 Everybody, tonight we're debating, does God exist? And we are starting right now with Stuart's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us again, Stuart. The floor is all yours. Hey, James, for having me on. Aaron, great to be with you again. I love this question because so many people come to it with so many different presuppositions. I think as a apologist and pastor, oftentimes somebody will come to me and ask this question, does God exist? And it depends on the person, typically. Are you looking for scientific evidence? Are you looking for historical and more intellectual? Oftentimes people will come and will have recently the death of a loved one or be going through something traumatic. And they obviously want a more personal counseling type of answer. And for me, I see evidence on both ends for God when it comes to the intellectual as well as more of the personal side of it. To start, I would say science. It's very hard to do science without God existing. I think that science points actually to a type of evidence for God. The law of gravitation, for example, plays a key role in the God debate. It's Newton's reason for believing in God and Hawking's reason for not believing in God. When Newton discovered the law of gravity, he wrote a book called The Principia Mathematica. It's the most famous book in the history of science to this day expressing in it a desire that a thinking person might come through reading it to believing in God. So when Newton discovers the law of gravity, he says, wow, what a fascinating God that he did it this way and an intelligent designer through our type of creativity that he gives us, the creator, we can learn about the universe. So Einstein talked about how the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Thus, I would say it's more likely that there's a designer rather than no designer. So there's obviously a world, really a worldview dimension to all this too. You know, if you were to tell me, put my atheist hat on and to write an account of the origin of life, I'll obviously come up with an evolutionary theory because that's the only possibility allowed by the naturalistic worldview. And so that must be taken into consideration as well in the scientific question when it comes to God. There's obviously other kinds of sciences, but I believe historical scientific reasoning, which is all about abduction, referring back to causal origins is key. I mean, you go into a museum, for example, and you see the Rosetta Stone and someone asks, wow, how did these inscriptions come about? You try and use methodological naturalism, we may only infer materialistic causes then, whatever the evidence, scientists would miss the obvious explanation. And this was it was produced by scribes, intelligent agents, it's language. You can't get that from reductionism. Thus, I would say it makes way more sense than immaterial, not a material God who speaks through language, who speaks through intelligence to us. So if you go naturalistic route, you're gonna miss so much. In my mind, oftentimes people, an atheist will say, well, you close your mind to outside evidence for different modes of thought when you are a Christian. But I would say it's, look at that example right there, in terms of language, in terms of the historical type of evidence and how methodological naturalism actually imprisons you in that instance, and I think many others. So the universe that we observe has precisely the properties. We should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Who said that? Dawkins. So he frames the issue well, I think. And the question, though, is he right? And he makes a testable assertion about his materialistic philosophy. And last summer, I got to hear Dawkins was knocked sideways by this. He said, you know, digital information processing systems, the cell, the complexity of the cell, he was shocked by the further intricate complexity that he sees in fine tuning in the laws of physics. So we shouldn't expect the beginning to the universe from a materialistic point of view, we certainly shouldn't have expected to find the intricate nanotechnology, information technology that is evident in the living cell. So science for me bleeds right into design, obviously connected, and I'm getting here all that there needs to be a designer. It makes way more sense. That's one of my clear, hopefully clear arguments. So oftentimes people will go with verificationism. They'll say, no, you need science to prove something. Well, how do you prove that line right there? That's not a scientific point. You can't prove that point, it's philosophical. So I don't believe in verificationism. I think the subtraction theory is spot on in terms of it's not just reason and faith pitted against each other, science and faith or belief pitted against each other, no. And I think one of the ways, like obviously this does not prove it, but one of the ways we think about this is simply, you know, the last, you count up all the Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2000 and over 60% were Christians. If it wasn't an absurd debate over this type of verificationism and subtraction theory, which is science and faith pitted against each other, then why in the world would there be so many Nobel laureates just in those 99 years who were Christians? So I also like, I think, you know, clearly Robert Jastrow, when he says, for scientists who have lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream, he has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. So science can only get you so far. And I think for me, it goes back to the Hebrew scriptures. In the beginning took scientists till the 60s to start to understand that, wow, in the beginning, Genesis actually had it right. So the Bible theologians have typically come first, but I affirm science in every kind of way. I think actually we are called Christian or not to be scientific. Quantum cosmology suggests either a kind of magic where human math creates the universe or mathematical Platonism. I don't believe, again, with this design teleological argument, I don't believe that math just creates itself. I don't believe from kind of more of the Platonistic understanding of things that there's just math out there in some kind of hanging, floating way, like obviously. Plato talked about in his moralism as well. No, there's a personal agent behind math. There's a mind clearly behind math, these mathematical laws that we're exposed to and can actually ascertain ourselves the truth behind them. The Pythagorean theorem, for example, did not just exist and we created it supposedly. No, there are mathematical laws behind it. And I think it makes way more sense that there was a designer, a creative agent, a mind that actually put those there rather than simply they just creating themselves or from a Plato understanding of things that they just poofed all of a sudden were there. So for me, my next point would be reason and logic. I think obviously many things that aren't material that we know exist, one being the law of logic or love, but the laws of logic exist independent of human minds. Suppose there are no human minds on earth, just a rock, if I say there are no human minds on earth, would that statement still be true? Yes, so the logic exists independent of human minds. We don't have our own private ideas of laws of logic. If we did, then we couldn't communicate. Trafficking in immaterial reality to even talk to one another, there's a type of immaterial reality there. Our minds use that as a bridge to other minds. We didn't create that bridge. That bridge is what we mean by God's nature. If there were no material, if there was really no immaterial God, excuse me, if there still was a level of conversation, a level of clear reasoning capabilities within us, but then also without us, that would still exist without us. So logic, math, why we have a sensible world that's orderly expressions or effects of the order God is needed for science. Found an orderly universe, there'd be no way we could even do science, no way we could even begin to reason, to live in a rational type of worldview even. Next would be morality and ethics. Moral obligation, I think is clear. I think there's a mind outside of it all where we have both values and duties. Values being why in the world is somebody actually significant. Why do they have value? And then obligations, why should I? Why ought to I to do something? I recently was approached by on a college campus a group of 15 students just kind of out of nowhere and they tried to corner me on value when it comes to morality and obligation. And we got to talk and eventually I asked them the question, well, why are humans valuable? And they said, well, it's because we give ourselves value. And I said, well, what about a 13 year old with a 13 year old desires because they have no value and they're severely depressed. Why not just euthanize them or allow them to be euthanized? And they said, yeah, that's fine. One said, well, they probably killed themselves anyway. So it'll be fine. And I think what these atheists were espousing was tremendously, they were trepidatious, let's just say about their statements. And they started to rescind them all, just about every single one of them did after about 15, 20 minutes of talking. But it shows the risk in terms of it. There's no objective value to a human life. What could and most likely will occur? Next would be understanding the human rights connected to this morality, to these ethics. You know, I think Hume's approach to the mind that moral reasoning is often a servant of moral emotions alone. 30 seconds left. That's unnerving to me. And I think for me, again, you look at ethics, you look at morality, you look at human rights and how we're progressing as humanity. I look no further than Steven Pinker, famous atheist who talked about, biblically speaking, all of these languages of, there's an arc of the universe that we're trying to get to, whether it's capital punishment or sexism, racism, we're trying to conform to this arc. And so as an atheist, he still even has to use biblical language in order to talk about a type of moral obligation, a type of moral inference point for all of us to look at. Thank you very much for that opening sword. And I wanna let you know folks, it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate. We are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics here at Modern Day Debate. I'm your host, James, and wanna let you know. We are absolutely thrilled, as you can see at the bottom right of your screen, Matt Delhonte and Posh, the Christian debater will be debating Christianity on trial. Later this month, it's gonna be a big one, you don't wanna miss it. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already because you'll have a lot more debates coming up in the future. With that, we're gonna kick it over to Aaron for his opening. Thanks so much for being with us again, Aaron, the floor is all yours. Thank you, and thank you, Stuart, for your uneducated opinions. Your presentation is nostalgic. It's like a review of the long lost arguments that were refuted in our youth or long before then, but to keep on playing on your favorite station. If God was real, we wouldn't need faith. We wouldn't have to pretend. It would be some way to know that, but not only is there no physical or logical evidence and no way to ascertain whether there's a God or not, we also can't test our knowledge of that. Yet, we've got millions of believers in myriad gods or different versions of God and so forth, all, many of them pretending as if they know which God that is, and many of them pretending that they have a personal relationship with Krishna, with Bost, with Jesus, or Zeno, whoever they wanna make up. And it works the same way for everybody because faith is deceptive in all religions. And then there was a number of other things in these nostalgic arguments that Stuart brought up. I mean, not only is there no evidence for a designer because he went into the creationist argument, we actually have plenty of evidence against the designer and we have all the proof necessary for evolution. He has a very strange idea about what natural laws are and like math, for example. I mean, if a thing is going to exist, it has to have properties. However, it comes to exist. It could be eternal and just always existed in which case it'll have properties. Or if it comes into existence through some process, then it'll still have properties. And he is saying that whatever those properties are, cannot exist unless his favorite magic imaginary friend wished those properties to be. So that two items together cannot equate to two items and that if you take away one and have only one left, that's only because Allah wills it. So that makes no damn sense. And then science does not point to anti-science, which is all religion is. I mean, everything about science versus religion is completely opposite. I saw somebody just today posted a counter to the statement of faith that is posted by the Institute for Creation Research, where all of the different creationist organizations post their written attestation that they will adhere to the Bible and will never admit when they're wrong, that they cannot even consider. And it doesn't matter what the truth is, no amount of proof will ever prove them wrong because they're not allowed. Faith means never admitting when you're always wrong. But the counter proposal from that, which is made by scientific communities is that because the truth matters so much, we will have to bow to whatever the facts are, whatever the truth indicates, regardless what we might rather believe. So we have one position that is based entirely on lies and another one that is only pursuing the truth. And the entirety of lies thing means, you know, faith, which is the most dishonest position it is possible to have. Methodological naturalism means that we can't just give up on finding the real answer. We can't close our minds to the reality and say, I don't know, therefore magic must have been a God done it because that's not the real explanation. He thinks it's the obvious explanation, but no, that's not even a possible explanation. It's not an explanation at all. Even if it were true that God done it, but that God don't show nothing and doesn't talk to anybody really or talks to everybody using secret voices and assumed names and so forth so that nobody knows what the hell he's really saying, then it still isn't an explanation by any means. Religious culture inculcates from childhood, condemning people against skepticism throughout their adulthood, damning people very seriously and very literally both in this world and the next as they grow up. I mean, you will be ostracized from your communities in many cases. So if you talk about Nobel laureates, you know, in the last hundred years when they grew up in a century earlier or 50 years ago where they were already getting their award, what have you, they of course were raised in a Christian dominated society where fortunately we're not gonna be that way much longer Christianity is in a general state of decline with good reason. Already the scientific community is at least half or I think the majority now of scientists in all fields have now like walked away from God. Interestingly, there was a poll that I think a third of the scientists still believe in God and there was some other number that said they didn't believe in God but that they believed in a higher power which I thought was interesting because they don't know what are they, they pantheists or whatever. But it still means that the majority of scientists are not believers. The more educated people are, the less likely they are to believe. Certainly the more honorable or the most honest that they are, well then they're not going to be stating things as fact that are not evidently true. My favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln is he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it's true or false is guilty of falsehood. And the accidental truth of his assertion does not justify or excuse him. That's what religion is. It is dishonest to assert baseless speculation as if it was a matter of fact, yet that's what all religions do. And faith is just a matter of pretending to know things you don't know. So if you couldn't, this is why the ninth commandment talks about you don't bear false witness against your neighbor which is taken to be against your fellow Jew because they were talking to a Jewish community. It was all supposed to be Jewish people. According to the commandments in Exodus 20 and so on, you're not supposed to charge interest on loans to other Jews just like you're not supposed to, bear false witness against other Jews, but there was nothing in there against lying because if they couldn't lie, they couldn't have a religion, could they? So now as far as the morality argument, which is the weakest, the most transparently wet tissue paper of all of Christianity especially is this strange and completely baseless notion that somehow we get our morality from God when actually we get our morality from society. I mean, just hands down. I mean, the people that are selfish and that are only self-centered and apathetic, well, these are not the people that anyone else turns to or give support to. It's the people that we know that we can trust that actually show empathy for their family, friends and fellows who stand by their word and are reliable. Those are the ones that find mates. Those are the ones that over time reproduce better. Those are the ones that are selected for where these apathetic selfish types eventually will be found out for the frauds that they are and they tend to be removed from society either being banished or imprisoned or killed. That's where we get our morality from. We certainly do not get it from the Christian God which doesn't even talk about morality. He doesn't care whether you're a good or bad person because all sins may be forgiven if you but believe but if you don't believe then it doesn't matter how good you are because the only sin that will not be forgiven is the sin of disbelief. Thus, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad person. Morality is completely irrelevant. Blind credulity is the only criteria for salvation. You just believe what the guys in the robes tell you to believe and pay them their tithe and give them all of your children time alone with them some secret place and just give your money, give your labor so that you have all the little poor houses around the great big palace that the clergy get to live in. And so they get to assume political power, they get to assume financial power, they get to be treated as if they're wise. But basically, even if you have a THD, wait, what is that? You have a doctorate and mother goose, that's it. These people that do not possess wisdom, they're not better than anyone else. They're certainly not smarter or wiser. They just have less ethics than everyone else. And that's pretty much it. And I know you gave me 10 minutes to go on in my opening statement, but I just wrote a handful of counter-arguments to Stuart's and I don't know if I can keep talking that long. You got it. Thank you very much for that opening as well, Aaron. We are going to kick it into the open dialogue, but one quick housekeeping type thing before we do, as you can see at the bottom right of your screen right now, modern day debate is expanding onto