There are really three areas that creationists point to, specifically with respect to naturalism or atheism, not being able to explain anything. And Austin did, in fact, touch on at least two of those, the origins of life and the origins of the universe, which are two. And then the third one is usually the origins of consciousness, higher order consciousness like what we have. Those are probably a lot of the areas that we'll focus on in our discussion. But another thing is creationism is ill-defined. I've asked a variety of creationists what creationism is and I get pretty different answers each time. Ill-defined ideals, I think, tend to perform poorly at explaining features of our reality because they don't have a good foundation that sets their methods and the processes through which they're going to go about explaining features about our reality and describing the things that are going on around us. So for me, creationism doesn't really seem to have a method like naturalism does. There is no methodological creationism or methodological theism that I know of. Naturalism has defined methods for explaining things and I've already touched on that with methodological naturalism and science which takes a naturalist approach when looking at the world around us. And finally, I'd like to say that creationism also appears superfluous, unnecessary. It doesn't seem to do anything for us. We've developed electricity, we've developed coal, gasoline, we're now looking into various forms of nuclear and hydrogen fuel cell energy production. That was all done through methodological naturalism to an understanding of the world around us, how it works and how we can manipulate it in ways that make our lives better. Where has creationism done that? When has creationism delivered technology that we can use to improve our lives and our abilities to survive in this very, very hostile universe which seems a little weird if it was all designed for us when 99.99999% of it is hostile to any form of life that we currently know of. So creationism doesn't tell us what the world would look like if it were created versus what it would look like if it were uncreated. There doesn't seem to be a distinction given there such that we can look out and test and see whether or not the world was created by an intelligence or whether it was not created by intelligence. And so in conclusion for me, creationism, this might be a bit strong, but for me creationism is just useless. It doesn't do anything for us. It seems to be a superfluous, ill-defined ideology pushed by people who still hold to ideas that have long been abandoned by the men and the women that have carried society forward and that have improved our lives. And I'll conclude there. Thank you. Thank you very much gentlemen for those opening statements. We'll pick it into the open dialogue floor is all yours. Okay. So how are scientific methodologies or knowledge or typically theories of how things work? How is that exclusive to atheism? I don't think it is exclusive to atheism. There are a lot of scientists out there who are Christian and Hindu and Muslim. I just don't think that when they do science, so to speak, that they tend to bring that into science because they understand the purpose of science isn't to show that religion is true. The purpose of science is to explain the things that happen around us in the world that we inhabit. Right. So it's actually not exclusive to atheism? I don't think so, no. Right. So that was most of your opener was when we take this approach, right, methodological naturalism, we're able to explain things. The explanation, the explanatory power is not exclusive to atheism at all. Whether you are an atheist or a creationist, you use the scientific method to understand the world around you. So the explanatory method of methodological naturalism, as if some type of superior framework is a false, it's a false comparison, right? I think it is superior to at least creationism, which I don't think has defined methodologies through which we can understand the world. But frameworks to interpret the natural world exist whether or not you adopt atheism or creationism. So it's actually atheism, but as I pointed out, creationism, I mean, if you want to tell me what that is or maybe outline some methods that it uses to explain things in the world. Okay, but just to get to the to address the point, the fact that we use frameworks to explain things in the world is not exclusive in any way to atheism. It's a non sequitur. Atheism is just, well, for me, the belief that God does not exist, but for many others, just lacking the belief that God exists. So disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God. Yeah, I know atheists that are anti-vaxxers. I know atheists that reject areas of science all the time. I mean, you're correct. Science is not exclusive to any worldview. But what I was doing in my opening was juxtaposing naturalism because atheism doesn't explain things as it's not designed to. Naturalism with creationism, showing that naturalism is just superior in explaining the features of our world and creation. It can't be superior when the argument was about explanatory power. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. It's a non sequitur to say, oh, well, look, we have these methods to study the natural world. What does creationism have? Well, the actual discussion is prior to the natural world that can be studied and attempted to be explained, who has the better explanatory power there. What do you mean by prior to? Yeah, prior. So that's where we need to get into what you specifically believe. You're talking about before the universe? Well, that's that would be what whether or not you believe that the universe is eternal or it had a beginning. I don't know what before the universe would mean. That would, to me, that's like saying north of the North Pole. It I just I don't know what that means. I don't know what it means. Right. And but real fast to conclude the first point, your primary argument in your opener is that you have explanatory power with natural methodologies. And that is actually a creationism does not have creationism. That's not what creationism is about. Creationism isn't trying to explain things. Not when it comes to studying the natural world, right? So then what use does it have to us? Alright, alright, because the necessary antecedent to order is intention, right? So what's the argument for that? Okay, can you present something that's specifically ordered? That's a question, not an argument. You made that claim. What's the argument? The argument is that all evidence ever shows us that specific intention order and information requires intelligent agency. So then how do chemists get order in labs with just by leaving things do their that's evidence of creation. The fact that the actual material and information is already built in is evidence for creation is already built into the universe. Well, far as we can tell built in, but that you have no you can't invoke any building. That's the point. But what let's just make sure do you think the universe is eternal? Or I don't know whether it's eternal or not. I don't know. You understand it's a very pivotal aspect as to your ontology. A lot of cosmologists are looking into whether the universe is eternal or not, or if it even makes sense at all. For me, what I would say is that the universe, to quote Carl Sagan, the universe just is. That's profound. And that's all. The profundity, man. Well, it's going to help us progress so much intellectually to just tap out of the questions. I don't think that's tapping out. That was Carl Sagan's opinion. I'm just saying that I happen to agree with. But you are tapping out because I'm asking you, do you think there's a beginning or not? I mean, this is one of the oldest questions ever in this conversation. Like putting a jar in front of me with 5,000 M&Ms in it, some are green and some are blue and some are red and saying, do you think there are more blue M&Ms in there? I don't know. That's not tapping out of figuring out how many of each M&M there is. It's just saying I don't know how many colors in there. Do you agree if there's a beginning, then there was something that came before it? Probably. I don't know if that would be true in any sense that I would understand before, but probably, yeah. If there's a beginning, then there was a time before that. There's something before that. Not necessarily. There could be a beginning in a tenseless sense where the universe stretches, say, infinitely in one direction and is bounded at the other end, but there's just nothing before that boundary. Nothing doesn't exist, but this is the paradox. Well, by nothing, I don't mean a thing that does exist that is called nothing. I mean, not anything at all. Right, which is just not that. That's just a conceptual private. It's a conceptual privation. There isn't anything. All right, gentlemen, this is what I need you to address. You have to determine whether or not there is a beginning to formulate your ontology about atheism. It's just a requirement. Atheism doesn't matter. This doesn't matter for atheists whether the universe has a beginning. In fact, most atheists don't care, probably. In fact, atheism cannot coexist with the claim that there is a beginning. Why not? Because we just discussed that. I mean, something comes before it. I explained how that's not necessarily true. Just by saying it, though, basically asserting it. So, well, you haven't shown how that states wrong. Now, you know that we, yeah, because you just basically asserted it. Okay. Well, I'm going to give an argument, I can. That is the point. I mean, I kind of did that you could have say, and this is even, even William Lane Craig, William Lane Craig acknowledges that this could be a possibility. He doesn't accept it, but he says, imagine you had a meter stick that extended infinitely in one direction, but still quote unquote started its beginning was at the first inch. So it's extended infinitely in one direction, but still has that boundary. And there just may not be anything before that boundary. Okay. That is not, there's nothing logically incoherent about that. That's not, there's nothing metaphysically incoherent about that. So that's an entirely possible. That's entirely possible. So I at the universe, we're having a beginning necessitates, they're having to be something before that I'd have to see an argument. So it spontaneously began that presumed some sort of tense notion of time, I don't hold to a tense or an a theoretic notion of time, where the present moment is all that exists in the future does not exist in the past does not exist in things literally come into being. I don't hold to that. I don't know what it means for something to literally come into existence. I think that things exist. And I mean this respectfully. I mean, this is the thing atheism is an ontology of shucking and jiving. It's literally just like it is a creative way to try to avoid the questions because you think that because your entire premise was, oh, look, we can study the natural world as if to pin creationism versus science when it's a non sequitur. So I was just posing creationism, naturalism, arguing that science better supports the naturalist position than but that is that's the debate. And okay, so we would have to get into that. Well, let's just talk about that then because we're not getting anywhere out with the beginning. You know that I disagree with you on cosmology, but if I yield to you, the mainstream cosmology, which you also seem to say, well, creationist think different things that isn't that doesn't mean anything when it comes to say your universal model. There's a thousand different theories about just about every phenomenon. The fact that there's different interpretations or theories doesn't actually undermine the validity of the overall ontology, right? Because then it would apply equally to you. Well, our theories about what exists don't bear on what exists. You're right there. I mean, I would agree with that. So you agree the argument that well, so many creationists think different things is not really relevant, but they really don't. Creationism is very simple. This is why I didn't debate Christianity. I didn't debate religion because then people get to go through the weeds and start misinterpreting scripture and stuff. Creationism is that there was intelligent design that the necessary antecedent to the order and information that we objectively observe, right? That is intelligent agency. That's what creationism is. So there's no other version of creationism. Creationism is the antecedent to the order and information we observe here. The antecedent to this natural world is intelligent agency. Whereas naturalism is, so that's guided, and naturalism is unguided, right? Basically that material created itself. How do you, when you say unguided, I'm assuming you mean not directed by an intelligent? Correct. Okay, because in a sense, the natural world is guided. It's guided by the laws and the mechanisms that exist within it. And laws require lawmakers. In fact, that's what I said. What's the argument for that? Because all the arguments come down the same thing. Everything that we can observe or ever experience shows us that this is the antecedent to information, laws, order, whatever. What do you think natural laws are? Atheism claims the anomaly in each scenario. It says, oh, but no, but atheism is the anomaly. So yeah, when we see laws, someone had to write. When we see a painting, someone had to paint it. When we see order, someone had to intentionally place that order. But not when it comes to the universe. Atheism's the anomaly. And just a cop out. What do you think a natural law is? It's something that we observe and happens every time as far as we can tell. It is nothing to do with theory, nothing to do with man. It's just an observation. It's an empirical observation in which we describe and record and it happens all the time. The laws of thermodynamics do not aid atheism. It does quite the opposite, right? I don't think it aids either theism or atheism. I think that specifically that thermodynamics, just thermodynamics that doesn't care. I would raise an eyebrow to an atheist who tried to argue that thermodynamics supports atheism. I would probably draw an eyebrow to a theist who tried to argue that it supports theism. I think it's just natural laws don't say anything about atheism or atheism. There's debate amongst physicists, particularly philosophers of physics, as to what natural laws are. I'm partial to David Lewis. He has what he calls the package deal account, which is sort of carrying on David Lewis's what did he call his the best systems account. Then John Roberts has one that he calls the measurability account of laws. I like that one too. I'm not committed to any view with what natural laws are, but I would say that natural laws are just regularities in physical reality. They weren't put there by anything. They're just descriptive aspects of the natural world that we inhabit. That's correct. It's not scientific theories or anything like that. Scientific theories use laws when we develop broader descriptions of how the world plays out. Of course. It's always just assumed and unspoken that it's relative to our limitation of understanding at the time, but yes, every law or anything in science or anything regarding the natural world is always unspoken that that's relative to our limited understanding at the time. The understanding of it is, yes, of course. There's a reason why 1500 years ago we didn't have electricity. We didn't understand the world around us well enough to develop that until we started building ideas and finding different phenomena. Thank you. To be able to say, hey, there's something here. Let's try to figure it out. I would argue there was people before him. Electricity and magnetism still not understood by mainstream physics, but real fast though, I just want to make sure that we're on the same page here. You are taking a naturalist philosophy, right? Yes, I am a natural. Okay, so that means that the creator, the replacement of that is matter itself. I don't think there is no creator of any kind at all. It's the replacement for the idea of creator. I don't think there's a replacement. I think there is no creator. There's nothing that replaces an intelligent. I think that there is a universe. That's it. At this point, that's all we can say. Everything comes from matter. No. Matter or energy. Comes from? That language confuses me. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Is derived from? Everything is derived from matter. I would say that everything is natural. Okay, like materialism as a philosophy says that everything- I'm a naturalist. I wouldn't call myself a materialist. I'm asking you the specifics because when you say that you're a naturalist, that's void of specificity. You need to stake a specific claim, right? If it's materialism- The natural world is all which exists. The physical world that we inhabit, that we observe, that we can describe, define and understand that as a system. That is all that there is. There is nothing beyond or outside of that because, again, beyond the universe, outside of the universe to me is like saying north of the north pole. It is semantically incoherent to me. Okay, so there's so much here. We have to kind of abuse it, right? So I'm trying to boil it down that basically you think everything is the summation of all things is this material, perceivable world, whether that be matter or energy. That's what naturalism is. Okay, so- I can agree with that. That's what it is, right? So now we could get into obviously the fact that we're even having this discussion and utilizing logic or philosophical parameters is evidence that that's not true, but you would disagree certainly. You would say that it's synopsis in the gray matter of your brain. Since that was logic, these are abstract conventions that we have developed. Okay, but let's get back to the laws of thermodynamics. What's the first law? I think the first law is that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Correct. So we've already hit a conundrum for the atheist or for naturalism. Okay, so matter cannot be created nor destroyed, so it was thus ever existed. That's the only thing you can say. I don't know about that. We don't know prior to reheating the reheating period, the big bang period. I call it the reheating period because I just don't like the language of big bang. We can go to about 10 to the negative 30 second seconds and everything that we could possibly know given what we currently know stops. Laws of thermodynamics might not apply there. There might be more of them. There might be less of them. We do not know. We do not have the physics to understand those things primarily because we don't have a quantum theory of gravity and we're not even sure how much that will help us with respect to trying to understand inflation. We might not really ever understand a lot about inflation because his PhD theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel has pointed out and he writes, he's got a blog, starts with a bang and writes for Big Think that inflation pretty much destroys any evidence of like what it is and how it happened at least as far as we can tell as a result of the process that plays out. We very possibly may not really ever pin down what inflation is and how it happened. Yeah, so that in the ironic part is that is a religion. The idea that well every time- How is that worshiping a deity because of the primary aspects of a religion? Chulabra. The worshiping of a deity. Chulabra. A belief system built upon the doctrine of man void of empirical evidence requires faith. What do you mean by faith in this? You have faith that something called- What do you mean by faith in this? Don't just use the word again define the term because you're probably using it differently than I would. Okay, you believe in something- Belief is not the same as faith. Believe in this. Yeah, but you're interrupting a lot. Void of actual verification. Okay, so that's what you can call faith. Your actions speak as to whether or not you have faith because you are speaking of this idea as if it's facts and you keep- we keep stimming away and I think it's because you just realize that even just with the first law and we're just getting started you have a problem. Okay, you said you don't know if there's a beginning or not but then we had a breakdown. Naturalism is of course you're limited to the material world. Nothing exists outside of that. Okay, so therefore if there is no beginning or it's like that the actual logical problem you have is if matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Okay, but everything comes from matter or material existence is the limitation of all things. Now you have to invoke eternal like eternality basically or not so well. I don't think so. I already explained how you don't. The laws of physics might be different in periods where we don't know anything about what physics does or what we can use physics to describe in those areas. So atheism is basically- So basically come here and answer. It's just what aboutism? No, what aboutism would me be like going well what about this? I didn't do that. Well, basically what you're doing is constantly just saying we don't know so it's a bunch of- Yeah, because we don't. It's just the honest answer. We don't know. And I say we because nobody in this room does. The cosmologists don't, the physicists don't, the chemists don't, the philosophers, the physics don't. We do not know. That is just genuinely the truth. Okay, we don't know. It's an appeal to incredulity. Now the reality of the situation is- What? Yeah, you're just saying that since we don't know somehow atheism is still vile, but this is what is so funny. That wasn't the argument I think. It is. You said I don't know ten times. But this is what- I don't know, but I didn't- That's what atheists do. That I said that- Atheists cop out. That's on whether atheism is true. You just cop out. We don't know and theism could be true. Okay, but I'm saying that what atheists do is they claim science as if it's exclusive to them. You did that in your opener? I don't know any atheism. Well, I know a couple that might do that, but- You did it in the opener. You pinned creationism versus science. I defend atheism. I defend naturalism, which substitutes atheism. So, you pinned creationism versus science, right? No. I juxtaposed naturalism and creationism for the third time. I did not say science. When you expanded upon it, you begin to use methodologies we use to observe and interpret the natural world as if it is actually advantageous to atheism or naturalism as the subcategory. That isn't true. We already covered that. We already covered that isn't true and then you conceded. I don't think that you showed that's not true, but- Okay, so now you're walking that back, right? So, because that was the first thing I pointed out was that that's not exclusive. All of those methodologies to interpret the natural world can obviously exist and creationism be true. It's non sequitur. I don't think that- I don't think so, no. Okay, so- Not with what the claims that creationism makes, particularly with respect to biology and chemistry. I don't think what we see in the world could be true and creationism also be true. In fact, I would argue that you could structure it logically and show logically that that's- that no, that that's just the contradiction. No, no. The way that we study the natural world is not in any way exclusive to an ontological interpretation of atheism or creationism. It's ridiculous to suggest that it is. But what do you mean by that? But this is why most people don't debate atheism per se, right? Because it's just a skeptical position. It's just like, oh, well no, I don't buy that. I don't like that. Oh, we don't know. We don't know. And that's a very convenient position, but you have to stake specific things to have any logical consistency, such as, is there a beginning? Is there a beginning? Or did it eternal exist? I don't know. So basically, you have no intellectual position to even give input in the conversation of creationism, because you're just sitting back saying, oh, I don't know. You're not even addressing the logical antecedents. Like, I can't even progress in the conversation with you because you won't stake any positions. That's what atheists do. Yeah, I'm not going to hold or take a position that I don't hold to. That's- that's called dishonesty when you do that. When you take a- unless you're like in a debate class for college or something, and they give you a position to defend, but it's not something- barring that to take a position that you don't genuinely believe in seems dishonest to me. I'm not going to do that. I'm not- I'm not asking- I'm not asking you to do that. What I'm saying is that your- You're claiming I've done that. Your worldview requires you do that. Wow. No, I mean it requires you not answer any questions effectively. It's just like- How does it do that? It's just a position of ignorance. You're making a lot of claims without really- No, it's recorded, my brother. Every time I ask you a question, you say I don't know. Saying it's recorded isn't showing how what you're saying is true. I'm trying to explain it to you. You're interrupting a lot, but like- Yeah, because you keep going off on things that aren't relevant to what I've said or the positions that I've defended. But they are, though. So you've actually walked back- You've walked- I keep asking you how, what does this mean, what does that mean, and then you don't explain. Well- And it's just hard to have a discussion. When someone interrupts you. Yes. Because somebody else isn't explaining things. Yeah. Okay, dude. So, obviously, what happened was you pinned the idea of science against creationism and you tried to do it- I did not do that. Okay. Okay, but once it was point- Naturalism versus creationism. Okay, bro. And then I showed that science better supports naturalism because, you know, we have a methodological naturalism. We don't have a methodological creationism. Okay. I wonder why. Okay. So when it comes to the actual question on the table, right, which is, is there a beginning? What happened before? What's the antecedent for the things that we see, the intrinsic order or the information? Atheist says, I don't know. We don't have to pretend that they don't. The truth is that everything we observe in the natural world, we have many different methodologies. We have many different theories and interpreted frameworks. All that's cool, not exclusive in any way to atheism or creationism. It's a non-sequitur. It excludes creationism specifically. No, it doesn't. Mm-hmm. No, it doesn't. So like, for example, like information, right, every observation we can ever make have any access to information that requires intelligent agency. And the argument for that. I just said it. You know, you said what we observe shows that. That's a claim. What is the argument that supports that claim? All, listen, all observable phenomenon. Repeated claim, not giving an argument. Okay, okay. So if I have a book, it has information in it. Someone wrote it. Mm-hmm. All kind of information doesn't have. Information is not one thing. There's a variety of different kinds. Can you name one that doesn't require intelligent agency? Without begging the question. I have no idea. I'm not an information theorist. I don't really know a lot about that. I'm not gonna make claims about something I'm not really comfortable making. And that's what I'm saying. Like, I could flip over and be the world's best atheist, bro. Like, it's not difficult. It's just exercising amid skepticism and then avoiding any type of claims, which is your own prerogative, but it certainly doesn't hold any ontological superiority or anything. And what I'm trying to point out is that we know that our actual existence, DNA itself, is very intricately and meticulously organized information. So you agree with that? Are you sure about that? See, so, okay. DNA is pretty chaotic with how it ended. There's a lot of mistakes that happen. Is it information? Of sorts, yeah. Okay, so our genetic code is information. Of sorts, yeah. Okay, let me just read you this quote here. So, DNA has two types of digital information. The genes that encode proteins, which are molecular machines of life and the gene regulatory networks that specify the behavior of the genes. The digital code of DNA, right? Nature article by Hood. So, we agree with that. Yes, okay. Scientists often use somewhat flowery language. I mean, I don't disagree with anything that was said there, but I would argue that some of the language is a bit flowery because most people, no offense, except for maybe a friend of mine who has a degree in biochemistry, really understand a lot of those intricacies of advanced biochemistry without going through the requisite training. And so, a lot of scientists, this happens in physics, chemistry, biology, a lot of fields, kind of, I don't like wording it this way, but doming it down for a layout. Okay. So, they use flowery language and stuff like that, but... That's not what that was. So, and then here's another quote. I think there was a little bit. We're gonna have to get to, we gotta get to some middle ground so we can progress the conversation. Okay, so, the genetic code performs a mapping between the sequences of the four nucleotides in the mRNA to the sequences of the 20 amino acids in protein. It is highly relevant to the origin of life that the genetic code is constructed to confront and solve the problems of communication and recording by the same principles found both in genetic