 Everybody, today we are debating whether or not God exists, and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. As today we are debating does God exist, we are very excited as we have a tag team match. We don't get to have these very often, but it's always fun when we do. Want to let you know though, if it's your first time here and you love debates on politics, religion, and science, feel free to hit that subscribe button if you want reminders of future debates coming up. So for example you'll see at the bottom right of your screen next week we'll have a debate on Bernie or Biden. So that should be a fun political one we've never done, and we've got a lot more coming up tomorrow, creation, biblical ancestry, all that stuff in the creation evolution camp. So that should be a lot of fun. But want to let you know a couple of things, this is going to be a pretty simple format. So what we are doing tonight is we're going to give each side a flexible 10 minute opening statement that they are going to get to divide amongst each other. So you have on the left T-Jump and Amy who are representing the atheist position and then on the right of your screen Sterling and CC Canadian Catholic who will be defending the theistic side. Want to let you know their link to the description so feel free to check out their links that I have conveniently placed just for you. If you're like I want to hear more, well you can hear more just below. And with that we're going to have Q&A at the end. So if you have a question feel free to ask it in the live chat and if you put at modern day debate in that question or comment that makes it easier for me to see. And then by the way super chats are an option as well. So if you have a super chat it allows you to both ask a question or a comment toward one of the speakers to which they would of course get a chance to respond to. And by the way is it just me is is Tom blinking green Tom I don't know it's like it's probably there's maybe a malfunction on your side. Your camera looks like it's blinking green just a little bit. It's like going on those websites. You shouldn't Tom. All right next just kidding buddy I'm sorry but want to let you know though folks one thing I want to mention is that if you do have a question super chat also pushes your question to the top of the list for the Q&A section. So with that very excited folks we're going to jump right into the Atheist will be leading here by getting the first opening statement and then we'll go to the theist for theirs followed by open conversation. So Tom and Amy thanks so much for being here. Pleasure to have you and the floor is all yours. If you don't mind I'll start. Are there good reasons to believe in the God no. And I'm going to go a bit further and say there are no reasons to believe in the God because if it isn't a good reason then it's not a reason you should believe it. So are there good reasons to believe in the God the answer is no. And the reason is because we need some way to differentiate between what's imaginary and what's real. If you can't do that it doesn't count as evidence. And nothing that theist can do is all they provide is words and words can't differentiate between what's imaginary and what's real. So they have no basis to determine their God is any more real than leprechauns or fairies or unicorns or any other imaginary thing. So no there are no good reasons to believe in the God. Okay can we one seventh get the screen share you bet. Says it's disabled. Oh I think that so there might be more than one way to do the screen share. At the bottom of the zoom window that you have on your screen there's usually like a little green square and it's got an arrow pointing upward. If you click on that it'll usually launch you into full screen. Is that the top of the bottom. It's actually it's either on the bottom or it could be on the side as well. So you'll just kind of want to wave your cursor toward the bottom of the screen as well as to the side. And if it's not already showing there should be a green box that'll pop up and it'll allow you to click it and it'll launch you into it. Give me just one second. No problemo. So want to let you know though folks we do have a lot of debates coming up so I will mention those. Want to let you know about next week this has just been confirmed. We technically have to confirm it just to let just to be sure that Jeff Holiday is OK with his opponent. But we're setting up a debate between Nathan Thompson and Jeff Holiday on whether or not predatory pseudoscience should be you could say restricted from free speech. So that's when we are definitely excited about hope you can make that. We think it'll be next week. We're still kind of tying together the details. But I think it's fair to say that that one's pretty much set. So that should be a lot of fun. And a lot of you don't know but you see Sterling pictured there on your screen. Sterling is actually Nathan Thompson's brother. So distant relationship. But you know still you can see the resemblance there. So very excited folks. And then so sorry Amy I know that sometimes Zoom can be a little bit fickle. Yes. Once I get it all the other debates we could. No problemo. I think you might. Let's see. We're close. It's up and you're on desktop or laptop right. I am on desktop. Oh OK. So I think they're resized it but nothing's coming up. Yeah I suppose it could be if the window is too small. I would maybe just try to. Without I suppose it's you can't maximize your screen and also do PowerPoint so that makes it an extra challenge. I would just maybe make it as big as you can without maximizing it. And hopefully that green box should pop up. Green box. And it's not the invite participants share a screen. It'll have it'll say it'll just say share and it'll have a green box usually. Should be alt S just hold alt press S. Alt S. Says host disabled screen share. Oh no hold on. OK so sorry this has been happening lately. This is what I'm going to do. So sorry about that. No I'm sorry. No no you didn't do anything it must be on my end. OK so embarrassing folks give me one second. I think that I've been on zoom calls all week with the virus so I think I must have hit something as of late that made it such that your for some reason not allow to show your video but we're going to make it such that you can. I'm going to make you the host right now. So you should be able to now for sure. OK. Thanks for your patience. So do we see that. Yes I'm going to flip it over on OBS. All right. And we'll see it all set. OK so is there good evidence for a God. Every battle to theistic claims based on consciousness. So who am I. I was raised in a liberal Jewish household which generally means I got to eat bacon but I got sent to a conservative Hebrew synagogue because my mom thought that was the right thing to do. But I ended up making a deal with her in my teenage years that I do the whole bat mitzvah thing. Then I never have to do anything religious again. And I haven't looked back. Is there evidence for a God. I don't believe so. However I do believe that we actually have evidence in the counter direction. So this presentation is going to be a single critique of theism through the study of our mind. So why is consciousness even relevant to a debate about God. Well it's important for understanding morality and ethics. And I actually believe that the answer has implications. Namely that a God cannot exist. So what exactly is my definition. Well it's a mechanism of the brain. That handles sensory data, information processing and short term memory. And what I actually mean when someone's consciousness is that they have a gradient set of brain states with a wake or on being at one side and a sleep or off at the other. And this also includes periods of in between like when we have just woken up or getting ready for bed. But why does consciousness exist. Well it's a rival to plants and fungi. It's our way of collecting energy, of providing homeostasis. And if we're lucky to sometimes procreate. But something to keep in mind why don't we have these giant brains. Well it's because neurons are energy greedy. They take up 10 times the amount of oxygen and blood than the cells around them. There's also the factor of being able to squeeze the brain through the vaginal cavity. There has to be an arms race somewhere between how big a brain can be selected for and what is possible. So what's my argument? Well a mechanism, all mechanisms of the brain have been naturally selected for the benefit of our cells. Consciousness is a mechanism of the brain. Therefore consciousness has been naturally selected for the benefit of our cells. Now we come to the real meat. What is a God? A conscious being that is the creator of the universe. And what I really would like to know is why this God would exist in the first place. I want to know does God have cells? I would like to know if he, she, whatever has cells. What kind of resources that the consciousness would need to collect? And then I would like to know if they have no need for resources. Why would they need a consciousness in the first place? Do other problems arise? Well I would like to know the medium that God is actually using the information processing or the thinking that's going done. I would like to know the sensory data by which God is actually collecting. God does have different sensors or things like that, heat, touch. And I want to know where all these memories actually being stored. They have to be stored somewhere. So I would like to know where we can actually peek inside and find the memories. Some final questions. I would like to know how someone can exist outside of time and space. And I'd also like to know how something can be not natural because to me, supernatural is kind of a PR term. It's like a bunch of people sat in a room and it's like, it's natural plus. What does that mean? And then I would also like to know does this being merely exist to create us because that seems to be the only explanation. In conclusion, I believe theistic claims for consciousness have not been proven. The mechanism deals with resource gathering for our bodies. Without a body, God has no reason to exist. Thank you. Yeah, if I can't go next, I would like to introduce myself. Hold on one second. We're just going to see if I can pull Amy out of. Once you're, if you're able to unshare then Amy, thanks so much. We appreciate that opening statement. And then we will jump back into the discussion boxes. So excellent. Thanks so much, Amy. And thanks to your patients as well with my mistake on the tech. And thanks so much, CeCe. We are thrilled to have you as well as Sterling. So CeCe, absolutely, the floor is yours. Can I just ask a quick question? We're quick before Canadian Catholic goes. Are we in our opening statements? We're not responsible for rebutting the claims they made in their opening statements. Yeah, we're just making opening statements. Correct. OK, so making sure. That's all. You bet. First of all, I want to thank James for having me and for having my links in the description. You can check out our official Discord channel and please join and debate us. And James, joining James's and Jump's Discord servers, obviously, too. I can confirm both of them are very fun. Now, as for James's, sorry, Tom's assertions, I just want to say one thing. And one thing that was really interesting is that James says there is no argument for God's existence. And I would like to ask Tom. Sorry, Tom says I kind of keep mixing up the two. Tom says there is no evidence at all for God's existence. My question is, if he hasn't heard all the arguments for God's existence, how could he even make such a conclusion? This is like the basic problem. And I'm surprised that someone with his level of experience would make such an amateur mistake. OK, now, as for Amy, Amy made some interesting arguments that I think I will leave to Sterling to address that one. Take all the floor away in this opening statement. I just want to address one thing that we can show through various thought experiments, like, for example, the Mary's room experiment, that consciousness is not all physical. So if Amy is asserting that consciousness is all physical, all OK, so made up of all physical facts, then it is up to her to show how this is tenable in light of what we know. So with this brief introduction, I'm just going to give the floor over to Sterling. Awesome. OK. Well, I'd like to thank Tom for joining us. I'd like to thank Amy for joining us at Canadian Catholic as well. I really appreciate having dialogue with all kinds of different world views. You know, it's always fun to kind of bounce ideas off each other. So I hope that we have a good time. Like James said, I'm not going to