 That is right, welcome everyone to modern day debate. We are a neutral, non-partisan platform welcoming everyone from all walks of life. If you're looking for even more fantastic debates, we are all over the internet including your favorite podcasting platform. So if you enjoy debates, please don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe, including tonight's debate on Is There a God? With our debaters Ben Burjais and Nadir Ahmed here to help us find out. I overshot, that's what you get, and if you enjoy what either of them have to say tonight, our guest links are in the description below. You can also tag me in chat at Amy Newman with your question or comment for our Q&A section. Those super chats will get yours sent to the top of the list. With that, I am going to hand it over to you, Nadir, for your up to 10 minute opening statement. The floor is all yours. Oh, I think, you got to unmute, that was me, yes, okay, thank you, sorry about that. Yeah, so the topic is going to be, you know, why we believe is God, Is There a God? I think the most convincing evidence for that is the Quran itself in that it is a scientific miracle. And I'll be presenting evidences from the Quran, which will prove that this book is something supernatural based on the scientific information in it. Now there's two kinds of evidences in the Quran. There's one which is that there are verses in the Quran which agree with modern science which scientists have only recently discovered. This information didn't exist 1400 years ago. The second one is that the Quran actually corrects the scientific errors of the Bible. And so 99% of the time we always debate with the Atheists the first one and we debate the second one with the Christians. But tonight's going to be a little bit different. I gave my notes to Burgess for the second one, but that's okay because even in that debate it is a question which atheists have to answer. The question which atheists have to answer is from an atheist perspective the Bible is just a book. It's just a book of history. But that book contains many scientific errors. So regardless of what kind of book it is, the atheists have to answer how is Muhammad coming 600 years later and correcting these scientific errors? And that's the challenge which I'm going to present to Dr. Burgess today. So yeah and he's cool with it. He's okay with that perspective because mostly atheists don't touch the Bible, they don't care about that one. That's fine, you know, but he's okay and I think he agreed to these terms. So anyways, let me begin the first scientific error which we're going to find and we're going to, well let me first list them all real quick. You see in the Bible you'll see Jesus, or the Bible talks about the mustard seed, talked about meat consumption, it talked about washing hands, it talked about how to treat the epileptic and it also talks about alcohol. Now what's interesting is Islam comes 600 years later and talks about those same exact things. So this cannot be a coincidence. What is Muhammad trying to do here? So as I mentioned, all those issues which I've talked to you about, they're all scientific errors in the Bible. In fact, let me go and share my desktop here real quick so we can look at that. And so if Muhammad was just doing a copy job from the Bible, well that's a very unwise thing to do because what's going to happen is you're going to copy over those scientific errors. So let me just go very quickly and I'm going to breeze through this very quickly. I only got 10 minutes. I'll ask you just please hit pause on the YouTube video to get all my notes. The Bible says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. It's the smallest of all seeds, but it's actually not true. We now know that orchid seeds are more smaller. Now what's very interesting is the Quran also uses a mustard seed analogy. Let's see if he falls into the trap and says that this is a smallest seed. It says inside chapter number 21, verse 47, it says, and even if there be the weight of a mustard seed, we will bring it up, but guess what's missing? You got it. The scientifically incorrect portion that this is the smallest seed. The mustard seed is not the smallest seed. So you can say, okay, maybe the author of the Quran got lucky. Okay, that's very possible. But let's keep going. The scientific miracle, which I'm talking about is not like one instance, one dodge as you can see over here, but the scientific miracle here is a consistent pattern of these type of corrections or in this case dodging. So let's take a look at a more serious issue. The Bible also talks about alcohol. However, the Quran comes 600 years later and gives a scientifically correct answer to alcohol. And that is, you shouldn't drink it. This is actually what science says. And as a result, there's this recent research, which has done the scientific study, which says Muslim women are 50 times less likely to give birth to a child with birth defects, something known as fetal alcohol syndrome. And that is a direct result of the teachings of the Quran, as you could see on your screen here. So that's the first scientifically correct statement, but the Quran rolls the dice again on alcohol. And it tells us that there's more harm than good in alcohol, as you could see over here. This is first, let me go and show you what study, what I'm sorry, what this from the CNN article, what does science say about alcohol? Many studies have shown that the overall health risk of drinking alcohol outweighs any benefit. Go to the Quran, chapter 2, verse 29. They have some benefits for the people, but the harm is far greater than their benefit. Word for word agreement on, you know, on the science behind alcohol. So here we see the Quran, once again, these are, once again, dodges a bullet of the scientific errors of the Bible. So because the right dosage really is zero because you have children, you have women. And so once again, the Quran gives a fantastic answer on it. The third scientific error, or yeah, third scientific error. The Bible removes all restrictions on meat consumption, as you can see from the following article over here. That's not a smart thing to do. Why? Because there's animals you don't want to eat like monkeys and bats, which those those contain by consuming them, you get diseases such as COVID. COVID comes from the bat. You get Ebola and AIDS, which comes from monkey. The impact is, as a result, all over the world, Christians eat this monkey meat. OK. And and this is and this is a huge threat to mankind because they contain because this is how you get Ebola and AIDS from the monkey. Prophet Muhammad, let's see what he says. He comes now 600 years later and reinstates restrictions on this. And look at what Prophet Muhammad said. He said, Allah's messenger forbade the eating of meat of monkey and beast. I'm sorry. Allah's forbade the eating of meat of beast having fangs. So what Dr. Burgess needs to answer here, here is a man 1400 years ago, you know, in the desert is giving us the turnkey solution, the preventive cure for for aid, Ebola and and and and the coronavirus. If mankind were following this advice that you see on the screen, we would not be having these pandemics. This is the cure and the solution, not just for this pandemic, for also future pandemics. And then we see another example of a scientific correction and both Jesus and Muhammad dealing with us with a child who has seizures. So basically what happened? Jesus looks at the child who has seizures and says, this kid's demon possessed. So here's a problem with that as a result of that. OK, for the next 2000 years, as you can see from the following study, if I can find it here for the next 2000 years, the what's it called? The Epileptics are now stigmatized as being demon possessed. As we can see from the from Dr. Carl Otennaken's article and his research on this and others, they all put the blame on the teachings of the Bible for stigmatizing Epileptics as being demon possessed. But once again, you know, we see another correction, Prophet Muhammad, an epileptic child comes to Prophet Muhammad. And what does Prophet Muhammad say as we see in the following Hadith? Does he accuse the child of being demon possessed, thus causing this type of horrible stigmatization upon them? Watch what he doesn't say. The Prophet Muhammad simply says, I will invoke a law to cure you. So here we see something like four or five scientific corrections to the Bible. So let's now do a little bit of math here. Now, I have more. There's actually a lot more. But unfortunately, I only have 10 minutes. I'll try to get to the other parts, you know, maybe in our discussion. So here we see the question which which Dr. Burgess must answer here. OK, so we were to say, what's the probability of you getting it right like this? I mean, once or twice, yeah, you could say, OK, he copied from some ancient source or something like that. Yeah, I mean, there's no there's no problem there. But you cannot keep getting it right every time. So if we were to say it's a 50, let's just be generous and charitable to Dr. Burgess. We say, OK, look, it's about a 50 percent chance of getting it right on alcohol. 50 percent chance of dodging the bullet on mustard seed. 50 percent chance on on dodging the bullet on on the epileptic child. If we were to if we were to add up all this probability and I think I've given you something like five, I think four, four. I've only a type of four. So that's two times two to the fourth power. That's the problem. What did I give you mustard seed, alcohol, epileptic and I'm going to give you five and in the open. So so if we were to that's that's two to the fifth power, that's the probability and that's going to be the denominator. That's the probability of you just getting lucky each and every time. So why the Quran is a scientific miracle here is because of the frequency, not the individual occurrence. Once or twice, we could just pass it off as nothing, but the frequency of these corrections again and again and again. And this is something which proves that this is something supernatural. Only a prophet of God can correct five or six scientific errors lifting the biblical curse from mankind and setting the victims free. That's what we saw with the case of the epileptic child. We saw that, you know, giving the cure for for these for these terrible zoonotic diseases, that's what COVID and Ebola and these things are, you know, and this is something which is consistent. So it's not just that the Quran is agreeing with science, but the impact it is having upon humanity also as well. So I believe that is my time and I'll go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Burgess. Thank you so very much, Nadir, for your up to 10 minute opening statement. And Professor Ben, the floor is yours for your up to 10 minute opening statement. All right. Thank you, Nadir. Thank you also to James, modern day debate for setting this up and Amy for moderating. So at the outset, before I get into the meat of this, I want to just spend a moment talking about why I do debates like this in the first place, sometimes people who used to see me argue about, you know, capitalism and socialism and war and peace and things like that are surprised when they say a debate on a more abstract, philosophical topic like the existence of God. And they assume that I see the topics as linked in a way that I really don't. They're linked, certainly in the sense that I believe in the separation of church and state or mosque and state and certainly see religious fundamentalists as enemies of humanity. So, for example, I would definitely stand in solidarity with the women, life, freedom protesters, risking their lives right now in Iran. But I have nothing but love for religious progressives. Those people of every religion whose faith inspires them to fight for a more just and equal society and who don't want to use the power of the state to coercively enforce their particular vision of the good life. I'm gay people or pregnant women or religious minorities are far more my allies than, say, atheists who love Iran. Many of the protesters in Iran are believe in Muslims. So here's the point. I'd infinitely rather people agreed with me about politics and disagreed about metaphysics than the other way around. That said, I am a huge philosophy nerd who finds questions like theism versus atheism fascinating. And I find it hugely refreshing to get to spend the evening taking a break from politics and arguing about philosophy. So let's do it. I want to do two things in this opening statement. The main one is to give my positive case for atheism. But before I do that, I do want to say just a few words about Nadir's case for the existence of God. As I understand it, that case goes like this. The Quran couldn't have been written by human being without the debate of divine revelation because of the scientific miracles. That's the premise. So conclusion, God and specifically the kind of God worshiped by Muslims must exist. And I have to say with all due respect, this strikes me as an almost uniquely weak argument for two reasons. First, the case for that anything paranormal was going on with the composition of the Quran is then to the point of almost not existed. And second, even if that premise could somehow be established, there's still a massive flying logical leap from there to the conclusion that the Quran was written by the all-powerful creator of the universe. I expect we'll spend a lot of time in open discussion talking about both of these points. So I don't want to take too much time on them in this opening. So we've got 10 minutes total, but I do want to hit both very quickly now. First, none of the things that didier points to as overlap between the Quran and modern science are anything of the kind, not specifically saying that the mustard seed is the smallest seed. Doesn't even show that