information system and in modern computer communication codes. Do you disagree? And the problems of computational molecular biology appears to be history. I do disagree with some of that. I can, I have a quote. It might take me, so, I mean, you can speak because it might take me. Okay. And then one more. I wanna point out. Let's find this. Sure. So, one more, right? There's enough storage capacity in the DNA of a single lily seed or a single salamander sperm to store the encyclopedia Britannica 60 times over. Some species of the unjustly called primitive amoebas have as much information in their DNA as 1,000 encyclopedia Britannicas, and that's Richard Dawkins. So, that's a lot of meticulous information, okay? And so, now we need to, now your argument has to, it's rendered useless unless you say, oh, well, information doesn't require intention, right? Information doesn't require intelligent agency, and you're gonna have to supply some type of evidence of that because everything we observe says that that's exactly what it requires. Well, I think it just depends because I know there's a variety. There's like Shannon information. There's a variety of other kinds of information. Other people in here might be able to mention. I don't know because I don't do like computation and information theory. I know very, very little about that stuff, but information is not a univocal term. So, what do you mean by information? That's really what I'm gonna need to know. A code, a software, an ordered and organized delivery system. I feel like those are examples of information, but not a definition of information. Well, we all understand information, right? It's actual like coding of, it's a coded delivery system, and that is the definition of it. It's not examples of it. It's code, right? It's coded or ordered specific delivery, right? You are saying that, sure, every example we observe requires, it always leads back to intelligent agency, but not with, not with existence. It's the anomaly. You know, I go, how so? I don't know. And this is what happens every time. And honestly, modern cosmology does the same thing. It claims anomalous physics as soon as they don't know answers, right? And so I'm just gonna say, we agree that DNA is obviously information. Upstorks, yeah. Okay, and so there's a genetic code, and you're suggesting that this DNA, they're spontaneously arised without any type of intention. I don't know how DNA arose. I don't study that. There's people here that are probably more qualified in the origins of life than I am, but what I do know, shouldn't say no. What I understand, based on what I've read in origins of life research, is that most people in it do not think DNA came about until, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred thousand years after the first forms of proto-life or the first organic replicating chemicals. I realized DNA was not there. By the way, I did find the quote that I was looking for. I don't remember what paper this is from. I can figure that out here very quickly. This is from self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme. Tracy Lincoln and Gerald Joyce, both of which, as I understand, are titans in the origins of life research. An RNA enzyme that catalyzes the RNA templated joining of RNA was converted to a format whereby two enzymes catalyzed each other's synthesis from a total of four component substrates. These cross-replicating RNA enzymes were optimized so that they can undergo self-sustained exponential amplification at a constant temperature and in the absence of proteins or other biological materials. And then I also have this one here that comes from the publications of the National Academies of Sciences. And this one is by David Horning and Gerald Joyce. Quote, the improved polymerase ribozyme is able to synthesize a variety of complex structured RNAs, including aptomers, ribozymes, and in low yield, even tRNA, transfer ribonucleic acids. Furthermore, the polymerase can replicate nucleic acids, amplifying short RNA templates by more than 10,000 fold in an RNA catalyzed form of the PCR, polymerase chain reaction. Thus, the two prerequisites of Darwinian life, the replication of genetic information, and its conversion into functional molecules, can now be accomplished with RNA in the complete absence of proteins. So where you're saying you need DNA and you need proteins, no, you don't. We have literal research showing that no, you don't. So that's why I was bringing it up. You need DNA and protein. Now that was a non sequitur. It actually begins with the information that we're actually supposed to be discussing. So replication of information. You just agreed that the genetic code is information. You're going to talk about certain natural processes. Certain natural processes can replicate it. You just invoked it. But this is the actual primary point, right? And that is that naturalism says that material world is all that exists. Everything must derive basically from matter and energy. Everything is to either matter or energy or a different form of it. No matter can be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred, right? So no matter energy can be created or destroyed. First law, second law, first law of thermodynamics. And then you have that your belief is that everything is either matter or energy, some version of, and it can only change form. So that's, is that a accurate representation of your position? Well, I pulled to the concept of an emergence, much like physicists, theoretical physicists, Sean Carroll. So I don't know if I would say that it's just matter and energy. I think that there are some higher order structures and processes and functions that may exist. Are those going to be, are those going to supervene on matter and energy? Probably, yes. Supervenience is a notion in philosophy usually given as a type of a relation where X supervenes on Y if some change in X necessitates some change in Y. Okay, so the actual point I'm trying to get here is that information is independent of matter and energy. I mean, I'll quote, I don't know if I agree with that. Okay, well. But I still don't know what you mean by information. Norbit, Norbit Weiner, Professor of Mathematics of MIT. Information is information, neither matter nor energy. And so you would agree, though, that if that were true, that atheism is untenable. No. Okay, so you just said that everything that exists is limited to the material world, thus it's matter or energy or a different version of that. And if information isn't matter nor energy, still somehow it can be matter and energy? Well, no. So we could have matter, energy, and information. And then that would just be the natural world. Okay, so then, so, okay. So now information always from everything we observe requires intelligence and design. The materialist. I still haven't heard an argument for that. Because the antecedent to order is intent. I still haven't heard an argument. Because specific organization is not randomly and chaotically achieved. Well, of course it's not. But the natural world isn't just random and chaotic. Entropy is a thing. Entropy also debunks atheism. No, it doesn't. It does. So that's the second law. We can't even get there, though, because you can't acknowledge that matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed. So you have to, you have to claim. You have to abide the denial. No, that. As it pertains to your position, which is that you have to now claim that there is no beginning. You have to claim that. How have I claimed that? No, I'm saying that you have to. What have I done that? What's the argument that I have to? Okay, because if matter cannot be created or destroyed. According to physics, as it currently stands, yeah, physics could have been different prior to the reheating period. Okay, so that's what I'm saying. Again, the atheist has free reign to make claims of anomalous physics. So like, when anyone would like- What I just said is something almost any physicist I know would also agree with. Even the Christian or Muslim or Hindu one. No, this is the point. Atheism requires the claim of anomalous physics or anything like that. What does that mean, anomalous physics? Because that would be an anomaly. That would be not like, oh, but before this period- Is it can't look for anomalies? Before this, no, you're not looking- Is that what it does? Dave, please stop interrupting me so much. You're not looking for anything. You made up an idea of something that you can't look for. Like, so therefore it's an un-fossified- Like what? You just said, oh, before the heating period- Reheating. Okay, did you observe that? The reheating period? Yeah. Yeah, we understand that pretty well. Did you observe it? What do you mean by observe? Can you observe- What do you mean by observe? Repeating the word is not a definition. Why do you- Because you're using words and I need to understand what you mean by them in the context that you're saying them. Because the word observe can mean- So to see with eyes- Or any type of technology. Or like various instruments and- Any instrument we can make using the laws of existence. Anything. Then yes, we have observed it. That's what you say. So you say- That's what the business is saying. That no, no. You say that you looked back in time when you look in the sky and that you see the basic- Okay, did you see before it? Before what? Before this period. Before reheating? Yeah. So again- We don't understand inflation very well. No, thank you for the concession, which is that you just get to make up un-fossifiable theoretical ideas on the top of your head. Like what? That the laws of physics- Laws of thermodynamics didn't apply. I didn't say that I said it's possible. I never said the laws of physics are different. I said it is a- It's a possibility that the laws of physics- That's it. Businesses. And the fact that it is. There is no immediate contradiction. It's entirely conceivable that the laws of physics could have been different, even if only slightly, prior to periods in the universe's evolution. We don't understand. Because we don't understand those periods in the universe's evolutionary history. Cool. So it is possible that the laws of physics could be different. Are they? I don't know. Maybe not. But it's possible. So you see, this is why atheism actually offers no value to the world, because every time we get to the actual intellectual perspective- I mean is it designed to? Or is it just- No, it's- No, it's- It's- Believe or lack of belief. My God, my God, my God. To defend atheism, you have to claim tons of anomalies and I don't know. And we're just supposed to grant to you, oh, the laws of physics were different. You just have to disbelieve or lack belief in the existence of God to be an atheist. Dude, if anyone's listening to this conversation, every time you get a pointed question, you say, I don't know, could be this, could be that. Yeah, because I'm honest. Okay, but whenever a creationist says, oh, I think that there's a creator with a specific intent behind everything, oh, you just need something to make you feel comfortable. I don't say that and I haven't said it. You're talking to me in this discussion, not all the other atheists out there that say things that I haven't said in this discussion that you're having with me. Do you understand that you're actually doing the same thing that people critique creationists for whenever you just have to make up whatever you can off the top of your head to say, oh, you're basically just appealing to possibility infinitely. No, I'm just saying that there are things that are possible because we don't really know what's going on at certain periods in the universe's history because humans don't know everything. The universe, we're still learning. Knowing everything is a total, that's like a gaslighting tactic almost. No one said that you need to know everything, like, oh, you don't understand science, doesn't know everything. No, you're claiming things. You're claiming that the laws of physics could be different. Well, we can dismiss that extraordinary claim. You have absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever. And I will actually start, I can start quoting some of the most renowned people. I can start quoting the most renowned people in your own paradigm that said any theory you have that goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics is complete trash. Here's one. If your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no hope. There is nothing for your theory, but to collapse into the deepest humiliation, Arthur Eddington. There was another physicist that said that if there's any law of physics that is likely to never change, at least over the next thousand years, it's the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I don't disagree with you, and I haven't said anything that's in disagreement with these quotes. Also, I don't really care about quote mining. I care about, like, arguments. Quote mining? I've asked you for arguments several times, and still haven't gotten one. I've asked you for definitions of terms you've used and haven't gotten them, just the reiteration. That's what's making this discussion difficult, and that's why I keep interrupting you because I'm trying to actually understand what you're saying, and you're just making it hard. Okay, and, like, I guess that you thought that was gonna, like, convince everyone that the last whatever didn't happen. But, you see, you're already interrupting what you're actually doing. Because you're making claims about things that I've said or that I'm doing that I'm not. And that's kind of, to be honest, then no offense, but that's a bit dishonest. But so is incessantly censoring the other person. But you know what, you're doing it right now. Because you're making claims about things that I'm doing that are just ridiculous. Why would I sit here and make these claims? Everyone in the room knows you've been erupting me a lot. Yeah, and I bet they would understand why. Okay, can you just chill? Can you let me also speak? I'll wait till it says 1055. Go ahead. It doesn't have to be anything like that. Just let me finish my point. That's how conversations work, right? So, okay, every time I ask you a claim, or a question, like the actual parameters of your position necessitate specific clarity to have any intellectual value whatsoever, or even illusory coherence, okay? I keep on asking you the specific ones and all we get is I don't know. So basically it's just glorified skepticism. And if you can just concede that basically atheism is actually agnostic, you just don't know, you don't know, you don't know. And as long as you can appeal to a theoretical idea that the laws of physics may have been different back then, or maybe there was an infleton or whatever, then it's good enough for you. It doesn't actually satisfy the intellectual questions, though. It's actually