 Hey everybody, tonight we're debating evolution and we're starting right now with Benjamin and Nephilim Freeze opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us and the floor is all yours. Okay, so I'm gonna start us off, hopefully I'll take about five minutes and then I'll turn it over to Neff because I know he has a lot more talking points. I'm gonna make one specific point and then a few side points off it. So I don't in total think that the evolutionary theory is impossible in all senses. I also don't think it's unreasonable in all senses, but I definitely think certain components of it are unreasonable. And so that is where I'm gonna start with the odds and let me do a share screen real quick. So please pardon, I'm sharing an Excel sheet that I just built and so it is terribly choppy. So I'm just walking you through is to show the math that I did. So I'm gonna calculate the odds of an amino acid chain coming together so we can progress from a single cell bacteria up to a human and based on the size of their genomes and whatnot. So with how objects are arranged and whatnot, the numbers go up very quickly with unlike objects, but we've got 20, or not 20 base pairs, 20 amino acids that are built from the different codons and whatnot. I didn't include the stops, I think I should have been 21. Either way, once you get up above 20, then you get into the part where it really slows down the total smaller differences I made each time, but the differences are still gonna be pretty substantial. So let's jump into that. So if we just have one amino acid, then there's only one possible combination and that's down here in the results. Again, this is terribly janky as an Excel sheet. I build them partially for a living. So I made this very quickly, so I do apologize. And if it's unclear, I'll talk about whatever I need to on it. So that's one, and this is just for all those viewing with two, there's two pairs available. So then once you get up to three, well now there's six pairs available. Once you get up to 25, oops, once you get up to five, there's 120 available. So down here, I'm making some of the assumptions and they're pretty generous assumptions. I'm not taking a lot of things into consideration with this amino acid change, such as left-handed and right-handed amino acid pairs, as well as the fact I think for the human genome, there's nine essential amino acids, which makes the whole situation more complicated. So I'm leaving all of that out, one, because I don't know all the nuance of it, and two, because this is actually a far more generous number I'm gonna be going with. So based on the current number of estimated bacteria in the earth today, so that's when I'm going off, although I assume there'd be far less back in the day when this was happening, we have, and I left it, I didn't put it in exponents, I left it with all the zeros, just to be more of a visual effect to show how incredibly large these numbers are. I think this is five undecillion, that's roughly how many bacteria on the earth today, with a reproduction rate of five minutes, and that's with every one of them reproducing every five minutes, so that's a perfect reproduction rate, and this is gonna be more of a recycle rate, we're not gonna have five, and then 10, and then 15, it's always gonna be five reproducing into five more and so on. So with a five minute reproduction rate and a mutation rate per generation of 0.003, so of every 1,000 specimens, three of them will have some kind of significant mutation. That is gonna give us from this whole total picture that I painted, and again, very sloppy, so I do apologize, it's gonna give us a rate per minute of, I don't think this is the same thing as like octalion, and then the rate per year, this is how many mutations are taking place per year. So coming up here to our calculator, if I take our amino acids, and this amino acid chain, let's take up to 35, and I jump down here, here I have how many seconds it takes to acquire to acquire that amino acid chain based on the odds. So even with this incredible number of possibilities, and that amino acid chain, we're still gonna reach that in about 10 seconds. So that's pretty fantastic. Well, if we take that up to 50, now we're almost up to a day. Okay, well, that's not a very big change. Jump up to 80, well, that's down, up to 80. Well, now we start running the problems. Not only does the evolutionists have to decrease their font size to get their total result, we're already up to 630 million years to acquire that chain, and this is only 80 links of the chain. If we take this up to 100, we have now surpassed, again, we have to decrease the font size. We've now surpassed the timeline that evolution allows for. We're up to 18 trillion years just to acquire by random chance an amino acid chain that is 100 links long. And then down here, if we go into the DNA structure of the bacteria, bacteria have roughly 7 million base pairs in their being. Human beings have 3 billion base pairs, which means that human beings have roughly 2.993 billion more base pairs than bacteria. So this, and a lot of that is not only gonna be morphological changes, but also endomic changes. So all of those changes have to happen in a time of, I think it's like 3.4 billion or something from bacteria to humans. All of those changes have to happen within roughly 3.5 million years. And for just 100 changes, it's taking us 18 trillion years to get there, which is that that's part of the thing that I see as absurd is the timelines that are thrown into this. And again, I'm leaving some critical factors out of this. This is assuming you can just jam amino acids together and make it work. There's certainly a lot more detail and finesse to actually putting these together. So this is very generous and it just does not seem feasible for the whole picture of evolution. And again, I will give credit where it's due as we're having a discussion. There are things we can observe. I would call that reasonable evolution based on what we can actually see, what we can actually test. And then instead of micro macro evolution, I would call it reasonable and unreasonable evolution. This is an example of what I see as an unreasonable claim of evolution just in the whole picture. Now, with this being said, I'm going to kind of diverge from evidences. James, what is my time at? I'm at 11 minutes, holy cow. Well, that took way longer than I expected. So I'm going to turn it over. Okay, well, then I'll try to jam this into one minute. From a theological position, even if evolution is true, the whole picture of evolution, including timelines and whatnot, even if evolution is true from a creationist standpoint, if we can fit that into the Bible, which people can make a case for how that can fit into the Genesis story, I think that is very unlikely. But if it does, if evolution is true, it does not have the ability to remove God from the equation. Because if we have reasonable evolution, stuff we can see in tests, well, God is required to have gotten us to a point of complexity where the evolutionary changes we see can actually happen. And if unreasonable evolution is true, it literally requires a miracle for it to work out. And I just realized I'm still sharing my screen. I've been talking this whole time, thinking I was looking at the camera. So that is where I'm going to leave it and I will turn it over to Neff. Okay, so great. Thank you. That was a great presentation. Yes, the protein evolution story. It just is implausible. Let me get my screen share working here. Let's see here. Let's see if I can screen share. There we go. Okay, so evolution is a 19th century myth that's based on philosophy and promoted as science. Charles Darwin wrote his book on the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of the favored races in the struggle of life in 1859. In 1869, Frederick Meyscher, a Swiss biologist and a researcher discovered the DNA molecule, exactly 10 years after Darwin wrote his book. Darwin did not know and no scientist knew in the days of Darwin of the existence of DNA. He was not known. He was discovered 10 years later. In 19, forward to 1929, we have JBS Haldane who put forth the primordial soup theory and was one of the co-founders of the neo-Darwinian evolution theory. Darwin believes some really weird ideas about evolution because his science was rudimentary. In his day. In 1929, JBS Haldane put forth the idea of neo-Darwinianism, that is because it had been discovered since Darwin that DNA is a package of information that prescribes the features of living things. That is, it's an instruction manual for manufacturing the stinger in the tail of a scorpion, the eye of an osprey, the liver of a chimpanzee, et cetera. It is the instruction manual to manufacture and operate those features. It is exactly what the organism is, is the information in the DNA. Because that was discovered by experimentation. Evolutionists like Haldane put forth the idea that while it must be mutation to DNA that produces evolutionary change. In other words, accruing mutations build the information that builds the features of living things. And so physiological novelties arose in the body plans of living things that turned into over time, a liver, a kidney, a heart, a lung, a leg, a digit, a muscle, a bone. And that's what the evolution theory became because if evolution theory had been true, it would be necessary that random mutations building upon each other cooperatively built the information that specifies new things. Evolution theory is a theory of the arrival of things. You can't have an organism to add the information to make all the features of all the living things and then express them that's not possible even under evolution theory. If the evolution theory had been true, then genetic mutations would have had to have accrued cooperatively to build the information that specifies new structural designs in biology. New physiological features would arise now. So we've gone through Haldane. This idea became known as the new synthesis, the idea that random mutations acted upon by natural selection, selected for by natural selection is what built all the features of all the living things. J.B.S. Haldane and his kind were the ones who put this idea forth. That was called the new synthesis. It failed. In the 2000s, all the evolutionist scientists have agreed that the new synthesis has failed. It is not true that random mutation selected by natural selection is the mechanism for allegedly for evolutionary change. All major university professors in genetics and biology evolutionists agree the new synthesis has failed. And so they've come up with what they call the third way. And all the third way is packaging new ideas like genetic recombination and phenotypic plasticity, the synergetic epistasis and other philosophical, non-scientific, philosophically based ideas added to the modern synthesis to try to resurrect the modern synthesis. So what Darwin said for 70 years was wrong. What Meisner discovered was put forth by Burton Haldane and his kind 70 years ago, and it was wrong. And they were telling us it was true for 70 years. Now they've come up with the third way because the second way didn't work either. So neo-Darwinianism has failed. The evolutionist scientists of this world, evolutionary biologists agree unanimously that neo-Darwinianism failed. And they come up with the third way. So for every time the evolutionary theory comes up against modern science, it fails. And for what they've been telling us all this time was wrong and they admit it. So they come up with a new model and it too is a failure. It never was true. Now one million studies in the observable effects of mutation have been conducted since Haldane's time in the 1930s. A million. If you printed them with a printer and stuck them, they'd be multiple stories tall. Scientists have mutated organisms to numerous generations and observed the effects and never have they observed cooperative mutations build genetic information or cause or the arrival of any physiological novelty in any increment in any species. It is a myth from the 1930s that mutation is a mechanism for the novel physiological features to arise. And if that didn't happen, doesn't continuously happen, evolution is not true. What modern science has discovered is that DNA is a four dimensional package of forward and reverse readings, strand hopping, highly compressed, overlapping and nested algorithmically operating linguistically functional and from prescriptive functional information. Functional information is a product only of intelligence. It cannot arise from material processes. Algorithms are step by step procedures designed to accomplish a goal which is conceived beforehand. It requires forward thinking and can only come from minds. DNA operates algorithmically. There are numerous DNA genetic algorithms. From the secular journals, we see this paper, The Linguistics of DNA. Words, sentences, grammar, phonetics and semantics published by Rutgers University. It's been known for 15 years that DNA is linguistically. It operates with linguistics, including semiarchs. Recently, the Kirilinska Institute of Sweden discovered that the grammar of the genetic information is more complex than that of any spoken human language. From this paper, the dichotomy and the definition of prescriptive information, the scientists admit that genetic information operates linguistically and algorithmically. This is only one of numerous science papers. It's now become norm. Prescriptive information, it's understood and it's not argued against. Nobody argues that it's not true that DNA operates linguistically and algorithmically. This paper published in 2000, what, 12 or 16, 2005, says genetic algorithms instruct sophisticated biological organization. That's the first line in the abstract. Genetic algorithm, I'm sorry? One minute left. Genetic algorithms instruct sophisticated biological organization. If that's true, evolution cannot be true because algorithms, functional information and linguistics are products only of minds. They require forward thinking. They cannot be produced by material processes. Therefore, evolution theory is philosophy. It cannot be true because science is verified, it cannot be true. These projects are only produced by minds. And from this paper, biological organisms are considered to be controlled and regulated by functional information. Which functional information comes closer to expressing the intuitive and semantic sense of the word information than mere Shannon combinatorial uncertainty and reduced uncertainty. The innumerable attempts that have been made to reduce the functional information of genomics to molecular biology to nothing more than physiological combinatorics will fail for reasons best summarized in the peer reviewed paper. So in other words, all theories of evolution that nature has produced this information will fail. Thank you for those opening statements from both Evelyn Frey and Benjamin and very excited to kick it over to Erika, YouTube's favorite daughter, as well as reason to doubt Jordan. Want to let you know first though, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Aid Debate, we are a neutral platform, hosting debates on science, religion and politics. And we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from. And so with that, thanks so much for being with us, Erika and reason to doubt, the floor is all yours. And I'm going to be starting and I'm going to be sharing my screen starting now ish. You see it? Yep. Awesome. Well, my name is Jordan and today I'm going to be talking about evolution versus creation or intelligent design. Now I'm aware that this isn't a dichotomy. Evolution being false doesn't mean that design by deity is true and vice versa. But since these two options represent the opinions of everyone involved today, we'll just pretend that those are the only two options. And before I dive in a disclaimer, I am an engineer. I am not a biologist. Evolution is nowhere remotely close to my expertise. I try to get my biology from biologists and you should all do the same. If I mess something up or get something wrong, assume it's because I'm an idiot and not because actual scientists don't know the answer. But being an engineer gives me some insight into design. Designing solutions to problems is literally an engineer's job. Since the creationist wants to assert that there's a sort of divine engineer, let's see if that matches up with what we know about design. Now, as with all good engineering discussions, we need to first start with some assumptions. First, I'm assuming this divine engineer is vastly more intelligent and powerful than humans and is generally competent. Any being sufficiently advanced to design all life should be sufficiently advanced to do a good job at it. Relatedly, I'm assuming that the designer does not have any meaningful constraints in terms of materials, whatever, they can mix, match, add things, whatever. Next, all design is goal oriented. What may be sloppy design for one goal may be a great design for another. Unfortunately, this is part of where creation is impales the scientific. The creator is ill-defined with features and goals that are not really nailed down. For today's purposes, though, I have to assume something. So I'll assume that at a minimum, the divine engineer has the goal of creating self-replicating life, including at least some intelligent life. So with this in mind, I think it's fair to say that we can look at our two models as being between intelligent design where we'd expect good design and evolution where we'd expect good enough design. But what is good design anyway? Well, there are tons of design philosophies, but just that any engineer you ask will agree that good designs have at least three things in common. They're simple, which means the opposite of complicated. Sometimes complication is unavoidable, but simpler is better. They're also efficient, meaning they don't expend resources that aren't necessary to accomplish a goal. And lastly, they actually accomplish the goal that they set out to accomplish. Now, applying this to our two models, we should expect a divine engineer would make things more like the light switch. It's a good design. It's simple and efficient. Flip the switch, boom, the light is on. Evolution, on the other hand, will sometimes get a light switch, but other times it'll just be good enough. Engineering like what you see on the right. It does get the light bulb turned on, but it's needlessly complicated and hopelessly inefficient. Sometimes evolution will work that way. So let's look at a few examples of these principles in action. And we're gonna start this with this adorable little fuzzball, the golden mole. This guy isn't actually a mole. He's not in the family of true moles. We won't hold that against him. Now, golden moles live in sub-Saharan Africa and they mostly eat bugs. This cute little face might be hiding something. You might notice it's odd. There's no eyes. The eyes are still there, but they're completely covered by skin and fur. They still work. The moles can detect light and dark with them, but they're definitely hampered by being covered up. So are these a good design? Clearly not. They're not simple. While the eyes are functional, they're way more complicated than they need to be. Simple amoeba and such have light sensitive patches that can fulfill the same function of detecting light and dark, but they're not nearly that complicated. These eyes are also criminally over-designed in their present state. Building out a fully functional eye and then immediately covering it up with fur, that kind of waste would get any engineer fired. This doesn't fit with a sort of divine intelligence, but it fits evolution perfectly. The golden moles' ancestors had eyes that were fully functioning, but they weren't necessary in their sub-tree and lifestyle. Being covered by skin and fur made them less susceptible to injury, et cetera, and that's the golden mole was born. So now let's go under the sea. Some mammals, such as dolphins and whales, with their entire lives in the water, yet they must still breathe air. That requires them to come to the surface periodically to suck in a giant gulp of air before they submerge again. Suffocation is a real issue for these mammals, particularly newborn calves. They never make it to the surface. They suffocate and die. Now, this is arguably a straight-up design flaw. The problem of requiring an exchange of gases while underwater has already been solved because gills exist. Even if the designer had a very good reason, for some reason, wanting aquatic animals to have lungs, that wouldn't preclude gills as well, particularly for newborns. Other animals have used precisely that solution. Of course, this makes perfect sense as a good enough design. The ancestors of these creatures didn't have gills, so they don't either. That wouldn't be an obstacle for a divine engineer, though. Nothing would stop this divine engineer from just grabbing a good solution that he already had made from a completely different animal and slapping it onto a whale. But evolution can't do that, and that's why we don't see it. Now, finally, I'll end with a crowd favorite, the