 Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not atheism is unreasonable, and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate as we have our two guests, experienced debaters, they've been on the show before, however it's been quite a while, so we are very excited to have them back. It's been about a year almost. So, want to let you know it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we've got a lot more debates coming up. For example, you'll see on your bottom right, Sargon of Akkad, we'll be here tomorrow going toe to toe with Vosh, the young upcoming star in political debate on YouTube, and so that is going to be one for the record books, so we are very excited, and want to let you know if you happen to have a question during this debate, if you think of that question at any point, fire it into the old live chat, and if you tag me with at modern day debate, that'll help me so that I can make sure that I see each one. We will ask those at the end of the debate, assuming we have enough time. So we'll get through as many as we can, sometimes we get a surplus, but want to let you know that's obviously a good problem to have, and Superchats will go to the top of the list, and they all allow you to make a comment toward one of the speakers to which they would of course get to respond to. With Superchats, we would just ask that they be respectful of our guests. If you want to take a jab at me, feel free, but given that these are guests, we do want to treat them with as much respect as possible. And so with that, want to let you know for tonight's format, it's going to be open discussion, or I should say, opening statements of 10 minutes each followed by eight minute rebuttals, and then open conversation for like 45 minutes, we'll feel it out, followed by a short Q&A of about 25 minutes. With that, we will have Edward taking the affirmative tonight, and that thus he will be starting us off. And Edward, I have, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, I have, in addition to having the timer set for you, Edward, I do have both Edwards and Braden's links in the description. So if you're listening and you're like, I like what I'm hearing. I want more. I've got good news. You can get more just down there in that little description box, where you can click on their links. So with that, clock is set for you, Edward. Thanks again for being back. It's good to have you again. I think that you're okay. Nevermind. Sorry. I think my connection was, my connection was fading, but you're set. Sorry about that, Edward. I'll give you the full 10 minutes starting now. Oh gosh. Hold on. Right. Believes and unbelieves. One second. So sorry. Edward, gosh, this is all my fault. So sorry. I'm going to start you over with 10 minutes. I had you on mute. That was my fault. Oh my gosh. Long night. So I'm going to set, start you over with 10 minutes and then the floor is all yours. So Edward, for your opening statement of 10 minutes, the floor is all yours. Thanks for your patience. No problem. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Good. Okay. All right. So the question tonight is, is Atheism unreasonable? And I say, yes, it is unreasonable. Atheists like to say that Atheism is only a lack of belief in a God or God, as if there are no implications which follow from that position. But there are ramifications. Beliefs and unbeliefs sort of like that next domino to fall, which I like to call the logical implications of the position, which I'm convinced that a lot of there's a God, or if you have lack of belief in a God, then it follows logically that from the Atheistic position, that all explanations of life, which point back to a being all off the table, including aliens or any other explanation of that type. Edward, I'm so sorry. It also follows. Edward, I'm so sorry to interrupt. If you're able to turn your video off, the connection people in the live chat are letting us know that the connection is, it's just not your audio is going on and off. And so it'll be less of a load on your connection. Internet wise, if you're able to turn off your video and this happens from time to time, it's not unusual. And usually it fixes it. If you're willing to turn off your video, we'll let you start over with the full 10 minutes, because I, they, it's been kind of going in and out to where I don't think they've heard you over the last two minutes very well. So we will give Edward his 10 minute opening statement. And Edward, thanks so much. The floor is all yours. Should I log out and log back in? I think that'll help. I think it's just that if you're able to not use your camera, I know that I asked you to use your camera, but I think it's, it'll be, your audio will come through clear without the camera. And so thanks for your patience on that. The floor is all yours. So should I start over or? Yes. Okay. Can you hear me good now? Yes. Yes. Okay. Uh, this is already struck out twice. So hopefully I don't strike out again. Okay. So the question tonight is, is atheism irrational or unreasonable? And I say, yes, atheists like to say that atheism is only a lack of a belief in a God or God, as if there are no implications which follow from the position, but there are ramifications, beliefs and unbeliefs stand in relation to other beliefs and unbeliefs. Sort of like fallen dominoes. This unbelief causes that next domino to fall, which I like to call the logical implications of the position, which I'm not convinced a lot of atheists consider. If you don't believe there's a guide or if you have lack of belief in a guy, then it follows logically that from the atheistic point of view, that all explanations of life, which point back to a being or off the table, and that includes aliens or any of the explanation of that type. It also follows that you are only left with three explanations for life on this planet. Number one, their life arose out of necessity, natural or chemical process. Right. But there are issues with that viewpoint, primarily that there is nothing in nature which can generate coded information that can't be traced back to a mind, which leaves a huge explanatory deficit when looking at the biological information, which is required for life. Number two, life arose by chance. According to the philosopher of science, Steven Meyer, when scientists attribute an event to chance, they usually mean there is no good reason to think that the event happened either by design or because of a known physical process that must have a necessity to generate only one possible outcome, which in this case will be life. The problem with the chance hypothesis is that the odds that biological information arose by chance would be mathematically prohibitive and therefore implausible. And now to believe that which is implausible is unreasonable. Here's a quote. The skeptics at Wistel argued that it is extremely difficult to assemble a new gene or protein by chance because of the sheer number of possible base or amino acid sequence. For every combination of amino acids that produce a functional protein, there exists a vast number of other possible out combinations that do not. And as the length of the required protein grows, the number of possible amino acid sequence combinations of that length grows exponentially so that the odds of finding a functional sequence that is a working protein, diminished precipitously. For a protein change, there are 20 to the second power or 400 ways to make a two amino acid combination since each position to be any of any number of 20 different alphabetical characters. Similarly, there are 20 to the third or 8000 ways to make a three amino acid sequence and so on. The odds of finding a correct sequence diminished correspondently as the possible combinations rise. The third option is a combination of one and two. And the problem with this third option is that the combination of necessity and chance do nothing to explain the origin of biological information which is required for life. So you are left with a position that is irrational. My argument can be summarized as a following. Permits one, if atheism is true, then life on this planet is due to physical necessity and or chance. Permits two, life on this planet is not due to physical necessity and or chance and the conclusion is therefore atheism is not true. Which leads me to my second argument. If any of the three solutions were true, that life arose out of necessity by natural chemical processes or and or by chance, then you could not account for objective morality. Products of chemical or natural processes and or chance cannot produce morality in an objective sense. At the most, you would have social construct which are subjective in nature, but in an objective sense, there will be no more obligations. You know, people like to be respected. People like to be treated right, but there will be no obligations of any of that. Or things that shouldn't be done like rape or murder. As Richard Darkin says, there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless and different. We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object's sole reason for being. Argument number two can be summarized as a following. If atheism is true, then there are no objective moral values or duties. Permits two, there are objective moral values and duties. The conclusion is therefore atheism is not true, which leads me to my third argument, which builds on this further. If solution one were true, that life arose out of necessity from natural or chemical processes, then humans would have no free will because we would because we would be byproducts of natural and chemical laws, which would dictate our action and reaction. Additionally, if solution two were true, that is, if life arose by chance, which is to say that life wasn't purposely brought forth and didn't come about out of necessity, then it follows that free will also came about by chance, which is even more mathematically prohibitive. This third argument can be summarized as a following from its number one. If atheism is true, then there is no human free will. I have freely chosen to do this debate. The conclusion is therefore, atheism is not true. My fourth argument builds on this further. If solution one were true, that life arose out of necessity from natural chemical processes, then as I stated above, humans would have no free will because we would be the byproducts of natural and chemical laws, which would dictate our actions and