 Everybody, today we're debating whether or not there are good arguments for or against theism and we're starting right now. All to have you here for this epic debate. I am extremely excited as we have two experienced, you could say veteran debaters, these guys have been through a lot. They crossed swords with many and we are very excited to let you know it's going to be a great one tonight. It's going to be a pretty flexible format. So a lot of open conversation and do want to let you know up front though that if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button because we've got a lot more debates coming up. So for example, we'll have a tag team tomorrow night on evolution. So that should be a lot of fun and also want to let you know we are a non-partisan channel, which means we have no positions as a channel. We want people to feel welcome, whether it be Christian, atheist or one of the many strange creatures in between. So with that, you're going to get rolling here. Basically it's going to be 10 second or 10 minute openings from each side followed by open conversation. Following that we'll have Q and A. So if you have a question fired into the whole live chat and also Super Chat's another option. If you do a Super Chat, it gives you an opportunity to also make a comment during the question and answer to which the debaters would get to respond to. And it'll also push your question or comment to the top of the list for the Q and A. So with that, without any further ado, very excited folks, I'm going to kick it over to Eric who's going to have his roughly, and again, this is flexible 10 minute opening statement. Eric, thanks so much for being here. The floor is all yours. All right, yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Kyler, for coming on and to just kind of jump right in to take advantage of the time. So the line of reasoning that I'll be using for the topic of the question that we have is a rule of logic that'll be known as modus tolens which can be summed up as a notion that if belief A leads to belief B, but if we know that belief B is false and it must follow that belief A must be false as well. So in order to answer the question, are there any good reasons for or against theism, I'm going to kind of do something that's going to cut both ways. Basically, I'll argue that if atheism is true, it would lead to certain beliefs. And by atheism, I am defining it as the belief that there is no God. If Skyler wants to give a different definition later, that's fine, but just for the sake of conversation, I'm letting you know how I'm defining it up front. So first thing I want to talk about is the argument for reason or what's sometimes referred to how in planning it has an evolutionary argument against naturalism. And it would go kind of as follows. To give an illustration to start off with, suppose you wake up one day from a nap and you see the microwave says 12 o'clock. And on that basis, you form the belief that it is 12 o'clock. But then you feel that it's really hot in your house. You see that there's water under the fridge. And then you see that the microwave is actually blinking 12 o'clock. And you come to the conclusion that, ah, the power must have gone out. Now the question is, is it 12 o'clock? Well, I don't know. It could be 12 o'clock, because as they say a broken clock is still right twice a day. But the point here is that if your belief that it is 12 o'clock is based on the ring of the microwave and given that the power has went out, then you now have what's called an undercutting defeater for the validity and truth of any belief that is based on the ring of the microwave. Now in the same principle, if there is no God and atheism is true, then the only way to explain how we got here in our existence is by naturalistic evolution by the mechanism of natural selection. And again, for the sake of time, that would basically mean that if our beliefs and behaviors play any role in this evolutionary process, the natural selection is going to select for adaptive behavior that are produced by beliefs which grant survival value, which is basically to say that natural selection doesn't care whether you're not your beliefs are true or false, it merely cares that your beliefs help you to adapt and survive. So to give an example, suppose a car is coming towards me and I formed a belief there's a car coming towards me and I formed a belief that in order to survive, I must jump out of the way and I'll live. So I do that, natural selection looks at these beliefs and sees that it produces adaptive behavior and says, check, let's go ahead and pass it on because those beliefs granted and produced a behavior that granted survival value in the adaptive behavior. But if a false set of beliefs could equally work and give us that survival value, then your beliefs don't have to be true for them to be passed on. So for example, suppose I have a different set of beliefs, same scenario, a car's coming towards me, but I have the belief that I'm Superman and if the car hits me, it won't kill me. However, I want to protect my identity as Clark Kent and I don't want people to know I'm Superman. So I jump out of the way to protect my identity, which means that these false set of beliefs could still produce the same type of behavior. And again, natural selection could care less whether or not your beliefs are true. Now, I say that to say, just like if any belief that's formed on the read of the microwave has an undercutting to feeder for its justification and validity or truth, then in the same way, if there's no God, you cannot trust any beliefs that your brain produces. And if your brain produces the belief that there is no God, then that itself is a belief that is produced by your brain which would be undercutted by this type of the feeder that we have given natural selection. Now, suppose somehow a scholar could overcome this argument. I don't think he can, but let's just say that he can. Then you have to deal with another problem, that if there is no God, first of all, the most logically positioned to hold, if there is no God and the only way we can explain our existence is through natural evolution via natural selection, then I would say the most consistent position to hold is naturalism. And this would be the idea that we have no reason to suspect anything non-physical exists, like angels, spirits, demons, souls, or anything like God, given that he's a non-physical entity. So when you apply this view of naturalism to human beings, human persons, then you get the view of physicalism, which is a view that human beings are purely physical objects composed of purely physical properties and states. Now, if that's the case, then nothing like a soul would exist, and then I would argue if there's no soul, there can be no free will. To explain this, well, let me first say this too. Moreover, if atheism's true and there's no God, then the law of causer closure would be true. And according to the law of causer closure, every physical event must necessarily have a physical cause. Now, to explain why this is a problem, if there is no soul and there would be no free will, consider the illustration Aristotle used. He said, if I move a rock with my staff, then I know that my staff move the rock, my hand moved the staff, but then he asked the question, what moved me? Now, I would define free will as being the originator of your will or actions. You're the first mover. So in order for free will to be possible in this situation, you have to be the first mover to move your hand to move the staff to move the rock. Now, you would have two options of physicalism is true at this point. You could say, well, a neuron finder in my brain caused my hand to move, to call the staff to move, cause the rock to move. Given that that still started with me, you could say why I'm still the first mover and based on the definition I gave, I'd have libertarian free will. However, given the law of cause or closure that only pushes back the goalpost because now given that a neuron was a physical event, you now have to ask yourself and what physical event caused that neuron firing to fire? At this point, I think the unbeliever would only have two options. The first option would be to again, posit neurons firing, but then again, you're pushing back the goalpost and it will eventually lead to an infinite regress, which we know is logically and philosophically impossible. So the other option is that at some point, no matter how many neurons you posit that are gonna fire, at some point, you're gonna have to point to something external and beyond yourself and prior to yourself that caused that neuron firing to fire. But once you do that and grant that, then you are no longer the originator and source first mover of your will or actions, you are now an intermediate secondary mover and hence free will cannot exist. So I would say if there is no soul and you're just a purely physical object, then given closure or closure, free will can exist because you're not the first mover of your will or actions. Instead, you are causally determined by external factors beyond your control. Now, I don't know scholar's position on free will, but someone might say, who cares? Well, if free will cannot exist, you're also gonna have to give up something like rational responsibility and intellectual integrity. Here's what I mean by that. So scholar doesn't hold to a belief in God and I would assume he would say that it's because of the evidence perhaps, but this would assume a type of intellectual integrity, which is to say he would be assuming that he was free to examine the evidence, freely come to his own conclusion and freely rationalize throughout this process. However, if given what I've said is true and there is no free will and there can be no free will if there's no God, then every belief that he is hold to was a belief that he was causally determined to believe by prior factors and events beyond his control, which means that his very belief that or his lack of belief that there is no God or however he wants to hash it out, it would literally mean that these beliefs are merely beliefs that he was causally determined to believe and he could not have believed otherwise. And for the atheists, it would literally mean that their very decision to become an atheist was not a rational, it was a non-rational, non-intellectual decision that they made that they were determined to make and could not have made any other choice. So all the beliefs are causally determined, including the actions. So we could reiterate by saying this, simply put, if atheism is true or there is no God, then given the conditions I've laid out, free will cannot exist. However, if free will does exist, then it would follow atheism cannot be true. So basically, if scholar wants to take intellectual credit for his beliefs and wants us to believe that he freely has rejected the belief in God for rational or even moral intellectual reasons, then it would also assume this was based on his ability to freely examine the evidence and freely come to his own conclusion, but if that's the case, free will exist and therefore atheism cannot be true. Now, based on the two arguments I've laid out so far, it would also follow that, and I'm just for the sake of time, I can unpack this later, it would follow that one could never rationally justify the truths of their beliefs and without a rational justification, I would argue that you cannot have knowledge, so knowledge would be impossible. So again, we could say that in a similar way, if atheism is true, then knowledge is impossible. However, again, if scholar wants us to believe that he knows anything at all, including the fact that he doesn't know everything, then it would follow that knowledge must exist and if knowledge exists, as a result, atheism cannot be true. Again, even if he could overcome that argument, then he would still have to deal with something like consciousness. Now, given what I've just mentioned, if atheism is true, given natural selection or naturalistic evolution, if physicalism is the most logically