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Second issue is right behind me and Snow White Zombie Apocalypse. And I'm going to be arguing in the affirmative tonight. So let's begin. So the question tonight as we look into the future that is 2023 AD in a world filled with strife, disease, and currently a senseless and mystifyingly idiotic war in Ukraine, the question is, are humans divine? And you might think that I'm setting myself up for failure by immediately calling attention to one of the most horrific civilizational heirs of the 21st century, a war that has claimed the lives of nearly 20,000 civilians, a not insignificant number of whom were children, and perhaps as many as 200,000 soldiers with no end in sight. Indeed it would seem with mankind's obvious capacity for evil that human nature, and for that matter nature herself, that this world in which we inhabit is not a beautific vision cast by a wise and omnibenevolent creator, but instead a hellish landscape. To quote the 16th century Scottish poet Robert Burns, man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands more. And there is of course something to be said for this, but don't take it too piously. Notice what Robert said there, man's inhumanity to man, which of course by its very nature implies something of an omnibenevolent character to humanity and human nature as a whole. Despite our significant differences, oh boy. Despite our significant capacity for savagery, just about every major world religion ascribes divine characteristics to our species. Christians of course believe that man is made in God's own image and that we are fallen creatures. God's greatest work that somehow, despite his own omniscience and omnipotence, somehow the experiment just went wrong. And so to those of us in the West, mankind is a kind of orphan, not really one of the family. So in a way, as supposedly godly creatures, we are divine and yet at the same time somehow not. The Jews have a somewhat more flattering opinion of us, as they teach the evil within man's heart was purposefully put there by our creator in the form of what is called the Yetzar Harah, or the wayward spirit. From their perspective, the master of the universe made no mistake whatsoever and what it is by divine and it is by divine rule that mankind both errs and sins. The Greeks, of course, maintained a strict separation of humans from their gods and considering what we have been told through myth and legend was that was probably for the best considering the kind of conduct that the Olympians, particularly Zeus, who is why we have the concept of God as a man clad in robes with a long white beard, got up to. So there are the three major pillars of Western civilization and thought, the Greeks, the Christians, and the Jews. And it is an amalgamation of their beliefs about men and gods that we come to our current understanding of these terms at the end of 2022. You will notice all three of these concepts disagree with each other and are more or less mutually exclusive. So what is divinity? Well, and what is it to be to be divine? In our culture, it is usually defined as anything that is either relating to devoted to or proceeding from a deity. So what is a deity? It is a God, a being that is presumed sacred or divine. And so our definition loops right back in on itself. What is it to be divine to be related to, devoted to, or coming from God? And what is God? God is divine. So that definition seems to say something, but it actually doesn't. So let's think a little bit harder. Now, there have been many in the West who at least claim to truly believe that God is a being who is cast in the graven image of a kind of ancient Near East ruler, a benevolent tyrant who created the world and rules over it with an iron fist. Now, we educated people don't believe in such a God. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most do not, despite emphatic and often enraged or even fearful adaptations to the contrary. They believe that they should believe it. They wish that they could believe it, but they cannot. And so they have to cling to the idea that they will be spared from the secret sin of blasphemy by divine grace. Now, there is another definition of God, however, one that in my opinion is far more credible. That which G.K. Chesterton refers to as the ground of being. This is echoed in many high-level divinity programs and is often called the Godhead. And interestingly enough, it is echoed in the East as well by the Hindus and the Buddhists. So, what is the Godhead? Well, Buddhists like myself don't really have a name for it. The closest thing would perhaps be the Buddha nature. The Hindus call it Brahma. It is not God in the politically kingly sense, which we have already dismissed as outdated and ridiculous, but God in the undiluted essence of the universe. The deep down stuff that there is, the ground of being called ground, because the ground is what everything on earth stands upon and emerges from. And of course, humans emerge from the earth. Though we often like to think of ourselves as separate from and above nature, when you really consider it, that way of thinking is kind of schizoid. It's a bit weird. After all, if animals are a part of nature and rocks and trees and oceans and winds, then surely man is a part of nature. He is a function of it in the same way that the cells that make up your skin are a function of your body. And so, we come around to the Godhead, the necessary being, the Buddha, Brahma, call it whatever you want. If indeed, being emerges from the ground of being, then human beings emerge from the divine. And as our definition of the divine is that which is related to, devoted to or proceeding from the divine, that therefore man is no abstract being squatting outside of the world. Man is the world. In fact, it is man, along with all other sentient beings, who evokes the world. If you wish to define God as the all-powerful being who created and continues to create the universe, then man is God. In fact, that's what each and every one of us are doing right now. We do it effortlessly through our senses. Your eyes don't react to light. Your eyes create light. They evoke it from waves of radiation. Your ears evoke noise out of the air, turning simple vibrations into a symphony. You evoke hardness from wood and sharpness from a blade. Our minds even create morality itself, as it is only through our own judgments that anything can separate bad from good. And so, we come back to Christianity, specifically Isaiah 45, 6, and 7. I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create the darkness. I make the peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. Drop down ye heavens from above and let the skies pour down in righteousness. Let the earth open and let them bring forth salvation and let righteousness spring up together. I the Lord have created it. Or, if you prefer, Philippians 2.5-8. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death. And so, it is indeed not robbery to be equal with God, because God is just what there is. And this is, in my opinion, what Jesus was talking about, and ultimately why they killed him. Because again, remember the graven image of God that emerged in the ancient Near East from a culture of desert nomads, which now centuries later, by means of popular repetition, exists within the minds of all Westerners, be they Christian, Jew, or atheist, is unfortunately a somewhat benevolent tyrant who really doesn't act particularly benevolently. When Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me, and he who has seen me has also seen the Father, he was speaking literally. Because for one reason or another, he likely bumped into a state that has been known about since before we had words to give it names. The Hindus call it Moksha, the Buddhist Satori. And the psychoanalysts refer to it as the oceanic feeling. It is the state of mystical consciousness where you perceive no difference between what you do and what happens to you, where we can transcend the conception of ourselves to include not just a single solitary soul standing against the world and oblivion, but instead we realize that in fact we are the whole organism. We are a function of the universe. We are the process of life itself. To quote Alan Watts, everyone is I. You all know you're you. And whereforever such beings exist, you are all of them. And when they come into being, that's you coming into being. Except you don't have to remember the past or be conscious, unconscious control of the world for the same reason that you don't have to think about how you beat your heart or remember how to shine the sun. You just do it like you breathe. And so I must emphatically conclude, though this tends to make those in authority who still think of God as Zeus on steroids extremely nervous. And this is because if enough people realize this, we will stop fighting each other. Why? Because there's nothing to fight about. No Russians will listen to Putin as he orders them to march one after another into the meat grinder of bullets and shells and drones. There is no reason to take Ukraine. We already have it. It is us and we're it. There is no reason to be frightened or hateful or take part, any part of existence too seriously. Because when we zoom out our perspective, we realize that the discord of our lives, despite being a fight at one level, it is harmony at a higher level. And this is perfection. As much as there is perfection in the patterns of waves or the markings of marble or the way a cat moves, this world, no matter what, is really okay. It can't be anything else or else it wouldn't exist. Ultimately, we are all God pretending he's not. We are the almighty sneaking up behind himself and shouting, boom, just to get a thrill. And as such, even with all the evil people do, we are all divine by virtue of nothing other than our own existence. And this is the single most important thing we need to realize and practice while we are alive. Thank you. Thank you so very much, Brent, for your opening statement. And we are now going to hand it over to T-Jump for your opening statement. The floor is all yours. Yes, I don't really know where to begin with that. So Brent, what are rocks divine? Because you said divine is essentially the fundamental nature of reality. So rocks are divine. It's both divine. Yes. Potatoes divine. Yes. So what isn't divine? In one sense, nothing. Now, also, as we know, with regard to Spinoza's God, things only matter in as much as there is something else that exists. Right. That's what I was going to say is that if everything is divine, then nothing is divine because the word doesn't delineate anything. Yeah. Well, you can say that, but also it's in how we think as humans of our relationship with reality. I would argue that, yes, in fact, everything is divine at one level. But at the human level, our brains need to separate things. We need to smooth out a wiggly world. We need to differentiate what is ultimately not really different from from itself. So I would say that if there is something that is not divine, it would probably be what is perceived by a person to not be divine at a given time. Interestingly enough, my Buddhist sect has a concept of this called fundamental darkness. It is the conscious tendency. So just to clarify, if I perceive humans as not divine, they're not divine to you. Yes. So does that mean I wouldn't debate? No, because we're not just talking about your opinion. We're talking about reality. Yeah. So but by the way, good, good, good shot. Yeah. Anyway, my Buddhist sects talked about this as fundamental darkness. It is the tendency that we as conscious beings have to forget the interconnectedness of all life and phenomena. Consciousness is by nature a singular experience. Everyone is I. And so therefore, it's easy to forget our connections to each other and the natural world. And this is really what eventually tends to lead us into conflict with each other and leads us to destroy our environment. I don't understand why you're bringing in like the war part and the conflict part. I don't see why that's relevant. I'm not understanding again. I don't understand why you are using the word divine to refer to anything that exists as if that is some kind of descriptive language. What do you think the word divine means to most people? I mean, again, I already defined divine. It means related to a deity and what is a deity? It is divine. So it's an archetype, I would say, that people have. It's an idea and a concept of reality that is created by human minds and human culture. Well, if you were going to try to colloquialize that and turn it into what most people would say it means, what do you think most people think the word divine actually means or refers to? I mean, I already explained that. I think that there is the pop culture understanding that divine is a grandfather in the sky with a long white beard. Well, I wasn't going for that. I was going for more like, when people use divine, what they mean is there is some specialness, some ontology beyond the material world in some sense or the regular in some sense that there is something greater and divine refers to that greater-ness, whatever it is. That's typically what people mean. And so if you're using the word divine to refer to existence in and of itself, and it doesn't have that aspect of greater-ness than rocks or poop or potatoes, then it seems like you're simply just using the word to mean something differently than what everyone