 Everybody, today we are debating evidence for God and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate as today we are debating whether or not there is evidence for God. It's going to be a fun one, folks. Very excited to have our two experienced guests here. This is going to be a lot of fun. Want to let you know if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we've got a lot more debates coming up. So for example, you'll see at the bottom right, Destiny versus Vosh, that's in person next month in Los Angeles. And we are pumped as well to mention that down in Austin, Texas next month, the day before Destiny and Vosh will be David Wood from Ax 17 apologetics and Matt Dillahunty. It's going to, the internet might implode. Okay, so want to let you know, folks, for our guests tonight, really excited. Both of these gentlemen, as you're listening and you're blown away, as your socks are being knocked off during this debate, want to remind you I have put their links in the description so that you can conveniently find their links and click to hear more material or content from them. Also, if you happen to have a question during the debate, feel free to shoot that question into the old live chat. If you tag me with an at modern day debate, that makes it a little bit easier for me to make sure I get every question. And then Super Chat, of course, is an option as well, in which case it'll push your question at the top of the Q and A list and it'll also give you the opportunity to make a statement toward one of the speakers that they would, of course, get to respond to. And we ask that you be your regular, friendly selves as we appreciate so much. And last thing, before we get this ball rolling, handing it over to Team Skeptic, I do want to mention, whether you be Christian, atheist, Republican, Democrat, no matter what background or walk of life you were coming from, we hope you feel welcome at this nonpartisan platform. So with that, going to hand it over to Team, but he's got a flexible optional five to 10 minutes, whatever kind of amount of time that he would like to use for his opening and then we'll kick it over to John. So thanks so much first, gentlemen. We really appreciate both of you being here with us today. Yes, glad to be here. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, it's always a pleasure to be here, James. You're amazing. So I love your work. That's really nice of you. Thank you, I appreciate that. It's gonna be a blast today. So with that Team Skeptic, I have the timer set and the floor is all yours. Yeah, so as we discussed at the beginning, I'm really holding the skeptical, agnostic, atheist view of the existence of God. I do come from a religious background, not like a religious scholarly background or anything. I was casually religious growing up as a Southern Baptist. So I was a part of some of the most fundamentalist views. I did experience some of the most fundamentalist views from not just my pastor and people that were around me of family functions and church functions, but also my direct family. Members of my direct family had held very fundamentalist views. So I held them myself for about 35 years of my life. I one day took a hard, real critical look at why I believed in the God. Why I thought there was a God. I mean, was I just believing because people told me to believe? Was I believing because I was truly scared of hell or the idea of hell? I couldn't understand why I believed and I came to the conclusion that I'm in no position to believe, nor am I in a position to not believe. I'm simply in a position to take him what's around me in modern day, my modern day life and none of that, absolutely none of that concern God. And I felt like once I stopped pushing myself towards a belief system, I felt a relief, a pressure that was off of me, a life pressure that allowed me to be more open with myself. It allowed me to be more open with my friends and my family. I believe that conscious decision to stop believing in a fairy tale was one of the best things I've ever done for my life. I believe children should believe in fairy tales. I think religion does have its purpose for someone who's susceptible to or more inclined to be influenced by a positive belief system. I think that a lot of religions do have a positive belief system that you can't knock them for what they say, love thy neighbor. That's great. Yeah, it's a great concept. I believe that. I believe that without needing to believe in God. I think that's all what I came down to I kept asking myself, do I really need to believe in God to believe to be a good person and to find a reason to be a good person? And I never could find that cause. I just always came to the same conclusion that no matter what religion said, I would be my own person. If members of my family had a problem with the gays and the whatever's, well, that's their problem. It wasn't looking back on it. I don't think my parents and my grandparents and my family members, and I'm not calling any one in particular. I'm saying I grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist family in the 70s and 80s. So, things were said. And a lot of it was derived from the fact that they were Baptist. It was a Baptist family. And in the Southern Baptist, a lot of those things are really frowned upon. And when I started thinking about who I wanted to be as a person and I said, do I wanna be a religious person that holds those beliefs or do I wanna stand on my own two feet and believe what I truly believe which is that every person is created equal no matter what they wanna do in their own free time and how they wanna find love. And I felt like there was a direct contradiction between what the concept of God really was and that's true love. Or true love to everybody regardless of religion or race or anything. Just sexual preference, regardless of all that. That's what real love would be in my opinion. So it led me away from a belief in God and I truly believe I'm a better person for it. If you can convince me with actual evidence and change my mind, then by all means, I'm here to have my mind changed. You bet, thanks so much, team. We will now switch it over to Jonathan. I have the timer set and the floor is all yours as well. Well, thanks so much, team. I look forward to our experts of engagement this evening. I'm just gonna present one argument for the Christians of God in my opening statement, specifically the Christian God in particular. Let me just start by summarizing the basic argument and then I'll flesh out in more detail. So when it comes to the origins of the gospel narratives that we find in the New Testament, there are three contending hypotheses for explaining their origin. These are, one, the gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events of the derate. Two, the gospel authors are honestly mistaken in the reporting of the events of the derate. Three, the gospel authors faithfully recorded actual events. Of course, those options could in principle be correct either individually or in combination with one another. When we discover a striking correlations between the gospel narratives and the Old Testament texts on a level that's unlikely by mere coincidence, then we have evidence against the hypothesis that the gospel authors are honestly mistaken. That is to say we have positive evidence for design either on the part of the human authors manipulating the story to the post-conformity to the Hebrew scriptures in particular the prophetic texts or on the part of God supernaturally orchestrating the history. The question then becomes what is the locus of that design? Now, the first of these hypotheses, that is that the gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events of the derate, is significantly undermined when we discover points of historical confirmation of the gospels. This gives rise to an inductive argument for treating the gospel documents as a whole as trustworthy. The numerous points of historical confirmation, the Big of Acts, where Robert builds us a picture of the pedigree of his author, Luke, who also happens to be the author of the third gospel and thus offers us additional reason to trust what he writes in this gospel. Having shown the first two of these three options to be improbable, therefore, it is possible to provide evidence for support for the third contending hypothesis, namely, that the gospel authors faithfully record actual events and the locus of the design is supernatural, divine orchestration of the events to result in convergence between events in Jesus, Jesus the Messiah's life and foreshadows written up in the Hebrew Bible. In syllogistic form, this argument can be presented as follows, premise one. The correlation between events with origin in the gospels and Hebrew scripture is either the product of human design or divine design, premise two. It is not the product of human design, but it is the product of divine design. One can, of course, make the inductive argument I just described for taking the gospels as a whole to be highly reliable. The case, however, is an even greater force when we can point to specific instances of details in the gospels that are subject to historical confirmation which also correlate with the Hebrew Bible in some way. We can model this argument probabilistically using Bayesian analysis. Now, the strength of the evidence for any proposition, I think, is best measured in terms of the ratio of two probabilities, the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis and the probability of the evidence given the false suit of the hypothesis. That ratio may be top heavy in which case e favors h, the evidence favors the hypothesis, it may be bottom heavy or neither, in which case the evidence favors neither hypothesis and we would not call it evidence for or against the hypothesis. So Bayes' theorem is basically a mathematical tool for modeling our evaluation of evidences to appropriately apportion the confidence in our conclusions to the strength of the available evidence. Now, when we divide the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis by the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis, it gives you what's referred to in probability theory as the Bayes' factor. And the Bayes' factor is a measure of the strength of the evidence and indicates how many times more likely it is that you will observe this evidence given that your hypothesis is true than if it were false. For instance, a Bayes' factor of 100 indicates that your evidence is 100 times more likely if your hypothesis is true than if it were false. Let me consider several instances where we have specific historical confirmations of details in the Gospels that given the Old Testament backdrop seem to be too striking to be coincidental. My first example is Jesus' death at the time of Passover. One historical detail that is scarcely denied is that Jesus in fact died at the time of Passover and this is a detail attested by all four Gospels and applied by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7. This is not a detail that the Gospel authors or their sources possibly misremembered. So many details in the Gospels are connected to Jesus' death being at the time of Passover. It's clear that the New Testament authors unanimously consider Jesus to be the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover Lamb. The correspondence therefore seems to be too neat to be the result of coincidence. Christ's execution by the Romans of the time of Passover is a remarkable coincidence that would have been difficult for an impostor to engineer. Now, of course, one caveat to consider is that there are also other days throughout the year such as the day of Atonement to which we might attach some special significance of Jesus' death had landed on those days. I will therefore assign a conservative base factor of 50 for this correspondence. Remember, this means that a correlation of 50 times more, this means that the correlation of 50 times more probable on the hypothesis of design than on the hypothesis of coincidence. My second example is the selection of the Passover Lamb. There's this additional interesting connection that's not wholly independent of the one just discussed but nonetheless certainly worthy of attention. This has to do with Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem five days before the Passover in which he died according to John chapter 12. Now, let's look at the Old Testament to see if we have any coin to strike in correlation. Passover itself falls on the 15th day of the month of Nisan. That means that five days before the Passover falls on the 10th day of Nisan. Now, let's turn over to Exodus 12 where God gives instructions to people of Israel considering the first Passover and verse three, God says to Moses and Aaron, tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of the month, and that's Nisan, every man shall take the lamb according to the Souther's house as a lamb for a household. Thus the Passover lamb was to be selected and taken into the household of the man of Israel on the 10th day of the month of Nisan. Given the oft-repeated New Testament imagery of Jesus being the Passover lamb, it is thus quite striking that Jesus' triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and a reception by the people happens to fall on the 10th of Nisan five days before Passover. Now, how probable is this correlation on the hypothesis that the connection is coincidental? It must be