recurrent laryngeal nerve. This is the nerve that branches from the vagus nerve that goes from your brain all the way down in your chest. The RLN's primary job is to innervate the larynx, and that's all the way up in your throat. To get back there, it moves under theortic arch, then goes all the way back up your neck, making that trip way longer than it needs to be. Now, as bad as that is in humans, the problem is blown to laughable proportions in duress. Their RLN does exactly the same thing, except it turns a trip that could have been a few centimeters into a trip of several meters. Now, it's easy to see this as not good design. It is far from simple. The RLN does have valuable functions all the way down there in the chest, but those functions could have easily been done by another nerve. It is obviously grossly inefficient if that nerve has to get to the larynx. I mean, just do it on the way down. Like, you're right there. The reason that this happens in reality is it has to do with our evolutionary history. In our distant ancestors, the heart was very close to the origin of the nerves, so a small loop around it wasn't a big deal. Over time, though, the distance got stretched out and stretched out and stretched out, leading to the hopeless mess we have today. This is the epitome of good enough engineering. Now, the list could go on and on from vestigial lens, mammalian yolk sacs, to vitamin C deficiencies and primates, et cetera, et cetera, but there can be little doubt that reality appears to be full of good enough design. Now, this doesn't mean that it wasn't designed at all. Maybe the intelligent being designed, like, intelligent being designed suboptimally. There are suboptimal designs made by intelligence. Perhaps the designer of us was incompetent or malicious or just lazy. All of those things are possible, but at the very least, it puts a significant constraint on what the designer could be like and it ends up getting to be so many constraints that it looks like it's impossible to distinguish from no designer at all. And if we don't need a designer to explain what we see, then why not make our model simpler and just cut it out? Our design doesn't need that feature. And that's me and I'll turn it over to my partner. All right, can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Okay, cool. Let me share my screen. I apologize if my voice gives out or anything like that today. I'm a little bit sick. I've got a bit of a cold. Can you guys see this? Yes. All right, James, how much time do I have? Did you tell me that? You have nine minutes and 47 seconds. Very cool. Okay. All right, I'll go ahead and start. Okay, my name's Erica. That's at Gibbon. I'm here with Jordan to discuss evolution and its robusticity. I am currently a PhD student in biological anthropology. So I study human evolution and primate evolution at the graduate level. I got my master's degree in primatology. So this is going to be fairly primate centric. Now, as a preface very quickly, this is a discussion that is for fun. In the broader world, this is not up for debate. We're discussing how cool evolution is or maybe potential areas where it could be doing better. But evolution is more accepted than ever, not just in the scientific community, but also at large. As of right now, only 18% of people in the United States accept young earth creationism or that evolution doesn't actually occur. But evolutionary theory is, it's been argued by many that it's actually one of the most robust theories in science, period. Now, it's supported by every relevant field, I feel comfortable saying that, but particularly what I'm going to go over here is statistics, genetics, and paleontology slash geology. Now, evolution makes a couple of very simple predictions. And as we all know, predictions are the gold standard of science. So within statistics, evolution predicts that all organisms should converge on a common ancestor. Within genetics, evolution predicts that more related organisms should share more genetically than less related organisms. And in paleontology and geology, evolution predicts simply that the fossil record should display slow morphologic change over geologic time in response to changes in the environment. So the first thing I want to bring up is this excellent paper from 2016, titled, Statistical Evidence for Common Ancestry, Application to Primates. Now, what these guys did is really cool. They essentially took a couple of different lines of evidence morphology of living and extinct primates, genetics, so they examined about 54 genes across about 180 different species of primates. And then they looked at biogeographical evidence and they wanted to test common ancestry against species separate ancestries. So someone created all the different species of primates separately and family separate ancestries. So someone created all the different families of primates separately. And this is taken from their discussion. Every test of species separate ancestry that we applied to the primates suggested that this model does a very poor job of explaining actual biological data as compared to common ancestry. Many of these data sets reject species separate ancestry strongly. The probability of obtaining a test statistic more extreme than the one observed under species separate ancestry model being incredibly small, often approaching or greatly exceeding the probability of picking a correct atom at random among the estimated 10 to the 80th atoms in the known universe. This uniform and strong signal arises in part due to the large number of primate species for which data are available. So they effectively found that there is no way mathematically speaking that you can explain the data set that we see in the morphology, biogeography and genetics of all primates including humans of course, us being great apes or hominoids by appealing to separate ancestry. It's simply not going to work. And to go back again, you should be able to recognize that by looking at these infinitesimal P values here over to the right. I mean, we're at seven times 10 to the negative 1,791st. This is some pretty intense stuff. But genetics are important in more ways than just our similarity to the other penins and the rest of the, or to the penins and the rest of the hominoids. Although that is important. When referring to the entire genome, we're of course, 96% similar to humans or humans are 96% similar, excuse me, to chimpanzees and bonobos. And when we refer to just coding base pairs, this number rises to 98.8% similar. Okay, cool. We all know that. But evolution makes this prediction that in accordance with it, humans and chimps should share progressively less in common genetically with organisms outside the primate order than the mammalian class than the animal kingdom respectively. And this is important because humans are of course, most closely related to chimps, but they are actually most closely related to us as well. They share more genetically when looking at a full genome comparison with humans than they do to gorillas. So this is quite interesting. And this is of course confirmed when we look at organisms and their protein sequences. This is called beyond reasonable about evolution from DNA sequences. We demonstrate quantitatively, sorry, let me move this out of the way, that as predicted by evolutionary theory, sequences of homologous proteins from different species converge as we go further back in time. The converse, a non-evolutionary model can be expressed as probabilities in the test works for chloroplast, nuclear and mitochondrial sequences, as well as first sequences that diverged at different time depths. Even on our conservative test, the probability that chance could produce the observed level of ancestral convergence for just one of the eight data sets of 51 proteins is one times 10, raise negative 19. And combined number eight data sets is one times 10, raise negative 132. So once again, there is no way to look at the data set of life, the biodiversity that we see today and come to the conclusion that these organisms are not all related to one another. As the creationist wants to draw a line somewhere and say, well, some organisms are related and others are not, then they have to present where that line is drawn and why it is drawn there. So statistics demonstrate that only common ancestry explains the patterns we see in biology. Can mutation really cause such massive change? The answer is yes. Human-specific ARGAP-11B increases size and folding of primate neoportex and fetal marmoset. So what these guys did here in this paper that I'm about to go over is they looked at humans and they said humans have a partial duplication of this special gene called ARGAP-11A. All primates have ARGAP-11A. Only humans have a partial duplication of it that results in ARGAP-11B. And what this gene does is it helps send a bunch of extra neurons, stem cells actually that go and become neurons during development. So they said, well, what if we take the human gene and we stick it in a marmoset, which is a new world monkey? And this is what they found. The marmoset's brain increased in surface area by three times. So small genetic changes can lead to big phenotypic outcomes that can then be selected for within an environment. But we can also see this with entire proteins. The de novo gene evolution, the antifreeze glycoproteins and codfishes revealed by whole genome sequence data. So this codfish actually has a brand new protein in it that allows it to swim in colder waters without its blood freezing. But paleontology and geology additionally corroborate the ideas of evolutionary theory and they do so in a beautiful way. We know the earth is very ancient. This is because of the radioactive decay law, which is just a law in physics. This is, there's no getting around that. And in fact, $257 billion industries depend on this fact because all of the fossil fuel industry and energy industry depends on radiometric dating to do basin modeling and actually find fossil fuels. This is something you can find on most of their websites, interestingly enough. Has it been two minutes and 45 seconds? Okay, cool. Thank you, Jim. So does evolution actually pan out here? Do we see slow morphologic change or organisms changing over geologic time as evolution would predict? And the answer is a resounding yes. I work with hominins specifically. So here are roughly 10 hominins, right? And what we see is slow morphologic change over geologic time from the size of the brow ridge to the dentition, to the palate, to the brain case size, to the size of the orbits. And if you have saw the postpone, you would see the emergence of bipedality and associated features slowly emerging there as well from the less bipedally efficient arnipithicus ramidis or australopithicus afarensis to the incredibly efficient bipeds in late genus Homo. And another good example is looking at the involucrum in whale evolution. So this little critter up there at the top is called endohias. Endohias has the little bone and its little structure in its inner ear called the involucrum. Now endohias is just a little hoof gland mammal. That's it. And it's the only hoof gland mammal that we know of that has an involucrum. Coincidentally, in the same place that endohias lives, if you go forward in geologic time, you will start to see the emergence of more aquatic, already-adaptal animals, things like amylocetus, pacicetus, and eventually you end up with cetaceans. That is to say whales. So why is this important? Because endohias is a land animal and it has an involucrum and all living cetaceans have involucrums and no land animals do today. Interestingly enough, all living land or all living whales today also have what's called an astragalus, a double-spooled knee, or ankle, rather, which is a structure that is exclusive to already-adaptals or even-toed ungulates today, like, for instance, deer. Paleontologic change is also recapitulated in development, which is very interesting. We have tracked the evolution of the inner ear bones, which animals they emerge in the fossil record, and how they migrate about. And it turns out that if you look at the development of a marsupial called the rat kangaroo, you see this exact evolution that we've witnessed in the fossil record occurring in real-time. And there's an MRI, I think that's an MRI over there to the right, showing it, which is very cool. So there's like a little comparison. So evolutionary theory is remarkably robust. It impacts the modern world in a myriad of ways, from our agriculture to our medicine, and it has withstood decades upon decades of scrutiny. The only holdouts, at least in my opinion, seem to be those with a particular religious motivation, and even those are dwindling. So I am ready to talk about this. I have quite a bit to say, and thank you. You got it. Thank you very much, Erika, and want to let you know, folks, a couple of things. We are absolutely thrilled if you have not heard, folks, at Modern Day Debate for the first time ever, we are absolutely thrilled that, as you can see at the bottom right of your screen, for the first time ever, we are launching our own debate conference called DebateCon. It is going to be in Dallas, Texas, this January 15th, that's a Saturday, as well as the 16th, two-day conference, full of debates. So keep an eye out for that. We are absolutely thrilled as we were talking to some really, really gifted debaters, very skilled. And so we are excited about that. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. As you don't want to miss that big event, as we're going to be live streaming during that conference for many of the debates. So with that, we are going to kick it into open conversation mode. Thank you so much, Erika, Jordan, Benjamin, and Nephilim Free. The floor is all yours. Yeah, who wants to get started? I have a brief thought. I'd like to point Benjamin's way, because I know he put a lot of work into the simulation of the debate. I think we're going to get started. The simulation that you were running in PowerPoint. But I think I saw some problems with it that I want to express, if that's all right. The first and the biggest is that you're not accounting for selection at all. Selection is the biggest, the most important player in evolution, right? It is the, I mean, it's called natural selection. It is what is actually honing the raw material of these mutations when they appear. And it can either speed up or slow down or pass something moves to... That's the modern synthesis, right? No, no, no, Darwin confirmed natural selection. Natural selection is just one of the four... No, I didn't say natural selection. I said modern synthesis. Yeah, I'm just talking about natural selection. I'm just saying you have to account for selection if you're going to run any kind of how... If you're trying to model how a mutation is going to move to fixation and how long it will take or different issues with it, you have to account for selection. I just pointed out that the modern synthesis failed in evolutionist biologists all agree on there. So is that what you're positing? So, I apologize. May I jump in since Erica asked... Yeah, please, take it over to me. So how in the selection, if we're taking that into consideration, how does it know what to select to get us from the bacteria to the human? How does it know what to do? It doesn't. There's nothing directional at all about evolution. Right. So then the word selection is kind of... It doesn't make any sense to say selection because really it's up to chance. And so that's what I base my model on. If we're going off of raw chance with no mind and nothing intervening, if it's truly random... No, it's not up to chance either. Just because there's no directionality to it doesn't mean that there is... It's complete chaos, right? What's actually doing the selecting environment that the organism is in, right? So a great example of this is when you look at bacteria that becomes resistant to disease, right? Or resistant to disease, excuse me, to antibiotics. So if you have a disease, if you have an antibiotic-resistant bacteria and you put it back into the original environment where there is no antibiotic present, it will actually be out-competed by the regular bacteria that aren't resistant, right? So evolution is context-specific. What is fit in one environment may not be fit in another one, which is why you have to include selection any time you model any kind of mutation. Because that's what's driving how an organism is going to respond and change. So I don't think that that's a parallel, a proper parallel example, because that's still comparing two bacteria. And what I would need to see is a bacteria changing into whatever it is it's evolving into and then changing back. And I know that we get into some time-form issues with that. But the reason I bring that up is because from a creationist standpoint, if the bacteria is already there, got designed in a certain way, then there's nothing wrong with saying that the bacteria is able to change to do this and then it can be out-competed by the other ones. Because it's already there. What I'm questioning is how did it get to that? All I was trying to explain with the example with the bacteria is that you didn't include selection in your simulation, that you have to include selection. You had a constant mutation rate, which mutation rates aren't constant. And you used modern bacteria conditions. I'm just looking at my notes over here. You used modern bacteria conditions, which is also not particularly apt. The prebiotic world is incredibly different in numerous different ways, at least from what we can glean from things like stabilized, or not stabilized topes. But yeah, stabilized topes, things like that to glean what this environment actually looked like and things like the temperature and the content and the atmosphere and things of this nature. I wish it were that simple. It would be really nice if you could just run a simulation like that. I do mean that sincerely. It would make everybody's job a lot easier. But life is simply too complex. Whether you're starting at the beginning when it's at its most simple or dialing it up to 11 and doing it with extant organisms. But you have to account for selections, is my point. But again, that word selection seems deceiving because by selection we have to leave it up to chance. And that's what I base that off of. Because again, what is deciding how it selects. If we've already got an existing bacteria that can adapt and unadapt and I'm not saying adapt in place of evolution. Well, that's fine. That doesn't contradict anything. What I'm saying is how does it know to evolve into something else and then how would it know to evolve into something else? That's fine. The idiot's perspective will help. The thing you have to remember with evolution is that there's not a dichotomy between someone choosing something and tensionality and randomness. Those two things are not an either or a boolean. So you can have something that is not random but is not intelligently directed. For example, imagine we lived in a world where one and a half meters above the ground there was a poison gas that would immediately kill anyone who touched it. Anyone who evolved who mutated in such a way that they grew to a height of 1.51 meters would die and that gene would never be passed on. There would be an election. Please don't interrupt me. Please don't interrupt me. You can talk when I'm done. So anyone who touched that gas would die and would never get into the population. There's no intelligence involved but it would be selected for if that makes sense. I hope that clears it up. So for me that seems to pose another big issue because there is intelligence to evolve. The intelligence is already in, if we're talking about a human, the human who is changing inside the intelligence is in their DNA. So my question isn't, and that would seem more like a morphological change. If we're just talking about a human, you can have a morphological selection. You can have morphological changes. My question is how did we get from the bacteria by chance to the human based on the numbers that I gave? Well, you keep saying by chance. It's not by chance. So there's a random element. So mutations are happening and that has an element of randomness. And then which mutations survive is non-random. The environment will decide being just a convenient way of language to say it. There's no intelligence. It will dictate who survives because some creatures will be better able to compete and get resources and pass on their genes. There's no intelligence involved. It's just, it's a brutal world out there. If there was unlimited resources, natural selection wouldn't work. But because we live in a world with limited resources, it does. Suppose you use like, here's a simple answer. I'm sorry enough. Can I say one thing and then you can go? I'll be really quick. Okay. So let's say I go out onto the beach and I build two houses. I build a house out of straw and a house out of stone. And then I leave and a hurricane hits. The house that's made out of straw is going to be blown over. The house made out of stone is less likely to be blown over. We're just using inanimate objects. We're not even