else is using the word to mean. And you can do that, but it just kind of dilutes the point of the word. It seems like the word only has meaning if it's used in the way that the most people in the culture use it to refer to something greater than the base level of stuff that we see around us. I get what you're saying with this, and I see where you're going. That, I think, is a valid concern. But again, I think that it does actually refer to something that is greater than the material world as it is experienced and conceived by a single conscious mind. I mean, we already know for a fact that humans do not experience reality as it is. Instead, we experience it in a way that is most conducive to our survival and or reproduction. So there is a number of things that are going on around us right now that we just don't have a concept of. We don't have a concept of the fourth dimension of time or whatever. We don't really have a concept of seeing all sides of a cup at once. Picasso tried to express that in his art, and there's been a number of other artists throughout the years who have attempted to kind of put things together in a way that helps us try to understand the world from a broader perspective. But I would say when people are using the divine to refer to something beyond the material world, what they're really saying is that they're referring to the real world beyond the world of the senses, whether they have the language or an education to specifically say this or not. I don't think that's the case because when most people use the word divine, they're not just saying the world as it is. They're saying that the world as it is, including rocks and the earth and space and stuff, that's not special. There's something else that's special and the specialness stuff where God and the angels and spirits live, that's the divine. It's the specialness stuff, which is separate from the regular stuff. Even the regular stuff in its fundamental essence that we can't see it, that stuff doesn't have the divine stuff. Divine stuff is something different. It's a different ontology all too. And I think that that's kind of, once again, I think it's kind of a schizoid way of looking at the world. And it's a big problem with Western culture specifically because it grew out of Christianity and the Greeks and the Hebrews. Because again, they had very specific ideas about God that was based upon their political structures and their relationship to the elements. But I don't think you can actually say that when people say divine, they mean something greater than existence. They could mean that, but somebody can sit there and take a bite of really good cake and say, oh, my God, this cake is divine. Now, you can say they are exaggerating when they say that, but at the same time, there are plenty of things that people consider greater than or sacred. And in my opinion, I think that it is a false dichotomy that we have in the West have grown up believing in that there is a differentiation between the sacred and the profane or the temporal. I think it's all one thing and it's just our brains and our judgments deciding whether to venerate something or to not venerate something. So I think what we should just do is venerate everything. And I think that that will work out far better for us and our species than if we venerate nothing. Make sense? I'm sure. But the fact that it would be more useful to use a word to mean something different doesn't mean that that's like mean. I mean, yeah, I don't think it means something different. I think so language is symbolic. No word ever actually lines up with the concept that it refers to, because a symbol is not reality. The computer screen, the little icons on it when you click on it, that's not the computer. That is an interface created by humans to allow us to interact with the computer and therefore reality on a completely different level in the same way. So is language, so is mathematics and numbers. These are things that are their creations of the human mind to essentially create hacks that make it easier and more pleasurable to be alive and to be successful. Well, if you're saying that divinity is some objective property of reality independent of our opinion and there is some divinity principle or something in the universe that objectively determines that divinity is X. And so even if we use the word to refer to something else, we're just wrong. I mean, so you can use the word however you want to. Kind of how I said at the beginning that when we focus on the evil of mad, which is why I opened with the talk about the war going on currently in Ukraine, you can decide, oh, the world is a devilish creation. And in fact, there's plenty of people in the leftist communities were constantly going on half joking that we live in hell. And that perspective can be true when you see it through certain people's eyes. But that's also just because the mind is making these judgments about reality. So if we're going to consider our relationship to the wider world to what we can both conceive of and not conceive of, I think that you can look at it as disconnected and profane, or you can look at it as connected and sacred. Both views are true. But where do you want to be? Where do you want to live? I would say the latter as opposed to the former. Well, it just seems like you're again, either changing the definition of what divine means for most people because if again, if most people are just using divine to refer to everything, then it just doesn't mean anything anymore. And so yeah, I'm not changing the definition of the word. I'm perhaps expanding on our understanding based upon that definition. As I said earlier, like language and words and concepts never correlate to reality one to one. Well, I don't think that's relevant. So like definitions are meant to represent our ideas and what we think of reality, not reality in and of itself. And so when we say divine, yeah, no. So when they say divine, there is sort of the colloquial dictionary definition of divine, which I gave at the beginning. And then there is the broader concept of divinity that they are unaware of. So they're speaking about something divine within our cultural context, whether it's a really good piece of chocolate cake, or it's a, you know, a flying invisible man in the sky. Well, that's why I brought up the whole, if divinity is like an actual some property of divinity in the universe thing, like it seems to me the better way to use divinity is what people mean when they say the word, regardless of there's some unknown divinity in the universe of their where I really don't care about that. What I care about is what do they intend by the word? And if they intend by the word to segregate one part of reality as being not that and one part of reality as being that and it can't be all of reality because that would contradict the meaning that they intend to express when they use the word. And it seems to me that the vast majority of humans when they use the word divine are doing that they are segregating one section of reality and saying it is different from this other section, which doesn't have the divinity property. I mean, they could be doing that. I think you are kind of projecting your own idea about that on to all eight billion of us, which I think is a very big mistake. It happens, but I think it's a mistake. And again, I would say that, you know, as I said, the kind of pop culture conception of God is something that pretty much no one believes. You know, I'm sure, you know, like I said, there's people who are so afraid that they try to make themselves believe it and make everyone else believe it. But ultimately, I don't think that that conception stands up to anything that people actually conceive of in their minds, at least not educated people. So, you know, when they are saying divine, they aren't all referring to the same thing. And I think that if we look deeper in what it means to say divine, what that says about themselves and their relationship to the universe and to each other, it's a much bigger concept than roping off one part of reality and saying this is extra special good. And then the other part of reality and saying this is either neutral or bad. I don't understand why you think that. So if I went up to a person on the street and said, is this rock divine? Would most of them say yes? If I said, is poop divine? Would most of them say yes? I mean, most of them might not say yes. But again, if they you're going into the actual processes of their mind and the concept of divine, I think you inevitably come to the conclusion that the material world as you put it, or I guess actual reality is inherently divine. Now, part of that is because I think and I will agree with you about this. I think divine as it is often used and popularly understood in the West is something of an Uroboros. And let's go with your example of the cake. So let's say someone has a piece of cake and says this cake is divine. What does that mean? That means they really enjoy the cake and they're having a transcendent experience being swept away by the taste. And they're using that word to take this piece of cake in particular and segregate it and differentiate it from other pieces of cake, right? No, no, hang on. The cake has already been segregated and differentiated by their taste buds. What they are doing is they are trying to express that differentiation. They're trying to express their particular view of that particular cake at this moment in time and capture their experience, the qualia that they're experiencing. Right. So if they had a bad piece of cake, they would not say that's divine. No, they might not. But again, like now you're getting into like tantric Buddhism. So if the meaning of divine was to refer to all of existence, it would make no sense to say this piece of cake is divine because all of the cakes would be divine. And so the reason they use that word is specifically to segregate it and say this piece of cake is significantly better than all of the regular pieces of cake, all of the regular ones. So when I say the sun is hot, I can't mean the whole sun. It can't include the whole sun. It has to be the very particular particle of the sun or the particular ray of the sun that I am feeling or thinking about. But the entire sun is hot. It's what people are focusing on at the moment that they are describing. So if I say, for instance, the sun is hot, I'm not actually talking about the entirety of the sun. I'm talking about how it feels when I walk outside my house. But the sun is still hot no matter where you are. I don't think anybody would say a part of the sun is not hot. That's true. That's why I brought it up. But they would all say this particular piece of cake is divine, but all of the others are not. I also want to say I consider that kind of like T-Jumps cross-examination, but just keep on going. We'll just move into the open conversation. I thought we were in the open conversation. We most definitely are. So I'll just hand it. But I will send a reminder that T-Jumps and Brent's link are in the chat. So is Brent's fundraiser. But once again, please don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe, and the floor is right back over you gentlemen. Thank you. Yeah. No, I get what you're saying when you say that a lot of people are using the word divine sometimes to create divisions. I just don't think those divisions are necessarily real. And nor do I think that if you really get down to talking with people about what is divine, what is God. My alarm's going off. I'm just going to... So should I just keep talking? Yes. Also reminder for everyone to take their pill or vitamin regimen, as the bill is described. But yes. Yeah, yeah, no problem. I kind of lost my train of thought there. I got a bit thrown. Most people use the word divine to refer to the nice cakes and not the bad cakes. Yes, exactly. So they may be using the word in that moment. But again, I think that their concept of divinity as a whole is much bigger. No one actually believes their cake is God. But they still use the word. Right. It's an analogy. Yeah, exactly. So everybody say, God damn it. I don't literally believe in God. It's just an expression of pain or whatever. But the reason that's an analogy is because it's a differentiation. There is some things which are normal. And there are some things which are better than normal. We call those divine just like there's the normal kind of existence. And then there's the better kind of existence, the divine perfect existence. And we're not in that. We're in the normal existence. Well, I would actually disagree with that. Well, can you give any examples of people using the word divine in your sense where it means everything? Yeah, sure. Alan Watts, he talks about that constantly, most Tolstoy. Some of the greatest minds that our culture has ever encountered. I'm in like your normal human language. So like, if I can say this cake is divine, that's a good example of them using it as an isolation word to represent something better. Or that experience was divine, better. Or God is divine, that's betterness. So I can give lots and lots of examples in common everyday English, most people speak that divine is a differentiation between normal and better. Since it's one of the definitions. We can argue that divine is a differentiation between normal and better than normal. Well, that's why I was asking, can you give any common everyday language usages where it's not that? Interestingly