consistent position to take, then you would have to say that consciousness, if it exists, would have to be reducible or identical to something physical like the brain, which means that if consciousness exists, the mind is nothing more than a reducible to the brain. Now, we can put it this way, if atheism is true, consciousness must be physical, but if consciousness is not physical, then atheism can't be true. Now, how do we know that consciousness is not physical? Well, based on something known as Leibniz's Law of Identity, which basically states that two things in question are the same, then they're going to share the same properties necessarily. To give a quick illustration, suppose I walk into a lab and I see two bottles of clear fluid. One is labeled water, the other is labeled chemical X, and I ask myself, are they the same substance? Are they identical? Because in philosophy, identical means literally the same thing as. Well, I notice they have the same property of being a clear fluid, so I think they're the same thing, but then I turn them over and I see that chemical X is caution-flammable. And I think, ah, I know water's not flammable. Therefore, even if I don't know what chemical X is, I know they cannot be the same substance or not identical. In the same way, if the mind is nothing more than the brain or reducible to it, then they would share the same properties, but we know that's not the case. How so? Take a state of consciousness, such as your thoughts or beliefs. My thoughts and beliefs can be true or false, but no region of my brain is true or false. My neurons are true or false. My brain can weigh three pounds, but the thought that I'm having a debate with a scholar doesn't weigh three pounds. My brain can be seven inches long, but the taste of a banana or the smell of a rose is not seven inches long, and that's in my mind. I can go on and on, but the principle is simple. Namely that if all the properties of the mind are non-physical, and all the properties of the brain are physical, then it follows that if consciousness exists, it can't be physical. And if a scholar is conscious, and consciousness is not physical, then he shouldn't be an atheist. So I just say in summation, given what I've laid out so far, we could say that if Skyler has any reason to trust in his rational abilities in any sense, my first argument, and if he wants us to believe that he freely came to his lack of belief in God, a rejection of the belief in God, on the basis of freely analyzing the data and following the evidence freely where it leads and freely coming to his own conclusion, my second argument, and if he believes he's conscious, my third argument, then atheism, the belief that there is no God, cannot be true. And if atheism is true, then it must follow that therefore, God must exist. Thanks so much, Eric. We will now kick it over to Skyler for his opening statement. That was just about 10 minutes. So Skyler, thanks so much for being here. Do want to let you know before you get started, Skyler, I want to mention to everybody out there, I have put the links for both of these gentlemen in the description. So that way, if you're listening and you're like, I like that, you can hear plenty more just by clicking on those links below. Also want to let you know, as I have mentioned, we are a non-partisan platform. And though we are pretty laissez faire, in the sense that we only have like one strict rule, which is no hate speech. Like that'll get you banned, we'll delete it obviously. We do want to ask, and I think 99% of you do a superb job at this already, which I just give you huge thanks for, is that you be your friendly selves as sometimes once in a while, it gets kind of pretty heated in a live chat. And we're kind of like, hey, we'll be patient and we're not going to be like super strict on this. But we ask, you know, come on, meet us halfway. We're pretty laissez faire. So with that, very excited to hear from Skyler. Appreciate both of you being here gentlemen. And Skyler, the floor is all yours. Hey everybody, you know, bear with me tonight, folks. I got a little food poison this week. I am not feeling the best I've ever felt. So, but let me jump into this, right? So the first thing I'm going to say is, I wish you'd just taken a little time to go look at my channel because I'm not an atheist, right? So a lot of what your argument was based towards was, that I'm an atheist that declares that there is no God. I don't know if there's a God. Actually, I kind of hope that there is, to be honest with you. Well, it depends on the kind of God I should, I should really kind of preface that with because if he's like the God from the Old Testament, that God, I don't want that. But other than that, I would say that I'm not an atheist. So a lot of what that, what you were arguing really didn't apply to me. I would also say that what you're kind of doing is you're kind of leaving like the law of excluded middle basically, you're doing this similar thing to what Matt Slick does where you create an either or, but it's a false dichotomy. But is this your opening or rebuttal to my position? Because I thought we were gonna give an opening. Why are we interrupting me? Like seriously dude, like this is, that's not, that's not cool. So we, technically we hadn't agreed. This is, I know that it's usually customary that in the openings, people don't address the opening of the other, but at the same time, something we didn't really actually make explicit. And so it's something that I wouldn't say we could assume because we're like I said, pretty easy going here. So we will. It happens every time. I swear to someone to talk to somebody. Well, I was, I was, I was, I was. Dude, all right. Look, can I go back to my time, my man? Listen, here's the deal. You can get lost. Just be quietly lost, right? Don't be rude and interrupt the conversation. Wow, already started. You're still, you're still talking over me. So can I start over with my five, my time? Is that okay? I can give you the, it's probably like 30 seconds. So I'll give you 30 seconds back so you got about nine minutes. Sure. If you would, please just mute yourself, Eric. If you can't help yourself during these conversations. So the deal is, as you know, I could open and say whatever I'd like in my opening, right? You're not here to dictate what I'm going to say. I wasn't even going to do a very long opening, but now I'll go the whole 10 minutes for you, Eric. And I'll say a lot of things that maybe you will just disagree with. But anyways, let me go back to going over some of your points here. So I'm not an atheist, what you got wrong. And you made almost a whole complete argument about. And with naturalism, I'm open to the supernatural. I wouldn't necessarily exclude the supernatural as possible. Right? I don't see any evidence for it right now. So this kind of dichotomy going to be like naturalism versus non-naturalism or supernatural, whatever you want to put in there. It's not going to work either. You made a lot of like assertions during this thing about like free wills. And if there's no free will, there's no soul. I don't, doesn't really matter to me. I haven't really thought about determinism enough to really have a position on it. It's not interesting to me. It amazed me like during that opening though, like it took so long for us to actually get to like an argument here. And I didn't hear any kind of definition of like theism, like what kind of God this like, how you're defining this general open God. There are different types of theism out there. I don't know how you're connecting. I don't know what attributes this God has that you're connecting with all these things that you're talking about within your arguments. I didn't hear any of that in there. I think you make a lot of category errors, especially when you do things like some things, depending, because I was gonna say, you were saying about like brains and consciousness, how like if a thought is not the same thing as a brain and since it's not that same thing like the law of identity, but a lot of this comes down to the idea of how we define things, right? So how do we identify something? Like how do we identify a person, right? People have specific definitions for this. It may be different. Specific definition may be different from yours, right? So when we get into these ideas of a law of identity, we're really gonna have to get in the weeds here and talk about how we're identifying and how these things are different or alike, depending on how we identify them. I think also, I was like, I hear my notes here. A lot of categorization. I think the consciousness thing is really interesting. I watched a lot of your videos. You pretty much made these same arguments against T-Jump one to his conversation. I think that when you look at, if you think you've solved the problem of consciousness, you should write a book and get rich and famous, my man, because this is a thing that has not been solved, same with the problem of identity. Simply just stating God did it because the atheist, well, I'm not even an atheist. I'm open to it. I'm open to ideas. So how long, how much time I got left, James? How am I doing? God, about six minutes, 12 seconds. Six minutes, 12 seconds, all right. So I would hope, I wonder if when we get to the actual back and forth, I wonder if you have any of these, I'd love to see these arguments in silages and forms. I actually go through the premises, we can go step by step with it. Yeah, I can see the rest of my time. I'm good to go. Got you, we will jump into open conversation, folks. Thanks so much. And as I mentioned, you can shoot a question into the live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate, it makes it easier for me to try to add everyone to the list for the Q and A. And with that, gentlemen, the floor is yours. Yeah, so I just, so, and James, I apologize. I guess there wasn't any set parameters that I thought there was. And it's not James Faudre or yours Faudre. And the only reason I interrupted it is because I thought you were gonna give an opening. So far, I haven't heard you address the topic of the debate. Are there any good arguments for or against theism? Now, as an agnostic, you should say no, which I guess, so you would agree with me that there are no good arguments for atheism. And if I would define, or we can just call it the belief that there is no God. Would you agree with me? Wait a minute. You said two things. You said the definition of atheism, the belief that there is no God. Well, I'm not an atheist with that definition. Let me reward it. So would you agree with me that there are no good arguments for the proposition there is no God? There is no God. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of people saying, especially if you don't know what, because you have to define what the God is in a sense, right? There could be a hundred different types of God. Well, I'm trying to give a more detailed answer so you can actually understand what I'm saying. Be a little charitable, man. You don't want me to get aggressive. I'm trying to be chill and peaceful tonight, man. Just chill a little bit. So the thing is, when you talk about this, when you talk about good arguments, yes, if an atheist just makes the argument, there's no possibility that there's any type of God. It's a shitty argument, in my opinion. Now, unless we get into the details of particular gods, then I think you can make arguments and show how the particular gods are contradictory. I didn't go here. So I guess your answer would be yes. You agree with me that there are no good arguments for the position there is no God? I answer your question, man. If you can't follow, I don't know what you want me to do. Right, no. I'm summing up what you said, and then I just, and if you're fine. Sure, go on. What's your next point? No, I'm asking. I'm asking. Yeah, I'll repeat myself again. I think that when people say that they're, yes, I would say there's no good arguments to say that there's no possibility that there's any type of God. Yes, that's what I said the first time, but go ahead. Okay, and I'm curious, why is that? If you don't mind me asking. Well, because there's so many variables involved, and there's so much that we can't know as human beings. Right? Like, well, I mean, what do you mean? Like, there's all types of things that I'm limited to by my knowledge. My knowledge is pretty much limited to here on Earth. Anything out of this realm, and then I don't even have, even a fraction of the knowledge or information that is here within it. So like, there could be all types of different ideas and concepts of God's. I mean, it's happened throughout our human history. You see all the different concepts of God's. And by the way, I do think there, I don't, I'm not one of these people who think that there are no good arguments for some kind of generic God. I was a deist for a long time. I actually have a lot of, actually appreciation for people who are deists and some of those beliefs. So I'm not necessarily completely, one of these people say that there are no good arguments. I just haven't heard them from you two apologists, I should say. So you do think there are good arguments for ideism? I think there are ones that are interesting and compelling to me personally. Good is kind of subjective to my own opinion. So yeah, there are things that I find more pleasing and I think more honest. I think I'm amazed to be honest with it. When I look around the world and how incredible it is and where we are and the things that exist. Like to me, that is very, what's, it gives me a sense of wonder that I appreciate. That's what I would say. And that's why I was a deist for so long. There was a lot of things. Yeah, so and to respond. So again, I wasn't necessarily calling you an atheist. I'm saying if there is no God, and I said, I'm gonna use the word atheism as there is no God. And I said, Scotland could define it however he wants later. So it wasn't an attack against per se, you being an atheist. So I'm saying, if atheism is true, the belief there is no God, these things would follow. So that would answer the topic. Well, I'm not an atheist though. Right, well, you don't have to be, right? I mean, it doesn't matter if you're an atheist or not. The point is, if there's no God, these things follow. Okay, but we don't know if there's a God. I don't know if there's a God. There might be one. I don't know if you're getting me here. So if A implies B, but I'm false. Maybe I'm not B clear. Yeah. A. Yeah. If A implies- Don't say it like that. Say it another way. I don't understand what you're saying by A. What's another way of saying it? If a belief implies another belief, but that implied belief is false. And it follows that that base belief must be false as well. So, and even, and I'm curious to- I don't know, I don't know how that relates to me. So what am I doing there? So I don't want to have that relates, what you just said relates to me specifically. Well, no, no, I'm explaining. I'm explaining the reasoning I was using because you accused me of kind of, I guess, not really addressing it or addressing you. And I'm telling you the reasoning behind my arguments. Okay. All right, where are you at? Go ahead. What's your next point? Okay. So, given this that we have that if there's no God, so this, and I guess it would be helpful to interact with with some of the things that I was saying. So for example, let's go with free will. I mean, do you believe that you were free to come to the beliefs that you have? It seems that way. I don't have a, I haven't thought about it enough to give you a definite decision that I'm gonna die on or hill I'm gonna die on or argue over. Why haven't you thought about it? I got too much shit going on in life. I got two children, a full-time job, a life, YouTube. Yeah. Yeah, that's not my point. You do this for a living and yet you haven't thought about it. Oh, I don't do this for a living. This isn't my main job. I make some money off of this. But this is what I do with my main man, Dr. Josh Billwood at night. We just, we discuss theology. We have fun. It takes nothing to make a YouTube video. This isn't really hard work. I got a nice mic and a video. Mm-hmm. Okay. But you know, also like there's lots, I have specialty fields that I work. Like I focus on morality. We focus on Old Testament ethics. There's a huge, when you talk about philosophy or any topic, right? People have specializations in particular areas, typically because they enjoy those particular areas. They study, they focus on those particular areas. But that's the way, that's why I am the way that I am. So I guess, so would you agree with me that whether or not God exists, it has a lot of implications? It could and it could not. I mean, depending on how active this God is with us, if he's just some God who created everything and disappeared, kind of like the God of the Old Testament. But like, but if he's like that, where he just kind of abandoned us, yeah, there really wouldn't have any implications in our daily life or what's happening. So, so, okay. So like the arguments I gave, like let's say that you have, you have an undercutting defeater for any belief for brain producers if there is no God. No, I'd say that. I'm sorry, you cut out. Can you say that again? I'm sorry. That like the first argument I gave that if there is no God, then you have an undercutting defeater for the rational justification or truth of any belief for brain producers. That would be a pretty big implication, wouldn't you agree? I don't know what you mean by that. I need you to kind of clarify and really flush that out for me. Right, so remember the illustration I gave about the reading of the microwave. If I look at the microwave and believe it's 12 o'clock because the microwave says so, but I realize the power went out, then I now have something that undercuts the validity or justification of my belief given it's based on the reading of the microwave. Sure, okay. So I get that point. What's the next point? So in the argument, the next thing I went to was that if we look at our cognitive faculties and our beliefs and given natural selection, our beliefs are going to aim for survival value, then it could care less for the truth value, which means as long as your beliefs produce adaptive behavior, that's all natural selection would care about. So we can't- Well, that's assuming that that's the case, that that's the only reason that our thoughts would, we do that. That's kind of an assertion you would have to kind of demonstrate, wouldn't you? Well, I don't know what you mean by demonstrate, but sure, I mean, you can look at someone like Patricia Churchland who says that when it comes to evolution, there's only four Fs. There's fighting, fleeing, feeding and reproducing. You know, there's kind of a hidden joke there. So in fact, she says- She an evolutionist, this person? She's a philosopher, yeah, a philosopher of science. So she's an evolutionist. No, no, no, no. Okay, are you an evolutionist? Yes. Do you believe in evolution? No. No, okay, you're a young growth creationist. I don't take a position on that. I haven't honestly said- Okay, that's fair enough. That's good, okay. So you don't believe in evolution? It helps me understand what your position is to what you're coming from. Yeah, so yeah, so I don't believe in naturalistic evolution. So she says, and she's an atheist philosopher, says, bored down to the essentials, a nervous system enables an organism to succeed in the four Fs, and she names them. The principle core of the nervous system to give the party parts in the right place where they should be in order for the organism to survive. Truth, whatever it is definitely takes a hindrance. So this is not my opinion or my assertions. This is something that people have thought through- Sure, survival means a lot of different things though. I mean, people become more intelligent to survive. Like this term survival has a lot more built into it. Now, is your degree in like, do you have a science degree within biology, evolution or anything like that? No. Then I'm not really gonna get too deep into a conversation with you because I don't know a lot about it. You're not qualified. But you're gonna talk theology to me and philosophy. Yeah, we can talk theology. Yeah, because I've studied theology. Oh, do you have a degree in it? I've studied some of this stuff. Yeah, I was actually, I was doing an apprenticeship to become a minister, bro. What degree do you have in theology? I don't have a degree. I don't need a degree to study theology. So then it's irrelevant. Not in a level. Oh, no, no, it's relevant. No, because here, let me tell you why it's relevant. Because both ways. No, I'm gonna tell you why it's relevant because you tell me you don't believe in evolution when 99% of the scientists do, you're not educated in it. The 99, so if 99% of the doctors told you to have a certain treatment and 1% of the doctors like, no, don't do the treatment, you're gonna go with the 99% of the doctors because you trust the people who are educated in that issue. So I don't know evolution. So I don't know if this is actually true what you're arguing. You're not, I don't believe you're qualified to actually even argue this. So I don't know what you want me to do with that. I don't know if I necessarily agree with you. And I heard T-Jump actually had different answers. Let's see all types of things that you didn't necessarily agree with. But go ahead. Yeah, I don't know how that's relevant. So this isn't quote my argument. This is an argument that people have developed and people who study this stuff and there's people who would agree with this and agree with these conclusions. Patricia Turchlin and it's mostly why they agree that that's the mechanism of natural selection. That's what it does. It aims for survival value. And these are philosophical arguments, not scientific arguments. So I'm saying for the sake of argument, if this were true, this would be the conclusion. You break it up. So I'm, where do I leave off at? So, okay. All right, so you were saying, so people have these survival instincts, right? And their thoughts repeat your phrase and we'll go into it. You said a lot. I'm trying to keep up with you and I've said a lot of different things in your first argument, 10 minutes. You had like three different arguments built one. Yeah. And I appreciate you asking for clarification. What is the last thing you heard me say? So I know where I... It had to do with the idea of people, the idea of survival mode basically and how their thoughts are connected with survival. Well, did you hear me say that my argument is not a scientific argument. It's a philosophical argument on the basis of people who've done the studying and done the research. So it's not like I'm making these assertions. These are arguments in that even atheist scientists and philosophers would agree with. So it's widely accepted that natural selection aims for survival of value. I don't even know what it would mean for it to aim for truth. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that, but there are a lot of ways that it does that. It isn't just when you talk about survival, there's a lot of ways that adaptation is really what we're talking about. These adaptations were changing. There's a lot of ways people adapt and survive. So let's go back to your main argument. Keep going with your argument. I'm gonna just for the sake of the argument, I'm gonna accept your premise and let's keep going. Well, I just want to make sure you understand me here because again, I'm not, so in other words, our teeth and our nails, we have those given natural evolution because it's helped us survive and adapt, right? You said we have what? Like our teeth and our nails, those are things that we have evolved to help us survive. I would imagine, I don't know, I haven't studied the field. Okay. I know we become, our brains have become, we become smarter. That's one thing. Well, I guess that's kind of what the argument touches on is that if anything, we can trust that our beliefs are aimed and produce beliefs that are geared for survival value, not necessarily truth value, which means your beliefs don't necessarily have to be true and these beliefs will be passed on. Oh, sure, sure. That's fair. I agree with your premise. Okay. Okay, right. So I'm saying if that's the case, then you now have an undercutting defeater for any belief your brain produces, much like the illustration about the microwave. And now that, I don't know where you get into that conclusion there. So are you saying that no conclusion my brain comes to can be true now? No, I'm saying it's now undercutted. It's an undercutting defeater. So in other words, when I look at the microwave and it blinks 12 o'clock, it could be 12 o'clock, but I have no way to justify if all I'm using is a microwave. Sure, but stay in my mind. I'm trying to figure out how this works with my mind here. Right, so. So how are you saying that now, are you saying I can't have knowledge? Is this what you're, what's your overall point here? Are we gonna get to like brain and a VAT type things? Is that what's gonna end up here? No. So that was the first point is simply that you now have an undercutting defeater. So you can't justify any, you cannot. No, I don't, that's what I'm asking you to justify. I don't understand what, okay, how do I have a defeater? What about, what gives, what about having a brain that interprets information? What is the defeater? So, so basically we, would you agree with me that your brain is not a mechanism designed to obtain truth? It cut out again. I'm sorry, I don't know what's, I don't know if it's my internet or the internet out there. I apologize guys. What was your last statement? Would you agree with me that the brain is not a mechanism designed to obtain truth? I don't think the brain is designed. Right, so, so your answer is yes. You would agree with me, right? Right, yeah. Yes, because it's not designed yet. Right, so. But it can't, but the brain can recognize truth. Well, that'd be, that would go into my argument about consciousness because I don't think your brain thinks at all, but that's further down the road. I mean, we can go where we want to. You might as well get, you might as well get, because I think that's going to be the root of it. I mean, because if you're saying that, I mean consciousness obviously, obviously no one solved the problem conscious. People don't know where consciousness comes from. Most, most people study this think it actually comes from the brain. You can, and it's very obvious when people get brain damage, their mind goes away. Like there's diseases that affect the brain that affect the mind. What's the mind? Depends, it's a complicated way to define it. I mean, what you consider mind and consciousness the same thing? Mm-hmm. It's a loose term, a loose definition, because like I said, this is something philosophers have been debating over for centuries. There isn't, there isn't a real definition, but my definition would basically be the idea that a brain consciousness is the way the brain perceives its own functions in a flawed way. Okay, so is a cyber perception? Because everything's in the brain. The consciousness, I believe the consciousness comes from the brain. You don't see consciousness without brains. You get brain damage, your mind can be destroyed. You see this. How do you see consciousness at all? What's awareness? It depends on how you define consciousness. How do you define consciousness? Yeah, so consciousness comes in five states. It's something you define ostensibly. So the five states would be thoughts, beliefs, sensations, desires, and volition or acts of will. So that should be how you would define consciousness. You said acts of will, what were the other ones? So thoughts, beliefs, sensations, desires, and volition, or you can also say acts of will. You know, interchange it. So none of those come from the brain, you believe? No. So you don't think human desires, emotions, none of that comes from the brain? Let me rephrase that. I believe the brain can influence these things, but I don't think these things are in the brain. Well, how would the brain influence something that's apart from it? How would the brain influence something that's apart from it? Well, you have calls and affect relationships. So I'm not a part of a guitar, but I can tune it or detune it. But it doesn't follow that. Yeah, but how does it interact? What's the mechanism? Right. So even if I couldn't explain the mechanism. So I think, well, let me give it to you. Well, you can't, truthfully, to be honest. You just can't if you want to be honest with me. Let me give a two-part answer to this. So first, I'd say that it's a primitive action. What's called a basic action. Because when you ask me, how does it interact? You're basically asking for an intervening intermediate mechanism. So if I say, how does A interact with B? And you say, well, I could say, well, C. Well, then you can just ask, well, how does A interact with C to interact with B? At some point, again, you're going to get to an infinite regress. So there has to be a stopping point. And I would say that it would be. I'm talking about the immediate mechanism, my man. We don't have to go all the way back to what's the immediate man. How does a brain influence a mind that's not connected to the brain? Right. So let me finish my thought here. So I think it's just a primitive action. It's a direct action. How? I could say, I don't know. But I could say that I do believe it's a basic action. But I don't come to the belief the soul exists, because I can explain the interaction problem. On top of that, if we have the idea. The soul is a Christian concept. That's not necessarily general theism. No, it's not. What does the soul have to do with theism? General God belief? You have to believe. Well, what kind of theism are you defining? What kind of theism are you talking about? There's different classical theism, like what? So I'm talking about a belief, first and foremost, that there is more to the natural world. There's more to the universe or to life than just purely physical states and properties. No problem. But you're talking about a soul, and that's not something different. OK, I guess that soul could be included in that. I get it. But how do you get to a soul from general theism? I'm going one step at a time for you, because I don't want you to say that I'm going too fast or anything. So that was just my first point that it points to. Now, if that's the case, I would argue that if atheism is true. Wait, you're not answering my question. You're not answering my question, though. You're going back to something else. So you don't know how a soul interacts with the brain. You said it affects the brain, but you can't tell me how it interacts. You claim me as soul is connected to theism somehow now. And now what do we do? We're going to move to another topic? We're going to move to something else? Where are we going? We're going to hopefully get to the end of a sentence for me before you interrupt again. I hope so. Let's hear from Eric of what the question, if you want to repeat the question, Skyler, but otherwise, if Eric, if you remember the question, we'll let you answer it. Yeah. So he asked two questions. The first one was about the interaction problem. And I even said allow me to give a two-part response. First thing is just a primitive basic action. Now, another thing I'd say, the second part to the answer I'd say is, even if I don't know how, if I can't explain the metaphysical mechanism by which it happens, I don't believe in a soul because I can, quote, solve the interaction problem. I believe in a soul for other reasons and arguments and evidence. So when you ask about the interaction problem, you're asking an epistemic question of how, when I'm answering an ontological question of whether or not it exists in the first place. So if I can give arguments that it exists and those arguments are successful, then if all of the soul exists, even if I don't know how it interacts, I don't know how my car works, but I can still drive it. OK. Can we go back to those points that I made about the soul? So how do you connect the soul with you? Is this just your personal definition of theism that you include a soul in there? Oh, theism, right. So the first part was to argue that if a soul exists, then you're going to have to give up naturalism or physicalism. I'm not saying you hold to it. I'm just saying in general. That's not what I'm asking you right now. That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you how you connect soul with theism. I understand that. And you're repeating what you're doing is you're repeating what you've done so far. I know you've done so far. I've already heard it. People wonder why I interrupt this because you're kind of repeating yourself. Just a direct answer would be nice. Go ahead. So I'm getting there if you would allow me to. So if we first give up, in other words, it's a step-by-step process. If there's more to the natural world and if, according to atheism, only physical things would exist, which I would argue that is the most logically positioned to take. And if the belief that there is no God leads to that belief and there are non-physical things that exist and it follows that some God must exist. So to answer the question and the topic of the debate, it would follow yes or argue arguments for theism. And that would cut both ways and say, that would actually disprove atheism. Or whatever you want to call it, the belief there is no God. I don't have that belief. Why are you bringing up atheism? It's not relevant to me. So my arguments are, I'm not focusing around atheism. I asked you a question about the soul and you didn't answer it. You're just saying, listen, you don't remember what my question was? About the soul? Yes. What was my specific question to you? Well, you asked, too. You asked about the interaction problem and then you asked how it relates to theism. And I explained to you that if- That's not how, no. I know how you're relating it to theism. I'm asking how you're connecting it to theism and saying this is part of general theism as a definition. Right. So I'm not saying it's part of the general theism as a definition per se. Okay, so this is your personal definition of theism then. So we might as well just argue Christianity if we're gonna do this. If we're just gonna throw our personal definitions in there of what we think God is. So I'm arguing against atheism, which I would define as a belief there's no God. Obviously- No one's making here. Hold on, let's write it. Go ahead and do it. If the belief there's no God is false, then that would imply the opposite. There is a God. Now we can then go, then if that's the case, then we've answered the topic in discussion for debate, which I haven't even heard you answer, by the way. So your personal beliefs aren't relevant to my arguments. It's not as if I'm not attacking you per se. I'm attacking the belief in general that there is no God. And if the belief that there is no God is false, then it must follow that there is a God. I mean, all you're saying is if there's a God, atheism isn't true. Well, yeah. Okay. So yes, I agree, but that's a tautology. I get it. So what's the point? You say the same thing. It's the same thing. If there is a God, there's no atheism. Obviously if you define atheism, there is no God. Someone claiming there's no God. Yes, if there's a God, atheism is correct, but you're not, but you haven't actually made an argument to prove the existence of this, of this theistic God that you've attached a soul to somehow out of, it's from Christianity, but you don't want to argue Christianity tonight. Are you familiar with Modus Tolens? Are you familiar with that phrase? That rule of logic? I've heard the term before. I am not a philosophy major. I don't focus on philosophy. Not my thing. That's why I originally, when I asked James to set this up for Christianity, I don't think you want to discuss Christianity, you want to discuss general theism. I usually argue Christianity with people because we have like a real topic with me, but we should keep on. I