appealing to anything that involves inheritance or organisms and how they reproduce. We're just solely talking about how the environment impacts a thing. In this case, that thing is the house. So is the environment or is the storm intelligent because it's selecting against the straw house? So what we're hearing is a lot of philosophical ideas and you'll see that their examples are based on ideas and they want you to see this and it's like a card trick. See? This I'm talking about something not biological. Therefore it happens biological. See? We're already talking about it. Instead of biological examples they're telling you their stories and their philosophy because evolution is not science, it's philosophy. When it comes to the when it comes to the psychology you want me to not talk over you. That's true. So when it comes to things like citrate utilization the evolutionist, this is the only argument they really have for evolution. Since evolution were true evolution had to produce cooperative mutations had to build the information that builds physiological novelties and the body plans of living things else the land-dwelling creature never rises from the fish. The bird never rises from the land-dwelling creature etc. Evolutionists never offer arguments about that because they can't. Evolutionist is neodarwinianism that failed. Evolutionist biologists agree that neodarwinianism has failed and that's why they offer what they call the third way which includes ideas like phenotypic plasticity and synergistic epistasis and whatnot. When it comes to citrate for example you offer this kind of idea as evidence of evolution but the truth is what's been discovered is that the bacteria already have the ability to produce the citrate utilization. The gene is simply turned off. A mutation, a change not necessarily a random one but an in-built change based on the coding of the information in the bacteria turns on a gene which, excuse me, turns on the gene which is me. If you can both give me a second. Just there are a number of points that you've made Neff so we do want to wrap it up right here might be a good upper Alright, Neff will read his left so we are going to just readjust the screen here. What we are going to do as well is remind you folks a couple of things. One, as mentioned we are absolutely thrilled for debatecon coming up in the future so subscribe for that we are going to flip on that subscribers only chat in just a moment in case you didn't get that quick reminder at the start letting you know to subscribe as we have some really epic debates being lined up for this conference that's going to be in person in Dallas, Texas in January. Also, want to let you know all of our guests are linked in the description we really do appreciate our guests even when they leave so we do want to say even Neff is linked down there and I have a feeling you'll be streaming soon because he's probably angry but we nonetheless we do love all of our guests and we do want to let you know as always folks we really do appreciate you no matter what walk of life you are from whether you be Christian, atheist you name it. We are really glad to have you here as we are a neutral platform trying to give everybody their chance to make their case on a level playing field and actually you maybe you didn't even notice you maybe thought why Neff didn't leave he's still there in the corner and he's been standing incredibly still this whole time that's actually not Neff of him for you that's a photo of him all right okay all right so let I just quick make one last adjustment and get Jordan back in here in terms of the pictures on screen and we'll kick it right back into open discussion so I think Erica you had a point you wanted to make and then we'll kick it over to Ben just to be sure that he gets plenty of time to respond as well given that I numbered yeah I don't want Ben to feel like he's so it's a 2v1 here I mean I know that's not what he signed up for to be fair just in case that wasn't an accident Neff is trying to get back in so if that was an accident and if he just accidentally clicked the button or something I do want to give him a chance yeah no I mean it could have been an accident for sure nephilim free yeah I just want to say one thing no I'm just going to say I don't think okay so if you left we're not letting you if you purposely left we're not letting you back in because we are I'm tired of people rage quitting we've had it happen like four times in the last month and we need more out of people than them cutting out and so I've got to tell you Neff if you left on purpose I'm not going to hear you now give a mouthful to why I'm unfair or whatever else did you leave on purpose Neff I'm asking you to unmute I'm giving you a fair shot okay well there he goes so what we are going to do is into open dialogue I have a feeling he left on purpose because he just left again so since I'm not familiar with is it Ben do you want to call it Ben or Benjamin Ben or me alright then so what exactly because you said during your opening that you don't think that it's evolution is necessarily in its entirety impossible or unreasonable I'm curious if you could describe real quick like what is your position with regards to evolution well I'm pretty open about the fact that from a nuanced standpoint I'm a layman as far as evolution goes I don't have any background in it but just in like in the general conversation we are having earlier there's little things that I pick up on that seem logically and consistent or seem to be either unreasonable or a contradiction or some things are just a mystery so I would I cannot say I won't ever hold this position but right now I don't hold the position that evolution in its whole theory is impossible but from some things I see such as what we have been talking about I think there are some aspects that are very unreasonable would you take the position then maybe that like are you more of the school that there's an intelligent agent who is guiding it to its current position to all of life or are you more of like the de novo out of nothing creationists or like how would you characterize your position if you don't mind me asking no that's fine I'm here to answer questions I am a young earth creationist so it would be out of nothing yeah that being said I don't think we can just throw out the baby with the bathwell every concept of evolution because we can watch certain things happen the gray area for me and my line is a squiggly line so I can't give you a clear line mostly because again I'm not studied in evolution I don't know the nuances but my line again goes back to the logic and the reason of what's being presented to me and what are some issues that we point out such as and I actually wrote one down I'd like to go back to Jordan on some issues that make the whole picture of what's being claimed in the evolutionary theory just unattainable just from how the world is and there seems to be a lot of assumptions pushed into evolution and sometimes assumptions are necessary to actually flesh out a theory but assumptions are something that I struggle with so I try my best to really finesse out the details as possible I used to be a young Earth creationist so I empathize with your position and I did want to say that I totally agree that accepting evolution does not necessarily mean you have to reject God there are tons of Christians who accept both so I agree with you there I can hit the assumption thing but you said there was something you wanted to kick over to me yeah since you're alone I want to give you as much agency as possible thanks I'm going to need it let's see this is actually going back to kind of the original point we were talking about before Nathan Erica we're talking you had given me the analogy of that based on the environmental conditions and how those affect a certain thing that's what decides to not just selection what progresses and what doesn't but what I am saying in the model that I built and it's not a perfect model but in the model that I built is for the thing that the environment is going to weed out to even have happened is that unlikely so for the environment to have something to weed out is that unreasonable so I'm not arguing that once it's there it can be weeded out is it feasible for it to get there within reason so thanks for clarifying that so selection still plays a role even in that sort of thing because what your model is basically testing is if we started from nothing and had to leap to a certain point could we do it with random mutation and I totally agree there's no way that we're going to go from literally nothing to a sequence of 80 amino acids in one go like that's not going to happen right or at least well I don't think it is maybe Dan will tell me I'm wrong but that seems unlikely to me too but we don't do that there's no single leap it's a bunch of little leaps building off of each other and so you don't need to go from zero to 80 in one jump you can go from zero to two and zero to three and then from three to five and then five to eight you can build over time to these larger structures so that's why we don't see like in the fossil record or whatever like that's not, that's what we would expect if it was just out of nothing created right but that's not what we see what we see is nothing nothing nothing then a little thing some simple things building up to more and more and more complex things so it seems to me given what we observe we're going from simple structures to more complex structures over geological time that seems to fit the model that we are proposing does that make sense yeah same with geology I guess that falls into geology the geologic column and how everything falls into that I'm not going to go down a Noah's flood you know try and ration out for that maybe that's the case but again I'm a layman on that as well but again if we're talking about and I know that Nef's touched on this on a lot of his space as well so I'm going to go down the trail too if we're talking about morphological changes we see that we can easily see that and so this is again me being possibly a bit too strict but that's the position I'm holding because I'm right now trying to tease out all the nuance we don't see any substantial beneficial anatomic changes that are actually progressing something from one thing to another thing live I mean live I think that tends to be conception right like a thing doesn't become a new thing right it just it changes in accordance with the environment that it's in and that means the existing structures that are already present are what's actually subject to that change it's pretty rare that you're going to all of a sudden out of the blue de novo get a brand new structure right that's not to say that it can't happen the example that I used in my presentation the de novo protein it's an antifreeze protein for these ice fish that live in these colder environments having that mutation that allows their blood to keep from freezing opened up a brand new area for them to basically exploit they could go farther north without worrying about dying in these colder conditions and exploit the resources that were there so that's huge for the fitness of these guys as far as reproduction and passing that gene then on to their descendants right they're not going to get as Jordan said it's not going to be nothing nothing nothing human or you're going to have ambiguous ape creature human right there are all of these intermediary steps that occur in the midst of this of this grand transition if you will and it's that gradient of change that we kind of refer to when we're talking about evolution and when we see it in the fossil record it seems much more drastic than it is today because we're getting pieces of the pie every million years or three million years or five million years whereas today we see organisms every day every hour every minute and so we don't tend to see this nice truncated easy way of of clocking how these organisms are changing on the in the grand scheme of things I think the trouble that I have with all of this again is it's the chain of evolution so even if from one organism to another I'm not actually sure that that would make things simpler because every new I don't think it's called morphology every new species every new creature would be another bottleneck where we'd have to explain how it got a little bit further and so we can see creature A and creature B they look similar and again I know that this is a redundant thing people try to take too far but it's like well show us the 50 in between those but again we don't have the 50 between those so we can make an assumption I'm certainly not saying it's impossible that that's what happened but again because we're going off of an assumption off of what we can see it does still seem unlikely and I do think that the equation that I used it was a very generous equation especially because I would imagine if you go that far back you'd have a far lower amount of bacteria and the I think I saw that the reproduction rate of bacteria somewhere between like three and fifteen minutes per bacteria so I went with a higher reproduction rate and I left out some really complex things so that is just to say regardless of the species that are in between I'm just talking about whether it was through five five different transitional things or five thousand different transitional things and the DNA the odds of the amino acids within whatever that is getting from point A to point B through that means is still incredibly unlikely so another thing to remember when we're talking about these population genetics is it's not like we need to the whole population is trying to do one thing and we need to wait until that thing is successful okay we got that step now let's move on to the next step it's a massive machine of parallel processing so we're throwing I don't know if you've ever done any Monte Carlo methods or maybe numerical methods it's kind of like that where we're just throwing mutation after mutation after mutation over this whole population and so we're selecting simultaneously for all of these different new features all the time so every new generation is selecting simultaneously for all of these features so that's why it works if they were trying to work together in series it wouldn't work well the only so yeah I tried to account for that too because like I said the number of bacteria that I was accounting for reproducing perfectly each time was I think five disilling or five undissilling which is an incredible amount of organism so even with that many reproducing every single time I still couldn't get there okay so your model was sharply nonlinear right so it was a sharply nonlinear model right and that's because you were trying to do jumps from a very small number to a very large number and but if you broke it into smaller pieces so like say we go from zero to five zero to five is beneficial boom that's locked in we don't need to do that ever again it's already there we've done it and then we can go to the next five and once we do that we don't ever need to do it again we've done it and so you wouldn't get into this massive exponential curve we're going from zero to 80 because you're never going to make that zero to 80 jump that that's why it works if you couldn't do that if you couldn't build piece by piece then evolution wouldn't work at all the only reason it works is because you can go iteration by iteration well into Jordan's point to just add on to that right a lot of the structures that we have today again there once you reach multi-cellularity and you get into organisms that are more complex this gets a lot easier because you've got all of the basic complex already in place and then it just becomes almost trivial to get digits from a thin right it's basically just hawks flinger on hawks genes for a while and expressing them for longer in different periods but what Jordan said too is that or what he kind of alluded to that's quite important is the fact that yes once you have a step that's done it's locked in you don't have to do it anymore and you also don't have to take it one step at a time some mutations contrary to kind of you know what earlier guests were saying they can work in conjunction with one another precursor mutations for instance right where one is on right you have the mutation present and it doesn't really activate quote-unquote to use like colloquial language unless it's in the presence of another mutation right and then when they're both together something really incredible happens right you might get a brand new protein or something along those lines right that you know these little leaps and hops that occur and then once they're there you know you're golden you don't have to re-evolve at a second time so I think would you say that maybe your problem isn't so much with evolution and it's more with a biogenesis it's more with getting life from non-life it's kind of the vibe that I'm getting from you that's that takes me more to the impossibility more than unreasonable I specifically wanted to avoid a biogenesis which is why I tried to do a progression from bacteria to to human and I have to say I told her respect like those people won't make that distinction so the fact you did is super kudos like yeah thanks thanks gosh I'm trying to think I had a point and then I derailed myself there but going back to the Hawks genes again where do we see that we can do that now because if we can actually demonstrate that with anything really empirical then it is an assumption based off of sure we're looking at the geologic column we're looking at the fossil record we're assuming that's what happened that it went from you know fins to fingers just with a few changes but if it's that easy why can't we do it why can't we we've done it in the lab we've done it with skates so like rays and things like that and we've played around with sharks as well if you take the wing bud of a chicken and you duplicate it the most distal or far away from the body like phalange like the wing bud and you duplicate it you get two wing buds in the adult chicken it develops in two places you just duplicate the patch of cells that's going to become the wing bud you duplicate it once and then you have two of them in the adult it's as simple as that to get digits right you just take the distal end of the limb and you get an accidental duplication and now you've got two fingers well what I meant from I'm sorry maybe I misunderstood I thought we were going from going from a fin two fingers not not just having multiple fingers it's completely analogous the finger the finger is just an extended expression of the distal end of the limb so whether or not you're working with a little nub on some ancient sarcophagus and fish right or you're playing around with in the lab with skates and rays and sharks today it's the same exact process you're just extending the expression of a gene that will eventually lead in the termination of a fin and you're duplicating it so two fins form instead of one and at the very tip instead of at the base and it's as easy as that so that gets you to two fins but the question would be how would you get from the fins to the fingers well that's what I'm saying it's a distal end so you've got it would be like if I was oh I understand the trouble that I have with that is once we get that to happen now we have to incorporate the fact that the nervous system has to go with it the muscular system has to go with it because the fin is a completely separate system entirely structurally other than you can see the comparison between the bones but it doesn't have any of the same muscles and tendons and what not that our fingers do yes the the issue with that is that the early digits that we see in the likes of tectallic or penderectis are incredibly rudimentary right they're not though they're not the multi segmented fingers that we see in later mammals even or even early tetrapods they're very very rudimentary and all they serve to do is effectively to spread out the surface area on the on the ends of the limbs for easing getting around it's a locomotion again you don't you don't go straight from fins to fingers and one jump you know you'll get that the fin if it was like this right and then you have two bones but that's all they are you know and then eventually over a very long period of time and many incremental changes then you start getting the more complicated structures that we have have in the lab is the coolest just to be sure there's not like a rapid change between your oh no actually I lost my train of thought on that I'm trying to think now I don't know where I was going sorry about that I lost where I even was you know mad props honestly for like just having a chat with us I mean it's kind of fun so you mentioned earlier assumptions and you were talking about some of the assumptions that you felt were unreasonable that went into evolution would you want to like elucidate what some of those assumptions are and maybe we can tackle some of those oh actually that reminds me one of the things I was just thinking about for the yeah excellent teamwork you mentioned that we saw that the structures got in place so that way they could just spread