Muhammad knows that mustard seeds are not the smallest seed, for example. And Muhammad doesn't say don't drink alcohol because it's going to cause fetal alcohol syndrome. He doesn't say that because he doesn't know about fetal alcohol syndrome. He just says don't drink alcohol. Horms and benefits can mean anything. And as you know perfectly well, a plenty of other alleged prophets and other religions who you don't believe in prohibited alcohol. Did God tell Joseph Smith about fetal alcohol syndrome? You know, Mormon's prohibited alcohol. How about the Hindu writers who condemned alcohol in their holy books? And even when it comes to better examples, which again, I just said I haven't heard any of this opening, but you know, but if there are better examples, even when it comes to those examples, for Didier to even begin to make his case, he would have to compare his examples of real or alleged scientific accuracies in the Quran against the large number of scientific inaccuracies. Other people have pointed to in the Quran. The passages, for example, where the sun and the moon are spoke of as if they're similarly sized objects that both rotate the earth, putting the earth at the center of the solar system, or the ones that seem to endorse a flat earth or a young earth creationism. I will cheerfully admit to knowing far less about the Quran than Didier. I don't think I'm shockingly ready there, but even I do know that much. Second and much more importantly, even if we did have some reason to believe that something paranormal was going on with the composition of the Quran, this wasn't just a regular unaided human being writing this, which to be clear, I would say we absolutely do not have any reason to think that, that would still be 100% irrelevant to the topic of tonight's debate. It would actually be far easier, for example, to convince me that Muhammad found out things most humans would discover centuries later by means of time travel or visitations from scientifically advanced space aliens, since however unlikely and outlandish those scenarios are, they're both far more consistent with the evidence we have about what the universe is like than the existence of the kind of God postulated by Didier. Even an explanation that invoked magic without bringing God into it would be a better explanation than the existence of such a God. And explaining why that is takes us to my larger case for atheism. Now, when I say I'm an atheist, that doesn't just mean that I lack a belief in God. I've always thought that was a terrible definition. My miniature Schnauzer Lucy would be an atheist, if that was all it meant. What I mean is that I've thought about it and formed the belief that there is not a God. That doesn't mean I claim absolute certainty if you, if any human beliefs lend themselves to absolute certainty, but I will admit to being pretty confident about this one. Okay, so why do I think it's so unlikely that there's a God and particularly unlikely that there's the sort of God worshipped by Didier? The first, and for the sake of time, I'm just gonna lay down a marker here, we can go back to an open discussion, is that all of the philosophical arguments that have been advanced for the existence of God over the centuries, I find really unconvincing the ones that I think are much better arguments than Muhammad doesn't specifically say most should see it as the smallest kind of seed. And even if there was no evidence one way or the other, all else being equal, the simpler explanation would be that there's no God. If I claim there's a tiny invisible leprechaun dancing around on that palm of my hand, singing the flogging molly song about what's left of the flag at a pitch that human ears can't detect, and the leprechaun can use leprechaun magic to evade any tests that we can come up with for this, you wouldn't be agnostic about the existence of the leprechaun, you wouldn't reserve judgment, you'd form the belief that it was extremely unlikely that there was a leprechaun. And that's even if there wasn't any evidence one way or the other. But at least if we're talking about the kind of God that did about Muslim like Didier believes it, one who was supposed to be both all powerful and all merciful, or equivalently the God that his Christian and Jewish counterparts believe in who has the same two properties, then we actually have excellent evidence that no such being exists. A God who has all those properties, philosophers often say all PKG for all powerful, all good, all knowing would want to prevent children from starving to death, and he'd be able to prevent children from starving to death, but children do starve to death. He'd want to save COVID patients and cancer patients, and he'd want to stop children from being raped, but COVID and cancer and child rape do still exist. As my late grad school professor, Quentin Smith, I pointed out in one of my favorite papers of his, even the natural laws that require some animals to inflict massive amounts of pain and suffering on other animals, who they kill and eat, add up to decisive evidence against the existence of an all PKG creator. Now, some theistic philosophers have tried to come up with ways around this problem. I know I am running short of time, so I will just lay down a marker here and say that neither references to free will or any of the other creative solutions they've come up with do much to counter this mountain of evidence against the existence of an all PKG God. Now, I hope we get back to that point in the open discussion, so we can actually talk about it because, and with this point, I'll hand the floor back to Nadir if we're going to have a real conversation about whether there's any reason whatsoever to believe in the existence of his God. The discussion is going to have to be about stuff like that and not these frankly irrelevant claims about what's in the Quran. Thank you so very much, Dr. Ben, for your opening statement. And with that, the floor is actually both of yours for our open conversation. Right back to you guys. Sure, I guess I'll just go for two minutes real quick here. Yeah, so thank you. First of all, I do accept this challenge about are there scientific errors in the Quran? Look, one of the many miracles of the Quran is in complete harmony with modern science. I would love to see these passages. I mean, the Quran said that the shape of the earth is flat if the Quran said that the sun and the moon are equal size, I'll have to concede defeat tonight. Of course, the Quran is wrong. So I would love to see those verses and this is a perpetual challenge. We have been giving the atheists come show us where it contradicts Quran and we've had many debates on that. Most atheists actually run away from that debate because they see it now as being unwinnable for them. But anyways, let me just address some of the points you said, you know, you said that, you know, the whole issue is about, you know, other people have concluded not to drink alcohol and they actually did give the correct scientific answer. And you also said things that, you know, that I guess just because the Quran says don't drink alcohol, that's not really supernatural. You can come to those conclusions some other way. And I totally agree with all of that. You know, the thing about the mustard seed, that's not really magnificent or something like that. I agree with it. You could hypothetically, you can pull off all of these one off individually, yes. But the bad news for you, Dr. Burgess, in spite of taking everything you have said into consideration, the probability is still one half of getting it right. And the Quran, I've given you actually, I was counting six scientific corrections to the previous scripture. And the probability is like one over 64 of getting all those right. And when we talk about correcting the scientific care of the Bible, I mean, we're just getting warmed up over here. We still haven't even got into the actual verses which agree with modern science. So the question I would return to you, how are you gonna beat this one half probability? Cause that's going to sink the ship here for atheism. Go ahead. Okay. So I think that the idea that there's anything even slightly improbable about anything that he's mentioned individually or collectively is just flatly wrong. That, for example, the Quran doesn't specifically say the mustard seed is the smallest seed. Okay, I mean, there are many thousands of other books that don't specifically make that claim. And I don't think that we would have, that we would normally take ourselves to have any reason to believe in any of those other books. Again, even that there was anything, anything out of the ordinary going on with their composition, they weren't written by unaided humans or that it doesn't specifically say that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession. It also doesn't say anything else about how it's caused or how it could be cured other than theoretically by means of a miracle in that passage. And with the examples of both bats and alcohol, there's nothing in either of those passages that says anything that indicates or hints at any sort of pre-knowledge of the scientific claims that Nadir is talking about. Says don't eat bats, not don't eat bats because one day you might get COVID, which if that was what God was trying to say in the Quran, it's odd that he didn't spell that out because nobody reading that would have any reason to think that anything like that was the reason. Similarly with alcohol, there's no hint of anything about fetal alcohol syndrome or anything like that. So I don't think any of those things by themselves are particularly unlikely. In fact, it would actually be massively unlikely that any random book would include those particular errors. It's also the Quran will obviously very influenced by the Bible is not a word for word repetition with only those things changed or anything close to it. And even if there were scientific, even if there were anything that was scientifically impressive in the Quran and if there was anything that would be, well, I'll just end with this then, that they have, then again, I really want to emphasize the point that this would do nothing to establish specifically that it's God. Just something out of the ordinary is 10,000 miles short of this book was revealed by the all powerful creator of the universe. There are so many possibilities that are left out of that. Okay, so I just want to respond to some of that real quickly here. So I think going back to some of your points over here, you're saying that other books could make a claim about a mustard seed. Yeah, and you could say other books have got away without making that type of error. That's true, but that doesn't work for the Quran. Why is that? Because the presupposition here is the Quran has to be copying from the Bible. It has to be or else how else do you account for the knowledge in there which agrees with the Bible if we are to assume Muhammad is not a true prophet? Because it is not a coincidence that we find these things about the mustard seed, alcohol, the epileptic child about meat consumption and that can't be a coincidence here. We know Muhammad is trying to achieve something. He's trying to prove something, but we don't know yet until with the help of modern science. With the help of modern science, now we know why he did or what he did. So that doesn't work with the Quran. We have to work with the assumption this man is copying from the Bible. That's not a coincidence here. So nothing of what you said beat that half probability. Again, I'm being very charitable here. It's a one half probability for giving us the cure, the preventive cure for AIDS, Ebola and COVID. It's just a 50% chance of coming across that and putting it in your book. Again, I'm being very charitable here. So you are nowhere in the ballpark of beating the scientific evidence for the Quran. And I do admit, the scientific evidence for the Quran proving it to be supernatural, it's not gonna answer every question which is gonna lead to the conclusion of God, but that's okay. This is just part of it. We have more evidence after this. So you said that, okay, well, the Quran, there's no evidence that you really knew that the correct scientific information in your book is for a specific reason. Well, yes, that's true. So this falls under the category of coincidence. A coincidence means that you said something like don't eat animals with fangs. You didn't really mean to agree with science. It just happened accidentally. So all you're doing now is just arguing coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. That's not gonna work. That's not gonna beat the one-half probability. So I'm gonna give you another opportunity. How are you gonna beat this map? She said that too, but it's quite a while ago. Let me just put it to this. So, okay, I wanna say first of all, that the options are not, that it's a word-for-word copy of the Bible minus these things that you're, for some reason, I cannot figure out calling corrections, which they aren't corrections. These specific things not being in there, lots of other specific things that you can't claim or scientifically inaccurate also weren't in there. But the options are not, either Muhammad is a true prophet of God or else Muhammad is copying the text word-for-word from the Bible, nobody believes the second thing. But nobody who rejects the first thing believes the second thing. What they believe is that, Muhammad was aware of the Bible who's influenced by the Bible. Sure, it's not a coincidence, but that doesn't mean that he's copying it word-for-word. It's heavily influenced, but there's tons of stuff in the Bible that's not in the Quran, including plenty of things that I don't think you can claim are scientific corrections. So, it's not 50-50 that one of these things, that there'd be some particular claim in the Bible that you