enough, probably just about every Zen interaction is that where traditionally, if you ask a like a Zen master, like what is the fundamental essence of Buddhism, he'll say something like, oh, a dry dung scraper. Because he was thinking again, poop is divine. So there's, there is a English examples or anything that we can use of the audience we have any languages, things that they will understand that we can do this. So you're asking me like, is there a time that people use the word divine to refer to everything at once regularly? Yes, just something that people can relate to. Sure. Standing on top of a mountain and looking out and seeing the directions, you know, everything up to the horizon, you can look at that, you can say that is divine. And you are talking about the physical normal world. So yes, people do use the word in that sense. Now, you can also use it as a word for differentiation, if you want to. That one, that example sounds like differentiation. When you have an experience like sitting on a mountain, you're comparing that to sitting in your basement. And you're saying this experience on the mountain is divine compared to just being in my house. Yes, but you're also, but you're so you are essentially describing your relationship with reality. Because when you're in the basement, you are experiencing the basement. When you are on top of the mountain, you are experiencing the whole of reality as far as your senses are able to do it. You're doing it at any point in every point. It's just certain points people realize that what they are dealing with is the divine, in my opinion. And at other times, they forget it. So I don't understand your argument there. When people are on a mountain and they say this experience is divine, they're not saying reality is divine. They're saying this particular experience. I disagree. I hiked the Appalachian Trail, Maine to Georgia. And I said exactly that numerous times. And I didn't just mean standing on the mountain. Why don't you say that when you're in your basement? Why don't you say that when you're on the job? Why don't you say that when you're watching porn? Fundamental darkness. Well, sometimes I say that depends. But no, fundamental darkness. Yeah, we get wrapped up in our heads in the world of symbols and human relationships. And we just kind of forget this. We sort of forget the actual miracle of simply existing. Because if you think about it, if you think about why I'm actually sitting here having this experience, the longer you go into that, the more you kind of realize just how mind blowing it all is, even if it's sitting in the basement, even if it's taking a crap or something, you know, normally people get jolted out of their normal everyday way of looking at things by specific heightened experiences. But that doesn't mean that the world that they are reacting to doesn't have the potential for them to react like that at any point in the day towards any stimuli, which again is why I pointed to tantric Buddhism that's literally about creating that relationship with negative things in life. I thought that was about sex. But I mean, yeah, because monks were so monks traditionally have been celibate because people believe like a lot of religions are just societies for the control of sexuality. Like, so if you get a bunch of monks who are isolating themselves and trying to remove worldly pleasures, you know, obviously they are going to focus on something like sex. So it's a slightly unrelated topic. But so what is the antonym of divine? I would say the antonym of divine would probably be profane. What's the antonym for divine in a dictionary? We can look it up. Do you want to look it up? We've got the internet right in front. Okay, look at us. Well, I'll kind of wait. I already did look up. I'm cheating. I have the cheat sheet. What do you think? Okay, but then tell me what you want me to say? Well, the opposite is typically like mundane. Mundane is typically human. Human is the opposite. Yeah, profane would fit under the mundane. Yeah. But again, what are we talking about? We're talking about well, as a human human, the opposite of divine mundane is the opposite of divine. So in both of these. So the dictionary says human is the opposite of divine. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to point something out. You have just committed a red herring. What? Or I'm sorry, not a red herring. My brain. So what's happened there is you're begging the question. If I come in and make a large argument about what divine is and what it should be considered, you can't then go to a dictionary and say, well, it says this in the dictionary. Therefore, it is this. That is a circular argument. So. Well, the argument is like this. The word divine should refer to what most people use it to mean to have an effective conversation. What most people use it to mean is expressed in the dictionary. Yes, again, and your problem there is you say what most people mean. That is a circular argument, T-Jump. That's just how language works. A language, whether or not a word has effective meaning is if the word refers to what people use it to mean. Unless you're saying that the word refers to something in reality objectively, in which case that thing in reality is determined independent of opinion, and that thing is what you're referring to. Okay. So what you were saying here, essentially, is that a word should have the meaning that people mean when they say it. Yeah. You see the circularity of that argument. No. So. Oh, God. All right. So you're saying that a word should mean itself. You were saying A should equal A. That is not a statement. No, I'm saying that the definition of a word is determined by its usage. Yes. But the definition of a word is not the meaning of a word. It is simply a categorization of it. Our meaning and definition synonyms? Say what? Our meaning. It doesn't matter. You're pulling us into the world of symbols. You're pulling us into abstract notions as opposed to actual reality, which is what I'm trying to talk about. Words are abstract. I don't, I'm not, like, that seems like you just contradicted yourself. I don't understand. What do you mean? Of course words are abstract. They're symbols. All symbols are abstract. Yes. So if you are trying to say that the only way that we can consider words is within relation to other words, and specifically within relation to what some dictionaries editorial board has come up with, all you said is used in society. Yeah. And that is, again, a circular argument because one, you don't know how they're used. It's not circular, but... Yes, it is. Which premise is in the conclusion? The premise is in the conclusion that the specific form of the word that you are thinking is how people use it, the dictionary definition, is the actual real meaning of the word. Let me give you the argument again. Premise 1. Yes. The best definition of a word is that which is used by society. Premise 2. The words that are the definitions used by society are expressed in the dictionary. Conclusion. The dictionary definition is the one that's the best to use. Which premise is in the conclusion? Generally, modus ponens. So your answer here should be it's not, but... No. Basically, you just moved it down a level. So you have said... Modus ponens is not circular. I'm not talking about modus ponens. I'm saying you've moved it down a level. So what we've got here is... If P then Q, P therefore Q, right? That's not circular. You can't say that's circular. That's literally a logic. But you aren't saying P then Q because, again, a word and a word's meaning are the same thing. So you're not saying P then Q. You're saying P then P. What? No. No. No. A word and the definition are two different things because you can have different definitions. They're not the same thing. I did not say if... So we're saying a word... Okay. So a word is not a definition, correct? No. A word is not a definition. Words have definitions. Okay. So then you said we should make words mean what their definition means. No. We should make words mean what most people use the word to try to express. Yes. And you don't know what most people use the word to try to express. That's the second premise. The second premise is what most people mean by the word is expressed in the dictionary. That was the second premise. Yes. Now that is also not true because most people... You can say it's not true. That's fine. No. It's objectively not true. I want to go back. You said it was circular. You said it was circular. So for something to be circular, the premise has to be in the conclusion. Appealing to a definition no matter what it is is always a circular argument. You are assuming the conclusion in the premise. Why does divine mean what I think divine means? Because that's in the dictionary. That's not how circular works. Yes it is. Not appealing to any definition is not circular. No. Yes. Appeal to definition is always circular. It is a fallacy. Oh my God. So for instance, if I came in and I said something like... I don't know. We'll talk about racism. If I said put forth an argument that racism is contrary to popular belief is actually X, Y, or Z, you cannot then go to that argument and say, well, the dictionary says racism is A. Therefore, racism is A. You are wrong. You can't do that. You have to actually approach the argument. The argument would be why should racism not be referred to X, Y, or Z? And why should it be referred to A? And when you do that, you cannot appeal to the definition because, again, that is to assume the conclusion in the premise. So if I said, let's say, only rocks are God and I want to make up an argument for why we should call only rocks God. Now, the reason that's a bad argument is because when someone reads the sentence, are rocks God, they already have a definition of God, which is in their brain. They've been brought up and they've used this word. Definitions are not static, T-Jump. People can mean many different things at many different times. So they don't already have an image in their mind. There's these things called languages where large groups of people tend to have almost identical definitions of words in similar over. Yeah, almost identical. Yes. And so these cultural groups, like people who speak English, use the word divine in a very specific way. In a specific and similar way, most of the time, but not all of the time, no word can have multiple meanings. When do English speaking people use the word divine in common language, the majority to not be a delineation between mundane and more than mundane? I would say usually during the religious experience. The religious experience is more than mundane. That's why it's divine. So the religious experience is the experience of oneself being in concert with absolutely everything that exists. No, that's masculine. Well, masculine evokes that particular reaction in the brain. Yes, I would actually say hallucinogenics are very similar, if not close to the same thing as the religious experience. They are the physical means by which people can experience this particular type of consciousness. It doesn't always go right because our culture doesn't have the right, I guess, understanding of hallucinogens. But yeah, I think absolutely when someone is having the religious experience, their brain is chemically doing something similar to when they're on drugs. The difference is that that's not more real than normal everyday consciousness. It's just a heightened state brought on by different chemicals. Yeah. But when they say it's divine, they're saying that because the feeling of being in touch with everything is more than the typical mundane human. Okay. So first off, I will say, you know, as far as masculine and stuff, oftentimes people will completely forget their normal world and they will still say that. So right off the bat, you don't know that they are saying that this is specific and heightened. Second of all, let's go with your premise here. We're going to say that it is a term for delineation of something from regular reality into a heightened reality. So yeah, you can say that, but then you don't have to use that experience of heightened reality to refer to a particular symbol or idea of God. You can use it to refer to anything because what's important about it is the experience, not the actual part of reality that it's dealing with. So yeah, you can see a rock as divine. You can see a poop as divine. You can see a painting as divine. You can see, you know, a landscape as divine, or you can see it as profane. This dichotomy is at the core of a lot of the ways that Westerners look at the world. And I think it's stupid. And I think it's dangerous. And that's why I think what we need to do is to expand our definition and take a look at the world as it is in a wider, less, I guess, particular sense. I mean, that's nice. You can just say, I think the way everyone uses the word is stupid, so they should change it. But I don't think that's a great argument. A great argument for what? I mean, we're arguing, are humans divine? And if humans can be perceived as being divine by definition, by the definition you have given, then they are divine. Right. But if I give the definition that essentially doesn't correspond to how the vast majority of people use the word, essentially, you're just changing the definition of the word. So once again, what people mean by a particular word is never the same thing. And it is never actually what it refers to in reality. You can say... Let me phrase