out their hand just for a support structure um but is that something that we can actually see take place today or are we saying we see that in the geologic column so we're assuming that it's transitional from one to another well it's more along the lines of like is there a benefit to the increased surface area when it comes to locomotion in things like long fish or other sarcophagus fish and we look today at these animals when they're born and they lack that ability to kind of splay out the this lens of their limbs they don't move around as quickly they're sluggish they're they're anemic and how they move around so there is definitively a benefit to having them right so if you take that back into the past what do we see we see organisms that lack the sophistication of those digits and then the second they appear they proliferate and they show up in pretty much everything that can glean that mutation right well we we've established that any genuinely beneficial structure it can't just appear so that's my question when we see it just appear what are we filling in from it not being there how are we getting to that like mechanically or in the fossil record well just how we're determining that it took place via evolution and not those were two different designed entities there's a couple pieces first of all and you look down in the geologic column you're looking through time the lower layers are older than the younger layers so hey cat so so unless the deity was like saying okay we're gonna have the one-fingered fish now and then I'm gonna wait a hundred million years and now we're gonna have two-fingered fish like unless he's like waving his wand over and over again then like that's just kind of how it would happen you know if that makes sense so unless you're like having sequential special creation I guess that would explain it but otherwise like I don't know how you'd get from like the fact that we're looking through time with this record and couple that with special creation well I think the common design thing is really an interesting like question and where I've kind of gotten with it at least as for me personally is that I find that most creationists can say okay I do think that like dogs and wolves are related do you feel comfortable saying that dogs and wolves are related yeah right okay so dogs and wolves are related right how do we know that dogs and wolves are related I don't know based off of the science of it so I can't give you a hundred percent answer I do know that I know that the painted dog is actually a different species of dog it actually can't interbreed with the other dog so see that one's a hard one because I mean it just looks like any other dog so I would or looks very similar so I would just say they're on a random lineup well yeah you can probably made all of those because they all look the same but then you figure out that it can't breed so how does that work I think the trouble is I don't necessarily think that evolution given the concerns that I have with the whole picture again there's little things where if they're by themselves such as possibly that I wouldn't be terribly opposed to it but in the whole picture I don't think that evolution is necessarily a better option than creationism it could be how God decided to do it but I don't actually think that in a case like that it makes more sense than he built one one way he built one another way and they can't interbreed yeah I think so the area that I was kind of going with that is that it seems intuitive that dogs and wolves are related and of course they are we know that they are and the way that we do that is really similar to how a paternity test works so like paternity tests you know we take a highly variable segment of the DNA of the genome of the human genome and we compare it between people and it should if it's highly variable then it's very likely that between two unrelated individuals it's going to be different and between two related individuals it's more likely to be the same which is how we determine paternity so it's genomic similarity take the genome set them side by side how similar are they that helps us tell how close they are at least with regard to their family tree things like that and within species it works the exact same way except instead of using one region we tend to try to use as much of it as we can hold genomes in some senses right so we'll take the entire genome and we'll say alright how similar are these two genomes between these two organisms and then using that we can start to fill in the blanks on how closely related things are so dogs are more closely related to wolves and they are to like coyotes using this method and the thing about this method that at least in my opinion makes it problematic for creationists is because creationists will get on board with that usually they'll get on board with that concept and then I say okay where does it stop where does genome similarity stop equaling relation and inheritance and it starts you know being truncated up into these created kinds because most creationists will say yeah I'm cool with dogs and wolves being related or I'm cool with lions and tigers being related but lions and tigers are like 95% similar encoding base pairs and humans and chimps are 98.8% similar encoding base pairs so I'm looking for a standardization from the creationist side where they say here's why we're drawing the line here here's an empirical way to do it and evolution when you know because you just said you think that they could both be reasonable explanations for something and to me creation fails there and evolution acts as an explanation for why is it that we see this convergence into the past between the genomes of organisms does that make sense sorry no that's great no I get that point as far as the why we see the convergence in the similarities and I think I'm going to have to make my way back after I say this I think I'm going to have to make my way back to actually DNA tracing but you can see the similarities because you know you have a common designer well then there's going to be commonalities between everything to a certain degree and then there's going to within the DNA make up because he's using the same DNA to make whatever he's making so let's go with that as if he built the base dog that now we've got all of our domesticated dogs from the base feline or cat whatever it was that if he made the base one of those that's where I'm saying I don't think that the parts of evolution that we can observe and trace and trace a doxin changing like all the domesticated dogs have been created within lifetimes of humans so those are things that we can observe but the trouble is jumping from one structure to another structure and I'm sure that the argument has been presented to you the idea of loss versus gain for example I don't necessarily have an issue with anatomical losses because everything decays in fact if the world is you know I come at this from presuppositionalist Christian worldview which means that I'm looking at this through the grid of what we know about God what we know about him through revelation of nature is you know half unknown and maybe half known who knows what we don't know because he wants us to explore it and enjoy it and what he's given us is scripture is black and white in some areas gray in other areas and so that is I don't what was I saying just before I said that I was talking about common design I like similarities meaning a similar designer yeah I am I am very very tired I've been on since about 4am so I'm pretty sure my brain just pooped out whatever it is I was saying so I wanted to hit because I'm an engineer right so designing things is what I do well part of what I would like to do anyway so the the common design leads to a common designer the common like pieces like the genetic thing it's a common refrain from from creationist and it seems very intuitive right if things look similar maybe it's because they were designed by the same person but when you're if you were looking at it like God looked at all of things right and then designed them all you would expect some similarities but when you're actually designing things you don't come to every problem fresh and you can take solutions from things you've done elsewhere and apply them to the problem at hand so for example I talked about the whales whales have a problem because they need to breathe air but they have to go to the surface to do it if God was just designing a whale it doesn't seem to make much sense not to use a structure that's already great for getting air underwater there's no reason there's nothing stopping this designer from taking an excellent that is completely unrelated to a whale and throwing it on the whale and you can repeat that kind of logic all throughout the animal kingdom or all the kingdom there's more than one colloquially the animal kingdom so if a designer was truly designing things I would expect we'd see those sort of things and then there's no reason that that would map onto genetic similarity because again if he's designing from scratch what does it matter if the genetic be somewhere who cares you know like just use the genes you have to use you know why I don't want to I want to give you time to respond so I'm not going to keep going what what benefit would it be so let's go with the assumption that if God is real he made everything for his glory right to one degree or another what benefit would it have been for him to have given whales gills well whales then wouldn't suffocate so if the whale like when the whale gives birth to a calf sometimes the calf doesn't make it to the surface and it just suffocates and dies that's a that's suffering that doesn't need to happen if the whale had gills that suffering would be prevented it'd be less wasteful it would indicate if by better you mean more likely to procreate and live a productive life it would be a better design I don't have access to God's design notes so it's possible depending on how you define this God there could be a design reason maybe he just doesn't like whales maybe it's like screw whales you want gills too bad I don't know but at the very least it narrows down what kind of design parameters God could have and still produce the design we see the reason that I asked that is because it seems like we've got the concept that God has unlimited resources and so with that he has creative license to do whatever he wants to do with his unlimited resources so we can say well it doesn't make sense because of X Y and Z losses of animals and what not it doesn't make sense to design them that way and I don't actually know what the suffocation rate of whales is I've seen much more than fish because fish can't suffocate but that being said this is where this is kind of converging with theology I don't mind that but I don't know how far I want to go into the topic because it's on evolution I mean it's relevant but death is introduced through sin so you don't have the whales dying and suffocating were it not for sin and so same thing with diseases same thing with all of that that's natural sin so again from a creationist standpoint the whales shouldn't be dying and suffocating anyway if God designed them that way and not die well then he just designed them that way to do it and now that sin's been introduced every creature, every mammal on earth has the ability to starve to death so we could argue that that is a poor design because I mean it would be silly to say why can't every mammal do photosynthesis that way it never starves to death but that's just kind of a parallel thing that I was trying to draw there between the design of the whale and another thing that could be seen as bad to us but it may just be how God wanted to design it. So how about something though with regard to the whales though that isn't perhaps brought on like that wouldn't fit in at least in my opinion from what I understand of the theology into that death brings sin and suffering and therefore maybe that's the reason why they don't have gills how about in whale development cetaceans like all this is actually just so I said cetaceans because it's dolphins and whales but very early on in their development when they're still very small for about two weeks there's a period where they grow hind limbs they're a little tiny fetus grows these little hind limb buds in the back and they stick around for a little bit and then they're reabsorbed back into the body of the animal and from the conventional science explanation of this right this is due to the fact that there was a time where these limb buds would initiate development and eventually they would grow into these full limbs for an animal that was living on land or at least coastally but over time because it's metabolically costly to grow limbs when you're not using them right they've terminated the development of these limbs at like a couple weeks after they begin right and so then they stop and they're reabsorbed back into the organism so this seems incredibly redundant and not at all it's not detrimental to the to the fetus for it to actually grow these little hind limb buds except maybe a little bit metabolically costly but it's within the body of the mother and you know the mother is huge she can fairly easily provide for these little limb buds that grows for just a brief period but it doesn't really make a lot of sense that this would be a consequence of sin so what is and I'm going to share my screen if that's okay with James because I think it's a nice little a nice illustration so you can kind of see what I'm talking about that I'm not just making it so well can you see this I'll let you up making stuff up so here's their little hind limb buds here right during week four through nine they grow them and then they're gone at week nine they disappear never to appear again and yet most twills will still most cetaceans will still complete the development of a partial pelvis right so this creates a nice interesting prediction for evolutionary theory right because if this is the case then there should be a period in time moving backwards where ancestors of modern whales still did have hind limbs right but they're shorter and stubbier and kind of useless and that's what we see in basilosaurus that's what we see in this critter basilosaurus let's get a listen where it's got these sad little itty bitty wimpy little hang up legs if you can see in the very very back there yeah or there for instance and they're almost entirely internal but there they are fully developed and so in this in this creature obviously they continued to develop in the fetuses life and didn't terminate completely but then in modern whales they do so how would you in your opinion like how does that square why do dolphins and whales grow these little limb buds for a period almost as if it's recapitulating evolution well the easy and probably not very satisfactory answer is that if that's if that's how they were designed to develop then that's how they were designed to develop and I know that that's not satisfactory so I'll try to go more into it in the sense that it seems almost more amazing to me and more in need of the idea of a mind or something acting in there the fact that these legs start to develop and then our program to reverse and stop developing how did how did it again through chance how did it decide to do that in the womb what what in natural selection how how would natural selection have weeded it out so that the fetuses stop developing to a certain point in the womb and another quite or another point that I would make is I wouldn't necessarily say we must draw a line between the I'm just going to call it the the older fish what was the name of it with the small yeah that's yes so again I'm a layman with the totally okay don't worry about it that's me and anything that I don't wax you know that's and see that's that's another thing that I see as an assumption where sure it could be true but it also could just be how it's created and we're saying well because we see this in this fish or in this sea creature and then we see that this fetus does this for this very short time but it doesn't actually do that they're probably related they're probably descendants are probably however you draw that line and I'm just not I'm not convinced that that has to be the case because again what can we do I I'm forgetting the word for not not morphologically the other one but what's the word anatomically separately anatomically what can we do now to see anatomical gain that's that's not just an addition of a finger but anatomical gain that's actually the the progressing and changing of a functional structure in a beneficial way what can we do to see that now as opposed to just making assumptions about what we see happening now in a fetus versus what we see as legs or real friends on a prehistoric creature okay so two two points you talked about how would the fetus know to stop developing the bikes right yeah and so again there's no intelligence I I do apologize and I'm only cutting because I said how would chance and I how would the fetus but that's that's what I meant so I do apologize for cutting in but go ahead I'm sorry what why would why would this mutation happen that led to this thing and so in the womb there are genetic expressions that determine how long your legs grow whether they grow you know X X a little bit more X a little bit less right and every generation there's going to be some alterations so maybe your limbs grow a tiny bit more than your parents limbs are tiny bit less cool with that so far yeah okay cool so longer legs you know yeah yeah exactly so every little bit of leg you grow costs energy it's more difficult to grow right and so if on average in a large population growing if you don't use the legs at all not growing them will mean you have to use less calories which means that you have more left over for you know impressing the the hot whale females you know etc you have extra calories right you have extra energy you're more fit for your environment and so not growing the legs gives you extra resources and so on average over a long time people who grew less legs shorter legs or less developed legs had more calories now just keep doing that over and over and over again and you get to the little lady bit of useless legs because they just stop growing them because there's no selection it's the same reason why a subterranean fish have eyes but they don't work and they're all like like useless and very functional because putting all that stuff in their cost calories and it didn't do anything for them so they just over time there was some variation of better and worse worse cost less calories and it had no penalty so they just kept getting worse and worse and that's how it works and we're not at the end can I address with something Jordan just said so for like for the cave fish that's an example of a fish that lost its eyes and so I guess my question for that would be they were assuming that it had an amatomical loss which again I'm not necessarily opposed to because I believe that everything breaks down and it randomly breaks down the randomness is what causes the breakdown so my question would be if you put that fish back on the surface is it going to get all that back because if the chance just takes it both ways equally well then you should get it all back it shouldn't have any it could right and so that's that's the only point that I'm making of there are a lot of assumptions built into the evolutionary theory that don't seem to me more reasonable than the creation model and again you know kind of with the I know we've already hashed up but with the equation that I did it seems fairly unreasonable with the timeline we have because I want to talk about the assumptions thing if that's okay I understand where you're coming I think I understand I hope I understand where you're coming from with that but within science in general regardless of what field we're looking at Jordan you can correct me if I'm wrong for your area of expertise I'll just speak for what I know but typically assumptions that are made on processes are often deemed assumptions by folks who are kind of outside looking in when in reality what it is is a process playing out that lacks a precedent to stop said process right so for instance radioactive decay will occur at a similar rate constantly if you go back in time for billions and billions and billions of years some folks might say okay that's an assumption but the reason why this is proposed is because there is no known way to violate that assumption the same is true for evolution and inheritance right so it's like yet we see organisms changing in small ways and in large ways today there is no reason to assume or to propose that this would be not the case if you were to go backwards in time there is no precedent for that it would be like saying gravity works until you go up 50 feet and then it stops working and if I said that to Jordan Jordan would be like well what makes you say it stops working why 50 feet you know and then I would have to provide a precedent why the process ceases to behave in the way that we've only ever observed it behave at that point specifically so does that make sense was that coherent