borne in mind that this coincidence is not believed in the previous one. Since Jesus is coming to Jerusalem on Nisan 10, would not matter at all if it went for the fact he then died subsequently at least around that time. If we take his entry into Jerusalem on Nisan 10 to be significant, we must be assuming that he died right around that time, which means that one entails the other. The question we can ask whoever is how much additional evidence provides that Jesus also entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10? Another factor for us to consider is that Passover is particularly likely time for a Jew to enter Jerusalem, and also a time when he could count on ministering to a large crowd of people who had made their pilgrimage to Jezeb for the feast. Now, one may also object here that a possible explanation of this coincidence is that Jesus himself, seeing himself as a Passover lamb to liberally enter Jerusalem on Nisan 10. However, to this I offer two responses. First, if Jesus saw falsely himself as messianic, it is far more likely he would have perceived himself to be a military leader, like Simon Bargura, who would lead a revolt against Roman occupiers, not suffer the humiliating death by crucifixion. Second, the appropriate issue to concern ourselves with is the striking coincidence that it was precisely on the year in which Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover that his death by crucifixion coincidentally took place on the day of Passover. To be conservative, therefore, it will only assign a base factor of two to this fact. Thus far, our cumulative base factor from the two examples we've considered is 50 times two equals 100. Then we've got a third example, which is Jesus' resurrection on the day of first fruits, 1st 20, 15, 1st 20, Paul says of Christ that he is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And what's being alluded to here? For the answer, we turn to Leviticus 23 in which we read of the first fruits, which is the next Jewish feast, following the Feast of Passover, and a lamb and bread, and that's to do with the barley harvests, which pursued the slightly later wheat harvests. The latter of those was associated with the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. God therefore instructed the people of Israel that prior to reaping the barley harvests, they were to wait before the Lord of Sheaf of the first grain. This was symbolized when the sheep was representative of the whole crop. It represented their trust that God who had given them the first fruits would also bless the rest of the harvests. So then how does Paul link, 1st 15, 20, how does he link Jesus to the Feast of the first fruits? Well, Christ was the first fruits of the resurrection, having been raised prior to the general resurrection at the end of time. Although previous peoples, such as Lazarus and Gyrus' daughter, had been raised in death, those individuals were not raised to glory and immortality. Eventually they would die again. But Jesus, by contrast, was the first person in all of history to be raised to glory and immortality, when the body transformed, such that it was no longer subject to care of death. And thus he is the sheep that's way before the Lord, the first fruits of the harvest. Now I, what base factor won't be assigned to this piece of evidence? Of course, this piece of evidence is not fully independent of the fact Jesus' death takes place at the time of Passover, and also only seven days of the week. So those reasons I assign a serrated base factor of five, which takes our cumulative base factor to 500. I'll just briefly mention another few. One is the crucifixion. Psalm 22 contains a remarkable text which censures for crucifixion was even invented in the description of the Messiah's sufferings that strikingly resemble the crucifixion scene, not about a more devoid of people if you want. And yet Jesus is not killed by stoning by the Jews, but he's crucified by the Romans. And for this fact, I think it's fair to assign a conservative base factor of 1,000, taking our cumulative base factor to 500,000. Then we have the name Jesus, which is significant, because it means Yahweh as salvation, which also corresponds to certain Old Testament passages like the Chariah 6, where we have a priest, a king called Joshua who said to push out of the Messiah. And finally, the sixth example is that Christianity becomes a dominant international religion as it becomes, because this is something that's prophesied specifically about in the Old Testament, as I 49 verse six, for example, says, it's too light a thing, you should be able to serve to result in transjudication and bring that to the person of vision. I'll make you as a light to the nations that my salvation reaches the ends of the earth. And so at that point, so I assign a base factor, which I think is conservative of 1,000 to that, taking the cumulative base factor at that point to 1 billion. And so, and that's basically the way I develop that order. You got it. Thank you very much, Jonathan. We will now switch over to the open conversation. So thrilled to have you guys here. The floor is all yours. Can you repeat what your total base factor was? What's the total amount? One, one million or one billion? One billion. Okay, with a B, great. Now, let me ask you a quick question. How did you come up with this? Is this something that's a objective fact with these base factors, or is this something that you made up to? Yeah, so they completely subjective. So if I was to take my beliefs and apply them to the same logic or to the same evidence that you have, I would come up with different factors of importance. Yeah, absolutely. So you can, so base theorem is a mathematical tool for modeling our evaluation of the relevant evidence. And so obviously, as with a logical syllogism or deductive syllogism, if you input garbage into the syllogism, you're gonna get garbage in the output, right? Right, but my point is, my point is is that you and I could both look at this and come up with different numbers to apply to the evidence, right? I mean, I could go through and say, okay, well that's just a book saying this, okay, that's zero. Okay, that's a book saying this, okay, that's zero. Like, I'm not here to dispute whether or not Jesus existed. I do personally believe that a man named Jesus who maybe they wrote him up to be a little more than he was, or maybe he was a popular socialite who had a lot to say, who pushed what he thought might be the correct religion onto people or whatnot. I mean, it was a time when people were less educated, the method of communication was definitely oral and not based on the internet, it was done in person. So he might've been a great, very prominent person on stage and given a lot more credit than he actually ever had. And my point of view is just as valid as your point of view of saying that, well, he existed and he could do all these crazy things that we can't do today with modern technology. Right, so to respond to your question, so yeah, there was a certain amount of subjectivity into the assignment of those values. I've tried to be conservative and tried to underestimate- Well, I believe one of them, you just threw a value of 1,000 on where another one, you threw a value of like three. That doesn't really help me quantify God. If you're trying to give me evidence and it needs to be something empirical that I can reproduce myself, even if it's through prayer, let's say you go, well, if you pray three times a day, tomorrow, every day, you're gonna go down 1% in the cost of living over the next 100 days and I could test that, I could test that prediction out. So let's first establish the in principle validity of this mode of argument. So would you grant the in principle validity of this style of argument? Philosophically, yes. I would not say empirically no because you haven't really provided any evidence that we can both agree on that is evidence, not evidence for or evidence against, just evidence in general. So would you agree then that if I can establish the examples I gave to be historically reliable then the argument would be solid? Yeah, of course, but you're not going to be able to because all of the arguments that have already been provided are all, they're all ad hoc, they're all hearsay, they're all word of mouth. There's nothing empirical about any of it and that's the only problem I have is that when you try to put something that is non empirical in front of me to say that this is evidence to support, I have to ask myself, well, how can I verify this for myself? What can I do to verify? So let's take an example. So let's work through all the examples individually and see what conclusions we come to. Okay, so the first one was Jesus' death at Passover. Okay, so would you agree that with the scholarly consensus that Jesus' death happened during the time of Passover at the orders of Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius? Sure. Okay, so you agree with that fact? Well, I don't agree with that fact. I'm willing to accept that as probably true, yes. Okay, so when you said that I was relying on hearsay evidence and you weren't... No, no, no, okay. So if I tell you that a, you know, Ronald, or not Ronald Reagan, if I tell you that Abraham Lincoln, for instance, died during his presidency, you and I, neither one of us were there, but there's enough historical fact to back that assertion up, correct? But there's enough... So I'm saying that I'm willing to agree with the fact that a person died and it was well documented during that time. Okay, and that person's probably Jesus. Okay, and you would also accept that Jesus' death coincided with the Jewish day at Passover? I mean, I'm sure that they, you know, celebrated it as a religious figure. They probably had some kind of religious tie to it. You know? Like, just the same way as Jesus' birthday is celebrated as Christmas, we're all told that when he really wasn't born on Christmas. It's been turned into a religious holiday. Whether it was turned into, whether the death of Jesus was moved to the religious holiday or the religious holiday was celebrated to, you know, to celebrate Jesus' death, one of those two could possibly be true, but I don't know for sure that either one of those is true. You know, there's no, there's nothing to say that it was, it was nothing, not a coincidence that it was a, it was a direct prophecy foreseen by the Bible hundreds or thousands of years in advance. So there's, there's no, I mean, you're drawing a false comparison there because the festival of Christmas only can be associated with Jesus' death a few hundred years after Jesus died. I'm not saying that that's an exact, that they did it like that. I'm saying it's not, it's been done before it's not something that's too ridiculous to believe has been done previously as well. There's no eyewitness for sensory sources saying that Jesus died at the time of Christmas. No, I said Jesus' birth, not his death. I'm sorry, I misspoke. No, I'm saying that there's, there's people that say that Jesus was born at a different time other than Christmas. That his physical birth was that it's like evidence that it's in the Bible that supports that being that of where the stars were that were in the Bible as well as the time, the fact they were in the, you know, the barn with the animals. Like the idea is that they weren't probably born around Christmas time, but either Jesus' birthday was moved to Christmas so that it could be, that it could turn that holiday into a religious holiday for religious sex. Like me and my son, we celebrate Christmas, but my son, he's a full-blown atheist. Like he doesn't, he doesn't have any belief in God whatsoever. Okay. So I mean, let's look at some of the evidences for Jesus' death at the time of Passover. So let's look for example at John 18, verse 20. So I mean, first of all, I mean the time of Jesus' death is, I mean, it's very unlikely to be misremembered. And I mentioned that in our statement. Also, it's tied to many events, many peripheral incidental details that are given to us in the gospel. So for example, in John chapter 18, verse 28, it says, then they land Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning, they themselves had not entered the governor's headquarters so that they would not be found with deep Passover. So does that not indicate that, I mean, that's an incidental detail that's directly tied to the Passover. That's just one of several. Hold on, you said John 18, 28, correct. I'm just pulling it up so I don't have to follow you. I can read it and react to your questions. Okay, so let me, which version of the Bible would you like me to do? Doesn't matter, which one you want. Okay, I'm gonna go with new international version, okay? That's the first one that's on there. If you need to correct me, please do. It says, then the Jewish leaders took Jesus from Caliphus to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning and to avoid the ceremonial uncleanliness, they did not enter the palace because they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. Okay, I mean, even, okay, so with that, you would have me believe that Jesus died during the Passover, correct? Right. Okay, so again, this book has been, whether that's true or not, is not evidence for God, number one. Number two, I mean, we've already, we know that the book has been, we know that the Bible has been rewritten several times for them to rewrite this so that it's