TikTok. The reason this is important is because once we get to 1,000 followers there, we will be able to live stream debates just like this one on TikTok as well, meaning more people will be exposed to these debates, which is a huge goal for us on modern day debate is we want to provide a neutral platform. So if you are behind that idea of a neutral platform like modern day debate, please do click that TikTok link in the top of the description box. In fact, I'll actually pin that same TikTok link for modern day debate at the top of the chat. If you follow us there, that really does help a lot as we are excited to unlock that feature of being able to live stream our debates there as well at the same time as we stream them on YouTube. So with that, we're going to kick it into open dialogue. Thank you very much, Aaron, and Stuart. The floor is all yours. Where would you like to start, Stu? Where I agree with you, okay? I agree with you on priests aren't smarter or wiser. They're often just less ethical. I don't know if you said often. I'll say often. I think we could probably prove that one in many ways. I'd agree with you on smacking the creationists, young earthers. I'd agree with you a lot on that. The dogmatism, I encounter many of them in both career paths of mine. And the dogmatism, I mean, you talk about one of the number one ways to decrease evangelism and potential intellectual evidence behind a worldview. You just throw some young earthers out there. I feel bad saying this because, hey, is it ham? A few of the son and father reached out. It's no disrespect to them. Yeah. What's that? Hoban. Oh, that's it. It's no disrespect to them because I think they're fantastic. Wait, you just, you said no disrespect to them. We can't be talking about the same people. No, they're well enough. We text sometimes. He has my number. I just, I think the whole dogmatic piece you're right with. And, you know. I just have a problem with people who lie for a living and know it. And it doesn't matter how often or how solidly you prove that they're lying. They're still gonna keep telling that lie. Well, if you're making money doing it, you may as well keep going. Not a justification. Yeah, exactly. Fully agree. So next one I agree with you on. Well, it's interesting you talked about atheists on a whole are more intelligent than Christians. The studies I've seen, it's pretty neck and neck. Atheists may have a hair on Christians, but Anglicans are the smartest. They're smarter than every other denomination Christian and they're smarter than atheists as well. I don't know what to say about that. I knew a creationist, so I wouldn't know what a smart Christian looks like. And that's why I'm pleased that you haven't been straw manning me. I think you know where I- Thank you for saying that because there are people in the chat. And I see this a lot who accused me of straw manning even though I've never used a straw man in my life. And when called on it on that accusation, those who make that accusation can never produce a single example. Yeah, our previous discussions, I think you did a good job saying, no, I can just tell you're not one of that type at least. And if I were to flirt with that type of theology or historicity of the world, look, I have no problem with flirting with it. But I think it's the dogmatic style that I see in people that heavy, opinionated way, where, so for example, one guy who left our church who is a strong, let's just say, young earther, he said we're not taking the Bible seriously at all. That's actually the first thing you're supposed to start with is the age of the earth. So anyway, not to belabor that point. I'd agree with you. I think that those were the main points I'd agree with you on. I think there are many, I'd agree with you too. Many pretend to know God. I think that's absolutely clear. We have that in our country and that's only growing. I think Jesus talked about that with the Pharisees and babbling on the street corners and the type of prayers that they were making. So I fully agree with that. There's a video that I saw that I quite liked was your Republican Jesus or maybe it was called GOP Jesus. And it shows how Jesus starts to say the things you would expect Jesus to say from the Bible, but instead he uses the GOP for talking point, which is exactly opposite of everything that Jesus taught, like slogan after slogan after slogan. It's a hilarious video. I'm not gonna quote the whole thing, but anybody should go look that up. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, that's too often as those two are too frequently connected. Question for you on the moral argument. So if there is no God and perhaps you don't think the Christian world do you mean that? It doesn't matter if there is no God or if there is a God. You can still think the same question because the Christian God does not inspire or guide or direct morality, like practically at all. I mean, if you might find a passage that implies that you should do good works, but then it also says that you're supposed to believe on faith and that's it. And that it doesn't, and there's no way for a good person who doesn't believe to get into heaven. That's just it. But it's a possible for an evil person who does believe they can get into heaven all day. All right, we've got out of it then. Let's just write up, let's write up a, we'll call it a contract or we'll call it a strategy on how to make society better. You bring the atheistic naturalistic worldview, which is some of it, I think you'd agree, is driven by strong eating the weak. Some of it, not all of it. Some of it is driven through evolution, strong eating the weak and you get some of your morality. Where did you get those two put together? What, atheism and evolution and naturalism? And this thing about the strong eating the weak. Oh, evolution. Yeah, but that's not remotely evolution. I can't believe that you've never been corrected on such an egregious error. Okay, hold on. Come back and correct me in a second. Let me just finish this. Herbert Spencer was an economist who misrepresented, because Darwin's theory was all the rage, everybody appropriated it in the early 19th century, for their own needs. A whole lot of racists appropriated it, although ironically, not Hitler, not Mao, not Stalin, but a lot of other people appropriated it for their own ends, including racism and classism heavily. So Herbert Spencer wanted the rich to be better than the poor and he's the one that came up with the strong survive, the kind of thing about the strong eating the weak. So it was his classism that Darwin actually argued against. Okay, so are you gonna take a humanistic point of view when it comes to how we really make society better? Because you said it's- What I generally do, but a couple of years back, I was impressed with the Satanic Temple and how they were able to, the type of defense that they were lobbying against my state of Texas, for example, and they were doing defenses of the First Amendment more effectively than a lot of atheist organizations could. Like when somebody wanted to put up the 10 Commandments in Alabama or Florida or Oklahoma and the atheists come up and wanna put up, well, let's put up our monument too. Well, nobody cared because what's a dedication to astronomy or Carl Sagan or whatever, who gives a crap about that, right? They don't see that as a religious position because it's not. So there's no point, they don't even get the point of what that was for. But when the Satanic Temple comes up and says, well, let us put our boffamette statue up because we have to be open to all religions. Well, now suddenly Christians wake up to the fact that, but we're supposed to be a secular country. Oh yeah, funny how you don't realize that until another religion steps up. You're open to putting out faith-based initiatives for Christian schools, but as soon as a Muslim school says they want the same thing, oh, whoa, oh, no, we're supposed to be secular. Right, that's what the Satanic Temple is for. And exploring the Satanic Temple, I found there are seven tenets, which I think are far better than the 10 commandments. And I agree with those. And so I decided to join their organization specifically to endorse their support of the First Amendment because I'm on the board of directors of American atheists. Just to redirect us a bit. First Amendment Defense is what my organization is all about. And I see the Satanic Temple as strong allies in that. Just to get us back to the good old debate on, does God exist? I want to go ahead, Stuart, I think you were attempting to set up some sort of moral argument. And just on the heels of the moral argument, I think a big part, obviously, of digging through whether God exists is the experiential side and the evidential. And I think it's experiential and evidential to ask the question, why morally be good? And from an atheistic perspective, I'd want Aaron to try and give me the best self he can from an atheistic perspective on why I should say, live for altruism, human rights, why I should sacrifice my own personal pleasures to go on this missions trip that's an atheistic secular missions trip. Or from a Christian perspective, why would I do those kinds of things and which one makes more sense? If you were, I understand that if you're Christian, then somehow you have the false idea that you're earning brownie points from your God. And so the only reason you're doing something good is not for the benefit of that other person, but to appease this, the indomitable despot that you imagine is watching every movement you make and who will come down on you badly if you don't do exactly what you're told. Of course, that doesn't explain the prison population, does it? It doesn't explain why there are so many people, there's so many people in prison, you know, I was at 98% of violent criminals are all deeply religious. And this goes for child molesters too, the more deeply religious they are, the more and younger victims they tend to have. And the funny thing about that is that all of these religious believers believe that God is on their side, that God fully understands why they did whatever they did to whoever they did, because that sucker deserved it anyway. And if they could just get the death penalty and get out of this prison sentence, well, then they'd be with God and God would reward them for whatever the fuck they did that God's already forgiven them for. And they're gonna use that as a legal defense. God's already forgiven me, so I don't have to go to prison. So all of that bullshit aside. Now, if you're an atheist, as I said, if you're a humanist, if you're a satanist, then you believe in people, you believe in humanity, you believe in society. You understand that there's little benefit in being selfish, the hell you get out of that. There have been philosophical arguments that anything we do good is actually for selfish reasons that if we go to benefit somebody else, we do get an endorphin rise. So if I go out of my way and sacrifice of myself monetarily or physically or whatever, and I save some other person, however trivially or even temporarily I do, there's still some degree of reward that I feel for having done something for someone. Whereas if you wanna do absolutely fuck nothing for somebody and pretend like you did something, just nod your head and said, I'll pray for you and then don't do a damn thing because that's what that means. But rather than literally wishing on a star, if you actually do something to help somebody, then you're actually, you're doing something and it's real and you're getting the rush from that. So even if it ultimately fails, you've got the satisfaction in having at least tried. And I'm only talking about a completely selfish perspective. I'm not talking about from the rest of society and how they view you, the person who did something, because ultimately, whether there was a God or not, history will be our judge in either case. How we are remembered is what ultimately matters. Seriously, and even if we're not remembered very long, it doesn't matter. So I would say that's another piece though, just like Steve Jobs talked about when he was an atheist. He was kind of a Buddhist atheist, but then on his deathbed, he said, you know what? I think that all this experience, these relationships that I've accumulated and all the work I've done, it does not feel nor make sense logically to me now in my final couple of years, that all that would just totally go away with the click of a mouse. And so I don't know if he became a theist or not, but I think he was after something that's kind of similar to what Richard Dawkins was experiencing last summer. Dawkins was more intellectual, I would say, in his, but he's struggling with the cell and the incredible complexity of the cell and how through Bhe and others, we're just increasing our knowledge of the complexity. Wait, wait, Bhe is increasing our knowledge or stunting it? I think he misspoke. It doesn't matter who it is. Here's a guy who makes the bogus argument. He comes up with a handful of. I knew Bhe would get you going. Brings up a handful of bogus arguments for irreducible complexity, not understanding that one of the things we would look for as a sign of intelligent design would be an efficient simplicity, which such as we do not see anywhere in biochemistry, what we see instead is haphazard compilations of extremely, excessively unnecessary complexity, which is what do you expect of blind incidental design? So then he comes up with a handful of arguments for irreducible complexity and he tried to bring a bunch more that he brought into court, but the star witness, Kenneth Miller, had already refuted all of them before they ever got to court. So Bhe just brought the last survivors for Kenneth Miller to then slaughter in the stand. So yeah, every one of the irreducible complexity arguments has been refuted. All of Bhe's, I put that in my book, by the way, the foundational falsehoods of creationism. If anybody's curious about the list there. So Bhe is not increasing our knowledge. He's stunting and limiting and reverting and perverting our knowledge. He's not increasing it. So even if he and the entire intelligent design group want to go backward, want to unlearn everything we learn. But the scientific community, Christian or not, they can be anything. Just to be sure we're going towards, Stuart, just to be sure that we're going toward an argument for theism. Yeah, this is a teleological and design argument. So again, I would say the complexity of a cell and how obviously we're increasing in our knowledge of what a cell is. Like Darwin had a floppy wiener, hot dog wiener, for example, of a microscope to look at a cell versus what we have now, the high tech we have now. And there are machines within a cell that he could not see. Just thought it was a blob, basically. There are trucks that move back and forth in terms of the amount of information that is moving. And so the complexity only increases. And this is why I'm surprised that you're so quick to push back against the complexity and the teleological, the teleological piece, because Dawkins. The more it's my position, the more complex it is, especially when it doesn't have to be that complex. And when it wouldn't be that complex, if it was intelligently designed. Yeah, that's an argument against intelligent design. But more importantly, I mean, you can go back to the 19th century. How would complexity... I can take your best guy today and argue that he was just as dumb as them. What, wait, in what world has R&R ever lived in where complexity and design is not connected to a designer or a mind? The one I just explained to you. Something completely random or accidental. I just explained. If it's incidental, haphazard, then it's not gonna be, it's not gonna have been worked out. It hasn't been all the problems worked out in advance. The most efficient design written out in advance. No, it's been slowly accumulated, constantly changing. And so that's what it's... When you look at like things, I don't know, like photosynthesis, for example, what an unnecessarily convoluted Rube-Goldberg mechanism that is. An intelligent designer would not come up with that. It may look simplistic when you look at that from the high school level, but when you get into the higher level, college level and look at that again, no, that's stupid complex. As in, only stupid could allow it to be that complex. So your point would be, your point would be there's no irreducible complexity with the cell or with the eye. Or with anything. It's just a matter of adaptation and through evolution, you see the complexity only growing through the cell. Yes. That's what you're saying. Yes. So here, importantly, when we're talking about the existence of God, because I know James wants to stay on topic, and I do too. Excuse me, I have two big dogs who think it's time to wrestle. I'm on camera. Thank you. Okay. The thing that people are arguing for usually in defense of God, we in the Western world at least, is they want their sacred scriptures. And we know that's completely bunk. And they want their thing about, they want to pretend that they are best friends with the most powerful being imaginable. We know that's not true either. They want to pretend that they're not really gonna die. They want to make believe that they're more special than everyone else, that they're holier than everyone else. And so the important things to look at is that we know. We're absolutely certain, we know. Even evangelical Christians know that Adam and Eve never happened. The Tower of Babel never happened. The Exodus never happened. Moses never existed. We know that most of the stories in the Bible are completely untrue. Anything that is true is only trivial, it's like Indiana Jones in the third movie of his series. He goes to Germany. He accidentally bumps into Hitler, literally. We know that there was a Germany. We know that there was a Hitler, but that doesn't mean that there was an Indiana Jones. So there are famous, the Bible mentions Ethiopia. The Bible mentions one or two people that actually existed. It doesn't mean that any of the characters or the events actually happened. And a lot of those characters and events were a mishmash of other people. There's absolutely no support for mind, body, dualism. Period, none. We don't have souls. There's no afterlife. It's not just that there's no evidence of an afterlife. We have significant evidence against an afterlife, against a soul, no mind, body, dualism. So the Bible is utter shit, man-made mythology, and that's all, has no good for anything. Except, you know, it's anthropological interest in literature, perhaps in ancient customs and traditions and superstitions. But as far as history or science or fact, no, it's toilet paper. And as far as everything that anybody cares about, the afterlife and all like this, the reason that hell was invented was because that will scare the people who spend too much time thinking about heaven because you can't spend a minute thinking about heaven before you find the major flaws in theology. When I was a little kid, my grandmother told me that in heaven the streets are made of gold. I'm like, why the hell would, why would we want streets of gold? Why would I want slick streets? And why would that matter that the streets are gold? And she said, and we'll all live in mansions. I'm like, why would I need a house? Why would I need shelter in heaven? And what good