not good enough for me. One position actually gives an intellectually coherent answer, a viability. Your position just consistently avoids the question. That's what's happening this entire time. Can you tell me why I've said I don't know a lot? Tell me, because I've said at least two or three times why. Can you tell me why? Yeah, yeah, because every time I boil down a corner you into the position of having to address specific things like the antecedent information or whatever, you just ask me, oh, prove that's the case. I say, well, all information. I don't think I've asked you to prove anything. I say, oh, evidence ever. And you say, oh, but what if beforehand it was different? What if that's not the case? Yeah, those are called questions. So it's philosophically bankrupt. No, it's not. It is. Why would I make statements about things I don't know about? No, but your position corners you into having to do that. Like when you said- No, it doesn't. Before the- It's just I'm honest. All right, look. Obviously, this is not going to, well, let's get to specifics. Okay, like for example- What if I don't know the specifics? What if literally- You're not going to know any specifics. That's why atheists normally don't take the debate. We just don't know. Atheists don't like to defend atheism. They just like to critique a religion. Why are there so many atheists that chose like myself, and there's another one in the audience, to debate here at this conference? If atheists don't ever take debate- Straw man. So atheism doesn't like to actually defend atheism specifically. What it likes to do is talk about what they think is wrong with the Bible, what they think is wrong with creationism. No, it's a fact. Because atheism, when they're cornered, just like you've said, oh, well, it's actually just saying I don't know. Well, yeah, I know that's what it is. It's tapping out of the tough questions. So the idea that you would then like, take some type of superior intellectual position is funny. I'm asking you, is there a beginning to the universe? Because you have your own position, and you don't answer. So you pigeon-hold the whole conversation. How many protons are in this card? I don't know. Exactly. Why don't you know? It can be figured out. No, no, no. Why don't you know? It could. And so the things I've said I don't know, too, could be figured out. No, they can't. Well, yes, they could. We just don't have the technology to do it. How can we go look before you are alleged big bang? When we have the physics to do so? To transverse time in the current material confinement. Transverse time. What does that mean? You think we can actually see before the big bang. Well, inflation was before the big bang. That's a theory. It's a theory that you have. Right, it is a theory. The scientific theory of inflation that we're almost certain happened. It's so wild that you're claiming that you would ever be able to observe prior to the big bang, which was the actual alleged creation. No. It was the creation of matter, space, and time itself. Oh, it was. No, it wasn't. Well, okay, then you have your own version because I'm saying what the physicists who know what they're talking about say. No, you're not. Inflation precedes the reheating period. So let me run everybody through this really quickly. So strong inflation happened. We don't know a whole hell of a lot about that. But immediately following inflation, what we do know, and Alan Goose showed this, is that during inflation, there would have been a super cooling. Under the rapid expansion of space time, naturally you make something really, really big. Temperatures are going to drop. Now, super cooling has to be taken within context here. It still would have been something like 10 to the 24th Kelvin. It still would have been very hot. But compared to 10 to the 32nd Kelvin, 10 to the 24th Kelvin is very, very cold. So there would have been a rapid super cooling. Inflation stops were not quite sure all the mechanisms for how it stopped. But after that, the temperatures would have gone back up. There was a reheating period. That is known as the hot big bang phase of the universe's evolution, where the standard model particles that we understand today would have come into existence as the inflaton field, which would have been this sort of energy field that existed, that decayed, which is where positive inflation would have come from. So inflation precedes the reheating period that it set up. Inflation comes before the big bang. That is your belief. Any PhD cosmologist, I'm not a PhD, so none of you have to take my word for it. But go to the University of Texas at Austin and go ask the cosmologist there. Did inflation precede the big bang technically? And they'll say, yeah. Inflation, as we understand it, preceded the big bang. Okay. That is your belief system. And the one of almost every cosmologist on the planet. Cool. Trying to paint this as if I'm sort of like pulling this out of my ass. No, I'm just repeating what the professionals are saying. Okay. So that is, I don't care about your vague appeal to majority or anything like that. That's a fallacy. So is appealing to? No, it's not. Appealing to majority is a fallacy. If I had a sore tooth and I went to the dentist, am I appealing to authority? Or am I going to somebody who just knows what they're talking about? You didn't even keep up with it. Should I go to my mechanic instead? A pill to majority or consensus? Majority. And then you said something about appeal to authority. You're actually not in the process of listening. You're actually just waiting to speak. Well, they're all sort of the same fallacy. Appeal to consensus. That's not the same fallacy. That's why it has a different name. Either way, okay. And you can't just appeal to the authority of someone either. Like just because- Fallacies come in groups. You know that, right? Oh my gosh, dude. Just because an authority says something doesn't mean that it's true. Okay. Right. If it's the applicable- And all the evidence says that the authorities follow that evidence. That's probably true, but maybe not. You just have to. You have to do it. Because if I get to lay out my whole point, then it just destroys you. So that's why you have to do it. So at this point, I'm just going to read this quote. I mean, that's the only thing you don't interrupt. Quote one more. The only thing you don't interrupt is quotes. But of course, I'm not appealing to the authority of this guy. No, you're quote-mining. You know what that is? No, I'm not quote-mining. So this is just incomplete context. You can go read the book at the beginning of time. Okay. But this is kind of what I'm trying to explain to him and he keeps chucking and ducking. So this argument about whether or not the universe had a beginning, that is at the heart of this entire conversation, dude. We're talking about conversations about whether the universe had a beginning or thought it was creationism versus atheism. That's right. And at the heart of creationism versus atheism is the idea, is there a beginning, was the universe ever existent? If there's a beginning, what came before it? And what actually was the energetic spark that caused there to be a beginning to then get here? Now, what atheists never want to do is talk about any of it. It's very convenient. Is that what I'm here doing? No, no, you're not. You're saying I don't know. So the argument about whether or not the universe had a beginning persisted into the 19th and 20th centuries, it was conducted mainly on the basis of theology and philosophy with little consideration of observational evidence. Okay. This may have been reasonable given the notoriously unreliable character of cosmological observations until fairly recently. The cosmologists, I think that this is important. The cosmologist Sir Arthur Eddington once said, don't worry if your theory doesn't agree with observations because they are probably wrong. But if your theory disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble. In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that disorder always increases with time, like the argument about human progress indicates that there must have been a beginning. And that Stephen Hawking in the beginning of time, do you agree or disagree with? Sir Arthur Eddington, well, I disagree with some of that and then I agree with other parts. No, Stephen Hawking. That was Stephen Hawking. He just, he referenced a small quote by Eddington. What was he referencing that quote with respect to? If there was a beginning to the universe, right? And that this is the point that you don't, will you address and tell me if you agree or disagree with this? If your theory disagrees with the second law, it's in trouble. In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the second law because the second law states that disorder always increases with time. So like the argument about human progress, it indicates that there must have been a beginning. Well, I disagree with that, yeah. Also, if there was a theory that disagreed with the second law of thermodynamics, for me, let me say theory that disagrees with the second law of thermodynamics, for me, honestly, whether I would accept it in my immediate sort of prima facie response would be to say that theory's perfectly wrong. But I'd have to look at the theory because it may have good reasons for why it goes against the second law of thermodynamics. And that's how we got into the conversation earlier, right? Because once you start to pin down the actual logical requirements of atheism, all of a sudden it's like, oh, for the beginning, before my idea of inflation or whatever, oh, maybe the laws of physics were different, maybe the laws of thermodynamics, they're natural laws. If they're not up for debate, no one cares about your non-sequitur before. That's up for debate. And then what's funny is, did the universe exist before the Big Bang? Technically, yeah. So, okay, so there was already space to be filled? Yeah, space expanded, which is what created the Big Bang. I just explained that like eight minutes ago. No, seriously. Were you not listening? Yeah, but you're not. What's funny is the actual typical position of all these authorities you keep appealing to is that space and time itself actually were created in the Big Bang. What? No. Oh yeah, I could just quote. No, they would have said what I said. Inflation precedes the Big Bang. Okay, what is inflation? Inflation is the process whereby space underwent an exponential expansion. It's a process where space does something, but it superseded space. No, that's why. See, you're assuming space begins at the Big Bang. That's false because inflation inflated space and then set up the Big Bang. That's just like following through basic. Okay, so space existed before it would follow that space obviously then existed prior to the Big Bang. Therefore forever? We don't know. Inflation might go back forever. Probably not. You know, we have the Bordeaux-Guth-Balankan theorem. Inflationary space times are not past complete. I feel, though, you're avoiding a logical application. I watched the World Science Forum and Alan Guth was on it that no, we actually have some theoretical ideas that inflation might be eternal into the past. But don't quote me on that, anybody, because I'm a little fuzzy on that. I don't know if I heard that correctly and I can't find the same World Science Festival video to confirm it. So please don't quote me on that. I'm thinking about emailing Alan Guth and actually asking him myself, but I just haven't gotten around to that. But, okay. See, physics science in general has nuance. You seem to be ignoring that and trying to push it into like a black and white dichotomy. No, I'm actually exposing the notion that somehow it holds intellectual superiority when in fact, okay, people sit back, men sit back, they write books, they come up with ideas, they haven't just as a master of ideas and then they start making up new ideas. Okay, cool, that's what we do in science. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. But like, creationists are able to answer a lot more of the questions, right, because there's the logical. So where did the universe come from on creation? An intelligent agent. How did that intelligent agent create the universe? It exists out. How did he do it? Yeah, how? With specific intent, however he chose to do it. How did he apply his intent to materialize the universe? However it was done. So what are you explaining? That now the... What mechanisms are you explaining? The logical antecedent is satisfied now. Okay, in your position... How is it satisfied? There's no mechanisms there. What are you explaining? An intelligent agent that's not confined to space, time, or matter is actually the primary... So what is this intelligence? It's the primary... That's called a diversion. The primary mover. That's the one about the... It doesn't matter. See, that's where religion comes in and then people come up with their interpretation of God. But that's not what this is about. This is about the logical requirement that there was a primary mover. Okay, that there was some type of intelligent agency. And how did the mover move the universe into existence? You're asking me questions that are red herring fallacies. No, of course I don't know. That doesn't matter. Okay, so it's okay for you to not know, but when I don't know, that's bad and that's all you do. And that's like, see this, this is what I mean. No, this is a good try. But what you're actually doing now is trying to like, you know, slide of hand, pretend that it's the same thing. It's not, I'm asking you about the fundamental question, right? Is there a beginning, if there's a beginning, what came before it? Well, does it have some type of intention? We know that order requires intention. Still haven't given the argument for that. I've asked like five times. It's the... I'm not even going to bother to ask again. Yeah, because our whole argument can be summarized. Our whole debate can be summarized in the same thing. You ask me, I say all observable evidence ever, and then you say what if there's something else? No, I say what's the argument that all observable evidence shows that order only can only come from intention. Okay, so I started giving examples. You want me to list everything in the universe? I didn't ask for examples. I asked for an argument. Those aren't the same thing. Okay, to have very meticulous order and information requires intelligent agency. If we write a book, if we make it, if we write computer code, these are very specific ordered in information. They're not the only forms. Stars are highly ordered. So stars require creators. That's not true. We know how stars form. Gravity. Okay, I get that you think that, and you want to like give me these big questions. No, that's not what we think. We've watched it happen. You've watched