Jordan yeah basically uniform like the uniform nature of physics that don't change arbitrarily so if we're going to extend that kind of to DNA and to structures and whatnot that would take me back to morphological versus anatomical because it kind of sounds like what you just explained supports the fact that we we don't see the anatomical changes I've been describing and so therefore why would assume that why would we assume they were happening if we don't see them whereas we do see morphological changes so it would be silly for some to say well morphological changes never happened okay so let me ask a question if you you've got a huge huge variety of visual apparatus apparatus I don't know of structures that can detect photons and you've got some that like they're just like flat panels they just detect yes or no and then you've got a fully formed eye would you agree that that is an anatomical change yeah if things are being added to the eye such as if one never had any concept of a lens and then the new eye does have a concept of a lens then that would that would seem to be an anatomical to me that being said though I'm answering as a layman and I don't want to be one of those people who just as a well I don't want to walk into that question like I'm I want to answer you genuinely based off what I know so yeah it seems like that would be an anatomical change I am the world's biggest layman when it comes to biology and I respect someone who can admit what they don't know like there's no shame in not knowing something no one knows everything right there's no shame in that that the shame is when you pretend like you know and you're not willing to learn that's the only that's the only time there's any shame so okay so if imagine you have this flat this flat thing right and the edges are going to change a little bit over time or like by random mutation some are going to be a little bit higher so I'm going to be a little lower you know if you had it was slightly raised then you can start detecting angles right you can start saying instead of just like yes no you can start getting a little bit of directionality you didn't have to change much but you have that little bit of advantage right and now the creature who has that gets an advantage over everybody else because everybody else can only detect yes or no but this guy this guy can detect where it's coming from okay and again no intelligence had to be involved just randomly now he'll be better fit for his environment okay the more it's curved the more you can do that again successfully tiny tiny changes eventually you get to the point you could hypothetically get to the point where it's completely closed you have very similar to an eye socket and all you had to do was curve up slowly over generations each each step comes to the benefit right so it's selected for and I'll start going faster now so then you've got the thing right well if that fills up with fluid which is a very simple thing to do your underwater well now it's even better because it starts to like focus light and so that's how you get these anatomical changes that small changes over and over and over again with every step being beneficial and just its little changes so what the creationist is doing is saying okay we can have these little changes and they can add up but you can't go past here and the question is well why why there why can't why do you stop here why not here why not there why not there you know like what mechanism is stopping these small changes from becoming large changes so if I can keep running with that analogy so once we get to the point with the cop and then the fluids and there it would seem that there'd be a point right that would come where the well the trouble that I see with that is if that fluid now becomes trapped and it doesn't have any kind of a cleaning or recycling system for that fluid well that's going to cause all kinds of issues with hygienics and breakdown so that's where I see from an anatomical standpoint we're introducing one thing that if everything else is in place sure that could make sense but we need a bunch of things to be happening at the same time for it to stay and for it to actually advance. Yeah I mean I know the myriad of different times that it's happened exactly like you said right where a novel beneficial structure has begun you know from our hindsight is 2020 perspective to form and then something has gone awry and it becomes detrimental to the organism it's selected against and then you're back to square one that probably I mean we see that happen now all the time when organisms are oh kitty when organisms are born with with rare mutations and they end up with you know one too many an extra horn or an extra antler you know I mean dear this happens to deer sometimes you know they get all sorts of abnormalities and because they don't create a benefit for the organism they become cold from the population they're selected against within nature but sometimes these little changes are beneficial and this is happening right now I think it's the coast of I think it's in Alaska I know it's in North America but there's a population of wolves they're called sea wolves and they are slowly becoming more and more aquatic they get something like 25% of their caloric intake from sea life from marine animals and if you look at the webbing between their paws it's significantly more developed it's thicker they can they can splay their paws to a much greater degree than their landlocked cousins right and this gives them an enhanced ability to swim they're better swimmers I mean everyone who lives in the area can comment on that so even given that state of them now if they continue unabetted where's the line for you where they could not become more aquatic to the point that eventually you're looking at something along the lines of the evolution of whales or something like the evolution of pinnipeds or something like that they wouldn't be a whale just to be clear it would be something like that though so I guess my question we know that they're on this journey and you might have a very clear answer right and then how do you know that the sea wolves weren't created that way and that's just how they they repopulate that I mean look at the variety of birds that we have how hard would it be to make a wolf that is able to be in water some birds will die if they land in water other birds can feed underwater so we don't have wolves varying to that degree but again I don't know that for sure I'm assuming that but how do we know the creator didn't just make that wolf the sea wolf because right now we know that this population of wolves is new to the area people have been living in North America for tens of thousands of years right so these wolves haven't always been there they're new these are this is a new organism that is capitalizing on the fact that this area was unexploited by anything you had a handful of wolves that were born and able to exploit the water in a way that other wolves couldn't so they started capitalizing and exploiting on it and getting fat on seafood all the other wolves you know times were time for tough inland and they couldn't they couldn't make ends meet and so eventually you get this this population of wolves that all capitalize on this same resource because wolves are of course very social animals this has happened in in you know since humans have effectively lived here on this continent so we know that this has been a natural occurrence right now what where is the line in your opinion like we know that God didn't specifically create these sea wolves they're right because we've observed them come about well right so that I think that was my first question I have two points that I think that was my first question of how do we know that they're new what was the answer to that how do we know that they're new and they haven't always been there and we just discovered that they were there how do we know that I believe in this case because there's nearby civilizations right and they've seen them slowly spend more and more time on the coast until they've eventually and you know these are locals are not scientists it wasn't until people who actually were like hey this is kind of weird and they came down and started investigating the nature of these these wolves that are spending time on the coast I mean they're living in the water they're just getting significantly more of their diet from the water than they're more inland cousins right so it's almost a transitional stage right yeah well now the only reason that I ask that is again it goes back to what who says it couldn't have been created that way if in fact it is in that transitional state that that's the point where or that's similar to right Darwin with the birds on the island there was a difference in their beaks right well if you put that bird back in its native environment it can also go back to having the beaks that way was before so same thing with the wolves and the only reason that I'm kind of going back to the anthropomorphic analogical what was the A word again? anatomical? the only reason I'm going back to the anatomical changes is even with the webbing becoming greater you could be weeding out that that population of wolves the same way that you make the docks and really short it just so happens that because they can get all this food that the ones with the more webbing are surviving just like the birds with the more appropriate beaks are surviving but that's just right but that's just the change of what's already there I'm not seeing new structures forming out of that it's just changing what's already there so I'm super excited because you're like right there so we're seeing changes what's already there evolution works on what's already there and it changes what you already have and repurposes it for something else and so you have changes to what already exists and those changes are beneficial or not and the beneficial ones make you more likely to survive and eventually eventually over a very long time scale those become a new thing so if this wolf kept having wider splayed things eventually they'd be able to splay even wider you can just see how it would get to something new if you just let it keep going the question that Jordan poses there is how could we show that that is the case right? the fossil record we look back in time and we say has this ever happened before has it ever been that we've seen this massive change in an environment that would have allowed an organism to benefit by capitalizing more on the coast and that's what happened in the Fiume of Egypt during the Eocene we see first no coastal animals and then all of a sudden critters that start looking like they're exploiting the coast how do we know that they're exploiting the coast? because when we take the isotopes of their bones we start to see that they're spending time in seawater they're incorporating seawater into various metabolic processes that they have to undergo day to day you know if we go into hold eventually it's it's aquatic one thing that you've said it several times but we haven't really addressed it directly you keep asking well couldn't the creator have just made it this way and the answer to that will always be yes and an omnipotent creator could do whatever he wants right he could have made the entire universe last Tuesday and we'd have no way of knowing okay but you get to the point where that becomes an ontologically expensive model and it's impossible to falsify if you allow any evidence no matter how complicated to fit well God just did it that way God just did it that way God just did it that way then you've made it so that no matter what the evidence is you can never possibly change your mind because you'll just incorporate in your model but that's ad hoc it's kind of like if I said the government is tracking me there's a secret government and they're tracking my every move well if I want to I can add any evidence into the secret government's tool bag if I want they control the lights they control the video like I can do whatever I want but is that a good model I mean it's not falsifiable it's probably not a great model right but it's something with this constant God touching the scales all the time you know I'm trying to think of I don't want to I definitely don't want to discredit the point that you're making I guess I would say sure that's true but just because that wouldn't be an exciting answer doesn't mean it's not true and yeah and I'm sure that you know you're okay with the fact that doesn't make it not true so I guess that's again I'm having trouble again seeing how the evolutionary model is more convincing than the creation model and if I didn't want to go back to something that you said earlier but I do want you to make this point first that you want to make real quick so the way we do that is by making predictions and then testing if they're true because if we have this model and we're going to say okay we don't know what we're fine but we're predicting if our model is right we will find this thing and then if we do find this thing it means either our model is correct or God just so happened to create things so it happened to look like our model so a good example of that happening is to they looked at I'm not going to go brief through the details real quick but we have a creature we have a creature like this and a creature like this and we should have something with features in between and if our model is true it will occur in this kind of environment at this time so let's go somewhere where we know that environment existed at this time and look and lo and behold there it was it was exactly what they predicted now if evolution wasn't true why would it be there like there's no reason for it to be there if evolution is false unless it's if your prediction is based off the fact that something built that way would be suitable for that environment that could also support the creation there because he creates something suitable for that environment so at this point that goes back to the limb buds in the whales I mean that's completely detached from any kind of environmental requirement the fact that the limbs appear and then they're reabsorbed it's completely inconsequential but under the lens of evolutionary theory it fits like a puzzle piece whereas from the creation standpoint it's like well I guess God must have a purpose for it I guess we just don't know what it is yet so for me and what Jordan said to their I think is that it boils down to explanatory power things like predictions and evolution reaches those in spades we're talking about massive gains in areas like paleontology finding tiktalic was a big one but in addition like evolution completely sculpts the way our medicine works and the way that our agricultural functions I mean we use the principles of natural selection to take wild mustard plants into the wide bounty of different types of organisms that we eat today that we put on our table so that's like taking it to the next level that's taking these natural traits and just amping it up to 11 because they're beneficial to us that's what nature does but in the context of the environment in which the organism lives the trouble with that and I know that this is not well received and I really don't want to go down this trail because it usually doesn't get a whole lot it doesn't get very far in the argument is whatever we do whatever we do to intervene and to mingle in controlled environments such as I was listening to actually debate the other day between I think it was Arron and Dr. Fuzz or whatever but he was talking about how the fact that one of the troubles he has with the RNA sequencing or production or something is that in the testing they use not only distilled water but a certain type of UV light that's not found not found naturally so the problem is when we start tinkering we're kind of proving the concept that in order for this stuff to happen it involves a mind I don't want to just say so then everything is credited because God gave us a mind to tinker but the problem is I can't help but see how that fits the creationist model but the mind seems to be an unknown that's very hard for the evolutionary model and I can't say that means they're never going to have an explanation for it because I think we have to be really careful with our predictive powers but right now the mind itself is a really hard thing for the evolutionary mind the mind consciousness well and the ability to not the idea of existing but the idea of knowing that you exist kind of thing because obviously animals exist animals can eat, animals can do things you can train a monkey to push a button to get a pebble, you can teach monkey sign language and whatnot but the question would be if monkeys are just in nature would they find a need to teach themselves sign language well at some point humans did at some point humans realized there's a need for sign language and so we're kind of out mentally we're able to see outside of our present state of being and say well what does the future look like what does the past look like and how can we manipulate that it seems that animals do not, that any animal does not have anywhere near the capacity that we do so I think that I've got an interesting take on this because I would argue that almost everything with one big glaring exception almost everything that humans do is simply a gradient of behavior of something that other primates do so chimpanzees have politics, they form coalitions they mourn their dead they laugh when they're tickled, they play pranks on each other, Campbell's monkeys have syntax and grammar that they use when they communicate with one another, vervets will lie to get what they want, they'll make the call for oh my god there's a cheetah and then when everyone leaves they go down and seize the prize that everyone's trying to capitalize the fruit or whatever chimpanzees will specifically mourn their colleagues if they put a plastic snake on the ground in front of the mountain Gombe right they've done this experiment where they'll put a snake on the ground and chimpanzees will selectively mourn members of their troop but only the ones that they knew couldn't see the snake, they won't mourn the ones that they know could see the snake in eyeshot they'll only mourn the ones that couldn't see it right they're capable of having favorite tools and teaching their young to use the tools that they like to use different chimpanzees societies have completely arbitrary cultural rules for the tools that they use that they pass down to their offspring right so we don't have a monopoly on this this idea of culture and are this idea of warfare and this idea of altruism and I mean chimpanzees they're the worst swimmers in the world and yet we've got video footage in zoos of when a chimpanzee falls into their local boat and some of them will risk their lives to try to save their fallen comrade right we've done tests with them where they for altruism where they'll give them a blue and a green token or sorry blue or red token and they'll say okay if you give us the blue token then you get five grapes and if you give us the red token then you get two grapes but your buddy one cage over also gets two grapes and they will overwhelmingly prefer to give the altruistic coin they won't always but more often than not they'll give the coin to get their buddy some grapes the funny thing is when you open up the screen in the back so the rest of the troop can see them then all of a sudden they're really really generous and altruistic because everybody can see that they're making the selfish or the altruistic choice so the idea that the mind is something that's exclusive to humans I don't think we can show that to be the case just my primatology what was the what was the monkey that warned about the cheetah um marmot marmot vervet you've made a terrible mistake by wandering into primatology well see the thing is and and I think that so this is um this is kind of my big uh big pow wow into the debate world the problem with me is I'm not a great debater because I like to have conversations and so it's like sometimes like man you're really supposed to be like fighting them it's like no I kind of just want to learn um so I'm going to try to try to do that as well yeah um that was not cool sorry so with with the velvet monkeys um what were they actually calling with the v right vervet vervet with the monkeys we all know with the vervet monkeys my question is did the chimps look at what the vervet monkeys and maybe they don't live in the same place but did the chimps look at the vervet monkeys and say that's a really good idea I'm going to take that idea and then they start doing the cheetah thing because a human would do that because we're outside of what we're just programmed to do so that that's my question yeah um so vervets and chimps they don't tend to live in the same areas vervets live in savannahs and chimpanzees tend to live in you know more lush tropical rainforest they live in like the congo central africa west africa and vervets tend to live in like south africa but that being said chimpanzees will observe if like one chimpanzee there's this really funny example um they of proto fashion is what they