don't want people to think I don't want to argue theism, but what I do want you to know, I do want is an actual, to show me somehow that there is a theistic God. So the arguments that I gave, if there is no God, there can be no free will. If there is free will, then there must be a God. If there is no God, knowledge is impossible. If there is knowledge, there is a God. Do we go premise by premise with that? Can we just go premise by premise besides, you just breeze them all over? Which one do you want to go? Go premise one. For which argument? The one you were just saying, premise one. So free will. Yes, that one. Is that the one you're talking about? The one you were just talking about, Eric. Choose one. Choose one. Just choose one. Okay, let's go with the brain, the consciousness one. Give me premise one. Let's go through the argument. So I would say if atheism is true, then premise one, then if atheism is true, then naturalism is true. Hold on pause. If atheism is true, naturalism is true. I don't know if that's, I don't know. Maybe there could be some other supernatural thing. Are you, when you define atheism, are you saying like, atheism is the same as anti-supernatural? Wait, wait, wait. Is atheism is just the, depending on, if you're defining it as you don't believe in God. Yes, yes. So you're defining it basically as anti-naturalism. No. Aren't there atheists that are honestly naturalist? So, an atheist could hold beliefs as an atheist, but it doesn't mean that it's logically consistent with the atheist perspective in the first place. So I'm not saying you can't be an atheist and not believe in these things. I'm saying it's logically contradictory or logically incoherent or inconsistent to the atheist paradigm. If there is no God. That's good. I'm not an atheist so we can continue with the argument. It's not against my paradigm. So deal with what I said there. So you asked me to explain it, my argument. I explained my argument so it doesn't apply to me. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the argument. I know, but premise one, but you keep bringing up atheist. You told me I go through premise as part of the premise. Okay, well, okay, go ahead. Keep on with premise one. I've showed you now that you, but you're, the way you're categorizing these things, you're categorizing as an atheist as the same thing as pure naturalist. But I believe there are atheists who aren't necessarily naturalist in philosophy. Yep, you're right. So, so then your premise, there's another option there. Well, there's another option to believe something. Doesn't mean it's a logically consistent option. Sure, but you have to demonstrate your premises to be true. You have to make that argument. Yes, yes, anybody can be wrong about anything. I agree with you, my man, but you got to make those arguments and show how it's the case. I have to make a sentence that shows the case. If he could stop interrupting me. Stop, stop the childish games. It's not a childish game. You have to give Eric some time to, we'll give him a chance to make his case for those premises. We might as well, I don't, I don't want people, I don't want to have conversations with me. They'd rather, we should just do formal debates with me. So you can have as much time just to make an argument to the audience and not interact with me. But I'm trying to interact with you to understand what your, like what the argument is. And I'm sorry that I got to interrupt you because you go through five or six different premises very quickly. And I can't object to them or go back and forth with you. And then when I, when I erupt you to get clarification, you're like, you're over talking me. I don't get no time. But go ahead. How much time do you need? Do you want like three, four minutes to kind of do what you need to do? Wow. And then if I don't understand something, I'll just let you go on and then I won't, we can't have a good dialogue about it. So note that James asked you to let me talk. And then you talked over James and kept talking. So you asked me to go premise by premise. I was at my first premise and then you interrupt me. I understand. There are atheists who don't hold to naturalism. And I think they're logically inconsistent within that worldview. But that was part. So if I were to put it into a premise, I would- We could debate that point now. We could debate that point. What if I say that I'm not a naturalist? How am I gonna go here? Okay, right. So I would ask, why do you, what reason do you have to believe that there are immaterial things? I'm open to it. There's no, it's not logically impossible. It doesn't seem logically impossible. Well, that way you asked, what's the belief you asked me? Why I believe that? And I'm saying that it doesn't seem logically, it seems like it'd be logically possible. I'm open to it. But, okay, wait. Are you saying you're open to it or you're saying that you deny naturalism? I don't, I'm not, I don't, I'm open to both. To be honest with you, I could be open to naturalism or the supernatural. If I see evidence for the supernatural, that'd be fantastic. But I'm open to both of them. So I'm not, so how am I in coherent in my views? So, well, I'm confused. So you said, let's say I'm not a naturalist. Okay, because I'm not necessarily a naturalist. I'm open. I don't know all that entails, like I'm not a philosopher major. So I'm open to both positions. The supernatural and it being all natural, I'm open. Well, I guess, so, let me ask a question here. So you haven't come to a position on whether or not naturalism is true. Is that correct? I don't know if I can completely come to that position. It's not what I asked. I don't know how I, okay. Say it again. So are you saying that you have not yet come to a position on whether or not naturalism is true? So let me ask you something. When I say I don't think you can come to that position, right? Doesn't that entail no, right? Don't you think that when I say something, so why would you be snippy with me and write back to me like, that's not what I asked. Well, sometimes when you haven't dialed people in, you pick up on what they're saying. You don't be rude just to be kind of sent into them. So this is what poisons the well and I get more aggressive with you. I just wanna let you know what you do show like that. So the answer is, I don't, James, let me, I'll continue, I'll continue. Listen, here's the deal. I told you that I don't know if naturalism is true. That's my position. I don't know if it's possible to be able to verify it. Gotcha. And I don't ask to like get into a debate about it. I'm asking just so I can know where you're coming from. So, but you know what? Hey, sorry, I'll let you unpack that instead of giving just a one word answer. Fair enough. I'll do that. So, so I apologize. No, it's no worse. Okay. So I'm curious that if you're agnostic, I mean, I think you can only remain agnostic for so long because if you haven't come to a position on whether or not immaterial things can exist, I would say, let me put it this way. If only physical things could exist, then it is not even logically metaphysically possible for any kind of God to exist, any God that is non-physical. So if only physical things exist, then you could disprove Christianity. You could disprove any type of non-physical theism, but I'm so, I can't help but wonder if you're doing this, even just for a hobby and spending so much time doing debates almost every week, and you haven't even thought of one of the most central issues to whether or not theism is true, I can't help but wonder how much thought you put into this. What does that have to do with the argument? We were just making a couple minutes ago. Why did we go to just talking about me personally at this point? Are we moving away from the argument? Okay, well, here, I'll answer your question, right? So I'll answer it. I just find it strange that you move, we were talking about the argument, then you talked about me personally, like it's weird that I haven't thought about these things. I've obviously thought about them. I'm just saying that it's complicated and I'm being actually very charitable with the idea. You don't hear many people that argue against Christianity saying that like being as open as I am about possibilities with God. So what I deal with mostly is Christianity and it's in coherence. That's the things I focus on in life and with my channel. When you say theism, theism could be almost any type of God, right? Except for like polytheism. Well, I guess it's polytheism. It's multiple gods, multiple gods, right? So when you just say like, why haven't you thought about the million types of gods? It's like the same thing. Why haven't you thought about Zeus and thought all these things through? Life's busy, I got shit to do, my man. But I'm here and I'm debating and I'm willing to engage. Okay. So I think it's a very relevant point that I was trying to make is that if you're really serious about these questions and issues and if you're busy, then don't spend so much time doing this stuff. But if you're genuinely curious and you're having this debate and discussion because you're genuinely open, which of course we'd assume free will, we'd assume rationality and we'd assume consciousness, which I'd argue if those things exist, atheism, the belief there's no God cannot be true, but setting that aside. Are we giving up the consciousness argument and moving away from it? Is that where we're going? Because we're still at premise one. And then now we've gotten to just saying, you should think more about this or do other things with your time. I don't really care about your opinion on what I should do with my life, my man. I appreciate it. We don't know each other. We're not friends, right? You don't have any clue about my life and what goes on. You should probably show some humility, some of that stuff that Christ apparently tried to teach you but it hasn't really worked. So are we gonna go back to the art? Let's go back to premise one. So we were at premise one. We were trying to justify premise one. Are we leaving that argument now? Well, first let's say if that, if you think it's the case, pray for me, right? But nevertheless, I'm gonna pray for you. Yeah, I know. I mean, I'll pray to raptor Jesus. Maybe raptor Jesus RJ will bless you with his cause. Is he physical or non-physical? He's metaphysical. He's non-physical. Oh, so that you would have to believe in non-physical things that exist. So first of all, But in this particular area, yeah, I gotta, I can't deny RJ up there under his cause. Okay, great. So it seems like we're not even on a premise. I thought we just got into just kind of going back and forth on each other's positions because you started saying, well, that's not my position. So I started asking you questions and then you want to go back to the premise set. Well, I want to go back to the argument. I want to go back to the argument, not just asking, but my positions are kind of irrelevant to what the debate topic is. I'm not a theist, not an anti-theist, the Serylia. Right. Your beliefs aren't relevant to my arguments because if my arguments pass, it doesn't matter what you believe. Well, not the conscious argument we were making, the consciousness argument, what might be relevant in there. I'll tell you what, ask me, ask me about consciousness. Let's talk about that. I'll let you ask the questions. Ask me about consciousness. Well, I did early, tell me how it interacts with the brain, how it works. Right. And I told you that would be an epistemic question. I gave you two part answer. I think it's just a direct type of primitive action or basic actions, what philosophers call basic action. And even if I couldn't answer the question, it wouldn't just prove there's no soul just like me not knowing how my car works doesn't mean I can't drive it. Why when there's brain damage in human beings, they lose consciousness? Very good. So there is a cause and effect relationship. So let me define soul for you. Can I do that? Maybe that might, I mean, okay. I don't know what soul, souls and consciousness