wanna say is scientifically inaccurate and it wouldn't end up in the Quran, it's not even particularly likely. I mean, it's 99.999% that any particular claim made in passing in the Bible wouldn't make it into the Quran, given the hypothesis that Muhammad is influenced by it, but not copying word-for-word. I should also say it's not a coincidence to say that for example, people might, some scientists, I think you are oversimplifying what current science says about alcohol, but forget that, it's not a coincidence. Let's say science for the sake of argument was unambiguously said what you said it said about alcohol, even if that was true, that wouldn't be a coincidence that science says that and the Quran prohibits it because there's nothing in the Quran even hinted at a prohibition for that reason. There are lots of other religions that prohibit it, presumably, according to both of us, because neither of us believe that these other religions were products of divine revelation that they prohibit from other reasons. Last point before I pass the torch back over, since we agree, I think, the topic tonight is supposed to be the existence of God, we agree, I think, that this argument doesn't get you even .0001% of the way there, you said there are other arguments that get you further, I would like to hear some of them. Okay, so what I meant by coincidence is if you claim that the author of the Quran is giving scientifically correct information but he didn't really mean to, this is a coincidence, meaning it is an unintended consequence of maybe you were just trying to be poetic, maybe you were just trying to, I don't know, yeah, be poetic or metaphorical or something like that. Oh, well, look at that, I just rattled out some scientifically accurate information. So this is a coincidence which I'm talking about. Coincidence works once or twice. It don't work three times in a row, you know why? Because if you just saw it happen three times in a row, well, the fourth time you're expecting it, you know this is gonna happen, again, that's not a coincidence, so it doesn't fall under coincidence. So I think you are struggling here to beat that half, the 50% probability, which is really seals a deal over here. So I think some of the things you said, well, let me just go over very quickly here on what these scientific miracles or you could say scientific corrections are. So we agree that, well, I'm sorry, going back to your point about alcohol before I go there. So there are other books which we should talk about alcohol, yeah, and maybe there's other books which condemn alcohol, yeah, but there's a lot of books which do endorse it, yeah. So how do you know which one is right? Even you can go to the medical textbooks, they give quack, quack type of healings for alcohol that it's gonna make your children plump and fat. The issue here is no matter what you say, Dr. Burgess, you still have a 50% chance of getting it wrong at least. Nothing of what you are saying is gonna beat the probability that when you start talking about these things and you don't know what you're talking about, you're an ignorant man. If you were that man in the sixth or fourth, you're gonna say stupid things coming out of your mouth when you could. You don't understand the science of these things. It's still 50% probability. So you have not beat that number and that I think seals the deal on the Quran being a scientific miracle. Now we can move on to other issues. If you like, it looks like you're not gonna beat the case for the Quran. Okay, so first of all, I didn't say it's a coincidence that's scientifically accurate. I said that you haven't even begun to establish your case, that it is scientifically accurate because you are conflated in two radically different things. The Quran saying, don't drink alcohol with the Quran somehow getting something right about fetal alcohol syndrome, which is a totally separate subject. There's nothing about that that suggests or hints at knowledge of this information about fetal alcohol syndrome. There's no coincidence there. There's no coincidence to be explained because in order for there be a coincidence to be explained, it would have to be the case that the Quran even hinted at knowledge of a fetal alcohol syndrome, which it does not. The idea that for any of these things that the chances of specifically not including the specific claim about mustard seeds, which there's no reason it would, are 50-50 as absurd. There's no reason to be anything like as low as 50-50. The chance of not including that specific claim would be well north 99% for any book that was influenced by the Bible. Similarly to the Quran, the Book of Mormon is influenced by the Bible, but it's not copying word for word. I don't know if it includes that claim about the mustard seed or not, but I certainly would not be surprised if it didn't. Also, if it was the case that all of these things, there was a 50-50 probability and you've given me no reason to believe that's true, but even if it was the case, getting a 50-50 probability four times is not surprising. It's not interesting. You flip a coin a bunch of times, you're going to get plenty of forehead streaks. It's not even interesting if you flip a coin four times and you get four heads in a row. That is will within other range of possibilities. In fact, it's just as likely as any other combination. So again, I don't understand the basis for any of this, but again, what you haven't addressed at any point is my point that even if you somehow establish this premise that the Quran wasn't the result of unaided human effort, which you haven't even the beginning of a case for that, that would still not get us anywhere near the conclusion that it was revealed by God. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. So, I just want you, I think you, I just don't feel like you're in the ballpark as far as really addressing the arguments here. Now you've made a claim that, well, this stuff really doesn't agree with science. You tried to falsely equivocate while other books also do talk about alcohol. Yeah, but what you're not gonna see in those other books is agreeing with science. There's two scientifically correct statements in the Quran. The first one, as I showed you, it gave the right understanding that science says, yeah, you're gonna find good in alcohol, but the overall health risks outweigh any benefits. That's word for word agreement is what we find in the Quran. They have some benefit for the people, but their harm is far greater. The right dosage, which is do not drink any alcohol. That's scientifically correct, okay? These are the scientifically correct statements which I'm saying, look, it's a 50% chance of making, of getting it right in spite of all the situations and scenarios you've pointed out. Then you threw out a number all, this is all 99% chance of getting it right. I'm not even gonna answer that, okay? That's just not something which I feel needs to be answered. So the issue here tonight, and I wanna give you another, now you mentioned, well, it doesn't agree with science. Let me give you another one, washing hands. The Bible basically discourages washing your hands before you eat. I'm not gonna go into the verses of the Bible because I just don't have time, but now look at Prophet Muhammad comes 600 years later and he said he would always wash his hands before he eats. Now, this is scientifically correct. Why? Because you have a lot of germs, parasites on your hands. And science not only says to wash your hands, but make sure you clip your nails. Once again, we see from the scientific evidence that Islam teaches to clip your nails and wash your hands. And the point, which I would in my brief seconds here, look how the National Library of Medicine is now honoring and recognizing Prophet Muhammad for its scientific accuracy on washing hands. And this is a statement about clipping your nails that you can see on my scene over there. So for you to say, oh, it's not agreeing with science, sorry, the evidence is right there in front of you. Yeah, none of that is an agreement with science. None of it even looks like an agreement with science even superficially. That in every case, all of these cases, what you're talking about are instructions. You should do this, you shouldn't do that. But in order for you to get an agreement with science, so then we could even ask the question you wanna ask about, oh, is this just a coincidence or how likely is this agreement? You would need it to even hint at agreeing with science, at prohibiting these things for health reasons, none of which hints are there. You said there's this word for word agreement that the health benefits are outweighed by health risks, but there's nothing in the wording in the Quran that even hints that any of this has anything to do with physical health. It just used the word benefits and harms, but that couldn't mean anything. In fact, a vastly more plausible explanation is that benefits are like, you feel a sense of camaraderie, it helps lower social inhibitions in a way that helps people celebrate and have joy, and the harms is that it leads to disillute behavior. This is the kind of thing I actually think it's almost certain that is meant. So in order for you to get even coincidences, you'd have to establish that. This is part of why I say that I don't think, I don't know why I'm supposed to take seriously this 50-50 number. And even if I did take that seriously for some reason, you know, flipping a fair coin four times, you've had four times is not even interesting. But again, what I really want to take the discussion to is that if, even if, everything we've been argued about, even if Nadeer was right about 100% of anything of everything we've argued about, I think it's 0%, even if he was right about 100%, this would not even begin to be an argument for the existence of God. Because there is a giant logical leap from the premise that this wasn't the result of unaided human effort to the conclusion that it was the revelation of the all-powerful creator of the universe. And if you want to say that, as one of my favorite people who did this, I like to say all your work is still ahead of you. Okay, so let me first, you know, correct you on some of your misunderstandings. I think you, well, first of all, you're contradicting yourself. You said that there's no agreement with science. And then you started saying, well, where is it even a hint of that this was done for physical health? You know, so those two statements contradict, because the second one, you're kind of conceding, okay, yeah, it does agree with science, but it's not for the reasons which you are thinking. This stuff was, he didn't state the reason behind it. So the problem is you are just, I think you are, you're a drowning man clutching at straws at this point. You know, you're not gonna beat the probability of 50% for each and every one. Now we actually got, let's see, we got now eight now. So it's two to the eighth power. So that's a denominator and I'll do the math later. But let me first correct your false assertion that this stuff doesn't agree with science, which again, as I said, in a way you're kind of contradicting yourself. If I can share my desktop here, let's go right here. Oh, can you see my screen, Amy? Cause I see I am sharing, but, okay, so here is the article. I don't know if you can see it in front of, if my screen is being shared. Sorry, I was muted, but yes, we can see it, but only from your browser. Oh, okay, well, let me hit stop share here and I will try to share again. And there we go. So here is an article of scientists praising Islam for its contribution, the efficacy of hand washing. Actually, let me get to use the article right here. But please keep in mind that the articles which I am presenting to you are from scientists who have actually recognized Islam for its contribution to science. So yeah, here's the article right here, okay? Here is an article, once again, published on the very reputable, the National Center for Biotech Technology Information, praising Prophet Muhammad. Look at what it says over here. The Prophet Muhammad always urged Muslims to wash hands frequently and especially after some clearly defined tasks and clipping your nails, as I told you. So please correct yourself when you say it doesn't agree with science. It doesn't agree with science. Nothing you said establishes any sort of agreement with science. Again, if there's a scientific claim about a health risk of something and the Quran says, don't do that thing, that's not an agreement with science. That's not even something that vaguely looks like an agreement with science. You'd only get an agreement with science if it said, don't do this thing for health reasons which none of the passages you decided to do. So that's one point. You just haven't even begun to make your case about any sort of agreement with science in anything in the Quran sort of, and we've talked about that ad nauseam, but that's just not true. So that's the first point that, but then the second and vastly more important point is even if you did get agreed with science and eight claims in a book that law, even if any of the more real agreements with science, which exactly zero is the ones that you've cited are eight claims in a book that agree with science is not actually particularly interesting. I'm sure you can find the same in many, many, many other books over the course of thousands of years, but none of that really matters because the key point that you haven't addressed is even if it were true that there was some sort of evidence somehow that much better than you've given that the Quran couldn't have been the product of unaided human effort, even if we established that frankly absurd premise, then it would still be the case that you would not have even begun to make your case for the existence of God because obviously there's a