is my mansion compared to everybody else's mansion? Are there people in heaven that have bigger mansions than other people in heaven? It's just a 90210 nightmare where everybody's trying to keep up with the Joneses forever. What the hell is this about? Why would we need any of that? None of it makes any sense. And so they realized, hey, there are people that are thinking too much about heaven because the carrot only has so much weight. We need to hit him with a stick. It's gotta be the threat of damnation. That'll keep him in line. Unfortunately, that doesn't work either because hell is completely inconsistent with God. If there was a God, there wouldn't be a hell. And whether God existed or not, the Bible is still crap. Evolution is still demonstrably real. Either way, God's existence could not change that. So the only important thing that it comes down to, do we have a soul in an afterlife? No, clearly not. Does the scripture indicate anything about God? No, those were ignorant savages who obviously had no idea what they were talking about at any point ever. And we can look at other scriptures and none of the other scriptures or anybody, because they did. I mean, I spent most, when I walked away from Christianity as a young man, I explored a bunch of different religions and I realized, no, everybody's just making shit up. See, I think the challenge there is everything that, you gotta look at the character of Christ. Was Jesus Christ actually a historical figure? Did he claim to be God? Are the, obviously, are the gospels reliable? And then you look at his metaphorical speech of heaven, for example, because like your mom got it totally wrong. I mean, no offense to Mrs. Ra, but to think actually in John chapter 14, when Jesus was talking about, in my father's house would be many rooms and I'd go to prepare a place for you. He's obviously not talking about that 90210 mansion. So you gotta leave room for metaphor and you keep going back to God. I wanna correct it in the sense of my theology and what I believe the Bible actually says. God is not just this power broker. He's not just- Just to be sure you give Stuart a chance. We've heard, we gave you about two minutes or so. I wanna give Stuart about the same. This is the God. And you said you've never straw manned somebody in your entire life. So you better not straw him. I want you to steel man me after this. Your depiction of God is always this kind of kingly figure. And he's a God of just power and that's it. And we have to kiss his feet, wash his feet, and somehow by groveling enough, maybe we'll get close to him allowing us through the pearly gates. No, that's not what we have with the Christian God. The Christian God is you have- The Christian God, because you said my version of God. Just to be sure- And when I believed in God, my God was better than your God. So it wasn't the Christian God. Oh, so you're not talking about my God? No, I was talking about a better God. Get out. So my God is based off of, the Christian God is based off of the crucifix. About every atheist I debate wants to leave the cross out. Like wants to leave what the cross is all about out. You know, Matt will sometimes talk to me about how it's a barbecue for a weekend, but that's about as far as he'll go. You have to at least- That's really good at this. You actually have to at least talk about what truly is the cross and be honest about it. Okay. Because I haven't met one atheist yet who can honestly describe to me why did God have to go to the cross? Why did the Roman Empire, and ultimately I believe our Judeo-Christian values came from historically speaking, the Christian faith, because you have a suffering God dying for us, causing an ability for us now to respond and love self-sacrificially. So we aren't getting something doing something just to please this landlord of ours who we're scared of. No, if it was just a kingly God, then yes, it would be all about self-absorption and fear. I'd fear this God every second of my life. But if it's a God who died on the cross, sacrificed everything to show that kind of love for you, obviously you go to him and build a relationship with him in a radically different way than if he was this despot who is terrifying and you have to accumulate enough good works in order to appease him and get into heaven. When you see the difference there, steal man me now. There are so many false assumptions that your premise is based on. Everything you think you know about everything you think you know is wrong, where do you start with that? I mean, the idea that Matt wouldn't address this, I've personally seen Matt address this. No, he did address it. He's somebody who addresses it. I'm just saying we didn't stay on it. It was the barbecue for a weekend thing. Okay. So God creates us. Yeah, let's just, let's just, nobody reads the Bible more literally than an atheist. So let's just stay with the literal interpretation unless you deem it and unless you're a creationist. Yeah. So we have the whole fable where God set the trap, put the bait and the mechanism, everything. He put the serpent in there, intending for the serpent to lie to the woman. He gave the instructions to Adam and let the serpent to deceive the woman so that they could find out knowledge of good and evil, which somehow knowing good from evil is evil. And somehow you can criminally punish people who are not cognizant of their crime, according to God, because God can do whatever he wants, even if it's illegal in modern human society. So God sets the trap, baits the people. And now what's gonna happen is that God, first of all, he lied in that story where the serpent was the only one who told the truth. By the way, that's important. And now God has this hell we're supposed to believe. And if you don't believe, then God will cast you into hell. Oh, but God doesn't cast us into hell. We cast ourselves, you know, fucking bullshit excuses. God made the hell. God said, hey, if you don't believe, you're going to hell. So it's God that did that. Isaiah 45, five, six, and seven. You don't, please, quit telling me that I'm strawmanning. It's in your fucking fairy tales. So God's gonna put us into hell. Don't strawman. Not for whether we're good or evil, because that can be forgiven. But the only thing that cannot be forgiven, even according to Jesus, is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. I will blaspheme all over the Holy Spirit's face. There we go. So quit telling people, people wanna say, well, you could still be saved. No, I can't. Your whole argument is wasted. You're gonna have to give me something other than an emotional plea. No, so this is no emotional plea. This is just the basic center understanding of theology. But getting back to, all right. I just want to clarify one thing before and then I'll let you continue after this. Sure, sure. You brought up a number of points that would each of them be solid debates on their own. I mean, this topic was just so fantastically general that I couldn't help it, but any one of the other sub, of the minor arguments that you brought up would be huge debates on their own. You'd lose all of them just to be clear, but those would all be good debates. Agreed. No, agree. Just theology. A debate on theology would take about 10 hours. So my next point that we haven't covered yet is reason and logic. So from an atheistic perspective, how do you even get close to understanding the immaterial way of dealing with something like reason and logic? We talked about math. You just kind of wrote it off as, no, a mind didn't create math and somehow, you didn't give me the alternative. Did math just create itself? Was it just hanging there? Okay, so you're going to tell me. So, how do you explain this from a materialistic perspective? Let's address that so I don't get it. As I get off, I'm seeing the chat. I'm getting all kinds of false accusations. Aaron is the pope of Satanism, for example. So you say that I just wrote off the math thing. If a thing is going to exist, and which means that there's a universe for it to exist in, that thing and that universe have to have properties. And in two scenarios, in science, you try to weigh two hypotheses against each other, consider both of them hypothetically. So universe A has a God in it, wherein one thing plus another thing equals two things. And you take that first thing away, you end up with one thing left. And then in a universe without a God in it, the same thing applies. But you're saying that's not possible. You have to have an imaginary friend to say that two things can be one plus one is two. That it can't be that without the magic imaginary friend. I don't think that's realistic. First of all, let's just pretend he's not my friend in this scenario. He's not my friend at all. That's not the important part. The important part is the imaginary part. Okay, he can be a personal form of a computer, a crazy hybrid. We can redefine God as long as you attach a mind to it. I mean, follow me on this one, because the laws of logic, obviously, would you believe they exist independent of human minds? Yes. So if there are no human minds on earth, obviously they still remain, right? So the immaterial reality our minds use, that is a bridge to other minds we would agree on. We didn't create that bridge. That bridge is what we mean. I would say by this mind, don't call it God, this mind's nature. And if there were no material, if there were no material mind, none of it would exist. It would all break down. How does the mind that you're talking about exist? And then there's a second question. How does the mind you're talking about do anything? So the mind I'm talking about is a transcendent source. When it comes to morality, that doesn't answer the question, does it? When it comes to reason and logic, the mind is a type of creative intelligibility that would exist outside of rationale logic morality. And this creative agent would create our abilities to actually have a moral understanding, how nature fits in, how we are able to reason with one another even when that reason logic principle still exists without us. So if you have God, then it's just pure chaos. There's no intelligibility behind the universe. So when Einstein talks about, the only thing that's unintelligible is that the universe is actually intelligible. He's wrestling with this is insane and eventually he became a deist because he started to realize that intelligibility is connected way more so to potential of a mind rather than just some vacuum. Who is this? What caused his mind to make such a stupid assumption? Albert Einstein. No, he didn't. He didn't say that. I'm not misquoting Einstein, I would never do such a thing. He said that he was a pantheist, that he didn't believe in a personal God. He didn't believe in a God that answered prayers. He believed that all of human origin was just fanciful nonsense. Agreed, agreed. He believed in a God though. Or he had a positive mind. He literally didn't. He didn't believe in anything that would qualify as a deity. He didn't believe in a preplanned intelligence to design anything. He did not believe in an immaterial mind that then wished things into being. Cause I asked you two questions and you failed to answer either of them. How does this mind that you're talking about exist? And secondly, how does this mind that you allege do anything? How does it exist? It's existed throughout time. It's outside of space and time to something needed to create space and time. So if it is outside of reality, then it does not exist. I mean, how far back do you want me to go? Cause we can go back to the big bang, we can go back to- It doesn't exist, it exists outside of time. So at no time does it exist. No, it's outside of space and time, it's space and time we are in. It is God. And it's- Interesting space and time through Jesus Christ. So it's your God is Rod Serling. He wrote the script and we're just- All right, so I answered the first part. What's the second question? So your God is Rod Serling. He wrote the script. That's before my time. I don't know who that is. Okay, so God wrote the script and we're just all playing out the parts. God wrote the script and yet he grants us free will at the same time. Which is not possible. But what was the second- Especially when, it's not logically possible. Especially- I want to answer your second question though. But you- Okay. What was your second question? How does it do anything? How does it do anything? How does the mind, how does God do anything? It creates. And now I'm calling it it because I'm changing my definitions of God to try to- So how does it create? Cause I said do anything. How does it create? Out of word. Speaks things into being. Abracadabra. And then the word becomes flesh. And so out of actual physical humanity, you have an ability that you see the miraculous, the supernatural playing out in the physical realm. Why don't we ever see- I a physical person. What? Why don't we ever see that? About 85% of the world claims- Never sees that. No, I'm sorry. 100% of the world never sees that. You mean like 15%? I mean like no percent ever actually sees that. A whole lot of- Have you been to Haiti, have you been to Africa, have you been to Latin America? I've been to India. I know a whole bunch of people claim- They all claim to have experienced the supernatural. Oh yeah, they all claim to have experienced, like in near-death experience. For example, in India, they come back claiming proof of reincarnation, proof that Christianity is false and that Hinduism is true. So what do you do with that? What do you do with their proof that Christianity is true? When the Hindu has a near-death experience and they get to meet their gods. Yeah. I wouldn't say it's proof. In their afterlife, which is then their reincarnation preparation. Right. I wouldn't say it's proof. I wouldn't say it's evidence. And I wouldn't trust it. You wouldn't say it's evidence. Whatsoever. Your near-death experiences are not evidence. Their near-death experiences are not evidence. We got nothing here. So we have a lot of people that make a bunch of erroneous assumptions and identify gods that don't really exist. Oh, except yours. Yours is the real one, I'm sure. We get morality from society, you said. Yeah, and that's the only point. Okay, I talked about moral obligation and I talked about a moral reference point and I believe that's a mind and it's personal because I think we have personal decisions to make every single morning we wake up whether we ought to do something or not do something. And you said we just get it from society. Are you saying that society then objectively or subjectively says whether it's right or wrong? I'm not telling you to say it's wrong. Are you simply saying mommy and daddy tell us what's right and wrong? I'm not telling you to shut up. I'm just sorry. I have a great journey. It goes off all the damn time. It's so irritating when you're a podcaster. He barks at everything. Hey, I'm glad he's here though. But I apologize. I'm sometimes not even able to follow you. I sometimes have to jump to the mute button because he goes off and there's nothing I can do about it. He's quiet now. Please repeat what you just said. When you said we get our morality from society, are you simply talking about we grow up and begin to understand from mommy and daddy and our teachers or are you saying we get objective morality from our, whether you call it objective or not, from society and that is right or wrong based off of what society says. Universally in every society that we live in because we have multiple, but if you compare them all, I like to refer to Scott Clifton's argument on a treatise on morality where we all understand that it would be immoral to unnecessarily cause harm or suffering to another person. We all get that. Now for people for political biases or religious biases will come up with excuses for how they're justified and doing the thing that they know is immoral in the first place. And that's why they're desperately coming up with excuses to justify that. But if you really are moral, then you're not looking for these excuses and you're not trying to cause this pain and suffering on another person anyway. So when you say society, I mean, obviously our society has gone astray many times. Right, but I'm not trying to say if they see what's good. I'm talking about all of us, the whole planet, everybody collectively. We all understand everybody everywhere, any time, any place understands that if you walk up to some little old lady and punch her in the face, that's wrong. Now, you can come up with excuses to justify why you did that, but we all understand everybody everywhere, every when understands that's wrong. Agreed, and I would say that favors. That that point on one point of evidence for God. That demonstrates how society understands morality from a societal standpoint and not from a God. Thanks. And how do you explain audience? How do you explain the recent woman who, you know, she's a writer for the Boston Globe, strong atheist, she went down and was trying to help eradicate in a certain tribe, honor killings. They thought honor killings were fine. Isn't that- As I said, indivisible groups will find political or religious reasons to justify the evil that they know that they're doing. You and I can both come up with exceptions of the excuses that people have written into their dogma to justify the evil that they're doing. We can do that all day. Yet again, though, this gets back to the same thing I'm trying to hammer home here with reason, logic, math, and add morality to it. Does it make more sense if there's a creative mind behind it all? Or does it make just total sense that it's completely random, all this creativity and beauty came from entropy and chaos? Also, no. A blind, pitiless, ex-distance? Just because it wasn't predetermined because someone didn't have a plan and we're not important, that the universe wasn't created for us and will end when we do. It was that we are the reason the universe exists in our humility. Just because that isn't the case doesn't mean it's completely random because there are processes here that make it not completely random. I would say normally deterministic, but some philosopher always wants to redefine things in a damning way, and they say deterministic that that would mean that there's no other way that can happen. What I'm only talking about, that there are processes that guide it to this probability over this other probability, but it's not completely random is the point. So I realize that religious believers have this weird fixation, which I've never understood. I really can't even relate to it at all. Where they want there to be a reason for existence and a meaning and purpose for life. And I have to tell you that when I was a little bitty boy and when I told my grandparents that I didn't believe that Genesis was literally true, I thought that this is a parable. Obviously it's a parable. I'm explaining to my grandparents how it is a parable. I was eight and I'm explaining to my grandparents how this is a parable. And my grandfather reacted by saying, well, what is the meaning of life? And that reminds me of when the fortune tellers would throw down the chicken bones or the tea leaves or the tarot cards, a completely random assortment and then read what they mean. To ask what is the meaning of life is just as meaningless. It's just a stupid question. It doesn't mean anything. That's just the way it is. But it's not Christians who ask that question. Pew Research came out of the stage and it's always been 90% of that question. 