aren't necessarily, I mean, it's just an extra, you're kind of throwing into the mix there. I don't know why we're gonna, what does soul has to do with consciousness? Are you coupling those together? Well, I said, let me define it and that might help with the conversation. So. Oh, I don't need you to define, I'm talking about consciousness, not souls right now. I said, I don't need you to define soul. Well, when I give you the definition, you're gonna know why I asked that. All right, go ahead. You can do it. Okay. So I would define some substance dualists and I would define the soul as an immaterial substance that contains consciousness and anime sub body. So the soul, the consciousness would be, would be a capacity of the soul. That being said, when you're talking about consciousness, you're, I don't understand. How does that work? How does it work? Functionally. Yeah, how does that happen? Now, when you say functionally, do you mean like a physical type of functionality? Yeah, well, just how is the soul interacting with the consciousness? So, I think the soul will be the self. So when I use the word I, I'm talking about me, I'm conscious. How do I interact with myself? I'm not sure how, if I follow that. Oh, okay. So, but I mean, so you're basically saying that the consciousness has nothing to do with the brain then besides somewhat related, but you can't explain how it's related. So you say, so the question originally was, can you explain to me when people have brain damage, how they lose consciousness? Right, right. And we didn't get to that answer. Can we just get to that specific thing without having to go into 100 different things? Well, I'm trying to unpack my position so you can better understand my answer because these are questions that you can't just, you know, they're gonna take some unpacking if you allow me. So if, so given that the soul contains consciousness, I'm not saying it has no relation to the brain. I'm saying that the soul when it's embodied uses the brain as an instrument, much like a musician would use a guitar. If you mess and detune my guitar, you mess up the music. If you mess up my brain, you affect the way my soul interacts with the brain and body. How does that, how does that work? How do you, how do you affect this, how the soul interacts with the body? If I can hit it. I mean, you're standing here like it's a fat, well, you're, yeah, but you just hit over the head. You're damaging the physical brain where the consciousness is coming from. Where you, well, you don't believe the consciousness is coming from. You think it's from the soul, but I'm sorry, how do you damage a soul? Okay. To where it affects the consciousness? So if, if I, if I pop a few strings in a guitar or scratch a CD, am I scratching the note C? Am I breaking the note C? Or am I breaking an instrument that conveys a note C? I, I want to go to the actual thing I was talking about, a brain and a soul. You're using analogy, I don't, analogy is different. I just rather stick to the actual thing we're talking about than using, I don't think the analogy's, yeah. So in principle, the analogy gets to the point of what I'm saying. You can have a cause and effect relationship without going to identity. There's different types of relationships. There's cause and effect relationship, but cause and effect relationships do not establish identity that something is the same thing as. So just because I can show a cause and effect relationship or even a dependence relationship, it doesn't follow that A is the same thing as B. How does Alzheimer's affect the soul? Same, same thing I just explained. It's a cause and effect relationship. Yeah, but I don't know, you're saying, you're just saying cause and effect. I don't understand the cause and effect. I can tell. So if I- Yeah, yeah, exactly. Please, please explain to me. What is, how does a disease affect the soul? How would you measure that? How would you even know any of this? So if you play an instrument. An instrument isn't a soul, an instrument isn't a soul or a brain. I'd like you to state, imagine you're- I just, we might wanna let him, I know it's an analogy, but I think it's fair to let him use an analogy if he wants. No, it's fine. I'm just gonna say at the end of your analogy, it's not the same. So if you wanna go ahead and do it, you can. Yeah, I'd love to do it. So if I sit on a piano or get a guitar, and there are certain keys or strings needed to play a certain note, then you can see how a cause and effect relationship by damaging certain keys or strings on a guitar or piano would inhibit my ability to play a certain song or note. Then you can understand that a cause and effect relationship can affect something indirectly or directly when the two things are not the same thing. So if certain keys on a piano are required to play the note C and I destroy one of those keys, then I can't play the note C, then you can understand that in principle, if the soul uses a brain, then if I affect a certain part of my brain that deals with something like memory, it affects my soul's ability to interact with that part of the brain that was damaged that has access to the correlation of what causes or stimulates the memory in the soul. You know, why this doesn't work is we can observe damage to a piano and we can understand why sound is being affected by the piano. We can't measure a soul and how it's damaged or consciousness in that sense. Well, we can see that when people have brain damage, actually we can see when people have brain damage, they usually have, it messes with their consciousness, their mind. I mean, we've mapped out the human brain to where we know what particular areas affect like memory, all types of things within neuroscience. Oh, you'd have to go talk to neuroscience. I mean, but there's tons of studies that we don't, you have, you've never, you've never read about how, what parts of the brain where memories come from, the hippocampus. That's not what I asked, I said, how do we map that? Oh, you'd have to go, there's data, what do you think, they never do tests or something like that, man? I'm simple, I'm simple, I can see it, I don't know if it's up my head right now, I'm fine. I can see it in that point, but honestly though, but if you honestly can't answer that question, and you really, do you know the answer to it? Or are you just, are you making the claim that they've never done it? Please, go ahead. I didn't, I'm just curious if you know. I already told you, I don't, so go ahead. Explain how they do it. So, so if, so I'll put, so consciousness is a first person introspective kind of thing. No, no, no, no, no, are you explaining how it works? You said you were gonna explain how they do these testing, can you explain it, tell us? If I can get a sentence out, yeah. Yeah, yeah, as long as you're gonna do that and not go to something else, I'm happy to hear it. I'd love to explain it, let me know when I get it. I'm ready for it. Okay. Thanks for your patience. Oh, absolutely, yeah, that's what Christ asks us to do. So. You're not perfect at it though. Oh no, of course not, pray for me, that's what I said. So, when you. I will, I will. I appreciate that. So, when consciousness is a first person introspective kind of thing, here's what I mean by that and here's why it's relevant to what you're asking. So, a neuroscientist can know more about my brain than I do but they could never know more about my mental life than I do because consciousness is something that is accessible only to myself, not by a third party observer. In other words, you can't crack open my skull and see my beliefs. When I think about a pink elephant, you said you saw my debate with T. John but I would encourage people to see that as well the commentary I made on that. There's no pink elephant inside my brain. These are mental states that are not physical things. Otherwise, you'd have that pink elephant inside the brain. Now, I would say the only way we're able to map that is by asking the person and the reason we have to ask them is because consciousness is not something that a third party observer can just look at in a physical sense or measure physically. So, when you look at a C5 refining my brain or a scientist probes my brain and they say they see certain neurons firing, they write down brain state X equals and of course I'm just simplifying here, brain state X equals and they say, hey Eric, what did you feel? What were you thinking about? Oh, you know what? I just had a thought of puppies. Ah, brain state X must equal puppies. Let's try that again. Shock them again, give them brain state X, brain state X, Eric, what did you feel puppies? So they had to ask the person because consciousness is not something you can just directly observe. So the only way in principle we can even map the brain is by asking the person and looking at the correlation brain states. Why? So what's the problem with that? Well, yeah, I'm sorry, how does that not work? Like if you're saying they're able to use an MRI machine or something, whatever they use, machine they use to read brains and then they're doing these tests, how does that test not work? Like I see that you're just shedding doubt on it. You're like, well, I don't believe it. That's basically what you kind of said. Like, I don't know how they could do this but it took also, it took a long time to get to you actually explaining it. So I'm sorry, could explain specifically how that works for me. So how is it not, when they do these tests, what do you think the scientists are getting wrong? These people that have studied the field for so long, unlike yourself. Could you please tell me where I said it was wrong? What do you mean? Well, you were saying, okay, so you're saying that when I made the claim and said that they're able to do it, they're able to actually study the brain and they know what parts of the brain is like where memory is stored at the hippocampus and then you were supposed to be explaining that moment how they're able to do these measurements and they're able to do that is what you were explaining, right, because that was my question to you. No, actually, I'm gonna ask a question. I said- No, I was asking you, remember you told me, hey, if you just let me respond to your question and you made this whole big thing about it and you asked me, hey, is it okay for me to go now to answer your question? No, I asked you a question because you originally asked me how it's done. I said no, okay? And then I asked you to explain how it's done and that's what you were supposed to be doing just now. Yes, I explained how it's done, uh-huh. Okay, so you didn't, okay, you explained that but then when explaining how it's done, you dismissed it as if like, this isn't the proper method- I dismissed it. In order to, yes, you dismissed it and said that. Okay, so do you agree now? Do you agree with the scientists who have studied this or do you disagree? I don't- You're confusing yourself here. I'm not quite sure how you're not following what's going on here. Do you agree- You obviously don't agree with the scientists who believe that consciousness comes from the brain and that we, well, not consciousness, but that we can map out the human brain. You obviously don't believe that. What makes you think I don't believe it? I'm curious because I don't think you're following- I mean, just tell me yes or no. Do you believe it or not? Do you believe there's a part of the brain that holds memories? How about that? No, that's a different question. No, okay, so you just said, okay, no, but that's specific. I'm talking about the brain and I was talking about how we mapped out the brain. That's what the whole conversation was about. Please stop yelling. I'm not yelling. I don't know if my mic really picks up something really loud here. It might be my vocals. Dude, I'm smiling. I'm not yelling at you. Don't be so sensitive. You could be on that armor of Christ. Put on that armor of Christ for you. So, you have courage, man. It's okay. Did your little testicles go up? Did you get a little nervous or something on there? That's okay. We