more of a, has more of an impact is not too much for me to believe either. The Bible has been rewritten several times. Show me a single textual variant where Jesus does not die in time of Passover. That's not what I said. I said the Bible has been rewritten several times. I said the Bible has been rewritten several times. So for me to believe that this was written in an effort to greater signify the death of Jesus. I mean, they weren't sitting there writing the Bible as Jesus died, right? I mean, it happened, the writing of the Bible actually occurred after Jesus died, is this not correct? Right, and it's... Okay, so you're saying that it's completely impossible for someone to see a correlation between the two and decide, hey, let's write Jesus' death a month earlier than what it was so that we could signify or amplify the meaning of the Passover or whatever the case may be. How do we know for a fact that this occurred, that this event occurred on the Passover outside of somebody writing it down in a book? Well, how else would you, I mean, that's how you investigate history, look at the primary source material, especially when you're dealing with aging. Yeah, I agree, I agree. But you will never find something, someone calling something pure, like absolute fact based on what somebody else said without it being able to be reproduced. Well, we've got, I mean, the Gospels are substantially reliable testimonies that are linked to... To who? To who? The substantially, hold on, substantially reliable testimony, to what? That to me is an absurd statement right there. It's all told from someone else's point of view. Nothing is in the Bible is absolute fact. Nothing can be outside of some historical events that happen, which I agree, they do write historical facts in, just like they do in the movies today. They incorporate in the movies today certain historical facts that we're going through and they write fiction around it. I mean, this is nothing new to us and I don't understand why you think humans changed in nature from 2,000 years ago to today. We're the same people. We just have different technology but we're the same people. Right, when we study the Gospels, we see that there's numerous points of historical confirmation that verifies incidental details that are given to us in the Gospels. And you can make an inductive argument that the Gospels are substantially trustworthy. John, I would argue was an apostle of Jesus. I would argue that Mark and Luke were people who weren't themselves apostles but they were associated with apostles. Luke was an incredibly accurate historian and give all the lonely evidence to support that. And so given- Hold on, but a question like, but a statement like that, saying that he is, you know, overly accurate, what is your basis for making a statement like that? The evidence, looking at particular facts in the Gospels that we can verify, making an inductive argument. But I mean, the cases that the examples I gave, I deliberately limited myself to cases where we have overwhelming evidence supporting that specific detail. So even need to rely on inductive argument. I mean, the Passover is independently attested in all four Gospels. The passion narratives in the Gospels are independent of one another. And so we have independent testimony of Jesus' death at the Passover. We also have Paul's testimony for Spongebob's fives as it cries, our Passover lamb has been slain for us therefore let us keep the feast. So you've also got the fact that it's another detail that it's linked to which is also well-supported is Jesus enters in Jerusalem five days before Passover because Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover as was recanted in John chapter 12. Then, and Jesus' death subsequently follows that at the time of Passover, then it follows that Jesus' death was also at the time of Passover. No, I can understand that. I can understand how you can take things, you know, in the Bible and you can correlate those two real historical events that we know for sure happen and say, look, because this was written in the Bible and that was written in the Bible and that was written in the Bible. And there's, let's say we have 1000 examples of historical references to things that we can actually prove happened. That doesn't mean that everything else in the Bible is real because there's movies and TV shows out there that I'm telling you are written around real life events. They're done for very specific reasons. They want you, the reader, use the viewer, use the person who's taking in this media. They want you to relate to it, to feel to it. They can't do that if they just write about some ridiculous thing. Like we watch shows all the time with people out in outer space. We love the sci-fi, but we don't relate to those because we don't live out in outer space. We don't have people out in outer space. So the ones that we relate to more are the ones that are written around real life events. And that's why I believe the Bible did have real life events in it. How could you get people to understand and believe it if it didn't have any real life events in it? The Gospels are not of the genre of historical fiction, right? They're written as, you know, ancient. For you, they're not. For me, they are. The evidence is overwhelming that they are written as historically reliable reports. At least the Gospel authors are trying to get their facts right. And we have strong evidence that in fact, in many, many cases, they do. So for example, let me take the example of Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem 5, which is a very specific detail that John gives that is not given to us in any of the other Gospels. This is in John chapter 12 and verse... So in John chapter 12 and verse 1 and 2 and then 12 and 13. So in John chapter 12 verse 1 and 2, it's the 6th, it's 4 times over. Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was in Jesus' race from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha, Seraph, and Lazarus was one of those who were planning with him at the table. And then verse 12 says, the next day, five days before Passover, the large crowd that was coming to the feast heard the deal was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him praying at Hosanna, blessed. So he comes in the glory of the King of Israel. So... Can you back up just a second? I was following along with John 12, 1 and 2. And then I think I thought you were jumping to John 12, 2, but did you move to a different verse? I moved to John 12 verse 12. 12, 12, okay. Just so I'm trying to follow along so I make sure I don't straw man your argument, okay? Yep, sure. So it says the next day, the large crowd that comes to the feast heard the deal was coming to Jerusalem. So that's five days before Passover. So can we confirm John's accuracy on this? Well, I would argue that we can. So he turned over to the gospel of Mark, chapter number 11, that gives us a parallel of Kennedy's arrival at Bethany. Although Mark himself does not give us the timestamp that John provides us. So he says in verse one, now, when the journey to Jerusalem, the Bethany to Bethany, by the law, Jesus sent two of his disciples, said to them, going to the village in front of you, immediately to enter it, you'll find a cold tide of which no one's ever sat on time. And then they bring the colds and everything. And... Okay, but here's the thing. I'm not debating, okay, I'm not debating that these events took place. That's fine. All of these events could have taken place. Okay, we write about our superstars every day. We have TMZ and all these other places that are literally modern day apostles who are writing about these fictional characters that are real life people. I mean, we all see a superstar in the industry as this person who's unreal, but it's a person, right? And we see all these other people writing about them as if they're unreal, but they're just people. This has gone on through the history of time. Nobody's debating that that event occurred. And I don't even know that it did, but I'm saying that even if it did, it's still not gonna be evidence to support the fact that God exists. I would disagree with you. I, you even agreed with the structure of my argument. And I'm defending the veracity of the points that are real when it's down to something. No, no, I agree. Look, I can understand that you have gotten to a point where you're not, you haven't given anything that is supernatural yet, you know? You say, okay, so in this story, this thing happened on this day and this is what was said. And these are the people that were there. And in this particular part, it says that he arrived there a certain amount of days before a certain event. So just based on that, yes, we can all agree on that, but there's nothing godly about that happening. That happens every day. I'm sure it happened then as well. Now, what is the godly part about that? The point is each of these individual episodes have a top heavy base factor. That is a base factor that's great. That's one that you assigned though. That's not one that I would assign. The better one for abilities you assign, is greater, the base factor is greater than one, which means it's top heavy. Okay. And so no matter what the values are, and we can debate about that, no matter what the values are, the, there are nonetheless evidence for the conclusion that the god orchestrated the history to cause this correlation or this convergence. Now, if we just assume for the sake of argument that the prior probability of, or the best probability given the background information of God's sovereignly orchestrating history, we just assume for the sake of argument that that is as low as one in 10 million. This leads us to a posterior probability, given my analysis of just those six examples that I gave earlier, of 0.99. And I can work through the math if you want of that hypothesis being true. And so, yeah, this argument in principle is a valid approach. The only question- It gets you to a point. Yes, it gets you to a point, but then you have to be able to prove the supernatural at some point and you can't prove the supernatural by saying somebody said that. Everything you've said so far is plausible. Like nothing that, when you start to break down an argument and you say this is the reason why I believe this argument, I can go with you on anything that's plausible. It's once you come to something that's implausible that I say, okay, I need to see this for myself because it doesn't make sense to me. And I'm not the, I don't know everything. So that's why I'm asking you, being someone who stands by those beliefs and holds the belief that I must be able to recreate something. I must be able to do this myself for me to be able to believe it. Or at least be able to verify it for myself. If I hold that, then I'm not assigning those same factors that you are because at some point you're gonna get to a point where you're going to assign a huge number to something that's supernatural without any evidence to support it except for the completely plausible things that led up to that event. But which of my examples were supernatural occurrences in the gospels? Did you not mention the resurrection in your opening? Yeah, absolutely. That's supernatural right there. We've never seen that outside of the fairy tale mummies. And I'm gonna discount anything that's fairy tale and stick with only what I still believe to be fairy tale, but what I'm gonna give you the, at least credibility to entertain this as a plausible event, you know? So let's talk about that then. Okay, so even, I would have wrote into this and we'll assume that at that time. But even if you don't accept the resurrection of Jesus as an historical event, you nonetheless, I think, nonetheless, the evidence I think is quite substantial that it was claimed that the resurrection, the experiences of the apostles that were interpreted as manifestations of the race of Christ happened on that day. And the day after the Sabbath following Passover correlating with the beast of first fruits. So for example, in 1 Corinthians 15, as Paul says of Christ, 1 Corinthians 15 verse 20, Paul says of Christ that he is at first fruits for those who have fallen asleep. And so Paul, and this is in the context of Paul having just stated in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 7, that Christ rose again on a third day in accordance with the Scriptures. What Scriptures are you alluding to? Well, it's interesting that in that direct context, he goes on to say, he goes on to equate Christ with the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, namely that he fulfills the first fruits festival and that then illuminates what he's getting at when he says he was raised again on a third day in accordance with the Scriptures, otherwise what Scriptures are you alluding to? And also, you've got in all four Gospels that's unanimous and resurrectionary, just remember, are independent of one another. It's unanimous in all four Gospels that Jesus' resurrection occurs on the Sunday following his death. So even if you don't accept that Jesus really did rise from the dead, it's nonetheless a very strong evidence that the apostles had experiences on that day which often resengers rise to the coincidence. And is it true? Well, I think that the Bible, okay, I think the Bible says that the apostles had experience. I don't think that necessarily means that they had an experience. I think that means whoever wrote the Bible