90% so that's even the little boy in the mud hut over in Haiti. And I'm sorry, but there's always been Christians that you said it's not Christians who ask that question but to me, everyone has been Christians right up until the last five years or so. And then some Muslims started filtering in. No, I'm talking universally. Okay, I'm sure there's some Hindus out there that make the same argument. No, no. 90% of the world is what Pew Research showed. 90% ask those types of metaphysical questions that are transcendent, that are out, they want to take part in ecstasy, is there hope? Do I have a secure sense of help? Will I last forever? Those are all questions that any human desires needs to have met, even a little child. I'm just entertaining the idea of when I was eight years old and my grandfather revealing to me that he wants to partake in ecstasy when that wasn't even a thing then. Did you partake? So, staying on topic if we can. Is this why you're able to drink nine beers in a row and debate me? I'm drinking water right now. No, I know, last time we had our little time because I think you told me you had nine and you walked me through every single type of period. I probably did, but I only had two and they weren't good ones. So, I still, I think the idea of obviously an infinite eternal mind is the architect of both nature we talked about. There's another line of purpose. And the moral purpose of man and the universe that is fulfilling intellectually and experientially. Oh, neither way, that is so the opposite. Because Joe, I mean, when Joe Rogan himself came out. Joe Rogan himself. I'm kidding, Joe Rogan himself. Oh, there's an authority you should fight for. He won't instantly lose all credibility by claiming him. He recently stated, and I think he is an atheist. He said atheists are so depressed because they don't ask these questions. Because they're too scared to ask these questions. I would not blame him because all these questions just end in dead ends. If there was a way that we could have a conversation with Joe Rogan where he wouldn't just shut me down on everything that I said, that would be brilliant. Because I've never heard anything from him that was remotely intelligent. I mean, like not at all. Nothing I agree with. All right, so then tied to morality. You talked about, okay, so the moral obligation supposedly is that every- I want to focus on something you just said. Yeah. You said it was intellectually, and I don't remember how else, rewarding this idea of an eternity. No, it's not. No, I didn't say that. That's not what I was saying. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not what I'm saying. I'm saying, well, first off, maybe this helps. What we're talking about right now in debating the existence of God, I think the evidence or lack of evidence that I'm giving, I hope you take 1% away. That can get you to reliability, but it's only experience that gets you to certainty. Oh, no, no, no. Because I've been there- So that's what I'm talking about here. It's not the pot of- I've been there. I've been the reborn Christian, absolutely certain. I've been there. I was, after that, I was a Neopagan occultist for a number of years. I had more evidence as a Neopagan occultist than I had as a Christian. And eventually, I realized that even that was also a fraud, that I was fooling myself. I realized that the problem was faith. That faith is the most dishonest thing there is. It's always- It wasn't that priest. What? It wasn't that priest? It wasn't what priest? That priest who was poking you? Or it was never a priest poking me. It wasn't the church lady who was tremendous self-righteous. I've been in a church exactly once as a child. Well, you brought up the priest's acting in this sexual kind of way. I was checking to see if that was the case for you. I was brought into a church one time. I was 11 years old. They brought me in because it was my request. I wanted to celebrate the, we were doing Easter. And I wanna know what is the traditional celebration? Let's just get with all the cultural whatever's. And how do we celebrate Easter? And my family told me we do it by going to church. I'm like, really? That's how you celebrate Easter? The fuck? But, you know, they take me to church and this old codger behind the podium lies to us. And he said- So it's people? Yeah. People. People pushed you out of the church. He said- It was an objective evidence. Found in a riverbed in Texas. Mockison footprints walking alongside dinosaurs, proving that those were Adams footprints. And I realized at 11 years old that there's no way that if there was Mockison footprints, even if they were walking with dinosaurs, there's no way that you would know that that was Adams footprints. You can't know that yet. You say that you do know that. And that means you're lying. That's what all religion is lies. And I said to my grandmother, grandma, he's lying. And I got slugged in the stomach and dragged out of the church. Because you never question the liar behind the podium. But there's always a liar behind the podium. At our church, we encourage more questioning. Day on a daily- I doubt that very much. On a daily, daily- I bet you can't show an example of that. A single one. I bet you can't. You can't give me a sermon that happened, say, last week. Give me the video for it. I will count the lies for you. I will give you- Don't be a recording of it. Was there a recording of your church? I will give you a couple- Did you get a recording of your church? Yes. All of our sermons are on YouTube and Facebook Live. I will give you a recording from a few sermons ago. No, not last week. Once a quarter, at least. You're gonna love this. Once a quarter. Give me the one from last week. We do Q and A. That's all we do in our Sanctuary of 700. Give me the sermon- That's Q and A. You don't do a sermon? We do sermons, but I'm just saying, once a quarter- Okay, then give me the sermon from last week. And I'll count the lies for you. You wanna preach it to you? No, I want you to give me the recording of the sermon in your church last week, and I will count the lies for you. I will gladly send that to you. But your point was that priests and spiritual leaders do not encourage questions at all, and they all shut you down. And my point is that our church, it's a fairly large church, and we do Q and A. We take out sermons and literally just have people ask questions. So one woman recently asked, is masturbation okay? And that was a shocker. And yet we give these opportunities to literally fight back exactly against what pushed you away from believing in God's existence. And that was- Then why? A man who wouldn't answer your questions. So it wasn't objective intellectual reasoning. It was largely emotional bias plus objective, plus evidential. I'm not saying you didn't think through the evidence, but this was largely emotional too, because it was a spiritual leader who was lying and shoving in your face objections to you even asking questions. I mean, I would leave the faith too. Okay, but you say that your church encourages the questions and all of that. And yet you brought all of these arguments in favor of intelligent design, saying there was scientific evidence of intelligent design, things we know to be false. When did I say there's scientific evidence for intelligent design? You said that science points to a designer. I said that it's almost impossible to do science without a mind behind it. Yeah, not only is it not impossible to do science without a magic imaginary friend, it's not possible to do science with one. And so my point is, if you want to fight the creationist's heart on that, then I'd agree with you, because they're really pushing hard on science. Now they have scientific reasoning, but no, the point I'm making is- It's not possible to incorporate your God into science. You said you can't do science without it. I'm saying you can't do science with it. And you can't give me an example where you can do science with it. Absolutely I can. I just talked to you in my opening, I gave endless amounts of examples. I know, I heard your opening and I wrote my notes based on your opening to now challenge you on how flawed the opening was. You can't use the opening as justification of itself. You were wrong then, you're wrong to defend it now. You can't use, you can't say that science points to a designer because it clearly does not. Science, there has to be something that gets this whole thing going. When Darwin wrote Origin of the Species, he was not talking about Origin of the Universe. Origin of the Species was specifically things, people inside of space and time. Then your buddy Dawkins came along and said Origin meant everything. So you don't need a designer, you don't need a creative mind or mechanism. And then what did Dawkins do? He apologized, he apologized. And he said based off of especially the fine tuning argument, he might become a deist. He said that last summer. For you, I would get to that point of understanding. Sir, I am fully on board with Darwin. I'm fully on board with evolution. But this whole idea that it's all just about science and that you don't have to explain any type of origin and making me look silly, that I'm saying that everything in our experience, obviously if there is a big bang, you're gonna look for a big banger. If someone's about to bang my door shut, I'm gonna look for a big banger. Everything in your experience says that there's something behind it all. Call it God, call it the spaghetti monster, whatever you wanna call it. I don't need to call it the intelligence, but we know that's not what it is. There, and in that instance, you're right, I cannot scientifically prove that one. Absolutely not. But that's my point, the origin of the species, Darwin never meant to even talk about origins of the cosmos. And Dawkins completely twisted it. So every single person in the US now thinks that that was exactly what Darwin was talking about. I don't defend what anybody else allegedly said. So I don't care what Dawkins may or may not have said. He said a few things I don't agree with. So I don't care to defend everything anyone ever said. When they agree with me, then I'll defend it. So you believe in what, an eternal universe? Do you believe in the multiverse? Do you believe? I don't do cosmology, I do evolution. And when people find that out and they find out that I know evolution, then they want to change the subject to cosmology. My first confrontation with a Muslim apologist group, they were arguing with P. Z. Myers and they were arguing embryology until they realized that he was a developmental biologist. And they're, I'm not even kidding. They, this is exactly what they said was, when they said, well, this is his field. They're, they're quote mining somebody. And he says, well, that's my field too. And they said, oh, you're a developmental biologist? Yes. Oh, well, let's talk about geology then. We don't want to talk about the subject you know, we want to talk about the subject you don't know. That's the way the apologists always are. So when they find out that I'm any good at evolution, they want to talk about cosmology because that's completely irrelevant. But what I said- I'm not doing that, am I? You brought up intelligent design. You tried to defend intelligent design repeatedly in your opening statement. Yeah, let's have that conversation. I talked about- There is no evidence, there is no evidence of an intelligent designer there is significant, profound evidence against an intelligent designer and we have all the proof we need for evolution. You just said you don't even touch it though, but now you're saying- I said I don't touch cosmology. Okay, okay. Well, how am I running from evolution? I said, I said- I just told you, I said I love evolution. I just told you just now you were arguing for intelligent design, which is- Why can't you have both? Why can't you have a designer? I mean, hey, maybe you're- How could you have a designer? Let's go over there. Maybe you're parsing the two in a different way than I am. Okay, let me clarify. ID and designer. Intelligent design is literally the exact same thing as creationism. I know they lie about that. They want to say that it's something else. And I'm not that. But it was proven in court. Intelligent design is creationism. They're exactly the same thing. Creationism is a rejection of evolution specifically and of methodological naturalism by extension. And you have argued against methodological naturalism in your opening statement and for intelligent design, which means that you're a creationist, which means that you object to evolution by definition. I- No. Okay. Then you don't know what these words mean. Let me clarify. If I ever said intelligent design, I apologize. I was talking about- You argued the irreducible complexity, which is the intelligent design argument meant to promote creationism. And the reason they changed the name to intelligent design was because it was a criminal conspiracy to get around the law against teaching religion in public schools. So in the 1987 Supreme Court ruling against teaching creationism or teaching religion in public schools, they had a textbook called A Pandas and People that used to say that this is creationism and it gave the definition for what creationism is. And then they changed it with a macro command because it's all on computers. They changed it with a macro command to change creationism to intelligent design. So then the word creationism became intelligent design but with the same exact definition. So that a superior intelligent being or supreme intelligence created magically all of these things without having evolved. That's what intelligent design is. It was literally creationism. And the irreducible complexity arguments are arguments that these things cannot have existed the way they are. They can't have come into position by natural means. They have to have been orchestrated by an intelligence magically. We now know that every one of those arguments are flawed. So I would disagree. Historically, I would agree on what you shared there. But no, I think you can absolutely have irreducible complexity and fit that in even to evolutionary theory and being an evolutionist. It's an argument against evolution. So you're saying no, it is against it. It's against it, but it's against it at certain times in certain places like with the eyeball or like with the cell now. But that doesn't mean you just erase all of adaptation, mutations and evolution. No, I would totally disagree with that. OK, well, I'm a little confused as to how you're advocating for intelligent design and criticizing methodological naturalism. But you say you support evolution. You're contradicting your own definitions. I would macro-micro-evolution. I'm talking about I'm a micro-evolutionist in terms of I allow for selective adaptation and changes within the environment, within species. But I'm not a macro-evolutionist in the sense of there is no God and so there's no room for the immaterial, the transcendent. You have to explain everything materialistically, and that's why I think when it comes to the moral argument, reasoning, rationale, when it comes to things like love, so many things in our experience are immaterial that the naturalistic worldview falls apart because it's so reductionistic and doesn't allow for the immaterial. OK, OK, so we'll talk about that in just a moment. I want to put a pin in that. No, I want to dive into that right now. The naturalistic position means. Start the debate, start. We don't assume magic. We know that we both know there's a natural world. We both accept that there's a natural world. You want to posit that there's also a magic alternative of reality. I don't make that assumption. And because I don't make that assumption, you label me a naturalist and you call mine the belief. Yours is the belief. You have the belief that there's a magical alternative reality. I don't make that assumption. So you label me the belief. And you tell me that I have to defend my belief in you not being correct about your belief. Yes, you have so many belief presuppositions. It's scary. I don't have the presupposition. I don't have any. Fighting for human rights, fighting for justice. You believe in the virgin birth of the universe. At least I have a woman who was a virgin. I don't believe there was a virgin. I don't believe there was a virgin. I have a woman who was a virgin. You have nothing that was a virgin. I don't have any. I don't have a virgin. Is that there are so many things you take by faith? It's scary. I don't have a belief at all. I don't think you have a faith. I don't believe. I don't think you have faith. You have endless amounts of beliefs. I don't have beliefs. Why did Matt, last time Matt and I debated, he said he has endless amounts of beliefs but does not have faith. Am I Matt? You are not Matt, but I'm getting to the point. What's the difference in our hair style? The dogs are a giveaway too. Matt hates dogs. I'm not going to argue Matt's position. No, no, no. There was a reason. You told me. There was a reason. I just want to point out how many times you interrupted that statement because there's always people in the chat that say that I'm the one interrupting. I realize I do interrupt and I try to curb that. I'm trying to catch you. That was a bunch of interruptions right there. I don't believe any of the things that you just said and you just admitted to the shifting of the burden of proof fallacy. So you have a belief that there's this alternative reality that I don't assume. We both accept that there's a real reality, the one that we know. But you also suggest that there's another one. The burden of proof is on the one making the positive claims. Why await your proof instead of substantiating your weird assertion, your baseless assertion. You then criticize me for not being able to disprove you because you can't substantiate your position. And you think that's justified. This might be an opportunity. There are endless amounts. A quick, pithy response. And then, Arne, if you want to go or we got to wrap it up pretty quick. I am so tired of the new scientific definitions on morality that atheists are getting. I'm so tired of the different versions of multiverses. I'm so tired of tunneling. Did I mention any of that? Did any of that have anything to do with what we were just talking about? Yes, I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. It just shows how much magical thinking is getting put in place on both sides. I would agree there's a lot of magical thinking. There's no magical thinking on my side. But I think the whole issue is that, again, you have the burden of proof as well because we're both making claims to knowledge here. I don't mind. Both making claims to knowledge. I don't mind living up to the burden of proof for anything that I actually hold true. Good. I can do that. You can't. I can't. The things I mentioned when it came to beliefs, you cannot take an empirical hard stance and test it in a lab that, here's why we should live for justice and human rights. Yes, I can't. Here's how somehow this place popped into existence. Here's why, for example. I don't believe anything ever. Here's why, for example. That's one of the beliefs you pretended that I have that I don't have. What? Which one? I don't believe anything