call it but I think that's really generous where one chimpanzee female for no reason she took a piece of grass and stuck it behind her ear and just started walking around and when it would fall out she'd pick it back up and stick it back always the same ear and every day she would get up find the piece of grass the same piece of grass and stick it in her ear and within days other chimpanzees first started with other females they started saying oh that's kind of weird they started picking up grass and put it behind their ears and then it was all younger females right because they have a hierarchy and then the older females would do it and then some of the males started taking it up and doing the same thing right and this is like really weird right because this is there's no benefit to sticking a piece of grass in your ear right they just did it because they felt like doing it right um and and there was no there was no um there's no feminist benefit it's just a cultural diffusion of a behavior darn kids with their blades of grass yeah they're modern fashion they'll do it they'll do it with um tools too so female chimps are are smaller than males and so they don't tend to go in the hunts as often so what they do instead is that when male chimpanzees will go hunting they'll take a stick and sharpen it with their teeth their canine teeth and they'll use it to skewer bush babies in areas where they can't reach with their with their fat hands right and they will teach that to other females right um and I believe I can't remember if I can't remember the specific study but I believe they'll only teach it to females which is interesting because it's basically saying look if you're a male you don't need this this skill but if you're a female you will that it's it's hard because that's um to me that seems like different ways that animals are just kind of programmed to operate and I don't want to discredit the grass the grass but I think because that's really weird it's like why would you want a monkey I don't have an answer for it either but with with the chimps like um you know sharpening the stick if that's within their capability to do um then it wouldn't seem absurd that they would teach others to do that because you know dogs teach their young how to hunt lions teach their young how to hunt birds push their their baby birds out of the nest so it doesn't seem unusual in that sense there is a difference between what a chimp can carry out versus what a bird can carry out but I'm seeing the same thing of this is how a chimps designed to operate this is how birds designed to operate so in general they're going to operate the way they operate but humans we have the ability to completely defy what any social norm is and completely do the opposite of how we think we're supposed to operate um and so we don't have to go too far down the consciousness path because I'm getting a bit I don't want to say I'm getting a bit tired but I'm not sure I can handle a full change into that but it just seems like there's such a difference in our awareness of our ability to change from what's natural to us versus animals to what's natural to them and that's just what's natural to them this may be a good opportunity to jump into the Q&A if you guys are all ready let's do it this was really fun and I want to say you didn't have to stick around Ben you really didn't you didn't have to stick around and have a chat with us I didn't think this felt like a debate I thought this felt like a fun discussion but I didn't think this felt like a debate and I thought you asked really good questions and you seem like you are really giving a lot of thought to all this stuff so awesome yeah I um I know that my my co-inner locker had his reasons for leaving but I wasn't I've heard his I've heard everything he offers so I was really you know expecting to kind of write off all the points that he made so I do apologize I didn't bring more points I wanted to make a a single punchy one and that's what I had um I just read right before we get to Q&A I just want to say that I I'm a skeptic that's since my identity and I super respect someone who can say they don't know something because a lot of people have are really uncomfortable admitting that for some reason so gold star you know like that that's what I like to see I think if more people did that would be better off as a society and now we can answer people's and to be a bit pokey I think some advocates of evolution need to be a little more open to to riding on or to uh kind of owning the results of not knowing some things and if you want to have confidence in something you know that that's that's fine um but there's things we don't know and so we have I think we have to be careful before we say well this is how it works because we don't actually know it works that way we know way less than we often think that we know I think that the more you tend to dig into a subject like the best the best sign that you're on the right track as far as learning goes is when you sit back and you go oh crap I don't know anything about this like I thought I knew it turns out I don't know anything there's so much more here than I could have ever imagined but that's you know I mean to be like kind of like a gigantic like dork or whatever like that's the cool part about learning and about science and you know about kind of opening your mind up to places that you you know aren't as well read in the first place and I would extend that to philosophy and theology as well I think that's an important principle for all of all of the realms that human intellect can plunge into you want to I don't want to keep rambling I know John James wants to get to the Q&A we can jump into it right now want to say thanks so much for your questions folks we do appreciate it and we're going to jump into it to get through as many as humanly possible contrary in 420 says does evolution exist for consciousness if so how that's a great question and nobody knows the answer to the like the question of consciousness is it's an active area of research yeah I think I think that an important thing to note though is that as far as consciousness goes I think we can make an excellent case for the presence of different levels of consciousness in living organisms today right like no one no one here would argue that like a clam is less conscious quote unquote than like a dog right the ability to have certain levels of cognition and respond to varying levels of more complicated stimulus like these are what we tend to do when we're grading how conscious quote unquote an organism truly is now as for how it evolved in the first place I would propose there is a massive benefit to being able to know that you are a thing and that things are happening around you so once it did arise whatever it is I would propose that that would experience a massive selection you got it and thank you very much for this question coming in from mango tea says Ben where did the essential building blocks of matter originate from are you aware of infinite regression and its fallacy well again coming from from my view the building blocks that if everything was created all at the same time then it's it's our it's all already in the thing that was created and as far as to the second question I'm not I don't think I'm familiar enough with that term to actually explain that so you got it in this one from Mr. Monster says first off we would still have discovered this process of evolution even if Darwin was never born evolution is a real process you don't understand I'm not sure if that was that do you that's that's mostly true as far as me not understanding it and it's probably also true that this theory certainly could have come about but as much as I don't know unfortunately I see a lot of things that we actually don't know about evolution that's where the big the skepticism is for me is it's in the unknowns that we have a lot of confidence in this one from Mango Tea says Ben these organisms that have evolved into a human would mean these tiny organisms are collectively intelligent therefore we are not in control well I don't think that's the case this one coming in from Josiah Hanson says talking snake says on today ancient may thank you for that Josiah native Atheist says science deniers keep losing these let's see we really do have to mention folks though we appreciate your super chat support the more questions regarding the actual content rather than calling people science deniers it really can uplift the value of the Q&A if they're more sincere questions rather than calling people names Black Panther thanks for your questions says if evolution were true then how come Nephilim let's see okay that's another personal attack Mango Tea thanks for your question says Erika do you believe evolution is similar to Cinderella given they are both let's see fairy tales fairy tales again we are looking for more serious questions because that is something that during the podcast some people are like we're used to like during the Q&A more sincere questions rather than calling things fairy tales or name calling but if you want to respond to Erika you can um no that's okay this one coming in from appreciate your question mango tea says Ben it's called natural selection not selection it's the natural surroundings that are indirect in organisms strong enough to evolve I think I get that and I touched on that I have no problem with the environment conditioning something that's already there my problem is how it gets there to begin with and again I'm not saying it's impossible but the math that I showed shows it's incredibly unlikely that it would actually happen through randomness which again I know we discussed it but it's happening through randomness it's chance gotcha and thanks for your question coming in from Experiments and Prebiotic Chemistry says hey Erika I think you dropped the ball here you forgot to ask quote what is the mechanism for supernatural causation how does an immaterial mind do anything at all I guess they're asking I'll give you a chance to defend yourself Erika no I mean I understand where they're coming from that's not usually my style of debate though I'm here to discuss evolution and you know as far as I'm concerned as far as my opinions are concerned if someone wants to take the stance that you know God did something and they are taking that as a faith claim that God just did it because they believe that that's what happened that's outside of the purview of science as far as I'm concerned it's only when folks want to come in and say you know science confirms young earth creationism or science confirms that evolution is bad that I post up I square up you got it and Ben will give you a chance to respond to that since it's a question in a way to you what is the mechanism for supernatural causation how does an immaterial mind do anything at all the well it's an immaterial mind so it's mind so that's how it does things it's just immaterial and that's just to say that if God is completely outside of his creation that's not a contradiction that's just something we can't understand because we are the creation inside of it so I don't think the second point is takes anything away from the concept of God I think it's a misunderstanding Scott you thank you very much for your question discovering ancient history says just want to give a shout out to Erica great job you have a fan out there Mr. Monster says what is the third way and and Ruravik says Ben there's a one trillion chance that I'll hit the fly on the wall from 10 feet away can I hit it on the first try probability problem solved I don't actually know if that's how the chances work again you actually because you have a mind and because you have the ability to think you could do all the math and actually make your chances like a 5050 shot so that's my point that the chances she's not a problem if you stick a mind in there to manipulate it it's if the ball through itself somehow and it completely randomly came to be that that's what I would argue against you got it this one coming in from do appreciate it Decepticons Forever says it's truly mind blog let's see like a minefield out there it's a starting stock show yeah I do want to encourage you folks we are looking for more sincere questions rather than just calling things fairy tales or just nonsense that that doesn't really add a ton of in terms of like insight or deep thought into the Q&A let's see I'm going to try can I can I ask a question real quick well I I'm going to finish this one giving it the most charitable interpretation they're saying Ben let's see how can you Ben how would you explain the supernatural like what reason do you have to give for thinking it's real in terms of it's a explanatory role in reality um the how would I explain the supernatural well the supernatural occurs through the supernatural being who again would be God which we go back to that my question originally he's outside of of our realm of his created realm so he's able to fully intervene he wants to because we're his creation I don't know if that the answer is at the best I wasn't particularly expecting that question so I do apologize you got it and then I think did you say you had a question Jordan no I did I actually wanted to ask Erica because I wanted to know this but I couldn't get a definitive answer on so for the great apes there's there's humans there's gorillas there's chimps there's orangutans and then is there also bonobos or are they a type of chimp well so the thing is they're their own species so they're they're panpaniscus and then chimpanzees are pan troglodytes and then there are subspecies of common chimpanzees so generally speaking we consider we'll say chimps and bonobos because they're both a member of that same genus they share pan as far as like it depends on if you're asking how many species right or how many genera of apes are there okay so how many great apes are there five or four I guess is my question I think bonobos deserve their own thing I think they're genetically distinct enough and I think that they are certainly behavioral did behaviorally distinct enough so I would say five I would say no both chimps humans gorillas and orangutans in my that's a side note that in my preparation for this I couldn't get a clearance in my mind sorry James that that was really bugging me so no problem no problem oh Joshua Alec thanks for your question says Benjamin a common why you see objection is quote no fish has ever evolved into a nonfish evolution responds quote individuals don't evolve populations do unquote what are the strengths and weaknesses of that response Benjamin well I I think it's a good theory I guess I want to see again anatomic changes in a population today that are structural that fully function that are beneficial if we want to go off the geologic column and the fossil record again that's where I see the assumptions being plugged in so I think I'll leave it there gotcha and pivot Cy Roy says after the last couple of dumpster fires glad to finally see some decent moderating compliments are due when they are due thanks for your kind words appreciate your compliments although we have today I have to say at the same time we believe giving the speakers a lot of freedom such that when tonight it goes peacefully and it's more calm of a conversation and it's not a dumpster fire absolutely great is organic that's the way we like it sometimes it's going to be organic and it's going to be fiery this ain't your grandma's debate channel it's just the way it's going to be so I don't have any apologies experiments and prebiotic chemistry says that should be the slogan for YouTube your YouTube channel Erica quote I'm not just making stuff up on it's got to have like two cartoon hands like I swear I'm not just making this up you got it Fred and fly Fred and six fly says I'm here for the lecture in biology by Erica go Erica go you have a fan out there that's very kind yet with again you know Jordan's right you really have to be careful when you bring up the primate stuff around me I try not to bring it up myself because I know my triggers but it does happen you got it thank you very much for your question this one coming in from Kent Wood says we quote we live in a holographic fractal Mandelbrot projected by collective consciousness experiencing itself subjectively unquote that's from Vinnie Eastwood thank you all cool and thank you very much sun flowers and Erica do you do primates commit suicide as in have they been observed to take actions that they knew would directly result in their immediate death I don't know I know they engage in risk like highly risk averse or highly high risk behavior I suppose I would say and they I believe they do so when cortisol levels are high so they they do it at higher rates when they're like depressed I guess you would say I'm putting it in quotation marks to avoid anthropomorphizing but as far as suicide goes I don't know I'm not not really looked into it it it wouldn't surprise me though if if primates that are kept in you know deplorable conditions animals in general are known to do this where they'll just stop eating you know because they're being kept in like a concrete cell where it's like there's there's nothing for them to do they just get depressed and they're going to give up but whether or not you could call that suicide in the same sense that we refer to human that in humans I've even humans I don't know you've got it and thank you very much for this question want to remind you folks our guests are linked in the description we've got some more questions but I do want to just give a quick reminder of that as we really do appreciate our guests and if you want to hear more from them it doesn't have to end here you can find Erica's Jordan's and Benjamin's and Nephilim that's right not yet Benjamin's but if he gets one in the future we'll put it in there for him and Nephilim for these links in the description we do really encourage you check those links out and TopicDiscos says I just want to know when Erica is going to let me interview her on my video podcast shoot me an email but these days my emails are I get back slower it's busy right now and it sucks being an adult is hard name into that Zagros Ozerman says damn Erica you are on absolute fire today that's very kind again I'm sure that came in at the exact moment that I started waxing poetically about primates you've got it in bandalia 1998 says let's think of a good question since I was just able to get on but wanted to cheer on Erica and Jordan also Erica poke poke poke bandalia I owe you an email then Edward Redbeer thanks for your question as well says question for Erica how many generations to fixate a mutation in sexual species how many mutations to subspeciate is the reason you never use exact numbers because you conclude the time frame does not fit no the reason I don't use exact time frames is because it's incredibly dependent on the environment and it's incredibly dependent on how beneficial the mutation actually is population genetics and how mutations move to fixation is so much more complicated than even I can wrap my head around and I've taken like soft courses on it so I tend to not put numbers to it simply because as more information comes to light about whatever specific example we're talking about is always going to be room for tweaking if that is appropriate if that makes sense you got it and also thank you Edward Edward said my question is my question is sincere and I just realized this was the same question because I thought for sure it was going to end with is the reason you never use exact numbers because you know evolution is a myth and I was going to be like that's like folks I just everybody's a rhetorician but I appreciate your sincere question rhetoric like that you really just can't mark reed says so thank you Edward for being sincere and that it wasn't that mark reed says I want to give full credit to Benjamin for flying solo and carrying his side alone always rough to take on multiple people alone and he did great well I appreciate that but my interlocutors were incredibly friendly and I really enjoyed this so thank you all yeah I enjoyed this too this was super fun we only have two more and topic discusses question for Erica Erica why do we depict Neanderthals as hairless how do we know that verses having or how do we know that versus them having more body hair also did their large occipital lobe lobe make it easier for them to see at night I have a lot more questions ooh those are some good questions yeah so in the case of Neanderthals that that how Harry is the hominin is a really good question but it tends to be applicable usually only from like late earlier than homohydroborgenesis because with phomoneanertal lenses Neanderthals we have their genome so we know about how Harry they are because we have access to the genes that control for hair growth all across their bodies we also know that these guys were probably wearing a lot of clothes because they were living in Eurasia so in addition like in combination with having their genome we also have a lot of support for a lot of their behavior to come to the conclusion that no these guys were not covered with hair now once you get into like