says the apostles had an experience. And whatever that experience could be, maybe they did, maybe they had the same type of emotional experience that people suffer from today where they think they see lost family members as ghosts and stuff like that. I mean, it's not, and I'm not trying to equate this down to those experiences, but people experience things during traumatic moments in their life. And I would assume that losing someone like Jesus to people who followed him would be a tragic event for them to write about it as if he would live on forever. I think that's really plausible when thinking of the human condition. And as I said, it's irrelevant to my argument whether you accept Jesus really did rise from the dead. But the point is that their experience, which is unanimously extended by scholars to be... Biblical scholars, biblical scholars. Yeah, but the scholar doesn't believe in the scholars. I mean, that's like, hold on, that's like saying there's flat because flat earthers unanimously believe in this flat. I mean, in Biblical scholars, I agree a Biblical scholar is a little bit different than a flat earther, right? But at the same time, when you, the basic, what I'm trying to basically say here is that you're in, when you introduce bias into a belief system, you know, or when you introduce the biased belief system of your, I can't think of the, of your, like the people you're referring to, the people that you're going to be, you know, saying, oh, well, all these people say so. Well, yeah, of course they do, but they're all Biblical scholars. So they're all gonna agree upon that, right? I mean, that's kind of their, they believe in the Bible to begin with. The difference is that not all Biblical scholars, many of the Biblical scholars don't accept, don't believe, are in operations. So, I mean, Gerhard Ludemann, for example, is an atheist in Germany, or Paula Fredrickson, he's a Jewish scholar at Boston University, accept that the experience, that the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death, which they honestly interpreted as appearances of the Reds Christ. They don't accept Jesus really did rise from the dead, unless they accept, and that's unanimously accepted as scholars that the disciples were not deliberately setting in to deceive people, that they had experiences. No, well, yeah, yeah, I don't think that they're going to be deliberately deceiving people. I don't think that that's the case, but at the same time, I also don't think that the, I'm pretty sure these books were not written during the time of his death. They were written several hundred years later. And again, even if it was the followers that were telling, you know, the people residing the stories and then those people are residing it. I mean, come on, it's inhuman nature to build up stories, to make them bigger than they are. I mean, Jesus wouldn't be the figure he was today if we all just talked to him about the man that he was at the time. We, it requires building up and, you know, that's what gets people to believe is that supernatural, that supernatural being that's just so rock and roll out there. But notice when it comes to the appearances of Jesus on the day following the Sabbath following the youth death, that's not only attested in all four gospels independently, but it's also attested by our earliest relevant source, which is 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 7, or Paul quotes an ancient accretal tradition, which he's likely picked up from James and Peter in Jerusalem for years following this conversion as we're going to see in Galatians one. And even if that's not the case, which most of all, I think it is, he goes on to say subsequently that then he appeared to James and all the apostles last while he appeared to me, also as one time to be born. He goes on to say, for I'm the least of the apostle, I would call it an apostle because I preach to you the church of God, but the grace of God, I'm the most graceful for it, but it's not from vain. On the contrary, we're turned in any of them, though it's not I, but the grace of God, as it was in verse 11. Whether it was I, I've got to slow down a little bit, slow down. I can't keep up with you, man. I'm trying to keep up on the verses over here, but you're moving too fast for me even for that. And I don't want to miss anything. So verse 11 is the key. It says, whether that it was I or they, so we preach to so we believe, so he thus tacitly assumes that the Corinthians Christians understand his problemation of the key points of the gospel, to be consistent with what's already been preached by the other apostles, Peter, James, and Paul, et cetera. That's why it says verse 11, whether that it was I or they, so we preach to so we believe. In other words, this is something you're already familiar with. That's also evidenced by the fact that in verse three, for I deliver to you as the first importance I also receive. So this is something that we've already heard before. And this includes the fact that Jesus' resurrection happens on the third day in the fourth day of the scriptures. And the best explanation for the in the fourth day of the scriptures is the connection to the truth, which Paul mentions in later on. So again, I'm not debating that events happened and that events were documented, but I'm also not seeing the relevance in the existence of God based on even if these events did happen, even if God or Jesus did die on the day they said he died and it coincided with the Jewish holiday of Passover. And even if these people had experiences and all of that, I'm okay with agreeing with all of that and still saying that you still are not providing anything for me to really grasp onto other than, hey, just believe the words in these books. I need something that I can hold on to, something that can really make a difference in my life if I follow a certain set of instructions. But the point is that none of these episodes individually is sufficient to establish a warrant that the truth of Christianity, but collectively, cumulatively- Even collectively they're not. No, because I'm listening to everything you're saying and I'm not hearing anything that's any new than what my preacher told me back in the day. This was basically a condensed Sunday school presentation, which is, I don't want to demean your presentation. This is not my goal here. That's not what I'm here to do is to say, you're being childish, you're presenting nothing. I'm just saying that everything you've told me so far is the same thing I walked away from. I mean, I walked away from it because it's unbelievable because to me it makes so much more sense that this was just a story being told to people other than all the laws of physics we know are not laws of physics to certain individuals should they be blessed by the hand of God. I would like you to actually interact with my argument though. And I haven't seen any response from you. Because your argument simply just the book said so, believe it. And I'm sorry, but everything the book said, and hold on, hold on. You also told me that every one of your arguments that you have, the reason that you've come to the conclusion you've come to is based on a subjective scoring system. I mean, I'm sure that if I read through your scoring system without your numbers and I applied my own beliefs and my own way of thinking to that, I would definitely not come up with the same number you came up with. Because the idea of evidence is to say, this is something that's objective that you and I can discuss. The words in the Bible are objective. Yes, we can both look those up and discuss those, but they're not evidence for God. There's always a level of subjectivity when it comes to historical recurrences. Sure. And that's why I've tried to bend over backwards to be as conservative as possible in my assigning the relevant base factors. I mean, let's consider one example, and that is the example of Christianity becoming the dominant international religion that it came. So until 313 AD, where you have the event of the land, Christianity became legalized by the Constantine in the Roman Empire. The Christian church was a persecuted minority. The powerful willers and officials attempted to stamp out the Christian religion, destroy its scriptures, destroy its people. And it was a high price to pay for being follower of Jesus and your fate could include being nailed to a cross, burned alive, had 12 animals, et cetera. And so the probability that Christianity would become a dominant global religion was therefore vanishing small. And however, this is exactly what was predicted in various passages just throughout the Old Testament, namely, that's the message. But even looking at it, putting it to today, if you start a corporation today, which I believe that any religion's really becoming a corporation, just look at what the pastors drive and fly in their planes and all that. It's a corporation. And every business, if it starts out today, it's gonna go through its bumps and bruises and having to struggle through the first part of making a headway and getting its message out there. And if it has a good message, that company's gonna blow up. Well, Christianity did, because Christianity offered heaven. It offered salvation, which is, hey, say I'm sorry and believe it and guess what, you're in heaven. Great. That's why it blew up, you know? Come on. It's in the light of all the animals. Question that we need to address is on this particular point, is what's the probability that Christianity becomes a international global religion as it becomes on the hypothesis that Jesus is Messiah? And the probability is approximately equal to one in that case. On the other hand, by condorously, on the hypothesis. How did you come up with that? How did you come up with that? Because it's predicted specifically. So it's after number six. Okay, so hold on, hold on, hold on. So your book, right? So the book says that Christianity will become the most dominant religion in the world. And you go, yep, that's it right there. That's a one for sure, because I see it in reality. Again, when was Christianity, when was the Bible written? Over a period of 1500 years. Over a period of 1500 years. Do you think, oh my goodness, okay. So it had 1500 years to become the most popular religion in the world. And then the final version of the book comes out that says, hey, we're gonna be the most popular religion in the world. Are you gonna let me finish? So on the hypothesis that Jesus is Messiah, because it's predicted in various books, the real testaments as I and Zechariah, Daniel, various other places, that, as I've written in verse 61 example, it says, speaking of the Messiah, it's too light a thing that you should be my servant to resolve the transjection to bring back the perceptive visual. I think there's a link to the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. So on the hypothesis that Jesus is the Messiah, the probability of that happening, namely that all nations, representatives of all nations around the world come to recognize that I'm the one of Israel, that probability is approximately 51. On the progress I thought of this whole situation, let me finish. Oh my God. Jesus is not Messiah. The probability is far, far lower than that. Surely you would agree with that. That, okay, that the probability of Jesus being the Messiah, I don't even believe in a Messiah. So Jesus being the Messiah would be zero to me. Well, you're not listening to what I'm saying. Yeah, no, I'm telling you that everything you could, when you said that the probability of Jesus being the Messiah is one, okay, that's you, you didn't say that. Okay, I'm sorry. What did you say? What was the value of one? I said on the hypothesis that Jesus is the Messiah, the probability of all people, representatives of all nations coming to recognize the worship of God of Israel is approximately equal to one. Okay, so and that matters why? Because the probability of that happening on the antithetical hypothesis, namely that Jesus is not the Messiah. Probability is far, far lower than that. The null hypothesis, the null hypothesis. Yeah, the null hypothesis, correct. So on the null hypothesis, the probability is far lower than that. And so regardless of what base factor you're gonna be assigned, surely at least agree that that is, that's a top-heavy base factor and therefore it's evidence for Jesus being the Messiah. Well, okay, so would you not agree that one of that written into our constitution is the separation of church and state? It allows for people like me to exist. Do you not agree with that? So as a nation. There's also no, there's no separation church and state in the UK. Okay, well, hold on. As a nation then, as a nation, would you not agree that we do not worship God as a nation? That's an irrelevant point I made. You just said that all the nations of the world are coming together to worship, to recognize the Jesus as the Messiah, right? Specifically said representatives of all nations. So represent, so as long as one person of all nations and as long as one person out of a nation, is that your argument that that nation now has a representative who believes the Messiah is Jesus? The point is the people from every nation, language and tongue. So another example is in Daniel 7 where it says, speaking about the Messiah, Son of Man, to him is given dominion, glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him. There's another example where