reactions. And it follows from that their reason would be useless and not applicable in the process. Why would you need reason if your actions were dictated by natural and chemical process? Not only would reason not be needed in the process of our actions and reactions, but reason would necessarily be excluded because the laws of logic and reason are immaterial and are not part of natural or chemical process. What role does reason play in gravity? When gravity, when gravitational forces pull water to the ground, when it rains, rationality and reason play no role. So my this fourth argument can be summarized as a following. Premise number one, if atheism is true, then we don't use reason. Premise two, I'm using reason right now. The conclusion is therefore that atheism is not true. My last argument is an argument from intentionality. Atheism also has an explanatory deficit when it comes to intentional states of consciousness. Intentionality is the quality of mental states that consist in there being directed towards some object or state of affairs. For example, I often think about my wife. I think about how beautiful she is. She just walked in the door and how much I love her. If solution one were true, that life arose out of necessity due to natural chemical processes, then there will be no intentional state because physical and chemical processes behaving like a blind light, law-like matter, which would preclude such intentionality, which is purposeful and thought out. Second, intentionality presupposes free will. I can choose to think about my wife, whereas physical and chemical processes will be more deterministic and preclude free will. Additionally, if solution two were true, that is a right life arose by chance. You know, which we went over, right? What that means, then it follows that intentional states also came about by chance, which is even more mathematically prohibitive than life arising by chance alone. This fifth argument can be summarized as the following, premise one, if atheism is true, then we don't have intentional state. I'm thinking about the absurdity of that idea, which is an intentional state. The conclusion is, therefore, atheism is not true. Now, I just want to end with this. Those of you who are atheists or those of you who used to be Christians and you left, you know, you left, you departed, whatever, a lot of times, and I speak to atheists a lot, they don't think through the logical implications of the position. There are things that follow from the position, and these are the things that follow, absurdity follow, irrationality follow, unreasonableness follow. Thank you. Thank you very much from Edward. Appreciate it. Always a pleasure. And now we will switch it over to Braden, who has 10 minutes. Paul Rudd, the floor is all yours. Do I lose you? Braden, Paul Rudd, you're frozen. I think he's on mute. Oh, oh, you're right. Okay, you're unmuted. Thanks. Thanks so much. Paul Rudd, man. That's right. Yeah, sorry, I was typing notes during Edward's opening. Edward, thank you for that opening. Thanks, James. And James, can you let me know when I have about a minute left on my time? Absolutely. Okay, cool. Awesome. So I'll give my opening here and then we'll do a rebuttal afterwards and I'll sort of respond to some of the arguments that Edward put forward. Glad to be on again. Thanks again for having me. Okay, so so the question is, is atheism unreasonable? And as an atheist myself, you won't hear, you won't be surprised to hear me say that I disagree. I do not think atheism is unreasonable. In fact, I think it's reasonable, the reasonable position to take. And let me sort of, you know, talk about this for a while. So first, I'd like to say a couple things with respect to the topic at hand tonight, atheism and whether or not it is reasonable or unreasonable. So obviously, as Edward sort of alluded to earlier, there are sort of different ways you can sort of define or characterize atheism, weak atheism, which would be, you know, a lack of belief in the existence of a God or gods, and then a more hard atheism, which would be the active disbelief in a God or gods. I wanted to say upfront a couple things with respect to that. The first thing is that I don't think Christians are unreasonable full stop, nor do I think that obviously I don't think atheists are unreasonable, but I don't think they're like completely 100% reasonable either we're all flawed human beings trying the best we can to reason as accurately as we can. So I wanted to say that up front. Also, I wanted to say, you know, definitions are really important when we're talking about, you know, things like we're talking about tonight, God and atheism in different positions we take on these topics. And I wanted to say the degree to which I would characterize atheism as reasonable, the degree to which I think it's reasonable to take that position will depend on whether or not you are espousing a sort of soft atheism, a lack of belief or disbelief, a more hard atheistic approach. It'll also depend on which God we're talking about in particular. Similarly, with with atheism, I think even Edward would agree that although he doesn't believe in the existence of other gods, there are certainly definitions of other gods. Gods can be defined in many different ways as he is across or she may across many different religions. And so the definition matters to me personally. And so I just wanted to express that how reasonable I think it is to disbelief versus lack of belief in any particular God will depend on the on the definition of that. Deity, I also wanted to say upfront. Atheism is not obviously there's no like official church of atheism. It's it's not really a belief system. It's just anyone who does not believe in a God because they either lack belief or disbelief. That's that's an atheist, but there's no it's not organized in the same way that as many religions are. And so I can only speak from my my personal experience. I can't speak on behalf of all atheists but I can speak on behalf of myself. And so for myself, I wanted to say the way I think about atheism is that I don't it's not that I want have any active desire for atheism in particular to be true. In fact, personally, I'll admit I'm quite uncomfortable myself with the idea of my life being finite. And, you know, I'd love for there to be an afterlife that be that be sweet, because I'm, you know, really uncomfortable with the fact that well, with the with the idea that I won't get to live forever. I think that's I think that's true, because I see all the evidence pointing in that direction. But but it's not that I want to be an atheist or one atheism to be true. I want to be an atheist insofar as I want to be a reasonable human being. And I want to be intellectually honest in my life. And I think that atheism with regards to the question of does God exist. And again, it depends on which God but I think atheism is the most reasonable as a position to take on that question. And so I I am only an atheist to the extent that I just want to be a reasonable person in the first place. And I'll just say a quick, you know, something about my my background. I was an evangelical Christian of a sort of non denominational variety for about 20 plus years. And long story short, basically what happened is I have a story to similar to many others. I started, you know, I got really into apologetics and philosophy. In particular, I really liked John Lennox and his work. And then I started, you know, encountering all the different people who were sort of challenging the ideas from apologists and religious people. And these atheists who were challenging these ideas. And I didn't know what to do about it. And I think when I was a child, I sort of dismissed them as, you know, sort of intellectually inferior to me or they were just, you know, dumb people who didn't get it basically. And I realized as I got older, okay, these are, you know, I think they're wrong, but they're not. These aren't stupid people. These are very, you know, intelligent people. I mean, philosophers and scientists and you know, Stephen Hawking and people like that, like I don't think I'm smarter than Stephen Hawking. So but I think they're wrong on this issue. So why are they wrong? And I, you know, thought of it as a sort of a spiritual journey. This is a great opportunity for me to grow spiritually and to learn what mistake they've made so I can, you know, tell them and hopefully inform them of the truth. And long story short, basically that led to me doing a lot of research and a lot of thinking. And over the course of that time, I dismantled all the reasons I had to believe in a God and I had nothing left. And so I said to myself, well, until I finally have a rational justification for believing in God, I can't rightly call myself a theist anymore. And so that's how I ended up where I'm at now. And I did a lot of thinking about philosophy and in particular, in regards to this topic, ontology and epistemology will be will be worth discussing here ontology being what is an epistemology being how we know what we know and how we come to form beliefs and how rational, you know, we can be in those beliefs. So basically, let me sort of outline a couple different reasons why I think atheism is the is the rational, reasonable position to take with regards to this question. I mean, those can be categorized in two ways. One, I think there are problems with atheistic arguments for the existence of God. I haven't seen one. I've certainly seen valid arguments for God, but I think unfortunately, many of them, in fact, most of them that I've seen as far as I can tell my, you know, limited ability to reason, I don't think any of them are sound when I'm thinking, you know, and I'm trying to be intellectually honest and philosophically, philosophically rigorous about, you know, thinking about these arguments, I think there are flaws and problems with many of them, you know, most of them really. And so that's one. And the the other category would be you could sort of say maybe problems inherent with the with the definition of the deity itself or or arguments for God's nonexistence, some that I find compelling. And I'll give how much time do I have, James? Got about two minutes, but maybe a little bit more, because I lost track of the clock for so I can give you like an extra minute or if you need. That's cool. Yeah. Let me that be great. If Edward doesn't mind, let me give a couple