homo erectus and a little bit earlier it becomes a lot more of a question as far as the occipital bun goes occipital lobe those massive honking occipital lobes that these guys were sporting I believe based off of the endocast material that we have from them that it didn't have to do with their with their visual acuity and part of the reason I think we know this has to do with not just the endocast but also the actual size of their orbits actually if memory serves they actually smaller eyes than humans do they're less neonatic than we are so they would have been pretty poor at actually capturing light although their their ability to differentiate between colors during the day like all other diurnal primates would have been incredible just like ours is so you got it and thank you very much for this question and from Tig Duan says hi Benjamin I disagree with your position but I really enjoyed your civility I hope you do more debates and you I appreciate that a lot you have got a lot of endurance Benjamin as well and in fact both all three of you Erica and Jordan because art you're all three of you I think are on the east coast which is so we appreciate you staying up so late with us and especially again Benjamin thanks for hanging in there as I know it can be a mentally simulating and exhausting as you're here by yourself but want to say folks Erica Jordan and soon if not or I should say soon if Benjamin gets a link but also Neff all link to the description so if you want to hear more you can click on those links below contrary and 420 with the last minute super chat says tip for the house thanks for inviting an unbiased platform for debate that is solely needed thanks so much contrary and that really does mean a lot we appreciate that and so I'm going to be back in a moment to let you know about upcoming juicy debates that we are absolutely excited about as well as some inside details about the upcoming conference the first ever modern day debates debate con in January in person in Dallas want to say thanks one more time though Erica Jordan and Benjamin it's been a true pleasure to have you it was a blast to be here thank you 100% the pleasure is all ours and I'll be right back folks in just a moment then thank you dear friends for being with us I am excited to be here and to finally get to talk I love listening don't get me wrong but I also love getting to say hi to you in the old live chat want to say thanks for being with us Bill Pasadot thanks for dropping in we are pumped that you are with us as well as Ivan and molasses glad you are with us and hacks good to see you again Ray Rard you've been here for a long time as well gainomatic as well a lot of long timers but also I love seeing the new new people here and just getting to say hello and welcome we are a neutral platform here at modern day debate hosting debates on science religion and politics and the most fair way we can we really do want to welcome you from all walks of life whether you be Christian atheist Muslim agnostic you name it we really are glad you are here we really do appreciate you spending time with us as always fun it was a fun Friday night for me I really did enjoy that it was I like the peaceful ones as well I know that the dumpster fires anything can get old right so too many dumpster fires do get old too many peaceful conversations can get old I enjoy the variety and that's something I loved about tonight is that we haven't had one like this for a long time was a very sincere conversation I really didn't appreciate that and want to say hello though sideshow nav good to see you as well as Jared a thanks for being a member Jared we totally appreciate that you've given enough credit and enough thanks to our members for real I'm sorry about that members I we never it's just you know I really I do want to say thank you for supporting the channel for supporting the vision as we all together share values that transcend you could say that even though we might be Christians we might be atheists no matter what everybody I think would agree that hey we want everybody to get a fair shot let's at least let it be a level playing that's something I think we really do agree on across different views and so we do appreciate that my dear friends thank you for your memberships thank you for your support and all the different ways that you give it whether it be hitting that like button or maybe it's sharing our content as I do check in like the YouTube studio and I sometimes see like wow our videos do get shared a lot that actually they show us that in the creator studio for the analytics and so we do want to say thanks for doing that is that helps us grow as new people learn about us that way and we really do appreciate all of your support just in being here for real it is a fun community when we have people from all walks of life it's not the kind of bland like it's true this is a channel that if you want to go somewhere if you want to go to a stream where you basically are told all of your views are true and you're not challenged at all and it instead just affirms you in your beliefs that's not here like I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but I am saying it's true you're going to be challenged here by the speakers you're going to be challenged by people in the audience not everybody is going to agree with you is what I'm trying to say and that's okay we don't have to agree to be friends that's why I say whether you be Republican Democrat Atheist Christian you name it I really do want to let you know sincerely I really do want to give you a fair chance extending the old olive branch and saying hey we do want to be friends with you and so thanks for just being a part of modern day debate with us as this is a growing community and we're optimistic about the future my friends in fact let me tell you about some of this based and or red-pilled epic stuff coming up my dear friends at the bottom right of your screen one tomorrow audit the police we are going to have a debate on whether or not it is a good thing that I don't know if you've heard sometimes they're called top watchers sometimes they're called first amendment auditors people who will record police or government buildings for example for the purpose well we'll let the speaker make her case as tomorrow she'll be defending Noly is joining us it's going to be a brand new topic that's something I'm excited about is we are working on getting new topics all the time we had a fun one in October I think that was just before Halloween I can't believe it's already December I'm like whoa there was a whole month between that debate the ghost debate yet whether or not there's evidence for ghosts there's a whole month between that and where we are right now is we're in December amazing it's just been flowing by I'm amazed but anyway that's one example where we're like hey that'd be a fun topic we've never done that really we've done do demons exist but we never did evidence for ghosts or basically he identifies as a paranormal researcher and so he had come in and shared video clips and things like that that was fun and we are looking for possibly if anybody wants to defend Christmas there is a certain someone who wants to make the case that Christmas is or not in particular sorry they want to make the case that Santa not Christmas more specifically Santa is satanic so if you are like what like I know a decent amount of the history of Santa and there's no reason to think it's satanic if you think that's bunk well then you might be the person that might be a good fit for debating that particular individual who's trying to make that case but we want to say we are excited as tomorrow this first amendment auditor debate will be a juicy one and we are excited about all of these new debates but I'm going to tell you one thing we're also excited about my dear friends you might be out there and you're like James what else are you excited about what do you mean that you're excited let me tell you one did you know in the chat can you I mean you don't have to see yes because I know most of you have heard about this we do have a podcast if you didn't know for example I just opened up my favorite podcast app podcast addict I would encourage you right now I know statistically most of you watch on your phones that's what the actual creator studio stats tells me and so I encourage you you got your phone in your hand right now maybe you could click on your favorite podcast app and then amazing you can find modern day debate look at it there isn't that beautiful this big black and blue beautiful logo modern day debate that is our podcast we are so excited my dear friends that it has been I got to tell you some big stuff one it has been growing in terms of the amount of people who are like yeah I actually find it really useful and I'm so encouraged because I like that is so great so we basically we cut the music out from the beginning and you know edit it just slightly so it's a little bit you know more convenient for listening and I'm just so encouraged too I'm not trying to brag I give you guys the credit and they give because for real you guys give us a lot of debate ideas you guys help make the Q&A possible by asking your questions as well as the debaters we are so thankful for the debaters as they are the lifeblood of the channel so people like Jordan, Erika and Benjamin and even enough despite the fact that he left we do appreciate the debaters seriously and I want to tell you though there is a recent list put out from FeedSpot now FeedSpot has been around for a while in terms of the podcast stuff and FeedSpot had 35 different podcasts that they ranked we were ranked number 2 which is I don't know what the metric was I don't know if it was just a subjective ranking or if there was some sort of objective criteria that they were using I am just so encouraged though that we were on that list that's awesome and so you guys it is encouraging we also sometimes see people in the live chat who are like oh yeah I actually found you guys through the podcast I didn't know you had a youtube channel until you mentioned it in the podcast and then I came over to the youtube channel which reminds me folks in the twitch chat I'm so sorry I completely forgot to say hello in the old twitch chat tonight guys thanks for bearing with me I really do appreciate you for real you guys in the old twitch chat I do want to say hello amazing let me say hi so I want to say we've got some big cool stuff coming up in addition to tomorrow morning's debate wait where is this twitch t slash modern that's embarrassing but I want to tell you this conference that is coming up I will knock your socks off I want to say hello into the old twitch chat thanks for being with us tapatsil brooks sparrow and let's farm I see you there as well as chaos soul if you're still in there I want to say thanks for hanging out with us as well as top dog shattuck and I want to let you know yeah if you were on twitch one thing we always encourage people to check out the twitch but we never we haven't done a great job of encouraging people if you're watching on twitch don't forget to check us out on youtube whatever platform works best for you we want to encourage you to check it out otangelo grasso good to see you there in the old live chat as well as sunflower and human girl or human beta as she likes to be called be truthful good to see you as well as edward redbeard thanks for your questions seriously I do appreciate your sincere question and I don't mean to shame anybody when I say that we were looking for sincere questions I know that things get heated I don't blame you I've got no judgment I get heated in life sometimes and so I do want to say I'm not trying to put anybody down when they have these kind of rhetorically cutting super chats for example when they you know ask a question and they say is it because you know your view is baloney or you know I'm like it's a bit much sometimes but I don't want to put anybody down it's more that the biggest thing is the worst thing is this I don't mind if there's a sincere question and then it ends with something like is it you know is it because you know your question your belief is your view is silly huh I can deal with that because it at least also had a sincere question in the chat but if it's something where it's just like oh so and so dumb and your view is a fairy tale I'm like we don't really want to read those so I do want to I got to give you a heads up with your super chats do try to like refine them if you think that you're like is this actually asking a sincere question that's substantive I would encourage you to refine it before you send it because we are looking for more of those as we really want the quality of the Q&A and like I said I'd say 90% of you who put in a question for the Q&A fantastic superb it where there wasn't even any sort of cutting rhetoric at all and I appreciate that because it was just a substantive sincere question and then like I said there's like maybe like 8% where it's like it's got a sincere question and then some cutting rhetoric in which I'm like yeah I can deal with that like but the ones that I'm just like ah gosh or it's just like this is you know your view is stupid like you should quit I'm like okay seriously it sounds like the guy that works at the fast food on the Simpsons but anyway you know like the teenager but want to say Jordan Smorgen thanks for being with us I see you there in the old YouTube chat as well as topic discussed thanks for coming by says where is the discord link well let me get that for you it's in our description box but I'm going to throw it into the live chat right now as well is we do want to say Let's Farm has done a fantastic job of building up the modern day debate discord and we want to encourage you to check that out if you happen to like discord we are so thankful for the people who have put in hard work to make that a fun community and I got to be honest all the credit does it goes to them because I'm rarely ever ever ever in the discord and the only reason is I'm a boomer I can't figure it out it's amazing how you young peeps you young kids can figure it out now I have I'll tell you I'll share something from my personal life one if you're wondering how my comps exam went I'm still waiting on the results I'm kind of like like I got my ringer on because they'll actually call us after our comp exam is done and tell us like hey you passed or you didn't pass and so I've got my ringer on which is extremely rare I don't think they're gonna call this late but I am waiting on the results so that's one thing but the other thing is in my personal life I'll tell you this what crazy tactics I see you there in the live chat said when is the Stephen or Stefan versus deaf destiny debate happening Stefan actually said he's taking some time away from debating that's disappointing we I asked him for any sort of like I said hey is there any way we can make this possible like I didn't get a response so I'm it's a bummer I don't know what's going on who knows it might be something I don't want to speculate but you know whatever it is we've got no hard feelings we're never entitled to host anybody we do hope to host it someday given that it was confirmed prior and I think it was like two days before Stefan backed out and said like nope I can't do it November after all and so we did advertise it because you know we usually only advertise when somebody yep all for sure come on by this date and he didn't so no hard feelings towards Stefan like I said I hope everything's okay with him whether if it's a family thing I have no idea like I said I don't want to speculate whatever it is we hope he's doing okay and same thing with destiny we hope he's doing okay as we do appreciate both of them coming on the stream we're hoping to have Stephen destiny on soon and oh Josiah Hansen sent a pig Latin super chat I didn't even realize that somebody was trying to explain to me what how to do pig Latin the other day but I didn't even realize that and so thanks for letting me know that and Tinkle Tinkle as well or Tinkle Tink as well as patient Noel we're glad you were here as well as Isidore Aries that you were glad you were with us and Hacks says based and woke you said that not me okay and then experiments and prebiotic chemistry thanks for your kind word says experiments and prebiot says thanks a lot James this was a good debate thanks for saying that we're encouraged I'm glad you said that you enjoyed it as much as I did doctor right life we're glad you were with us as well as human girl says it is amazing Christmas carols incoming and Andrew Kroll says if you didn't hit the like you are a better hit that like button folks you might as well I mean since soy tube removed the dislike count because you know that was a badge of honor for me knowing that hey we have these debates some of which got dislike bombed because hey we are always in the business of triggering people and I'm kidding we I don't purposely trigger people but it's funny how some people just really oh boy they just they we do trigger some people and we don't try but it just comes natural to us I don't know but that's the thing it is sometimes you're going to feel uncomfortable here sometimes you'll maybe even feel a little unraged I sympathize sometimes I'm a little bit or I'm like you saw it today or no in the Q&A I was like okay we want serious questions please so I've got to tell you I get you I know where you're coming from and I'm looking up a debate right now let's see Nathan I'm looking up the famous Nathan Thompson Aaron raw debate and the reason is I've got to see is there where is this debate I can't find it I know I've got it's listed I don't know like why how could I not find it that's weird let me see here are in raw so and because this was the debate that where is this do we still have it it's got to be here let me the are in raw flat earth let's see that was the here it is that was the one that get dislike bombed and now I'm looking at all you can't see all the dislike the dislikes very sad because we used to have an enormous amount of dislikes and now all of our haters hard work has gone to waste I'm sad the humanity so yes it's true the dislike count has gone youtube soy tube as they like to be called they I for real I even though I'm making fun of our haters because a lot of them I've seen people even like on like other places where they'll talk about modern day debate and they like I just click into leave a dislike all of the times they did that now it's gone to waste and even though that's true I gotta say it was like a badge of honor there's we nonetheless we kept those videos up just to say we're not taking them down and there are some there are one or two videos that even recently someone said hey we would you take that down that one really triggers me would you take it down nope we keep it up but we're Jean gel thanks for coming by let me know if I'm pronouncing that right is it is the W silent Amanda good to see you Andrew cool thanks for coming by says James and T jump and Speedo is doing a car wash we might actually be doing that because we are going to do a crowd fund I've gotta give you a heads up we are planning Ozzie and thank you so much for having given over a hundred subs in twitch I hope you know we do appreciate your support seriously big time we really do appreciate it so thanks for letting me know that in the old YouTube chat as I am like I said behind on the old twitch and so thank you so much Ozzie and for your support seriously that really does mean a lot and Brooke Chavez thanks for letting me know that and gotta tell you my dear friends Edward red beard thanks for being with us so thanks for your kind words about the channel as well and thanks for your kind words whereas I just saw somebody said something nice but we do want to say Jared A says where's the bomb ass merch at James you're right I am behind on the merch I'm sorry about that we've got to update our merch because we still haven't gotten the new logo on the on the merch for real that is like that's a priority for me I've just been swamped but human girl good to see you let's see doctor right life Samuel 99 little home good to see you thanks for being with us and then let's see Andrew Kroll says kids I just turned 53 no actually I'm not gonna have kids I was gonna tell you in my personal life I'm about to turn 35 in a month which is crazy you guys that's nuts for me I'm like I refuse to grow up I am Robin Williams in the movie hook I'm not growing up I am going to stay young and hip as long as humanly possible when I think about 35 that's where it's like whoa I'm an adult like that's that's kind of like the age that I remember when I was in college my landlord was 35 and I always thought was like wow he's old and I also thought I'm never gonna be like him and in some ways so now I'm now I'm really self-conscious about being like my old landlord Mike Berg and Mike I don't know if you ever like unless he stalks me I don't think he'll ever hear this in fact I don't think he likes me but I do like I do like Mike I like Mike despite our our differences that we had Mike I just no offense it was just you know I have to stay hip and young