 gentlemen, we got an epic debate tonight, which we have Jim majors and Gavin. Thanks for joining us tonight. So we have a last minute change here. We we're going to do the resurrection. And but we had some miscommunication. So it looks like we're going to be doing is America a traditional Christian nation? Or is it founded on traditional Christian values? So what we're going to do is we're going to start with the format of we're going to start with five to 10 minute openings. Approximately it's going to be whatever they need to open with. And then we will go into a about 45 minutes or so open discussion. So with that, I guess Gavin, you probably want to start it off. But let me just say first, thanks for everybody that's coming out. And we want to make sure that everyone, no matter your background, where you're from, what you believe, we want to make sure that everybody feels welcome here. And so feel free to leave a comment. And yeah, this is going to be a cool one. And please hold your questions till closer to the end. That way I can because I'm operating everything. And that way I can, I can definitely take the super chats at any time. But if you have a question, tag me at converse contender, because I'll see it there. And just try to wait more toward the end of the debate for the questions, if it's not super chat. So with that, Gavin, you want to get it started? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Thanks, CC. Thanks, Jim. And apologies for the mix up in communication. No worries. So I'm taking the affirmative that was America founded on Christian principles. I don't think this is going to be a, I don't think this is going to be a dumpster fire of a debate, because I think Jim and I are going to find that we agree on a lot of things. And there's probably not going to be much, much contention about much. But anyway, we'll see what we can make of it. The first thing is, I mean, even though Christianity is not even mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, the founders of America, they were highly influenced by Christian ideas, ideals, and ideas, sorry, and a lot of significant ways. Number one, their faith taught them that humans were sinful, as James Madison wrote, in Federalist number 51, if me and my angels, no government would be necessary if angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary. This conviction led them to avoid the idiot utopian experience, experiments we saw in France during the French Revolution, and to adopt a constitutional system characterised by separated power, checks and balances in federalism. Number two, the founding fathers, they fairly believed that God ordained moral standards, that legislation should be made in accordance with these standards, and that moral laws took presidents over human laws. Number three, similarly, Christianity informed the founders' understandings of substantive concepts such as liberty. Barry Shane says he's identified eight different ways in which the word was used in the 18th century. Only one of these is related to the excessively individualistic way the term is often used nowadays in the 21st century. Instead, the founders were far more likely to see liberty as the freedom to do what is morally correct, as illustrated by the United States Supreme Court Justice James Wilson's marvellous victim. Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name and becomes logisticiousness. That's a big word. The founding fathers believed that humans were created in the image of God. Part of what this means is that humans are reasonable beings. This led them to conclude that we the people as opposed to the elite can order our public lives together through politics rather than force. It also helped inform early and later opposition to anti-bellum slavery, which is very important because in 1860, former Secretary of State and Governor for New York William H. C. Wood, after the famous phrase, slavery is forbidden under a higher law than the Constitution. And the Christian faith led many founders to conclude that religious liberty should be extensively protected. That's probably enough. That's probably enough, I think. Okay, you want to end with that, Kevin? Yeah, that's a pretty reasonable opening. Okay, thanks. Thanks so much for that opening, Jim. Yeah, okay, so I just want to start off. I was not at all prepared for this debate, but I'm more than happy to have it. So forgive me if my opening statement isn't as slightly less awkward than it's going to be right now. So in 1 Peter 2, it says, for servants to obey their masters, to fear them, not just the good and gentle ones, but also the ones that act to the contrary. And I mentioned several other times, servants submit yourselves to your masters, wives to your husbands, children to your parents, so on and so forth. And three times, at least, I believe, in the New Testament, this is a Christian belief. But most of the people who hold your view, they tend to say that it's found on Judeo-Christian principles, not on its theology. But we don't get our law from religious law, thankfully. I just wanted to let you know as close as I come to say what I can do is I can start this Zoom meeting, and then if I have the string in the URL, I can use that. The most fundamental tenets of Judeo-Christian faith, the ten commandments, I would say there's maybe five of the commandments in there. If that, the majority of the commandments, including the most important one, which both God says and Jesus says and several other prophets and wise people and old men say that is thou shalt have no other God before me, the first and foremost and most important one that should never be betrayed, that's not a law in the United States. So I would say that the United States, like any other ideology, will adopt things that they find good from prior beliefs. It's what the Israelites did with the Babylonian captivity. It's what we do with religion whenever the religious minorities were escaping religious persecution from within Christianity because Christianity started to become too sectarian and they wanted to reign that in and said no, this is about freedom of our church. We can establish our church wherever we want. It will be our church. We can teach what we want. We deserve to have our piece of sanctity and it be just as recognized as legitimate by the state as anybody else's and I would say that the Founding Fathers also meant that for lack of faith as well. That's about all I got to say as an opening statement. All right, perfect, Jim. Sorry about the interruption, buddy, but thanks so much for that. So we're going to move to an open discussion now and we'll just let you guys kind of interact. So Gavin, do you want to start us off? Yeah, sure. Yeah, thanks for that, James. That was an excellent opening discussion saying it was off the cuff. So big props to you, buddy. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, yeah. Look, there's no question. There is no question that in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, there is no mention of God or Christianity or anything to do with religion. And the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they were drawn up in such a way because the last thing the Founding Fathers wanted was a theocracy. That's what the Puritans ran from. They ran from England and the theocracy that was dominating society. The Church of England. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So what the Founding Fathers wanted and I think they were largely successful is they wanted to promote the good principles of Christianity, but they didn't want it to be like state enforced, if you like. They wanted all citizens of America to have the freedom to worship whichever religion they chose. And they were dead set on on making avenues and encouraging that freedom to pursue, whichever religion anybody wanted to pursue. It just had to be at the time that Christianity was the dominant religion. You know, there was a bit of influence from days and from the Enlightenment and that sort of thing. But by far and wide, you know, it was Protestantism, Church of England, that kind of thing. So look, I can't fault what you said and you're dead right. The Founding Fathers, they wanted religious freedom. They wanted the good things of Christianity to be part of the part of the American fabric, yes, of life. But if you were to take those elements, though, just by themselves, those good elements that they incorporated into the Founding Principles of the country. Those are not just exclusive to Christianity or to even Judeo-Christianity. Most of the good things that come from Christianity, Christianity has it because they borrowed it from somebody else. With that being said, I would argue that our entire culture is influenced by things that we hold sacred, beliefs that we hold firmly to. And that's what molds us and what helps us develop and what our parameters are and what limits us. But just taking the good things from Christianity, I don't think that limits us to saying, oh, we just got this from Christianity. I don't think that that's fair to say, especially with the religious diversity that's here now. There are a lot of moral principles, those things which you would say were influenced by Christianity in the Founding Principles of the United States that we can all agree on. Atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, whatever. We can agree on most everything. We can line up one of each. We can say, is rate bad? Yes, is rate bad? Yes, is rate bad? Yes, go down the line with so many fundamental moral quandaries and moral black and whites that we will all agree on, as a matter of fact, that there's very little that I think that you and I would disagree on as far as morality goes, but I think it's just really hard to see past that one difference that makes it all seem so much bigger. Yeah, I think because just because Christianity was the dominant religion at the time, I don't think the Founding Fathers would have had much idea of religion's history going back and back. But I think they got it right. I think they got it right. And I think that's one of the reasons. Well, okay, it's one of the reasons. It's not the, sorry, it's not the reason, but it's one of the reasons why the USA is such a successful country economically in all sorts of ways. Because of that thread, that thread of Christianity that runs through the fabric of American society. But at what point of development did they get it right? Was it at Second Temple Judaism, or was it at Donatist or Dossatism? Or maybe even, we can go even further and say Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Maybe it was Calvinism. When was Christianity at its peak? When was Christianity at its truest? I think the Founding Fathers got it right from the starting blocks. Jim, I think they started far and then accelerated. Which one? Because most of the Founding Fathers were excommunicated for Heresy at some point. Wow. Yeah, that's a fairly popular Atheist meme, but it's not actually true. Yes, it is. I think the Founding Fathers got it right. I think they got it right from the start. We had the abolition of slavery, anti-bellum slavery. These religious Christian principles, they were embedded in part of the whole abolition of anti-bellum slavery, which is ironic. They were also embedded in the spread in the justification of anti-bellum slavery. Sorry. It was also used as justification for slavery. Absolutely. Some of the Founding Fathers were actually slave owners. They were. So what we have is two people looking at the same text and having such an ambiguous nature to it that they come across with two different meanings. One says you can't own people and the other one says buy and sell black people. And it's like, well, how are we reading the same book? We're both Christians. We're both believing the same God. How are we both reading the same book and coming up with these two completely different, very important to get right moral beliefs? Because we're seriously flawed human beings, Jim. But the good news is that in the end, Christianity wasn't the most biggest driving factor, but it was one of the biggest driving factors in the abolition of slavery. Okay. That's like a kid spray painting graffiti all over my fence and then coming back the next day and saying, hey, I'm painting your fence for you and painting it white, painting over the graffiti. It's like, well, if you didn't crap all over it before, you wouldn't have to fix it now. So I mean, thanks, I guess. Yeah, thanks, I guess. That's the immorality of seriously flawed human beings, Jim. Right. So when can we know when and if we get it right? I think we can know by carefully reading the text and we've got an embarrassing amount of resources by which we can interpret the text correctly. Right. But the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, they all separated because of fundamental differences in the way that they interpreted the text. That's why we have Southern Baptists. The whole reason Southern Baptists is the thing is because they said, no, I think God wants us to have slaves. Yep. So what I'm saying is that it's a problem that the Bible is so ambiguous. It's not just a couple of people that are getting it wrong. It's enough people that are getting it wrong where we're like, well, which one of us are right? Because it could be either one. I don't really subscribe to the notion that the Bible is so ambiguous. Yeah, I don't really hold to that, to be honest. Yeah. And look, I'm no scholar, Jim. I can't speak Greek or read Greek or ancient Hebrew or anything like that. But I do go to the experts. I do refer to the scholarly experts. It's awesome. Well, if you were to ask SJ, slavery was awesome to be a slave was not a bad thing. If you were poor, that was