examples of each of them. So a problem with a theistic argument. There are many of them, but I'll just pick when it ran on the fine tuning argument. And here's an opportunity for a shameless plug. It's on the link in the description, but I actually have a YouTube channel. I have one video on it. So I didn't promote it last time because it's it's not much to brag about. But I have a video about the fine tuning argument and a couple areas in which I think it's problematic. One of them is the fine tuning argument basically states that the physical constants of our universe are such that they're they're like on a razor's edge. And they're so specific and only under those circumstances and no others could life emerge could physical life in the form that we see it today emerge on this earth. And so it must have been a fine tuned by a designer that that's more a probable explanation that someone tuned it that way precisely. An example of a problem I see with the fine tuning argument, which I put in the video. There's a great comment by Sean Carroll, you know, who's a theoretical physicist who comments on the question like, well, how probable is life in the first place? Like, how do we actually know that life is improbable? And he talks about what we would have to actually know in order to be able to make that call. And he says, you'd have to you'd have to do the math on a couple of things. One, you'd have to know every possible physical combination, every possible way universe could form. And then every possible way that the physical laws could manifest within those universes. And then every possible way that life could emerge within those constants within those universes, and then calculate that fraction in order to calculate the probability. And the point of what he's illustrating is just to say like, we don't, nobody even knows anything close to be able to do this math, like nobody's actually done the work. We don't have like a calculation that we can do because there's just so much we don't know. And this argument is sort of we're sort of, you know, using this argument, when we don't have the math to back it up. And so that would be an example of, you know, a flaw in a particular argument. Another, you know, we can maybe I'll skip an example for the next one. But, you know, we can discuss various reasons why I think God's nonexistence got to be more likely than his existence. Okay. Lastly, I just want to say a couple of things that Edward could do to convince me or argue the case that atheism is unreasonable. You can make an argument. Perhaps there's one I haven't heard yet that is a sound argument for God's existence, totally open to that. And so there's that. Or perhaps, you know, a flaw that I might point out in any particular theistic argument, like the one I just illustrated, maybe, maybe it's actually what I think is a flaw is actually not a flaw. And it's in its real flaws in my reasoning about the argument that could be pointed out to me open to that as well. And lastly, I would just say a flaw could be pointed out in my epistemology, which again, totally open to as as many Christians say, and and as I've taken seriously and actually been considering lately, maybe, you know, this, they like to say sometimes that, you know, your standard for evidence is too is too high, like there actually are good reasons. And you've just set your your standard unreasonably high in your epistemology. So as to, you know, kind of shield yourself from concluding that this is that God does exist. There could be a problem with my epistemology as well. There was a three ways he could address that. Hopefully we get to talk about some of these areas in the conversation conversation to come. You bet. Thanks so much. Next, we'll go into the rebuttal phases. So these will just be eight minutes apiece, followed by open conversation. So I have the timer set for you, Edward. The floor is all yours. If you mute me again, James, don't forget to unmute me. Very funny. Okay, you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. So I'm not going to this is not going to take eight minutes. I assure you of that. So let me just summarize what tonight debate is about, just in case you join in late or, you know, with the the opening statements, you know, maybe you lost focus of what the nice debate is about, but it's about the question of is atheism unreasonable? My opponent says is reasonable because these arguments are flawed. He used to be a theist, but didn't have answers for objection to theism. But that's insufficient to show that atheism is reasonable. That speaks more to his apologetics than the truth or reasonableness of atheism. He says there's so much we don't know, but I don't know much about quantum mechanics. But that doesn't mean that that it's not real, right? That it's not, you know, that they're not bringing full of truthful ideas or that it's not real science, right? His basic argument is that atheism is just unbelievable. You know, he talked about given definition, and there's hard atheism and self atheism. But that just that just sidetracks. It doesn't matter. It's the it's the lack of belief in God or gods. And there are certain things that follow from that period. Like you can't get around that. It follows from his lack of belief in God that the design hypothesis is removed from possible explanations of reality, which leaves the ones I've highlighted, which I've shown to be highly implausible and irrational, from which it follows that atheism is highly implausible and irrational. I'm going to give you an example, right? So if there was a woman, Edward, I think they're male X and male Y go away. If you became pregnant, Edward Edward, if you can do me a favor and just start, if you can start over from if there was a woman, then it it it cut out. So I think that if you can start over from there and then keep going forward. Sorry about that. We lost you. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, so if there was a woman who messed around. Can you hear me? I think you said if there was a woman who messed around. Yes. Gotcha. Keep going. We're good. Okay, so there was a woman who messed around with two guys, right? We'll call them male X and male Y and she became pregnant and she says, well, I don't think male X is the father. Then it logically follows that she thinks that male Y is the father. And if she were to say, well, no, I just don't think that male X is the father. That would be utterly ridiculous and wouldn't make logical sense because the only option she has is X and not X. And it's the same way with atheism. There are only so many options remaining. And like I said in my opening, those options are ridiculous. Those options are irrational and those options are unreasonable. I would like to hear what, you know, what Brandon has to say about those. And I look forward to that in the rebuttal period. Thank you. You bet. Go ahead, Braden. I'm going to unmute you, my dear friend Paul Rudd, and the floor is yours. Thanks, James. Okay. And let me see. I was gonna, I was gonna try to get a clock in front of me. Eight minutes, right? Yes. Okay, cool. 55. Okay. Okay, so thank you, James, for that response. Or sorry, Edward, thank you, Edward for that response. Okay, so Edward laid out a couple of different arguments led to try to go through all of these. Let me stay up front. I think there's a problem that all of these arguments suffer from, unfortunately. And it looks like they suffer from the problem of straw manning atheism as naturalism or materialism. And this is, this is something I see quite, quite common in discussions like this atheism as the, you know, which is, you know, like we said, the disbelief in or lack belief in God is characterized as naturalism or materialism, which, you know, is the belief that only the physical material world exists and only physical material, you know, explanations, only physical or material things count as explanations or can cause things, something like that nature. And unfortunately, that's just not true. They're two very distinct things. Now, naturalism, it's true, I mean, depending on definitions here, but broadly speaking, materialism or naturalism, usually wouldn't have God. So it would be a God free worldview. So, but unfortunately, that's you can't, well, you can, but it would be wrong to sort of a saddle atheism with all the baggage of naturalism. So atheism is just I don't believe in a God, it's not I don't believe in a God and only the natural world exists and only material things can be, you know, attributed as cause as explanations or causes or something like that. And so maybe we can talk a little bit more about that. I'm always kind of confused as to as to win. I mean, it's fine if we talk about, you know, naturalism, although I'm not a naturalist, so I wouldn't characterize myself in that way. We can talk about it, but I just wouldn't characterize atheism as being equivalent to naturalism. So argument one and in the conversation, let me know if I have any of these premises incorrectly, I was trying to write them down as you went, but argument number one, if atheism is true, then life is due to physical necessity or chance. Life is not due to physical necessity or chance. For atheism is not true. And you sort of said, if I remember, like all explanations of life, if we're trying to explain, like, how did how did life arise? How did how did we get here? How did, you know, biological physical life on this earth starts? I think you said, if you're an atheist, then you can't use a being as an explanation. I would say that's incorrect. You can't use a being which would have the attributes and properties of God as an explanation, but you you can use a being. You can you can use a designer. There's nothing wrong with that. It's, you know, again, atheism only talks about a God type of being and no, any other any other beings are totally possible if you're an atheist, as far as I'm concerned. So let's see here. And I would just say that, you know, atheism does not eliminate the possibility of design, although I don't necessarily think that there was a designer. I honestly, I would probably inductively sort of say that it's most reasonable to believe that life arose due to some, you know, you know, physical sort of interaction that, you know, we aren't aware of yet. A lot of scientists are doing a lot of work on that. And I'm not a scientist. And I definitely don't know all there is to know about