be responding directly to their claims yet. I mean, because we will obviously, after the opening statements, get into the weeds and the kind of, you know, the PowerPoint and the consciousness debate thing. My argument is going to be based on the argument from reason. I mean, the argument for reason, I apologize. That's something else. The argument for motion. And this basically relies on understanding the natures of things, also in philosophy of, philosophy of nature and philosophy of science. Basically, I'm going to argue that that's the best, the best explanation for phenomena, for scientific phenomena, for one. And we can go into that. We can talk about some of the premises. I'll just present the syllogism really quick, and then we can kind of go into each individual one. I won't do that all here since we only have five minutes, but we can talk about them in the course of the debate. So my first, the premise one is some things are in motion. And like I said, we can define those terms later in the debate. My premise two is that if some things are in motion, then they're put in motion by something else. Conclusion A, that therefore some things are put in motion by something else. Premise one B, if they're put in motion by something A, then it either has to go to infinity, or it's necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other F. Premise two B, they're put in motion by another A, which conclusion B would be, therefore either this goes on to infinity I, or it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other. I can provide the symbolic logic to show this follows, by the way. Either then premise one C, either this goes on to infinity, which is derived from the first syllogism, or is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other, or second syllogism rather, but this cannot go on to infinity, premise two C, conclusion therefore is necessary to arrive at a first mover. And so just to be clear here, and again, we're gonna go through all this, we're gonna explain it, or I'm gonna explain it, at least in defend the premises, and make some definitions and things like that in the course of our debate. But what I'm gonna be arguing for is just that there is a God, something that started the universe that has certain properties that started the universe, that's sufficient for me to call it a God. I mean, you might say that, okay, well, and we'll go into what that means, what a first mover entails. We can talk about that. But that's gonna be my argument. I'd like to thank everybody again, and hopefully we can have a good discussion. You bet, thanks so much. And we will go into the open discussion section. Very excited folks, as mentioned, if you have a question fired into the old live chat, and then do wanna let you know, the person who donated Colorado Biker Prepper, we appreciate the camera we're using right now was donated from Colorado Biker Prepper, and who by the way, Sterling, just like you and I is from Colorado. So he says howdy, and we'll go into the open discussion section. So thanks so much. The floor is all yours, whoever'd like to go first. Yeah, we'll go first. So to respond to Catholic, who has his name now, he said that, how do I know, since I haven't heard all of the possible arguments for God, that there are no arguments for evidence for God? Well, evidence is epistemic. You have to actually be in a mind to convince a belief that it actually exists. And since we know that apologists have been arguing this for 3,000 years and they've gotten nowhere, all the arguments are crap. It's pretty reasonable to conclude they're not just hiding one under the bed somewhere that's actually really good and excellent, it just hasn't been discovered yet. So it's reasonably inductive to conclude, there is none. That's a pretty good reason to address Sterling's argument from motion. Yeah, there has to be a first mover. I can grant that doesn't have to be a God. No mind required of that at all in any sense. So that's not evidence for God. What else was there? Oh, the Mary's room experiment. Pretty much the consensus by all experts in the field of neuroscience and cognitive science shows that no, it's all physical. Like there's no one accepts the philosophical arguments that doesn't mean anything. Those are just truly what we can imagine and our ability to imagine things tells us nothing about ontology. So no one in the fields of cognitive science or neuroscience actually care about Mary's room thought experiment. It tells them nothing, it gives them nothing. It's not worth any credence at all and neither are any of the other thought experiments. The consensus in all of the academic fields is that the mind and consciousness is purely physical because that's all the evidence we have indicates that. All right, I'm done. I'd also add to that if you're looking for a non-physical element, it would be possibly something like the energy the neurons are sending, but it's energy we can define that we can measure that you can see it light up on an MRI. Yeah, if I can go ahead, first of all, I would like to note that Tom has made another fallacy which is the argument from authority. Well, he has not shown which authority is denied the fact that there are mental facts, for example, that exist, and the mind is all physical. For example, I imagine you wouldn't subscribe to Daniel Dennett's idea where all basically robots in the world exist or at least consciousness is in the loop. I have an answer to that. Yes, please go ahead. Oh, we are, we have a robotic layer or I would say a layer that deals with the information processing, the sensory processing, but we have what I would say two additional layers. I would say we have a sentience, which I define as long-term memory and a system of feelings that we can use. That's how we deal with the Pavlov's experiment. And then I would say there's one more layer on top of that which is a self-awareness layer is the ability to use metadata to then reflect and make new decisions. And the classic eyes-ansel I do for that is you were fine with breathing until I told you that you can control your breathing. And then all of a sudden your body starts to take control of it. That is what I define as self-awareness and the tests I would use to define that is the mirror test. All right, one sec, let me respond to his argument from authority part. No, that isn't an argument from authority fallacy. An argument from authority fallacy is only using a false authority. If you're actually using a real authority, it's not a fallacy. So the ad vericindium fallacy on Stanford encyclopedia philosophy for logical fallacies, you can just Google it. It's only a fallacy if you're using a false authority. My authority in this case, where I quote from Julian Mussolino, cognitive scientist, most in fact, the overwhelming majority of people in my line of work are what's called materialists or physicalists. So nope, not an argument from authority. It is supported by actual experts in the field. In fact, the majority of them. Okay, that's it, done. I mean, but that, okay. So but we're evaluating the philosophical ontology of consciousness. We're not evaluating the scientific, the scientific opinion of it. So the, and a, something that would be a valid authority would be like a percentage of philosophers that are physicalists versus emergentists versus, and that's kind of the point I was gonna go with addressing Amy on. The thing is, is that this kind of like basic appeal to science, to try to justify the existence of consciousness on a purely physical level. Ignores, not just a phenomena. Well, just not just a phenomena, but it ignores, for example, you talked a little bit about how reason, has evolved to try to benefit us as a competitive plants and fungi. But the problem is that- I'd say consciousness. Oh, sorry, consciousness, I apologize. That was a misstep. But my point is that consciousness, that if you like read somebody like Alvin Plantinga, there's not really any reason to think that consciousness would favor truth. It would only really favor survivability, things that would lead to us. I mean, it doesn't matter- I'm sure we do favor truth. Yeah. Well, I mean, it does, since like, yeah, exactly. Well, that's kind of the point. I mean, but then, and then there's the other problem that if all my thoughts are ultimately atoms and like just molecules, I really have no reason to think those things would lead me to our truth. And therefore I have no real reason to postulate my brain is made of atoms. Like, if ultimately they are just like meaningless particles that have no intentionality. No- I would take the word meaningless out, just call them particles. Well, particles without- Well, they don't have any reason or meaning. Of course they have meaning. Unless you think- We can actually say what the meanings are and how they interact. But what is that intentionality? Maybe you can expand on that. Okay, okay, fine. Can you just come directly? Do you have any argument for why disembodied minds cannot exist? Is there any argument? Because you made- I know, they could. Yes, because consciousness is a mechanism of the brain. It actually- How do you know that? How do you know that? Because- Are you familiar with hard problem of consciousness? Yes, I don't believe it. Well, I think that we probably should try to do that. That's a argument for incredulity. Hold on, one second. That's a personal- I believe I've solved the mind-bopping problem. Would you like me to answer it? I think the original question from Canadian Catholic was, I don't know what it was, but I think Amy was in the process. Yes, so my original question was, do you have an argument, specifically Tom, but yeah, Amy would be appreciated too, for why a disembodied mind cannot exist. What is an argument specific? All mechanisms of our body have been naturally selected. Consciousness is a mechanism of the body. Therefore, consciousness has been naturally selected for the better of our body. Can you, Catholic, just have to let- If you'd like to point out where in the syllogism is wrong, I'll take it. Also, I wanted to bring up Zeno's Polydox, because that's the whole motion thing, right? You understand that assertions are easy. How do you- An assertion, it's an argument. Is this physical? If you can point out which part of the premises- You're preaching something that has to be shown. Okay, hold on. I appreciate that you guys, everybody has spirit, which is great. We appreciate your passion. But we do just have to be sure that we'll do one question at a time and we'll let Amy or whoever it is have a chance to respond. So I think what the last question was from Canadian Catholic, what was the last question you had asked? Yeah, the last- Are there any arguments that- Yeah, so the argument for why a disembodied mind cannot exist. What is the argument? I would like to know why a disembodied head would exist. Like, what is the reason? Why does God exist? The question is, has there been an argument provided from Tom? Because Tom says- Yes. Well, I don't know about- The first cause, but he's not willing to grant a disembodied mind. I want to hear an argument for why this is impossible because if it is not, then this becomes automatically more possible given what has been from this first cause. But would you admit that a disembodied brain makes no sense? I didn't say a disembodied brain. A disembodied- Well, okay. So the mind, I consider the operating system by assertions are easy, proofs are hard. You're simply asserting something without providing a single argument or engaging with what we have provided. Would you be able to- You've clearly resorted your position. You're simply reserving what you already said. Will you at least grant me that syllogism has been naturally selected? Why are you changing the topic? That's a red herring. We are talking about mental fact. We should have not- There's no reason for a disembodied brain to exist. You would actually have to prove- A disembodied brain can exist. Disembodied brain is a contradiction. We're talking about a disembodied- I agree. That's why a God doesn't exist. Okay. So he did ask me. So let me try to answer the question. So no, there's no logical contradiction with a non-physical mind. That's definitely possible. But there's no reason to believe it. Inductively, we only have evidence for any physical mind or a mind that is from a brain. Inductively, we can rule that out as having no basis at all. It's just kind of a fairy tale that we've made up like leprechauns. And so that's a good enough reason to exclude the possibility. And there's no actual reason to think it could do anything. Only natural explanation. Just to clarify before I open, come on. One second, I wanted to also respond to what