false dilemma between a human effort and this is the result of the all powerful creator of the universe. You would still have no reason, if it was a not unaided human effort which we have every reason to believe it was but if it wasn't, then we would start to ask, okay, what other kind of being could have helped with this? And for God to even be in contention, you would have had to give me some other reason to believe the existence of God. And so far, all of what we've gotten are these complete irrelevancies about what's in the Quran. Well, I think you're muted. Dr. Burgess, if the Quran did not agree with science on these issues, why do we find the Quran being praised inside prestigious scientific journals on the issue of washing hands? So Prophet Muhammad urged people to wash their hands and clip their nails, which corrects the scientific error found in the Bible where Jesus discouraged that. So that doesn't make any sense. I think, I wanna move on. I agree with you. I think we've exhausted this topic. I don't think, I mean, if you look at all the probability of getting it right on washing hands in all these things, it's about 50%. You can't keep getting it right every time, all the time on correcting these scientific errors. And that's what we believe is a scientific miracle. Now remember, this is just one aspect of it. We still haven't debated the verses in the Quran which actually do agree with modern science. So you're saying, okay, let's just for argument's sake go along with it. Let's just say, okay, fine, the Quran does have this remarkable scientific information in it. So how would this lead us to the conclusion that there is a God? Well, we would now have to ask the question, how could a man 1400 years ago in the desert of Arabia? And remember, Muhammad was an illiterate man had the cure for COVID, had the cure for Ebola who liberated and freed children from the stigma of being called an epileptic being called demon possessed. How could a man have this kind of knowledge? So the best explanation for what we are seeing which explains the data is that there is a supernatural power. There is something which is giving him this ability to do that. Now remember, and this is just one aspect of the Quran. We haven't even talked about prophecy. We haven't also talked about Muhammad's amazing ability from on the battlefield, from a military perspective. You know, how a man again, who in the minority of one was able to conquer both the Persian empire and the Roman empire. That's like the Eskimos trying to conquer Russia and United States and being successful at it. So it's not just him being great at science. Now we see here, Muhammad is this great military general here who's doing things which, you know, which are setting records in our history. So there's many layers of evidence here. Yeah, so if Muhammad had been to liberate children from the prejudice that their epilepsy was caused by demonic possession, presumably he would have actually said something anywhere in the Quran that said or even hinted that epilepsy was not caused by demonic possession. All you've given me is a passage where he doesn't specifically claim that it was. So I think that's an example of just exactly how thin and sloppy these alleged scientific miracles which are nothing of the kind. And you've given me no reason to think the probability of any of them is even close to as low as of getting any of these things right as even close to as low as 50%. But and the idea that Muhammad's military successes have something, you know, had needed a supernatural explanation any more so than many other conquerors throughout history who are wildly successful, you know, from unlikely starting points is also very odd. But here's the larger point. Let's say for the sake of argument that you've given me some reason to believe that Muhammad could know the future in advance, that, you know, that he could know that he would do that, for example, the reason he prohibited eating bats is that he knew about COVID, which you've, I mean, I have no reason to take that seriously but let's assume that for the sake of argument. So let's assume that he had powers to know the future. Let's assume that he had, that his military successes, you know, were somehow supernatural in origin. Why would any of this, even if we granted it, which we shouldn't, because you've given us no reason to believe it, but even if we granted it, why should any of this give us any reason to believe that the world was created by an all powerful but also entirely just being, which is a hypothesis that is wildly unlikely for all the reasons I started with in my opening statement, and even if anything was remotely miraculous about any of this, which it's certainly not, but even if it was, that's still a completely different question from whether this particular supernatural being exists, not a person who could know the future but a being who is both all powerful and all good despite the amount of evidence around us that no such being exists. Okay, so let me very quickly answer your first objection here is that, you know, you see, you're not disagreeing. Now he's coming to the, he's now coming to the realization. Yes, these things do agree with science, okay? So good, but I said, but you better state the reason that the reason that, in fact, is at the opposite. Hold on, let me, let me just finish my point here. But he said, you better state the reason why you better say, it should be written in the Quran that the reason you're doing is to help those children, you're liberating them from the stigma of being called demon pizazz. I'm talking about the epileptic children, which are the stigma which the Bible put on them. Well, true, the reasons were not stated in the Quran. So through some very common sense reasoning, we can ask questions. Okay, if you were not referring, you were not really intending the scientific reason behind these things. You didn't mean to save all those millions of children from fetal alcohol syndrome. If that is really not your intent, then this falls under the category of coincidence. The fact that you actually did do that was an unintended consequence, which you did not mean to do, and it coincidentally happened. It is random, it's a random act which happens. And again, what's the probability of these wonderful things happening? I'm gonna tell you, it's be charitable, 50%. So none of the scenarios you are presenting are gonna beat that 50% number. So we're done with the Quran and science. Let's just now talk about the second thing that you said, even if we were to grant you what you're saying, this is still not going to prove God. No, it actually does. The problem is you said these things are all, the fact that there is a God is wildly unlikely. This is your opinion. You should now change your opinion in light of the evidence which you're seeing. Now also, I will also say, look, the issue about the conquest, which Muhammad did, you know, if we were to just look at that, that proves nothing. Other conquerors did this. So it's kind of a stupid argument, but why it's a good argument now is because when you look at this in light of the scientific evidence, okay, you're doing all these brilliant things in science which according to you is coincidentally happening, coincidentally happening, okay, fine. Now you turn around and you do these wonderful things, you know, in terms of military conquest. Wait a second, how is one guy doing all this? Okay, I didn't say I was a coincidence and I didn't say I was agreement with science. I said over and over and over and over and over again, the exact opposite of both of those. I don't know how you heard either of those. I said that there's no agreement with science. The Quran prohibiting something that science has some reason to think is bad is not a coincidence, that's not an agreement with science. It would only be an agreement with science if the Quran said something about it being bad for that reason. It's not a coincidence anymore that it's a coincidence. The book of more that, you know, that Joseph Smith said not to drink alcohol and that fetal alcohol syndrome exists or anymore that it's a coincidence that various Hindu holy books say not to drink alcohol and that fetal alcohol syndrome exists. Those aren't coincidences because in order to be a coincidence, there would have to be a descriptive claim, a claim about what is true that rather than a prescriptive claim, a claim about what you should do that says nothing about the reason. So no, there's no scientific agreement. And there's also, and so there's, this whole question of coincidence doesn't even arise in the first place. It's not just my opinion. I gave you an argument for it in the opening statement. That was the last thing I talked about in the opening statement that the obvious evidence against the claim that it all powerful being exists who is also all good is the existence of unjustified evil. I went into, I gave you several examples of that in the opening statement. I haven't heard a response to that argument yet. And finally, I would just say that even if I, you know, for the sake of argument, we say the thing that I think is absolutely false that we have any reason at all to even begin to suspect that anything that was out of order was going on with the composition of the Quran, it would still be the case that at best you just established something out of the ordinary happened which is a totally separate question from whether a being exist who is both all powerful and all good like the God of Islam and Christianity and Judaism and that I just haven't heard any reasons. A supernatural thing could happen. But again, there could be any number of things that are out of the ordinary happen without an all powerful creator of the universe existed. Okay, so, you know, I think this is a canard which you have kind of invented here to explain away the clear agreement with the Quran and science. See, you're saying, well, we're not gonna accept this an agreement unless you state the reason. Give me a break. You can tell that to the national whatever article I presented to you. Tell that to them. Tell that to Professor Keith Moore. Now, many people from the scientific community spoke about the scientific accuracy of the Quran. So, and no, it didn't state the reason. Okay, well, the reason why this is the Prophet Muhammad gave the cure for COVID. He gave the cure for Ebola. He gave the cure for AIDS. And you are not gonna see the agreement with science but you better tell me what the real reason you're giving this to me, I wanna see the reason. Your own personal defense mechanism to salvage and to save atheism, okay? So, if the scientists as I have, I could present to you many scientific articles Islam was praised, I've gave you one. And they were cool was the fact that, okay, tell me that the reason why you didn't wash your hands you were really doing that because there's parasites and other bacteria. No, show me that's the reason why you're doing it. Okay, so this is something which I think you're taking this to a place where I really don't wanna go. I think the case has been made for most reasonable people that there's a clear, consistent agreement whiz between the Quran and the modern science and how it corrects the previous scriptures. So, moving on, you ask, well, how does this really prove anything? Well, when we look at the evidence, again, the evidence from history I really talk about this amazing conquest when we talk about the scientific corrections. If you were to grant me that. So what we're saying is God is the best explanation which explained the facts. I haven't heard of any other explanation which is better than that. Now, you did say, okay, well, what about all the terrible things that kids having cancer and evil things which are happening in the world? Well, this is known as a consequence fallacy that you're not gonna believe in something just because it has a desirable or undesirable consequence which you don't like. Of course, these are bad things that happen. I know we don't have the answers for it. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, well, I also, I just wanna say there's about 15 more minutes of open discussion, but if you want to get your burning desire question in, now is the time to start sending them in. Tag me in chat at Amy Newman and from modern day debate. We hope you're enjoying. Please don't forget to like, follow and subscribe and Dr. Penn, the floor is right back to you. Yeah. So the existence of a article where in some scientific journal that uses some of these words in the title, I obviously haven't read the article, but is very weak evidence that even the author of that article believes that this is an amazing coincidence. I would certainly hazard that if we actually did a poll of scientists about whether any of them thought it was an amazing coincidence, your side would not win. I think we both know that for sure. So I don't, I think bringing up this one, bringing up this journal article, scientists praise Mohammed or whatever, that is frankly a little bizarre to take that as evidence for anything. But also, of course, you don't believe that it's an amazing coincidence that various Hindu holy books pray to condemn alcohol drinking and also that scientists now know more about various medical risks of alcohol. And you don't believe that it's an amazing coincidence that Joseph Smith prohibits alcohol and that scientists now know more about the medical risks of alcohol. There are plenty of reasons, as you know, why that I have discussed already why somebody would disapprove of alcohol that had absolutely nothing to do with fetal alcohol syndrome or anything like it. But on moving on to a more serious argument on the problem of evil, this is not a consequences. Fallacy, the way you're talking about, it's not, oh, I don't wanna believe that because there's this thing that sounds unpleasant. It's a question of whether the evidence fits the hypothesis. The hypothesis is that the world was created by being who is both completely good and all powerful. And the problem is there's quite a bit of evidence that is in tension with that hypothesis. So these examples about cancer and AIDS and the Holocaust, et cetera, all seem like things that an all good being would want to prevent and then an all powerful being would be able to prevent. And so that is evidence. Now, you can give me an alternate explanation of the evidence, but it's not a consequences argument in the sense that you're describing. That is evidence. So yeah, I think we're moving into this philosophical discussion about why is there bad things? Why do good things, why do bad things happen to good people? Sure, we can go there. But one thing I would like for you to do is after this debate, when somebody tries to explain things from science to you, I want you to tell them you're not agreeing with science. So you tell me the real, that the reason you're explaining this science to me is really for this scientific fact. You really understand it and know it. See, if you were to apply this type of logic in your daily life or whatever you work at, I think you would be laughed at to be very honest with you. If there's a statement which agrees with science as we have seen in Professor Keith Moore, many scientists have spoken about the scientific accuracy of the Quran and has been praised. We should just accept this agrees with science here. I mean, it's a clear, don't wash your hands before you eat. Science says that. Muhammad, wash your hands before you eat. No, there's no agreement with science there. I can't, where? No, I can't see anything. No, I can't see anything there. Okay, so getting back to the issue of, you know, the problem of evil. So you need to let God be God. He has his own will. He has his own reasons for letting things happen in the world. I think it was Bertrand Russell, he was an atheist guy. He said, first God created man in his image, then man created God in his image. So what that means is that we want God to conform to what we want him to do. And it just doesn't happen. The life is not like that. So it goes back to, I want to also give you another evidence when I talked to, in fact I didn't finish my point about the military conquest. I just want to read to you this one quick quote. Here we see another feat of Muhammad. He said, a small number of believers, as compared to Romans and Persians, conquered and defeated both these large empires. Later on conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt, continuing going on and conquered and rapid succession North Africa, up to Spain into France, and then the fall of Turkey in 711, sweeping over Persia and India, all within the eighth century, all within a hundred years. They carried out the record conquest, unparallel in human history. He's not just a scientist, but are also a brilliant general. Wait a second. This doesn't make sense. Okay. Nothing you said makes Muhammad a scientist, that the, and nothing you said is an agreement with science. And none of it is anything that in any other context any, anybody would ever suggest was an agreement with science. Science doesn't say don't drink alcohol. Science might say, here are some health risks of drinking alcohol. If you said there are health risks, like that's a prescriptive statement. This is what you should do. Science isn't in the business of doing those. Science can give you information that can be relevant to helping to decide what to do, but science can't tell you what to do. So somebody who says not to do something that there might be scientific reasons for isn't agreeing with science. They might be coming to that conclusion for any number of reasons and we have no idea. There's not even a, like the mere fact that anybody is as many, many, many, many, many people did who are not Muslims before the discovery of fetal alcohol syndrome disapproved of drinking alcohol. That gives us no reason to think that there's even a 0.00001% chance that they believe that the reason was fetal alcohol poisoning. Now, on your answer to the problem of evil, I think that what you gave me was essentially what's sometimes called the mysterious ways solution. That we don't, that God must have some reason. He has his own will, you say. But that's not an answer. That's just putting a question mark in place at the answer. That's just saying, well, I'm confident that there must be some answer, but I can't tell you what it is. Because if you believe that one of the properties of God is being completely morally good, then either that it's not morally good to stop genocide from happening, to stop child rape from happening, et cetera, which would be quite a bullet to bite, or else this is in fact direct evidence, a very powerful evidence, about the non-existence of this being. Now, you can say, well, it looks like morally good, but actually here's God's good reason that if you come up with something, we could have a discussion about it. But right now all you've said is there must be one. Right. So yeah, can I put aside the philosophical argument? First, I wanna correct your scientifically inaccurate assertions you've made tonight. You said, well, the scientific position didn't say, well, don't drink alcohol. Actually, there's a couple of scientifically correct statements. Not drinking alcohol is one of them. Look, as you can see from the article over here, this is a CNN article, drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain study find. There is really no such thing as a safe level of drinking alcohol. The fact that the Quran says, don't drink alcohol, but there's no agreement with science between these two statements. Nope, not according to Dr. Burgess's logic, because show me that the reason why you're telling me not to drink alcohol is right here. Therefore, you can't agree with science. So this is his reasoning. This is his defense mechanism to defend his beliefs of atheism because he's gotta come up with something tonight. So anyways, going back to some of the points over here, I just wanted to correct you on your false assertion. And again, were there other people who also condemned alcohol? Yeah, it's like, if you meet like 10 people, okay? Maybe one out of the 10 will say, hey, don't drink alcohol, all right? Now, nobody's claiming this is groundbreaking evidence. What we are claiming though, what I am claiming here tonight is that you got a 50% chance of getting it right. You can't beat that 50%. No matter how hard you try tonight, it's not working. Okay, the chance that the probability that you gave two scientifically correct statements. Remember those other books only gave maybe one. Islam gave two scientifically correct statements on alcohol. Now that's eye-opening. Again, the probability is half for each shot that you take. So you're an ignorant person, I'm referring to the person in the desert and you're talking about something you don't know nothing about. And yet you hit it, you hit pay dirt twice in a row. That's amazing to do, to give the right understanding from a scientific perspective on alcohol. The other statement, I'm sorry, go ahead. Okay, you misunderstood what I meant when I said that science doesn't tell you not to drink alcohol. Science doesn't tell you to do or not to do anything. Science tells you what's factually true, which can then help you figure out, given your goals, what you want to do or not do. But science doesn't involve should statements that you should do this, you shouldn't do that. That's not what science can do. It can tell you things that can be relevant to you as you try to decide what to do or not do once those are combined with your goals, but it cannot by itself tell you to do or not do anything. Now, so even if you were correct that the science is just totally unambiguous about, you know, you should definitely not ever drink a small amount of alcohol, about that the health risks being really bad for even very small amounts of wine or whatever. Even if you are, that's irrelevant. It doesn't tell you a should statement. So you can't get, like a should statement cannot agree or disagree with science in itself. So that's that point. As far as the problem of evil goes, I just wanted to be noted that Nadir has not answered the challenge that the question is, okay, this is very powerful evidence for the non-existence of an all PKG gut that given the hypothesis that there isn't all powerful and all good being, you would not expect these things to happen because an all powerful being will be able to stop them, a completely morally good being would want to. Now you might say actually a completely morally good being wouldn't want to stop them because it was such and such, you could give me a reason and then we could argue about whether that reason was sufficient to counter this powerful evidence, but you haven't given me one yet. All you've given me is well God has his own will, which I take to be a version of the mysterious ways defense. If that's not what you meant, you can clarify what you did mean, but that is, if it is the mysterious ways defense, that's just stamping the table and insisting that there is an answer that we don't know, which is a very different thing from giving an answer. And I'm actually going to interrupt you guys. You're each going to get, I will say just one more rebuttal. So I'll give it to Nadir and then Dr. Ben, but then after that, you will each get your own one more, just to say closing statements, what you got going on in the world. And yeah, but once again, still yours each get one more rebuttal if you'd like. Yeah, so the problem is, is what you are presenting as evidence, you know, against God. This is mainly subjective. Everything I've presented was objective evidence. Okay, God has his own will and he does things according to his own reasons. And we may not know those reasons, you know, and it may say, okay, well, this looks contradictory because you're the moral God, you're supposed to be doing this, yet you allow bad things to happen. Well, I'll tell you what, he's going to have a reason for you. And yeah, but this is kind of a cop out. And yeah, I don't even get into these type of philosophical discussions because it once you establish a scientific evidence for the Quran, then what people are doing with these type of philosophical discussions, they're trying to invalidate the evidence. They're trying to invalidate the evidence that there is something amazing about the Quran, you know, of how it agrees with modern science and how it corrects, scientifically inaccurate information book. You say, well, I'm not going to agree or I'm not even going to look at or I entertain any of this evidence, even though it makes sense, because of this, you know, God, why did you do that? Why did you allow this evil to happen? So we shouldn't be engaging in these type of philosophical discussions to try to dismiss evidence, to make it disappear, makes it all what I've presented you go away, you know, so that's why I mainly stick with the science of the Quran. I mainly stick with, you know, talking about the prophecies. Now we didn't really get into prophecies. I'm not going to open up that can of worms, but what we have today is a man, Prophet Mohammed, who made eight, you know, astounding scientific corrections to the Bible. The issue here is that, you know, what the, you know, where the miracle is, how did you not fall into the same traps as the previous author did? You know, and I think before that, we really don't have a good explanation. And then you turn around and do this amazing military type of miracle, you know, and then because of Mohammed, in addition to that, he starts a scientific revolution which is known at the golden age of Islam. All of this is coming from an illiterate man in the desert. Okay, when Nadir says, well, I don't want to get into this because this is just an excuse to have to look at it. What he's doing is he's refusing to answer the question. He's been given an argument that serious philosophers who are theists who believe in God take very seriously. He's spent a lot of time trying to counter. He's been given an argument that we have a mountain of evidence that God, that there cannot be a God in the sense that he believes in a being who is both completely powerful and completely morally just. And he has essentially said three things. One, there was this mysterious ways defense. Well, there must be some answer but we don't know what it is. The second, which is really shocking is that this is subjective. So that, you know, which sounds to me like an endorsement of moral relativism. Morality is subjective. Or if it's not an endorsement of moral relativism, is it an endorsement of the claim that we have no idea, we have no way what's morally good or bad? Again, it'd be a very odd claim for Nadir to make. And then the third was, well, it's not science, it's philosophy. Well, okay, yes, does God exist? That is a philosophical question. And the larger point, I mean, beyond the abject absurdity of saying that the Quran among the many hundreds of statements accurate or not that are in the Bible that are not in the Quran, that that includes some that are, that were scientifically inaccurate. The utter absurdity of saying there's something miraculous or even mildly surprising about that. The point is even if we had reason to believe there was something out of the ordinary that it was not a product of unaided human effort, this would not even get us 0.0001% of the way to reason to believe in the existence of God. Again, why God, not scientifically advanced aliens visited Earth, why God, not time travel, why God, not just saying that there are some people who have these powers to know the future, you have not, none of this, the topic that you agreed to tonight was is there a