gravity? Yes, we've watched stars form. That's crazy, dude. You watched gravity? Yeah, I can watch gravity right now. That's crazy, bro. You should get your Nobel Prize. See, you watched a bottle. You didn't watch gravity. Watch gravity. That's what I just observed. I observed the force of gravity. I get it. I get it. Well, pseudo-force of gravity. You're pulling out all the tax now because you know that I obviously could debate you about what you think gravity is. And I'm not going to take the bait to change the subject, although your own paradigm, admittedly, has no idea what gravity is. And everyone knows that. Perverture in the geometry of spacetime. What are you talking about? Except, admittedly, they know that doesn't work. And now they're proposing modified Newtonian dynamics. Well, then I wonder why Einstein and Eddington watched the gravitational. Why are they proposing that? Modified gravity? Tell me what modified gravity is. There's different versions. I said mind. Why are they proposing mind? Mind is modified gravity. Tell me what it is. What is modified gravity? Many different versions. So pick one. Tell me what it is. No. Modified Newtonian dynamics. What is it? Okay. So as soon as I point out that… You don't know, do you? You have to interrupt, right? As soon as I point out that they know that the current version of gravity is wrong and that's why they're proposing something else, you say, oh, define it. Yeah, I want to know if you understand it. No, no, no. Answer my question first, and I'll happily do it. Answer my question. If we're so sure about what gravity is and it's correct, then why are they proposing mind? Why? Dark matter. Okay. So then there is something wrong with the current version of gravity and it's being theoretically replaced. There's not something wrong, but, well, the thing that's wrong with the theory of gravity is that we don't have a quantum description of it. That's what's wrong. But so what is… Oh, cosmological is the cosmological problem. So what is mind? What is modified gravity? There are… It's typically Newtonian mechanics, although there are some hybrids of relativistic and Newtonian mechanics within it. It's an entire branch of an idea of just modifying gravity to not have the dark matter problem. There's all kinds of different versions. How are they modifying gravity? I don't care. Well, not because you want to change the subject. No, it's just that what I'm doing is asking you to see if you know, if you even understand the things No, it's because you're trying to change the subject. Modified gravity is a way of modifying certain constants and features in Newtonian gravitational equations and certain relativistic equations to account for the anomalies that we see, like galaxies spinning faster than they should, lensing light more than they should, all of that, which is the whole dark matter thing. You literally said nothing to this. There's modified gravity, which states that no, there isn't extra matter out there that's adding this mass to account for these anomalies. We just have to modify gravity on these galactic and extra galactic scales that we haven't really even tested gravity on because we don't exist on those scales. We just have to modify the equations and that will fix it. And then there's dark matter, which says no, there is a legitimate form of matter there that is adding that mass that is creating these anomalies that we're observing. So there's two ways to approach this, but this doesn't really have to do with gravity, per se. It has to do with anomalies that we're observing that don't align with what we have, with the theories that we have. Of gravity. So what do we do? Yeah, we're like, this is, you're trying to run away. It's more that not really so much gravity is that the gravity is telling us the truth that we should be seeing galaxies spin apart. Okay, are you done? Are you done? Mass has to be there. Okay, so this has nothing to do, this has nothing to do with the debate and that's why I kept trying to jump in. You're going to interrupt me. I kept trying to jump in and say, dude, you're wanting to change the subject and you get me to take the debate about gravity because you can't answer the ontological parameters of your own position. Please stop, dude. You keep using terms. Stop. I don't think they know what you think they know. Stop. Stop. So, and no, what's super funny though, dude, is all he can do in the debate is pick a word and try to argue about the definition of the word and then what, stop interrupting me, dude. I don't have a mic, but just one second, bud. I mean, it's just incessant. Okay, so this is the point, right? You said, oh, I don't even know what it is and then all you said was they're modifying it. And it's not about gravity per se, except what's wrong with our theories of gravity. I said that in like 10 seconds. The new monologue for two minutes has had the same thing, but that's all irrelevant to what we're talking about. What we're talking about is atheism versus creationism. I'm trying to get you to answer and make specific claims and you can't do that. I'm saying, okay, is there a beginning? I don't know. Okay, then if there is a beginning, you agree as something predated it. I think inflation had predated it, right? Okay, so like, so you are saying there's a beginning because your belief is that your belief is that inflation came before that or so you're saying there was just inflation was there forever or whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter the specifics. The question is, if there's a beginning, don't you agree that means something came before it to start it? And if entropy is always existing in the universe, then the universe is losing energy over time, then it's supposedly going to reach this point in here. It's not leaving it. It's effectively decaying. So like energy is the usable form of energy is decreasing. The ability of energy goes down as energy does work. The usable energy in the universe, according to your paradigm, is going down over time. And okay, so you just corrected me to not correct me. But this is what's so funny because that's called it's all you have is tactics. Answer the question though, if it's running out, does that mean it'll eventually end? The universe? Yeah, no. Okay, so it's not going to reach the period that the energy is no longer usable. Well, that's not the same as the universe ending. That's energy not being able to do anything. That's the universe reaching thermodynamic equilibrium. Will that happen? Yes. Will the universe stop existing? No, almost certainly not. Okay, so the universe will expand and cool literally forever. They call it the heat death or like the big chill. Okay, and so it's the idea that obviously at some point the universe is going to have this heat death because the usable energy is going to eventually run out, right? And that is also suggestive of a beginning. Okay, but just like human progression as Steve and Hawking said, that's like, oh, we started somewhere to progress. It's the antecedent of progression. It's the antecedent of change that is progressive or regressive. Okay, so it's very simple logic to know that if the universe in your own belief system is supposedly running out of usable energy, right? But entropy we know to be always present, well, then there had to be a beginning. There had to be a beginning for that to be the case or what causes that progression? Well, the universe was low entropy, yes. We don't know why, but it doesn't mean it's a beginning. And I've already explained why. Okay, so it just started progressing randomly with no beginning point. I don't know. I don't think most cosmologists... And you see, and yeah, you're right. You don't have to know, but you have to address the actual logical antecedent, right? So like, oh, you know, I don't know what happened at the beginning of time. So you think somehow God exists? I'm not saying you're saying that, but that's the implication. No, right? I don't care if you know all the specifics or what the specifics are. I'm asking you to address the logical antecedents. I don't know what you mean by that. The logical requirements. So like... Logical requirements of what? That if something is progressive or regressive, for example, that the usable energy of the universe is running out over time, that means it had a beginning stage. That's not logically necessitated by that statement. No, that conclusion is not logically necessitated by that. But when I asked you to articulate why it was not, you said, I don't know. No, I said that because it does not follow. There's no logical entailment there. You'd have to show the logical entailment because you're the one claiming that there's a logical entailment there. So what would that entailment be? It's very simple, yeah. So if there's a universe, okay, and all the energy throughout all time of the universe has been moving in a certain direction, the usable energy has been going down, it's very simple. If that's been going down the entire time, it started from somewhere to go down from. Do you understand that? What's the argument for that? Basic logic. Can you lay out that logic for me, then? Yes, yes. The progressive change, meaning it's changing a certain amount in a consistent direction, okay? Something can change literally forever from eternity past. But it's changing progressively. But change is, yeah. Okay, no, it's like as in a sequential percussive order, right? The amount of usable energy is consistently going down, and it consistently goes in that direction, okay? So it's coming from somewhere. It's going down from some initial amount. A low entropy state at the reheating period, yeah. Okay. It doesn't mean that's the beginning. Okay, so there were- You still haven't logically shown that entailment. So at one point, it wasn't going down. I don't know. Do you understand the logic? You have to say yes. You don't understand the logic of it. Believe me, I probably understand. Oh, okay. Then maybe you should pay attention to the logic of this question, right? Which is, at the beginning, you're saying the low entropy state. Okay. Which is not the beginning. Was it going down then? Was the universe evolving? Was the usable energy going down then? Was the universe evolving, yeah. No, I said was the usable energy going down? That would be entailed by the universe evolving. So obviously I managed to say yes. If you knew what you were talking about, you would know that that was part of my answer. Okay, so even at the beginning, in this low entropy state, it was going down. The usable energy was going down. Therefore, okay, going down from where? So you can't just say the low entropy state were back to the same problem, which is that it's going down from an initial point. That is where the entropy has been increasing from the low entropy state of the early universe. Okay, but you said- We don't know why the early universe was in a low entropy state. Do you not actually understand what I'm saying? A lot of it, no, I don't. Why do you think I've been asking you what you mean so many damn times? Okay, it's very simple, right? So if the usable energy of the universe is supposedly going down forever, and then you say, yeah, but that's, and then it started with the low entropy state. That's not necessarily a beginning. I said, okay, well, at this low entropy state, was it also still doing that? Yes, okay, doing that from where? Now you're just- From the low entropy state. Yeah, you're infinitely regressing, right? Like, it has, you just said the low energy state, the low entropy state, then I said, okay, so the low entropy state at that time when it was in the low entropy state, was it, the usable energy also decreasing? Then you said, yes. Okay, so then we're gonna keep on going back now. Okay, so where's it coming, where's it going down from? Why was the universe in a low entropy state? No, why is the entropy, dude, how do you understand this? If it's going down, the usable energy is going down, okay, it's going down from some point. The low entropy state of the universe. But you said the low entropy state was also going down. No, I'm saying there was a, the universe was low entropy during reheating and the entropy has been increasing since then. I think what you're trying to ask is, why was the early universe low entropy and that entropy has been increasing since then? No, that's not what I'm asking. And you're right, I'm not following you. Well, you'll get it. Just like Stephen Hawking said, I read the quote, just like progression. I don't think any cosmologists. Just like progress, just it's very simple though. And I just read Stephen Hawking explaining it, but just like the progress, the progression of human quote unquote evolution, if you believe in that, that progression shows there's a starting point. Okay, this is logical antecedent to death. And this is what atheism is void of logical coherence. All of a sudden when it comes to the universe, whenever there's a progression, you don't need a beginning. It progresses from nowhere. You can invoke of nothing. You can provoke the progression from nowhere because when you say that, say humans evolve, well, we track it back, right? We track it back and then you get all the way to your special rocks that you guys believe in, right? So like, and you can keep going. What's a special rock? Don't you agree that if something is progressing or changing over time, it's coming from a certain state, initial state. Progressing from some previous state. An initial state. If you track it all the way back. Not necessarily from an initial state. So it just infinitely loops. Something could, yes. So it goes down below zero. What is that? What do you mean by that? How do you understand it? Zero have to do something. It couldn't be infinitely increased. For example, it couldn't be infinitely increasing. What couldn't? Anything, dude. What about the real number line? You're ignoring the logic. What about the real number line? That couldn't infinitely increase even though it does? What? The real number line? Numbers. Yeah, but no, we're not talking about, no, we're talking about physical reality. I'm asking you. That was an example. I'm just giving an example. All right, this is just crazy. Nothing can increase infinitely, but what about the real number line that increases add-in for an item? Okay. I'm saying that the logical requirement for something to progressively change, and I've had to say it ten knots, right, is that it's coming from an initial point. You said, yeah, the low entropy state. I said, okay. So we go to the low entropy state and we keep going. Or is it not changing then? Oh no, it's also changing then. Okay, so it's decreasing. The usable energy is decreasing even at the low entropy state. So now we're going to go another step back. Where is it, where's the starting point that it's decreasing from? And you said, oh, it