that. I'm also more philosophically interested than I am scientifically. So it's it's really easy for for me to get in the weeds on that. But I I don't see any any evidence of design as far as the origin of life goes. The next one was about objective morality, objective moral values. And your argument was atheism is true. There are no objective moral values. And you think there are. And so atheism is not true. Now, me personally, I I'm sort of. I'm not. I wouldn't say that I. Believe that morality is objective. I'm not super, super confident on it. I'm doing a lot of thinking on it lately. But but I'm it as I currently said, I'm not someone who believes in objective morality. So someone like me could just say, you know, I disagree with premise to that there are no objective moral values. And we can discuss that. But more importantly, I would want to say. It's not atheism or. Well, you can be an atheist and believe in objective moral values. Most most philosophers, I believe are atheists and they're also mostly moral realists. And so like, you know, maybe you would make the argument that you're if you're a naturalistic atheist, then you can't have objective moral values. But there's nothing wrong with there are lots of different philosophical positions you can take on objective moral values. Maybe your Platonist and you, you know, attribute objective moral values to abstract platonic objects and they're instantiated that way. You could be an atheist and do that as far as as far as I'm concerned. So no, no, no problems. There are no incompatibility there. Argument three was of atheism. Then there's no free will. And you said you freely chose to do this debate. So atheism is not true. Free will, I take a bit of a more stronger stance on. I actually don't believe in libertarian free will, usually characterized as the ability to do otherwise. So I would just disagree with you that you freely chose in that sense to do this debate. But, you know, I wouldn't necessarily agree that, you know, again, the sort of characterizing atheism as naturalism, you could probably be an atheist and still, you know, find a way to have free will. But I personally don't believe in it. So maybe we can discuss that. Sorry, if you can hear my dog barking right now. Argument four is if atheism is true, then we don't use reason. Would we definitely disagree with that? Don't see any reason why we can't use reason as an atheist. Maybe we can discuss that. That kind of these last two and then atheism is true, then there are no intentional states. These these last two, I confess, I kind of see more as like, and, you know, we can discuss them, but I kind of see those more as just kind of like blanket statements, like, you know, you can't use reason or have intentional states on on atheism. I just want to say why. I mean, maybe again, maybe maybe it's naturalism you're talking about, but just on atheism in general, I don't see anything and, you know, any incapacity with being an atheist and having those two things. So maybe we can talk about that now. You've got it. Thanks so much, gentlemen. We will now be moving into the open discussion format. So. The timer is set. Maybe go about a half hour roughly, and then we'll go into Q&A. So the floor is all yours. Thanks, guys. Cool. OK, so Edward, I also wanted to I didn't get a chance to say this in my rebuttal. I wanted to just clarify. I think you sort of. During your rebuttal. Describe me as somebody who was just espousing a sort of lack theism position. And again, you know, it depends on what definition of God we're sort of talking about. But that I would actually with regard to the Christian God, I would I would I would say that I disbelieve in the Christian God. So it's not just that I lack belief. I would sort of take a week or sort of lack theism stance on a general sort of vague deistic God. But. The although if I had to bet on it, I bet it I bet that God doesn't exist, even a deistic one. But the Christian one in particular I would I have a stronger stance on. I'd say I actively disbelieve in that one. So just wanted to clarify that if you wanted to ask about that or talk about any of the other arguments. I'm cool as whatever. Sure. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, great. So I feel like you. You know, you try to take away the logical implications which follow from the atheistic position. Now you said that you know, and I watch it with what we I guess we need them. I heard you say that before that when I make this argument that I'm talking about materialism or naturalism. And in reality, that's not what I'm doing. What I'm doing is I'm basically presupposing that atheism is true. Right. Okay. You don't want to believe there's a God. Okay, great. Let's go ahead and look at that. Let's take that to the logical conclusion. Right. So. Well, I would just I would just remind you that it's not that I don't want to believe in God. It's that I just don't see any rational justification for believing in one. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I said that. Whatever your position is. Right. You have a lack of belief in God. So my point is their implications which follow from that. Now, before I even move on past that. Because I don't think I can go any further until until I point out something that you said, I'm sorry. You know, I mean, I think there's a difference in being an atheist. Well, I'm sorry. But I think atheism and atheism. You could. You could still believe in a being that a being brought life. Right. Or a designer. But I feel like that totally changes the argument because let's just say that there's an alien. And I think I've heard this before at an alien. You know, came to planet or from planet life on earth. Right. that label that as a God, right? That's a deity. That's the creator of life. So from a definitional standpoint, that's a God, right? So atheism can't, you know, that's an incoherent argument. I see what you're saying, you're right. It's important that we're clear on definitions here. So if you, as you just did, I mean, if you described God as the being who first originated and created life on planet Earth, if that's your definition of God, then, you know, and I guess by that definition, an alien who came to Earth and sort of created life as part of like a, you know, extraterrestrial science project or something would be described as God. But so definitions matter. When I'm thinking about God, I'm thinking about more the, you know, sort of classical philosophical definition of God, which would be something like an all-powerful, all-knowing being sometimes characterized as all good. And so, I mean, depends on the definition. So if that's your definition of God or it's the Christian God, then under that definition, if an alien comes and, you know, creates life on planet Earth, as long as that alien is not all-knowing, is not all-powerful and is not all-good, then it's not God and that seems to be totally compatible with atheism to me. Okay, so, you know, and not to, you know, to just keep at this position that we're at right now and, you know, for argument's sake, but I do want to say that the definition of atheism that I hear constantly from atheists is that it's a lack of belief in God or God's. So that includes all God. It's not just the Christian God or classical definition of God or whatever. It's just any God. If we're talking about Thor, if we're talking about Zeus, it doesn't matter who we're talking about. If we're talking about aliens, all of those are excluded. And that's what I said in my opening. I said that all of those are off the table. All beings are off the table, because that includes, when you say God or God, that includes, you know, that's exhausted. That includes any being that could be considered a God. Do you not agree with that? I mean, yeah, to an extent, but I mean, it just depends how far you want to take that really. Like if you want to, you know, if you want to define God as any being, let's say you want to define God as just any being. Like God is any, if something is a being, then I'm gonna call that God. That's the definition of God as just any being. Well, then I wouldn't consider myself an atheist because I believe in you. So it just depends on the definition you want to use. Maybe we can stick with your particular definition of the God that you actually believe in as a theist. And then, you know, that way we can sort of... No, no, no, no, I don't want to do that because, you know, and it's not just for this debate sake, but for anyone's listening, because no, I'm not gonna just say we're talking about the Christian and God. No, we're talking about any God. And what you just did there is an equivocation of fallacy because it's not just any being. We're not just talking about any being. We're talking about someone who actually is the cause of biological life on earth, right? So that's God, period. Like no matter how you want to parse that up or, you know, change the definition or whatever, that's considered God, regardless of how we want to play with the words. So you're saying just so I'm, I'm sorry, just really quick, I just want to clarify. So are you saying that you define God as any being that creates life on planet earth? Is it just life on planet earth or is it life anywhere? Well, you know, every definition has a context, right? So in this context, we're talking about earth. Are we not talking about, you know, another planet that might have life on it? We're just talking about earth right now. We're talking about biological life on earth. So am I correct in saying that if, like say it was the case that an alien, you know, a three legged two-headed alien came down to earth and created life as part of a science project that it was supposed to do for its home planet or something. It's not, you know, it's three legs, two heads. It's not all knowing, it's not all powerful. It's not all good. You would still say that that being was God. Is that right? No, it's not about what I would say. There are people that would say that. There are people that would say that that's God, right? Because that's the three legs. So I think we can move on. I think that that's pretty clear. I think that's pretty clear. Okay, well, I'm just, I was trying to get clear on how you're defining God. And so, I mean, yeah, I digress. I mean, we can move past this. It doesn't really matter. I don't, I mean, personally, as I said, I don't, I'm not really inclined to think of that it's more probable than not that a being created life on earth anyway, no matter, you know, what kind of being it is. Okay. Well, I don't want to give you that loophole. I don't want to give you that loophole because the rest of my arguments build upon this first premise here. Yeah, well, is there a particular argument that you'd like to discuss? Well, I wrote it down. I wrote down some notes from what you said. So that was really the first one about the, you know, that you could include a designer in there. So I want, you know, and also I wanted to, now I'm going to go back to the other point that I was talking about, where you wanted to say that we're talking about naturalism or materialism. So that's not true, right? Now, if the logical implications lead to naturalism, well, if the logical implications lead to materialism, that's a different story. But I'm not just saying, okay, the atheistic position is materialism or that it's naturalism. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, okay, let's eliminate design, let's eliminate this being, and now let's look at what's remaining. And what does that lead to? If it leads to, if the conclusion is that it leads to materialism, then it is what it is. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's, I appreciate you clarifying that point. And I totally grant that, yeah, that's great. I mean, if there's a, yeah, that's totally fine what you're saying. I just assumed maybe you were equating atheism and naturalism, because I don't remember really hearing an argument for like how you concluded that materialism is a rational sort of outcome of atheism. So is there, do you have an argument for that? Like is there a particular reason you think that if God doesn't exist, then the only, you know, that materialism is true? Okay, so what the argument is saying is that the atheistic position eliminates design from the table, right? So now I'm saying that there's only three options remaining. I would still like, okay, I mean, we can continue for it as long as it's clear that I'm kind of, again, I'm kind of, that's kind of problematic for me. Like, you know, as my understanding is just God is like an all-powerful and knowing being. So if a being isn't that, then I mean, in particularly the Christian God, like I said, like I think the Christian God doesn't exist. So I wouldn't necessarily say that you can't, you know, if God doesn't exist, then no being could have possibly done X. Like I don't see, I don't see an argument there, but we can continue on. It sounds like we're going back. It sounds like, yeah, it sounds like you're going back to, excuse me, it sounds like you're going back to that first point about, you know, that on atheism, you could still have a designer, you could still have a demigod or whatever. But let me ask it this way. Can you just answer this real quick? So let me try to put it in like an argument form if I said like an all-knowing, all-powerful being did not do X, therefore no other possible being did X. Like whatever it is, is that, that doesn't strike me as reasonable. Would you agree with that or disagree with that? Well, you said a being, right? So if, because it sounds like you're saying if a being that you would characterize as God didn't do it, then no possible being could have done it. And that just, that seems like a non sequitur to me. Well, okay, you know, we're still stuck on this definition. So people- Yeah, we can move past it if you like. So if we look at history, if we look at, you know, the history of polytheism and all of the different gods that people have had over, you know, over the time of us being on this planet, people worship trees and all sorts of things, right? They worship different deities, the sun, the moon. So if there's an alien who created life, they would worship that alien. I mean, if it's another being that has, that brought biological life on this planet, then people would worship that being as a deity. That's just what it is. Now, I don't wanna say why you don't wanna let that point go. It's kind of more just like a definitional think, I think, a definitional sort of hiccup, but we can move past it. Can I ask you about your second argument? If atheism is true, then there are no objective moral values, but you think that there are, and so atheism is not true. I wanted to ask you about that. So you're a Christian, correct? Yes, I am. Okay, cool. So I wanted to kind of maybe hear your response to a couple of things. So with regard to morality, as I sort of outlined, I'm not convinced that there are, that morality is objective necessarily. Again, I'm not a materialist, but I'm just kind of unconvinced of, I don't disbelieve, but I just not convinced that morality is objective at this point. I could, that's not incompatible with atheism. There are many atheists who are more realists, and so it's compatible. I'm just not there at this point in my reasoning. But I also wanted to let you know that as a former Christian and someone who has read the Bible for many years, 20 plus years, and someone who's familiar with it and the way God is characterized in it, I, let's say tomorrow, I become convinced that morality is objective. And I feel inclined to think that my intuitions about morality sort of are referenced to something objective in reality. The problem is I still wouldn't believe, in particular, in the Christian God, because when I read the Bible, it seems like God is characterized as doing things that are just so obviously and intuitively immoral to me, such as commanding the genocide of certain people, or how he says to treat women or children, or just lots of stuff like that. So even if I bought objective moral values, I think I would still be just as firm and disbelieving in the Christian God for that reason. Okay, so there's a lot I actually wanna touch on regarding this. Now, I'm not gonna leave, I'm not gonna ignore what you just said, but I just wanted to just touch really quickly on what you said in your rebuttal. Sure. About objective morality. You said that someone could be an atheist, and this sort of goes back to your first objection about there could be, you could be an atheist including the being that created life, which I totally don't agree with. So you said that you could be an atheist and it also be a, I forget which word you use, but a plateness. Yeah, a plateness. Where there's just abstract, so how does that work? So there's just abstract moral values? Yeah, on platenism, there would be sort of abstract objects that would instantiate the objective moral values. Okay, so what would ground those values? Okay, so what would ground those values? So for instance, if we're talking about- That would be like asking, what grounds God? No, no, no, we're talking about morality right now. So- Right. So what would ground a value at such as justice, right? Yeah, so let's say like- Hold on a second, let me just finish. So usually when we think of justice, right? We're thinking of in terms of a person, right? We're thinking of justice in terms of people, persons. Now, if there's no, if there are no persons, then justice wouldn't really make much sense, right? Or am I off with that? I agree that we can think of people performing certain actions that we would characterize as just, but I don't see why that necessitates that the grounding of justice be a person. Just because people exhibit justice, I don't see why it follows from that, that the grounding has to be a person who also exhibits justice. Okay, so- Why is that? Okay, so explain that to me. Explain how justice, explain justice, draw me a picture of that. Draw me a picture of justice, absent person. So like if I were taking a plateness position, I would just say there is an abstract object in a abstract platonic realm and that instantiates moral truths like it's good to be just or something to that effect. Yeah, but what would that be? What would be, like I think that outside of persons it loses its definition. Like what is just out of persons? What is just, it sounds incoherent. What does, can you show me like a contradiction there? Well, what I'm saying is it's not conceptual at all because outside of persons, there's no such thing as justice. What is that, a justice? What is that outside of a person? That's nonsensical to me. I mean, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm just saying, okay, show me what that looks like outside of a person. Just an object of justice. What do you mean what it looks like? It loses its value. So in other words, let's just say that there's no physical reality whatsoever. I mean, I would just say like an response to that. Like I feel similarly how you feel about justice and how you're talking about that. Like I feel similarly about the concept of God. Like you think God is a mind outside of space and time and I'm just like, what does that look like? If I asked you, what does that look like? I mean, it's really hard to describe. Like it's really mysterious and I just, like it'd be, I don't know if you can necessarily characterize that. So I mean, your sort of contention that you're lobbing at that, I would just say like, first of all, I still don't see a reason why just because people exhibit justice that if justice is objectively a good thing that I don't see why the grounding necessarily needs to be a person who can also exhibit it. That seems like a non sequitur to me. But further, you're saying, well, it just doesn't make any sense when I think about it. The idea of like a disembodied mind doesn't really make sense when I think about that either. Well, I'm not sure what that looks like. I feel like that's real. You know, like, so that's not the subject at the moment. The subject of the moment is objective morality and you brought up, you know. Right, the overall topic is not reasonable. There being a possibility of objective values being abstract objects that are not grounded in persons. Right, so why can't I? And I feel like that's being coherent. Why? Okay, so let's stick to this topic, right? Okay. So, I mean, unless you want to concede the point and we can move on. But I just don't. Why isn't it clear? You're saying that these more values can exist without persons. So I just want you to show me that coherently. I do. Explain that to me, please. So I presented a idea that, you know, on a, on a Platonistic view, there's no need for an all, you know, powerful being to instantiate the moral truth that justice is