God and nothing you've said gives us the slightest reason to fix it. And all right, I wanna thank both of you guys for joining us and then I'll just pass the ball right over to you Nadir for another round if you would just like to summarize the topic and if you would like to tell people what you got going on in the world. Oh, how long do I have? I mean, we were going by two minute ratios but if you go over that, I won't pull your leg either. Okay, so should I just make like my concluding remarks? Yes, and then what we're going to do is go into the Q&A. So sending love to all the lovely people in chat, if you send in a super chat that will try and move your question to the top of the list and I guarantee I will try to get those but if you're just a viewer, a subscriber, just tag me at Amy Newman and we will try to read your regular questions too because we love everybody. But once again, Nadir, just the floor is yours. We're talking God and what you got going on. Yeah, so basically just to kind of sum up my presentation here, getting into the philosophical issue, why does God allow evil? You know, in the Quran, it states very clearly that the good is from Allah and is from God but the evil which you see is actually from yourselves. God wishes good for everybody and as I told you, you know, God has his own will. He has his own reasons for doing things just because you don't know what that is, doesn't disprove that he does not exist. I think what we saw tonight is this type of bizarre reasoning that you do not agree with science. Like for example, science says, wash your hands before you eat. Muhammad says, wash your hands before you eat. There's no agreement with science there. Did you tell me the reason why, about parasites? No, no, you don't see a state the reason why then there's no reason. So this is a very kind of bizarre reasoning which was a cop out to, you know, to try to explain away the clear scientific accuracies and corrections of the Bible. I think one of the most amazing, it's not so much that the Quran agrees with science and is correcting the Bible but look at the impact those corrections have upon humanity, you know. Unfortunately, the Bible did stigmatize epileptic people as being demon for this. This is in the scientific literature. It points a finger at the Bible. This story did that. Muhammad comes and removes this terrible curse, this terrible biblical curse from epileptics and says, I will pray for you. We've also seen how the Quran is responsible for saving millions of children from birth defects, something known as fetal alcohol syndrome. Again, this is in the scientific literature. I'm not saying this and we've seen that this are amazing agreements with science. We've also seen that a man in the desert who's supposed to be an illiterate man is giving you the cure for COVID Ebola and AIDS. How can one man in the desert give all this scientific information? And for that, we really didn't hear anything, you know, that could even begin to explain this but all of this is going to be dismissed by him because why did God allow evil, huh? Why did God allow evil? No, these type of philosophical questions which have been debated to the point of ad nauseam. I'm not the one who really does that but that doesn't make the evidence which I've presented disappear. There was no way in this debate he was able to just, how shall I say, beat that 50% number. Meaning it's a very easy, I'm being charitable to him. I'm saying, look, it's a 50% chance of getting it right. When you talk about something you don't know nothing about you're talking out of ignorance on the science of alcohol, two scientifically correct statements and you get it right every time, each time. That is amazing. So now this, so the big riddle which I presented in the opening, how, why is it that we find the same topics as we find in the Bible? The mustard seed, alcohol, meat consumption, the epileptic child. Science has given the answer to that. Muhammad is correcting the scientific errors of this Bible. This is not only a challenge for Christians but it is also a challenge for atheists. From an atheist perspective, it's just a book, book full of errors. And one of the reasons also why I invited Dr. Burgess to debate this, quite frankly the Christians don't want to debate this. They know that the scientific errors in their book is indefensible and they'll be a laughing stock trying to defend it. Of course, there are apologetic articles and things like that, but if you look here on modern day debate, if you look, you know, also you'll see it's very, very rarely ever debated because it'll do catastrophic damage to their faith, these type of debates. But Islam is not like that. We are here today and tomorrow to debate these topics. So just to wrap up, I think I didn't hear anything from him which really was able to give solid answers of why we see the scientifically corrected information in the Quran and the Hadith. So that's all I have. Okay, nothing that Nidir has said tonight gives us any reason to believe that anything in the Quran or Hadith is scientifically correct. Science doesn't say you should wash your hands before you eat. Science says that here are the health risks of not doing it, science doesn't say you should do that. That's not what science does. That's not what science could do. And science doesn't say don't drink alcohol. Science would tell you something about the risks of drinking alcohol, but it doesn't tell you not to. So there's no convergence between saying not to do something and an information about a specific risk of doing it. Many people for many reasons have said not to do probably every single thing on that list. And in no case, whether we're talking about Muslim cases or non-Muslim cases, does that give us the slightest reason to suspect that anything out of the ordinary was going on. So Nidir has utterly failed in establishing his premise that there's anything even mildly surprising, nevermind miraculous in anything in the Quran or the Hadiths. And certainly the 50% number, I don't know why I'm supposed to beat that. It's made up out of nothing. We haven't been given any reason to believe that the chances are anything like as low as 50% of saying something that you shouldn't do something that people might later have a health-based reason not to do. More importantly, even if he did somehow establish that premise, which he never came close to tonight, that would not give us any reason to believe that there's a God. Because even if something paranormal was going on with the composition of the Quran and the Hadiths, that something paranormal is a much, much different question than the question that Nidir agreed to debate tonight, which was, is there a God? That, again, you could have, you know, why God? Why is God more likely than scientifically advanced aliens? Even if there was even one example of Muhammad having a green with science, and we actually heard zero examples tonight. And finally, the evidence against the existence of God, which he continually mischaracterizes as asking, why did God allow these things? No, the claim is that if we're examining a hypothesis, we say any, you know, we do the same thing in science. We say, here's a theory, now we run an experiment, we see if the results of that experiment conform to the theory or not. We have a hypothesis that we've been given that there's a perfectly morally good being who's also all-powerful in creating everything. And we have a mountain of evidence that flies in the face of that. We beyond the mysterious ways and morality is subjective defenses that we heard earlier tonight. I think we got a new one in that last statement, which was something like a free will defense, that the good comes from Allah, the evil is from us. But of course, that's not going to apply to things like natural laws requiring animals to kill each other in ways that inflict lots of suffering. It's not going to apply to earthquakes. It's not going to apply to lots of things that do not seem from what we can tell to be the result of anyone exercising their free will. If you want to claim that it is perhaps by some magical mechanism, that would be a different discussion. All right, with that said, I guess part of the prompt was to say something about what you do and all that. So let me just do like, you know, 15 seconds of that. So I host a podcast and YouTube show called Give Them an Argument. You can find him YouTube and all the usual podcast places. I wrote a few books, probably the one of most interest to people who watch this channel is the most recent book, which is Christopher Hitchens, What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong and Why He Still Matters. And yeah, I have really, you know, it's been too long since I did a debate here. I always enjoy it. So happy to be back. Woo-hoo, thank you so very much, Dr. Venn and the Deer for joining us in the ring. We are now gonna set them up for some questions. So please keep on tagging me at Amy Newman. Helps me to see your questions as well as it sending all those love in with super chats. In fact, a $5 super chat from Jim Bob, Ben B, if beliefs slash propositions are purely determined outcomes of a physical evolutionary mechanism, how does a mechanism produce slash access knowledge? Right. So I think there are two different ways that you could take this. I'm gonna try to do both of them really quickly. So one is that there's something like a question about like, is it just a coincidence that if you're physically determined to believe something, then it's true. And I'd say, well, that depends if you're determined to look at the evidence and you're determined to apply good standards then, and that's why you're determined to believe a true thing. That's not a coincidence at all. And the second way you could take it is something like Alvin Planagas, evolutionary argument against naturalism, which says, well, if God created our minds, he would want us to know him. So it's a very high likelihood that the operations of our minds would achieve the truth. But if they evolved without divine intervention, then there's no particular reason to think that. But the flaw in that argument is, well, if that assumes that the very thing that we did here tonight was so eager to deny, which is that we know what God's will is. We know what God's intentions are. And it could very well be that if God exists who doesn't want us to know the truth, you have to establish that it's particularly important to God that we know that we know that like various abstract things that we might ask questions about are true in order, I think, for that problem to even get off the ground. Woo-hoo, thank you so much for that answer in that super chat, another super chat from Spaces Alive for $5. Is smoking explicitly banned in Islam like alcohol? Are there any texts that explicitly say smoking is banned? If not, why aren't there? So I'll first ask a question here. You know, Dr. Burgess said, science doesn't tell you what to do. It actually does, it tells you don't smoke. Okay, not only that, but I'm just gonna share my desktop real quick over here. Hand washing, this is from the CDC, okay, Center for Disease and Control Prevention. Wash your hands often. So for you to tell us that science doesn't tell us what to do, that's factually incorrect. They tell us a lot of things to do that we have to do. So going back to that, you know, about smoking. Smoking is considered wrong in Islam, but I think the overall arching question here as well, okay, so yeah, Islam did save children from fetal alcohol syndrome. So why don't we find, in fact, I'm gonna improve that argument a little bit. Why don't we find the cure for, I don't know, for heart disease or why don't we find the right prescription for insulin in the Quran and for all the other scientific information? So the answer to that is, you know, whatever scientific information we have find in the Quran which has helped humanity, like for example, not only just, you know, not drinking alcohol but washing hands and of course we have the cure for Ebola, AIDS and, I can't forget the other one. But anyways, look at how this has impacted humanity. Muslims do not eat monkey meat. We don't eat those type of animals which can now cause these type of diseases which has greatly helped humanity, but wait a second, we don't have the cure for diabetes in the Quran. The answer is, you should be grateful, thankful for what you get. The author of the Quran, Allah or God, whoever you believe, he's under no obligation to give you the cure for all of these things which you are demanding of him. You cannot make demands of him. He has no obligation to do that, do that. So I hope that answers the question. Yes, it does. Thank you so much for the super chat and that answer and moving right along. $5 from Oliver B. Nadir. If God is real, how do you know God does not lie to you? How do you know you're not cattle to him? Yeah, so that's what a divine revelation is for. His will, His plan is revealed to us through a book which we believe is the Quran now. His revelation was also revealed in previous books. For example, which we find in the Bible as badly damaged as it is as we saw it tonight, his will and plan is also there too. So through the revelation, through the statements and this is another way God sends profit to explain to us what is the path to salvation? What is his will? And he gives us evidence as they believe, like the scientific evidence we have seen. I think one of the most compelling evidence is Mohammed and an illiterate man in the desert 600, I'm sorry, 1400 years ago is giving us the cure, the preventive cure for COVID, for AIDS, for Ebola. That's something amazing. And he's then starts a scientific revolution from there which is known as the golden age of Islam which has benefited all of humanity. So these are the many evidences of why you should believe Islam is true and to follow the Quran as his divine will and plan. Thank you for that super chat and answer and $10 from NF at Nadir with respect to good instructions that the holy book gives. What do you think, why do you think that it is more probable that God spoke it instead of some smart humans came to the conclusion? Right, so I like where the questioner is going because now he's beginning to accept that there is congruency between the Quran and modern science. We've got very good information in there which do agree with science. But he's saying, okay, look, let's say that maybe there was a team of scientists, let's say he himself was a scientist. Let's say that there was a smart group of people out there who could have helped him. Okay, let's entertain this possibility. The problem is when you start appealing to the knowledge of that time, that knowledge is filled with scientific errors. And so you'll probably get some good stuff but then you're gonna get a lot of wrong things as well and the Quran is in complete harmony with science. Like for example, if you're gonna be searching for something about the science of alcohol, you saw two correct scientific statements in the Quran regarding that. Well, the knowledge at that time was scientifically incorrect. We do have records on that. People believe that drinking alcohol will lead to plump babies as well as whole other misinformation. We know for a fact that about not eating animals is things about Ebola and what are known as zoonotic diseases, this information was not present in any of those people of the past. So even if we were to entertain the possibilities, there's no way that you can explain to continuously getting it right every time, each time you make these corrections to the Bible. Thank you so very much for that answer. And a $5 super chat from Samar. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Shouldn't you acquire the evidence first that everything came from nothing before you refute a creator? Oh yeah, that sounds like one for me, which is a good opportunity to say that science does not indeed tell you to do or not do anything. Science can tell you about the risks or benefits of doing or not doing things, but science doesn't tell you that. Now, when a doctor or a CDC official tells you to do something or not to do something, they are operating from the assumption that they share the goals of the people that they're talking to, you wanna live for a long time, et cetera, and they're using scientific information to tell them how to achieve those goals. But where the science comes in is the information itself. Where the science comes in is not the you should wash your hands, it's the you should wash your hands because of parasites. That's the claim about parasites, the factual claim, that's the science part, but if you're never making that, you're neither agreeing nor disagreeing with science. This is a really basic distinction. I don't know, I would have hoped it was clear now or before, but maybe it's clear now. In any case, as far as something coming from nothing, this is the first cause argument, also known as the cosmological argument, that when you say, okay, something can't come from nothing, you say, well, why not? Well, because everything has to have a cause. The obvious problem with that is if you say, well, God has to be the initial cause for everything because everything has to have a cause, you just contradict it yourself. Because if God is the first cause, then God is by definition the uncaused cause, which is why all the fancy philosophical versions of this argument don't just say something can't come from nothing, they add extra conditions. They say nothing that fill in the blank can come about without a cause. So whatever goes in the blank has to be something that wouldn't apply to God. There are a lot of efforts that have been made to come up with something plausible to put in the bed, the blank, that's not gonna apply to God, but is gonna apply to the physical universe as a whole, but that isn't obviously just trying to jerry-rig it to get the answer you want. Like anything that's not God or whatever. People say like everything that has a beginning has to have a cause. And God doesn't have a beginning, so God doesn't need a cause, but then you say, okay, well, why couldn't the universe not have a beginning? And then you say, well, this is the move that some of Nadir's co-religious made in the Middle Ages, the Kalaam cosmological argument. You say, well, it's because nothing can exist forever because that would be an actual infinity, which is supposedly impossible for some reason. It turns out there's actually no particularly good reason to think that's impossible. It just sounds weird to us. There's nothing logically incoherent about it, but that's the sort of place that argument would go if you really fleshed it out. Which I wish we had because instead we just spent the, most of the evening talking about the sort of irrelevance about how supposedly there's something, there's some reason to believe that the Koran had non-natural origins, which even if it were true, which it's not, would give us no reason whatsoever to believe in the existence of an all-powerful creator. Thank you so very much for that answer. And he has another $5 super chat from Samar. Thank you so much for the support. Would you admit there's a chance you're wrong? If so, you die and meet God. Is it reasonable that he would be angry with you for campaigning against him? Yeah, so this is Pascal's wager that says that the probability of that, even if you have no evidence for the existence of God, you should still believe in God for self-serving reasons to avoid punishment on the off chance that you're wrong, that you should believe in God as afterlife insurance, which I'm not sure any God worth assault would be very impressed by. But even putting that aside, the problem is that a God who wanted you to believe in him would punish you in the afterlife. A God who was shy, who didn't want you to believe in him might punish you for believing him in the afterlife, reward you for not believing him. A God who was very particular about which religion you chose and picked a different one, would reward or punish you for that, et cetera. And of course, the religious person can fairly say, okay, Ben, but you just made that up. Why should I take seriously the idea of a shy God, a God who prefers non-belief to belief? There's no reason to think that such a God exists. And I would say very good. Now we're back to arguing about what we should have been arguing all along, which is where is the evidence for any of these versions of God? And I would say that there is none for any of them. Thank you for that question. Then we have another $5 super chat. We have another $5 super chat with both a question and then a super serial question. Mark wants to know, does God exist? The subject has been overdone to all hell. He screams, tell me, Ben and Nadir, does a devil exist? And is he in my Overwatch lobby? No, Nadir. So how we know if the devil exists, this of course is revealed to us through divine revelation, which is what we believe in the Quran. Yes, there is evil in the world. And whether he exists in wherever you stated, I don't think so. I don't know. These are things which I don't think any of us would. I think the guy is basically joking there, so I'm not going to take him seriously. But I want to just point out one thing. CDC says wash your hands. So when I tell my kid, hey, wash your hands. I'm not agreeing with science. There's nothing scientifically correct or wrong about that answer. So I can never claim, hey, listen, I'm just giving them a scientifically right advice. This is the logic which Dr. Burgess is trying to give us to try to explain away the scientific agreement with the Quran. I don't know if anyone's here going to buy that. Thank you so very much for that response and for your super chat, Mark. And then a $5 super chat from Sergio Nadir, your entire position, the cop out, justify murdering apostates, underage marriage, and women as property without saying that it's God's will. Yeah, so you know, I think this guy is doing some damage control here. I think that the case for the scientific, there is a clear, consistent frequency of the Quran making scientifically correct corrections to the Bible. He can't beat that case either. So what he's doing, he's throwing all kinds of mud. He's trying to introduce topics which really are not, you know, the subject of tonight's debate. But I would say no, that he has misunderstood all of the things which you have mentioned. Invite me back here. We can debate all that. You know, I have no problem with that. Sounds good to me. It sounds like more modern-day debates. And all right, thank you for your super chat and that response, Sergio. But then a $5 super chat from Lone Drow. Nadir, you can't only count the hits and ignore the misses. The Quran is blatantly incorrect on fact regarding embryos and semen production and more. Yeah, the Quran is 100% correct on embryology. The Quran is 100% correct on semen production. And it is the atheist. It is the Christians and other people who try to challenge our evidence. They're the ones running away from the debate over here. I'm ready to debate these things. But I don't want to mention any names of people like Aaron Raw and others than them. They know that they cannot win a debate on alleged scientific errors in the Quran as in 100% agreement with modern science. They're the ones who are running away but I'm ready to address all these claims. And if you look at the past debates on these topics, I think they were very successful and we clearly successfully argued for the complete scientific accuracy of the Quran, which is different from what we've seen in the Bible. But my, like I said, I'm ready for all these challenges. Now it's in your guys' hands to go get your guide to come debate me. You heard it now. Come one, come all. We're looking for more challenges and send in love to Lone Drow. And thank you for that response. And then a $5 Super Chat from Tropes, Nadir, when science and the CDC told you to refrain from worship at the local mosque, did you comply? If so, does science trump your God? Yeah, I did for two years. I don't think I went to the mosque for two years. And even now when I go, I go with a mask and I'm like in the way back. I don't go near people. So to answer your question, yes. And all right. Thank you for all of those Super Chats. We have about 15 more minutes left in the Q&A. So if you want to guarantee that your question is read and sent to the front of the line, keep on sending in those Super Chats and we appreciate all the love. But a question from Yudith, send in love from Yudith, a question for Ben, Deadpool's advocate. If not deism, then where do rights come from? Yeah. So when you say you should wash your hands because you live in a society where everybody knows about parasites, et cetera, then it's reasonable to assume that your reason for that is that you have that knowledge. When somebody in a society where that's not widely known says you should do something and they don't list that reason, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that that's their reason. That's a really basic distinction. As far as the question about where rights come from, so the idea that, you know, moral rights come from God or that morality in general comes from God, this is called Divine Command Ethics, that things are right because God wants them, they're wrong because God doesn't want them. So in this case, for example, you could say that the reason that it would be morally wrong to violate certain rights is that God would disapprove of this. And the obvious objection to this, this has been widely known for thousands of years, this is called the Euthyphro Objection, this is from a dialogue by Plato in ancient Greece called the Euthyphro where Socrates is arguing with this ancient Greek pagan priest who says that holy is that which the gods love and Socrates asks him this simple question, which is to the gods love it because it's holy, or is it holy because the gods love it and translated into the language of the question, it would be, would it be morally wrong to oppress people in these ways to deny them these rights because God disapproves of it or does God disapprove of it because it's morally wrong? Now if you go with the second option, you say God disapproves of it because it's morally wrong, then you've just abandoned Divine Command Ethics. You said that there must be some reason other than God's disapproval that it's morally wrong. On the other hand, if you go with the first option and you say that it's only morally wrong because God disapproves of it, then you get this shocking result that it would not be morally wrong if God did approve of it, that if God wanted everybody to have their work, their work is harvested involuntarily, et cetera, then that would be right. That if God commanded you to go forth and kill whoever slightly annoys you and rape whoever you desire and so on, these things would be morally right. Now, I think most people, when they're first presented with this argument, they say, oh, well, that's silly because God wouldn't command you to do those horrible things because those things are morally wrong, God is good, but notice that if you say that, you've just stepped away from Divine Command Ethics because if you say that, God wouldn't command those horrible things because those things are wrong and God is good, then you're saying that those things are wrong for some reason other than God's disapproval of them, which is exactly why it's the case that even theistic philosophers who do believe in God who are aware of these issues, why many of them have rejected Divine Command Ethics. They say, look, God could be completely morally good, so God wants you to do only the good things and