like Peter Pan but anyway Jared A. says where's the beanie at yo maybe I should maybe I should just to show how young I am and Brooke Chavez says let's get to 100 likes we're at let's totally let's get to 180 folks we're at 27 likes we can totally get to 180 it's only three more are you going to be one of those three people that get us to the 180 mark as we can totally hit that goal and I want to say thank you so much though for your support guys seriously I do appreciate it Bill Pasadosa's Jesse Lee Coons cut it out that's funny amazing and then thanks for your kind words gay nomadic appreciate your support of the channel as well as Jason PK appreciate your kind words and then Jason PK says memo to James being impartial etc long story short sides with Neff and I have no hard feelings against Neff and I even considered I to give Neff credit he did defer to Erica at one point prior to when he left where he said he's like oh you know go ahead Erica even though he clearly already wanted to speak and he was differential there so to give him credit like I wasn't trying to like shut him down for the whole debate I wish he would have said James like for real like in the grand some I know I've been going for about three minutes but in the grand some I still haven't gotten more time in which I could have you know kind of compensated and said okay Neff fair enough what we'll do is we'll still jump back to Erica and Jordan but I promise we'll come right back to you on the next one instead of Benjamin for example because Benjamin had gotten to talk early on when Neff didn't and so I would concede that at that point it was like in the big picture Neff was still he hadn't gotten a lot of time to talk yet but the idea was just that we wanted to make sure that like I said the conversation was continuing to flow but yeah Jason PK I would say I do see that you're starting to copy and paste your your grievance and if you can do me a favor I'm totally cool if you have like criticism of modern day debate that's okay like that's like human and we're not gonna ban you for that or something but I do want to say can you do me a favor and just not do the copy and paste of it and by the way that also makes me wonder if you're one of Neff Lemphrey's sock accounts because Neff Lemphrey was doing that earlier but nonetheless I do just want to mention like Neff like I mean whoever you are please don't spam it's whenever you do like the you know copy and paste and so we do want to say thanks for coming by as well as let's see here Amanda says I'm not young James well you know there's like advantages to getting older and some of them I like to be honest like if so I asked my students this once I said and I've asked my friends this and let me know what you guys think because I think I've asked you guys this before two seconds I'm gonna get this blazer off it's my first time all right so what I was gonna say was you ready for this I asked friends would you go back and live your earlier years again and I would not the reason is even though I enjoyed my younger years I even enjoyed like my middle school and high school years which most of my friends didn't most of my friends are like oh I was like a prison and I was like I don't know middle school and high school were fun college is fun too but I've always I've enjoyed life in general I think I've had a pretty good you know like I've enjoyed it but I wouldn't go back and I'm talking about going back without knowing what you know now if you could go back and know what you know now I mean like I frankly I still don't even think I would then but I could get why in that case you might want to because you'd be like well think of all like the things that I could like you know take advantage of with basically knowing the future you know if you went back in time and relive things but imagine you didn't have all the info you know now I wouldn't I for sure wouldn't in that case I am excited about kind of the growth and progress of life and getting older I actually I'm happy to get older but I'm at the same time I'm realizing like I like really am and it's also yeah it's just it's uh you know there are parts of it where it's just a little bit scary it's a new part of life where it's I just a part of it is that I worry about my parents my parents are older and I just I love my parents I'm really thankful for my and we have our differences as well my parents and I we don't agree on everything in fact we don't agree on a lot but I love them I'm so thankful for them and I I couldn't ask for more loving parents and more supportive parents and so that's in another case folks where I tell you you don't have to agree with everybody to be friends with them or even to love them I am so thankful for my parents and let's see but they're getting older they're okay but I still just kind of I just I'm thankful to have my parents around still and I just I should be grateful because I know a lot of people don't have their parents around for as long as when they reach 35 and so I am I'm thankful don't get me wrong but want to say in the old live chat my dear friends spicy roads good to see you says soy tube haha agreed soy tube deserves to be laughed at and scorned but only because it is I'm just like yeah come on YouTube really you're going to get rid of the dislikes and it's like oh yeah because it might discourage people we can still as creator studio like in the creator studio we can still see how many dislikes a video gets so if it was going to if it's like oh we don't want the creator to see to be discouraged by how many dislikes they might get it's like they can still see them in the creator studio anyway now people probably because I get you could say dislike bombs would be less motivated people would be less motivated to you know have their mob show up and dislike a video and folks we're almost 190 likes we're we're at 184 we're only six away we can totally make it to 190 my dear friends I want to say thanks for supporting the channel we blew past the goal of 180 likes at an hour at 184 so thank you for that I was going to say it's true that the dislike bomb mobs that go around and dislike videos they're not just doing it to discourage the content creator that's true I understand that they're also doing it because it's supposed to kind of like socially send a signal to people who are considering the video where like they're like we've got a billion dislikes maybe I won't watch it so I do agree that like dislike mobs but at the same time that's maybe a like kind of a good signal I know I've clicked on videos for example when I'm trying to figure out how to do something in Excel or in stats like in SPSS I click on a video and if I see it's got a thousand dislikes and it's got like eight likes I know I'm like they clearly didn't give whatever they promised they would give in a thumbnail or the title but want to say Manic Pan is good to see you as well as Perfect One who says if you want to leave a dislike on a video now you'll need to leave a comment saying that you liked it that way people will know hey that's a good way of doing it I like that and uh Hannah Anderson says I say let's get to 200 it's doable let's smash it and we were at 188 so thank you so much for those of you who have already the four of you that in just the last minute or so hit like thanks for your support for real and then let's see here flat out conspiracy thanks for coming by we are glad you are with us and then Dan Pettinger let me know if I'm pronouncing this right we are glad you are here and he says stop inviting creationists and flat earthers a lot of times they actually set up debates and they come out like they say James we've got this opponent can we come on and debate and although we do sometimes invite invite people too but I've got to say the reason that we're not under the whole de-platforming thing is we believe that addressing an argument and giving a substantive response is the best way to expose that argument rather than trying to force it underground by saying we're not going to platform people anymore of this particular view and the other thing is we really care about giving everybody a fair shot and so if we say oh we're going to you know these people we're going to say no you're not allowed to come on but these people yeah you are that doesn't seem very neutral to me so it's true I'm not a flat earther as an example and there are a lot of views that I'm just pointing out flat earth because that's the most controversial one ironically is there are a lot of views that I host or I don't agree with the guest but nonetheless like we host them and want to give them a fair shot because if we're really going to claim to be a fair and neutral channel we really have to do we have to actually follow through with it because that's one thing I've noticed and there's nothing that makes me more sick and it's really sad is that often times I see people for example who will oh I'm all about tolerance yeah I'm all about tolerance it's great we're so tolerant and then there are certain groups though that they don't welcome and they purposely oh you know they can't be here oh they say that their view is the only correct view that's intolerant get them out of here and I'm like I thought you were all about tolerance like that means you got to tolerate even the people who say that their view is the only correct view so I would say it really is important that we actually are willing to host everybody and as long as like I said I'll be practical we won't violate terms of service because youtube has helped us grow immensely really so we do appreciate them and we don't want to cut off we don't want to basically saw off the metaphorical youtube growth branch that we're sitting on by violating their terms of service that wouldn't be shrewd we are encouraged that we are growing and we're pumped about that as we want to say folks we appreciate you are the reason that it's growing and that this movement has continued to grow and expand across youtube and I'm dead serious you guys you think I'm joking about this our goal we are on a determined march by the end of the year to hit 60,000 subscribers and then no joke by the end of 22 2022 to reach over 100,000 subscribers no joke and that's going to be here before you know it we're going to be like wow we're we're kind of big now like over 100,000 that's a lot and so I'm very serious about that we have got big aspirations my dear friends and we are thankful to have you with us josh will it good to see you as well as we'll see you Andrew Krull pumped you were with us and Brooke Chavis says Jason pk please stop james ask you to stop it's true Jason please don't spam if you want to do like criticism that's not spam it's not copy and paste like fair enough but like when you copy and paste it's like it's just cringe let's see let's see Jason pk says I'm an admirer of JF Gary Epi even though he's an evolutionist so I want a debate to be done on fair and impartial terms as even Dr. Gary Epi himself would expect yeah I think that frankly in terms of the grand total of minutes spoken by I would agree that he was kind of behind and that's something that I would have been willing to make up for him but it's true that it doesn't have to be made up all in one like response where Neff would get to speak for like eight minutes in a row like it could have been that like I said you know I was gonna stop him I don't know maybe use that three minutes or so I could have stopped in there and said okay Neff we're gonna go back to Erika and then I promise you know we can come right back to you and we could have had Neff make up his time that way but before that could even be it just had to be Neff's way of like no I'm gonna get it to make all of it up right now with an eight minute statement during open conversation and that's where it's like you know like you gotta be flexible with us so I get where you're coming from I'm open to criticism and apologetics channels thanks for coming by we are glad you are with us and then human girl I don't know if you guys know this but human girl actually recently contacted me and she told me that she's a beta and I was like that's that's so sad that you know that you think of yourself like it was very sad but I said you gotta you gotta stop being so hard on yourself so you know give human girl some you know some love some positivity and also we just hit our goal of 190 thank you friends we're at 190 likes that's encouraging we can get to 200 we're only 10 away from 200 and I gotta tell you if you if you hit that like button I will guarantee you that I will show you what is right next to and in front of me on my desk believe me you do want to see this because it may surprise you you might be like oh James that's not what I expected but I will show it to you and believe me you can probably hear it can you hear that that was what it was so do want to say I you guys remember when I used to pull up the curtain and show you guys like what was behind the curtain that was a fun game I wish that I had a pet that's what I really wish is that I had a cute cat so that I could show you the cat and I do love cats I have to tell you I love cats I love dogs and Ortho mom I love you says how is that a low bar it's clear logic to me I don't know what you're talking about Ortho mom but we're glad you're here so thanks for your support and then that let's see Dr. Wright life says I like debate on the platform to get da fitties is da fitties some sort of is this some sort of sexual innuendo like when someone was trying to tell me about a Cleveland steamer or a what was that a hot coral or the Tokyo sand blaster or taking grandma to apple bees like all these nasty innuendos you guys nasty guys I'll tell you a very nasty but yeah we do want to encourage you if you haven't gotten membership yet oh I've got to find out that reminds me I've got to find out in terms of memberships I have to find out if we're able to get it so that we can do a stream and I'm going to check this right now if we can do a stream where oh actually reminds me of two things I've got to do let me do two things right now if can we do a stream where it's both members only but we could still share a link to it to people who are not members I don't know I've got to find that out that I think it's not possible but if anybody knows let me know does anybody know do you know if we does anybody if you're already familiar with members only streams can we do a members only stream where we can then share the link to it such that if you had the link you wouldn't even have to be a member to watch it I don't think that's available yet that would be epic I would love that but I don't think YouTube likes that and that's okay we'll be alright but let me look this up in the old analytics I'm going to look up a couple of things nope that's not actually what I'm going to do but I am excited though you guys is that we have just been so thrilled and thankful that modern day debate has just been growing and growing lately I'm just like surprised at the growth like this last month I'm like we haven't had that many streams because I had that big comp exam but nonetheless like the growth has actually been like pretty steady it's been going fast and so that's really cool as I'm like wow that's encouraging that people have found this channel valuable and we're just thankful to you guys for all your support in making this channel grow as it has like I said you guys seriously I'm not just saying that you guys have a very real part in helping the channel grow we do appreciate that more than you know it's it's amazing but let's see here the old twitch chat Brooke Sparrow I see you saying hi there and then let's see here I got to go in just a minute but I want to say like father like son thanks for coming by we are glad you are with us and then Brooke Chavis Brooke Chavis is impressed at the number of innuendos that we've learned here at modern day debate including the old Cleveland steamer and tokyo sandblaster and taking grandma to applebee's I don't even know what the last two are and I don't want to know so I got to say though we do appreciate you guys seriously it's seriously it's a fun time here and I'm going to look at this let me look at this really quick I'm in the so I told you I'm just super thankful that you guys help us in so many ways you guys I'm just thankful I appreciate that I was going to look into okay here are stats for the last video we did T jump versus Nadir and let me look at how many see you got channel pages YouTube search suggested videos so 6.6% of our views on that video we're from 0.06 0.06 times 10 thousand so 660 views on that video so we get so many recommended our YouTube recommends our videos a lot we're really thankful for that that helps us grow a ton and so that's one thing I've got to give street cred to YouTube for is we're thankful for that and that's why we do follow terms of service and I don't know why I'm amazed that some people are like no you should like break terms of service so why would we do that we have grown an awful lot thanks to YouTube in fact I got to say like if you want to grow on Twitch without starting on YouTube it is a long uphill battle I was listening to somebody talk about this the other day he's grown on both platforms and he said it's like it's way harder on Twitch you just don't have nearly as many ways that YouTube recommends you to other people and then let's see here how do I find the number of shares that people have done on a single video I have had a ton and that's something I'm looking for is how many times people have shared the video I think it would be an overview there are 5,000 chat chats in that debate that's a lot but I want to say thank you guys for real I'm going to let you go I want to say love you guys thanks for all of your support seriously it's like a family here I appreciate all of your support I got to let you know we we what was I going to say I'm just laughing at Gaynomadic who just googled the Cleveland steamer is we are excited and we're going to launch the crowdfund soon I've got to tell you I've got to give you a heads up let me mentally prep you the crowdfund is going to work like this some of the oh don't worry I'm still here is some of the debates will for the conference in January will be live streamed and some of them you would be able to live stream and watch them live if you have either one if you're a patreon patron or if you have put into the Google what's the word I'm looking for if you have put into the Google or if you were a YouTube member of the channel or if you happen to sleep well Bob thanks for saying good night and I don't know if I want to know what Tokyo sandblaster is to Brooke apparently googled it I don't want to know is what I was going to say is good night Chris thanks for your kind words sleep well is for some of the streams we would ask that people in order to view some of the streams during the conference that they would put into the crowdfund as basically you would get to watch some of the streams live if you don't put into the crowdfund but not all of them some of them we were saying you know if you put into the crowdfund we would be willing to give will send you the link to watch it live and that's basically how we would do some of the debates and that helps us fund the event as we're taking a big risk here goes I mean like seriously the budget in terms of what's going to be spent on this I'm anticipating about $20,000 maybe $25 I don't know like in terms of the flights the hotel nights the food for the speakers in terms of not just the hotel nights but also the lot like the builder the ballroom that we want to rent out for the actual speaking like this is a big deal and so that's why we are going to have a crowdfund that is going to be epic and that is going to help kind of cushion us as we try to we're going to sell tickets as well but at the same time like I said we're like hey we don't know how this is going to go so we're trying to be as careful and you know shrewd as we can but shrewd just means wise, careful planning, extra delight thanks for coming by we are glad you are here and then in the old live chat let's see but yeah Nick Ross thanks for coming by I see you there in the old live chat and want to say seriously my dear friends we love you guys H.I. is it H.L. Aristotle's thanks for coming by we seriously appreciate you hanging out here as well as master optics and serpenix thanks for dropping in we love you guys seriously thanks for all your support of the channel we are excited about the future and seriously we appreciate you guys we're excited about big things in the future we're going to take some big leaps it's going to be epic and amazing as we strive to fulfill and we are determined as we will fulfill the vision of providing a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level playing field with that want to say thanks everybody love you guys have a great rest of your night and excited to see you next time tomorrow morning for this juicy debate that you can see right now my dear friends you see that right there bottom right of the screen First Amendment Auditor Debate you don't want to miss it thanks everybody for being reasonable from the Unreasonable