it this way. So in English, common everyday English, no, we're not divine. But in Brenton English, we're divine. Hang on, you're confused. It's not the words themselves that are creating the reality here. It is from Brent's perspective, we are divine. From T-Jump's perspective, we are not divine. So from the English-speaking world, we're not divine, but from Brenton's perspective. You are not the entire English-speaking world. You are just T-Jump. Well, I can pick any dictionary I want from any section of the English-speaking world. It doesn't matter. Dictionaries are just a list of what the editors think a word is sometimes used as. They are not authorities on anything other than, you know, like, I guess... Are dictionaries typically representative of the culture in which the dictionary is produced? I mean, everything that a culture produces is always representative of the culture in which it is produced. There is... No. I mean, specifically, the definitions in the dictionary very often represented of the majority usage of the term. Okay. That is what the editors are attempting to accomplish. Sometimes they accomplish it, sometimes they don't. Typically, they do. But you cannot go and appeal to definition to counter a particular argument that seeks to expand or otherwise make the word itself more precise. Because you have to actually respond to my concept, not my word. So my argument here is that if we ask the question, are humans divine? And we go based off of typical English given in the dictionary of any culture, the answer is no. But if we change English to be... Bandwagon fallacy. It's not a bandwagon fallacy. Yes, it's a bandwagon fallacy. You are arguing that because a definition of divine is necessarily popular, then you are correct. Again, this is relations. So the way a sentence works is you have to say each of these words mean something in a sentence. And we have to figure out, well, what does it mean? And as you said, there's different ways to interpret the words. And so if we're taking the meaning of those words as they are in the vast majority of all English-speaking countries, which can be determined by the dictionaries, then the answer is no. But if we change the meaning of those words... But the argument here... I'm making an argument here. So let me finish. I'm hearing this argument. You've made the same argument again and again and again. I know, but it's just a bandwagon fallacy. That's fun. I want to... No, no. Yes, but if we change the meanings of one of those words to a different language like Brinton English instead of actual English, then it becomes the answer is yes. But if we use normal English... So again, there is no such thing as normal English. Again, our language is common property and words can be used in any number of ways. I mean, dude, I'm a professional writer, for God's sake, man. Language is a lot more complicated than you are presenting it as. And I mean, hell, writers can make up words whole cloth. There's tons of words in the English language. Assassin, for instance. That's the Shakespeare. It didn't exist until Shakespeare just made it up out of nowhere. So if we're going to have an argument, are humans divine? That is an argument that refers to a particular conception of reality. You cannot then quibble with that by saying that a lot of people think that the word divine means something else. No. Oh, shit. That's why we are having this argument. Well, so I think I think what you seem to be arguing is so everyone uses the word divine in English in a way you disagree with. Many people use the divine. Many people use the word divine in English in a limited way. And you don't like it. You don't like the way English uses the word divine. So you want to change it into a Brinton language. I don't care how a particular language often uses the word. I'm not talking about the word. I'm talking about the concept that the word refers to. That would be the definition. Yes. No, the definition is simply an attempt at figuring out what people most of the time are using the word to be. And oftentimes, if you look in the definition, there's three or four or five different definitions of something. And sometimes these are mutually exclusive because, again, language is symbolic. So again, you can try and appeal to, I guess, colloquial language, but that's not actually arguing with anything that I've said. That's just you saying, well, this is different than I've heard my whole life. No shit. Again, that's why we're having this argument. Well, there are words that are their own antonyms, and so they can be direct offices called a Janus word. Divinity is not one of those words. You can Google the list of Janus words. Divinity is not on there. My point is not, Divinity does not have to be that. My point is, is that you cannot take the definition of divine and use that definition as an argument against the particular concept of divine that I advanced in my opening statement. Because I'm saying, hey, we should think of ourselves and our world in this way. And I, you know, I could say that I'm using the word divine when I do that, because I know people have a conception of divine that relates to God, the sacred, the holy. I'm saying people should think of the world as sacred, and they should think of themselves as sacred. Right. But if I want to string any combinations of words together and make it the title of the debate. Oh, Jesus Christ. Dude, no, what's happened here is you are so wrapped up in your mind and you're so wrapped up in the symbols that you are actually forgetting the real world. You are forgetting the things that those worlds that those symbols relate to. No, no, this is just how debates work. There's a title and the title of the debate is a set of words and those words have a meaning which refers to certain things to the audience. Do you think I don't know this? Maybe. I'm thinking this is debatable. It's debatable. No, this seems to be what your basic tactic is here. You're trying to be condescending in an attempt to make it look like you have the intellectual high ground. You know, that's not going to work with me, dude. Again, do you want to really engage with this or do you just want to argue about words? Well, that's the point is you're just changing the definition of divine. That's all you've done. Oh, my God. I'm not changing the definition. Literally, if anything, you don't get an opinion on it. It's literally what you're doing. I've proven it deductively. No, hang on. If an individual person can make up a word completely whole cloth, obviously, I do get an opinion on it. I mean, again, that's why we're having this discussion. That's called changing the definition. Yeah. That's what you're doing. Oh, good God. No definition is static. No definition. You don't get a say on the cultural use of divine and you're not. Oh, my God. Everyone gets a say on the cultural use. Language is common property. That's like saying you get a say on the majority opinion on the shape of the earth. You don't get a say. No. Okay. So essentially, what you're saying here is that my conception of reality and my argument that it should be different than it normally is is wrong because the rest of the world decides that. I'm saying that your argument to change the definition of a word is to change the definition of a word. Yeah. All right. So, T-Jump, in order to understand my argument, does the dictionary have to go and add my definition to the dictionary? Yes. Okay. Wait, what? Yes. So, hang on. Hang on for a second. No dictionary. No dictionary uses divine equals everything. That is not a dictionary. Okay. So, again, I'm not. So, we'd have to add that in. We'd have to make up a new part of the definition. Why does the dictionary have any authority whatsoever? Because it represents what most people do. No, no, no. Hang on. It represents. It is not the same thing. It does not have authority over language. Culture has authority over language, particularly in the United States, where our language is common property. Now, like, you could maybe make this argument if we were speaking French, because France actually has like a, I don't know, like a panel of people who decide what is and is not French. But even if we had that argument there, it would only be saying that I'm sorry, what? They're called the immortals. Yes, I'm familiar. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, language is public property in that sense. So you could say that an individual in France has no control over the French language because the state has decided that they shouldn't. But I don't think that's how people use language. I don't think that's how people use symbols. I think people use symbols and language in many different ways. And I think it is a bit myopic to one, I think it's fallacious specifically because it is circular reasoning. But two, I think it's a bit myopic to simply say, OK, society has decided this is a certain way now. Therefore, it is a certain way. And you can't argue. Like, OK, fine. If you want to do that. Well, I'm saying that. So imagine I'm not here. From the perspective of anybody in the audience, if they are a typical American, they're going to use divine to refer to holy stuff and not mundane. Yes. And then they will have a conversation with me. From their perspective, you are trying to change the definition of everyone in their home. I know. So I'm trying to expand their understanding. I don't I don't care. From their perspective, you are trying to change the definition. They don't care. OK. So by what they mean by the words, what the culture means by the words, the answer to the question, are we God is no. In fact, if you ask all Christians, are we God, they're going to be no, we are not God. That is not what it means. Those words do not mean the things that you're trying to make them mean. Yes. And the argument is because they're wrong in the definition. Yes. No, I'm not changing the definition for fuck's sake. Why is it that you right wingers get so stuck on these things like meaning just one thing all the time? Like seriously, like every time somebody tries to talk in a more broad way and expand knowledge of the universe and of our society, you people freak out and you run retreat to your bunkers and insist things are only the way you see them and no other way. Why can't you just admit you're trying to change the definition? Like why is it because I'm not trying to change the definition. I'm not taking away the other meanings of divine. Rather, I am using the word divine to end the roots of the word and the specific history around it to expand someone's understanding of it. I'm adding number six at the bottom and I'm doing that by means of argument. Now, let's say a bunch of people agree with me and they start using the word that way. Well, then what's going to happen is the dictionary people are going to hear about it and they're going to add it to the freaking dictionary and then you won't be able to argue with it supposedly. But actually, I think you could argue with it that maybe the definition is too broad. But what we can't do is just say the word usually means this. Therefore, you are wrong. Well, I can say the word usually means this. And if that's the case in this language, the answer to the question of the debate is no. And again, that's the question. It can't be. Oh, my God. Yeah, you cannot. Like if we if we want to teach you, why are you so afraid of learning something? Your confusion about logic is so bad. Like if we have a topic of the title of debate, is the world round and you wanted to change the world round to mean flat and said, therefore, no, the answer is it's OK flat. And I said, you're wrong because in English, the word round if I was not have a no, hang on, hang on, hang on. Oh, no, it's circular. It's circular. You can't do that. You can't you can't if I refer to the definition of round and say, oh, my gosh, the debate like no, dude, what you're saying is insanely stupid. So I appreciate all the fire. Just pull in both of you guys apart, send in the love, but right back to you guys. Yeah. All right. So what I'm saying here, let's let's go with the Earth is round versus the Earth is flat. Yeah. Let's say that I am trying to argue the Earth is flat, right? Yeah. And I redefine flat to mean round. What have I argued? I've argued in essence that the word that the world is round. I have not argued that it is flat. Right. You're trying to change the word round to mean flat. Yeah. So the word itself doesn't matter one way or the other. What matters is the concept behind the word. What matters is the reality behind the word. That's called the definition. Yeah. Yes. No. The definition is a symbol and approximation of what they think that symbol usually refers to. And you're trying to change that from what? Oh, my God. That's like saying, OK, that's like saying that like scientists are trying to change the meaning of theory because normal everyday people tend to use theory as a guess. Yes. That's correct. Oh, for fuck's sake. No. So scientists are trying to change the typical definition of theory. No, they're not because that's literally literally yes, we literally are doing this. So typically, colloquially, people use the word theory to mean hypothesis. Scientifically, science educators are literally trying to change their understanding of the word and they admit that they are trying to expand their understanding of the word. They're not saying that you can't use the word theory to refer to hypothesis in everyday