doesn't necessarily need that. I don't know. It could go infinite. So you're saying that's your argument. Where is entropy increasing from? Sure, where is the low entropy state of the universe past which we don't know anything about. So you've got the low entropy state from there, the entropy increases as the universe evolves forward in the future. I don't know why this is difficult to understand. This is literally just like 101 in cosmology. No, you're saying it's difficult to understand. Your argument is that you don't know. So like... Well, that's not an argument. That's me being honest about what we don't know. Okay, but why are you saying it's... Why are you acting like it's difficult for me to understand? You're trying to claim me on this. Your argument is that you don't understand. We've admitted that. You're trying to get to specifics when there are none because we don't know. Okay, I get it right. So when it comes to if there's a beginning or not, you don't know. Nobody does. But I just pointed out that your own universal model, whether that be accelerative expansion, which is lavable, but we won't talk about that. Accelerative expansion or the fact that entropy of course always exists. And so therefore we have usable energy decreasing over time since the supposed beginning, which typically your paradigm would say the Big Bang. Okay, this all necessitates a beginning or it's in direct conflict with the second law of thermodynamics. How does it necessitate a beginning? Or it's in direct conflict with the second law of thermodynamics. And that's where you said, oh, well maybe back then the second law didn't apply. Okay, that's effectively just tapping out. No, it's not. It's stating the truth. We don't know with the law. And it's funny because the laws of thermodynamics actually aren't like other laws of thermodynamics. They're statistical. You're claiming that it could happen, okay? So you said, you don't think it's very likely. Okay, so let's, we now, that's just a random claim that holds no way to say, oh, back in the day the second law didn't apply. I didn't say that. It could not have applied. That's just a cool story. I didn't say that either. You literally said it. It's possible that it could not have applied. We don't know. Maybe it did. I don't know because we don't know enough about it. So when you said it, see what he does? He says you didn't say that. He repeats exactly what I said. And I say, yeah, it could be this, but it also could be this, but maybe it could be this. And he said, you said it was, no, no, no, no. No, I said you said it could. And then you said, I didn't say that. I said it possibly could. Yeah. It's just so funny, dude. So anyway, the point, it's very simple. I'm trying to get to the conclusion of this whole thing, right? Whenever it came to the information, right? And we know that we have very meticulous information in our DNA and genetic code, for example. And like, so transcription and translations, the coding schemes, all within our DNA is very complex. And you say, I said, well, that requires some type of intelligent agency from everything else that we can see, right? Because the antecedent's intention is order. Our total order is intention. And then you, like, disagree with that. You said, no. You still didn't give an argument for it. Because you just appealed to the possibility that maybe you can have information without it. What I appeal to isn't relevant to your argument that you did not give. No, my point is that all examples I can point out show that. I didn't ask for examples. I asked for arguments. How many times do I have to say this? You know what an argument is? Can you tell me what an argument is? Oh, my gosh, dude. Because I already explained that the specific order requires this. But this is one thing I wanted to do. It's a claim, not an argument. I think we have 30 minutes of Q&A, right? So I want to say, I want to ask you this other question. Maybe this will be productive. Because all we've gotten, I don't know, is with all the other stuff. So, and you may say, I don't know this, right? But is morality objective? By objective, you mean stance independent, correct? Yeah. No. I'm a normative anti-realist. I don't think there's any stance independent norms at all, not even a systemic norm. OK. So you don't think that morality is subjective? I think it's stance dependent, yeah. What you believe is right or wrong depends on the stances you have as an agent. Well, sure, obviously. But the question is, That's what subjective morality is. It's stance dependent. Yeah. But the question is, what is the actual truth? Not what you think, right? And so, OK. But you just asked me what I thought. So then, therefore, you're suggesting, and I hate to have to bring this up, right, but something egregious, like, there's a scenario in which raping a woman or, like, hurting a child or something is not only not wrong, but it's good. Yeah. Like, if aliens came to the Earth and said, if somebody doesn't rape this woman, we're going to kill all humans, including this woman, I would say, yeah, that woman ought to be raped in that scenario. Yeah, that would be good. The act of raping a woman is still intrinsically vague. Well, I don't think that morality is contained in actions. I think it is contained in stances. That's what stance dependence means when ethicists talk of immoral philosophers, talk about stance-dependent versus stance-independent moral statements or normative statements. Before we go on about ethicists, I just want to be clear about the entire fact. Yeah, I was trying to bring it back. So the point here is that, and you said subjective, right, which I just think is untenable, and that's what you have to say, but there are some atheists that claim that morality is objective. And my point is that, obviously, to have objective morality, like a linear code of ethics, right, or laws and physics, these require an author based on What do you mean by that? Application of logic necessitates that very specific linear code of ethics, a very specific order, right, or laws. That requires a lawmaker with everything that we can even conceive of, but the atheist gets to claim the anomaly again. We'll know, but the laws of physics don't need one. Oh, those laws don't need a lawmaker. Oh, objective morality can exist without some type of intention behind the order, right? So it's just like this weird, ambiguous anomaly. It is redundant anomaly, Glenn. So this moral author is the objectivity of moral statements above this moral author or contained within the moral author, given by the moral author? Well, that's a good question. I mean, whatever this is, must not be confined to material, confined. Sure. Okay, so then, so then we, no, we don't even, we don't understand the even the interpretive or intentional process of such a thing, right? And that's where religion gets into it. And I don't care about that, because my point is just that like, something with intention is creating this. Like when we talked about the laws, like everything seeks equilibrium. Like if you wanted to like really dumb down physics, is that everything seeks equilibrium? I don't know if I would use that phrase, but can you, but it literally does. So like high gas, cold gas, okay. So the thing about this, if everything in physics, whether that's chemistry, quantum, whatever, it's in a process of seeking equilibrium, then who created, like where is the intention to give it that predetermined order? Meaning that there's a state of equilibrium, there's a state that it's pursuing, everything in physics is naturally just trying to fall to a specific predetermined order. I don't agree with that. I'd need to see an argument in favor of that. I haven't seen what you mean. Well, like yeah, do you use anything? So get gas pressure, make a cup of coffee, it's gonna get cold over time. Yeah, that's just the natural world doing what the natural world does. Which is seeking you equilibrium. So not really because you can reverse entropy, but the earth is getting energy from the sun. Entropy on earth is not going up, it's going down because the earth is getting energy. So the second law of thermodynamics, and I'm sure you know this, is like universal, not in the sense that it doesn't look at like specific instances, it's broad. Entropy broadly increases in the universe over time, but not there's instances where it's going down, like on earth because the earth is getting energy from the sun, or when you stick that cup of coffee that went cold on the counter in the microwave and reheat it, your decreasing entropy in that instance. Okay, yeah, I mean it's pretty simple. What I'm saying is that regardless if there's external additional components or whatever, my point is that everything in physics is seeking you equilibrium. I mean, and that's just actual, it doesn't matter like everything is, and the reason that the sun is supposedly giving energy to the earth, obviously, I don't believe in your model of things, but it doesn't matter, is not somehow independent of the fact that everything's seeking you equilibrium, everything does that. My point is that everything we observe from the small to the big scale, all sciences, right? The very fundamental acknowledgement we have to acknowledge, which is also proof of the metaphysical that we even have to acknowledge it as the prerequisite, but we do that, we utilize logic, a metaphysical application, to then acknowledge that everything's seeking you equilibrium and we use that understanding to actually begin to learn about the world, right? So how in the world is this place randomly and chaotically here or ever existent with no intention and everything to the smallest little molecule and smaller is all built in such a way that it's always seeking you equilibrium? I don't think the universe is random. If it were, I don't know why the laws of physics piece the damn predictable. You see, okay, we agree though, so I guess your position then is, yes, everything that exists is very ordered and has this natural order. Well, there's disorder as well. But the disorder is the process of trying to get the order. Well, I don't really understand that. I just think the universe is increasing in entropy and there's order in that, there's disorder in that, there's stochasticity in that, there's causality in that. But you think that, so you think that the universe can be as ordered as it is randomly. With that, like without any... You mean by ordered randomly? No, I'm saying like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. You mean by ordered, yes. I don't see why that's immediately controversial. But how did it got here without any type of like intention? Of course. Right, so it would be random. Did you guys want any closing statements before we go into Q&A? I don't need one though. Boston must have one, that's fine. All right, because we are going to go into Q&A in about two minutes. I think we should totally do closing statements. All right, if you want to go ahead there with us, the floor is yours. All right, just real quick, yeah. And it got kind of heated and you're cool with me, bro, but this is a really big conversation and maybe it could have been more ordered, but long story short, we talked about how anything that you invoke that goes against the second law of thermodynamics is inadmissible intellectually. And he obviously disagrees. He says that maybe at some point in time the second law of thermodynamics didn't apply, but disagree. And that necessitates a beginning to the universe. And in any model, the fact that we see that this energy, just usable energy is decreasing, et cetera, et cetera, the second law necessitates that there was a beginning. And that's the fundamental first question I get. Was there a beginning to this place? If there's a beginning to the place, then the antecedent is, well, something had to spark and primarily move it. Also, the fact that we even are using logic, that's a metaphysical acknowledgement of the world around us that we used to interpret it. And the fact that we have such information even built into us, the genetic code, is specific information, all examples require intelligent agency. So long story short, the whole Maho argument can be summarized in the fact that the antecedent to specific and meticulous and reoccurring order is intention. And someone can say, prove it. I'm like, okay, well, I can name anything in the whole world. I can name anything that exists as an example. And they're like, oh yeah, but maybe there's something else. Can you prove that there couldn't theoretically be something else that doesn't require it? And at that point, I'm like, okay, you can say that about anything. You can say that Daffy Duck, we live in Daffy Duck. I mean, you can say anything if you just end up by saying, well, can you prove that isn't theoretically possible in some way? And so I just want, I want people to lead with that, right? The idea is that atheism effectively kind of taps out of the tough questions. And we all have thought about the questions because they're the most important ones. So I think we should not tap out of it. And do you want any closing statement where you just had one there, Leo? I might as well. Whoa, I should not have had two cups of coffee. I'm zooming over here. Anyway, so, I mean, in summary, I think I did a pretty good job of juxtaposing creationism and naturalism. I think that naturalism is, in fact, intellectually superior. I think it doesn't make nearly as a rash of claims about reality as unsupported of claims about reality as creationism does. Not to mention, I think there are aspects of creationism that are just obviously and demonstrably false, particularly those related to biology and certain claims that some of them make about physics and chemistry, like that 4.54 billion-year-old planet that we inhabit is somehow only, like, 6,500 years old. It doesn't make sense. Anyway, I asked a lot of questions related to definitions so that I can better understand the context that my opponent is coming from so that I can better understand him and his position and respond more accordingly and was effectively accused of dishonesty and dodging. When I did that, same when I asked for arguments, I didn't get any definitions for words that he used which made it difficult, which is why I interrupted a lot. I didn't get any arguments for claims that he made, which is very hard, because then I don't know what your argument is. I don't really understand what it is that you're saying and what you mean, and that makes it difficult. And that's also why I interrupted quite a bit because when people don't answer questions and don't give arguments for their claims and they don't define the terms that they're using, it makes it very difficult to understand them and the position that they're coming from. And then that just makes the discussion very hard. And so I have to interrupt