the thing to do was be a slave. So I mean, slavery was good. I don't know why everybody's so upset about slavery. It's like you could keep their kids and their wife or you could keep them if they wanted to stay with their wife or you could keep them if you got them from the surrounding lands and it wasn't a fellow Hebrew. There's always these justifications and these slips and these little moral platitudes that we give ourselves are little freebies or passes and say, well, it's okay. It's not as bad as it was. So we can keep doing it. It's the same reason people are justified for hating homosexuals. It's like, well, they used to stone them and we don't stone them now. We just say that we hate them when we call them queers behind their back. It's not that bad, but it is. I don't think that that's anything that I want my kids or anybody else's kids getting their worldview and molding them into the way that they interact with the people that I interact with because we are the people around us and the people around us are in some ways a product of us and we get out of the world what we put into it and I don't want to put out pieces of shit just to put it bluntly. Oh, yeah. Look, I agree. I agree. And as far as homosexuality is concerned, look, the Bible sees it as sinful, but it's no more sinful than stealing or committing adultery with somebody else's wife. It doesn't go into some sort of special demonic category, which means you're going to be tortured for a million years until you can't stand any longer. And as far as slavery goes in the ancient Near East, God regulated rules for the slave other than for the slaves. Slaves had rights, which is something I'm quite unheard of. But rights or not, they had they were slaves, right? Like you acknowledge that they were possessions. Well, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. But no matter what you say after that, no matter what comes after the comma, nothing makes up for that. Nothing. Well, it kind of does because they were they weren't they weren't prisoners of war camps in the A&E. So prisoners that were captured as a result of Israelite victories, they had something with them. They're also taken they're also taken from their families. They were I mean, they could have left them there. Yeah, they could have. But no, they couldn't have because in those in those cases were where God illicitly tells them to it's to wipe the land of a certain race of people or a certain people with a certain mindset, you know, it's it's it's this us versus them mentality and that we're more powerful because we have God on our side. And therefore, because God's on our side, everybody else is wrong and they're the enemy and they just need to be crushed. And that's a harmful mindset, very harmful mindset. Yeah, one second, guys. Just for the people who just came in, we actually had a change of topic tonight because some miscommunication so we are actually talking about the dead America. How was it founded on Christian values? Go ahead, Gavin. Sorry. Yeah, Christian principles. Yeah, Jim. I can see you're taking me down the skyline of fiction road to the Malachites, but that's not really the topic. If you're a slave in the A&E, you had, okay, being a slave is not so cool. But being a slave of an Israelite was a hell of a lot better than being a slave of, you know, an Egyptian or some other slave of another nation. At least you had recognizable human rights. Babylonian slavery was pretty decent. Yeah, but I'm not saying I'm not saying that slavery was cool. It wasn't so cool. But what are you saying? That slavery is what? I'm saying slaves, the Israelite slaves, they had human rights. They had human rights. Right. But if you were going to make one or two statements and say slavery is good or slavery is bad, which statement would you make? Well, it's not a dichotomous question. Okay, it's not a dichotomous question because it depends. If you're an enemy and you're captured, you're a POW, you're a prisoner. What is an enemy? An enemy in those days. Once you start saying that there are enemies, then you yourself become an enemy. And you should, and if you're not subject to those same rules, then you step outside of that picture and examine it. Because what you're saying is that you are better than everyone else, even though that you're granting at the same time that all these other people are creations created from the same God with the same material, but because they're born in different families and they're born in different parts of the world, they're not as good as I am or as important as I am. Therefore, their life is worth nothing. I will rip the babies out of their stomachs, dash them on the rocks. I will kill every living thing. Even the animals, because that's how much we hate them and how filthy they've made this land. And we can only purify it by getting the pagan scum off of it. Are we still talking about the A&E? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, that's what God wanted us chosen people to do. Okay. I'm going to kind of be your mom now, but if God told you to jump off a roof, would you do it? If God told me to jump off a roof. Yeah. Like his audible voice. I don't know. Whatever would be convincing to you. If God told you to jump off a roof, I don't know. However you want to imagine it. I have no idea. I have no idea. Right, but probably not, right? Like you would have to think hard about it for sure, right? Even though you believe in God. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, but we're talking about people who feel justified in killing other people and their families. And we're not just talking about men who sign up to go to war, men who are paid to fight on the battlefield, but people who are hiding in their homes and getting torched and raped and taken into slavery. And no matter how many rights they have, the facts of the matter is they are robbed of their identity, their family. Everything that they were, they no longer are. Yeah, so we've got a few people in the chat asking if this is actually how relevant this is to America. Yeah, it's very relevant. I guess that is one of the bad Christian principles that we've inherited is that we think that we need to stick our nose in everybody else's business and everybody else needs to think the same way that we do. And if you don't think the same way that I do, well, then you are my enemy. You are fake news. You are the bad guy. And I will do whatever I have to to stop you, even at my own demise. I don't think that. I think that is America's mindset as a whole. Well, it's not mine. It's not my mindset. Well, that's that's good. That's really coming up on American Christian mentality. Yeah, I'm sorry. I went off on that rabbit trail. Like I said, I wasn't prepared for this debate at all. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine, Jim, because I'm really cognizant of the fact that she was preparing for another debate. So maybe there's a few things in American values or principles today, like separation of church and state or like, you know, other values that America has that you that you guys would probably disagree over that. Okay. Are there anything that you think you agree that that would be considered a Christian principle that that you think I wouldn't agree with? Like a value or an ethic to instill upon the society? To be honest, Jim, I don't I don't think off the top of my head, I can't think of a Christian principle that you would you would you would push back against quite firmly. I'm trying to think of one. But to be honest, I can't I can't think of one. Yeah, I think I think only good can come from from Christian principles. It's it's been shown historically. If you remember how we were talking about the the 10 commandments and whether or not they they all apply to the legislature or not. Okay, so imagine you're a founding father, you can take 10 principles of Christianity going by what the founding fathers did implementing things for Christianity and and what you would do, you know, what would you do different? Are there are there anything from Christianity that you would add that they didn't? Or is there anything that you would that they implemented from Christianity that you would take out? No, no, to be honest, Jim, I think I think they got it spot on. And and they they thought about this and they discussed this and they had they debated ad nauseam over this. But I think they got it pretty right. I think they got it pretty right. Given the fact given the fact that society is full of seriously flawed people like me and CC, you know, I think they got it pretty right from from the start. But I think I think okay, so let's say even though you may be right, I think it's important not to hold to that viewpoint dogmatically because I mean, there's a reason why there's a three fifth compromise. You know, there's there's a reason that that there's that there was an emancipation proclamation. There's a reason that a lot of these things were were implemented after the founding fathers established the the the foundational principles for this country. So I think it's important that we be open to change and open to reassessing our our worldview as often as necessary. And I can't disagree with that, Jim. I can't disagree with that. I think I think those two commandments that Jesus distilled down to two, you know, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and love the Lord. I love your neighbour as yourself. They're very, very universal, very universal. Yeah, but not original to Christianity. Well, like I say, they're very universal. And I think we could do well to cling to those pretty, pretty, pretty closely, I think. Yeah. Yeah. The things like the golden rule, those go back to like the the the fifth, sixth century BCE. Yes. Yes. I don't disagree with you. Yeah, but I think that it's that it's a good thing whenever we implement things that we that we can we can realize and acknowledge that as a whole we agree that these things are good and that the and that investing in these things and investing these things in our society is a good thing. So we should do that and we should get together more often and put our heads together and decide, you know, hey, is this is still good, right? Or is there is it starting to look bad? Do we need to fix it? Is there something we need to add to it? There's something that, you know, let's let's let's mess with it. Let's talk about it. Let's never get stagnant into thinking that we at any time hold a monopoly on morality. Yeah, yeah, like I agree. And the founding fathers, they were very strong on discussing religion in the public square. They were very encouraging of that principle. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's like I said, my friend, I actually wrote down a big blue letters and pen on my pad here. Be be be benevolent, be benevolent to my to my learned colleague, Jim Majors, because the topic was sprung on you like at the last minute. So you got exceptionally well. If it was me, I'll be tripping over my tongue and I don't know. Well, I'm a lot stronger in biblical arguments. So I'll be honest, you know, what, 30 minutes ago or whatever, five minutes before the debate started, I got a little nervous, I'll be honest. You don't have you don't have to. I'm just a beginner, Jim. I'm just I'm just feeling my way through this whole thing. Well, good deal. Feel, feel free to sit down anytime. Yeah, I'll tell you what, though, you're right about coming together and having public discourse about subjects. Yes. And never saying this is bad all the time or this is good all the time. And it can never change. You know, that's dangerous. Absolutely. Well, coming, coming together and having public discourse about something, even if you're on both sides of the fence, let's take the CIS and the ACS. They come together. They have a discussion. They keep it respectful and they keep it reasonable. Now, the very worst thing that can come out of that discussion is that both sides are going to leave knowing a little bit more about the other side's ideology and the way the other side thinks about things. And that's a good thing. That's a really good thing. And hopefully, and it's my my favorite takeaways from those type of conversations is whenever you learn something about your own worldview. Yep. Oh, definitely. Absolutely. I can't I can't fault that at all. But I'm a big proponent of debates and even the YouTube chat can get a bit grossed out sometimes, but occasionally getting gems and and it's people who who want to debate something and they're happy to do it in a reasonable and respectful manner, even if they're on the other side of the fence from there. Because I think I think there's an ACS and there's always going to be like fenced off. But but there's no reason why we can't put a gate in there somewhere and we can't be or we can't be rational. But you know, we can't be respectful towards each other. At the very least, we're going to learn something and that's what it's about. If we were to take those principles, everything that we find to be good about Christianity, and we were to mold them into one ideology and give it, you know, give it identity, give it a form and and, you know, some sort of an establishment. How similar would that be to to something like secular humanism? Like, do you think it would differentiate at all from that? I guess is what I'm trying to ask. Yeah, I think so, Jim. And the only reason I say that is because I might be wrong and look, I'm open to being wrong and I'll start from the outset. But it seems to me that secular humanism doesn't doesn't hold to any ultimate or higher authority than man. And I think that once man puts himself at the level of a god or the ultimate authority, then I think that really owes the seeds for chaos and malevolent disorder. We've seen that throughout history. We've seen that especially in the 20th century. So, so of course, you know, I lean towards Christianity for so many things. But one of the major things is that I know there is God, you can call him whatever you like, you can call him beel juice. I don't care. But there's, there is someone who is higher, who is higher than man, who ultimately I'm going to be accountable to. A deity. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so without that, that accountability, I just think there's just too much room, too much wiggle room for malevolent disorder and chaos. Who takes accountability? Sorry? Who has accountability in that case whenever you're getting your your moral inclinations from this someone who is morally responsible for the the the consequences of that morality. Like let's say that God one day for for whatever reason decides to change his mind and say one day murder is okay now. And then all of a sudden everybody's murdering. You know, does that make it good? You know, where do we, where do we draw the line? I don't think, I don't think God, I don't think it's part of God's intrinsic nature to say murder is good. Do you think it's in God's intrinsic nature to punish homosexuality by murdering them by stoning them to death? That's, that was an old testament why I'm doing things. Right, but it was dictated by God. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. But thankfully, thankfully, Jim, we're not under that old covenant now, one of the new Of course, but when we were under it, was it moral? Sorry, when we were under it though, was it moral? So in other words, back in the old days, let's say back back whenever they were under that covenant, and they found somebody in the acts of homosexuality, they had two or more witnesses, they drug them both out of the city gates, and they stoned them both to death until these they stopped moving. Is that moral or is that immoral in that context? Well, yeah, look, I understand what you're saying. If we're looking at it through the lenses of 21st century society, I think we can say, oh, that's a bit tough. But then, you know, we're talking about a high context society back in the Pentateuch, and we're looking at a high context society from a low context society in the 21st century. Right. I'm not trying to avoid you. No, no, no, no, I don't understand. But I think essentially what you're trying to get at is that God doesn't change, but rather society changes in their view of these actions change, right? I'm not so enamored with this whole thing of God doesn't change. I certainly think God changes his mind. I certainly think God changes his mind, but his intrinsic qualities, you know, of love, I think that's perennial, that's unchanging, that's unchanging. If God changes his mind, isn't that evidence that he's not omniscient in that he would have known that that would not be the right response and to respond to it right the first time? In other words, he would never make a mistake because that's essentially what changing your mind is, is realizing that you were wrong about a split in the path that you took and you went the wrong way. I'm talking about God changing his mind. An example would be at the insistence of God was going to wipe out every living thing in Sodom or Gomorrah. Right, let's think and find 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would be an example to me of God changing his mind. And also, I think it's important to say that I think God, because he's omniscient, he exists in the past, the present right now, and he also exists in the future. So he knows the future in terms of what will happen, what should happen, what could happen. So he knows all possible outcomes. And there's a good scripture in the Old Testament with David and the 600 men coming to the town of Kyla, and David praying to God and saying, and you'll know this, Jim, David praying to God and saying, if I stay here overnight, we'll capture the town and we'll, the town's inhabitants hand me over to Saul. And God said, yes, if you stay here, if you and your men stay here, you will be captured by Saul and his army. So David upsticks and took off, he left with his army. So that's, that's God looking into the future, seeing what would happen if David stayed in the town of Kyla. And so saying to David, this is what's going to happen if you stay here. We're out of here, we're off. But the problem with that is that some of these, these changing his minds come as a part of God's will changing. And our, our entire purpose, most Christians believe, I assume that you believe, is to ultimately fulfill God's will to play your part in God's will just as Judas did, as Pharaoh did, as Moses, anybody else fulfilling God's will, whatever that may be. But whenever you have a will that is malleable, that, that can, that can change, all of a sudden, that makes my purpose and your purpose much less insignificant than it even was before. Because now we are, our purpose is dependent on something that can change at a moment's notice. I think, I think the intrinsic fundamental properties of God are unchangeable. But we certainly have free will, we certainly have free will to choose whatever path we want to choose. So we have like the, you mean like the will, or we have free will to whether or not we're going to pursue the will of God or to, to go against it? Absolutely, absolutely. We have free will. We have free will to do anything, General. What about in, in Heaven, once we've, we've achieved the and fulfilled the, the will of God, are we, is there, is there free will in Heaven? I would think so. I would think so. So that sin would be in Heaven, right? Then your next question is going to be, so can we sin in Heaven? Right. When Heaven is our reward, it's kind of like double jeopardy. It's like, I've already been to court, Your Honor. Like you can't get on this again. This is just my belief. I mean, I'm not saying this is scripture or anything, but, but probably we can sin in Heaven, but you know, would we want to, would we want to eat dog turd? I mean, no, like if, if, if I woke up and somehow I was in Heaven and he was like, oh yeah, you made it. And I'm like, really? As an atheist, I'm maybe like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fine. You're fine. Whatever. You just got to eat dog shit every day. I'd be like, whoa, like, what? Jim, if we bumped into each other in Heaven, I'd say, whoa, Jim, you were wrong, but I'm really glad to see you. I would be wondering why there was dog shit in Heaven though. I mean, right? No, no, what I'm saying is I'm just trying to draw, draw an analogy between eating, eating dog poop and sinning in Heaven. I don't, I think personally, I don't think we'd want to sin. Like we want to eat dog poop. Well, as a, as a Christian, you don't want to sin, right? No, I don't want to