life. It's not changing it. That is. Yes. They are wrong. You are wrong to do that. That's what they are saying. You are wrong to say that no, relativity is a theory. It is not or is a hypothesis in that context theory. No, it is not. It is a fact. Evolution is a fact. Not a theory. So first off, the theory of evolution as it exists like within science, I think it's perfectly reasonable makes perfect sense. However, when scientists use theory within the context that they are using it, that is why it takes on the special meaning. Now, we could come up with two different words. We could get rid of theory and come up with some new word no one's ever heard before to refer to what scientists mean today when they talk about theories. But again, what's important is not the symbol. It's not the I guess the composition of sounds and noises and shapes. It is what is trying to be communicated with that. And what is trying to be communicated with that is not necessarily what is in the dictionary. So yeah, I mean, like I said, again, you can argue that the dictionary definition is always right by virtue of being the dictionary definition. That would be a fallacious appeal to authority. You could then also argue that the dictionary definition is correct because most people mean that the definition is correct, which you have argued. But when you do that, what you're doing is a bandwagon fallacy. So again, what you have to argue with specifically is the concept of divinity that I have advanced, and you have to argue why that isn't divine, not simply using the fact that the word divine has other definitions and that my understanding of it is slightly unorthodox, to say the least. So you would have to actually argue with me on what like why my concept of divinity is actually wrong. Right. So if I gave you a sentence, let's say one plus two equals three, and you said, nope, that's wrong. Because by three, I mean five. Okay. What are you doing? So wait, one plus two. I mean, I would just be switching around the symbols, but I'm not doing that. No, no, no. So one plus two equals three. And you said, that's wrong. That sentence is wrong. Because by two, I mean five. So I mean, I would have said the same thing. I've said exactly the same thing that you've said. I've just added an additional complication. Oh, but I'm just trying to add a higher understanding of the word two to incorporate that it can possibly mean five. I mean, you can probably find a context where the idea of two makes more sense than this very specific, you know, system of numbers. But I don't think that's useful. I think it is. I think it is extremely useful. I think it is extremely useful to expand our definition of divine, specifically because I think it will prevent wars. I think it'll prevent genocide. I think it will prevent, you know, destruction of the natural world. So there is real that part's interesting. So when I say something is useful, a word what makes the word useful is if it effectively communicates what the other person is trying to mean. So I mean, like not you, I mean, like, yeah, you use the word divine, that is a useful definition. If the person you're talking to what they think the word means is accurately represented by what you're using the word to mean. OK, so first off, you are ignoring the context in which I am using the word. If I just came up to someone and said rocks are divine. Yeah, OK, you could maybe make that argument, but that's not what I did. I talked for like 12 minutes there. And I gave a specific argument, citing biblical sources, citing the meaning of the word, specifically talking about how these things work in a historical context. So I'm not simply shouting that divine actually means something different. I am telling you why divine should be understand understood to mean more than what most people are thinking of right now. And that if it does wind up meaning more than that, it will actually be more true to what is attempting to be expressed by the word. And it will also have utility to us in everyday life. So again, you could say you could come in and argue that that shouldn't be. But I'm saying that it's false. I'm saying that the second part of what you said is false where this it more truly represents what people are trying to express when they use this word. OK, I say your definition is objectively the opposite of that. You are expressing the wrong thing. Hang on. So why express by that. OK, so why? Because most people like everybody, every single human who isn't crazy uses divine to be a segregation between mundane thing going on. I know it's great. I love it. But they use the word to mean not mundane. That's literally the antonyms. Every single antonym divine in every single dictionary, mundane, human, mortal, normal, not divine means mundane, which means it's a segregation. Not everything can be divine because there's an opposite to it. So first off everything can be done. OK, hang on. Hang on. Everything could be divine because again, the opposite is a subjective judgment about something. So, you know, if you want to call something subjective judgment, you know, you know, yeah, mundane is a suggestion judgment to and to and to is to because even though most people use two to mean two individual ones, OK, now you got to be triggered here. Again, what's happened here, as I said before, is you are getting hung up on the symbols. You're getting hung up on the abstract system of communication. So OK, fine. Let's do the argument again and we'll just take the word divine out. I'll use the word. I don't know. I'll use the word sacred or I could just make up another word. You know, I don't care what you call it. Sure. I care that you engage with what I mean. So let's say you do make up a different word. And you're saying that are humans this different word and what is your right properties of this? So my argument is exactly the same, except let's just say instead of divine, I've used a word that doesn't relate to anything else. Yeah, my mind. Sure. So we're going to talk about our humans, my mind. And then I make the argument that they are so you can argue with me using my logic. Wait, wait, wait. Go ahead. Start just start over with your argument from there. Like what is our humans, my mind and you're going to give a definition of my mind, right? Yeah, which I already did. Okay. Yeah. And you can make up whatever definition you want, right? Well, I can make up a word and add on to that word whatever I think it should mean. Sure. But yeah, but that's not the point. The point is, is that I again, I'm referring to a specific concept, a relationship between people and the world. So again, if I'm describing that relationship, and I'm using a different word for it, or I'm using the word divine, I'm making the same argument both times. I have just used a slightly different symbol. Right. So you've made up a symbol and you've made up a definition for that symbol. And so obviously whatever definition you made up is going to be true unless you do a lot of prediction or something. But I actually would disagree with that. You could, because again, appeal to definition is a fallacy, even if it's a word that I made up. What? Yeah, too serious. Yes, it is. Literally not a fallacy. It is absolutely a fallacy. A definition applies to the truth values of some independent fact. No, it doesn't. It's not. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. Again, truth value is truth value in and of itself. It does not. And also like, no, truth value is a result of a maker. You can't even define truth without related without like using itself to define it. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Yes, exactly. That's just you adding extra words. I defined truth without using truth. Okay. So what is reality? What is reality? That which exists. Okay. And how do you know that that's what reality is? That doesn't matter. Yes, it does. In this context, it does. My point. No, no, no. So my technology is what exists. Epistemology is how you know whether you know is irrelevant to what exists. Okay. So epistemology and ontology, it's the point. They're separate. Yes. My point of this is you're saying that which corresponds with reality. What is reality? Reality is what is true. No, no. Reality is what exists. No, hang on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. You just said reality is what exists. Truth is a property of sentences. Please give me an example of untrue reality. Untrue. Truth is a property like a table. This table is not true. This table exists, but the table is not true. This sentence, this table exists is true. The sentences are true, but the table is not true. Okay. So I'm, so in your definition of truth, essentially what you're saying is, is that truth is subjective and added on. Truth is property of sentences. Okay. Which would make it subjective. No. Yes. No. Yeah. No. If you are saying that truth. It's an objective fact. If the intended meaning of these words does correspond to reality. If I say the sky is blue, and if that I mean that the sky has a UV rating or whatever wavelength of X, which is then corresponding to blue, is an objective fact, which does or does not correspond to reality. It's not subjective. It is. Okay. So first off, you got a problem there because the sky isn't blue, not all the time. And we don't actually know that particular, I mean, this is like philosophy 101, but you don't know that your experience is one plus one equals two. If I say one plus one equals two, that sentence is true. Yeah. But in this context, it doesn't, again, in this context, it doesn't correspond to reality. We're simply putting one abstract symbols relationship to another abstract symbol, which is the relationship to the concept of two. So numbers correspond reality. So mathematicians are a correspondence reality. Okay. They are meant to correspond with reality, but they are still abstract. It is still a system of abstract symbols. That's why they're true because they're a system of abstract symbols that correspond reality. Okay. But then truth is subjective. No. Again, you can build that system any way that you want to. No, you can't. Yeah. I mean, you can. You will get different inputs and outputs. No, you can't. So if I said one plus one equals seven, that would not be true. I mean, again, that would not be true under the rules of that particular system. But that is not the point. Because again, if you said one plus one equals seven, and I'm going to define seven as two. Okay, then. If you change the definition, if you change the definition, it's relating the system back to itself. And it is relating a system that isn't actually real. It's just a heuristic humans use to interact with the world around them. No, no, no. The definitions can refer to themselves, but they correspond to reality, which is not themselves. Those are different things. The words are meant to correspond to reality, which is not the same as the words. Those are different things. They are meant to correspond to reality, but they are not reality, and they are always wrong. To one extent or, yeah. How is one plus one equals two wrong? In relation to, okay, I'll tell you exactly how. One plus one equals two within reality. So I could say one plus one and be referring to an apple and an orange. I could say one plus one is two, or I could say the exact same thing and be referring to two apples. What's happening there is we're using really a set theory. And as we know, set theory is limited because you cannot make a set that contains all sets. So when I ask the question is one plus one two, you're asking that about my mean, not your mean. So again, I'm giving you an example of when the concept of one plus one equals two could be wrong. You have to give an example of what I mean by that. What would I mean by one plus one equals two? When is that ever wrong? When what I mean? When I say one plus one equals two, give an example of what I mean by those words is wrong. When the set that the two things. That's not what I mean by the words. That's not what I mean by the words. One plus one, what I mean is in every abstract concept, if I take one object and another object, that's two objects. I don't care. What are two things together? They are a set. So again, you've got the four blue eyes, white dragon, you have a set of four blue eyes, white dragons. The one plus one equals two is a statement about sets. So whatever that two of whatever that we're referring to, that is what we would consider one plus one. If it was two nuclear power plants or two apples or an apple and an orange, what we put in that set doesn't really like it can be useful to us, but it is a subjective judgment to put it into that set. Meanwhile, yes, numbers. No, no, no, I'm saying if I take one of anything and add it to another of anything, that is two things. Now, there are you don't get to add in like, it's only two things if you group them together. And so I'm going to interrupt you both to say that we have five more minutes. So if you have questions for each other, now is the time to wrap it up before we do outros. And then if you are in the live audience, please keep on sending in those chats and super chats tag me at Amy Newman, because we are about to move into the Q&A section. But guys, the last five minutes is all yours. Yeah, plus symbol is when you when you add things together. That's yes, that's called grouping. Yes, exactly. It's a set. It is the the system of numbers is describing a set. So my question is, is when you