not do the bad things, but they're good or bad for some reason other than what God says and whatever that reason would be and which is obviously a giant philosophical question that's the entire field of metaethics. But whatever the answer is, it's equally available to the atheist and the agnostic as to the theist. Thank you so very much for your response and a question from Harsh Reality. This is a question for Nadir. Why did Muhammad often have Seaman all over his clothes? Lots of references, but one example is Shaha Al-Bakari 232. I think what's happening is there's some nefarious people in the chat who are throwing rotten tomatoes and I'm not going to answer these types of insults and things like that. I think they watched this debate and they're not happy with the outcome and so they're engaging in this type of rotten tomato throwing so I'm just going to pass on that. Sounds good. Thank you for that response and I am trying to, we always say we're always looking for attacks on arguments, not the people, but I always want to like to think everyone has good faith so thank you for all your questions and love so far as long as especially our two interlocutors. More of a, I guess a joke question, but defeat hypocrisy just wants to know if any of you partake in cannabis. No. You know, everyone wants to grant well, but I'm middle of age and born now so not very seldomly. There we go. And Origami wants to know, ask Nadir what's the cure for AIDS? So the preventive cure for AIDS is not eating monkeys. So basically how the AIDS virus came about, it is through the consumption of eating monkeys. And when you look inside from the hadith, the prophet Muhammad, he forbade the eating of animals with fangs. So this is the preventive cure for the spread of these zoonotic diseases and not just past pandemics, but also future pandemics. And I think the question, which are the astonishing questions, how could a man 1400 years ago have this type of precise scientific knowledge which has, as you could see, such a huge impact on humanity? Thank you for your response. And then from baked Alaska, is marrying a six-year-old and consummating the marriage when she was nine a healthy practice and consistent with science? Now science, I'm sorry, Islam does not promote child marriage at all. And we can, of course, debate that at a later time. But so the Quran, once again, on the issue of who to marry is in complete harmony with science. And I will say this is the last five minutes, folks. So if you want to guarantee your question gets read, please send in super chats. But we do want to respect our interlocutors time. But I really do want to thank everyone who's been sending love and questions as well as spending time with us. From origami, ask how if the Quran tested the fetal alcohol syndrome, did they test and repeat it and get it peer reviewed? How did they come up with their conclusion? So, you know, to answer that question, the argument, which I think you might be misunderstanding here, is the Quran gave a scientifically correct answer on alcohol. The impact of that was that it saved millions of children from fetal alcohol syndrome, according to the scientific literature which I showed you in my opening. Now the canard which was presented today was, no, you have to now, we're not even going to acknowledge or even give credit to the Quran unless you specifically state that the reason why you gave the correct answer is because you were trying to save children from FAS. So, you know, as I said, this has been refuted. I think this was some kind of defense mechanism which Dr. Burgess tried to present to us to try to save himself from the mathematical, the math which was mounting up against him. Wait a second. You cannot keep making scientifically correct statements right every time, each time. And he says, oh, sure you can't. Just so long as you just don't state the reasons why you're doing it. Does this make sense to any of us? This is nonsense, you know? So that means that you can copy answers. Let's say there's a, you know, there's a, well, I won't give the answer of copying, but what I would say is, so that means you can consistently keep making scientifically correct answers. You can go 100 down in a row and according to Dr. Burgess, I don't see anything there. Did you, did you state the reason why you're giving that scientifically correct answer? Like I said, I'm not even going to debate that. I think the audience, I think I've convinced majority of the audience that this was some kind of cop out answer because he wasn't able to beat the science of the Quran. Matt, I want to see a poll on that. A super chat that just came in from Tropes. Ben, do you have morals? If so, what's the justification for saying something is wrong or right? Is your morality subjective or objective? Yeah, so, so of course, of course, like everybody else, there are moral statements that I would agree or disagree with, that that's, so I take it that's what do you have, do you have morals means? But on the question of objectivity and subjectivity, the point about the youth to throw dilemma is that adding belief in God, you know, obviously these are incredibly deep philosophical waters about whether there's some sense or another in which morality is objective, what it could even mean to say that morality is objective. But the point is these problems exist every bit as much for theists as for atheists. There is nothing about adopting theism that helps you in any way, shape, or form to solve those problems. Because if you say that, you know, if you say that the only reason why something is morally wrong is that God disapproves of it, then you're committing yourself to the belief that if, you know, there was an all-powerful but sociopathic creator of the universe who approved of suffering, then causing suffering, would therefore be good. When we're considering such a universe, you know, maybe we should morally admire people who inflict as much suffering as possible. I don't think anybody really believes that. And so adding the assumption of the existence of God does you absolutely nothing to help you to establish the objectivity of morality, whatever that ends up actually meaning. And I have to say, I love Nadir's claim that he's convinced most people in the audience are men. Please speak up one way or the other in the chat because I really, I mean, I wish we could do a poll on this right now. My guess would be different. And all right, I am going to read a question, a follow-up, and I think the last super chat, and that is going to be it. You can try to sneak one more last super chat in, but that is going to be the end, I think, of the questions. I'll ask from Debate Archive and highlights. Why do you still bring up alcohol according to the Quran? Allah is forbidden, or Allah has forbidden alcohol because it's good and Allah made it as a miracle. Christian Prince exposed this, but yes, what is your, why do you still bring up alcohol according to Quran? Allah is forbidden because it's, yes. So, yeah, so let me just kind of respond to that. So basically, I think this person has been watching some YouTube videos, which are sham debates created by Christian Prince. What a sham debate is, is basically where you try to control when your opponent can speak, what he can say, and mute him at any time. Christian Prince conducted a sham debate with me on alcohol. And so, and so, I actually did refute him, but I was muted and I just walked away. I said, listen, CP, we could have this type of debate, no problem, but why don't you come here to modern day debate where we can have a fair debate on this subject. And let us show for the record that coward ran away. So you should bear witness that Christian Prince is a fraud and a deceiver. And the reason why he ran away, because he knows I have, I have some background on Quran and signs. I have some level of expertise. So there are some of his followers who actually noted that, that CP dodged the bullet on coming here to modern day debate and debate that. So they actually approached James to try to set up that debate to see if CP is really who he claims to be. And that little, that yellow-bellied coward ran away. So I will ask you, go on to Christian Prince's live stream or whatever he has, Skype or something and say, listen, you got to go to MDD, modern day debate, if you really are what you claim you are. Because this is a fair platform. Amy conducted a fair debate. She's not going to mute you and, and jerk you around at the mic like that, like the antics which CP did. So don't fall for his tricks. There are two scientifically correct answers on alcohol, which corrected the mistake in the Bible and bring CP over here and we can debate that. The spice is real. And thank you so much for the answer and the question. And I just have to say we are always looking for more debaters on modern day debate. But a follow up from Samar from his super chat. If species evolve by chance, why have reproductive parts and what compels them to have sex to multiply? They could just live until they die off, right? Doesn't seem like it's their will. I lost the thread of that somewhere in the middle. Sure. And so let's see. If species evolve by chance, why have reproductive parts and what compels them to have sex to multiply? They could just live until they die off, right? Doesn't seem like it's their will. Okay. So I think that's a question for me. And, and you're talking about random chance, which makes me think that you're not quite getting the other half of the equation. So evolution by natural selection, which by the way seems to be something that the crown does not get right, talks about the first humans being made out of clay. I'm sure Nadeera's a way of explaining that away. But in any case, you know, says there's a random chance component, which is random mutation, but then there is a significant non-random element, which is selective pressure that you have that you've got a range of that exists due to random mutation. And then the ones with traits that make it easier for them to survive and to pass on their genes are the ones who are more likely to survive. So, so that's this, you know, evolution is not the claim that things came about in a completely random way. It's the thing. It's the claim that organisms came about by this, this combination of mutation and natural selection. And the last part of the question I have to admit, I didn't quite understand that it sort of went on, you know, went on some kind of, you know, some kind of right turn there that I didn't follow. That's OK. Thank you so very much for your answer. In fact, thank you to everyone who sent in their questions. They're super chat. This is the last super chat and question for the night from Minecraft player for $5 to Ben. What is the best argument in your opinion for God? Yeah, I think the best argument for God is probably the argument from cosmological fine tuning that you say there are these, you know, basic physical constants that it's just massively unlikely, not supposedly unlikely like something with a 50-50 chance happening a few times, but really, you know, truly unlikely on the level of like searching for one particle in the universe, except you have billions and billions of universes that you'd have exactly these physical constants and not other ones. And when you run the numbers, it can really, you know, give an atheist pause that this sounds so unlikely. The reason that I still don't find this argument especially convincing is basically two things. One is that again, much like a lot of these other arguments, it assumes not only that we're talking, that the only God we're talking about is one that intended for us to come about. But of course, God could have any intentions that don't necessarily have to have anything to do with us. So if, you know, that this, the particular God who wanted this particular outcome is more likely given this, but you could have any God who wanted any outcome. And the other half of it is that there is a more general problem with just going from, well, this particular outcome is unlikely given these specific starting conditions and to be very unlikely given this other specific starting condition. Therefore, it must have been that other one. And to see what's wrong with that, think about getting dealt like the Ace of Spades out of a randomly shuffled deck of 52 cards, only one out of 52 chance of that. Whereas if the dealer was cheating somehow to make sure that you got the Ace of Spades, there would be a 52 out of 52 chance or, you know, maybe you could mess up somehow, so it wouldn't be quite 52 out of 52, but it would be close. And that's clearly not a good reason for thinking after a single deal that the dealer was cheating. And it would still not be a good reason no matter how many, if you'd changed it from 52 cards to 52 billion, 52 trillion, 52 Googleplex or whatever, the structure of the argument would still be the same. Woo-hoo, thank you so very much. And thank, in fact, I hope you all enjoyed tonight's debate on modern day debate. We are in fact a neutral platform welcoming everybody from all walks of life. If you're looking for even more fantastic debates, we are now all over the internet including your favorite podcasting platform. So if you enjoy debates like the one tonight, please don't forget to like, follow or subscribe. It helps us reach an even wider audience including tonight's debate on Is There a God? With our debaters, Dr. Ben and Nadir Ahmed here to help us find that answer. Plus, if you like what any of our interlocutors have had to say tonight, all of their links are in the description below. Finally, if you're looking for even more fun after the show, feel free to check out the Modern Day Debate Discord. And with that, I am Amy Newman with Modern Day Debate. We hope you continue having great conversations and discussions and debates. Good night! Muah!