ever popped into existence. You do. But I don't believe what you do. Do you believe it exists forever? Don't blame me for you believing that. If you believe it's eternal, then I take it back. I believe it's eternal. You believe the universe is eternal. I had an interview with a number of cosmologists, including not just Sean Carroll, but also Lawrence Krauss, the author of a universe from nothing. He doesn't actually believe the universe came from nothing. So what I've gathered from all of the cosmologists that I've talked to is that even in that there are multiple models here, nobody actually knows for certain what the, that when you get right down to the grid of it, they're very, very confident after the first second. But prior to that, nobody really knows. That's what I'm getting. I could be wrong about that because I don't do cosmogony. I don't, cosmogony, I don't care. I literally don't care whether or how the universe had a beginning. I certainly don't have a belief about things that I don't care about. But what I've gotten from cosmogonous is that even in models that have a singularity, that singularity is eternal. It does not matter whether or if or how the universe had a beginning. But what I'm hearing is that it didn't. This might be a good opportunity, Stuart. I know that you've got another round in the chamber ready to fire back, but I think this is a good opportunity to go to Q&A, so we're not here too late tonight because you've already gone a little bit over that open dialogue, so I do want to jump in. I'm really, yeah, I'm sorry. We didn't even get to the meat of that. No, I know. I feel the same way. I just want to jump into this because we do have a lot. And also the good thing is some of these questions definitely match up with what's been discussed, so it'll hopefully give a chance to kind of flesh out some of the stuff that you guys want to go deeper on. I want to say thanks so much for your questions, so we're going to move through these fast. And I want to remind you that our guests are linked in the description. So if you want to hear more from Aaron, or if you want to hear more from Stuart, you can find their links below in the description box. That includes at the podcast. I don't know if you guys know all of our debates end up on the Modern Day Debate podcast, which you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. You name it. We're on every podcast app, and Stuart's link in the description box at the podcast episode as well. We're going to jump right into it. Thanks so much for your question. James W., who says after show at Amy Newman's channel, open mic. Help us celebrate Aaron Ross win over Stuart. Tell us why, what you think about the debate. Thanks, Stuart. And thanks, James. And thanks, Aaron. Thanks very much for that. And thank you, James, for declaring me the winner. So we're late. Let's see. Lameo says, is Satan Yahweh's attorney general in prison warden? If so, it makes sense why Yahweh doesn't destroy Satan. Satan is an employee or minion. I don't know if that's sincere, Stuart. I don't know if you want to address it. This one coming in from... You can just interject. Just jump in, Stuart, if you ever feel like it. Otherwise, the trolly ones are the ones I'll just move past fast. Jeremiah Gallagos says, hey, Stuart, what do you think about... Ra... Aaron Ra being a Satanist. I think they just mean Aaron Ra. Pretty neutral and yet very enlightened at the same time. Interesting. Franco Trujillo says, thanks, Aaron. Ra, doing good work. Helped me on my journey out of Christianity. This one's from Thunder Stuart. It says, what is the best sandwich? Thanks for that. You guys have a favorite sandwich at Subway or anywhere else? Oh, the white Russian roast beef. Nice. That's specific. Aaron, you seem like a guy who enjoys a Reuben. Am I right? What do you like for sandwiches? Well, I am a big fan of pastrami, yes. Ooh. Nice. This one coming in from... Thunderstorm says... We got that one. Let's see. I want to make sure I read these. Guy with the hair says, Stuart's argument that Darwin had a floppy wiener, therefore God. Just to clarify, I think Stuart, that came out with the pauses in the wrong place to where some of the... Just like what I said, I thought Aaron got poked. Yes, it's something that got lost through the internet here. I wanted to cover my face when you asked Aaron if he got poked by a priest in the past. But you meant like a verbal jab? That's what you must say. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Even my face turns red. I've never been the victim of any religious person. That's never happened to me. I look out for other people. I see how other people have been victims. Yeah. Same. Yep. I know some. Something coming in from Hillary D says, our emotional connection can overlook human error and doing. Have you ever looked at Satan or God and tried to think someone made them up and it took flight with fan fiction? Oh, that's for me? I'm not sure if it's rhetorical or for you. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. I mean, sure. Absolutely. That's why you got to look into your background beliefs, your horizons. And yes, your emotional reasoning, your confirmation biases. You got to sift through all of it and then decide for yourself. But the sociology of knowledge by Peter Berger up at BU clearly talks about how me and Aaron are impacted by those around us in our worldviews way more than we'll ever be able to realize. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Bob says, God is misanthropic. Satan is humanistic. Yes. I agree. If you want to address that. I agree that Satan is humanistic. And Satanism is just humanism in gothic outfits. You got it. And this one from, or Stuart, I want to give you a chance if you did want to address that because they, being misanthropic, if I remember right, that would mean like not for humans or in other words kind of opposing of humans. Yeah. What was the question though? You said God is misanthropic, but Satan is humanistic. Yes. Is that a question? I would disagree with that. If you agree with that. I would disagree with it. But based off of what Aaron just said, I'd want to look into it more. That's fascinating. I saw the Super Bowl and how many Satanistic symbols there were on Rihanna and others. I bet yet there wasn't one Satanist involved in that old production. Exactly. That's what I was thinking. It's like... This one from Christopher. Kustin says, I had to be taught Christianity. Why didn't I have this God belief since my birth, Stuart? Well, I don't believe everybody is instantly given proof that God exists as soon as they're born. No, different people come to believing and building a trusting relationship, not just some mental ascent with God at different stages. For me, it was 10 years old, but then I almost dropped everything, my sophomore year of college. I wouldn't say everybody is born with a certainty of it. There are many studies out there that show that on both ends. I bet Aaron would have his own studies showing whether somebody is actually born with this innate desire to know God. It's up to you. You've got to decide, and based off of your free will, and that's what God has given us, and that's where we have the ability to decide to follow Him or not. I want to add that our ability to love or not love is completely independent of whether we were fooled by that particular lie, but you said that we were influenced by other people around us more than we would possibly know. I came to recognize that because I've been in a number of different cultures in my life, and I recognized how those cultures affected me. You do respond to the people around you, whether you're aware of it or not. You want to be in accordance with your entire circle around you, and I've recognized how there is that influence. But there was another point I wish I could remember, but I'm having a senior moment now. I should have written down in notes. You got it. We can come back to it if you have it. I want to say all over Catwell, thanks so much for sending your Super Chat question via PayPal. Folks, if you want to send it via PayPal, if you have any sort of malfunction or anything with your on YouTube, you can. Our PayPal is in the description box, Brayden Runal, his mouth. Brayden runs his mouth, sorry about that. Aaron, if there was a big bang on your door in your room, wouldn't you wonder who or what caused it? If there was anything, I would wonder what caused it, yeah. You got it, this one from Otangelo Grasshole. I don't know if this is the real Otangelo. I think this might be the troll. There's a troll or two running around posing as Otangelo. Why would you close as Otangelo? What would be the point if you're trying to retrieve it? That would be redundant. They say, Aaron, have no show why life, not irreduce complex. He have not even address. Okay, this is definitely a troll account. That's definitely a troll. Even Otangelo's not a troll. Let's see. Christopher Custis is related to my last question. Why does the theist give verifiable evidence of deities without scripture or holy text? I assume they meant why doesn't the theist do that? Because that's arguing from authority and I try not to do that. Even though Romans 2, 14 through 15 does absolutely talk about what I was speaking with Aaron about in terms of the moral and the natural being wedded together perfectly. I'm having a senior moment too. This Cambridge professor talked about it in terms of the creative intelligibility behind nature and morality. Romans 2, 14 through 15 talks about that. That makes sense of it. I don't use scripture in debates. It would take me a minute to look up where the Bhagavad Gita said the same thing at least 600 years ago. You've got it. And Michelle Maria, thanks in the chat, says 1000 in the live chat. Hit that like button. Thanks for your support, Michelle. Yeah, please do. If you enjoy this debate, it really doesn't mean a lot for real, folks. This one coming in from Lin Yen Chin. It says religion only means cyclic or repetitive. That is why you can correctly say you religiously verify that your appliances are off before leaving the home. Pigeonhole is the path to death of the language. I would like to jump on that if you don't mind. Sure. I mean, I took a course on the comparative history of world religions and one of the challenges was to define what a religion is and being that I'm in two taxonomy. I realized that your classification has to apply to all of them. You can't just make one specific to one and exclude everybody by definitional fiat. I applied the same things to gods and my definition of them. But a religion is a faith-based belief system that posits the notion that a supernatural essence of self somehow survives the death of the physical being to continue on in some other form. My definition does not apply to Satanism, but then the U.S. government doesn't have a definition of religion and so that's why they recognize Satanism as a religion and I don't. You got it. This one coming in from Do you appreciate it? Christopher Custon strikes again and says, R.N., I had the same experience at seven years old. I did it for the candy and not getting in trouble. This one from French friend Franco Troulos says, People really do be having faith since forever. This one from Bubble Gum Gun says, When are you going to let me debate Dr. Thompson? I don't know, email me. This one, Mindy Mild. Thanks for your super chat. I didn't see a question attached but let me know in the live chat as a normal chat if you had one you wanted to attach. Hates, stares. Good to see you again. Says, Stuart, how do you cherry pick what is wrong and right? Is eating shrimp okay? What about wearing polyester? Is stealing my neighbor's cattle okay? Yeah, it's definitely not cherry picking. It's old covenant versus new covenant, dietary ceremonial laws that were needed back then. If you, yeah, if you ate certain things that were unclean, you would get pretty sick. So it actually made quite a bit of sense to do so contextually. Obviously in the New Testament, you do not have that today. We do not have that. We have different forms, mechanisms to clean things, for example, but it also pointed in terms of the dietary and ceremonial to more, much more of a pointing to that Jesus Christ could ultimately be the only one who would make us clean by dying on the cross for us. And so the old covenant was shown to be how people were constantly trying to make themselves clean to go into the Holy of Holies, for example, but they constantly fell short. So there's both angles to it. You got it. Thank you very much for your question. Charles Lainer says, Aaron, do you have confidence that the laws of logic that are true today will be true tomorrow as well? And if so, what evidence do you have that it will be the case other than, quote, because that's how it's always been, unquote? How could it possibly not be? You got it. Bubble gum gun strikes again, says, Aaron Ra, would you debate me one-on-one on evolution? I don't know if you know this guy, Aaron. I suggest no, but... I've never heard of him, but it doesn't matter. I don't think I've ever heard of him, but I mean, it's not a familiar name. I'm open to having conversations on evolution. It's a subject that I do understand and I'm happy to help any creationist who, if you still believe in creationism, call me. I'll be happy to have a live video conversation with you and I can help you. You go to this one coming in from Ryan says, credit where credit is due, Stuart, your conviction to continue to do debates despite losing, embarrassingly, is impressive. Ribbonia in the old live chat, Stuart. I wouldn't take that one. That's... That's very funny. That was a good one. Hold on to that. This one from Linya and Chin says, evolution is just continuous adaptation to an ever-changing set of circumstances within one's environment. It's a synonym for quote-unquote living. This is a quote-unquote Christian. Why so spastic rather than sapient? Was this question for Stuart or me? I think for Stuart, at least the jab at the end there, but in terms of the beginning part, for you are, and I think you're right, this probably was for you. They say evolution is just continuous adaptation to an ever-changing set of circumstances within one's environment. It's a synonym for living. As long as the circumstances change and as long as life forms change, then yeah. You got it. And then Stuart, you're apparently not sapient enough. You are too spastic for them. Sapient meaning wise. I don't... Under what grounds did you read that one? Were they offering you money? We even, in these cases of the jabs at Stuart, we do read them because we go through all the super chats before we go through the standard questions. Have you ever heard you money to make that comment? This is a super chat, yes. Okay. That's pretty impressive. I like that. You should get used to these on the basketball court. A little bit of elbow ink here, but keep ringing it, James. This one, I always, that's the thing is if you can take crap well, I, in my opinion, I feel like it can kind of like lift your presence in a positive way. If it's creative crap. When people get reactive and they... I guess that's my problem with it. I mean, that was just an insult. I mean, that would be my issue with it. I didn't see much point in that one. You got it. This one coming in from Sameer, Farzane says, atheists don't exist. If they can't disprove creation, their best bet is agnosticism. Excuse me, atheists do exist and I can prove that have done past tense and can prove evolution, can disprove creationism, have done past tense. You and I should have a long series of conversations on my channel. You got it. This one coming in from Min Yen Chin says, the true Christian seeks inner stillness, not noise of insecurity. Let's see. Yeah, this is really coming after you, Stuart. Well, that's not as more Buddhist than anything. I appreciate it. I'm going to get a beam on that guy. Atheist Alasaurus says, why does Stuart always laugh and gish gallop like a maniac whenever he loses the arguments? It's the cold brew I'm drinking, actually. Juicy. It's temperament. It's a high level, high temperament. Got high blood pressure, too. This one. Go ahead. I want to give you a chance if you'd like. No, no, I was going to ask Aaron a question. I'll ask it after. You got it. Charles Lainer says, if the universe were eternal, then the past would be infinite. We live in the present, therefore the past is not infinite. But according to cosmologist Sean Carroll, the past is infinite and so will the future be. This one from the Muslim apologist for a purpose, for existence. I'm guessing that's for me. I think for both of you. Well, this should be good, then. To serve God and to serve others. The definition of a calling. Wow. Okay. That sounds so abysmal. So christianese. To be a slave to an indomitable despot. It's like the second part, though. The second part. The second part of what? What I miss. It's point one is to serve God. And when you serve God, you flourish the most as a human being, joyfully, physically. Recent Harvard study came out with that. One came out in 2018, too, that we could go into. And then to serve other people, which is obviously when you're serving others and living for another person and loving. That's when the world is at its best. That's the part I'm in. And you're also in servitude to an indomitable despot. But why are you in that part? What's a good, good reason for a heart? I understand it's a decent reason that a heart could probably think. I understand there's not a great reward in being selfish and self-serving. The selfish naive, though. We evolved as a social animal. We need human companionship. Why not be a free rider? Because we care about other people unless we're dysfunctional. Why? Why would you do that? I have more of a motive. There's much more of a reason. Now, my reason could be totally fallacious, but there's much more of a reason behind my world view as to why to serve somebody than yours, which is much more societally based. And supposedly we should just do it. We should serve people that are real. Not making something up and then trying to imagine that maybe after I die, my death is not even relevant. We're talking about if somebody is in need and I'm able to help them, I can help them. Right? And so I would do that. Right? And I do. Right? Why would you sacrifice your own time, physical well-being, resources? I could see you just doing it and just say for my common man. Does that person need help? But is that good enough? Why would you do that? Optimistically? Does the person need help? Either way. Their reason good enough? Does it have to be my reason? Well, if you're going to act, it has to be generated by some type of reason on your part. Yeah, if that person has a need and I'm able to fill it without compromising my own ability to continue. Yeah, I would just say from that worldview it makes sense to be nice but not really nice. And what I mean by that is... That's a distinction. And I also don't get from your perspective... Here's what I mean. What I mean is from the naturalistic, atheistic perspective, even through humanism, whatever. Don't worry about that. Just from what you've described, I still don't understand why you would serve somebody over in Malaysia who's really hurting. I know you would because you are a good guy. I've had many conversations with you. But why from your worldview would you sacrifice so much? I can't get there. Well, I would have to know the specifics because there are some people that are more of their own problem than you can deal with. I've had to walk away from personal friends that there's only so much that you can do. And when it comes down to the point where all they're doing is lying to you and everything you do to help them is just for waste. There's a certain point where you just got to say, hey, I can't do this anymore. And you're on your own. I had to do that less than a year ago. I had a friend for decades who was deep in addiction. I knew he wouldn't get help if I didn't take him, if I didn't make the arrangements myself, if I didn't drag him physically there myself, if I didn't take him to the pharmacy to get his medication myself and watch him take that and all of that I had to do because I knew he wouldn't do any of it. But I can't force him to take pills. And then when I found out that he didn't take the pills and he lost another job again for being drunk, I thought, okay, this was your sixth time in a year. I can't do this anymore. So there are limits. This one coming in from Forte says, is there an argument for not spreading atheism from the view that religion is a byproduct of evolution, and such offers many benefits to the believer in terms of health or whatever, lowered anxiety, lowered depression, they say, the Robert Sapolsky argument. I don't argue for spreading atheism. I'm an advocate of truth against lies. Religion is a pack of lies, so I don't lie. That's it. This one coming in from, religion as well. Notion slave says, in the atheist world view, we exist for no reason, no purpose, just a giant energy ball strangling itself. May as well believe we live inside of Barney's butt. Like Barney the dinosaur? I don't understand. What is the fascination? If you're not the reason the universe exists, if the universe wasn't created just for you, then you have to be morose. I don't get that. I've met so many Christian believers who really think, and one of them actually said to his own congregation, he admitted that he was completely irrational and he had no justification for believing what he did, but he said, if what you do today doesn't still matter five billion years from now, then it doesn't matter now. He said, if he couldn't live for absolutely forever, then if he only had a temporary lifespan and that was it, then he said, then there's no reason to help anybody else. There's no reason to prolong life or to minimize suffering. You just may as well just hurt as many people as you want to. I don't think he said that last part, but he did say the other two parts. That is the most nihilistic perspective I've ever heard from a guy who's arguing against nihilism. That was disgusting. If you can't live for five billion years, then what you do to help somebody today doesn't matter. Today, that's just wrong, every way possible. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Zero Glitch says, question for Stuart, since you say both sides have the burden of proof, what's enough proof someone can give you that would make you concede your belief in God? Show me the body of Christ. If Jesus was, as some have suggested, either a compilation of different characters into one, and that the stories of his crucifixion were confused or conflated with events that happened to other people, or that he wasn't necessarily put in this tomb but was left to the dogs to tear apart and all like that, then you're never going to see that body, are you? My experience has been that when I present this hypothetical situation, that if people had a time machine and an Aramaic translator and they could go back with the TARDIS and go look for Jesus, that even if they could find him, if they could find his body and see it wrought, I've had Christians tell me and I've got documented evidence for this because it's still available online, they admit that they would still believe it anyway. And I encounter atheists all the time on university campuses who say that they wouldn't even if it was true Christianity, that is. And I would say, just to Aaron's point, exactly, you're not going to be able to turn up a body now, I would help to see like an osuary that literally had written out like, hey, this was all just a big hoax and then I would need that connected to other osuaries with these something here. If I have a personal religious experience I've had personal religious experiences as a Christian and as a pagan and I had them as a pagan actor and the ones I had as a pagan were better than the ones I had as a Christian but I've learned how deceptive those religious experiences are so having that personal religious experience means nothing to me. I need objective verification to know that I'm not fooling myself, as a matter of fact for the very reason that I'm not still a Christian. When I was a reborn Christian floating around in this euphoric days for hours I had the presence of mind to ask a friend of mine who at the time were just high school kids but I mean this guy later became a southern Baptist preacher. I said, how do I know that this elation that I'm feeling is really the power of Jesus and that I'm not just fooling myself some way through a trick of the mind and he told me just keep telling yourself it's Jesus until you believe it. Act as if. Wow. The fake it till you make it thing broke my Christianity in an instant. Yeah. That would break mine too. You got it. Thank you very much for this question coming in from. Amy Newman says after show after the debate another amazing debate James question for Aaron and Stuart what would change your mind that a god does or does not exist? There's a number of things like when I argue about evolution I show people what we can verify and when I say something is true you don't have to take my word for it you don't have to take anybody's word for it we can go out in the field and see it yourself we can go into the lab and see it yourself there's so many different ways that I can demonstrate the truth of this thing but with God all you've got is one story book contradicted by all of these other story books that talk about different gods and nobody has any verifiable truth to anything nothing that can be objectively verified and if there really was a god and especially if he was going to be such a bombastic asshole that he would dare to damn somebody to hell forever and ever and ever for not believing in him then it is his responsibility to make up for this huge mistake of not providing any evidence and giving us only the most untrustworthy liars to convey his message to us and stories that we know are fractured fairy tales and completely false it's God's fault I don't believe God needs to know how to fix that I would just say to that I agree with a lot of it and I oftentimes think that way but holding in tandem with if you have a god big enough to be angry at that angry at then you have to have room for a god like that to have reasons that you don't know about if he's that big enough if he's that small then you don't need those reasons that god is very very small very very insecure almost as if in matter of fact exactly like there is no god it's just the clergy trying to sell us a bullshit story and trying to scare us out of questioning them this one coming in from do you appreciate it? the grim skeptic says Stuart would you debate the YouTuber King Zertseys I don't know who that is me neither this one from Jay says Stuart do you believe it's possible that the universe could be eternal no I don't think it's it's eternal it wouldn't shatter my faith if there was like say like a multiverse because I still think there would be a creator behind multiverses but Aaron help me there though with the eternal perspective tonight I hate the cosmology question because it's completely irrelevant to everything I study creationists argue with me all the time that we are not evolving apes and the argument they always bring up is where did the universe come from that makes absolutely no difference if the universe had a beginning we're still evolving apes if the universe is eternal we're still evolving apes can we get back on the topic but they don't want to ultimately they want to defend their fairy tales in the bible why do you go back to cosmology we know the bible is fake let's look at this let's look at all of the different evidence for why the bible is wrong but no they want to go back to the origin because they want to go back to the distant past so far back that we're not absolutely certain about everything we know for sure then you can get your vanishing gaps where they can call in the god if you argue about evolution I'm sorry I got everything you need so that's why they pushed the boundaries back you got it they also asked james are you a christian and they say are in you rock this one from the grim skeptic says steward we got that one notion slave says atheist world view we got that one we got to reload this puppy thank you very much for your question fetch whore mephitis says did you skip my super chat question nope we're just getting to it thanks for your patience this one coming in from bear with me folks we've got to reload the page here our guest steward and are in our link to the description box if you have not already checked out their links we highly encourage you to even if you disagree with them there's a value in it in the sense that if you disagree so in other words if you disagree hey you can still learn just to be sure that you're kind of like okay I get exactly what they mean I can strongman them what is it steelman them as they say eddie dean says are in raw on the topic of helping others it would help me emotionally if you show us one of those beautiful creatures behind you I'm looking to get my first snake which would you suggest as a starter that's a fun question I'm sorry I have a wall of snakes behind me if anybody's curious I used to say that it was corn snakes would be the easiest ones but I realize it's ball pythons they're slow, they're easy to take care of they have very few requirements you want to make sure that you maintain the temperature and humidity and all that but it's really easy they're sluggish, they're derpish they don't run away from you like corn babies can more importantly I want to add to something on steward here I've seen a number of people that have been hugely frustrating with me because they lie it's not just that we have a different opinion the people I argue with usually openly overtly lie and so far steward and I have just had a difference of opinion and I still think I can help him but he hasn't actually lied that I caught thank you for that I still think I can find lies in his sermon from last week appreciate your authenticity, Aaron I can't think of a debate where somebody hasn't just come out and bald-faced lied and I've been able to call him on it it's an important dimension I very much appreciate that and secondly I get from a lot of people that I'm one step away from atheism so I don't know if that is if that's connected or not alright well our convention is in April see you there I was waiting Dubai this one from Samir Farzain says I've seen his talk a number of times and I've talked to him about this number of times but I don't remember him ever saying that there was not even quantum fluctuations because his position depended on that this one coming in from Franco Truillo strikes again says Aaron would you like heaven if you weren't stuck there for eternity so like a temporary a temporary a temporary a temporary there for eternity so like a temporary visit when I was 12 I remember praying to God to spare me that just let me die like we're supposed to don't make me have to sit through an eternity you got it this one oh but I think they were saying like they said let's say you could just be a temporary visit instead so like there isn't anything remotely appealing about heaven at all I want nothing to do with it what if Stuart's there ooh he said I'm a little this one from Harrison Bridges says Aaron please accept my friend request on Facebook you got a fan out there Kent McLeod Jr. says for Aaron please explain in detail how and why Christianity was legalized under Constantine and spread during his reign Constantine found the strategic value in the emerging cult of Christianity and whereas it had been under the Romans it was illegal to be a Christian up to a certain point when Constantine adopted that within 70 years it became illegal to be anything other than a Christian you got it and this one coming in from do you appreciate it hill hugger says for Stuart how did words and sound exist before our universe did and how do you know this I said without human beings rational logic would exist and I was saying that most people would buy into that type of reasoning because you don't just get rationality and reason just from us talking we think we get it from an outside source most likely you got it Phaetor Mephaetus thank you for your Phaeton Mephaetus says do either debaters believe that what we understand or see as our existence could be the product of an ancient higher life form maybe like a simulation if there were aliens from I don't know what a higher life form is but I'm gonna say no agreed you got it this one coming in from you guys agree alright this one from Jay says Stuart do you believe it's possible that the universe could be eternal I think I rest out forgive me this one from the Grim Skeptics we got that one this one from Notion Slay says Atheists we got that one Eddie Dean thanks for your question says got that one as well Harrison Bridges says Stuart asked why he would take the time out of his day to help someone else sounds very self-serving P.S. we got that one did we get that one sorry guys I got that like my eyes are jumping from line to line did you hear it Stuart what about the self-serving oh yeah let me just two moments I'm loading this puppy up I think that's a troll chat in the comments so ignore that folks this one from they said Stuart asked why he would take the time out of his day to help someone else sounds very self-serving oh I think that it might have been when you were saying like on a assuming a secular like an Atheist naturalist position I think as rhetorically you were saying like so why should I help someone you're asking that question to are and I think that they were meaning that you personally were saying like on your own world view you don't like helping people does that make sense no if you really are selfish and you really don't want to help people buy a sports car or a motorcycle and have that as be your only transport if you make the mistake of doing as I did and buy a truck you're going to help people move a lot that's that's the worst this one from Charles Lainer says why it matters everything that begins to exist has a cause the universe began to exist therefore the universe has a cause that's this one got addressed Charles didn't begin to exist are in is of the position that it's eternal Daniel Seemster says mind learning evolution from Dr. Hovind convicted fraud Hovind not doctor they say are in raw question mark I think they mean like what are your thoughts on this I think we just heard them any other thoughts mind I don't know what they mean by mind learning evolution from Dr. Hovind I know Dr. Hovind supposed to be but I don't know what they mean by mind isn't that a blissful thing doesn't know who Dr. Hovind is supposed to be what kind of a sheltered world does he live in I know who that is this I was saying I don't understand it's not going back on there's a lot of but anyway this one from Jay says are in when you believed in God did you ever believe he talked to you if so looking back now who was talking to you okay well I never believed that God talked to me I asked one question in my prayer I asked one question of God that I can honestly say his answer and it was the prayer I alluded to earlier I challenged him to because I read the Bible for the first time not the whole thing I didn't get very far into it before I threw it across the room and discussed because it obviously wasn't the words of a supreme being it clearly wasn't the God of wisdom and love and all of that and I in the privacy of my own room just like it says in Matthew I prayed to God to justify the horror and atrocity and ignorance and stupidity that was attributed to him in the Bible and that if you would not if he couldn't do that then explain how the Bible got him all wrong and if he couldn't do either one then he could not have my soul I was ready to damn myself in hell rather than be in the presence of and have to be subservient to an evil despot and I can honestly say that that prayer was answered because the entirety of my life experience after that has proven again and again and again almost daily that the Bible is a load of crap that it got everything wrong including God if there was one You got it this one from okay Lieutenant Gregory Stevens I think that's the troll chat let me load another one I'll just give you a stored email if you want to talk this one I want to say it reminds you folks that are guests are linked to the description, Samir Farseen says Aaron have you considered what if it's not God's fault but rather what if it's human's fault for wasting our lives trying to disprove his existence instead of seeking him I don't know anybody who tries to disprove God's existence again is shifting the burden of proof you're making an assertion that there's a thing I say okay show me why can't show you got to prove there's not no that's not how this works this one from Eddie Dean says if all knowledge of science and religion were to be wiped off the earth in 2000 years the same science would emerge but different religions do you both agree I do we need the beginning of that question again 2000 years I think they're saying like if all that we all sort of documentation and even like internal knowledge or beliefs were wiped away regarding science and religion and then like let's say we'd like started from a clean slate and like just restarted humanity with no belief or knowledge about these things 2000 years later the same science would emerge in other words the same mainstream theories like let's say the Big Bang or whatever it might be they say but different religions would take the place of for example these kind of the old religions of Christianity Hinduism etc I mean it's impossible to say but I doubt it it's not impossible to say there would definitely be different religions but the same science there would be more religions they wouldn't be the old ones it depends if what would history would history have been totally different we're talking about if all knowledge of history was wiped somehow people with no knowledge of history would survive a global nuclear war say and then eventually they're going to figure out how things work how nature works and they're going to find evidence in the dirt the same science will emerge but it would be different religions I no I don't think so some of them yes but not the true religion I'm sorry that was this one coming in from Harris and Bridges as Stuart how old do you think the earth is do you believe the mitochondria evolved outside of our ancestral cell 4.6 and no you got it roughly 4.6 for the best that I know of it trusting in experts and yes because mitochondria started out as a rickettsia bacteria so it precedes ourselves you got it this one from sale man says hey Aaron what necklace are you wearing