take one thing and you add it to another thing in a set, when is that not the case that there are two things? That's the question. Yeah, if they're incorrectly sorted. So again, the set is something people have created that the mind brings into reality. You could have a set of one plus one equals two apples. Oh, but wait, this is a Granny Smith apple and this other apple is a Gala apple. So I didn't add any classifications to the know. Yeah, it would be a straw man then for you to specifically argue that when I would appeal, when I point out that your system is simply referring to itself and its own rules, where again, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about reality. Again, that's the whole point is one plus one corresponds to reality in a way that humans think about things within reality. This is a set of two apples is only two apples because humans have grouped them into a set. No, humans group them into sets that if humans don't group them into a set, it's not one plus one. So is all of reality one reality? Yes. And is that just because humans label it that way? No, it is. I would say because it is a more accurate way of thinking about reality by recognizing the interconnectedness of all life and experience. So if I cut reality in half, is that two halves make a whole from your perspective? Yes. But in actual reality? No. Oh, my God. Yeah. It is your mind that is grouping the reality into two parts. But your mind, what you think doesn't necessarily correspond or control reality. In fact, it most definitely does not. Okay, I'm ready to go with the Q&A. Because you've got a freaking own right there. But on that note, and who would ever like to go first if you would like to tell people what you got going on in the real world on the Internet? And what are your final thoughts on the subject? If one plus one doesn't equal two, then Brenton is right. I would say that looking over this debate, I want to again point to the fact that I don't believe at any point, T-Jump actually addressed my question. What he did the entire time was quibble with my word choice. And I don't believe that that is a good way to come to any kind of an argument about truth. If you jump into systems and see those systems as human made systems as reality, rather than the things that the systems are supposed to refer to and interact with, you may come to a superficial observation like one plus one equals two. But that's not actually saying anything necessarily about reality. You are just making the system be consistent with its own rules that were built by humans, specifically for its utility. So overall, what I would say is, you know, take a look at what I've said specifically about the history of the concept of the divine. Take a look at the fact that, for instance, you do evoke this world out of nothing, that it is your eyes that turn you know, radiation into light. It's your ears that turn vibrations into sound. You evoke everything, heat and cold. And if we are to define God as the being which creates the world via its own power, that's us. Every single one of us creates the world every second that we are alive. And so I would say that we definitely need to think of humans in the way that people have thought of gods. Because that will be one, I think it's more correct and two, I think it has much more utility than to think of humans as lesser than. And yeah, there we go. Thank you so very much, Brent and T-Jump for that. And with we are going to be moving into our Q&A, please keep on sending in your questions, tag me at Amy Newman, or send in your super chats that will move you right to the front of the list. But I also want to remind everyone that both of our interlocutors links are in the description below. So if you're like, that was some fantastic thinking right there, you should be heading right down to their respective channels. But with that, for a $2 super chat from Oflemo says Atheist Thank you so very much Oflemo for the support and the super chat and $5 from Fedder. Thanks for hosting this. Well, for this. You're right. That's just really phonetically. Well, thanks for hosting. Whatever this is was apparently turned into an argument about the meaning of words. I find it ironic that you said that you said the humans shouldn't be seen as less than the end, but almost as if divine is a delineation between less than and greater than. It is a description of our relationship with reality. I don't think that we are greater than reality. I don't think we're less than reality. I think, you know, we are the whole of the process of life. We are the universe experiencing itself. Another $2 super chat from Oflemo. T jump worships dictionaries as deities. Yes, that is that is the complete accurate representation of my argument. Yeah. Yeah. The appeal to death. By the way, I just I googled this because I was very annoyed when you said it wasn't the appeal to definition also known as the argument from dictionary is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone's argument is based in a problematic manner on the definition of a certain term as it appears in the dictionary or a similar source. The problem with such arguments is that dictionaries are descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive, meaning they attempt to describe how people use language rather than instruct them in how to do so in a definitive manner. Boom. And then to jump into your question. Right. So like as what you just said read, the point of a definition is to express what most people mean by the way. No, it didn't say that. It said it is descriptive. The sentence before that was the sentence before that dictionaries are descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive. What before that? The sentence before that. Yeah. The appeal to definition also known as argument from dictionary is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone's argument is based in a problematic manner on the definition of a certain term as it appears in a dictionary or similar source. That's the sentence before that. The main problem with such arguments is that dictionaries are descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive, meaning that they attempt to describe how people use the language right there. Yes, exactly. They attempt to describe how they use it rather than instruct it. So if they use it in that way, if they use it in the way of English, the answer we got is no. No. I mean, we have to change the definition to Brinton's language. And then change the definition to anything at any time. What matters? Yeah. So just admit, admit you're trying to change the definition. That's all. For fuck's sake, because I'm not trying to change the definition. I'm trying to broaden that. And then t-jump last sentence is having. That's changing it. I'm just going to point out t-jump said that appeal to definition was not a logical fallacy. No, I said mine is not an illogical fallacy. I'm sorry. No, you. It's not circular. And on that note, we are moving forward. It's $20. Super chat from Federer. Thank you so very much for the love and support. Brent's claim of Philippians 2.7, the gnosis of Jesus, was beautifully surreal. Could you ask him to explain his exogenesis, and if he is troubled by how much it conflicts with English, and more importantly, the Cohen context? Cohen. Not Cohen. Cohen. So, yeah. So I'm going to try to approach that. Most of my philosophical training is in Buddhism and Eastern thought. I have less formal training in theology, though I did take a couple of classes in college and one in high school. So the whole concept of a Cohen is to ask a question that has no answer, specifically to try to bring about a state in which a person begins to think about the world in a way that is, I think, different than the patterns of thought that they normally have. Usually what is the sound of one hand clapping is thought of as a Cohen? I'm not sure if it's a real Cohen or if it's just one that's been sort of moved into reality. But the point of these kinds of statements is to alter the relationship of the person to their own reality. So Jesus, for whatever reason probably, and I've said a number of times that I actually think Jesus Christ can be considered a Bodhisattva. When he realized essentially the interconnectedness of life and phenomena, well, he's going to say, you know, I am the way of the truth and the light who has seen the father has seen me. You know, because that was literally true for him at the time and how he experienced it and everybody constantly misunderstood him because they were still in their normal everyday ways of thinking. I would say like throughout this debate, you know, think of it like this. Jesus is the guy that got up out of Plato's cave and experienced the real world and came back to tell the people staring at the shadows on the wall that they, what actual reality was and that the kingdom of God is within them. You know, read Tolstoy, the kingdom of God is within you is freaking phenomenal. It's also one of the reasons I got so frustrated with T-jump because I can, our argument here is me trying to talk about the light outside of the cave and T-jump was describing the shadows and saying that my argument about what's outside the cave is incorrect because this shadow looks this certain way. So yeah, I mean, that's that's my answer on that one. I'm glad you found the question interesting. More than anything, I want to prompt people to think in new ways and hopefully learn something. And I actually have an addendum. First of all, it is Coyin, is that correct? Coyin? Coyin, because my pronunciation, I always kind of get that right. And if you send in a super chat and I ever get the context wrong, however, Federer has sent in an addendum and says I met the Greek text Coyin Greek. Oh, oh, you know, honestly, I got to say I can't go into that because I am not really schooled in Greek. I know that there are some really interesting things in the Bible that due to certain issues of translation kind of actually really changed the meaning of the text in a really big way. One of the biggest ones is in the beginning there was the word, which is very ironic, since the word is a symbol, but you know, and said, you know, and the word became flesh and but the actual better definition of that in Greek is in the beginning there was the conversation, which I actually think expresses again the relationship of the world and the divine as a relationship rather than, you know, the word, the one thing coming down from on high and rolling over everything else. So yeah, I can't fully answer that. I'm not quite that educated, but you know, I do think that there are some really interesting things within how our religious scriptures have been preserved, translated, and understood by various people at different times. Thank you so very much, Fetter. And I also saw the double addendum because they sent in a $2 super chat just to make sure that we saw that it was that Coyin refers to the Greek text. And so thank you for all of the support, Fetter, and hopefully we answered all of your questions or comments. And I'm just glad I got to talk about cons. I've got a copy of the gateless gate, and man, it's a trip to read. And another $5 super chat from Fetter, does Brent venerate the divinity he and his Antifa comrades fight with? And does that mean he supports divine on divine violence? So first off, I wouldn't say that I have Antifa comrades. I know people who have been involved in Antifa. I tend to support the actions, the self defensive actions taken by Antifa, when fascists are trying to organize and I support their right to fight back when attacked. I don't support offensive violence in that case. And I also overall as a Buddhist, I don't support violence in most contexts. I'm not a total pacifist. Sometimes fighting is the best of two bad options. But I think ultimately, the way that we get to a more peaceful, prosperous world is to move beyond our animal natures. And that means moving beyond violence as a means of communication and social control. Thank you so very much, Brent for your answer and Fetter for your super chat and love and a $2 super chat from John Rapp. Could you now please move on to the debate topic? That would be nice. Yeah. Are we God in English? The answer is no. No, Jesus Christ. A $5 super chat from Eric Waters. T jump. What is your response to Brent's description of you being the guy in the cave arguing about the shadows? Well, he's again, missing the point like in English. For any debate topic, you have to read the sentence. What does the sentence mean to the people we're talking to? To me, the audience. It doesn't mean what Brent has said. He's arguing for something new. It's called a new definition, which is fine. You can do that. You can say, I think we have this new definition we should use. And it has these properties and these reasons that that's fine. Wait a minute. We're doing that. At what point did I not admit I was doing that? I was saying that I wanted to expand the definition. You were saying that I wanted to change the definition in the way of making the word mean something it didn't. So, yes, because it does. You're trying to make it mean something that's the opposite of that. But you're only assuming that the definition means what it means because it's written in the dictionary, though, again. Because it means that to me, it means that to everyone I know, it means that to everyone in English. So, first off, you have no ability to understand