more so that I can try to get you to answer the questions, give the definitions, make the arguments. And that's all, to me, better understanding your argument and your position and where you're coming from so that I can respond in a way that is honest. And I think that acknowledging the limitations of our knowledge, acknowledging when we don't know things, instead of committing ourselves to positions where we don't really have a lot of evidence, is just the honest position to take. And I've noticed that a lot of, in this final sentence, I've noticed that a lot of creationists attack the other side for having that honesty to admit when we don't know things, or when we're not committed to certain decisions. All right. Well, thank you so much, Leo, and also thank you to Austin Whitsett. We're going to go into Q&A. So if you guys are watching live right now, hit the like button. I'll break the rules and look right into the camera. So we're going to have some speakers come up. Hopefully you can all hear me on the feed. If we don't have enough questions, we will pull from our super chat. So if anybody wants to make a line behind the camera here, I'd just say just stay behind that last outlet plug there just so we don't hit any lines. And I'll also let everybody know while I'm thinking of it, once we break from here and go to lunch, if you're not going to lunch, there is an area in the lobby, just behind the glass pane where you guys can hang out. You can also go out to the pool area. The pool's not open, but you can go out there if you want some fresh air and you don't want to leave the hotel area. So if you guys have questions, you can make a line. It's more of an observation, two observations than a question, but it's pretty quick. I agree that especially early on, you were interrupting a lot. Yeah. Which I don't think is going to debate stuff as Austin's. However, I think it's much more, considerably more intellectually honest to say, I don't know, instead of postulating, implying, if not specifically saying, that there has to be a creator. I think it's more intellectually honest to say, we just don't know. Thoughts on the panel there? Yeah, I think that I don't know is an honest position when there is an equal answer to basic things. Meaning atheism doesn't have a logical worldview. Whereas creationism is like, oh, well, we can check all of these boxes as to the primary movement, the requirement, the logical antecedents. So as to exactly what it is, who's God is right or anything like that, I can maybe even agree that saying, I don't know, would be more honest there. But as to exactly how it happened, why it happened, like he was asking me, what did this creator do and how did he do it? I don't know. And that's the honest position. But the honest position, in my opinion, in conclusion, what I'm saying is the honest position in this is to acknowledge that everything we observe that has order like that, everything that we can ever observe, it has some type of intelligent agency behind it, right? So if you're going to claim the anomaly then, I don't know that I don't know is actually the honest position. I think there may be like some ulterior motivation as to why people don't want to think that it was created. But can I give just one really quick statement? Sure thing, 30 seconds. Part of the reason, and I agree with you, interrupting isn't necessarily the best approach, but I come from a particular philosophical dual, I guess you could say. A lot of my friends online, we do engage in a particular way. And part of the reason that I did interrupt quite a bit was also because a lot of statements were being made about what I said or what I'm committed to that are not true. And I'm going to stop you right there if you do that because that is not fair to me. And I have the right to correct that and state what my actual position was or what my actual statement was. And that's all I wanted to say to them. All right, I want to make sure that the audience can see our questioner. So if you can step up just a little bit there, all right, your question. Cool, yeah, gotcha. So what's it? You claimed that order and information can only come from intelligence or intention. So I just wanted to provide you two counter examples that debunk that and then hear your response if that's okay. So one, like snowflakes forming in the atmosphere. Every snowflake has a unique shape. That's unique information that snowflakes don't require any intelligence or intention to form. And then two, since you really like genetic information, particularly, I wanted to ask if you ever heard of nylonase. It's a specific type of enzyme that evolved to digest nylon. We know that the information for that enzyme did not exist prior because nylon did not exist prior to humans inventing it. So this was like literally mutations producing new information. Nylonase is an entirely new class of enzyme that did not exist prior. That's new information that order in snowflakes, et cetera. No information or no intelligence, no intention. Your thoughts? Yeah, so it would be the order that was actually antecedent to the laws of physics that formulate the snowflakes in the first place. That kind of begging the question. Natural occurring processes. When it comes to the enzyme thing, I mean, you have to have the preexisting information and capability to then become something else. Which is why I was saying ironically, evolution would be proof of creationism. And that's what's so funny is for the actual organism to have the information innately to where it can adapt, that had to be built in. Like you're like, oh, look, this made new information. Yeah, because it already had the information and capability to do that. And I've never heard a rebuttal to that from evolutionists. That's an innate quality of an organism to be able to, so it's pulling upon existing information to even be able to do it in the first place. So to isolate and point out that, oh, look, there's a little different information over here. That's just a non sequitur in my opinion, respectively. All right, your question. Yeah, thank you both for doing this. It was an amazing debate. Really appreciate it. I like your shirt. Thank you. I like his shoes. My wife picked it out. It's the only good shirt I have because of her. So my question is for what's it? You mentioned DNA being information. I've heard this kind of equivalence done a lot. Like DNA is like code or it's like words. The problem with that equivalence is when we look at words or software, there's an encoding mechanism and a decoding mechanism. Like software is decoded in a CPU. DNA is the only thing that we know of where the encoding mechanism and the decoding mechanism are the same thing inside the system. It's very unique in that way. There's nothing else that does that. So you're kind of, it feels like a false equivalence to me and I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. That would seem like you needed some type of intelligent agency more. I guess like DNA is very crazy. Also DNA is not even fully understood at all and not just the full mapping of the genome like the actual methodologies and causal mechanisms of what DNA does. But the main point is just that it's just that the information itself is there. It's a genetic code and it's very highly meticulous mind-blowingly. So as to that distinction, I don't see that distinction being specific to my point, which is that just to have that genetic code or that information it requires intelligent agency. I mean, we can just claim that maybe it doesn't but it just doesn't logically follow to me. But yeah, I would say even the fact that DNA is exclusively exclusive in its causal mechanism of creating information wouldn't really be specific to why it has to be intelligently created. All right, next one. Hey, Leo and Witzit. So my question goes back to a little bit what you said earlier, Witzit, about how you could claim, you don't know that how the mechanism, how the creator caused the universe to exist. So we can discuss like, we could provide a logical argument to explain that there's an infinite past existence, infinite low entropy, the symmetrical to the infinite high entropy into the future. Like we seems like everybody agreed, at least based on our current model that with second law of thermodynamics there'll be an infinite future of high entropy. So why can't we have an infinite past from the big bang, I guess, of low entropy but we just don't know the how? Like we could say, well, we don't know how that mechanism went from low entropy to where we started getting high entropy. I probably said that backwards. But anyways, that's the question. So why can't I say be logically consistent by just asserting something and just not explaining the how? It seems like I'm in the same position you are. Thank you so much. I wasn't asking for the how, specifically I was asking, I was making the point that holding to that belief requires acknowledging that there's a beginning. So like you said, infinite, infinite past was an interesting term, their phrase, but my whole point was that that requires there be a beginning, the fact that it's progressed, the usable energy, so entropy increasing and that the usable energy in the quote unquote university, anyone that knows me, I don't really believe a lot of these theories because they're pseudo scientific nonsense, but that aside, that is a, you know, thermodynamics is real and the usable energy decreasing is coming from a specific point. So the reason I invoke that was typically, if you look at the history of atheism when it comes into like intellectual forum, the whole argument used to be about like, oh did the universe eternally exist? Now that was pretty much done away with in like the early 1900s, but some people still cling on to that and I think it's important to point out that it really can't happen that way. If the energy is actually usable energy decreasing and entropy is always increasing, it's coming from a beginning point, logically speaking, or it would be infinite regression into what, like negative numbers and it just doesn't. I just wanted to say really quickly with respect to that, just a quick correction that a thousand years ago, atheists weren't talking about whether the universe had a beginning, most of them thought it was eternal because a lot of the, in fact back then it was the theists. Like Arhazali, the Muslim who developed the Qalam cosmological argument that was further developed by William Lee Craig in the 70s, where it was the argument that the universe had a beginning that he philosophically got to using arguments from infinity and stuff like that. Most people believed that the universe was eternal back then. So the atheists back then throughout history, what they would have been focusing mainly on would have been things like arguments from evil and other very philosophically based arguments like that. They weren't really interested in cosmology. I just wanted to make that quick correction. Any last thoughts before we pass it over to the next question there, Austin? No, no. All right. Your question. Yet another question about information. It seems that you believe that chemistry, physics, etc. all of that contains information within it innately. Is that an accurate characterization? Sure, yeah. Okay. Given that that seems to be the case, how do we tell the difference between chemistry and physics simply acting as they can within the universe that they can act in with us assigning information to it after the fact versus a mind assigning information to it from the very beginning? The information requires a mind. I agree with you about that. But how can we tell which mind is putting it there, yours or God's? That's an interesting question. I'm not even sure I fully follow because like with DNA, for example, I mean, if that information requires a mind, I obviously didn't put it there. Now, I do understand that sometimes, we apply the concept of information or different versions of that to describe the phenomena or whatever. But I'm talking about the innate order. So like something exists, whether or not you acknowledge it exists, right? How we decide to use our information systems to describe it is independent of the fact that there's innately information. And physics gets a little bit more nuanced if you want to talk about the information there. I would say there is, but it opens up a whole can of worms. But like biology is very straightforward. It's the genetic code. That's why I invoke that because it's just very clearly information. So I don't know if I fully answered your question or understood it, but basically, yeah, we apply information as in like that's how we describe things to different phenomena, but that would be independent of the fact that the information's there. And I think, yeah, like DNA is a perfect example to answer your question. You said chemistry, right? But intrinsically, there is an innate informative system that we are now observing. How we choose to describe it or order it, you know, mathematically or with words doesn't really matter. Like it already exists independent of us, which requires a mind. And that means a mind bigger than us. At least that's how it's here. Too late to follow up. How much time do we have? We've got 15 minutes. We've got another two speakers. If you make it real quick. Yeah, like with DNA, whether or not you choose to ascribe anything to it, it is a very meticulously specifically ordered code. I don't have to go in there and call it DNA. I don't have to count it. I don't do any of that. It's just there. It's absolutely there, regardless of what I think about it. The actual meticulous order and the causal mechanisms of DNA and what it's able to accomplish, which is insane. And they always try to undermine it, jump DNA, wrong about that. Long story short is it was there independent of us. And yeah, they can both happen at the same time. How do I tell the difference? Well, because the natural order is just there. I observe it, tangibly observe it. And then I describe it with a separate additional information system. So like ours is additional. All right, your question. How's it going? What's it? How's it going, Leo? So I know in Leo's ending statement, you kind of ran into like definitions and things like that. And I know that you're arguing atheism, but kind of like what Witzit was saying, you kind of ran into a lot of like, well, we don't know. We don't know. I don't know. And I know that that kind of is also associated with agnosticism. So I kind of, and I know Witzit also sort of ties natural law in with creationism. So I kind of want to know at what point do you guys distinguish like naturalism versus creationism and like atheism versus agnosticism? So kind of just go into that. Well, for me, for me, I know this is not true of all atheists, but for me as an atheist, I take my atheism to be the belief that