sin, Jim, but I'm full of it. I'm full of it like it really does. Right. So are you saying that as an angel that you could, that you can be immune to the temptation of sin? Don't know. Don't know. Hope I can find out. Yeah. Interesting. Now, when you say free will, do you mean that you can do, you can act outside of the will of God? Here on Earth. Okay. So you can do something that God does not will you to, like he, he does not want you to do this, but you can do it anyways. You mean here on Earth, Jim? Right. Well, sure. Well, Earth, Heaven, if we have free will in Heaven, I'd expect the same thing. Yeah. Well, if we're talking about here on Earth, you know, we have, we have free will here. We have libertarian free will. Do we have free will in hell? And where? In hell? I don't know. Hope I never have to find out. All right. So we got, we've been rolling for, for almost an hour now. What we'll do is probably just take about, let's take about another 10 minutes and try to, you know, draw together some of the threats in this conversation. Let's, let's talk about a couple of laws that you think either add to your side or maybe are against the other side. So laws that America was founded on or principles that that America was founded on that you think would either contribute to your side more or go directly against the other side. Whoever wants to start and we'll just kind of use that as a tool to start wrapping up over the next 10 minutes or so. My favorite one is just pure and simple. There is to be no official test of, of religion by the state. That's, that just about covers it all to me. Okay. I'm sorry. One more thing before you answer, Gavin. If you want to get a question into the, to either of the, the debaters here, just tag me in it at converse contender. I'll post in the chat so you can see my name there. And just send me your question and I'll be sure to ask that we're going to set us out at least 20 minutes for questions. So go ahead, Gavin. Yeah, sure. And if those in the chat, if you can just be a bit, a bit charitable towards my Leonard colleague, he didn't know it was going to be a debate about was America founded on Christian principles. So it'd be kind to my friend. I think, I think one thing, one, one really important thing to come out of, of the, the declaration of independence and the Bill of Rights was that the family members, they believed in what colloquially called the law according to, sorry, the rule according to high law, the rule according to high law. And this is often, this is sometimes called the divine law or the natural law, but you can just Google the rule according to higher law. And this is like an international legal process that supersedes the sovereign law of any nation in the world whatsoever. But who enforces that? Sorry? Who enforces that if it's an international law? Well, it would be whoever the authority is, is in charge at the time. And I'll just, I'll come to that shortly. I'll come to that. But this law, this, this rule according to high law was first introduced in the post Roman Europe by the Catholic canon jurists. So, you know, obviously, obviously we know where they got their, their law and their principles from. They got it straight from the Bible. But the two, the two kind of really notable occurrences when this law was invoked. And it's still an invocable law today was, like I said earlier in 1860, when former Secretary of State and Governor of New York, William H. Seward said, he proclaimed that slavery, this is just before the civil war broke out. He said, slavery is forbidden under a law higher than the constitution. And that was quite, quite a famous phrase he was coined with. Also, the, the rule according to higher laws invoked in 1946 at the Nuremberg trials when the Nazi war criminals were being tried for war crimes. The Nazi defense had a, had a point. They had a point when they said to the, to the allied judges, look, our clients are not guilty of anything because at the time they were acting in accordance with German law or military German law. And they had a point. They had a point because, because yeah, the Nazis were acting under, under, under German law, but the allied prosecutors, they successfully kind of circumnavigated this by appealing to the rule according to higher law, which is also known as the divine war or the natural war. So it seems to me the founding fathers got it right. They stuck pretty close to the rule according to higher law. They stuck pretty close to the divine law to the natural war and yeah, big, big, big applause for them. I think, I think they had a difficult task to do because they didn't want a theocracy gym. They didn't want a theocracy. They didn't want anything like the Vatican or like the Church of England in, in, in the UK or Roman Catholicism or anything like that. But they definitely wanted to encourage, encourage the principles of Christianity, but also have a separation of state and church. And I think they did it quite, quite well, quite successfully. All right. Thanks so much for that, Gavin. Jim, do you have any response for that about the Nazis and the Nuremberg trials as far as how they handled that? I don't like Nazis. Don't like talking about Nazis. Don't like arguments that involve Nazis. So I just, as soon as just give my, my closing statement. All right, perfect. Godwin's law. So it's a must. It never fails. All right. So how about this? Yeah, let's just take a couple minutes of peace and, and give your, your closing. You want to start, Jim? Sure. So simply the, the highest law, according to the Bible, is national have no regards before me. But thankfully, thanks to the First Amendment, the Constitution of the United States of America, we are guaranteed the right to worship whatever God or no God or as many God as we want without consequence. We, there is no law saying that we can't work on Sundays or Saturdays or whatever you interpret this Sabbath to be. We can say what we want about somebody else's religion and not go to jail for it. Thanks to the First Amendment. We can engrave an image and we can make it holy and it's no problem. Let's face it, not all of our moms and dads are the greatest. We don't have to honor them. The law will not come by and lock us up if we don't honor our mother and father. The, I have a cop who lives down the road. My last summer, my neighbor's wife was out in jeans shorts in a bikini top and washing your car. And I decided that was a good time for me to wash my car too. And cop drove by and didn't arrest me even though I'm pretty sure I was breaking one of those commandments. But it doesn't matter because while we may have adopted principles that are, that are part of Judeo-Christian religion, it in itself is not the religion. It's not the supernatural presumptions. It's what they are. They are universal things that we can, for the most part, agree on. There are some of us who will