can talk about that later, but we're gonna get back on topic here. Well, you know, when people go to that kind of, that kind of attitude and characteristic debate, it's really telling that they have no arguments and that they're losing a debate and they're trying to get anxious about it. I'm trying to make it. You're the one going off. You're the one talking about me more than the actual debate. You're the one like, stop yelling. Yes, like you're making a dramatic scene. Like I'm yelling, screaming at the top of my lungs at you. I talk loud. I'm from Philadelphia, brother. You gotta relax a little bit and just deal with it. So let's go back to the argument. James wants us to go back to the argument. Let's go back to the argument. Art, do you wanna talk more about the drama for a couple of minutes? You just talked about my testicles and you're saying I'm talking about you? Yes, because you're so sensitive. If you're like, stop yelling. I'm not even yelling at you, bro. You don't know what yell it is. You don't hear my wife, man. You'll know what yell it is. I just get excited, man. I have a good time. Don't take things too seriously, my man. I'm not, I'm perfectly. Listen up. Get those balls. Loosen them up a little bit, my man. Wow. Get them, loosen them up. Let's go back to the argument. Let's go back. Yeah, let's go. So do wanna let you know, we'll probably go into Q&A in about five minutes. So we're gonna give these guys a chance to kind of draw together the threads of what you've heard tonight and the floor is yours, gentlemen. So we start talking about consciousness with the main argument we talked about most of this debate so far. We got the premise one, never got past premise one. So that's where we're at. So we can continue. So if you wanna figure out how we can justify that first premise, we can get past premise one. So your argument works, we can do that. If you have another question for me, I'm happy to answer that too. Whatever you wanna do, my man. I'm having a good time. I'm glad you are. So, I don't know if I understand you. Are you saying we're doing the closing or are you- Digging for Christ. That's what I love about you. Praise the Lord. What were you saying, James? Hello, Jebus. You said something about five minutes. Yeah, so I would say we don't have formal closings, although it's up to you guys. If you'd like to do formal closings, we could do time sections. Otherwise, we could kind of, in fact, I think that's probably a good idea. Just maybe at least three minutes and then going into the Q and A. Okay, well, let me just explain what I think, and I don't mean to suspectfully, I think you're missing the point I was making. I never said that these things don't happen. I'm saying, I agree we can in principle map out the brain, but the only way we can do that is by asking the person what's going on mentally, because while we have access to the physical components of the brain, we do not have access to the mind as a third-party observer. You have to ask the person because consciousness is not physical. So if consciousness were physical, you wouldn't have to ask me what I'm thinking. You could just look at my brain and know, but the only way we can map it is by asking, after we map it, which was based on asking, then from then on, we can keep trying to further map out the brain. So my point was, yes, you're right, I agree with what the scientists are doing, but that is something that lends validity to my position. No, what I was, I get that's what you're saying, like you're explaining how the scientists do things, but you're not saying what the problem with it is. I don't, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. The tone that you're putting towards, maybe I'm misreading your tone here, but the way you're kind of talking about it, you're talking as if there's a problem. And obviously you do think there's some, there's gotta be some kind of problem because you don't believe memories connected to the hippocampus. So you don't believe them on that aspect. You don't believe them in a lot of the aspects that the neurosciences have been studies and things. You don't believe it. I got from the tone, the way you're talking about this, is there's a problem with the methodology? If you think there's no problem with the methodology, I guess we don't disagree, yeah, go ahead. The methodology of how we come to map the brain, is that what you're saying? Yes, the thing you were just explaining exactly. It sounded like your tone was that it's a bad methodology in which we do it. I might have misread it, maybe it isn't. Well, yeah, I mean, no offense, if that was a tone, it was a tone to the methodology of your way of thinking and tracking my argument. It wasn't about the methodology of how we map the brain. I was saying that. That's not dealing with what I just said. Come on, man. You've been dodging a lot of questions this debate, man. Give me a minute, and then you ramble for two minutes about something that's not directly related to it. So I'm sorry, do you agree, is the methodology useful? Does it work? Direct question, yes or no? Yes. The methodology does work. The results that they get are correct. Yeah, I'd say so. All things been equal, sure. Okay, so then you contradicted yourself because earlier you said that memory is not in the hippocampus, yet they've done testing to see, and you just said you agreed with how they did the methodology. You agreed with the conclusion. So this is, if you're wondering why I'm confused, it's you because you're contradicting yourself. Okay. Okay. I mean, I don't know what else to say at this point because so you can rewind and watch it again. If you would allow me to use an analogy again. If I knew nothing about it. No, it's not useful. You're not actually dealing directly with what I'm saying, but go ahead, if you want to finish up, do your last, say your piece and then we can go to Q&A. I appreciate you having the conversation with me. So let's say I knew nothing about pianos, I've never seen a piano before in my life. I hit a key and I listened to what sound comes out of it, and I can write down this sound comes out of it, and I hit another key, and I hit a different set of keys, and I can map out the keys to a piano, which my father's actually done before he's a musician, and he was trying to teach us a one point piano, and he would, since it didn't have the labels or labels were like a worn off or had eventually scratched off, he actually had to play the keys and then listen to what key was being played and said, okay, these three keys here, well, we're gonna play this key and whatnot. So I can do the same thing with a piano. I can know nothing about a piano, but hit the keys, listen for the sound, and then map it out. But if the keys were nothing more than, if the notes were nothing more than the keys on the piano, all I had to do was look at the keys on the piano, I know the notes, but that's not the case. Same thing in principle with a brain. You can't just look at a brain and know what someone's thinking, and you can say what we've mapped it out, and I would say yes and amen. The only way we've mapped it out is by asking the person what they were thinking when we saw the correlative brain state. But that would go to lend validity to my position that consciousness is not reducible or the same thing as a brain. Excellent, thanks so much. And then, Skyler, if you have a couple of minutes you wanna take to do your wrap up, we will then go into Q&A, folks. Yeah, I just say that a lot of the same things that always happen when I talk to Theist generally about God is the argument becomes more about me and my style of debating and arguing than it does about the actual topic. It turns to more personally, you don't understand, you don't know this, you should study more, you should do a certain thing as if certain people's opinions matter to me at all. I just find interesting, I just wish we would have had, we could have got past the first premise of the argument tonight and we would have at least, I don't know, I guess I wasn't surprised. I don't, I haven't really heard too many good arguments. I haven't really, from anybody on YouTube, any good arguments for Christianity, but our theism in general, but it doesn't matter. No, it was a fun time, I love all you out there. Appreciate you having the dialogue. Gotcha, thanks so much. Wanna let you know, folks, I have linked both of these guys in the description. So in case you've enjoyed it, you can hear plenty more where that came from. Also wanna let you know, we appreciate those of you, we wanted to give all the street cred in the world and say thanks so much to those of you who are friendly there in the live chat, or maybe you're debating your wrestling around, but you're at least not brutal, you're not abusive, we appreciate that and so we do wanna give you credit. And also, Colubb, thanks for your super chat. As he likes to be called, Colubb says, a magnificent win by Hernandez. You have a fan out there, Eric, stupid whore energy. Thanks for your super chat. She strikes again. She says, Eric, even if free will doesn't exist, the brain can still make explorative inputs. Okay, I don't even know what that means, but if there is no free will, then it's just your brain chemical reactions firing off and you have no say so in it, but that's not relevant to the argument of free will. I mean, if there's no free will, then yes, your brain's doing everything and your brain's caused to be determined by external causal factors beyond its control. Gotcha. Thanks so much for your super chat from Colubb. Again, James, what's your workout regimen? That's funny. I like to just like chill out and stuff. Berlin72001, thanks for your super chat. Who said, typical theist debater, start off straw manning your opponent with no knowledge of their positions, but then it's easier for the lazy to attack a straw man than to defend your position. I'm coming at you, Eric. Yeah, so he never gave a position. His opening wasn't even an opening. He started immediately trying to rebut my arguments. He never even answered the debate topic. So I don't know how I can address his arguments or position when he never gave one. Well, that's pretty dishonest because when we started talking, I actually gave all of that to you and explained what that was, but whatever. You could be dishonest on camera. Just because the super chat was originally for or against Eric. I'll give you Eric the last word so we're not ganging it up on him. And then we'll go to the next one. We can go to the next one. Next up, a poser of religion. Thanks for your super chat. Who says, Skyler, most atheists say atheism is just a lack of belief. Are we all wrong or are you wrong? No, I agree with them. I think that most, I don't think I disagree with that. I think most atheists would say they just lack of belief in God. That's what I'm saying. I don't hold the position that Eric was stouting in the beginning as an atheist. I don't deny that there is no God. No, no, if there's one. No, but I agree. I think most atheists hold that position. Gosh, you know, Apollo Jedi, thanks for your super chat. Who said, yeah, by the way, there are some some trolls in here. I'll divide them equally at least. And I will skip the ones that are just nasty. One of them's, okay. So anyway, says warning, Skyler already seems shaken. Okay, here we go. Don't you hold back, James. Read them, read them. I don't care. You don't hold back, okay. We have Michael Dresden, thanks for your super chat. Who says, sorry, I'm late. Has Skyler cried yet? Okay. Oh, not yet. Let's see, Apollo Jedi, let's see. We're going to spread these out. Colubb, thanks for your super chat. Who says, Skyler acts like an angry rabid koala. Okay, gotcha. Next up. Koalas are cool. They are. They're cute. Yeah, they're very cute. Merlin72001, thanks for your super chat. Who said, last I checked, the title of the debate is reasons for slash against theism. Did no one tell Eric or is he just confused? Go ahead. Yeah, I don't see how it's confused. I responded and I even go back in the beginning. I