gods do not exist. And then I would take agnosticism to be a suspension of judgment on the question of whether God exists. You do not believe that God exists. You do not believe that God does not exist. You've suspended judgment. So that's how I would characterize the difference between those. And naturalism and creationism, I think the difference is very stark where naturalism says it's natural world that we inhabit. That's all that exists. There is nothing outside. There's no such thing for me outside of it or beyond it. Whereas creationism, creationism I do think is quite broad. There's young earth creationism, old earth creationism, evolutionary creationism, forms of intelligent design. But I think that the central theme is that some form of intelligent designer created either life or the life plus the universe. Usually that's the one I hear. And so that's how I would distinguish between both of those. And just one more thing. I say I don't know a lot because that's my opinion. I don't know. I'm an atheist because I believe that there are no gods. But I have no problem saying that with respect to certain questions say about the origins of the universe or maybe what natural laws are I might be more agnostic with respect to those specific questions. Your question. Science has been wrong more than it's been right through history, right? And it just, but it progresses. So what in the past two or 300 years would be some good examples of taking your methodology where if we don't know we can start to point toward the creator. Where has our, where have we advanced in the past few hundred years by taking that stance versus taking a stance in science which, well, we may prove certain theories wrong but we don't just throw science out. Yeah, it's cool because I'm going to tie into the other guy's question too. So this is a typical, this is a typical, I don't want to call it a tactic but it is an approach that people use. They want to pin creationism versus science, right? Because then they can tout all these discoveries as if they're exclusive to not acknowledging a creator. Understanding how the world works, understanding the processes, then creating technology to utilize it, constantly pursuing a better understanding of it, using natural processes, natural laws, you know, scientific methods, etc. None of that is exclusive to atheism. And anyway, your question is how much has acknowledged that a creator may do it if we don't know? How much has that done for us compared to not doing that? And I'm explaining that That wasn't my question. Okay. Before you restate your question, let's get you in the microphone here. My question was in the past 200-300 years, what were some major advancements that took place because we decided to say God did this and we didn't have any other explanation. We just said must be God. That we don't make discoveries in science like that. So it's like, that's my point I'm asking about science. I'm asking about saying we don't know it must be a creator. What advances has that given? Taking the stance of it must be God. Where have we benefited from that in the past 200-300 years? It wouldn't be relevant to furthering understanding of the natural world. So I did specifically answer your question. It is a tactic to try to use all discoveries of the natural world as if it's something I'm explaining to you, dude. You can acknowledge that there's a creator and still find all the discoveries. You're asking me what if someone just says oh God must have done it and then tapped out then what would that do for us? Nothing if they tapped out. It's your assumption and tactic to pretend that they didn't have to tap out which is absolutely ridiculous which is what I started my whole thing with. I started with the quote that the first step of natural sciences will have you an atheist but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you. Natural science is not exclusive to atheism. That's just a tactic. So people can say creationists are science deniers and therefore we're correct. My answer to you is that's independent. Acknowledgement of some of these pre-requirements of this place. Acknowledgement of that being a creator has is independent of discovering how things work. Right? No, because if hundreds of years ago sorry if you could put it in the mic right quick. Well I'll have to say this is the last one. So hundreds of years ago we would have said well God is causing this thing and many people would have walked away from trying to understand it because it would be against God to try to dissect what that is. It could be with vaccines. It could be with advances. Being able to put spaceships in the space being able to predict things had we just said when did it ever benefit us to go? Yeah, it's God. Even if you say he's a creator God created the universe. If you believe that what benefit is there to that? No, he has been. We just say we're going to stop. We're going to so because we ended up with God we're going to stop trying to figure it out because God is God. But see that's what you're claiming because that's you require that character for your position but it isn't reality. Creationists don't just tap out of understanding the world because they know that there's a creator. That is just a tactic and I just explained that multiple times. Why would someone not be able to send a rocking into space which they can't anyway? Why would they not be able to do that? Right? Because they thought there was a creator. That makes no sense. In fact, you would actually have motivation to better and further understand the world that was created because it just consistently gives glory to the fact there's an intelligent agent which is what the quote means that I started my presentation with at the bottom of the glass you find God. So I don't find any exclusivity in it than this idea that people just used to be like stupid because they were creationists but now all of a sudden the atheism has saved the world is a joke almost every major advancement was by a creationist. Can I say some just one really quick thing? Can I deal man your question if I may and then maybe provide my response? It sounded like to me you were asking something along the lines of so we've got these sort of natural methodologies on one side that where we've looked at things and said you know I don't know how this works let me look at this explain it and see what I can do and then we have been wrong but we continue to make progress and we get it right. Are there any methodological naturalism? Are there any creationist specifically methodologies where we start with okay God is causing this let's explain how God is causing this to happen is it was that was the question so what I would say is I think for me this is an argument for naturalism is that as we have progressed technologically and scientifically we have only really got an explanation for things through understanding the natural world and using natural methodologies to understand the world. We've never overturned a scientific explanation with something that's supernatural and I think that there's a reason for that so that's how I would answer your question. So that was your question you got a couple seconds to close. Okay yeah I mean it's just a false dichotomy to try to say oh that we study the natural world or we are creationists it's just a tactic it's a tactic to basically say the other people deny science that's not reality yes natural studying natural world is very beneficial naturalism as a philosophy is that nothing exists outside of that and in fact actually the prerequisite to even applying scientific method or anything is actually using your mind. Ironically you have to have philosophical parameters to interpret the world before you do anything to understand it so naturally studying the world or studying the natural world is not exclusive to atheism or exclusive of a creationist that's just a non sequitur and I explain that many times. I'll read your question. Yeah so it sounded like your response to my previous question with the snowflakes and nylonase was that information that new information in those two examples was contingent upon previous information and that the total information content before and after has not increased or decreased. That sounded like what you were saying. So I would like to ask how can you show that it's any different for like a human intelligence something that's created by a human intelligence is also contingent upon previous information and so it sounds like your argument is like the total information content of the universe is not changing so how can it be that a human mind can create new information because the same response you gave to my previous examples also applies to any human creations. Does it though? Because when someone first created like a language yeah yeah so people people create new information systems but so I don't understand when you brought up that somehow you can have information with that intelligent agency because this new information was created I said yeah but it's taking existing information and the real question as it pertains to this is you said all the information in the universe what is the intelligent agency behind the information in the first place that is accessible or replicable or you can manipulate it and then I explained that naturalism actually says that everything is confined to matter and energy information is distinctly different than matter and energy therefore naturalism isn't feasible as a philosophy which is why the information is basically a death blow to the idea of naturalism specifically as a philosophy right so One follow up Yeah I don't think that you've explained how a human mind can create information that's not contingent upon previous information like how does a human mind create new information that's what you allege that intelligence creates new information so how does that happen given that it's still just contingent upon previous information that's how you try to shut down the two examples I provided What not Okay I understand what you're saying is that basically for for a human to create information it's always drawing off of or accessing existing information or how we understand the world Okay that's right because there's only one all powerful mind my point is that the mind is actually creative are able to reorganize it or create informative systems or even frameworks of interpretation this all requires intention frameworks of interpretation themselves require intention so it's the even the re the actual manipulation of information systems which I would say should you say languages and all these different things are different things that men made up per se right so you can say oh but we we knew that we could move our mouth okay but we created an information system right that requires specific intent information systems don't just randomly and chaotically order and it's all drawing off information I agree with that but that kind of kicks the can back down the road to the question which is like well where did the initial information come from so as far as we can see manipulation in organization requires intention like specific creation of information I can't conceive of any logical alternative I've never heard one all right last question here and then we're going to take a break for lunch yeah I don't you think it's a dishonest tactic to bring up like the problems we have with consciousness to try to refute naturalism over creationism when all worldviews have to presuppose certain things like logic the exists the external world exists and then we try to discover what the ontology of that universe is that world is the reality is you could be a solipsist that could be eternally internally consistent so I think it's sort of dishonest you sort of make a comment about that so I'd like to yeah I mean yeah I didn't in any way make that as a primary argument or anything but I do find it funny that this is obviously it's very easy to understand what the atheist will say it's just a random chemical imbalances or oh it's just synopsis in the brain it's all limited to material and energy right so there is nothing that exists outside of that confinement that's the definition of naturalism as a philosophy that's the actual realism and naturalism as a philosophy is that everything can be confined to the material existence in and of itself and everything is derived from that so it's not that I think and I don't think it's dishonest we have different interpretations of it I think that that is existed in a metaphysical like void of that physical limitation it's metaphysical where the atheists would say it's not so it's not actually that it's dishonest it's that we have a different interpretation of the mind consciousness etc whereas the atheists just vehemently rejects the inevitability that those are very real things and they say that they're simply conceptual abstraction though they're very real they're very real so that's a disagreement I wouldn't say that it's dishonest I think the atheists would concede that if the metaphysical exists then naturalism is incorrect right because naturalism says nothing exists outside of the material world that's what naturalism as a philosophy is so acknowledgement of the metaphysical is a big problem for the atheist so no it's not dishonest naturalism is a metaphysical that's all I wanted to I agree it's that's that's why it's intrinsically contradictory and and as is empiricism empiricism is also intrinsically contradictory as it is a philosophy but basically the philosophy states that everything is everything that is limited to what can be tested or sensed right same thing with this naturalism you have to actually use a metaphysical starting point to even claim that that's your belief system also what you said about consciousness I'm an atheist and I don't believe that but you guys can find out what I believe about consciousness and the soul today at 3 p.m. so right before we do a round of applause for our speakers getting in the hot seat do want to give a quick plug as you can see on the bottom left of the screen up here it says manifold the reason is manifold has helped us put this conference on they've given us a ton of support to help keep prices for the tickets affordable so we do want to plug them as it's a great site it's one I actually use myself so basically it's a play money prediction market so if you've ever heard for example of predict it it's like that you can predict anything but it's play money so you don't have to worry about losing your own real money and it's a blast check out that link in the description box and want to give our speakers a huge round of applause thank you so much gentlemen it's been a true pleasure we'll break for lunch which is solo independent wherever you want to go and then we'll be back in an hour with the next debate thanks folks can I take the mic off how's it going bro