it specifically said that's what was to happen. So the probability of that happening on the hypothesis of the Messiah. Go over, go over what it said again. I'm sorry, I wasn't, I'm trying to follow. You said that it's something about the languages. What was it again? So Daniel 714 speaks about the Messiah, Son of Man, to him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him. So his dominion is never left on the kingdom. When it's kingdom lunch, it'll be destroyed. That ties in with the text we read in the signs, other texts like in- But I don't see how that is even relevant to the argument. I mean, to me it's like you're, you're not really making a point with that argument. Like explain, the same thing as you just made a point when I asked you, so what you meant is only one person from every nation has to believe Jesus was the Messiah. And you were like, well, let's get beyond that. Well, actually that's, like if that's your point and that's kind of a, that's a weak point to believe in or that's a weak point to bring up. So the second one, then after that, you brought up this thing about the languages all being there to serve who? To serve Jesus or the Messiah? Or to serve somebody else? I'm done, I just wanna follow. Okay, let me spell this out. There's a consistent message throughout various prophets in the Old Testament. The thing inside it, the thing Zechariah, the thing Daniel, et cetera. That the Messiah is going to bring people from all nations to a recognition of worship of the God of Israel. Which is not happening. Because we don't, we as a nation don't go there to worship the Messiah. Sorry, I know that you want to believe that but that's not the case. And I'm just telling you now that you're seeing a dwindling of people that believe in God in the United States. You're seeing a dwindling of people showing up to. Globally Christianity's actually increasing. That's fine, I'm saying like, what my experience is here in Texas, right? Membership to churches is down. Attendance to churches is down. The number of people that you run into that hold fundamentalist beliefs, which is really where it's at in Texas, you would have to really, it's not that you're gonna find a lot of people saying yet that they don't believe in God, but you're gonna find a lot of people who are not as fundamentalist as they used to be. Which is a dwindling number. Okay, it's because people are coming to the realization that everything that was needed to be described by God is described by science. Now when you brought up the consistencies in the book of, in the Bible, the consistencies with the message that was in the Bible from all of the apostles, from all of the books, that's completely understandable. Because when we look at books, typically good books that are written that are well easy to follow, even if they're being told from multiple points of view, they all tell the same story. If it didn't, it wouldn't be an effective religion and it wouldn't be an effective book. For the fact that it exists today after 1500 years of writing, attests to its ability to be a well-written book. We're going to go to the Q&A soon. But I do, what we'll do is we can give Jonathan a rejoinder followed by the last word from team, given that Jonathan started and then we'll jump right into the Q&A folks. Okay, I'm just a little bit disappointed that team this evening hasn't engaged with my argument at all. The, in terms of the last example I gave about people of all nations coming into recognition of the God of Israel through the Messiah, I mean it's, I think, virtually incontestable that on the hypothesis Jesus is the Messiah, the probability of that happening is approximately one, whereas on the hypothesis or the null hypothesis that Jesus is not a Messiah, then the probability is far, far lower than that. And we can debate about specific, what specific numbers were assigned to that. But I would think that that particular point is indisputable, incontestable. So I'd like to see at least some interaction with that. And as you begin to see all these coincidences add up as an argument, I call this the argument from Messianic convergence. And I'm just a bit disappointed that we have a narrative response to it this evening, but I'll turn it over to team for his final word. All right, great. Well, thank you. I do want to appreciate, first off, the good conversation. A lot of these arguments are new to me because I don't really engage in these types of arguments. So I felt like it was a fresher for me to be able to talk about something other than the flatter or whatnot. Now, I do just want to address one thing and I'm going to say that as part of my outro with the Jesus being the Messiah, being the probability of one that's completely arbitrary, completely subjective. I would see it the exact opposite. I would see the probability of Jesus not being the Messiah as being one, the null hypothesis actually being more probabilistic than the hypothesis itself based on simple science. Now, as far as my outro, I want to say that I did, I was hoping to at least see evidence that I could address and not evidence that I would have to like contemplate. Addressable evidence is a lot easier to work with, deal with and refute from the opposite position other than subjective evidence that is, hey, I threw these values on this and what do you think about these values? That makes it a little bit hard since I don't even know what your grading system would be for your base factors. But I do want to say I do appreciate it. Thank you, James, very much and I'll secede the rest of my time and we'll turn it over to Q and A. You betcha. So thanks so much, folks. It's been a true joy. We're going to go into Q and A, but I do want to mention, I think I saw Fight the Flat Earth in the live chat. Tomorrow we will have the plain truth has called out fight. And he said, hey, I want a piece of you and fight, let me know. So we are going to host those two tomorrow. That should be an exciting one. And then we will also have, for the first time in a long time, Skyler Fiction will be coming back debating whether or not pot should be legal. So that's going to be with John Maddox. So that should be a fun one as well. And then I'm trying to think of Sunday. We do have one for Sunday, in particular the classic one. We haven't done this for like six months, maybe four. Whether or not aliens are demons. So that should be an interesting one as always. And so with that, thanks so much, folks. We'll get started with the Q and A right now. First up, appreciate your super chat from our dearest friend. Let's see here. Schrodinger's cat says, team skeptic is a boss. You got a fan out there, team. Then we have sub Schrodinger's cat. Michael, the Canadian atheist. Thanks for your super chat. He said, here's hoping Steven Steen comes back soon. So I don't have to be quote unquote, nasty. That's right. Steven Steen is the usual nasty guy. So appreciate you just letting it, letting the torch die with Steven. Fight the Flat Earth says to quote Professor Dave. He's coming at you, Jonathan. He says, a book says a thing, quote unquote, big deal. He needs to engage with what I actually said, which is that I limited my argument to examples where we not only have the striking correlations with the Hebrew Bible, but we also have strong historical corroboration of those facts. Let me just respond to this question just to flesh out one example, which I started to flesh out in my conversation. But didn't get very far because I've interrupted, which is the example of Jesus enters into Jerusalem five days before Passover, so which is according to only in John and not in any other gospels. If we go over to Mark 11, it parallels the arrival of Bethanese, is what brings Jerusalem, Bethany, and all of us. Jesus sent two of its disciples and sent them to go to the front of you in each place. And they were kind of cool tied to which ones that were sat on tight and bring it. And then later on, he rides into Jerusalem in the back of a donkey and he got the palm branches and so forth. And then verse 11 says, so remember, and Mark here is a telescope of the narrative, so he hasn't actually told us about, he doesn't put Bethany night before and in the morning he actually enters Jerusalem. But in verse 11 of Mark 11, it says he entered Jerusalem, went to the temple, and when he returned to everything, as it was already late, he went to Bethany at 12. That would make it the evening of five days before Passover of which he and John's penalty to be correct. And then in verses 12 through 14, it narrates the cursing of the victory, which according to verse 12 happened the following day, which would be four days before the Passover, assuming John's penalty to be correct. Jesus then plans the temple, and according to verse 19, when Evely came, we went out to the city and in verse 20, and we read as he passed by in the morning, so the victory, whether it relates to its roots. So we're therefore at three days before Passover. And then Mark 13 says we read the... So in Mark 13, we read over the Olivet discourse on the Mount of Olives, and this we can assume took place in the evening since the Mount of Olives was meant to be between the temple in Jerusalem and Bethany, where Jesus and his disciples were staying. So then marks the end of three days before the Passover. And then we turn over to Mark 14, in which you read in verse one, it was then two days before the Passover. So Mark and John calibrate perfectly, thereby corroborating the timestamp given to us by John because the undesigned coincidence there is far more expected on the hypothesis that John is giving us reliable information about the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem than otherwise. So that's just one example. You bet, thanks very much. And thanks for your super chat from stupid horror energy as she calls herself. She said, Jonathan said, quote, Jesus's death is unlikely to be misremembered, but many psych studies show our memories change within hours. Yeah, the problem is that we have so many numerous incidental details in the gospels that aren't corroborated historically that we can cross check and verify. And so that therefore provides an inductive basis for trusting the gospels to be reliable reportage of the events that they report to talk about and to narrate. Furthermore, the Passover is such a, since we get so many minor details right, we can therefore trust them with the big picture details such as Jesus' death, the time of year of Jesus' death, so I mean the Passover, especially since many small details, many incidental details in the gospel narratives are directly tied to Jesus' death in the Passover, including the one I just gave, namely Jesus' entrance in Jerusalem five days before Passover. Can I address that, please? Yeah, so if you found a movie out there made in 2004, 2005 that accurately predicted or accurately got right small details of a historic events to push a obviously false, you know, bigger picture narrative, would you still believe that bigger picture narrative because some of the details in the movie or book were actually accurate? Well, it depends. I mean, we have to be careful once you compare apples and oranges. The authors of the Gospels and Acts get hard things right, not things like it was the encroach of time and so forth, the existence of Pontius Pilate, but things which are very minor and significant details and things which would be very difficult to know unless you're close up to the facts. And furthermore, the Gospels report to be reliable reportage and we can therefore go investigate the small claims of the Nic to determine if they get the small, hard details right and therefore we can trust them with big picture details. So I think you're comparing many categories. Okay, so you believe that the Bible is factually correct? Is that my assumption? I can make that assumption correct? Yes, my argument is the rest of the facts will actually see. Yes, so I'm thinking it's Joshua. Give me one second to find it. Well, it's not real. Okay, and Joshua, hold on now. And Joshua, this is a book of the Bible, correct? I mean, we're talking about books of the Bible and the relevancy of the Bible. You've only used the Bible as evidence in this entire argument. There's been no, let me explain something that you probably do recognize this and it's a fallacious way of arguing but you're presupposing the Bible is correct through the entire argument. You've made this one presupposition that everything in the Bible or at least the arguments that you presented out of the Bible were correct without anything to back those. No, I actually gave positive evidence for the point of sight. Okay, so in Joshua, when they say that the Lord stopped the sun, do you believe that? In Joshua 10, yeah, I believe that it's using the language of appearance there. It's clearly describing some sort of supernatural event exactly what happened there. I don't plan to know, however. It's called an annular eclipse. I mean, at most, your argument, even if there's an error there in Joshua 10. But that's the whole point is that it's subjective. The entire Bible is subjective. Let me finish what I'm saying. So even if it is the case, even if you have a point there, there's an error in Joshua 10, which is not something that I grant, but let's see if there's an argument that there is. All you've done is, and challenge the doctrine of inerrancy, which my argument doesn't rest upon. In fact, I think