good. The truth that justice is good can be instantiated by a abstract platonic object. And I haven't heard any response from you, you know, to show any contradiction with that or make me think why that's logically impossible. Okay. It's like you're just expressing your idea, which is totally fine. No, I said that outside of persons, there's no such thing as justice. Why? That's what I said. There's no such thing as justice. What's the definition of justice? So are we talking about what justice is or what grounds it? Those are two different things. No, we're talking about what is it? What's the ontology of justice? What is it? Is justice a person? No, I'm saying justice as in that value, right? What is it? What are we talking about here? Like it's grounded in person. Why is it grounded in person? I'm not, see, and I think you might be confusing what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's ground. I'm not even like, it would be begging a question for me to say it's grounded in God at this point, right? I'm just saying, I'm just making an argument against your claim about platonists for objecting more values. I'm saying that it has to be grounded in persons. We could be talking about human person. I'm just saying that it can't just be an abstract object that's just not grounded at all. So you're saying that... It's incoherent, is my point. So you're saying that if the moral truth that justice is good, you're saying that if that's not grounded in a person, then it can't exist. Yes. Okay, can you give me an argument for that to think that that's true? Well, that's actually, definitionally, when we talk about justice, we're talking about things that happen to persons. That's what we're talking about. It's what happens to persons, but it's not necessarily grounded in a person. And I like would be very surprised if you could find me any dictionary definition that describes justice as that which can only be grounded in a person or a being. That's not the definition. It talks about how we use justice. But again, so my whole argument here is just like, justice is an attribute that we, as persons we can perform actions that we define as just or unjust. Totally get it. But that, I'd see no reason to think that just because we can perform actions that we define as just or unjust, that that means that necessarily justice has to be grounded in a person just because it can be performed by persons. Okay, okay. So that wasn't your argument. No argument. No, I'm asking you for an argument for that, gentlemen. Hold on for a second. That wasn't your argument. Your argument was that moral values can just exist abstractly. You know, just that's what Platonism is. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm not a Platonist, but I see no logical problem with that. No, but you said that that's a possibility. And I'm telling you that is incoherent because you're saying that justice can exist as an abstract object. So that means that it exists outside of person. And I'm saying that's incoherent. Right. And I'm just, I mean, at this point, I can only respond by saying that I just, that's, you keep asserting that and that's fine. But I've heard assertions that to the contrary, not arguments to the contrary. No. Which is fine. Maybe we can move on to another. I've demonstrated that. I've demonstrated it by saying that outside of persons, there's no such thing as justice. Right. That's an assertion. That's not an argument. That's an assertion, not an argument. Can you give maybe a premise, premise conclusion for that argument? All right, let's pull up the definition because I'm arguing from a definition standpoint. That's what we're talking about. That's what justice is. So from definitionally, it's incoherent. Well, there were lots of, I mean, we can, we're probably not gonna- That's a demonstration right there. That's a demonstration. What do you want, empirical proof? You don't, I don't need to give you empirical proof for this. I don't think we're gonna, you know, necessarily come to an agreement on this today. With the last few minutes, do you wanna talk about one of the other arguments you had a few? Well, hold on. You said, you actually mentioned something else about objective morality. So you said that- It's the last couple of points. And then we've got a- Okay. So what I'll do is I'll give Edward, I wanna give you a shot to explain whatever it is you were going to explain right now. And then I do wanna wrap up though with what Braden's response is, just because we had started with you, Edward, and so we'll give the last word to Braden before Q and A. Okay. So you said that objective morality, you don't feel like it exists, right? I'm unconvinced that it exists. Yeah, I'm convinced that it exists. Now, this, you know, that point that you just made, that you don't think that objective morality exists, I think is demonstrates the irrationality of the position because there are certain things that are objectively wrong, right? It's wrong to rape a baby. Like, so for someone to say, well, that's not objectively wrong is really, you know, like we believe that more so than many other things. Like even like you should believe that even more than atheism. The fact that it's wrong, because that's intuitive. That's just on a level, you know, that's on a deep intuition level that is wrong to murder a baby, right? It's wrong to do certain things. Now for you to say, well, that's not an objective fact. How could that not be unreasonable? You know, I feel like atheists wanna hold onto atheism so much that, you know, they talk like this, that, oh, there's no such thing as objective morality. So, but we don't walk that out. We don't walk that out in our everyday life because if someone does something wrong to you, then, oh, that was wrong. Or, you know, you even try to say that the God of the Bible is evil. You know, and I know you kind of parsed words with that a little bit. You didn't wanna come right out and say it because you knew I was gonna call you out on it. But that's basically where you were getting at, that, oh, there are some objectively wrong things that were done in the Bible. But if there's no objective morality, then that's obviously not true. So I really don't think that the atheists can walk out their position in reality, at least not consistently. Go ahead. Okay, cool. Yeah, so just a sort of final response to that and maybe to close out this portion. So critiquing the idea that, or the, you know, your critique of my lack of belief in objective moral values, that's my position, not the entire atheist position. As I've stated previously, numerous times at this point, atheism is not incompatible with moral realism. It's totally compatible. There, I still see no, you know, arguments that there's anything wrong with being an atheist and a moral realist. So many atheists have no problem with objective moral values. It's just me in particular, I don't. And I never said that I disbelieve in them. I just, I'm not convinced that morality is objective at this point. And upon further thinking that viewpoint could change. And yeah, with, you know, again, we kind of heard just another assertion. You know, you said that, you know, some atheists don't want to believe in objective moral values, but raping a baby is just obviously wrong. I would definitely say that that is wrong, for sure, is that objectively wrong in a universal sense and a philosophical sense. I'm not sure. I still have a lot of thinking to do on that topic. But I would definitely say that I would, I personally characterize that as wrong. I would prefer that babies not be treated that way. But, and you said it's just intuitive. You just intuitively know. And with the same intuitive feeling, maybe you can understand why I would also feel that it's intuitively wrong that God commanded the Israelites to perform acts of genocide on other groups of people. I would say that it's objectively wrong that God commands that, you know, women are supposed to marry men who rape them. And the West is on the topic of atheism. Lots of things. And I'll kind of close it out by saying, you said that, but if there's no, if those things aren't objectively wrong, that's not what I was saying that they're objectively wrong. I can still say that they're preferentially wrong at this point. So it wouldn't be accurate to characterize me as saying that they're objective. But I do think that those are wrong. And I feel that with the same intuition that you feel about certain moral facts. So, but just to kind of close it out, I still, we kind of talked around some things. I heard a lot of assertive responses, but the arguments that Edward outlined, I still view those as problematic and not sound arguments to view atheism as unreasonable. So I'll cut it there. You got it. Thanks so much, Brayden. And thanks so much, Edward. We'll now jump into the Q&A. A special hello to Vosh in the live chat. As mentioned, folks, earlier in the debate, Sargon and Vosh will be on tomorrow. It's going to be an epic one, a lot of fun. So I am honestly, there are a few things. It almost, it's like, I'm just like pumped thinking about it. So it's honestly, it's going to be a great time. I've never met Sargon, but I think a lot of you probably, certainly most of you have remember having Vosh on, who just really friendly guys. So I think it'll be a lot of fun. And so with that, we will jump into the Q&A. So thanks so much for all of your questions, folks. First up, Dwayne Burke. Thanks for your question. Always Tom Jumps chair. They love Tom Jumps chair. They say, big shout out to D, to T Jumps chair. Very nice, Dwayne Burke. He does have a terrific clamshell chair. He also says, for sale, comfy chair comes with one atheist, Tom Jumps. Very nice, yes. It is a terrific chair. Oh, Tom, let's see. Brian Stevens, thanks for your super chat. He said, what is the ultimate nature of reality that allows, okay, I get it. He's, I'll let you guys guess who he's pretending to be. He says, what is the ultimate nature of reality that allows for the intelligibility of facts? If you've watched the last couple of weeks, this person's been on. It's Darth Dawkins. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like him, that makes sense. Now our good friend, Duncan Atheism, as he prefers to go by. Interesting. Was he on the channel? Yes, he's, he just made his debut a couple of weeks ago. That was sweet. I'll have to go back and watch that, I miss that. He's always a surprise with him. He keeps you on your toes. And stupid horror energy as she likes to be called. Thanks for your super chat, Ysikko. She says, the first proteins were only three amino acids long. I think that's for you, Edward. Was that a question? No, so for super chats, people sometimes will make comments as well. As long as we give the debater a chance to respond, we let it roll. Okay, so what's, I don't understand. So she says the first protein was three amino acids long. Okay. To be honest, I'm not sure. Sometimes the questions, I think what it is, is as the moderator, I'm kind of sitting on idle. So like I'm not debating, but the debaters oftentimes get the questions better than I can because they're like in debate mode. You know what I mean? Their brain is like kicked. It's like, it's warmed up and going. And so they, so I was hoping one of you would understand it. I don't know. But thanks for that, Sarah. Sidger Fredo, we'll come back to it. She'll probably clarify in the live chat. Sidger Fredo, thank you for your super chat question. He says, ED, oh, for, okay. So for Edward, what evidence is there that atheism? That atheism is not grounded in God. Is that a joke? It's not grounded in God. It's an Ohio, I wonder if Sidger Fredo is trolling us. But I don't know. So we'll let Sidger Fredo, if he's out there, we'll clarify. But so thanks for that. Well, carnivorous, let's see, let's see. Well, we're almost there. I forgot Brian Stevens and we had just a couple of new ones just come in. So thanks for, let's see. Snake was right. Thanks for your super chat. He said, can God break the laws of logic? If not, then he can define, then he can't define morality, logic and morals exist independent of him. Can you repeat that? Is that for me or? It's definitely for you. He said, can God break the laws of logic? If not, then he can't define morality or logic and thus morals exist independently of him. Well, that sounds like a question like, can God create a rock that's heavy enough where he can't lift it? It sounds like a nonsensical question, incoherent. Maybe we could characterize it a different way, Edward. For example, if God, could God decide that rape is wrong tomorrow? Could he just make that okay tomorrow? Well, let me finish my answer. So what I was gonna say was, from a theistic point of view, we look at the laws of logic as existing in God's mind. So they're consistent with his nature. So to say that he can go against that is nonsensical. Gotcha. If there's clarification, Snake, I'll keep an eye on the live chat in case I had misunderstood it. And stupid whore energy strikes again. She says, quantum phenomena disprove the principle of causality like the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Totally in over my head. Is that, Edward, I'm out of my depth with that as well. I think that's for Edward. I'm sorry, say it one more time. So she had said that quantum phenomena disprove the principle of causality like the Stern-Gerlach experiment. I think she's saying that that experiment... Disprove the principle of causality? Yeah. I think she means like the law, like that it has like a law like essence to it. And that I think what she's saying is that like this experiment showed that it may not hold in every instance. Well, I would like to see some type of evidence that disproves a law of causality. I would surely like to see that. This is new to me. Gotcha. Let's see. Next up, thanks so much for your super chat, Vosh. She said, nothing much to say. Just enjoy the channel. Keep up the good work. Thanks Vosh. That means a lot. I can attest folks. I don't know if you've, if you've gotten to know Vosh, I gotta tell you like very easy going, just mellow guy. He's never let it get to his head. Thanks Vosh. If you guys, if you see, you'll understand why people love Vosh is that he is very personable. And so thanks for your kind words, Vosh. It really means a lot. And thanks for your support of the channel. And let's see. Stupid horror energy. Thanks for your other questions. She said, let me restate it. The first proteins were small. So you'll remember that first one was that they're first the three amino acids. And then she says, the first proteins were small and simple. So they were probable to evolve. So I think she's, were one of your arguments, do I remember right, were any of them about abiogenesis? No, I did talk about, I did talk about amino acids and protein. Okay. That must be it. Is she's, I think she's saying like, hey, these were, you know, pretty simple like it's not too big of a step to get there from previously not having had them. Well, first of all, where did the information come to, for them to form in that way, or would there be three amino acids? So it takes information even for the sequence of amino acids. So, you're presupposing that information. And then not only that, you're big in a question that, they just came about from nothing, right? Or without a divine mind or a design behind it. So you can't just jump, you know, you just can't jump to the three amino acids, right? You just can't just jump to the protein. Like something has to start the process. You got it. Thanks so much. Also, I'm just noticing poor Braden, not getting a lot of action during the Q and A. Well, I don't worry, I'm sure one's coming. Na slash na slash na, thanks so much for your super chat. They said, just want to hear you say stupid whore energy, hail Satan. Well, thanks so much for that support and you've heard me say it. So let's see. Next up, thanks for your super chat from Snake was right. Okay, Snake clarified. Thanks, Snake. He said, no, God is limited by certain things outside of himself. And so I think what he was saying is that, if God can't break laws of logic, like if these laws are something that not even God can break, then he was saying, then God is limited by certain things outside of him. In which case, I think he's getting at, he's like alluding to the idea that this would threaten God's omnipotence. Like if God is bound by the laws of logic, he can't do the impossible. Like he couldn't make a squared circle. And so he's not actually omnipotent. Yeah, and I thought I addressed it pretty good, but I'll just build on what I said. So from a theistic point of view, at least some versions of theism, we suppose that the laws of logic exist in the mind of God. So in other words, that's part of his nature. So in the same way that I'm true to my nature, like I do things that humans do, I eat like that's part of my nature. So being true to God, being true to who he is, you know, being true to the laws of logic. Does that make sense? Gotcha, thanks so much. And Philip, oh gosh, Philip, I don't know if I wrote this down. He told me how to pronounce his name right. And then I, okay, but I think I might be able to remember. Philip, okay, Philip, I'm seriously sorry. I can't remember. But I do know how to pronounce your first name. Let me know if I get that wrong. Thanks for your question and super chat, Philip. He said for Edward, what difference to morality does it make if God exists? Isn't anything that God commands just his opinion? How are we obligated to do what he says? Well, there's a lot in that comment and in that statement or in that question, I would say that if there's no God, then morality is just a human convention. It's something that we made up, right? It's something that's subjective. We can all decide, it's relative. We can all decide how we feel about a certain situation, right? So that's, I think that answers the first question. What was the second part of the question? Yeah, let's see. About following God's laws. You bet. It was something about following God's laws. They said, isn't anything that God commands just his opinion? How are we obligated to do what he says? I think he's saying like, if it is just God's opinion, like why are we obligated? Why are we beholden to these opinions? Well, again, I mean, I think that's big in a question that it's just God's opinion and it's not objectively true. So, in order to put that forward, you would have to show that it's just his opinion, but I don't accept that. I don't accept that it's just God's opinion. Any chance I get chime in here, James, just real quick? Yes. Cool. So, kind of what I take Philip to sort of be suggesting and I kind of agree would be problematic is using God to sort of ground objective moral values if you think they exist. And so, what I take him to be getting at is sort of something akin to the Youth Afro Dilemma, where you can ask if, whether or not God commands, so like we mentioned rape earlier, does God command that you not rape because it's bad or is it bad because God commanded it? And so, it sounded like earlier, Edward wanted to sort of suggest that these objective moral truths are somehow grounded in God's nature. God's nature is such that it makes rape bad, but the problem is you can apply the dilemma you can just rephrase it and apply it in the same way and say, okay, is God's nature such that rape is not to be done because it's bad or is rape bad because it's part of God's nature that it's not to be done. And so, on one hand, if it's just part of God's nature, but there's no real reason beyond that, then it seems just sort of arbitrary, like if God's nature had been different and God's nature had been such that rape was something you should do, then it would just be good no matter what and there's no real reason behind it. And if, on the other hand, if it's bad independent of God's nature, then that just leaves God with nothing to do. So, that'd be kind of how I see the problem. You got it. Thanks so much. Let's see here. Also, thanks for your question from Dwayne Burke. So, wait, one sec. Sorry, Dwayne. I did have the carnivorous ape had theirs first. They said, for Ed, if morality is objectively wrong and if it is objectively wrong to eat a baby, then why do lions do it? You might have yourself on mute. Let me check. No, I'm not on mute. So, when we talk about morality, we're talking about, we're really talking about humans. We're not talking about animals. And I'm not a biologist in terms of knowing the consciousness of animals and things like that. But when we talk about morality, we're talking about creatures that have free will, creatures that freely choose to do this or that and not something that's driven by instinct, where it's just survival. We think these things through. I mean, at least most people don't go and eat their babies, at least same people. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Let's see, we do have, so that was carnivorous ape. Then, Brian Stevens, thanks for your question. He said, when the Israelites took prisoners of war for wives, was this objectively moral? It's for you, I think, Edward. Can you repeat it again? He said, when the Israelites took captives, took prisoners of war for wives, was this objectively moral? Well, that's really a loaded question because they didn't just take prisoners, they didn't just take wives from the prisoners. Like, there was a period in between where, a period when they had the woman had a chance to break from her family. He had a chance to, you know, clean herself up. I think she's supposed to cut her hair. And the man had to be sure that he wanted to marry her. It wasn't like he's just taking her. We don't know all of the details. Maybe there was a communication between the man and the woman and they came to some type of agreement. I don't know, the text is silent on that. So it's really loaded and it really is an argument from silence in a sense where you're assuming a lot of information that's not there. Gosh, can I ask a question, James? Let's see, just real quick one. If it's the shortest question that ever was uttered, yes, just because we're pushing it on time. You got it. Edward, do you think that those passages in the Bible would be more moral if there was a verse that said, by the way, be sure to ask the women for their consent and make sure that they consent to the relationship before you marry them. Do you think the Bible would be better if there was a verse and they're stipulating that? Well, it adds a lot of things in there where it talks about the break from her former life. But I mean, it didn't get into the details about that. I mean, I'm sure, like the more details the text has the better so we can better understand it and we can better come to conclusions. But I mean, I think it's Felicia's reasoning to just jump to conclusion when the text is silent. Gotcha. Thanks so much for your question. Calvin Gonzales, we appreciate it. They said, does Earl think all atheists are going to hell? Who's the person who said that? Calvin Gonzales. Calvin Gonzales. Well, the Bible says that that we've got all the things are possible. I know that there's a lot of atheists that convert. I think I just saw it in the news really recently. There's a 85 year old atheist who just converted to atheism. So I'll leave those decisions up to God who he's going to save and who he's not going to save. You know, I just do what he tells me to do. Gotcha. Also, we have, if Vosh is still here, I don't know if he is, but I think he might have, maybe he's gone Betty by, I don't know. But as I say, we have Vosh and Nathan Thompson in the live chat at the same time. That would be a fun discussion. Who knows, you never know. I just, get a little Nathan Thompson, but anyway. Okay, both fun guys. Thanks for your question also from Dwayne Burke. Question for Brayden. There you go, Brayden, here we go. Is it, is it reasonable to lack belief based on a lack of evidence when mankind isn't lacking in evidence as man has not accessed all evidence? I think they maybe mean like the all potential evidence. Right, that there could be evidence out there. Yeah, I mean, I would just say, yes, I think it's reasonable because I don't have the ability, nor do I think anyone else does to perceive all evidence at once. I'm certainly incapable of doing that. So I have to just acknowledge that I'm a fallible human being. There could be, and I've readily acknowledged there could be evidence out there that I haven't seen that upon review I could go, oh, well, that does it. That's the evidence I needed. Now it's, now I think it's more reasonable to be a theist and atheists would be unreasonable. So it's certainly possible, but I have to just go, and I try to look into that evidence all the time, but I just, as much as possible, but I just have to go on my limited resources and do the best I can with what I have. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate that. And last one we've, all right. Translator Carmenum, sorry, I forgot. Okay, I missed this. Thanks for your super chat. They said, I define quote unquote God in its broadest useful sense as quote, any conscious and immortal being with absolute dominion over at least some aspects of nature. Interesting. And I'm trying to think of who that might be for, if it's for anyone in particular. This kind of makes me think of the inspiring philosophy debate on Saturday. Let's see, so thank you for that. Well, we talked about that a lot, about the definition of God. So I think that might be to Brandon, or Braden, I'm sorry. Yeah, take that, Braden. In its broadest useful sense. Okay, I mean, you're more than welcome to define God however you want. If you define God as bananas, then I'd be a theist because I believe that bananas exist. Gotcha, thanks so much. And appreciate, let's see here, get through maybe a couple more. Travis Lee, thanks for your question. He said, do you agree with reformed epistemology or that God is a properly basic belief? I think that, I thought it was for, he didn't say, but I thought it was for, can't be for Braden, because he's just not a theist. So it must be Edward, do you happen to adhere to that view, not namely that God's a properly basic belief? Is that, did they say that that's a reformed position? A reformed epistemology? It's from Elvin Planning, and William and Craig uses it in his debates, but it originated from planning, like I think it was in the 80s, if I remember right. Well, I've heard, someone has asked me this before, and what I say is that I don't subscribe to that, to God as being a properly basic belief. But I will say that the evidentialist can't make an argument if I were to have that position. Like there would be no way that they could refute that without refuting their own position. So, I don't see anything wrong with it. I just don't subscribe to that. Gotcha. Thanks so much. We do have a couple more questions that just came in. Jay Shah, I appreciate your question. He said, if it's just your preference, then who are you to tell someone they ought not rape? If it's not objective, why should people listen to you? I think that they're challenging you, Brayden. Yeah, so I would just say that when communicating with somebody else who doesn't necessarily share your views on what is and is not moral and ethical, it is helpful to sort of make arguments for your position based on a goal. So, I would vaguely, and trying to keep this brief, I would sort of broadly adhere to the idea that when I discuss morality and what is moral and immoral, I'm thinking in terms of the kind of the wellbeing idea of promoting wellbeing among a conscious life and diminishing suffering among conscious life. And so, I would make an argument that the thing I was promoting as moral was something that improved wellbeing among conscious life where I was saying that rape was immoral, for example. With respect to causing suffering or diminishing wellbeing, I could make arguments as to why I think that it leads to those effects. And if they happen to share that goal, if we find some common ground, then I can potentially persuade them if they're not already that that is immoral with respect to the goal of diminishing suffering and promoting wellbeing. At a certain point, if they just don't wanna hear it, it's just, they just don't agree. And that's that. I mean, at a certain point, there's nothing really you can do. There's only so much reasoning you can do. But I would still say that potentially the same problem exists for God if it's just God's preference or if it's just His nature arbitrarily and there's no real reason why certain things are right or wrong. I mean, to what extent are they actually, can they say to be objective? Got you, thanks so much. We've only got time for two more questions. So we'll do this really quick. Brayden, stupid horror energy, thanks for your question. She said, Brayden, were you born an atheist or did you lose your faith? Yeah, so thanks for the question. I actually, you may have missed it in my opening statement. I sort of went over this. I'll just reiterate for you briefly that I was a evangelical Christian of the non-denominational variety for 20 plus years of my life until I began looking into the philosophical arguments against God and also the philosophical problems raised with theistic arguments and essentially after a period of study, I found that I didn't have any good reasons left to be a theist and so I wasn't one. Got you, thanks so much. And next up, converse contender. Last question we can ask for Brayden, what is moral progress if there is no objective standard? What are we progressing towards? Towards opinion? Quietly. Edward likes that question. Can you repeat that for me, James? What is moral progress if there's no objective standard? That's right, so and then- Okay, I think I get it. I mean, I think it would just depend on how you define progress. Like I said, with respect to if we establish that as an example, if we didn't think that morals were universally objective in some ultimate sense, but that they were just, we're using those to refer to the goal of promoting wellbeing among conscious life and diminishing suffering among conscious life than the progress in question, we can evaluate it with respect to that goal. And yeah, so that's one possibility. Gotcha, thanks so much. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, it's always a pleasure, so fun, folks. I hope to get to see every one of you, hopefully. Just the party continues as tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern Standard, so 2 p.m. Mountain Time, my time, or 1 p.m. Pacific Time. We hope to get to see you for this epic one with Sargon and Vash. It's just the internet might explode, I'm afraid. So with that, though, I do wanna remind you, our guests tonight, Edward Earl and Braden, are linked in the description. So like I said, if you're like, hmm, I want more of that, well, you can find more of that in those links in the description. And so thanks, gentlemen, for being here. It's a pleasure to have you. Thanks for having me. Thank you, James. You betcha. Thank you, Braden. Thanks for the discussion, Edward. With that, keep sitting out with the reasonable from the unreasonable. I'll see you tomorrow night. Take care.