Sterling said. Because Sterling and I could have just been sitting back here just listening. So Sterling said that the argument from authority would be from philosophers. No philosophers get no say in this. So all philosophers are only post-doc explaining what we already know. Science takes authority over science in pretty much everything because science is the confirmed methods we have to differentiate what's imaginary and what's real. Philosophy is just post-doc in that respect. So science always takes authority in those respects. Concerning Plantinga, Plantinga's theory of evolutionary truth is pretty essentially debunked. It's rejected in every field mostly by philosophers especially. There have been a number of rebuttals showing that no actually it can select for truth in numerous ways. And even if we do accept that your premise that philosophers are the authority if we look at the Phil Surveys paper the authorities in philosophy agree with my position they are mostly naturalists and physicalists also. Tom, I'm gonna cede the floor to Sterling in a second. But just for everyone to confirm you admit that you have no argument against the existence embodied mind. You're not saying it's impossible. You're not saying there is a contradiction. You're saying it's a perfectly viable thing. You're not saying that there is any contradiction within. Well, there are definitely arguments against them but it's not a logical contradiction. Okay, that's what I want you to concede. Okay, thank you. Now I'm ceding the floor. Okay, so for one, I don't think it is sufficient. Well, okay. So obviously it depends on your perspective of how you approach philosophy. But ultimately if philosophers the point of philosophy is to start at basic ontology then they would be the, and that's at least my position. My position is that philosophers start at ontology. And if they start at ontology like Pythagoras what is the most important question? What is being? If you start at that basic point then they are the authority on what is, or at least in terms of arguments about ontology. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about what exists. That's a field of philosophy. Now you do say that the field papers say that the majority of them are physicalists and the majority of them are naturalists. One, there's a slight problem with that. It's true that majority of them are physicalists but there are so many different forms of physicalism and there's different types of ways you can define physicalism. There's emergentism. You got somebody like Churchland in California who believes that essentially what the position contra-plating a contra reason that there really isn't reasons for things they're just brain states. So it's a much more complex field. I mean, you could argue that somebody like Searle's position is property dualism, for example. But okay, let's just keep going into the whole because I wanted to respond to a little bit to Amy a little bit. I don't claim that God is a consciousness. So the argument doesn't really apply to me. If you look at the fourth later in counsel, nulun discrimin inter creatorem et creaturas es maior, es meus. Ergo, there's nothing bigger than the difference between creation and creator. And so my argument from the Catholic perspective is that you don't have to take God as a consciousness. He only has to be the thing, a couple of things. He only has to be the thing that started the universe one and something that's extremely powerful and worthy of worship. Now, and again, so a consciousness is something that exists, I would agree, that consciousness exists inside a brain. But there are different kinds of properties that we attribute to God analogically that are not univocally applicable. Can I also mention that in our brain, there is not a single physical function that we perform, a single physical function that we could not also perform without consciousness? Like, how about our heartbeat? There has been no engagement with the fact that there are mental facts. For example, experience of color. This is a mental fact. What is the engagement from the other side with its argumentations? There is none, there is just reassertion and there are shocking mistakes. Disembodied brain mixed up with disembodied mind. We're just saying these are amateur mistakes and I'm not trying to be insulting or throw anyone under the bus. Can I just ask, you say you don't believe it's a consciousness, are you a Christian? I am a Catholic. I don't remember saying Catholic. Well, I know Canadian Catholic is. I wanted to try to understand that too. When you say God isn't a consciousness, is there a difference between your view and say pantheism where there's just, everything is divine, just the universe, no mind at all? I think pantheism is a little vague. So I would equate it closer to panemtheism in the sense that the whole world is, okay, so ultimately, as a Thomas, you believe that God wills the universe into existence. But if God is being subsistence in of itself and holds the universe together, then you have to think of God as beyond that. It's, like I said, Ipsum's subsistence essay. Panemtheism says that God is both the universe and more than the universe. He's outside of space and time. But I'm asking, does God have a mind? Is it? No, not in the way we have a mind. No, certainly not. I'm asking in the way we have a mind. Did it have a son? Is it conscious? Does it have thoughts? Can it, does it, or is it like? It doesn't have thoughts. No, he doesn't have thoughts. Is it more like the cup, or is it more like me? It's not really like either. More like you, I guess. No, no, no, this is just more like. So the cup has- I would guess more like you, but not. It's kind of difficult. So the atheist position is more like the cup and the theist position is more like a person, right? But he's not a person. That's a part of self. It doesn't matter again, this is just comparatively. The atheist position is more like a cup and the theist position is that it's more like a person. I'm not, and I'm trying not to interrupt you to, like, you know, just polite, but, and also trying not to step on anybody's toes. But I don't think that that's necessarily the case because, okay, so I don't know how familiar you are with Thomism. Pretty familiar. Okay, so then you're familiar with like aprophotism or aprophagicism, like in terms of theology, like that we have to, that we can't really say too much positive about God. We can say what he's not. And he's not like people in almost every way. There's only like- I agree, but as far as I know, most Thomists do think he has a mind and is conscious. No, I would agree. I would agree. I would agree. They agree that those terms can't necessarily apply to God. They're not sufficient to describe God. They're only analogous in some sense, but they wouldn't say that- They're analogous, but they're only analogous. Like, so for example, okay, I'll just try to explain like a basic level and just cause I think it's kind of a red herring to the whole argument, really. And also cause I know that Canadian Catholic really wants to talk about consciousness. Okay, so for example, when you say that God has an intellect, right? Yeah. It means that he has understanding. He can, he understands the whole universe, but that only comes from the fact that God is literally being itself. Everything that exists is willed into existence. He doesn't have a mind like we do. He doesn't see something, understand it in, you know, process and things like that. He doesn't have a brain. So he doesn't do that kind of thing. And so- Why does he exist? Yes. Well, so that's part of my argument, right? It's necessary for him to exist based on the argument. It's not like, but all these properties that people put on God are like extra metaphysical kind of like, I don't know, it's feel good stuff. I also want to engage with Tom's argument. I think that what you're saying is not necessarily something that, basically it could be a red herring because we don't have to know the mechanism of action of God's consciousness to believe in it. What we have to do is- Well, that wasn't an argument. I wasn't really asking him. I was like, I want to understand his position. I understand, but I don't need to know the mechanism of action. You have already- I didn't say you did. That there could be a first cause. And you made a concession that there is nothing inherently contradictory about disembodied minds. Now, the third one that I'm waiting for you to make, the third concession is, why do you object to mental facts? What is your response to the fact, for example, the experience of color is a mental fact and not a physical one? And if you can see there's all three, then once again, why aren't you considering this as a serious possibility? You started out saying there is no argument at all for God, look how much you're willing to conceive. You notice why we object to your position. Correct. But there is no evidence for God at all. None of your arguments- That's just repeating. That's not engaging with what we present to you. Sorry. That's the next sentence. That's the next sentence. So there is, I am correct in my original statement, there is no evidence for the existence of God. None of the things you presented are evidence. So my argument against the color analogy, why isn't color like read a mental state is because it's just an unknown. Like we don't, do we know what causes color? No, could it be potentially like idealism? That's not the question. The question was the experience. Stop, stop. So again, any mental states, any experience, any quality experience whether color or shape or anything, could all be idealistic, could be a mental thing, or it could be a physical thing. The fact that we have them tells us nothing. It's the same fallacy that Descartes used when he tried to use, I think before I am to show dualism, it doesn't work. The fact that we have quality experience of redness doesn't tell us what that experience is. Could be idealistic, it could be materialistic, it could be dualistic, tells us nothing. So right now it's just a, here's something we don't know. All of the evidence of everything we've ever discovered is all physical. So what's reasonable to infer is probably gonna be physical. Asserting this new property that we have no evidence for of this mental stuff is just ad hoc. There's no basis for it, but I can just say it's, it's bleh bleh bleh bleh, and then that would be equally as reasonable as concluding that it's its own ontology of stuff. Can I just recap real quick? You're willing to concede that there can be a first cause. You're further willing to concede that this first cause can be responsible for something like the human consciousness and you're willing to concede that there is nothing wrong with this first cause potentially being, there's no logical contradiction with this first cause being a disembodied mind. Correct, there's also no logical contradiction with it being a leprechaun or a unicorn or a magic. That's a total, that's a total retina. No, no, no, no, no. I ceded the validity of the argument for the first cause. That's, wait, I want to respond to that one. So the reason that debunks your entire argument is again, evidence is only that which can differentiate between what's imaginary and what's real. So if I can make all the same concessions and insert an imaginary thing like leprechauns or magical fixes or unicorns, that shows us not evidence because it can't differentiate. What was, just a second, I would like to press you on the Mary's room thing. What is your evidence after the Mary's room? What is your conclusion? Mary's room is nothing. Mary's room is just a philosophical analogy. What is it? What do you object to? Where is the premise wrong? What do you object to? Look at them in detail. You do not even know what it is. At the top of my head, I don't need to. I don't need to. Again, since it's not- So what is your object? What is the problem with it? What is the wrong with premises? I can just say it's not accepted in any scientific field because no one cares. Oh, so you're not even going to be engaging with these arguments? I can. Go ahead. Tell me what it is. I'll be happy to. Okay, so Mary's room. Oh, so you do not know what thought experience is? Well, no, I don't. I don't know. Are you familiar? Oh, that's fine. That's fine. I'm not trying to throw anyone under the post. Are you familiar with the Mary's room thought experiment, Amy? I'm looking at it right now on the internet, but not thoroughly. Okay, so when you look it up, you've made several assertions there. To be fair to Tom John, be fair. He's not the one that brought up the consciousness thing. I'm going to be fair to him. That's my stack. I get it. You brought it up and you do not even know the key objections to it. How like, I mean, I'm not trying to throw the key objections. I was this unprepared. The whole chat would be piling up on me right now. Could you tell us what Mary's room is? I don't think I'm unprepared. This is just ad homes. Could you like tell us what the argument is? Well, the argument basically boils down that there are like experience of color. Mary could know. Oh, I can explain that. That sounds, I can explain color if you like. Just a second. Mary could know every physical fact there is to know about color, but the experience of color will gain her some new insight because the experience itself is something that produces non-physicality. Sorry, I apologize. The experience itself is a non-physical. So like, I mean, I'm sure you've read it up. Either some of you have remembered or maybe you've read it up. So I would like to see the engagement because Tom asserted that everything we know is physical. And I No, I didn't say that. So what I'm happy to address that. So again, Mary's room is exactly like dark matter. If I know every physical fact about what a universe is, I still couldn't tell you anything about dark matter because it's not one of the known physical facts. So Mary's room doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't tell us brains are physical or. So is it your assertive that Mary learns something new when she experiences red after knowing every single fact about the color red? Yes, just like you can experience something new if I like. What new is she learning? What is a new thing she learned? It's conceptual. It's non-physical. It's not. So there you go. You've admitted that mental facts exist. Again, that's not a thing. So Harry Potter, I can teach you about Harry Potter and you've learned a new thing and it's not a physical thing because no physical things in the universe are going to tell you about. How is that not a red herring? Because the exact same thing. It's like the rules of chess. I could tell you all of the physical facts about the rules of chess and chessboard or I can tell you all of the material facts and all of the particles I can give you all the positions. It will never give you the rules of chess. To give you the rules of chess, I have to tell you because those are not things that are themselves physical in that sense. They are conceptual. So the argument is like the rules of chess. It is a subjective thing contingent on how the brain works. So just seeing the brain isn't going to tell you what it looks like just like seeing the chessboard isn't going to tell you what the rules of chess are. Is it your assertion that healthy and brain perceive the color red in a different way? Potentially. So I don't believe that colors are subjective. In fact, I've struggled to find anything subjective in the human brain. Even when we talk about subjective, say we were to take, I have an apple. How does it taste to eat that apple? Well, if we really wanted to, we could go through all of the facts. We could say, well, how much water did the apple have? Did it have good sunlight? Was it picked well? How long until he ate the apple? Does he have genes that respond well to an apple? And does he have memories of good experiences with apples? And I feel like we could sit there and take every single point and brush away the subjectivity into objectively why someone likes apples. In the same respect, the color red is a frequency. And it's your brain and your eyes best ability to decipher that code. Now you could say I could take that wavelength and I could put it into a hex code into a digital representation. And you could ask, what does it mean for a computer to feel whatever the hex code is for red? But you ask, what does a human feel for red? Well, it's our body's organs best trying to translate that data into usefulness as best as it can. And the any type of subjectivity that I could see with weakened is because humans aren't perfect machines. And so you're going to get people who have trouble with their brains deciphering red. That's not subjective. That is the brain doing its best job trying to get you that information. I'm just going to say a sentence and I'm going to just say briefly because I'm sorry, Tom, I've been interrupting you. I do apologize for that because, you know, I've been cutting you over and I didn't mean it. Sometimes it did. But let me try to recap something. Mr. Jump has conceded that given that Mary knows. I haven't conceded anything. These are, these are literally the things that are on the first videos on my YouTube channel. We already know these. Sure, I apologize. So Mr. Jump has at least said, don't like that word that Mary knows every single fact and in thought experience, she knows every single fact, including how brain subjectively interprets things, what wavelengths and there is something mental. This is what we call mental facts that she learns and new information that comes in with the experience of co-read. So now the question comes in again. If Mr. Jump is willing to concede that there is a first cause, even for the sake of argument, I'm not even saying that, you know, then he's willing to concede that this first cause factually produced parts of the universe that are conscious. Okay, that's experience consciousness. Yes. There is a possibility and even probability of mental facts. What is against the idea that this first cause is a disembodied mind? What is the argument against this? I haven't seen any isn't an argument against this. I do not see how our position or at least worse hasn't at least doesn't gain an advantage. So that's a burden of proof fallacy. I don't need to present an argument against it at all. You need to present evidence for it. So again, the same thing applies to leprechauns and unicorns and magic pixies. Is it possible that the first cause is a leprechaun or unicorn and magic pixie? Yeah, yeah it is. There's not a logical contradiction there. But if someone's supporting the leprechaun hypothesis, right now it has zero evidence. The fact it's possible isn't evidence. They would actually have to show that this has a more or is not an imaginary alternative. It's not just a made up possibility, it's a real one. That's the difference. That's why there's no evidence for a God because it's just like magic pixies or leprechauns. You don't have a way to differentiate. Is it real? What do you know that it's a magic? I just kind of want to point out that I'm the only one who's offering arguments for the existence of God right now. I know, right? We're talking about we're in the mud with consciousness, but... Oh yeah, you haven't responded to my point yet that you... Sorry, I was kind of waiting for them to, you know, get through what they wanted to talk about. Apologies, apologies, I made you worry. No worries, I mean, can you just reiterate the minor points? I forgot what you had said. Yeah, my rebuttal to your point was that there's no need for a mind. Like when atheists and theists in contemporary scholarship have a debate, they're debating, they agree there is some fundamental nature to reality. The atheists think there is no mind there. There is no non-physical consciousness that exists. The theists thinks there is a consciousness that exists at the fundamental nature. So I don't know what your position is on that exactly, because I mean, most homeless, if I've asked them this exact same question, is God more like me or is God more like the cup? They always say God's more like me. They do agree it's a consciousness in some big analogous sense. So that's the debate between atheists and theists. Atheists say, nope, it's not that. Theists say it is that. And as far as we can tell, there's no reason that it would need to be a consciousness, nothing that a consciousness can explain that a non-consciousness couldn't. Therefore, the first mover may be conscious, but there's no reason to think that it could be not. Right, okay, okay, okay, okay. Now I understand what you were saying. Good, cause sorry, it was mixed up in a lot of different things. I was a little confused. So let me just address that kind of, let me just address that on layers. So one, I don't think that, I think consciousness is a really ambiguous thing for one. I think it involves a lot of different things, sensation, intellects, will. I think it, there's a lot of just observation. There's a lot of things that when we say consciousness, we're really talking about human processes. And I don't think that the debate between atheists and theists is about, I'll just say that I don't think it is about whether the fundamental nature of reality is a consciousness. I think that, and I'm representing Tom as I'm here. And I think not all Tom, it's not all scholastics would agree with this, but a lot of them would. What we can say about God is very limited, but we can say he's pure act. Now, that doesn't, he doesn't have consciousness because he's not a brain. Consciousness is something that comes from brains and animals and things like that. But you would have, for example, if he's pure act, we can draw other conclusions about it. He would understand everything. So this is kind of why I wanted to dive a little bit into the argument earlier, kind of go through. I don't know how much, James, can you just tell me how much time we have until this is over? Oh God, please do not just go into the Thomistic definitions upon definitions. I know, it's gonna be fun, right? I'd say maybe 20 more minutes of open discussion. Just, can we skip to the end? Where's the argument part? Because you haven't gotten there. Well, you know, I presented the syllogism in the beginning. And then if we can break it down, like it can go through it, like, you know, so that we can talk about the argument. Like, but I'm not gonna go into the definitions upon definitions because you've conceded to a lot of the argument. We're just gonna talk about what- I can grant your entire argument in the introduction, but it doesn't indicate a God. So when Atheist talks about a God, I mean, some kind of consciousness, it doesn't matter if you like that word or not. So why would the Atheist be wrong? You need to present that. That's your premise. So my set is that the pure act. When I say if there's something that's pure act that has implications, right? I mean, I think we can agree on that. Something that has no change. So what would it mean to not change, for example? Well, change is again the subjective metric that we made up in our heads. It isn't necessarily an ontological thing, kind of like time. Well then you couldn't grant the argument because the premise one, A would be wrong. Nothing would really be in motion, you see what I'm saying? Because everything would be not motion. That's again wrong. It's assuming that change is somehow an ontological fact that applies to the world and isn't just a made up category that we have. It's too abstract. It doesn't mean anything. It's kind of like time. We thought time- Well, but then you can't really grant the first one if it doesn't really exist. I can. You can have motion without change. It's totally possible. Okay. Well, that's what I'm talking about though. Motion basically is change. It's going from potential to actuality. No, no, no. Change is an abstract concept that we apply to things. It isn't a non-tology. So we can have motion without change. No problem. How do you have motion without change? And Sterling, would you agree that most of Zeno's paradoxes have at least mathematicians claim have been solved by calculus? I don't really see what the argument is there. Sure. But in, did you know that? Because they can work in the affidities and they, they can. Well, the point actually, so interesting that you say that and I'm not trying to interrupt you. I love your accent by the way. It's really nice. But, okay. So actually Aristotle, you know, after going a little bit history, he developed the idea of potentiality and actually dissolves Zeno's paradox and to solve the Parmidian paradigm of change actually. So the, if, while there is potentially an infinite number of steps between the first and the, and the, for example, the tortoise and the Spartan of their racing or whatever it is, there's an actual limited amount of space. So even though that you could potentially cut it up into however many, you know, however many parts, there's only an actual amount of space. Even though there's a potential infinite amount of steps, right? So I mean, that would only support my argument of anything. All right, well, it's not even support. It's kind of like a tangent. You do get there. You can say it takes infinite that it could go on endlessly, but yet how long does it take to walk 10 feet? That's the minute. Yeah, an actual, an actual, yeah, an actual amount. And that's right. I'm still waiting for the argument. So Aristotle did invent potential and actual infinites if he believed in a past infinite. So he believed that the infinite past just went on forever, but it was just a potential of it. So, but I'm still, let me see if I can skip all the explanation and try and give you an argument. You believe that act requires some kind of will-based decision, right? Oh yeah. Or it did, well, decision, but yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure I'm just gonna try and get it over with. Yeah, it has to be willed. Yeah, the universe has to be willed into existence. There have to have been a point where there was nothing and then there was something. In order to do that, you have to have a will. Well, no, so that's the first part is that there can't be a nothing because the will has to exist for there to go from nothing to something. So there can't be a- Well, there would just be no change though. It would be stasis. That's fine. But you can have that with quantum mechanics. So anything a will can do, quantum mechanics can do. But isn't a will something we find in high level agencies? Like we don't even find it in most of life. Like the vast majority of life, the single-celled organisms, fungi, plants, they have no, as far as we could tell, no will. So most of the universe, including most of life, doesn't have will. It's for seemingly mammals and birds to make these sort of self-awareness or animals. I shouldn't say mammals and birds, animals. So why would a God have will? Okay, so let's break that down. So the, are you familiar with Aristotle's Four Causes? Maybe. So the efficient cause, material cause, the formal cause and the final cause. I believe this is what Thomas Aquinas borrowed from. Yeah, a lot of them did. A lot of people do. The fourth, so we do see will in nature. We see things driving toward ends. So for example, when we see, like you can see it in a lot of different ways. I mean, like mainly in the like the laws of physics and way things that have natures behave. And that's kind of like what I wanted to lead into in the beginning. Well, actually, I think that the concept of laws is really problematic unless you have nature. If you have like an essentialist nature of objects. Oh, I believe in nature. Well, that's what I'm saying. If you have, if you believe that things operate in certain ways, then they have to have an internal force driving them toward that. Their own form as it were, like whatever makes them what they are. And this is kind of what I wanted to touch on when we, well, cause with, so with Tom grads my whole argument, it's kind of hard to like, you know, go into the details and say, okay, this is why I believe this. Now, so that's kind of what we're diving into here a bit. So one of the reasons why you would believe in real changes if you wanted to believe in science, for example. I believe in science. Well, that's good. I believe in science too, to some extent. But the problem, if you haven't noticed that the problem with science is that you have this kind of, this postulated entity of scientific laws that are kind of just mysterious, they just exist based on our models of reality that we just extrapolate these figures and things like that. But they're kind of, but they're not really explained to what they actually are, where they even come from. When we can talk about like the, I don't, I should go absolutes. Oh, we can talk about, yeah, we're getting there, right? Yeah, so again, I can just preempt your argument and say, yes, there does have to be some kind of nature to reality, but that nature doesn't have to come from mind. Will of any kind, so yes. Well, that's, but this actually leads into my argument, right? So that we have, so that's what grants the whole idea of potentiality and actuality as real metaphysical principles of the universe. Well, I can grant those two and just say actuality doesn't have a will. So you just granted it, but that means that God that, or whatever the first mover has to be pure act, because if I can grant that, I can grant that a will. And I can say it's not a will. Okay. I don't know that I could. I don't accept that ontology, but for the sake of argument, I can grant all of the Thomistic ontology and just say pure act doesn't have a will and you get rid of the theism entirely. But how would, okay, so how do you get from stasis to a universe without a will? Quantum mechanics. Well, no, because there wouldn't be any quantum mechanics. There would be literally, there would just be the stasis. No, quantum mechanics. There would just literally be the stasis. No, quantum mechanics can exist outside of space and time in the exact same way that pure acts than Thomism can do. What would it mean? Well, sorry, are you equating pure act with quantum mechanics then? No, I'm saying that quantum mechanics can do. Because those are having compatible properties. No, quantum mechanics can do anything pure act can do. So anything that the pure act, the idea- Don't you think that that's kind of vague? I mean, let's expand upon that. I still don't know what act is. All of totemism is extremely vague. But it's pretty bad. But so yeah, anything that you can explain with pure act as a will, you can explain with pure act as a quantum mechanical process. Because we do have quantum mechanics that can exist outside of space and time and can exist in that kind of statistical stacy thing and do stuff. No, no problem. Can you explain that? Not exactly. It's Amplituhedron, Neymar, Carni, Hamad or Emergent Space Time by Sean Carroll. They can explain it. See, that's not fair. You can't bring an argument where I have to read a book unless you're gonna explain it. And you can explain it to me. Excuse me, excuse me, Mr. Thomas. No, I would have explained the whole thing. I have it all written down here if you want me to go into the degrading. So the thing is that I can bring in science. Science actually supersedes any kind of philosophical argument. Even if I can't explain it. I don't think so. Because science has some philosophical assumptions. As tons of philosophical assumptions. Sure it does, but science can actually work. No, it's ontologically prior. Philosophy is ontologically prior to science. It doesn't matter which is prior because there's a difference between pure philosophy and science. Science can actually demonstrate the difference between imaginary and real philosophy can't. Well, then you can't demonstrate that science is a valid form of reasoning. No, you can't, because science isn't just philosophy. Science is philosophy plus empiricism. Whereas philosophy on its own can't. What if you don't believe in empiricism? Then you don't have theories, or airplanes, or buildings. You can believe, but my point is you can believe in science and not believe in empiricism. So it's not a necessary point. You're right, I'm not saying empiricism as the philosophy. I mean science is philosophy plus empirical data. So it's those two concepts. Okay, so empirical data. Yeah. Okay. I disagree. I mean, it's not really. There is so much philosophical baggage upon science. One thing being scientific laws would be the philosophical baggage or like scientific realism. No, no, the laws are all empirical. Well, okay, so for example, you could be, no, let me unpack that for a second. You could be a fictionalist about science, for example. Right? And then you wouldn't, the empirical data wouldn't really mean anything. It would just happen to work. So what I'm saying is that science is laden with these philosophical assumptions that you have to work through philosophy. No, no, no, no, I agree, I agree. That's not a problem. So science is the philosophy, philosophical stuff plus the empirical data and how you interpret that, there's lots of different ways to interpret that. But pure philosophy on its own without that empirical data is just junk because it can go anywhere. It doesn't have a way to differentiate. So the philosophy plus is good. How do you conclude that it's reasoning about like what's true about science would even be valid? So it's the science plus the empirical data. That's good. Or philosophy plus the empirical data, that's good. Philosophy on its own is pointless. It's just- What would be the point of it by itself though? No, like how would you, how would you even get there? Like how would you get to the point where you, because you're saying that you're adding empirical data to the philosophy. But how do you even get to the point where you have this kind of reasonable starting point of philosophy to start your science? They're just the basic principles, I mean. Yeah, I imagine a unicorn, I don't see a unicorn in front of me. I need some way to differentiate between these two categories, that's how. Right, so like we're gonna talk about an ontology. So then we're gonna go into ontology. What do you mean to imagine something? Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. You get into these questions. No, no, no, no, no. That doesn't say anything about ontology. I can't explain that. I would love to. Maybe what I'm seeing could just be imaginary. Maybe this is all part of my head and I'm a solve system. What I'm seeing is just a deeper level of my imagination. That's completely compatible with science. It doesn't care. All the science is asking is, I imagine a unicorn, I don't see a unicorn. These are two different things. We need to figure out what's the difference between them or somewhere to differentiate. Doesn't tell us that ontology is purely epistemic. There's some difference between that and that. We need to have a meeting and we need to discuss this further. Cause I really want to, I don't want to just cut off Amy too much, that's all. But you have an idea of what my response is going to be, right? I mean, come on. I'm not sure. I can think about 12 different responses at this point. Which one would you go with? My response, I want to let Amy talk too, though. I always feel like I'm over talking, you guys. Okay. Do you want to jump in or do you want me just to keep on? I wanted to ask both you and Canadian Catholic, there is at least within Einstein's equations, there is the ability to have repulsive gravity. And there is the hypothesis that whatever it is that started the inflation event it was because of a repulsive event that is still happening right now. And that's why we see inflation because we have a repulsive gravity event and that could have been the big bang. So for example, we could just have a universe that expands and contracts, expands and contracts and didn't have a beginning. Is that kind of your argument? Yeah, I'm not sure where even it would be nested if you want to say in a multiverse or other things. But I do know within Einstein's equations the possibility for repulsive gravity is there. It's rare, it's not what you normally see, but it is possible. It's actually Alan Goose inflation theory to be specific. I wish I was that familiar with physics. Physics isn't my strongest one either. So James, what time do we have the Q and A? Because I'm kind of not caught up on the schedule. I'm sorry, I kind of missed out on that, I apologize. Oh, I was not going to respond to Amy or I was just... Oh, no, sorry, sorry. I was just... No, no, no, it's fine. I just thought, you were asking me too. I didn't... Apologies, apologies. I know Catholics believe in the big bang or at least most of them do. Yeah, wait. So I guess you could just say, well, there's a couple of different ideas. Even if the universe was eternal, which I mean, that would still make my argument would still require a first mover. Like it would still need something to start the change in the very beginning. Even if there was no beginning would still require. That's actually kind of Aquinas' idea, right? Because he says that even if Aristotle was right and there is no beginning of the universe, there has to be something which has the change here and now continuing. And that has to do with the essential series of causes. And Tom, I'm sure is very familiar with that as well. But the... So that would be my response. Also, you do have people who say that the universe would run out of energy if it had been around forever. Because so eventually we're gonna go into heat death because there won't be any more energy in the universe. And if that were the case, then we would already, if the universe was actually eternal, then we would already be out of energy at this point. There would be, we would be in heat death because there's an infinite time past if you think about it. So if there's an infinite time past, there's an infinite amount of time to reach heat death. And James, I'm sorry for interrupting you, you