that Christianity can be true even without inerrancy. It would at best cause me to revise my understanding of expiration. So let me explain my point in bringing that up, okay? Because the Bible- You gotta go back to QA then too, pretty quick. Yeah, I'll just explain my point in bringing this up. It's because the Bible takes events that actually happened and they glorify them. They write them for a narrative. The story of Joshua or the story in Joshua 10 was written so that it gave God this ability to stop the sun and the moon and the sky so that all his people on his battlefield could win the battle. It's a great story, but guess what? When you ask the Egyptians who didn't give a shit about the battle that was going on and they documented the exact same event, the sun didn't stop in the sky for them. It was an annular eclipse. So the Bible is full of these stories that are great stories, man. Cool story. Makes you feel good if you wanna get a good reading. I think it's better than chicken soup for the soul, to be honest. The Egyptians don't record the battle of Joshua and Joshua 10. I know, but they did record the annular eclipse and the sun and moon didn't stop in the sky for them. Well, it's not necessarily talking about the same event. Yes it is. Yes it is. I've already done research on this. The annular eclipse is the same eclipse that's described in Joshua 10. It was documented by the Egyptians. It's the, I believe it's the first time we ever documented as a human race, the annular eclipse. I don't think it's relevant to the argument I think it, I think if you're going to be, if you're going to be saying that the Bible is true, is honest and true, then we need to really evaluate the Bible as a whole, not just the points that you wanna evaluate the support of your narrative. Well my, my, That's only fair. My argument doesn't rest on the ignorance of being true. And my faith in Christ is interested in my inner belief in the Bible being narrated. So I don't think it's relevant to this particular discussion. We've got to go back to the super chat as fast as we can. Michael Dresden says, Jonathan's killing it tonight. You got a fan out there Jonathan. Josh, thanks for your super chat. They say JM's arguments are never compelling today. No exception. You can, you can respond if you want to. You don't have to, if you don't want to. Well, I'd like to see some actual interactions so far from my opponent this evening. We haven't heard any interaction with what I'm actually arguing or the structure of my argument. Let's see. We have J.L. Warren. Thanks for your super chat. They said subjective, unverified anecdotes are not evidence. I think they're throwing that at you, Jon. Jonathan. Well, they're not subjective or unverified anecdotes because these, I limited deliberately in my case to those cases where there's both a striking correlation with the Old Testament in a way that points to fine orchestration. And which we, and with, and those very cases enjoying strong evidential in a historical support as to their brassity. Gotcha. Thanks for your, thanks as well. Michael for your super chat. Michael, the Canadian atheist says evidence for God given equals zilch. You can respond, Jonathan. You don't have to, if you don't want to. That's demonstrably untrue. I would quibble with how you're defining the term evidence. So evidence is the way I would define it, which is the standard Bayesian way of defining evidence. So the evidence is that evidence is evidence for your hypothesis H if and only if probability E is greater than given H than given non-H. So for instance, in a forensic science setting, if you were to imagine a courtroom and the forensic scientist steps forward and presents the murder weapon and say the handle of the murder weapon has the accused fingerprints on it, then that would be strong evidence for the guilty hypothesis over the non-guilty hypothesis. It might not prove the guilty hypothesis, but it's nonetheless good evidence for that because it's far more probable, far more expected on the guilty hypothesis than it is in the innocent hypothesis. And so the way that we quantify how strong a piece of evidence is is to look at the Bayes fact, which is expressed as a ratio of the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis versus the probability of that same evidence given the non-hypothesis. And so I think that the examples I gave all have a top head of the Bayes factors. Even if you don't think it's sufficient evidence, it nonetheless is evidence, which is at the quibble that whether it's sufficient or not. Gotcha. May I address that? It's a shortened pithy one. Yeah, sure, very short. Well, here's the thing. If you and I both observed the evidence of the fingerprint on the murder weapon, you and I could both agree that that was there, that it did have the pattern it had, that it matched the suspect that we both agree that it should match, right? I mean, there's no subjectivity to that. We look, we see, whether it's, whether that person committed the murder or not, we can both agree that that fingerprint was left. That is the definition of objective evidence. Your Bayes factors, as you've already agreed to, are completely subjective. They're already based on your bias. I wouldn't come to the same agreement on the factor. So therefore it's just an irrelevant argument and it shouldn't be considered evidence. We're next going to go to, thanks for your super chat, Fight the Flat Earth, who says, yes, pot should be legal. That'll be a fun one to read, right? And then- I'd debate that on your channel. That would be superb. Really excited for that. That's a topic people have really enjoyed in the past. Christopher Hogan, thanks for your super chat, says, my comic book says radiation might give me superpowers. I think they're trying to use a satire argument against you, Jonathan. Well, again, it's not engaging with anything I've said, so I'll put it to a level. Gotcha, next up, Tioga, thanks for your super chat, who says, you're making me blush, Tioga, she says, I'm super chatting James a kiss right now, very kind, very, I'm now blushing. Josiah Hansen, thanks for your super chat, says, evening team, I wasn't impressed either. Jonathan, they're coming at you. Well, we haven't heard any interaction at all this evening with my argument, and you can say that you're not convinced until you're blue in the face, but until you actually engage to explain to me in a cogent way why you're not convinced then- Well, I mean, yeah, the answer to that is that you've not given me something that I can tangibly do for myself. Here's another way of looking at it. For me to come to the same conclusions as you have come to, I must have the same biases that you have as well. That in itself is definition of a lack of evidence. If there's no way to convince somebody that what is being true is true without me also, excuse me, also accepting your presuppositions and your biases, then it's not evidence, at least not objective evidence to me. Next, we will jump into the next question, which is, thanks for your question. Jeremy Pace, appreciate it. They asked, how do you reconcile the contradiction in the Gospels about when Jesus was born? So you mean the Corinthians episode, I guess. So, yeah, so we can talk about that on the text. Okay, so it's in Luke 3. So, okay, so the text is in Luke chapter two, the text is in Luke chapter two, verse two, where it says this was the first registration with the Corinthians governor of Syria. The contradiction is that, okay, so in Matthew, we learned that Jesus was born during the time of character great, if you according to Josephus died approximately four BC, whereas in Luke, Jesus' birth happens during, well, Corinthians governor of Syria, and Koreanians didn't become governor of Syria until 6 AD, which is 10 years after Herod the Great was dead. So how then can a chronological blunder of 10 or 12 years be explained? Now, before I answer this, just a couple points of detail that are important to bear in mind. One is that Luke knows that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. We know this because let's look at the Gospel of Luke, chapter one and verse five, which says, Luke chapter one, verse five says, in the days of Herod came Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, and the division of Elijah and so forth. So Luke is very much aware that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Now, Luke also knows about the taxation under Koreanians in AD six. We know this because in Acts chapter five, verse 37, he says after, so this is when Emilio is speaking, and he says, after him, Judas the Galilean moves up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. And this is referring to an event also documented in plebiscite civas that Judas the Galilean was a protester against the taxation as he led a revolt rebellion against the Romans. And so Luke is aware of that taxation in the Koreanians in AD six. So any explanation of Luke's language, therefore, in Luke two must be compatible with those facts. Now, so how would I address this argument? So the term apography, which is used in Luke chapter two can mean either a registration or a taxation involving a registration. So an admissible reading of Luke's re-cowardering is that Koreanians a decade later picked up where the matter was dropped in six BC and brought the taxation itself to pass. So in fact, Luke uses the verb again into this very way in Acts chapter 11, verse 28. So in Acts chapter 11, verse 28, it speaks about the famine that was predicted and by Agibus, it says, one of them named Agibus stood up in Portul, but his burden would be a great famine over all the world. And this came to pass and this took place in different countries. And so it's, I think, admissible to read again into also in Luke chapter two as having this kind of future tense point of view. Namely, this came to pass during the time of Korean, when Koreanians was governor of Syria. And so the consequences of that reading is that Luke's passing mention of the apography in the time of Judas Agali in Acts 537 does not need to be explained in way. And Luke's brief reference to the registration corresponds to Josephus's illusion in a text of the Jews to an oath of allegiance to Caesar in Judea near the end of the time of the reign of Herod the Great, which would be taken at the time of registration. In fact, a few years before Herod's death, Herod fell out of favor with Caesar Augustus. There was a report delivered to Caesar by a guy called Silius, and namely that Herod had sent his entire army upon the Arabians and made waste to Arabia. And so it says that Caesar wrote to Herod Sharpe, saying, I previously used you as my friend, now I will use you as my subject. And he gets demoted from the rank of Rex, associates to Rex Amicus and he seems to, he presumably lost the right to conduct his own taxing. And so then that eliminates of course, why even though there's a census taken to the world of Judea might be taxed, nonetheless that taxation is ordered by Caesar Augustus. And that phrase, the whole world is also used of Judea in Acts 1120 as well, because it's the famine of all the world, which is the world of Judea. We know that from Giuseppe's and also the context of passage. And so in that case, there's no need to predate the governorship of Carinius to 6 BC, which is when the census was taken and all apparently chronological discrepancies would argue disappear. So just to summarize then, I would argue that Luke probably intends to convey that although the census was aborted in 6 BC, Herod got back into Caesar's good graces at a later point in the Seabas, Delphos, and because the report delivered to Caesar had been greatly embellished. So presumably the matter at that point may well have been dropped. And it was, and then it was picked up presumably in carry through to his long completion the taxation itself under Carinius. So that's my personal harmonization of that text. Gotcha, thanks so much. Next, I appreciate your question from Fight the Fight Earth, who says, why does the Bible say Pi is three? That's a universal constant. It gets wrong. Yeah, it's not intended to give us mathematical precision. This is an ancient document and I just don't see any. It doesn't give any precision whatsoever. I mean, if you put, the only thing it gets right is a few historical events that can be verified. Historical events. A few historical events. That can be verified by non-Christian texts. Anything that can't be verified by an outside text is going to be a biased piece of evidence. That's just completely false. We have numerous examples of documentation within the federal tax support event. So for example, if we go over to just give one example from the Big of Acts, I'm particularly fond of the Big of Acts. First, we're in the chapter four where we read Paul says in verse 17, that's why I sent you Timothy and I blow out at the papal child of the Lord to remind you of my ways of crying. So the time Paul was writing to the Corinthians, he's already sent Timothy on his way to Corinth. Now, he's writing to the Corinthians from Ephesus. We know this because of the end of the letter. He sends greetings from Aquila Priscilla, from the Big of Acts. He met Corinth and traveled from as far as Ephesus. Now, so at the time of his writing, we just learned from this text, first of all, he was born in 17, that he's already sent Timothy on his way from Asia Minor to Greece, Corinth. Now, in first