disagree and that's we might find something moral at one time and not in another culture like cannibalism or slavery or child sacrifice or what have you. And again, that is why it's also important to remain vigilant and to not allow any sort of dogmatism to creep up when it comes to assessing not only your morality but your society's morality. All right. Thanks so much for that, Jim. Now, Gavin, you want to take maybe a minute or two to give a brief closing statement? Yeah, sure. Sure. That's a good closing, Jim. So did America have a Christian founding? I don't think it's really a dichotomous question that has a yes or no answer because history's complicated and we should always be suspicious of simple answers to difficult questions, which is why I agreed with my learned colleague about we should be having public discourse about these things and hashing them out in a reasonable and responsible manner. There is some evidence that some of the founders were dais but it's very few. There's very few of them. The majority were just orthodox mainline Christians. What do these facts mean for Americans who embraced non-Christian face or had no face at all? Although the founders were profoundly influenced by Christianity, they didn't want to design a constitutional order that was only for like an elite or like for a chosen few. They explicitly thanks for that, Jim. They explicitly prohibited religious tests for federal officers, officers as in holding the office of the chairman of the water board sort of thing. And they were committed to the proposition that all men and women should be free to worship God or not, or not if they wish to, as their unconsciouses, consciences dictated. So 100% the Bill of Rights and what's the other one? The Declaration of Independence. What's the other one? The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution. Constitution, Constitution, Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are silent, silent about God, religion, worship, prayer, anything like that. But they were silent about that for a reason. And the reason was they wanted every man or woman or child to be able to worship should they want to according to their conscience. They didn't want to have a state controlled religion. And I think that was a really, really great, great thing they came up with. So again, I come back to the fact that one of the... I'm sorry, but I can't, I have to. The Bill of Rights, the first amendment in the Bill of Rights is the freedom of religion. That's right, yeah. Jim, I think he said that they didn't have anything explicitly religious in it. Oh, I think he said he didn't mention religion. Oh, sorry, sorry if I wasn't... Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, I'll not say I hate interrupting, but I gotta. That's fine, that's fine, that's fine, Jim. Possibly what I meant to say was that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, they were silent about religion and about worship, about prayer, about God, and all that kind of thing on purpose, on purpose. And one of, as I said before, one of the reasons, it's not the only reason, but one of the reasons why America is such a flourishing country and a world leader, a world economic power is because of that freedom to worship or not, to worship or not. And I think they did a really good job, really good job. Let's be honest, America, the original colonies, it was famine, it was disaster. They were worse off here than they were in England. People were dying off left and right. The entire row note colony went missing just over a span of some years. But what really helped was whenever, mostly the Jews in terms of trading, but Judeo-Christians as a whole began justifying the Atlantic slave route. That's whenever the economy really kicked off. That's a fact, Jim, but the economic success of the US today is not due to anti-bellum slavery. Oh, sure it is. It's a direct inheritance. All right. Maybe we'll end it there. Do you guys have about 20 minutes or so for Q&A? Yeah, sure. Sure. All right. Let's go into the Q&A now. We'll start with the super chats that we had up front. We had quite a few. Let's see. All right. Okay. Thank everyone for your contributions. It's going to a good cause. Also, consider if you're not already becoming a patron to modern day debate because James has done a great thing here to bring being kind of a bridge between over troubled waters, we'll say. I will donate $20 if you don't read any of Stephen Stain's. I would say yes, but I don't have clearance to make that call. I will donate $50 if you don't read any of Brian Stevens. Oh, Brian's nice. I like Brian. Oh, yeah. Well, again, I don't have the altitude to make these calls, so I'm going to go with what we got here. All right. Make an executive in CC. Yeah. As a matter of fact, we're starting off with Stephen Stain. Thank you so much for your $2 super chat. Jim, bested by Gavin, RIP. Oh, come on. That's fine. That's fine. It was, I'd say it was a strong draw. Yeah. Oh, so, yeah. I'd be happy with a draw, Jim. Yeah. I'd be happy with a draw. All right, so we've got somebody new next. Stephen Stain, thank you so much for your other $2 super chat. It says Gavin is unstoppable. Next, SJ Thomas. I didn't know that your crack dealer worked on Tuesdays. Next up, SJ Thomas, and thank you so much for your $10 super chat. Very generous. Hey, what's up? SJ says, how do we come to value equality and meekness as sacred in the ancient Near East when they routinely disposed of the infant women and considered the poor cursed by the gods? Well, it was a desire for reciprocation. I mean, and it wasn't that they felt anything less for the child, but it was hard living. I mean, I don't know if you've read some of the accounts like in First Kings, they got to a point where they had to decide which child they were going to eat first and which child they were going to eat next because the famine was that bad. People were raising rats and selling rats. It was it was an awful time to live. So, I mean, I don't think that we can go and throw any ethical stones in this proverbial glass house. All right. Thanks so much for that response, Tim. That's a good point, Jim. Next, we have Stephen Stain, another $2 super chat. Thank you so much for that, Stephen Stain. It says SJ living in Jim's head rent-free. Always. Always. She has a little, yeah, she's got a nice little one bedroom studio overlooking the ocean. I think it's because you brought her over earlier. This was early on when he sent that in. All right. Next, we have Iron Charioteer says, covers, can you ask Gavin, why is it recorded that the Founding Fathers were mostly deist and wanted separation between church and state to prevent a theocracy freedom of and from religion? The Founding Fathers weren't, were not, were not mostly deists, mostly fundamental Christians. Well, I would say most of them were Protestant sectarians, but I believe that that quite a few of them were, were deists, I guess it would be the best term for them. All right. Thanks so much for those responses. Brian Stevens with a Patreon comment says, Jim is winning this debate with his eyes closed. You know, at first I didn't realize what he was saying, Jim, but it looks like actually your video has been frozen. I'm not sure why. Both of ours is working fine, but it looks like yours is frozen. No, Gavin, yours is good. Mine's good for some reason. It's got Jim's video, but it's like a steel frame. I'm actually working on my ventriloquism. Okay. I was about to say it actually looks like a blue steel pose, and so you have a great- I was just catching my good side. Yeah. And it's got like a perfect little twirl on your mustache and everything. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Screenshot that shit. Jim, you win the battle of the mustache. There's no contest. Oh man. Yeah. I'll take that trophy. So thanks so much, Brian Stevens, for your, for your Patreon question there. Next we have Kill Doggy 1. Can you ask Gavin? What? What a name. Our Kilo Doggy 1. Says, Gavin, is it important to make people feel guilty for sinning? Not it. Not it. I don't think so. All right. Thanks so much for that answer. Next we have Onus says, Comers, can you ask Gavin what principles of Christianity, Eric, what principles Christianity has, please? What? The question is what principles does Christianity have? Yes. I guess we're referring directly to the positive ones that they adopted into the Constitution. It sounds like a big question question. Love the Lord your God with all your mind, all your heart, all your soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. But it doesn't say anything about loving God. I just said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul. And that's absent. That's absent in the legislature. And the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? It doesn't say anything about having one God, not having any other God before me just worshiping this one God, this specific God. It's not just saying be a monotheist. It's saying be a Yahwehist. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Jim. This guy, he actually wasn't asking what principles does Christianity have in America. He was just kind of making like a kind of like a snide like, what principles does Christianity have? You know? Oh, yeah. Well, that's why I think that kind of question. All right. This is something called good. You can check it out. All right. So Kill Doggy one again says, nope. I'm sorry. Iron Charityer says, ask Gavin, are some forms of slavery good? Personally, I don't think so. All right. Thanks so much for that answer, Gavin. Iron Charityer once again says, ask Gavin, does he think that the church fathers should have listened to Marcion when he wanted to get rid of the Old Testament? He said you would have to deal with questions about slavery, but I think he means you wouldn't have to. Yeah, sure. Now, I think the founding fathers did an excellent job. All right. Thanks so much for that. We'll move on to Stephen Stain. Question for Jim. Where are your pants? Your mom's house. Stephen Stain, you asked for it. Next, we have Kill Doggy one again. Gavin, what percentage of people who call themselves Christians will make it into heaven? Please read my question word for word. So I had to read that last part. Okay. So my answer word for word is, I don't know, only God knows. All right. Thanks so much for that answer, Gavin. Looks like we have another question for you from Iron Charityer. You have a correction. You would not have to deal with questions about slavery. Okay. So he says, ask Gavin, why do you adhere to the Old Testament laws when it was invented by Jews? I don't adhere to the Old Testament laws. All right. Thanks so much for that correction, Gavin. Brian Stevens says, Jim is doing so well, even with his eyes closed. I think I already read that one, didn't I? He reposted it. Read it again, CC. Jim is doing so well, even with his eyes closed. All right. Next, we- It's a good thing you guys can't see me blushing. No, he's winning it. I'm going to shout it out. He's a hero on all judges' scorecards. So next, we have Onus says, can you tell Gavin that natural law comes from Greek philosophy, not Christianity, please? Yes. Yes. Yes, she can tell me that if you like. All right. We got a question for Jim from KiloDoggy1 says, Jim, is there anything about love that is counterintuitive to an evolutionary worldview? Is love nothing more than a benefit to our own survival? Maybe not love, but maybe romanticism. I think romanticism is counter to our tendencies to survival. But I think that we've reached a stage, an evolutionary stage, where we can let go of the constant need to survive and we can start focusing on creature comforts and other amenities, Wi-Fi and things like love that are fun to think about, but difficult to ever actually materialize. All right. Brian Steven says, Converse, Gavin was a pleasure tonight, but Jim's mustache won the debate. He's right. He's 100% correct. All right. So it looks like I think that's all the questions that we have. I just want to, if I missed one, feel free to put it in the next couple of minutes while I'm doing a little wrapping up here. I just want to say that, do you like, do you like Dilla Hunty? Do you like Vila? Well, tune in Friday, 7pm Eastern, because there's going to be a showdown. Tonight we had the battle of the mustaches, but that'll be definitely a good conversation to check out. And then Sunday, don't forget, Sunday at 4pm Eastern Standard Time, we will have a new person, Jim, the mustache majors, versus S.J. Thomason on the resurrection. Yes. That's the debate you need to be at. So that's one for the IJ. Yes. And I'll be there. It's probably the last time she debates me, so just show up for it. So I'll be there because I'll be moderating it. But that's going to be an awesome debate. Not only those, James has a lot of other cool debates that we haven't really like talked about yet publicly, but there's a lot of interesting things coming down the pipeline. So if you haven't subscribed, make sure and do that now. And everybody who's here, there's like 150 people here, hit that like button if you thought that Jim or Gavin did well and you like seeing these kind of conversations. And sorry for the people who are just now getting in here. You missed pretty much the whole thing. So it doesn't look like we have any other questions. So again, I just want to thank everybody who showed up tonight. Thanks to both of the debaters for their time. And again, consider subscribing and hitting that like button. And thanks to James for making these things possible. Jim, Gavin, I appreciate it. Yeah, nice job, Jim. Nice job, CCC. Thank you, man. Yeah, I had a really good time. And with that, any time keeps sifting the reasonable