what it means to everyone in society. You can't even know. No, you can't see that even more than 150 people as actual individuals. I'm psychic. I can just read the minds of all English society. Fuck's sake, dude. Your argument is just insanely stupid. Like, yes. Ask any rational human being to every English speaker. Does divine mean not mundane? Yeah. Not stupid. You will not get the same answer from every English speaker. And it is pure vanity that you think they would. Every single human without exception, including yourself, will always use this exact thing. Problem solved. Oh, my God, no. That is definitely not what's happening. And again, even if they do the concepts that they're trying to express would still be necessarily different from what the word refers to, there will always be some kind of a distinction between mundane and not mundane. That's the whole point of the word. Yes. As there will always be a distinction between the shadow on the wall and the rock behind it. But again, I'm trying to talk about the light outside the cave in the real world. Teach up final sense because it was your question or directed at you. I'm trying to make the word not a distinguishing between mundane and greater than mundane, which is literally how everybody uses the word. It means you're changing the definition. I'm saying it is not useful to think of parts of the world in terms of sacred and other parts of the world in terms of mundane. I think you should think of all of the world as sacred because I think that has greater utility. That part I agree with. I understood that was your argument. It's just divine doesn't do that. Okay. And on that agreement, actually, we are going to move on to the regular questions. But if you have a super chat or a regular question, please send them and tag me at Amy Newman. But with that from art five is evil divine? Yes. So the Buddhist conception of evil is a little different from the Christian conception of it. Christian conception of evil is usually understood in terms of sin in that it is a human doing something to counteract or remove themselves from the wishes of God, whatever that is. I Buddhists instead tend to view evil as a mistake. Most people are very deluded because, not because they're stupid, but because consciousness is necessarily a singular experience. And so we tend to focus our conscious attention on very particular things and ideas and plays and we miss so much of the rest of the world. Ignorance is literally ignorance as in, as organisms, we have evolved this conscious attention to be able to survive. But as a consequence of that, we do not see the world as it is. And also even if we could, like our brains couldn't take in all of that information. So I guess kind of what I'm saying here is that what we need to do as people is challenge the our own assumptions about reality as much as possible. Even those assumptions that people don't even realize are assumptions. There's a great old joke about this is older fish is swimming by and there's two fish and swimming in the other direction to young ones, teenage fish. And the elderly one says to the teenage fish, hey, water is warm today. And the other two fish came by and one turned to the other goes, what the hell is water? Because water is their entire world, it's just there is the background noise, they don't recognize that they're in water, that's just where they are. And similarly, you know, people don't recognize the divine within reality, because they're so focused on the, I suppose, task of existence and the type of consciousness that arises as a consequence of the struggle to stay alive. Thank you. And a question from what's the takeaway? Brent is Buddhist now? Oh yeah, dude, I've been Buddhist since 2014. Yeah, I'm a Nichiren Buddhist. I practice through Soka Gakkai, which is a Japanese sect. It's the largest lay Buddhist organization in the world, we're in 192 countries and the current President Daisaku Ikeda presents a world peace proposal to the UN every year, which I think is a very, you know, good thing to be doing. Yeah, I mean, I was actually a young men's leader in Harlem, starting around 2014-2015. Mm-hmm. And from Winston's mom, what about the personal unconscious, the super ego and the ID, T-Jumps Freudian- It's id, not ID. T-Jumps Freudian and Jungian psychology, does our divine include the complexes and defense mechanisms? I can read that again from Winston's mom. What about our personal unconscious, the super ego and the ID and T-Jumps id. I said it right. See, this time I actually tried to and I couldn't. Maybe that was my Freudian slip. T-Jumps Freudian and Jungian psychology, does our divine include the complexes and defense mechanisms? I have no idea what the question is exactly. Are, I didn't think you were a Jungian, actually. Oh, no, no, definitely not. Yeah, Nora Freudian. I guess what they're asking is, does do things like the shadow, the things about ourselves that we consider bad? Are those considered divine? But I think you would say no, because you draw very strict delineation between the sacred and the profane and you argue that the sacred doesn't exist. Well, I'm happy to say the word things can be divine, like I'm right with that. You're okay with using the word in a secular context. Or even in a religious context, like it still has meaning, but the meaning is not everything. It's literally the opposite of something. Again, there's a long history of using that meaning as everything, most famously Spinoza's God. And a question from Marcus. Why is this Brent Fella trying to talk about something he's only heard about? What, what do you mean trying to talk about something I've only heard about? Did that guy like elaborate? Because I have no idea what he's talking about. It sounds kind of like the atheist thing of if you say God exists, you've never heard about it. So divine being some supernatural realm or something, you've never heard of the divine, you're just talking about it kind of thing. Oh, okay, that makes sense. So what I'll say is the religious experience is something that I have experienced. I did not do it through church or revivals or anything, you know, some of it was encountered via, you know, the use of perfectly legal substances. Other times that I have gotten into that state has been through meditation. I actually had a minor satire, Ken show, when I was training, to get my black belt, I had to do 15 two minute fights in a row without rest or water. And I would say around fight 13 or 14, I forgot my name. And it's very interesting when you do kind of when the walls of your regular existence break down, because and you are able to take on a broader perspective. I think that that's an experience that everybody should have. And I think that if more people had that experience, Vladimir Putin and other people like him would have a much harder time sending us to die for their vanity. Thank you so much for that question and your answer, Brent. Question from Jason, does divine mean we are all God? Yes. Yeah, we're God pretending he's not. Watts really looking down on Watts, because he's freaking phenomenal. And I quoted him several times. He talks about it like this. Imagine you could dream any dream you wanted to dream every time you went to sleep. And let's say for the sake of argument, you know, you could dream 75 years of time about. And at the beginning of this process, you would of course fulfill all your wishes, you do all the stuff that you want to do in your dreams that you could have those experiences. But after a while, after essentially running the world on invincibility mode, you might say, okay, this is this is getting a little, a little mundane. What I'm going to do is I'm going to have a dream that isn't under control. And, you know, I'll see what happens when you come in, you wake up and you're like, oh, what a close shave that was, I can't wait till next night to come in. And you would go further and further and further seeing how deep you could go into the dream until you dreamed a dream where you forgot who you were until you woke up. And then shortly thereafter, you know, you would dive in even further and you would eventually find yourself where you are right now watching me have this conversation with T-Jump. And a $2 super chat from James Hake. What is up? Oh, Hake. In fact, he says, nice to see you, Amy, Brent and T-Jump. Happy New Year. Hey, how's it going? Happy New Year to you too, dude. Merry Christmas. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Merry Christmas. Yeah. We're all a good night. And I also should talk soon, Hake. Just want to remind our audience that myself, Brent and T-Jump have all had debates or panels with Hake. And so you should go check them out on modern day debate. Yeah. Hake is very interesting because he will oftentimes, I feel like sometimes people on the right can be very canny about what they really believe and try to, Hake will just come out and say it. And at least let's us talk about the underlying issues. Anyway, my, I just wanted to add just in case my thing about waking up as yourself right now, the point is, is that the real lesson of God is that no one wants to be God, not even God. And ultimately what someone usually wants is a surprise, because then we really feel there in the moment, as opposed to, you know, you're running around with the cheat codes on. Oh, you're muted. Yeah, muted. Thank you. I'm getting old. You're still muted. Can you hear me now? Yep. Yeah. All right. I have to do that at least once a stream and a double tap, just like zombies, just to make sure. But thank you so very much, Hake and our both of our interlocutors for that answer and a question from Winston's mom, Metta, the divine abodes of compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity questions, perhaps Brent could expand upon the divine abodes. So Buddhism has this concept called the 10 worlds. And this is essentially 10 life conditions that a person can find themselves in at any point in time. And it runs the gamut. You heard me say that some people will say we live in hell. It runs the gamut from hell to the world of hungry ghosts to animals, you know, all the way up to, you know, Buddha and Bodhisattva. The concept, the philosophical concept that comes from this is also called Ichininsanzen, which translates roughly to 10,000 worlds in a single moment of life. Because each of these 10 worlds combined has within itself the other nine within hell is the heaven realm as well as, you know, the land of the Buddha. So really, when you are looking at the world, it's not that there are two worlds, one pure and one impure, one sacred and one profane. It's that the human mind likes to smooth out a wiggly world and sort it into easily sorted categories like one plus one equals two. You know, this is true in a sense, but it's not the whole truth and you can find yourself in any of these worlds. So your actual experience with reality is not contingent on the way things happen to you. It is how you respond to the world that would indicate like how you feel. So I would say, you know, we can think of what you were talking about with, you know, equanimity, compassion. These are ways of thinking that get someone closer to the higher life states. And I think they can lead you down a path that will eventually, hopefully, you know, bring you a great deal of joy and eventual enlightenment. Thank you. And a question from Gail Morrow. If I don't like cake, then it's no longer divine. To you. I mean, I would say that the cake, as I said, like each world contains the other nine, you know, the world of the cake that you're eating is just one of many possible experiences you could have with that cake. So to you, it's not divine, but that doesn't mean it's not inherently divine. Or it doesn't have the, I guess, the potential, the potential to be viewed as divine. Thank you. And from Tanner Steele, for Brent, what fundraiser? Oh, so it's not a fundraiser, it's a Kickstarter. So I am a professional comic book author and writer. And right now, the link goes to Derudie number two, which is my other series about anarchist, Buena Ventura, Derudie. One of the best men to, in my opinion, one of the most exciting and interesting men to have ever lived. He is best known for starting out as kind of a bandit and a bank robber. And kind of swath of revolution across five countries and two continents was put in prison for trying to assassinate the Spanish king and escaped. And when Spain's military went fascist, he took up the defense of Barcelona and defeated the military, led an army of 10,000 anarchists against Franco and Madrid. The series is me telling his story, his life story, and issue two has him meeting the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, who was the general that led the anarchist Black Army of 100,000 anarchists during the Russian Revolution. So it's a wonderful suppressed history that a lot of people don't know about. It's just a fun series. So if you want to get a copy of it and help me keep telling this story, just go to the link and grab yourself one. And then you'll get one with my signature on it. And if you want to, you can flip it on eBay, but you won't because you're going to love it and hang on to it for the rest of your life. I was a big fan of the zombies one. Yeah, I got to get you the other ones, man. The graphic novel is about to come out. I'm going to keep them until you die, then I'm going to sell them. Perfect. It'll be, hopefully it will be worth a lot