said my arguments will cut both ways. If there is no God, then that is the position against the position that is against theism, which would show the inverses true, the reverses true that if the belief there is no God is false, then that must mean that there is a God. Gotcha. Thanks so much for your super chat from stupid horror energy strikes again. And she says, your Clark Kent example does, your example shows that eventually that false belief will come home to roost. For example, when he is alone in a dangerous situation and thinks that he's invincible. Yeah, I mean, so that particular belief would apply to the car example, but in another situation, he could still have a different set of false beliefs in the same principle would apply. So the point is simple, is that natural selection doesn't care whether or not your beliefs are true. It simply cares that it grants survival value and adaptive behavior. Gotcha. Thanks for your super chat. Pants L. Jones, who says, I love that they're coming at you, Skyler. They say I love that. Oh. They didn't even spoil your name right. Come on, Pants L. Jones. Oh, teasing you Pants L. Jones. They say I love that Skyler interrupts so much. It makes him look scared of his opponent's points. If he believed his points, he could let an opponent talk. No, I mean, I let Eric talk a lot, but the problem is you ask direct questions that take four or five minutes to answer a simple direct question. And this happens all the time with Theist. I've done this a lot. I've had a lot of debates and it gets tiresome because it's, I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna say Eric necessarily did this debate. But I will say that there's times where I'm basically fighting against the clock where people are just trying to run down the clock. And a lot of the steps you recognize is when people have to repeat like what I'm doing and keep saying about behaviors, talking about the debate instead of the actual topic, overly repeating themselves like this is, these are all tactics that I see that kill time and it gets frustrating and yeah, maybe I shouldn't interrupt as much, but it is kind of annoying. We've got another critical one from, he just told me I can't call him Colubb anymore. I have to call him his real name. Caleb, thanks for your super chat. Who says, Schuyler, let your opponent talk. Then in all caps, state your rebuttal, very simple, other debaters do it just fine and you can't for some reason. I don't know, I've had a lot of these debates and they keep happening, so people keep talking to me, so apparently it's not that bad. Next up, Panzel Jones, thanks for your super chat. Who says, if S isn't scared of E's points, why not let E talk? Who? I did, lots of times. Stupid horror energy strikes again. She says for Eric, as a substance, that's how she sounds, as a substance dualist, how do you answer the problem of knowledge of other minds? The fact that we can know the mental states of others. Yeah, well, first I love the way you read the super chat, this is awesome, you're the best on that. Yeah, so the problem of other minds. So I think it's something that we're just fighting believing and then unless we have a reason to believe otherwise, then we're just fighting holy beliefs. In other words, the beliefs would be innocent and so proven guilty. So when you stick me with a pen and I say ouch and I see James get stuck with the pen and he says ouch, I think it's perfectly fine to assume and place that same mental state that I experienced when I got stuck with the pen onto James because there's that same similar type of behavior. So it's an epistemic question that I think is justified in knowing that when I have this experience, he has it. But an interesting point is that, yeah, there is a possibility of, how do we know that there's not something like inverse quality of that? When you get stuck with the pen and you say ouch, you really feel this incredible euphoric feeling of happiness and joy. Gotcha, thanks so much. And let's see, we've got, let's see. Oh, Pansel Jones is coming after me now. Pansel Jones says James, why do you let S dictate how E can respond? I thought I stepped in at least once to say it was fine to use and that I thought it was fine to use analogies. But maybe, I don't know, I could be wrong. I could improve. Caleb, thanks for your super chat. Man, these guys are coming at you, Skylar. More so just Caleb. But Caleb says- I would spend all his money trash talking to me. I'm glad the money goes to a good place. He's- I do this every day for you, kids. I love you, brother. He's sassy. He says in quotes, I don't understand. Most honest thing Skylar said, oh, come on. Oh. You guys are trying to throw some sick burns. Tioga, thanks for your super chat. Who says, Jimmy Hendricks, please operate my brain. Is that a lyric? I don't understand. Okay, stupid horror energy is added again. And she says, is Eric aware that quote, souls can be induced to become depressed via physical drugs? Gotcha. Thanks so much. I saw something like that in a movie recently. All right, never again. Logan, 16, thanks for your super chat. They're coming at you, Eric. This is all they said is poor little Eric. Oh, okay. Sijafredo, you could respond if you really want. Well, I'm waiting for that Trump stimulus check. So hopefully I won't be poor for very much longer. Nice. Superb. And Sijafredo Serabia, thanks for your super chat. Who says, Eric, it didn't seem Skyler made it past premise one of what's supposed to fit your definition of theism. Then you agree. Well, what would be your point from there? Well, I think the only premise we actually got to was when I tried to talk about, I think it was free will. And I said, if it was true, I would say the most logical position is naturalism. The next point would have been given naturalism when applied to human beings, you get physicalism. If physicalism is true, human beings are purely physical properties and states, then you can, this would apply to both conscious and free will. If you're just physical, a physical properties and parts, you can have consciousness given that consciousness is not physical and you can't have free will given the law of closure closure that every physical event must necessarily have a physical cause. So everything that happens is going to be causally determined by external factors beyond your control. Gotcha. Thanks so much genius tracks for your super chat who said Eric, I mean, Eric, you failed the burden of proof that the consciousness is non-physical, yet you feel free to use it in your argument. That's fail. Well, free will exist if I am free to use it in my argument. So that would at least pass one argument. And the argument I gave, one of the arguments, one of the many arguments I gave, but the one I gave was based online, it's the law of identity, which is useful for any discussion of philosophy of mind that if the mental states and properties are not identical with the physical states and properties of the brain or anything physical, then it follows that consciousness cannot be physical because it does not share any physical states or properties. When you have two things in question and they're different properties are not the same thing. Gotcha. Thanks so much for your super chat from Iron Zombie who says a debate between Hovan and Skyler would be entertaining. See, Skyler, I told you, I've been trying to talk to Skyler. I told you, I told you I would debate get over. You gotta get, you make that up and I will do it. We can't debate evolution though because I don't know shit about evolution. Maybe something connected but not direct, you know? Agreed. It's Skyler, he's right. He has said yes to it. I'm not, I don't know if we're gonna get Hovan to come back on. At the same time, we're not as tight as we used to be. Nathan artwork, thanks for your super chat. I'm gonna read this. I'm kind of thinking I'm like, what should I do? I don't know, it's not a big deal. So they say, yeah, I mean, you guys already know. James, what's your opinion on the debate? Is there good reason for theism? Please don't dodge. What? What? Okay, so yeah, I'm a theist. I've got a couple of my debates on here but I don't, I hate saying that during the debate because I don't wanna feel like I'm trying to, you know. But I mean, I'm only, I'm not, okay, I'm arguing for it. Beckel, thanks for your super chat. Says Skyler looks like a COVID-19 infested chicken tender. Oh! What does that even look like? I'm trying to imagine a COVID-19 infested chicken tender now. And now I'm just going to talk about it. So you're cute and delicious, apparently. Yes, exactly. And poisonous. Oh, fair point. Let's see. Carmel Cronk, thanks for your super chat. Who said Skyler is consciousness fundamental, why or why not? I don't know what they mean by fundamental. Like fundamental to what in a sense? Like is it a, I don't, I don't understand the question clearly like what the full question is. It's important. I don't know if that's what they're asking. Eric, do you know what they're asking? Would you think you, you have an idea of what you think they're hitting at her? Yeah, so they're basically asking is it something that kind of emerges or something that's always been there from the beginning that it's, so Thomas Nagel, who's an atheist, believes in something like consciousness being a material. But he says the only way to explain this, he argues, we know it can't come from just rearranging physical matter like Legos. I'm simplifying. So it had to have always been there. So it must be that everything has a potential for consciousness and just given the right physical conditions, conscious would emerge only because it's always been there from the beginning. So it would be fundamental in that sense. Oh, yeah, no, no, I don't believe that. Yeah, that's certainly not my position. Next up, by the way, Nephilim Free in the live chat, the legendary YouTube debater he's been around for so many years. But he is kind of, it's funny that like sometimes like people, like really big YouTubers, like actually it was like Destiny or something. They're like, Nephilim Free. And they're like, Nephilim Free from like 2006. But of, you know, it would be awesome for real Skyler, think about this. What? Because, you know, we're not on great terms with Kent Hovind. What if we had something like a Skyler fiction versus Kent Hovind delight? Nephilim Free. Oh, there are a few people that I would rather have my fingernails ripped out than speak to. And Nephilim Free is one of those people. I can't do it. He's right there in the live chat. I'm sorry, you want me to be honest, like that's not how you're gonna get it. I'm trying to respect your values here. I just can't, no, thank you, Neph. The problem with Nephilim Free is there's no, it won't be a dialogue. Like even Eric and I, we disagreed. We, I think we had a lot of fun too. I think Eric and I pushed each other. We got at each other, but it was fun. And I generally go with dialogue. But when there was moments where we wanted to understand each other, we took the time to try to understand each other, right? I don't think that would happen with Neph. And I'm just not interested in that kind of dialogue as far as I guess. It would be so hard. Kent Hovind light. Next one, thanks for your super chat from, let's figure it out, Beckles. Padme the cat, thanks for your super chat who said, atheists are not the only ones against theism. Your main position is useless now. Is that some air? Who's that for? I think you, yeah, I think you. Atheists are not the only one against theists. So, okay. Oh, I think atheists aren't the only ones that are against theism because I guess we can have someone look up. I think they're maybe saying like, if they're using the classical definition, they're saying like atheists are not the only ones against theism because agnostics are too, because they would also say there's not enough evidence for God. Well, sure, yeah. And now the agnostic would say, so I would say, so theists, I believe that exists. Atheists, I believe God does not exist. Agnostic, I don't have any.