know, answer Canadian Catholic's question. You know, it's okay. I would say we probably are to the point where we might kind of draw together the threads from tonight's debate. So in other words, going into, I think Sterling got that reference. So we will kind of give you guys a few minutes. Everybody, if you wanna take a little bit of time to kind of just summarize, maybe we go, I think it would just because otherwise we're gonna have a bunch more rebuttals. If we go from either left to right or right to left, it might be better to go right to left since we had the atheist start on the watch screen. So for me, that would be the two theists going first followed by the two atheists. And if you guys, if anybody has a strong preference, we can go either way. But given that the atheists started, we can go in the reverse direction this time. Okay, well, yeah, let's like Canadian Catholic go first and then, yeah, I think that's fine, right, Tom and Amy. I think that- Yeah, so to summarize myself, to conclude myself, I do think that Tom and Amy obviously came prepared and I wanna first of all apologize for cutting them off. I kind of, probably when the debate starts, you have, there's maybe nerves or something, settle down more towards the end. And they were prepared. But ultimately, I do think that our side was able to get more concessions than we had hoped for. At least in my humble opinion, I'm not saying that this is a fact. I'm just saying that I thought that, I mean, the idea that there is first cause and this first cause is responsible for what we perceive as the universe. And then we have the mental facts and that the consciousness could include mental facts and the shocking concession, which I didn't expect, that there is nothing wrong with the concept of disembodied mind. There is no logical contradiction. And I've debated several people on this topic. Notably, I've discussed, I'm not debated. People like, for example, Jack Engstrich who actually present arguments arguing, no, this is not co-parent. And to hear the concession that, yeah, I mean, disembodied minds are co-parent. I thought that was a huge concession, but ultimately, I enjoyed the debate. So thank you, James, of course, and Sterling, a brilliant partner, and Tom and Amy were very well prepared. Please make sure to check out our links, everyone's, Tom's, James's, and our official Discord too, you can see that. Thanks once again, James. You were a wonderful moderator. Thanks so much. Appreciate that, CC. My pleasure. And we'll kick it over to Sterling. So Sterling, the floor is all yours. Okay, I was muted. Sorry about that. So obviously this debate ended up going in two directions. It kind of made it hard to focus on one issue. I, Amy and Canadian Catholic, want to kind of talk about consciousness more, which is fine. And me and Tom were kind of more, well, Tom, you engaged with the consciousness debate as well. And I kind of was just like, I want to talk about God, because that's what we were talking about. I would actually be, and I offer this to Amy and I offer this to Tom, that I would rather debate you guys individually anytime, that Canadian Catholic was a great partner, just that I think that our approaches to debating are different. I would love to debate either on consciousness or on God's existence with Tom, it doesn't really matter. I don't know if Amy, if you have a channel, but I'd love to be on there. But yeah, so I thought that it went really well. I wish that we had, I wish we could have fleshed out the argument more, like I actually talked about what pure act means and talked about what kind of implications were there. I feel like we just kind of got into, it's because I was trying to be engaged with both sides and trying to play both sides. So I apologize for that, but I'd like to thank Tom and like Amy, I'd like to thank Canadian Catholic for being here. And hopefully we can further this discussion in the future. Thanks so much. We'll switch it over to Tjump or Amy, either one of you who ever wants to go first. Yeah, sure. Oh, Sterling, definitely. Let's set something up sometime because we got like a few months of nothing planned for everyone just off season, so might as well. That's true. So yeah, my position is still that there is no evidence for God at all. I do happen to grant that there's no contradiction with a non-physical mind, that's definitely possible. There's also no contradiction with magical pixie leprechauns. Is that evidence of magical pixie leprechauns? No, the fact that it's possible isn't evidence for something to be evidence. It has to be able to differentiate between what's imaginary and what's real. And as far as I can tell, all of the things presented by both of our atheists and I have presented none of that. I just said, the universe has a beginning, but yes it does, not the God. And there's consciousness, yes there is, not a God. We experience things and we can't explain them. Yes, that's true, not evidence of a God. That was essentially all the arguments I remember. I can't really, not really any evidence for God as far as I could tell. Yeah, thanks for both guys for coming on. Thanks for James for having us. Thanks for Stephen Steen. Stephen Steen for the large donation that he gave. That's great, I really appreciate it. Thanks. You're on the floor, Amy, all yours. Okay, and so I would just like to thank James Sterling and Canadian Catholic, well, it was awesome. T-Jump, you were an awesome partner. Thank you for allowing me to, this was my first debate. It was awesome. In conclusion, I believe that consciousness is a mechanism. It's really what separates us from plants, fungi and single celled bacteria. And I believe when you try to prescribe that to other entities, that it just doesn't make sense. It breaks down and there's no purpose for them to exist. But yeah, it was a fun debate. Thank you very much, Amy. We will jump right into the Q&A folks. So we got a good number of questions. So we're gonna try to fly through this as fast as possible. First up, stupid horror energy. Thanks for your super chat. She says, I'm suing Tom for giving me epilepsy. Yes, Tom is still flashing green on his screen. I remember my first time plugging in an HDMI. Okay, next up. It's actually because there's a storm going on so I can't control it, so I can't do anything about it. Okay, next up, Stephen C. Thanks for your super chat. Who says, stupid horror energy super chats last night. Perfect. She's a nasty, yeah, she got pretty crazy last night. Stephen C. thanks for your super chat. Who says, congrats, CC and Sterling for your objectively easy win over Tom. Oh, Tom. Thank you so much, thank you so much. Okay, it's very nice. I wanna be defeated too, this is fun. Oh, let's see. So Stephen C. in our benevolent troll that hangs out here. Stupid horror energy, thanks for your super chat. Who says, how does Sterling deal with violations of causation such as virtual particle pairs and the Stern-Gerlach experiment? Oh, I don't think that they really are examples of violations of causation. Even if you grant, like, that there are no efficient causes for virtual particles, that they still arise out of the quantum vacuum, which is a thing that has properties, and it's not just nothing, for example. Gotcha. So it's a different, it could even just be like a different type of cause. It could be a formal cause instead of a final cause, for example. Gotcha. Moving forward, Stephen C. Thanks so much for your super chat. Who says, Sterling is a Bernie bro. Are you a Bernie bro? I am not a Bernie bro. I'm not even, I'm not a Trump bro. Gotcha, thanks so much. No, I'm a no bro. You got it. K-024. Thanks for your super chat. Who says, question for the theus. Can God create a rock that He cannot lift? My quick answer will be if I can go first. Sure. That's a logical contradiction. That's like asking, can God not be God? So this is the common misunderstanding of the- Your answer is no. Yeah, yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. My answer is that, yeah. I'm going further than most. I'm saying God cannot create that because that's a misunderstanding of how we understand, or at least have understood, amnipotence. With amnipotence, what we mean usually is the maximal power. But there are things that God cannot do and the Bible is clear about. God cannot stop being God. God cannot be unjust. God cannot lie. These are things that go fundamentally against His nature. So my answer is going to be no. And I'm not saying that this is Sterling's answer. I welcome this agreement. Gotcha. Medieval scholastic, medieval logics. People who study logic proved that that kind of statement is meaningless. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Next up, Super Chat from, let's see. We've got Dwayne Burke. Appreciate it. Good seeing you again. Dwayne says the CIA and Stanford research proved consciousness can separate from the body via astral travel. The documentation is all there on the CIA FOI library. Tom. Very skeptical of that. Yeah, NASA and scientists are gonna be real surprised by this, that they actually discovered that non-physical grains are possible. It's gonna be great. I'm gonna be waiting for that Nobel Prize. It's definitely gonna be awarded in the year that whatever this paper is published for sure. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up, Nathan Foster. Thanks for your Super Chat. Who says Dwayne Burke designed T-Jump's clam chair. It's very nice. T-Burke. I don't know who that is. Dwayne Burke was the last person who gave the Super Chat about the CIA and. Ah, yes. So, very nice. Two birds with one stone. This chair is Dwayne Burke's father, as James would say. That's very nice. I like that. Yes, exactly. Stupid horror energy. Thanks for your Super Chat. She says, are you guys familiar with Boltzmann brains? Yes. I just heard about that the other day. Unfortunately, I have to say no. I have to concede that I'm not familiar with it. A Boltzmann brain is the idea that in certain quantum mechanical things where things can pop into existence, it's possible that there is a universe where just a brain and only the brain has just popped into existence quantum mechanically and it exists on its own, kind of like a solipsistic brain in the universe. That's the idea of a Boltzmann brain and that those would exist. There would be more universes like that than there would be universes that were in life from many like hours or something like that. And the problem with them is that there's no been proved and we haven't been in the universe long enough for that sort of brain to pop out. And we have been in the universe long enough for regular brains to pop in. Gotcha, thanks so much. We got Duncan Atheism in the house. Oh my goodness. Duncan Atheism, we'd love to have you back on. Yes, I want him. I want him. Tom Jump wants his father to, he wants you to come back. So for a good old father-son matchup. So Duncan, if you're there, by the way, it's true. I don't know, Mods, if you guys are, unless he's using hate speech, which I highly doubt, please don't censor Duncan Atheism, even if he's Duncan Atheism. Just kidding, Duncan. Okay, next up, appreciate that. We have Stupid Horror Energy says, hi, Steen, how are ya? Talking to Steven Steen who says, I am not Stupid Horror Energy in his own Super Chat. Thanks for that. Steven Steen says, Stupid Horror Energy, I'm good. I'm just looking at pictures of James. Seriously, nasty, I. Stupid Horror Energy says, ah, me too, very good. So you guys are weird. Steven Steen, thanks for your Super Chat. He says, I have tons from Dallas. Okay, that's so, that's kinda true. But Steven Steen, thanks for your Super Chat. He says, amazing Super Chats last night, mint in all capital letters. That must be what the young people are saying. Is that what people are saying nowadays, Sterling? Yes, they are. Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. The youngest one here, I think. Am I the youngest one here? I don't know. BigthAdvoster, thanks for your Super Chat. He says, bees pollinate plants, they produce our oxygen and breathe the CO2 that we breathe out without either one we would be done for. Thank you, Lord. Okay. Who's that for? I like bees too. I like the bees. I like bumblebees, they're cool. Gotcha. Let's see. Appreciate that. The Stolen Earth, would you consider a debate with an atheist against a Satanist? Yes, we would. We would, we would indeed. So thanks so much for your Super Chat from Cam Spears who says, for Canadian Catholic, can you explain how and why you repeatedly harassed members of the academic biblical criticism discord server to the point of even using your mom in the server as a ventriloquist dummy? Oh, that's actually a fan of mine. This is a running joke. We kind of made these Super Chats for each other to kind of poke fun at each other. It's really funny. I didn't know he would actually do a Super Chat here. I thought he was joking with us. Yeah, he's a fan of mine. You bet. Phillip, thanks for your Super Chat who says, for the theists, what predictions can you make from proposing that God created everything? Isn't any universe consistent with the God? No, no, no, there are a lot of universes which wouldn't be consistent with the God that I can think of. Ones that don't change. Ones that don't have natures. Ones that, whether it's no conscious experience at all. Like if you have like a kind of almost a pre-Contian categorical imperative type of universe that wouldn't really be a possible universe. Things like that. Gotcha, thanks very much. Next up, appreciate your Super Chat from Phillip who says, for the theists, what predictions can you make from proposing that God created everything? Isn't any universe consistent with the God? Did I just get deja vu or did we just answer that? Or was there something different there? Oh, no, you're right. I'm sorry, that's embarrassing. Okay. No, no, I just thought I thought I would get deja vu. You're absolutely right. Sorry about that. Long day. Thanks for your Super Chat question who says, for the theists, does simulation theory align with your beliefs? I don't know, it's kidding. Kenneth, let's touch that. I know, no, it's kind of silly. I mean, the only part that I like sympathize with is the idea that God doesn't have moral obligations but that's kind of it. James, you cut out a bit. Could you, if it's not a bother, repeat the question. It might be a problem with my connection. Glad to. Let's see here. They asked, does simulation theory align with your beliefs? My position has been that it would all matter. To be honest, I do not believe in the simulation theory, but even if it were true, the facts that we see and experience would apply in that simulation and we would still be able to deduct something. So yeah. Gotcha. Subtracted thanks for your Super Chat who said, if God made existence before existence itself, how could he have brought the universe into existence when there's existence to bring the universe into? You want to touch that, can you even count it first? Okay, I guess not. God is existence itself, Ipsumase subsistence. So he is being itself as it were. So that's kind of what pure act means. Like we want to dive into that, but yeah. So that's my answer. Gotcha. If you want to, you may. Anybody else if you want to respond? No, okay, fair enough. Snake was right, thanks for your Super Chat. Says, if things must have internal force to drive them, what drives God and why is God a necessity of that? Doesn't that mean something exists without will? All right, let's just keep hammering them. You set them up James and I'll like knock them at the park, you ready? Okay, so basically God being pure act, literally means that he is changing, what drives change at all? So there's nothing that drives him because he is that. He is the force in the universe, which causes even possibility of change in the universe. So there you go. Can you, and Catholic, come on, maybe? No, I don't know. Yeah, I'm satisfied with that answer. I don't really, the thing is I seated the floor because Sterling has been arguing from the Thomas position. So this was a classic Thomas question. So I just kind of let him handle all of it right now. Gotcha. Fair enough. Thanks so much. Next up, question, let's see. Stupid Horror Energy strikes again, she asks, but Thomas give primacy to metaphysics, which is the problem? Fru, yeah, that's kind of the, I think the core difference between me and Tom is that I don't start with epistemology. I don't think you can start with epistemology. I think you get to know where you end up with a rut you become a solipsist and you're on the street and it gets bad. Like, I don't know, I've been down that route. I've been down that route and it ended up getting me into Heidegger, and I bet you guys all know how, where Heidegger can get you. I mean, if you're familiar with history at all. Basically, actually, that's what I think. I think if you start with epistemology, that you should be a Heideggerian. You should be a phenomenologist. And if you start with metaphysics, you become a Thomas. Now you just gotta mix those together and see what you get. And it's beautiful. Mwah. No, no, starting with epistemology doesn't lead necessarily anywhere. It's just, how do we know stuff? It doesn't lead to anything. It's just a method. Leading to Heidegger. No, no, most philosophers reject that. Gotcha, thanks so much for your super chat. Thanks so much for your super chat from Merlin. 72001, appreciate it. If you had a question you wanted to attach to that, let me know. Just shoot it in as a normal chat in the live chat. Kang024, thanks for your super chat. They said, question for the atheists. Don't we run into the problem that the origin of the universe can never truly be answered because every time someone proposes a solution, we can keep asking the question, what happened before that? That is true. The problem is we always, every time we find something, we are going to ask, you know, what is beyond that? The expression that comes to mind is turtles all the way down. You're always going to keep on looking. But I think the answer is to find out as much as we possibly can. And when we don't know something, we just say, I don't know. And that leaves us open to keep on searching. Gotcha, thanks so much. Next up, Apollo Jedi says, Cam Spears gave $20 to James who platforms harasser CC. And the rest I'm not going to read because I have no idea what's going on there. But I have no idea. I cannot, I mean, first of all, I don't know if CC actually does this because I don't hang out wherever this apparently happened. But if allegedly happened, I cannot, it's hard for me to keep tabs on what everyone has done who's been here. It's hard enough to keep tabs on Tom. I mean, look at him over there on the left side of your screen. I mean, the guy's all over the place. So next up, Dwayne Burke. Thanks for your super chat who said, I love you, Tom. What time is it? Oh, no, sorry. I was respond. SJ asked me to a debate in the, she made a super chat. I'm like, yes, SJ. I've got a month of nothing to do. Let's debate. Oh, snap. That would be off the charts. And I tease Tom Jump all the time, but I love him. Look at him there. He's a lovable guy. I mean, the most lovable guy. Next up. James, James, come on, come on. Keep it, keep it indoors. A terrific guy. Okay. Next up, Dwayne Burke. Thanks for your super chat who says, eating a cocktail sausage and thinking of T-Jump. I didn't make that up. I'm dead serious. That was like, well timed. That's clearly something just James read for no reason. That's not a super chat. James just, this is how James feels. I just made that one up out of thin air. No, that was real. Merlin 7201. Thanks for your super chat. Says, arguments for a God are not evidence for a God. That's just wrong. Yeah. I also, this is the problem. I don't mean to insult anyone, but if I can get philosophical for a second, I just want to ask people who will be no doubt commenting in the section, if any of our side, and this is not an offense to Tom Jump or Amy, or the person who asked this, ask a question that's so anti-intellectual in nature. Wouldn't everyone be ripping at us? Wouldn't there be memes made from this, right? This is the thing I'm objecting to. Questions like these, for me, in essence, are anti-intellectual. And I'm not attacking the person who asked them. I'm simply attacking the argument. And I'm saying that it has to be fair, right? I'm not saying let's make the meme out of this. I'm just saying, can we see that in a knowledge that atheists can make dumb arguments and recognize it? Sure, but kind of mind work. So it's okay. Gotcha. Next up. Thanks so much for your super chat from John Rapp. Appreciate it. Tom Jump was I naive to hope for some evidence of God. Yes, I mean, you can't really hope for much when the best theists in the world can just provide kind of gibberish word games, but that's about it. So I mean, there's not much to hope for. Don't you think that's a bit disrespectful kind of like in- Oh yeah, it's meant to be. It's meant to be. Okay, so you don't really have intellectual respect. Well, if you don't have intellectual respect for somebody, how can you consider their arguments? Because the arguments are not the people. You don't have a principle as chair. No, the arguments are not the people, so I don't need to respect a person to respect the arguments they present. Well, no, I think you do. I mean, because if you disrespect them, you can't think of it as in good faith. That's kind of like in the principle. You can't say like, for example, if you submit any paper to a philosophical journal, try it and you insult the person in the first four paragraphs, it's not going to be accepted. Well, no, that's not a medium of discourse. It's not a good thing. The person and the argument are separate things. Like if Hitler said one plus one equals two, he's right. Even if you don't like it. But that doesn't matter. That's not the point. The point is that you're attacking the person. So it's like you're violating the non-aggression principle because you don't respect them in the beginning. You don't need to respect the person. You only need to respect the arguments. And I fully respect the arguments and take those seriously. How could you respect the arguments if you don't respect the people? Because the people don't matter. The arguments matter. Like you could write the argument on a computer screen and it's the same argument regardless of the person saying it. Or I could get like Richard Dawkins or someone who I respect to say the argument and it's the same argument. So the argument and the people are separate. Most philosophers would not agree that that's a reasonable standard of discourse for philosophy. No paper. Try any paper. Try any paper. It's submit a paragraph insulting somebody in the first paragraph and then go into your argument. See if you get accepted anywhere. It's not a reasonable intellectual charity. It is relevant. Because those are the standards of discourse. No, no, no. Those are standards of discourse. No, no, no, no. Yes they are. They're the standards of discourse. No, the standards of discourse apply to arguments not to people. They do apply to people because they would never work. Nobody would ever take your paper seriously. They would reject it instantly. It would be rejected like that. There are lots of philosophical papers within. Seattle. Seattle acceptance. So they are accepted. I totally love that you guys are passionate. But just to move on to get through as many questions as possible. Thanks so much for your super chat from Gentle on James. I hope it's not about me. Okay, so I'm stiff and I'm not talking about my back. Come on, seriously. You guys are sick. Cam Spears, thanks for your super chat. It says, I am not a fan of CC. He is lying. My accusation was serious. CC, you got a major critic in the audience. By the way, some people in the live chat, they said you did it on our server. What's going on, CC? Can you take it? I have no idea, honestly. I don't know most of these. I haven't been active on Discord. I mean, academic biblical. There's a subreddit, I think, which you can check out. Maybe there's a Discord. I was active on Discord months ago. But I haven't been active on Discord. I really don't know. I mean, they're welcome to get it on Discord. But I have no, I wouldn't know. But yeah, I also want to say about that. Can I comment about the past super chat that I kind of missed the opportunity on? Well, Cam Spears has another one. We might as well get out. He says, CC lied to the audience. I'm not his friend. CC's harassment is not a joke. Our server has extensive evidence of his abuse. I have no idea what they're talking about, to be honest. Maybe they're confusing me with another CC. There are plenty of CC's. So I'm pretty sure they're not. I think there is credible allegations, but I can't be certain. But I just, I don't think it cares. Like for the same thing about the argument, me and Sterling just had at Homs don't matter. It doesn't matter how terrible CC is. All it matters are his arguments. Tom is defending Canadian Catholic. Did you hear that? Well, I mean, yeah. The world is turning upside down. We can talk about that later, especially since it's apparently unknowingly on modern day debates, Discord. That's embarrassing. Boy, is my face red. Okay, next up, I don't know. I have no idea what, I mean, we'll look at past stuff and see. But S.J. Thomason, thanks for your super chat says, will Tom... Next modern day debate. Did CC actually do this one? Yeah, CC, you might be on trial here. Let's see. Yeah, that will be fun. But with, now to take the serious thing, I would actually not mind at all debating any of you one on one appearing on this again. I was at first worried, but James, you're a great moderator today. There is no question. Appreciate that. And then we do also have, let's see. S.J. Thomason says, will Tom debate me on whether Jesus resurrected because Tom's a punk? What do you think, Tom? I added that last part. Let's do it. No, no, that's in there. She called me a punk. I see. Gotcha, thanks so much. It's on. Well, we will be thrilled to host that. That would be an exciting debate. Kang024, thanks for your super chat says, question for the theists. As we learn more about the natural world, like quantum superposition, for example, do God's powers of what is logically possible change? That's a really good question actually, because in quantum mechanics, there are logical contradictions like Schrodinger's cat where a thing can exist and does not exist at the same time. And like time bending is also a philosophical contradiction. So it is logical contradictions can actually happen. Gotcha. And thanks so much for Tioga says, I wish TomJump would finally eat that Oreo. Tom, where's that black thing that you had hanging out of your mouth? This is my camera lens. It goes on the end of my camera. Why are you eating it? Because it's fun. It tastes good. I like that. It tastes like James. Good answer, Tom. Wait, what? Seriously? Ashley, God, forgive me if I mispronounced your name. Thanks for your super chat. I know that we've had you on Ashley. That's why I feel so embarrassed that I'm not sure how to pronounce your last name. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it's good to see Ashley. Ashley says, I mean, if he wasn't active on Discord, I'd love to hear him explain how I spanked him on Ocean's server. Oh, snap. C.C., apparently Ashley spanked you. That was directed towards me. Yeah, that was directed towards you. Is that the one? I think I had a discussion about help on Ocean's server. And I wouldn't say that they spanked me. I think I brought good argument, but it's said that that's the perspective you have. I'm not into sadomasochism, so I can't comment on the spanking. Gotcha. Anamorphic Mind, thanks for your super chat. Says question for James. Why is Steven Steen sending me picks of you and him together? I don't know. Why would he do that? It's like a shared, sick thing you guys have, but yes, we appreciate that. Yes, C.C., you have a lot of critics in the chat, but for some reason I get the feeling that you're not gonna, you're a... C.C., I mean, if you really are willing, if you want a one-on-one debate, someone, if they take this offer of whether or not you have engaged in harassment, they might have screenshots. Are you sure? You don't wanna just own it? I don't know what the thing is about, to be honest. I mean, really, I don't really have the chat open to see what it is. I'm just kind of getting these from you, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't... Gotcha, thanks for that. Let's see. I will, oh, we do have some questions from earlier in the debate. Brian Stevens, thanks for your question. Says, would universe-creating pixies be sufficient for that which created the universe? And then in parentheses says these pixies are not gods. Okay, one, there wouldn't even be possible metaphysically for there being more than one. And they would have to be pure act. Now to what it means to be a pixie is to have a certain properties which can, which have like certain different things, or certain different characteristics which are capable of change, so no. Gotcha. Can I make a comment on that? It's not in the definition of pixie anywhere. Well, what's the definition of pixie? I don't know what's that. It's whatever I want it to be pretty much, so. Oh, okay. The god, the pixie, even fine, you can. It's just not a god, that's essentially it. Is it's anything that isn't the Christian god that can create things? Well, I mean, if you say it has characteristics though. I mean, like I'm thinking of something with wings. Yep, it has wings. Something with, okay. Little, it's like tinkerbell, but it's magic. Those things are, okay, wings have potentialities and actualities. They're magical wings, so they don't have that. They're just pure act wings. How does that work? And a pure act wing? What does that mean to be a pure act wing? Exactly. Exactly, so your argument doesn't make any sense. No, it makes, it makes. No, you have no, it only makes sense if you don't know what pure act wings. No, it makes exactly as much sense as I do. It only makes sense in a moment, though. No, no, it makes exactly as much sense as I do. If you have no idea what potentiality and actuality it makes sense, obviously. No, no, it makes exactly as much sense. But it just shows your ignorance of what potentiality is and what actuality is. It makes exactly as much sense as I do. Did you get the potentiality word from Deepak Chopra? What? Deepak Chopra. He has a whole thing on potentiality. No, potentiality and actuality comes from first Aristotle, actually. And then in the scholastic tradition kind of. And what I really wanted to ask is how do you know it's one? How do you know it doesn't take two gods and they have to kill the third god to make a universe? Okay, so, okay, so for something to be pure act it has to be the way it is in every single possible way. So it has to be a changeless completely having no properties of potentiality, ways to be different. Now if there was that thing, if there was a thing that had all those properties then there couldn't be more than one because it would have, there would be no distinction. It's like Leibniz's principle of, what is it called? The principle of identicals where everything has exactly the same properties as the other thing, then it can't be something different. Law of non-identity? I think I might get the law of non-identity. But yeah, that's exactly why. Next up, thanks for your super chat from Ashley. Ashley G says, yeah, we debated namely CC. We debated hell as a single place. I've studied Hebrew and Greek. He hasn't, enough said, I'll let you figure out what happened. Oh, James. James, I have to tell you, I wasn't expecting such a hostile audience to be honest. I mean, no, I'm not objecting. The atmosphere has been fine. I think you've been doing what the audience has been slightly. No worries. I mean, I love debates and heated ones. And yes, Ashley, it was a spirited debate. You know, it was on a Discord server. And I, yes, she's an educated individual that I tried my best to debate. So the audience is hostile, but I have no complaints so far. Well, you guys were gentlemen here. Thank you so much. Very nice. I will say there's a lot of testimony in the live chat CC. Basically, yeah, so we'll talk. But thanks so much, everybody, for your questions. I think there's maybe one or two more that I had that I did want to. Sean Kelly, thanks for your question. They said, we got two more. And then they said, if there was a lie that you could make yourself believe, what would make you a better person? Oh, that's a good question. That would make you a better person if you believed it. Would believing it be the right thing to do? It would, there wouldn't be right or wrong. It's not a moral question, but the first question is actually really interesting. What would the question be that would make you a better person? And I think like believing that you are like more charitable than anybody else would probably do it. Gotcha. And I would say that gets complicated because the first lie is always easy. It's the lies that you need to prop up after-rise to support the lies. And that's what normally brings everything down. So I am very hesitant to support anything that would be considered a lie. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Next up. I don't think that, oh. Appreciate your work. Is that just for the atheists, sir? Oh, that's right. So sorry, you're right. Go ahead, Sterling. Oh, okay. I think that what it means to be an ethical person is to try to be rational toward the truth. So if there was a lie, like if you, so you couldn't believe a lie, well, but if you didn't know it, that's an interesting question. I don't know. But I don't think you could purposely believe a lie and like will that in order to make yourself a better person? Because there would be no lie that would make you more rational. Well, it's actually, it's a really common thing in motivational speakers is they give you like triggered words and those triggered words cause you to feel in a certain way, which is a lie to yourself to get you to act. So it is actually a really common thing in psychology to do exactly that. Like suggestion kind of? Sort of, it's more like you're telling yourself, I am the king of the universe and it can cause an emotional response similar to that. So like kind of like the using mirror neurons to do that kind of thing. So it's a lie that you tell yourself to cause yourself to feel something which will then cause you to act in a different way usually temporarily, but it is actually a thing. Next up, super chat from Reverend Arrow. Appreciate it. They say, CC, thoughts on logs, showing activity on discord? CC, they're coming after ya. I don't know how I have gathered so many enemies. I'm sorry if I did anything. I really haven't, I haven't stayed like the academic thing. I vaguely remember. I was actually like maybe three months ago and we debated the Bible and stuff. But like, I apologize if I hurt anybody there. I really don't remember this. Honest apologies. What the deal is. We will, let's see, we can talk about that later, but wanna say thanks everybody for being here with us. It's always a pleasure to hang out with you folks. Hope you feel welcome. We are a non-partisan channel. So no views are expressed on behalf of the channel or any of the moderators here. It is purely a platform for other people to argue their views. And so whether you be a Christian, atheist, you name it, no matter what walk of life you're coming from, wanna let you know. We hope you feel welcome here. And with that, do wanna let you know all of our speakers. I put their links in the description. So that you listened and you're like, hmm, I want that, I want more. Well, you can hear more. And so, highly encourage you to check them out. So thanks so much, folks. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable and last, any thoughts, any last goodbyes from everybody. It's been a pleasure to have you all. Well, it was a pleasure to... Oh, sorry. I interrupted Tom again inadvertently. And we got another super chat too. So yeah, thanks for having us on. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, Neat Bucks pointed out the law of attraction is one example of telling yourself a lie that'll motivate you to do stuff. So those kinds of things do exist. I thought it was, it was a big James again. I know I'm kind of over praising you, but they were a great moderator. I think it went fine, actually. Like I was concerned about my voice, sound and stuff because I thought, and yeah, the debate was respectful for the most part. At least I thought that way. So maybe at the start there were a bit of nerves, but it kind of got settled down at the time when fine. And it was fun. Thank you so much. And I am more than willing to do... This is a great venue for debating. I think it's a great place on the internet in general. Thank you. And I think that was everybody. So... I just wanted to say, I think it all went awesome. So thank you so very much. So glad, absolutely. Thrilled to hear that. And last super chat from Stupid Horror Energy, who says the water brought James and I... Waiter. Oh, the waiter. Oh, it's like first time reading. Okay, the waiter brought James and I sushi that was encrusted with diamonds. Does that even make sense? I tried picking out the diamonds, James laughed at my attempt. I pushed the plate away and started... Gosh, you're sick. Okay, next up. So thanks so much for hanging out here, everybody. It is always a good time. And we hope you have a great night. We will see you tomorrow afternoon. Is that is going to be a lot of fun. We are going to have a creation biblical speciation debate. It's going to be a former zoologist against Standing for Truth and Raw Matt. So it's going to be a two-on-one lion's den debate. That is a first time in a long time we've had a lion's den debate. So that should be a lot of fun. A handicap match, you might say. Two-on-one. And so thanks for being with us, folks. Have a great night. See you tomorrow.