and do you like Norse mythology yes I have I have Norse ancestry and I am wearing Mjolnir I've never been ace a true I have been a neo pagan spiritualist at one point I hung with a lot of Wiccans I never identified as ace a true and so I never had any particular belief in or interest in sadly Norse mythology but I do have the Mjolnir and I do like my Viking heritage you got it with that I think that's all of the questions we do want to let our guests go as we're already over time so we want to say a huge thank you to both Aaron and Stuart it's been a true pleasure to have you guys here tonight thank you James thank you Aaron thank you very much and James is it are we always over when I'm on and is it just when I'm on that's true I have to be honest it's probably almost everyone it's not meant to it's just that it's the conversation goes so smooth but long story short yeah I'm guilty as charged this wait one question we have all over catwall says my PayPal chat let's see first soy 15 verse 2 and low they went forth and hit the button of like and yay it was good thank you very much for your support Oliver please do hit that like button if you haven't already I'm going to be back in just a moment with a post credit scene we are going to be hosting a giant debate as I mentioned this last one coming in from Timothy P. Southwick says I came or come to you all in Jesus name you are all given answer blessed be our heavenly father thank you for that as well and then let's see I think we maybe had think we're caught up Amy is having an after show as well that I will put in the description box as well I want to say thanks so much folks as I mentioned that juicy debate at the bottom right of your screen met a london versus posh you don't want to miss it hit that subscribe button right now so you don't miss it and I'll be back to let you know about other upcoming debates in just a moment hey folks thanks so much for being with us let me just say if you haven't already as I mentioned we do appreciate all of your likes thanks so much for liking the stream let me just load up zoom one more time as we have got to let you know we have many debates coming up that you don't want to miss in particular as I had shown you at the bottom right of your screen met a london versus posh it's going to be a great one we want to let you know my dear friends this is going to be big let me just adjust these little view finders here in the OBS in addition we do have two debates this weekend what do you guys have to let me know what you think about this because I'm still like how is this going to work how is this going to go over in particular a debate on whether or not the Quran teaches a flat earth what do you guys think about that topic I think it's going to be juicy so yes basically it'll be a gentleman arguing that the Quran espouses flat earth and then it'll also be a gentleman a Muslim gentleman saying no no no it does not that's a Saturday in addition we will probably in this one I'm waiting on a certain someone that some of you know of he hasn't responded yet regarding whether or not there will be a debate on the moon landing this Friday so that's going to be a juicy one as well but let me pull up this calendar and let you know about other juicy debates one other thing that I forgot to mention right I did mention this but I do want to mention it again because in case you missed it at the very beginning we are very excited that modern day debate is expanding on to tiktok in particular because you may be thinking like huh well what's the relevance of that James as you can see the bottom right of your screen we have a tiktok link at the top of the description box and I'll pin it to the top of the live chat right now the reason that's important is once we had a thousand followers on tiktok we will be able to live stream these debates there as well which is huge my dear friends we are excited about that it's going to be amazing the reason is tiktok has grown so fast we cannot ignore the you could say the platform this is a opportunity for modern day debate to expand big time as we are unashamed with the fact that we want to grow we want to give everybody a shot to make their case on a level playing field whether they be Christian atheists you name it we want everybody to feel welcome here and we want to give everybody a fair shot that's important to us so I've got to say my dear friends if you have not already do want to say please consider following our tiktok that is at the top of the description box it has the link and then I'm going to pin that to the top of the live chat right now so just threw it in the old chat and now I'm pinning it the reason this is important is because with that additional exposure on tiktok we really believe that will help us expand and in other words more people will hear about modern day debate and that's a big deal as I said we have seen other debate channels out there I'm not going to say this about everybody because it couldn't be fair how could I even know it in YouTube but I will say that there are some out there and I'm not even going to name names that don't seem to be exactly fair in the sense that for example a moderator might jump into the debate and start taking a side and it's like wait what like how is this supposed to be fair regarding that our desire is that everybody would have a truly you could say neutral platform where they have their fair shot to make their case we believe that's important in addition to that we believe that compared to those other channels where maybe the moderator jumps in and takes a side YouTube deserves a better class of debate channel we're going to give it to them our values are these we believe that our guests all of the speakers were free from their first breath in other words they were able to speak their minds since they could start talking we want it to be the case that they still can in honor day debate it's going to sometimes be pretty crazy sometimes things are going to get wild we're going to sometimes have crazy stuff going on people taking bizarre positions or potentially even as some have said dangerous positions and we'll have controversial speakers the reason though leads to our second value we believe in the spirit of competition in particular it's a natural selection of ideas we believe that in debate the best ideas will be the persuasive and that if you let a thousand flowers bloom the cream will rise to the top and the best arguments will win out and that those allegedly dangerous or you know bizarre ideas that have nothing to them will be exposed in the competition of ideas in the arena of ideas the coliseum of arguments we believe that the best arguments will win out so our values in particular that we want the guests to be able to say what they want we want them to have that freedom and likewise in the live chat I'm going to say we want you to be able to say what you want so I want to say hello first I want to say thank you so much for hanging out with us thank you guys for your support you guys support us in a million ways I know that if you're in the live chat right now you're a subscriber because I actually flipped on subscribers only chat earlier but want to say seriously thank you for your support so that's why I do want to say thank you to you personally do tails thanks so much seriously thanks for your support of modern day debate says James I know you are amazing at being neutral for the sake of the cause but have you considered debating thanks for your kind words doh tails I definitely have enjoyed debating in the past and I will do it again I really believe that it'll just be when the timing is right right now I know like during the doctorate I'm like I'm just I don't have enough time to prepare for debate and I'd like to be able to prepare well and so I've got to say that I want to in the future no doubt about it so Fred and 6 fly thanks for coming by Justin Barnett glad to have you here Jack was Palomir says don't forget all the other things you're coming by True Tech said True Tech good to have you here glad you're with a spell song happy to have you here as well as Michael do it glad you're with us iron horse thanks for coming by says you shouldn't let up let's see iron horse has words for the discourse I'll work on it I've got to say I would tell you I recommend you a Bob Sancho Nav who might be in the chat he might not actually be at his computer right now he might be in the bathroom or something but he is in the live chat at least I would encourage you to go to him I draw stuff thanks for coming by Yeshua's king thanks for being here blue glad to have you with us Dylan Motz glad you're here Waxknack thanks for dropping in Mr. Kreenin good to have you splatter IVXX thanks for coming by as well as Kannon Carol thanks for being here as well as Lynn Yanchin thanks for coming by Willmark glad to have you back Rip Bob happy to have you here as well as Justin Barnett glad you're here Jehovah Jesus thanks for dropping in and DP thanks for dropping in True Tech glad you're here Bruce Six happy to have you with us as well as Flanker 420 glad that you are here Tsunami happy to have you back and I see it's Tsunami thanks for coming by glad to see you I see you there in the old live chat Gideon David 30 thanks for coming by I see you there in the live chat GG thanks for coming by as well as One Nation Underground thanks for dropping in as well as Nicholas Katzilis thanks for dropping in True Tech glad to have you here Joseph Tim Merriman glad you were with us Kevin Greems thanks for coming by James how are you so yoked thanks for coming I appreciate you saying that I'll send the $5 in PayPal for that compliment later thanks for being with us non-theist glad that you were here as well as Saito Navga to see you there GL says I'm a self-hating soy boy thanks for coming by GL we're glad you're here even if you're a self-hating soy boy Jake Green glad to have you here Smoky's Oaks good to have you back I see you there in the old live chat Saito Navga good to have you here James can't get rid of me that's funny Saito Navga good news I've got to remember how we did it with the format or the venue with the last one I wasn't sure about the venues like what is available so I reached out to the last one and I said hey you guys open and they do have some availability on the dates we were looking at I just have to figure out how we did it last time because this time I don't know I've got to figure it out but we are absolutely planning on debate con part 3 this spring folks SP Benez let me know if I'm saying it right says who are your top 3 debaters you enjoy watching be honest thanks so much I appreciate you asking who's tough let me think of this I got to be honest ah man it's really how will I choose one from each camp can I do that and coincidentally it's pretty split that way so the most entertaining because remember you don't like I don't have to agree with them in order to say that they're entertaining debaters and entertaining can be there are different things that contribute to that but anyway here goes from the Muslim side Daniel Hikikachu is definitely the most I enjoy listening to his debates the most it's really tough on the atheist side it is pretty split between Matt Dillon D and R&R and that's tough I enjoy watching it so I can't it's hard to pick I'm only supposed to do 3 so that would be 3 but I've got it like I said I want to be fair on the Christian side so if I name a person from each side of the main sides that we have on the modern day debate it would be Mike Jones or inspiring philosophy on YouTube is what his name is and then let's see politically I want to name like this is fun I'm trying to think of okay so I would say I think Destiny is on the left leaning left he's the person that from the left I would say I enjoy listening to the most and then I'm trying to think of who leans to the right Sean, actual justice warrior that's Gerald is probably my favorite from the right and I'm trying to he's not super right he's kind of like he's not left leaning but he's also like there are a lot of people who would say James he's not that right leaning he's you know like I don't know I'm trying to think of who would it be let me think about this Leon Hewitt thanks for coming by says is it over it is this is the post credit scene Leon thanks for dropping in Paul Haynes glad to have you here as well as servant girl thanks for dropping in and Randolph Richardson president of Canadian Atheists glad to have you here I like giving you your street cred is that but yeah Randolph Richardson you're humble about it too Randolph like you rarely you know Randolph I feel like I didn't give you I could be wrong about this I feel like I didn't give you a great introduction on the last one sorry because I do know I wanted to get into the habit of like short and pithy like two sentence introductions and so I'm sorry if I did forget it on the last one but anyway I think I might have remembered I can't remember but anyway Charles Lainer thanks thanks for coming by Mangala Raj thanks for coming by we're glad you're here as well as Michael Dewitt and One Nation Underground glad to have you here Eric McCall thanks for dropping in Jonathan Smith glad that you are here spell song thanks for dropping in as well as Rebuke and Reprove glad that you're here a true tech glad to have you with us oh yeah yeah anyway let's see okay Jay says James you never said a spicy comment like I asked oh that's right I remember seeing that I forgot to say it I was going to say something I was going to say Stuart I mock your value system but I which by the way if you guys know what show that's from I'll be impressed but I forgot to do that Jay and then Randolph Richardson says thanks James this always means so much to me I appreciate so very much thanks Randolph seriously you're friendly warm congenial nature is always enjoyed and appreciated here so and then Gigi says could you have scientific debates yes we could we have a lot of those that's like our most popular topic probably if you like I would say yeah religion debates and science debates are actually our most popular topic did you guys notice that let me put a poll well okay well I mean like what would you have guessed if I didn't say that let's put it that way what debates get the most engagement on modern day debate I'm going to put this poll in the chat and science religion politics soyboyism I made that last one up so I put this poll in the chat and I'm curious like what would you have guessed say if you did not hear me just say that what would you think like oh I would have thought that these are the most popular like what's our flagship what is modern day debate known for in terms of like oh the thing that they seem to get most traction or most engagement with viewers on is good all over cat well I can't believe you guessed the show I mock your value system is from Homer saying that to Ned Flanders so yeah I really wanted to say it too because I love quoting the Simpsons but you're right Brian yeah I mean you're right Oliver so anyway so the one that people are saying that the debates that get us the most traction oh crap I spelt soyboyism wrong in the poll screwed it up that one would have gotten the most votes if I just put the B in there now it just says soyoyism but the one that right now although this is a religion debate so that maybe is why it's like especially high but yeah like flagship I think our flagship topic is religion debates I actually think that's true it's kind of like what we're known for because there did you ever notice this folks there are big political speakers or debaters people who are known for it so for example obviously destiny vosh actual justice warrior does a lot of debates there are big religion debaters like Mike Jones he's got like what 250,000 he's got a quarter million subs are in raw mat so you have those and you don't really have a lot of big ones in the science world don't get me wrong I'm not saying you don't have good debaters you do have good debaters but in terms of the ones where it's like oh yeah they've got like 200,000 or 300,000 or 500,000 subscribers not as common do you notice that isn't that weird and the funny thing is yeah so it's like now that doesn't mean that they're like less rational or anything I'm not that's not it's not trying to be a dig at anybody I'm putting this over here I'm looking right now and the reason I say that though conspiracy cats has got a good following he's had like 70,000 let me look here he's had a big following 63,000 and then there's also like Professor Dave but he doesn't come on anymore he's really hard to get but we've had him a couple of times I don't know if you could count Kent Hovind it's kind of a religion debater and I hate even saying that but it's let's see yeah if you look at the best of modern day debate playlist on our channel you have you know Matt Dillhunty versus Mike Jones Destiny versus Matt Lauren Southern Nick Fuentes, Milo Unopolis Destiny, Gavin McGinnis Jesse Lee Peterson which by the way strangely that debate today the Jesse Lee Peterson debate with Professor Dave okay so anyway going back to the poll 65% say religion, 21% say science and only 7% say politics so that's kind of what I thought although I would have guessed science debates would have been more known but here's the thing there aren't as many big so anyway going through this playlist oh yeah by the way this is like a weird thing today our Jesse Lee Peterson debate with Professor Dave all of a sudden like jumped up like it normally gets like five views a day and all of a sudden today it got like 500 so somebody shared that somewhere probably like on like a reddit or a 4chan post or something someone shared that somewhere and it got traction but anyway I always pay attention to the stats I love I look at the stats all the time on the channel it's super interesting I just love like trying to see patterns and stuff it's interesting but Sargon versus Vosh see all of these are either big political or big religion debaters David Wood Richard Wolfe David D. Friedman Bart Ehrman Kim Iverson Mike Schermer whoa I just noticed no way could this really be all of the debates in our best of modern day debate list none of them are science debates I just realized that I'm like whoa there's no superstars that are known for debating now don't get me wrong Professor Dave like I said he's got like two million views or two million subs but he doesn't debate here like we haven't had him on for at least a year and I think it's been like two years if it's the last time he debated it was against Jesse Lee Peterson that might be three years let me see here at least two years ago it's two and a half years ago since we had Dave on are you seeing the pattern yep I look all the way to the bottom I see actual Justice Warrior Shu-Wan had Stefan Molyneux Ray Comfort I can't believe how many big names we've had we've had like Hovan versus Professor Dave is the only one on that list that was a big debate I remember that so like I just kind of shows you that's pretty interesting someone says what about T-Jump true T-Jump does a lot of science debates and he's a strong debater it's just that he doesn't he's not really one is like I'm thinking like big time in terms of like hundreds of thousands of views or not views subscribers now like I said I'm not saying that's like what makes it important for a modern day debate to host somebody because most of the people we host do not have anywhere close to 100,000 subscribers I'm just saying there are these different areas there's religion, there's politics there's science here are some of the differences between these things in terms of topics this is pretty interesting we have religion debates and the topics are timeless they're called evergreen pieces of content because they're always relevant does God exist is always relevant is Christianity true always relevant it has been for 2000 years it's probably going to be for a long time for all of these religion topics science debates pretty much the same flat earth it's been around for a while evolution it's another one it's been around for a while and those will probably be popular for a long time I don't think we're ever going to I don't think that those will ever stop being popular to some extent right now I think they're especially popular but I think they'll be pretty relevant even until I die which is presumably maybe hopefully like later out like I don't know 80s or 90s or whatever who knows political topics they don't have the same kind of shelf life they're not evergreen so for example let's look at some of the political topics now some of them are I agree so for example like abortion although I've got to tell you I should not have said that on the stream I mean what I meant to say smortion is that topic what's the word I'm looking for it's not actually that popular to be honest like those debates don't actually it's not sorry socialism versus capitalism that's actually pretty evergreen that'll be around for a while but let's look at the most recent ones for your debate was Andrew last name rhymes with mate participating in illegal activities that's not going to be popular in a year in fact that debate will probably get no more than a few views after a year like per day in fact probably less than that let's see should society be based on religion or race oh that's actually kind of might be a little more evergreen is the great reset real maybe popular for like a year or two but five years from now you're not going to see it nobody will click on that let's see well so many of these political topics I can't even say them out loud because they're so naughty let's see is biden succeeding as president it's not going to be popular in four years especially yeah political politics just changes faster topics change faster things just move way faster so that's one difference politics moves way faster than science or religion science and religion topics the ones we host they'll still get views so for example like Matt Jill Hunt versus Mike Jones we hosted that in person like three years ago it still gets like 500 views a day something like that so I think that was on whether or not God exists so that's pretty interesting that's one difference but the other thing is yeah interestingly so in the in terms of like the evergreenness politics doesn't have that same evergreenness oh my arm is sore in terms of stars by that I mean like people you know like people who are known for debating and they do it don't get me wrong there are a lot of science channels that are huge on youtube like if you do a natural science like like on biology or chemistry there's like a ton of channels that have over a million subs like it's a popular topic but how many of those debate a tiny amount and even put it this way even science channels that have over a hundred thousand subs how many of those people debate the only one that I can think of is professor Dave and he hasn't been on for two and a half years science just doesn't have the same amount of stars that actively debate so it has stars so like I'm trying to think of any but I can't remember any others off the top of my head but so that's an interesting difference because politics and religion obviously has stars check out as polymer says you should have science debates although it will end up a religious debate juicy rdub says most of the religious debates are religion versus science to be honest that's kind of a lot of them are there's definitely there's significant overlap which makes you think but anyway, oh yeah you could say Aaron because Aaron even though he debates religious topics he his channels mostly his specialty is evolution so Aaron actually would be besides professor Dave so they're okay Jay says James has there been any interest in a debate between Judaism and Christianity let me think about that not a lot of people have mentioned it there are not a lot of Jewish debaters I'd love to have Jewish debaters if they want to debate so if you know of anybody who's a Jewish debater Shmueli Botea wanted to have him that'd be cool haven't gotten to reach out yet but yeah there are other guests as well but likewise if you're a Muslim debater and you want to debate please let me know I'm pretty tired I gotta go here it's getting pretty late for me but I want to say thank you guys seriously for all of your love all of your support I'm going to make this fun I'm not just saying that to be corny I've got to tell you if you have not already I have put Mr. Green says no I just picked one of my favorite topics you're not going to get the same debate over science that you will with politics and religion bro like science debates do better for us than politics like they do like all things equal if you hold like because a lot of people don't realize that our power makes a big difference in terms of how well the debates do at modern day debate if we have like like that helps because for example if you have R&R he's got like 300,000 subs a lot of them are going to be like oh yeah sure I want to go watch and we are happy to have people even without a channel because we do it we oftentimes have people that don't even have a channel like they have zero followers so I'm not trying to emphasize this as being I'm saying if you hold the subscriber count equal on each side so let's say you had a thousand subscribers for each debater in a religion debate and likewise for a political debate the religion debate will get more views politics debates just right now are not as hot as they used to be I don't know I'm pretty convinced of that but I want to say thanks for being here it doesn't mean we won't have them we still will have them here and there maybe we're going to be a little bit more selective I want to say thank you guys for all of your love thank you for all of your support Biden's Balloons good to see you there in the old live chat Biden's Balloons I get it I get the joke I watch the news SB Penaz says here's a guaranteed evergreen work on a rate comfort versus destiny debate years of payoff that would be alright I'm going to write that down because I meant to do that a long time ago that would be epic let me write that down I'll make this happen I've got to do that I'm so glad you reminded me I wanted to do that for a while but I just forgot destiny versus a rate comfort I would love to do it that's a good idea I love it that's a cool idea thanks for doing that I wrote it down seriously I'm not on my list of things to do so tomorrow or is it Friday I'll try to make that happen thanks for coming by this should do a debate about the three stages of jihad wow that's controversial we could we've done more controversial what do you mean whether or not there are three stages or what the order is or whether or not they're bad for society tell me more and you don't have to do it in a super chat that's pretty interesting I agree I'm so tired it's 847 it should go thanks for your kind words thanks for all your kindness and allowance of free speech thanks so much can in Christ thanks for coming by let's see glad that you're with us I see you there in the old live chat and Richard Randolph Richards sorry tongue twister when I'm tired we're glad you're here Mafi Zilag 6502 glad to have you here I see you there in the old live chat flanker420 glad that you made it Sandy Pigeon good to see you progressive glad that you are with us as well as let's see Shekel smack thanks for dropping in here let's see I want to say thanks for your support I love you guys you guys make this fun Shekel smack says hosted debate on whether Subway has the best fast food sandwiches I'll be honest I think we both know that's not true I hate to say it but they don't have the best it's good I enjoy Subway and that is being kind of a bias guy for Subway do you guys believe me how biased I am a lot of you guys probably haven't seen this let's see let me tell you guys if we can get to we're at 443 likes we've got 642 watching if we can get to 500 likes I will show you my Subway for life tattoo on my back which is 12 inches by 12 inches please do please do hit like and show you guys this huge Subway tattoo like the Subway Sandwich Shop for real I'm not joking come on we've got 639 people watching that means it should be easy because that alone like if everybody who is watching right now hit like we'd have over 500 so thanks for your super chat this one coming in from Daniel Paul says does anyone wish to talk about Genesis being framed on the monomyth man of a thousand faces well I can see it that's a new topic to me I appreciate you saying that I am new to it it's juicy to say the least and then thanks Hannah Anderson for supporting us by putting in chat I just pinned it our modern day debate TikTok link so folks we are really close in early January we started trying to plug our TikTok and the reason is if we get to a thousand followers there we can stream which will be huge for exposure we have gone from 240 at the early part of January and it's been a month and we are at 949 so that's awesome you guys seriously to grow by about a thousand in a month not quite a thousand but yeah averaging over 500 per month that's awesome so thank you guys for your support epic we do appreciate that because we are excited to live stream there so thank you for your support that way it means more than you know it's exciting though thank you guys for your support we gotta go can and crisis you might have had a regret after what happened to Jared no actually I got my tattoo after Jared because Subway repudiated it like they said like hey we are not with Jared anymore and they gave him a boot so I am not worried about that let's see thanks Yeshua as king says I love you thanks for your support brother I love you too and but yeah you guys think I'm joking about this I'm serious hit that like button so I can show you guys this tattoo I'm gonna take my shirt off if we get to 500 likes and I'll show you this huge Subway tattoo I have it's only at 463 so we've gone up by 20 likes in the last couple of minutes and that's cool don't get me wrong but for real we can easily get to 500 likes because there are 615 people watching so for real homies servant girl thanks for coming by as well as Randall Richardson I'd love to get to at least 1000 subscribers on my youtube channel so far I'm at 650 I know that as I release more content more people gradually subscribe it's so true that being consistent with content is the real trick that makes a huge difference and but yeah I've got to tell you you are one of the most congenial people ever Randall for real so I know that your authenticity is very likeable and DJ Batman says you all need to see this tattoo it's really cool hit like we're at 472 so we've got up 30 likes in the last like 3 or 4 minutes you guys we're only 27 likes away from me bearing it all taking my clothes off on stream come on I'm actually you got to see this tattoo it's the real thing Dustin credible good to see you there I see you there in the old live chat says I got faith in you no need to show the tattoo that's funny I know you're right you can take my word for it or I'm serious I'll show it to you I'll take my shirt off on stream you don't get to see people take their shirt off on stream I mean unless you got only fans or something it's not that common so I am willing to do it though because like I said I really do I love this tattoo very proud of it Jack has says I'm scared to see the tattoo listen if you're feeling like am I gay if I hit the like button because I'm like encouraging a man to take a shirt off you're not gay you're only gay in the sense of being happy so I got to tell you this we uh you're it's not that you're you're not like doing it to see a man take a shirt off you're doing it to see the greatest tattoo there ever was we're 24 likes away for real folks we can totally do this I'm not doing it unless you get to 600 I mean it's a very reasonable request or not is it 500 so only 24 likes but I want to say thanks for all your support I'm going to run in just a couple of minutes so just a heads up but gg thanks for coming by says click like thanks for your support and then yeah I want to say for real thanks for your support though and then yeah that the tiktok link is pinned at the top of the chat if you want to help us out if you have a tiktok it's super easy all you have to do is click that modern day debate link for our tiktok at the top of the description box or the top of the chat and then when you do click it if you follow us there like I said it really does help so thanks guys I love you I hope you have a great rest of your night we're close we were at like 470 what is it 476 we're at 470 480 likes so thank you guys for that support I hope you guys have a great rest of your night keep zifting through the reasonable through the unreasonable and also if you do want to see that if you really think I'm right 482 so we've gone up was it like can't remember what it was but what were we at really 443 yeah so we've gone up like 40 likes we're so close but if you want to see the tattoo because I don't think we're going to get to 500 likes you like Misers are you being you being you don't want to give your likes away that easily one nation underground says 598 oh yeah oh yeah we do have we have 598 like watching which is why I'm wondering I'm like what's going on is it that I'm always wondering I'm like is it that there really are people that are like nope I'm not going to like I heard you say it I heard you ask but I'm not going to do it screw you I like your content but I'm you know not going to hit like are there those types I don't know I have no idea because I've also wondered like on the east coast right now it's going on 11 o'clock we have we've only got about 14 likes to go so we're actually close here so we're really close we're actually okay we've only got 13 likes to go so for real folks I'd be I've wondered like is it that people fall asleep because yeah it's close to man I'm so tired you guys it's close to 11 over there and what is that called the east coast and 50% of the united states is on the east coast no joke it's about 48% to be exact so that means like probably half the viewers because I don't know not not quite half because we've got an international audience but we're at 49 likes we've got we're at 490 likes so we're only 10 away okay now I'm actually feeling weird about taking my shirt off you don't have to hit like I mean I guess I'll do it if we really get there at 491 so we're nine likes away I'll do it to keep my promise although I'm like I'm feeling weird about it it just feels cold and I feel so naked do it but what I was going to say is H.J. Evans if we get to 499 likes and it stops it's going to ruin my day that's funny is what I was going to say was let me think about this I'm so tired I can't remember let me think about what I was going to say crap I'm tired let me just do something really quick I'm going to pop my melatonin I've got some melatonin I've got some valerian root that's my thing fair enough yeah so many pills we're at 497 that's pretty close so two seconds hold your horses I wasn't really sure if we could get to 500 that's a lot they're so late I got to go you guys Matthew says will you debate anything I don't know eventually we're at 502 hold on let me just take a swig of water because I've got pills in my mouth I'm going to show you the top too I'm not joking if you haven't googled it you should google if you haven't seen this story it's the real deal I'm not joking google subway fan gets subway for life here it is so can't see how well you can see it let me see so it's in celebration of the new subway series like sandwich subway 2022 I think it says and then series that's the real thing so it's wild it's crazy but oh that's real I'm not making it up did you think I was making it up have you really not heard about this story so I did it over the summer you guys thought I was joking so I did it over the summer and yeah that subway like that tattoo is not going anywhere it's the real deal so basically man I'm tired I gotta go you guys keeping me up late is subway said hey if you get this 12 inch by 12 inch tattoo we will give you subway for life and so I've been blessed with subway for life and now the reason though no joke I'm not exaggerating a significant reason why I did it is because we are doing debate con those are in person conferences so modern day debate it's our channel our podcast we have conferences as well now I can cover the lunches for those conferences with my free subway for life which is awesome so it's kind of a business investment no joke I'm not joking I'm dead serious that was a huge reason why I did it is because for us let's say it's $500 to cover lunch at a conference event so we were like hey let's let me go get this tattoo and then that'll cover our lunches for our conferences for modern day debate for pretty much the rest of our pretty much the rest of my life so pretty huge so I'm pumped about that and yeah for real it was an investment in modern day debate I want to say though thanks for your support thanks for your Dario says I get subway mostly every day it's a smart investment thanks for your support I appreciate that Gigi says what is your limit per day there's no limit per day so if I want to go there every single day I can the limit in terms of the quantity is $50,000 in subway so so yeah I think it's like I did the math I could get my favorite sub every other day I could get a foot long every other day for the rest of my it's for 40 years so pretty crazy but yeah let's see Samir Farzane says James would you contact a channel host to debate if I suggest you one maybe I don't know you can email me about it I got a lot right now I'm kind of pooped out but thanks for your support you guys Randall Richardson says James has subway cred it's like street cred but a lot more delicious thank you for that Randall seriously appreciate you guys love you guys thanks for all your support and Randall Richardson says James has subway cred thanks for that Richard Randall if I appreciate that thanks for your support you guys did Jared give you the tattoo yes in prison but yeah thank you for your guys support appreciate you guys I love you guys thanks for all the likes seriously appreciate your support of the stream and thanks for your support of modern day debate we're excited about the future my dear friends join us while we are small and we've hit the 93,000 subscriber mark but this is just the beginning of our story we have big things for the future and we're excited about the future so thanks for your support Bob says do you have to show it to get free food no I have a gift card so we'll want to say thanks for for thinking I love you guys seriously you guys are awesome I love you guys thanks for making this fun and I'll see you at the next debate keep sending out the reasonable from the unreasonable