more. And the links of that are in the chat and the links of both of our interlocutors, of course, are in the description below. But from John Rapp, God equal divine? What about an evil God? Yeah. I want to answer that, but I've been talking a lot. Do you want to go first? No, my position is that your definition of divine includes everything, including evil, and there's nothing that couldn't be defined. I mean, I think even given your definition, even nothing of this would still probably be to have to be defined. Oh, yeah. Dude, why do you think Buddhists are so focused on the concept of nothingness? It's called sunyata, the void. It's like one of the most important concepts. Like, I think the only thing you could say is not divine is like a logical contradiction or something around squares. Like that's the only non-divine thing. Even that could still be divine. So I don't think, so I think in his definition, everything is divine no matter what it is. I don't think there could be any way that wouldn't be divine no matter what. So I would to an extent agree with that in the sense of Spinoza's God, everything is God, or what was said in the Bible, you know, I Lord, I God, I create light in the darkness, I make peace and create evil. The experience of reality kind of can't happen without a context for it to exist in. I will usually put this in context of a black ink drawing on a white piece of paper. Now we may say that the drawing is the ink, not the paper, but the ink isn't just floating in space. The only reason you can see that and pick that out as a drawing is that there is the white paper. So it's really by contrast that you are able to perceive this thing. Similarly, by contrast, is the only way that you are able to experience the world. You only know that you exist because there are things that are not you. So overall, like an evil God, you've got two issues there. One, I would say, what are you talking about when you talk about God? If it's an actual being, whether it's good or evil, I don't think you can consider it God because if there was an alien that had the same powers as God, that wouldn't make him God. So I actually think sort of the idea of God as a conscious being with definite opinions about the universe who is oddly obsessed with people's sex lives is not a useful personification. I see why it evolved and there are useful aspects to it, but I don't think that that's really a good way that educated people should think about God and the divine or the sacred or whatever you want to call it. So an evil God in the sense that God evokes the world and creates good and evil out of I guess nothing or the undifferentiated reality that God would be simultaneously good and evil. Thank you for that answer and we are going to go on for about five more minutes. We do value our interlocutors time and so if you want to guarantee that your question is asked, you're going to have to send in a super chat to send them to the top of the list. However, we are moving right along from Farron Salis is a property of divine, a metaphysical distinction as well. Do you want to take that or should I get it first? Well, if it's a distinction then it can't be his definition. So I'd say no. I don't think, so this was very interesting that T-Jump said that for instance like truth was a I guess property of the sentence. Similarly, I don't think divine is a property of reality. Like it's not like we could sit down in a lab like grab a rock and find out what parts of the rock are this divine property that it has. Rather divine in that context describes the relationship of reality to itself and how I think the more correct way of looking at things is. So yeah, I mean people tend to get really hung up on ideas about like essences of things and properties of things and a lot of the time these are just mental projections on those things. They're real, they're useful, but you need to also recognize that they are limited and artificial. Isn't that exactly what you're doing when you're saying the divine is the not the shadow? It's the real thing out there independent of what you say? I did not say that the divine was the real thing out there. That was me referring to actual reality and making an argument about the divine. Yeah, I would say that what frustrated me about this conversation is that we got so hung up on sort of the abstract details that in my opinion weren't actually important to the argument at all. Like yeah, you can come in and say for instance like, oh well the dictionary definition of divine is this, therefore this is the answer to this question. Now you can say that, but it's not interesting. I don't feel that it's helpful and I don't feel that it really explains how people actually have their relationship to the divine beyond like just categorizing in the narrowest possible sense. I think like the topic you wanted was more if we all thought of everything as divine, would there be less war? Something like that. James wouldn't let me do that. So we have to get around it a little bit and get the clickbaity title. Fair enough, but then I would also say that you heard my argument coming in, so appealing to the title as opposed to engaging the argument is quite frustrating. I didn't understand what you were trying to get at from your opening. That's why I was going through the, how did you get to your definition? If you just admitted yes, I'm trying to change the definition to this because I think it would have this outcome, then that would be easy. You know, that's fair. I will say there's a reason why I did not go for that and it's because right wingers are constantly accusing people who are trying to expand human knowledge of changing definitions. I'm pretty right-wing, dude. I'm center left. Okay. What is your opinion on socialism? What is my opinion on socialism? I think that there are some socialist policies that are helpful. That's one for a mixed economy. Okay. So your socials doesn't work. You, yeah, that makes you a right-winger, but no, the left in my, well, again, like in political philosophy, usually the left encompasses ideologies that are anti-capitalist. The center tends to have to advocate for some sort of welfare state while preserving capitalism. And I guess the far right, as far as I know, you're not a reactionary. So it's not like you're trying to turn the clock back and, I don't know, reassert white supremacy or kings, you know. T-Jump, if you want a response, that's fine, but then Brent, you have to have the final word because it was your question. That's fine. What was the question again? That's okay. It was on metaphysical distinctions and we are moving forward, trying to squeeze as much juice as we can, but we're sending love to all the people who did send in chats and super chats from David Friskian. Ah, okay. So Brent is claiming we don't have definitions. Doesn't that mean anything he says is gibberish? It's not that we don't have definitions. It's the definitions are symbolic and subjective and can change however the popular wind blows. You know, these are strategies to communicate ideas between people. They are not necessarily rules. And you oftentimes, especially as an artist, you have to break rules in order to bring people to a higher understanding, whether that's, you know, painting outside the canvas or going beyond the pale philosophically. And I think we're only going to have time for one or so more taric. How does Brent define the word God? The word God. Oh, that's interesting. I would define the word God when I use that word. I don't like to use that word. I don't think it's useful. But I would define it, you know, in the way GK Chesterton does and the way the Hindus do as Brahma, as the ground of being. So in my opinion, God, if you want to call it that, is the process of life itself, both conscious and unconscious. It's an eternal process that with no beginning and no end, but constant change. I would call that God. And that means, essentially, that as I said before, we are all God experiencing itself. We are the universe eyeing. Everyone is eye. And I am, I was looking for questions to like get one in for T-Jump. We're going to read three more so I can finish your own one that you can both answer. By the way, I'm not, I'm not in a hurry to leave. I don't know if T-Jump is, but I'm fine staying and answering. Speaking of which, we have John Rapp, which is funny, John Rapp, because you are the question that I think I'm going to end up, but we'll begin and end with you. So John Rapp, for two dollars, so in summary, everything and everyone is special. Yes. Probably the most special thing that there ever could be. I mean, for fuck's sake, we're all, the atoms in our body were forged in freaking exploding stars. We're like, we as humans are creating the world every single second of our lives without even trying. And in that sense, I can't think of anything that isn't remarkable, that isn't well beyond the mundane. And I just think that it's conscious attention pulling us into a world that is less real than the real world, that is a big problem. It's the cause of a lot of our social and personal dysfunction. Thank you for that. And thank you, John Rapp, for the super chat and support. Question from the angry atheist. What does sacred mean, Brent? And he also said that this was cool, yo. Take anything. Oh, cool. Yeah. Sacred usually refers to that which is, I guess, held as having specific unique value. It's like what T-Jump was trying to say God was as. Like, sacred is saying that this particular thing is heightened above others. You know, I think that that's ultimately a subjective judgment. So it can also describe relationships of a person to reality. And it's essentially, it's a synonym for divine, but it more seems, it's more obviously, I guess, subjective. Someone's sensing a sacred property of some action or object or place. Thank you. I expected you to jump in on that, T-Jump. I was agreeing with you there. Yep. Yep. I noticed. And it's looking like someone just wants to double check T-Jump. They want to know if you were preferring McDonald's or Burger King tonight. McDonald's is better. Burger King is terrible. I like Burger King shakes. Their burgers are God awful. Double quarter pounder with cheese is good. I like that a lot. I like the McDonald's shakes aren't bad, fries are okay. I think Wendy's, honestly, is out of like the five major ones. I think Wendy's is probably the best. Yeah. McDonald's, I always wind up getting into gestion. And Burger King, their impossible burgers actually pretty damn good, but their calories are just through the freaking roof. Like I could feel my arteries clogging, just eating like anything from Burger King. Thank you for that, Slicy Slicer. And we're getting to the heart of the real debates, the burger questions. But from Coffee Mom, the spice is real. Let's debate about the evil of capitalism, but first let's argue about the definition of markets. Heads up. I'll never tell you what it means. Um, so we can do the argument about capitalism. And I think T-Jump, you wanted to argue with me about the state and whether the state is good or not. Uh, state is in government? Yes, governments are good. No, state is in military and the police and the court systems. Yeah, those those are good. Yeah, I think those are bad. So we should argue about that sometime. There we go. We got more modern day debates coming up. But I think this is going to be the last question of the night. Maybe a good one. John Rapp, he wants to know from both debaters what your notion of Godhood is. Non-physical mind, the creator of the universe. My definition of Godhood would be, you know, I would say that the closest thing that I could compare the concept to would be like Davis, which are closer to angels. So basically, higher beings supposedly from another plane of reality, which has a great number of powers. I don't think that if such a being existed or exists, I don't think they're necessarily worthy of worship. And I think that, you know, that being would still be essentially tied to the cycle of samsara of birth and death, because it would exist within reality and the only universal constant in reality is change. So if God exists in reality, that means at some point God has to not exist in reality, the being has to die. I think the only thing that is eternal and might be worthy of, while not worship maybe, awe is the process itself. Again, the ground of being Brahma, the Godhead. And on that note, I want to thank and send all of the love to our mods, subscribers and viewers because I want to thank you all for joining us out here on modern day debate. We are a neutral, nonpartisan platform, welcoming everybody from all walks of life. If you're looking for even more fantastic debates, well, we are now all over the internet, including your favorite podcasting platform. So if you enjoy the show, then please don't forget to like, follow on Twitch, or subscribe on YouTube. It helps us reach an even wider audience, including tonight's debate on, are we gods? It's a very dorm room question. Exactly. Get together back and forth with our debaters, T-Jump, and Bret and Lange here to help us find out the answer. And if you enjoyed what any of our guests have said tonight, all of their links are in the description below. Finally, if you're looking for even more fun after the show, feel free to check out our MDD Discord. And with that, I am Amy Newman with modern day debate. We hope you continue having great conversations, discussions, and debates.