of all, in these chapter 16, we read in verse 10, when Timothy comes, he's among you. So even though he's already sent Timothy on his way, you know in the last spaces, letter to arrive in Corinth before Timothy gets there. Now, how do we explain that? Well, where is Ephesus in relation to Corinth? Well, it's across the Aegean Sea. Ephesus in Asia Minor and Corinth, where he's writing to, is in Greece, or what was then known as Achaia. Now, if we look over at the Big of Acts, we go to chapter 19, where Paul is in Ephesus, and we read verse 21, 22, speaking as an afterpiece of Acts, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia, that's what Corinth is, and go to Jerusalem saying, after I've been there, I must also see Rome. And having sent into Macedonia, to have his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, himself stayed in Asia for a while. And so, you would infer from those little clues in 1 Corinthians that Timothy must have taken the indirect overland route, moving up through Troy as in Macedonia. In Acts 19, you see that's in fact what he did. So it correlates in an undesigned way, in a way that points to the traditional narrative. So that's one way that you can use those. Okay, so as far as historical events go, can you give me one historical event that is identified in the Bible, that's not identified in any other text, whether it be a geography book or anything like that, that didn't pull that information from the Bible itself? Sorry, can you say that again on the point? Yeah, basically I'm asking for a piece of evidence that was directly pulled from the Bible that we would not know of, a historical event, not a path that a person would have taken through to get from one place to the next. I'm saying a historical event to you. Paul Revere ran down and warned us all that the English were coming right. That's a historical event to me and you as Americans. But if you ask somebody in Northern Africa what they think of Paul Revere, they're gonna be like, who? So when I'm talking about a historical event, I'm talking about something that was a worldwide event, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The, can't think of the island, the Krakatoa. You know what I'm saying? Things like that, an event that the Bible gave to us directly that we would not know had we not had the Bible here to begin with. Well, there's an example. I can give examples from the Gospels as well. So for example, in John chapter six, we have the Feeding of the Five Thousand, where... The what? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that with the what. In John chapter six, we have the Feeding of the Five Thousand miracle. In John chapter six and verse five, it says, lifting of the lion's head, and approaching to war to him. Jesus said to go, we're going to buy a bracelet. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Where else, other than the Bible, do we, can we validate that that story that Jesus fed 5,000 people with a loaf of bread and a fish? Let me finish. You're not letting me finish what I'm saying. So in John chapter six verse five, it says, I don't besides that, seeing the large crowd was coming to war to him. Jesus said to go, where would you buy a bracelet if you were me? That means you raise the question behind the audience. So why is Jesus turned to Philip during this scenario? Turn over six chapters later to John chapter 12 and verse 20. It mentions, sorry, verse 21. It mentions that it's dentally that Philip is strong in serving 10 and in with the sign that he yell. And that's six chapters later in different contexts. Now if you go over to Luke's Gospel, which also recounts the Feeding of the Five Thousand miracle, chapter nine. Luke doesn't mention this context at all. It just goes to the disciples. No, I'm thinking out. It's clearly finished, but it does mention that the end of the Feeding of the Five Thousand took place in Beside. And so by putting the pieces together, it got it from Luke nine, John six and John 12. We have a cogent explanation for why Jesus turns to Philip in John six, five, namely he's a local guy, he knows where the shop started by rent. That's the sort of thing that is very surprising on a fictitious telling of the story, but it is very unsurprising and expected on the hypnosis, the stores. So because the Bible's consistent with itself, therefore it should have happened. Therefore it's more likely that it did happen because the Bible's consistent with itself. That's a bad argument. Number one, what I'm asking, okay, when you bring up the fact that Jesus fed 5,000 people with a bread and fish, okay, or however you want a word that or whatnot, when you say that I'm asking for evidence outside of the Bible, to show that the Bible was correct, okay? You can't provide me that. Because it's like me telling you, hey, you know what, I know God doesn't exist because my buddy over here, he's a God expert and he told me. Okay, I'll give you an example where we have extra. I'll give you a chance to answer his question, Jonathan, but then we do have to go back to Q and A. Of course. I'll give you one more example then. This is one where we have extra biblical in the book of Acts chapter 23. We have Paul before the Jewish Council and Paul stands before a nice high priest and the high priest orders for him to be struck in the mouth and Paul replies to him saying, God has been a strike you might watch while are you sitting to judge me according to the law and you according to the law, you order me to be struck. Those of Sid by said we grew up by a gospel priest. And Paul said, I do not know brothers that he was a high priest. For it is written, you can not speak evil of a ruler or people. As there is a question in the audience, why, how come Paul doesn't know who the high priest is? Well, if you read David's deceitful, he actually illuminates his voice because actually in fact, in fact, and the nice of him this was spoken was not the high priest at this time, but he was acting in judgment in that same capacity. He grew as a healthy office. He'd been deposed. The person who'd replaced him called Jonathan had been murdered. Another had not yet got in a point to the station. So during the vacancy of his own authority, he assumed upon himself to the discharge of the office. And so then that illuminates Paul's words. Well, I'm sorry, he was a high priest. And that then provide and shows a marker versus military to associate with this particular kind. So there's an example where you could use that. We've got to quick jump to the next several super chats. We had a few come in. So he said, Michael Barrett, thanks for your super chat. Who said like this guy much better in impractical jokers? I don't know, I've seen that show. I don't see who looks like, but Schrodinger's cat, thanks for your super chat. They said, what exactly did team do in the Coast Guard? Well, in the Coast Guard, I supplied, I made sure that all the sound powered telephones had charged batteries. You betcha. Thanks very much. And thanks for serving, by the way. Oh, you're welcome. Did you get that joke, did you? If you're not in the military, I'll say it slowly for you guys. I made sure the batteries to the sound powered telephone were charged. Nice. Sound powered, it would need batteries unless the batteries encapsulated sound. Next, thanks for your, but let's see, faux hammer 335, thanks for your super chat. But yes, you, I didn't realize that. That was a smooth faux hammer. Thanks for your super chat. Who said, go team meat tube. Yes, some sort of meat to exist. Some sort of off-putting fan out there. Jeremy Pace, thanks for your super chat. They said, can you name any account of Jesus's life outside of the Bible written during his life? I will wait because it does not exist, Jonathan. The short answer is no. And that's okay because we have such strong sources in the New Testament. Why do we have to set aside the primary sources in order to get secondary and tertiary, the secondary and tertiary sources, and to see why we should do that? No other, no other realm of historiography would we throw away the primary sources and search for secondary sources. I mean, we have references to Jesus in other early writings. First century source, David Chescevas, seems to mention him in David of Jerusalem, 18, although it's subject to debate as to how much of that text is being interpolated by later overzealous Christian scribe. Clearly, his tacit is also in the house of Peter of Rome, has a brief moment allusion to Jesus. He's a Roman historian who wrote in the early second century, around 110. I personally don't use those in my apologetics because they only tell us what the early Christians in the first century were saying, what their beliefs were, which we already know from the New Testament. So they don't really add, they're not really much evidential value. So I use the New Testament to make no apology for that in my case for the veracity of the accounts concerning Jesus. You got it, thanks so much. Nathan, artwork for your super chat. They say, I've been waiting 10 years for evidence for God's existence. I am now an atheist. Can you give me something tangible so I can believe again? Sure, some of the evidence I give tonight, the evidence is for the resurrection, I'm sure you don't have a chance to get to this. Now, let me, since you mentioned God, talk about some of the scientific evidences briefly. One of the evidence from science, I think is a cumulative argument for multiple strands of evidence. The fine-tuning of the universe, for example, fine-tuning the initial laws and constants of our universe. Businesses have come to the realization that our universe appears to be balanced on a razor edge for life of any form to exist anywhere, anytime in our universe. So if the cosmological constant, for example, which the Germans have read the universe expands, we're off by one part, the usual value given in the literature is one part, 10th, 120th power, then either you would only ever get the two life's elements, hydrogen, helium, or the universe would collapse in in itself within a few seconds of the big bang. You know, either way, let them not exist in such a universe. The gravitational constant, the ratio of the strong, weak, and clear force. Let me finish and then you can come in. We have to be short and pithy. I've got to say a lot, you say a lot, and then I'm trying to keep up with your argument because you've made like six mistakes right in a row. It's just like, okay, so your argument is basically, there must be a creator because the one chance that it did work, we exist in that one chance. Therefore, the only chance that could happen is because of a creator, because we exist in this one chance. When science tells us that the odds of this one chance happening are astronomical. Well, guess what? The odds of you winning the lottery, of any one person winning the lottery on their first time is astronomical. But if they win, I guarantee you they don't go into that same mentality that, wow, I must be somebody that's absolutely special. I'm going to win the next time I play too. No, there's millions and millions and millions of people that don't fucking win. Excuse me, that don't win. Just like there's millions and millions and millions of failed attempts at, or I can't say that for sure there are, but we have to accept the possibility that the universe may have attempted before and not worked. And it may be attempting as we speak right now and not working constantly. And then you know what? One out of every one to the 10 to the 29th times, 35, five times 350 times, it might work. Well, guess what? That universe will exist and those people inside of it will probably think they had a creator too, because the odds are so astronomical, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. We're good. It's just improbable. We'll give Jonathan a short and pithy response and then we got to go back to the Q and A. So the problem with that argument is that there's, it's not merely the improbability because the universe isn't just lying, it's the improbability combined with specification that there's a certain narrow range of values and constants which are necessary for life, not just of our kind, but of any form to exist anywhere, any time of the universe. And the argument we've constructed either in terms of illogical syllogism as well, and Craig does it or is the way I refer to it in terms of invasion analysis, namely that God, the unclassical theism, there are certain qualities and attributes of moral arenas in ourselves which is something that God would find morally valuable. And therefore God would bring, God is not implausible for God to bring about. So it's far more, so the fine tuning of the universe for moral agents such as ourselves is far more probable on the hypothesis of theism real in terms of the hypothesis of atheism. And also it's a cumulative argument. We've got not just fine tuning of the universe, we've also got the fact that the universe beginning to exist, which I think is more collective on theism of atheism. The fact that there is the information-rich qualities of DNA and RNA, there are two molecules, I think is better explained on design than non-design. So it's a cumulative argument for multiple lines of evidence but I think point horribly to the theistic conclusion. Gotcha, let's see. Thanks for your super chat from Superdore Energy. Thanks for yours. She says, why don't you think Jesus was not an important enough figure to interest contemporary historians despite performing miracles and rising from the dead. We've got a, if you're able to give a short and pithy one just because we've got a lot of questions left too. So this is an argument from silence which I personally find to be, it's basically the saying that because certain historian doesn't mention a particular event, therefore that's the reason to think it didn't happen. But first of all, most literature from Palestine for centuries being lost. So we don't necessarily know that all the sources that mentioned Jesus we still have. Furthermore, we can give Kendra examples where events you would expect to be mentioned in a source are not mentioned in a source. For example, Josephus and Philo, I found out in the Jewish philosopher, both pass over the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, the Claudius in silence. Although it's mentioned by the second century Roman historian to Tony to reflect the Claudius and we have just one passing mention of the event in a first century source namely in Book of Acts in chapter 18 verse two. And yet despite Josephus' silence, all historians acknowledge that the event took place. Furthermore, no first century source being possessed reports the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 8079. Although plenty of the younger gives a detail to kind of the eruption itself. And that is uncle, plenty of the elders killed in that eruption. And yet no one endures from plenty of sounds that the event did not take place. And so I just think it's a weak argument sorry for the silence like that. Gotcha, thanks so much. Next up, appreciate it. Fight the flat earth. Thanks for your super chat. They say he says if the Bible didn't exist how could I get evidence for God? Well, you wouldn't have evidence for the Christian gods in particular because God reveals to himself to us by scripture. But you would nonetheless I think have very overwhelming evidence that there is a conscious being which brought the universe and life into being. I already developed briefly the fun to new argument. Let me just briefly talk about the information argument namely that in life is chock full of digitally encrypted information content along the sugar phosphate backbone of the new molecule. The chemical subunits that we represent with the alphabetic characters ACTG. Direct the construction of proteins which are native subunits called amino acids and information content in every own experience always goes back to conscious rational deliver the agent or intelligent designer. And so when we find information turns it to life surgery molecules DNA and RNA I think it's rational to conclude that it too very likely arose by virtue of an intelligent cause. Gotcha, thanks so much. And thanks for your super chat from Willie, oh let's see we almost skipped Steven Steen. Nasty guy, he says team skeptic touched me with his sexy mankini body. There he is. It was the greatest night of my life. That was quite the night. Willie Merck, thanks for your super chat. They say team, I know it's off topic but Jonathan looks like Mer from impractical jokers. Maybe a little bit. Proof of God and the meat tube right there. Gotcha. Have you seen impractical jokers you guys? I haven't. Okay, yeah you look like I think is, I can't think of his name right now I can look it up. You do look, you have a very striking similarity to, what is his name? Mer. Mer, yeah Mer. But he's super funny so. Very liked, yes very likeable character. Next up fight the fighter thanks for your super chat. They say John quoting you, let me finish. Also John never stops. Fight the flat earth is throwing punches. We might have to see if we can get you guys in a discussion on whether or not, you know intelligent design is something that people have been amped about lately. People have really enjoyed that. So, possibility. Fight the flat earth according to Steven Steen in his super chat says fight the flat earth can't stop whining. Steven Steen, Nathan artwork thanks for your super chat. He says I'm sorry Jonathan but your evidence doesn't get me anywhere. God is still a mystery. Let's call the mystery a mystery, not God. That's an assertion and much like what we've seen from Team Skeptic this evening, assertions don't qualify as your bubbles. Gotcha. Thanks for your super chat from. Presuppositions don't count as evidence. How about that? I agree. Eric Johnson, thanks for your super chat. Your entire argument was based on a presupposition that everything in the Bible is true. Or that all the evidence that you presented tonight is true. There's none of this before us, let's move on. Eric Johnson, thanks for your super chat. They say Jonathan, if Jesus did something profound in secondary sources and it was forgotten by writers of your book, wouldn't secondary sources be important? Secondary sources being sources outside the Bible? Potentially, but you'd have to give a specific example and I'm not aware of any. So, it's neither here nor there. You don't have specific example. Gotcha. Josh, thanks for your super chat. Josh says, Jonathan, sorry if I got it. That was a strange delay on my part. They say, Jonathan, why assume life is a goal, not a by-product? The argument is that it's not impossible on the hypothesis of classical theism to expect that God would bring about a moral arena. That is a community of moral agents that shape and will their character and interact with one another in what we call more significant ways. That's not at all implausible. I actually have a presentation where I argue for the sake of argument that the probability on the hypothesis of theism of God bringing about a moral arena is just 1%, which I think is a generous assumption. But on the hypothesis that of atheism or the annulment of theism, the probability is far, far less than that. So even just assuming a very conservative probability on atheism of the universe I mean to being from nothing, to any of the laws and concepts of the universe, the organization of information content, the organization of multicellularity, the organization of annul programs and consciousness and so forth, the probability on atheism is far, far lower than that than is on theism. And therefore the fact that we live in a moral arena, such as we find ourselves in, is strong, strong evidence for theism over atheism. Gotcha. Thanks so much for your super chat from stupid horror energy as she calls herself, who says, she says, question for TM. I don't know if she did that on purpose. I think she accidentally crossed your two names. She combined them maybe. She's having a hard time tonight, very sad, very. She says, what weighs more? 200 pounds of feathers or 200 pounds of bricks? Is this some sort of inside joke that I wanna wear on? I think that is directed to him. I'm not sure that's directed to me. Gotcha. I mean, if it is, I just don't see the relevance of being directed to me. Jonathan, do you wanna answer that? I didn't know what he's getting at. What's the question? So they said, Sarah said, what weighs more, 200 pounds of feathers or 200 pounds of bricks? Oh, I think I maybe get what he's saying. But so maybe feathers and bricks is relating to the strength of evidences, I'm not sure. But let me just say this. There's a common misperception in the 80s community, the skeptics community, that there was this popular slogan that was popularized or coined by Carl Sagan, namely the extraordinary claims for our extraordinary evidence. So what many skeptics think that entails is that you need to have a single piece of extraordinary spectacular evidence in order to verify or authenticate an extraordinary claim, such as the resurrection or something like that, or where I close the end of the Bible. I would disagree with that because what can in principle be accomplished with one spectacular piece of evidence can in principle also be accomplished with numerous weaker pieces of evidence, which are in themselves singularly insufficient, but collectively are sufficient. And so this is the nature of a human argument, a human case such as I provided tonight, namely that if you have lots of pieces of evidence which have a slightly top heavy base factor, if you have enough of them, then eventually you end up with a massive cumulative base factor. And therefore you can do a lot of heavy lifting. Can I interrupt for a second? The answer is they weigh the same. Next question. Next up, I'm trying to, it's been a long day, I'm trying to, but hold on one second, actually just had a couple come in. Thanks for your super chat. Nathan Artwork, who said, did I make an assertion when you presupposed God? Jonathan? I don't know what he's talking about. That was in reference to their question when they said God is still a mystery, let's call the mystery a mystery, not God. And you had said it was an assertion. Yeah, he made an assertion rather than actually interacting with anything it says, which is why I said that. Gotcha. Next, Eric Johnson, thanks for your super chat. They said, John can't know anything if we don't check, right? Or they said, John can't know anything if we don't check, right? No, I disagree. There are certain things that we can know as properly basic beliefs. For example, that there are certain things which are deductively certain, such as the mathematical truth, like 2 plus 2 equals 4 is absolutely certain to be true. That the laws of logic hold, that there are no square circles, law of identity, the law of exclusive middle, these things are all true definition. I can also know for certain that I exist, as René Descartes showed, I think there are four I am, in other words, I doubt my existence has to be one doing the doubting. So there are certain things that we don't need to go and gather evidence for, although I argue that most things need to go and gather evidence for. Gotcha, thanks so much. And next, Super Chat. Tim Krakowski, thanks for your Super Chat. Generous, really appreciate it. They said, he just admitted there's no secondary evidence. When you are offering eternal salvation versus eternal damnation, you must have independent evidence. There is independent evidence for many events in the Bible. And in the book of Acts alone, for example, I give you a hundred examples of extra-biblical corroboration. Is there any non-biblical corroboration to eternal hell or eternal salvation? There are, I'd argue, inductively, because I would say- Inductiveness, inductiveness, come on, we need a tangible. Well, induction can be strong. So if Jesus rose from the dead, then we can take as words, his teachings concerning that seriously, because the resurrection is strong evidence for the Christianity and therefore, strong evidence for his messianic and divine credentials, and including his view of the Old Testament. So the evidence is for Jesus' deity and his resurrection from the dead. I don't argue your indirect evidences and confirmations of what he says about the afterlife as well. Gotcha, we next, we'll go to the Super Chat from, Fight the Flight Earth says, for John, I have a triangle of sides one, one, and one. What are the internal angles? I'm not sure the relevance is a question. Do you know the answer though? No, I've talked about it. 60, 60, 60. All right, yeah. Next up, J.O. Warren, thanks for your Super Chat. Who asked, Jonathan, let's see, that's just another troll one. Oh, you guys, I skipped a lot of troll ones on both sides just because a lot of you, it's like I can only read so many troll Super Chats. Let's see, thanks for everybody being here. It's been a true pleasure. We've got to run, but I want to say, appreciate you guys being here. Hope you always know, like we say, whether you be Christian, atheist, Republican, Democrat, gay, straight, no matter what you identify as where you're coming from, we really do hope you feel welcome. And I know it's always, there's always a debate going. And there's always debates going in the live chat, but hopefully you got that tough skin that loves to debate and knows that you're appreciated even though there's always going to be somebody somewhere disagreeing with you. We might as well get used to it. It's not going anywhere. So thanks, gentlemen, for being here. By the way, folks, Team Skeptic and Jonathan, both of their links I have put in the description. So I encourage you, if you've been listening and you're like, mm, I want more of that. Well, those links are waiting for you right down there in that little description box. Yeah, James, can I first say, Jonathan, I appreciate your time in and I appreciate talking to you. Well, we may have fundamental disagreements and belief, but I don't think you're a bad person. I think it was a pleasurable conversation. I do look forward to maybe talking to you in the future. Likewise, thank you. You betcha. So thanks, folks, for being with us. It's always fun. And as mentioned, very fun, fight the Flat Earth who has been shooting them super chat comments and suggestions or questions tonight. He will be here for a good old Flat Earth debate tomorrow and we are trying to set up Team Skeptic with Flat Earth, Aussie. I think he goes by, is it Flat Earth, Aussie, Jesus? He said he wanted a piece of me and shit, I'll give him the whole dinger. So it's gonna be a lot of fun when we finally get that. He hasn't checked his email, but we'll make it. We're good to be all right, fair enough. Thanks, folks, for being here. Have a great night and take care. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreli-