 Hey everybody welcome to modern-day debate tonight. We're going to be arguing that Christian versus secular humanism Which is best for society start us off Matt has the floor. So Matt 15 minutes. It's all yours Thanks, Ryan and thanks Bob for agreeing to do this today There was a solar eclipse matter of fact just an hour or so ago I went out to look at it full anularity was visible from about an hour west of my house I didn't bother driving out, but I did get to see about a thousand natural pinhole cameras Created by the tree in my front yard in the shadows and I took some good footage of it We were able to predict this a solar eclipse to the second because of science not because of any religion Religions on the other hand don't make testable predictions generally and instead attempt to exploit natural Curiosities like an eclipse as signs and omens and portents to prop up their preferred narrative Humanism has at its focus the betterment of humanity in this life While Christianity in its various forms Has as its focus adherence to a God and the disposition of souls in an afterlife if Christianity were true It still wouldn't be the best things the best thing for human society in this life as that's not the goal Our best efforts in this life are according to the Bible like filthy rags our best attempts at righteousness and justice are vile and disgusting When compared to a God who advocates the death penalty for nearly everything adultery blasphemy breaking the Sabbath disobedient children Witchcraft worshipping another God not being a virgin on your wedding night If Christianity or any other religion could ever demonstrate that adherence to their ideas would demonstrably Contribute to the betterment of humanity in this life, then those ideas would be consistent with humanism That hasn't happened It simply cannot be the case that Christianity is better for human for humanity than humanism When humanism's only goal is the betterment of humanity Anything that could have a hope of being better would just be included Secular humanism is only secular in the sense that because there are many proposed gods that haven't been demonstrated Our foundation for humanism is one of us being forced to address and solve issues on our own Without appealing to supernatural entities not a declaration that they don't exist It's not a declaration that there is no god. It's an acknowledgement that any god that might exist has remained irrelevant to human interactions Any afterlife is without guarantee and this life that we experience is the one to focus on How do we tell which is better for society between competing ideas? The one that has human society at its focus would generally get the default position But that doesn't mean that people can't have wrong ideas about what's actually better for us Heaven and hell if they were to exist Aren't human societies so any religion that's focused on whether you end up in heaven or hell isn't about human societies As a matter of fact human society may be antithetical to your soul's disposition in an afterlife The temptation is often to look at data comparing Christian and Christian nations and secular humanist nations, but there are no secular humanist nations In the entire history of the world no nation has adopted secular humanism as its foundational principle Although many have come close in some regards secular humanism is still relatively new So the next temptation of course is to look at the lives of secular humanists compare that to the lives of Christians But we don't have enough good data to do a fair comparison. This is in part due to a due to history Or a history of religions being in charge and secularists being marginalized Afraid to identify themselves if not outright prohibited or slaughtered depending on the regime Which means we have to look at the ideals secular humanism First established as a religious ideology in 1933 with the secular humanist manifesto one I don't think it was called one at the time, but it might have been I didn't bother to look that part up It would have been very interesting to see if they anticipated that it would be changing is a key aspect of both scientific inquiry And humility of recognizing that we don't have all the answers now just like the founding fathers of the united states didn't have all the answers then manifesto one which was released in 1933 is a fairly simple document that I have A couple of reasonably significant disagreements on I think it goes too far in some of its assertions. I think it was a little Too optimistic about an end to religious thinking It identifies as a religious view And then it makes assertions that the universe wasn't created that mind-body dualism is essentially false um those are Claims that I don't know they could establish and meet the burden of proof for It doesn't matter that the burden of proof hasn't been met saying that the universe was created or that mind-body dualism is real But I would say that mind-body dualism is Almost certainly false the notion of a soul is I've said many times before the single most dead concept in all of theology Humanism one or manifesto one Asserted that we are products of our culture that there are no supernatural guarantees Of human values that theism should be dead Which is one of the things where I think they were a little too optimistic and perhaps a little short-sighted It is about the complete realization of the human personality um It includes Concepts about a heightened sense of personal life and a cooperative effort to promote social well-being It has as its ideals this cooperative attempt to use the best method best methods to improve the well-being of human society that when we face crises We do so with knowledge of the naturalness and probability of those basically When something happens rather than thinking it's an act of god and it might not happen very often It would be in our best interest to gain knowledge so that we understand the frequency at which A solar eclipse is going to happen the frequency at which Tornadoes are likely to occur or the situations that cause those things to occur in order to do our best To address natural disasters It held that religion must work increasingly for joy in living by the way It's holding itself humanism as a religion and that religions including humanism must foster creativity And encourage achievements that add to the satisfaction of life The there's a notion that secular humanism in all of its forms is Scientism or a cold-blooded or a cold-hearted Vulcan-esque Heartless endeavor and yet right from the start They were recognizing that creativity And encouraging achievements that add to the satisfaction of life were critical and that religious thinking albeit not Supernatural religious thinking represented aspects of human life that were valuable They also noted that the acquisition and profit motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that we needed radical change toward a more socialized Cooperative economic order. It's not simple socialism. Not simple communism It's probably not the democratic socialism that you might hear from someone like bernie sanders but in 1933 this is what their line of thought was that capitalism While it has some advantages may not be the best I think it was a mistake for manifesto one to start declaring things about economic policies But they were trying to do what was best for all facets of society And they flatly pointed out that the goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily And intelligently cooperate for the common good 40 years later in 1973 the manifesto was updated to what is my favorite version It's way too long for me to go through and read in detail here But I will hit some of the highlights and then in 2003 it was updated again where it was cleaned up shortened dramatically and I think is Overall inferior, but I understand getting the bumper sticker sized McNuggets have thought May make it more appealing for some But manifesto two is where I tend to draw the most from because I view manifesto three as just a Synopsis of the elements of two um Few things that were important about the second humanist manifesto is that they flatly pointed out that the people who signed this manifesto Immediately disclaim that they're setting forth any sort of binding credo. There is no This isn't a top-down structure these are statements for a vision in a time that needs direction And they're affirming a common a set of common principles that they believed could serve as a basis for united action And on that front they addressed many different topics beginning with religion And it starts off without incredible animosity towards religion They're essentially saying they're fine with religious inspiration But what they're opposed to is dogma and authoritarian views that place anything above human needs Religions don't pass the test of scientific evidence religions promises of immortal salvation or eternal damnation are illusory and harmful This is at least evidenced in the many people that I've spoken to over my years working with the atheist community of people who were indoctrinated into a fear of hell That has lasted longer than their belief in that to wake up in the middle of the night after being an atheist for 20 or 30 years with a fear of a hell that you were indoctrinated into as a child Or this notion or concept that you were born bad or that you were born wrong or that you You're the reason jesus had to die has led to suicidal thoughts and actions on the parts of many people Manifesto 2 also addresses the principles the basic principles of ethics that moral values are derived from human experiences That situational ethics are what matter and they stem from both human need and human interest The reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that we possess In assessing situations and trying to reach conclusions about what we should value and what we should consider unethical It also points out expressly that they are not advocating for the use of scientific intelligence independent of or in opposition to emotion for humanists believe in the cultivations of feelings and love Humanism focuses on the individual as a cornerstone as a founding basis of why we need principles for freedom That human individuals are precious and have dignity and the individual person is a central human value That when it comes to things like sexuality birth control abortion divorce should be recognized as rights And that we're opposed to exploitive denigrating sexual expression, but don't wish to prohibit sexual behaviors between consenting adults It's a rather measured look that your freedom extends To the limits of where other people's freedoms began the the old Saying that my freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose is kind of a way to sum it up I think the freedom to swing your fist ends somewhat short of somebody else's nose When we consider things like personal space, but it doesn't mean that merely touching someone else is a problem. We have to address the entirety of the human condition and human interactions It also talks about democratic society And that to enhance freedom and dignity the individual must experience a full range of civil liberties in society This includes freedom of speech freedom of the press Political democracy the legal right of opposition to government policies and fair judicial process religious liberties, etc And they're committed to an open and democratic society that includes the separation of church and state and the separation of ideology and state or The separation of religion and government essentially Not that there should be an elimination of religion people are free to and should be free to follow the dictates of their conscience But that humane societies should elevate economic systems not by rhetoric or ideology But by whether or not they increase economic well-being This is one of the cornerstones Of we're going to point to data. This is how we're going to make our decisions and change minds Whereas religions through do it through coercion and conversion Um secular humanism advocates for debate discussion data driven decisions Is a little bit more to manifesto too Principle of moral equality must be furthered through elimination of all discrimination based on race religion sex age or natural national origin They made sure that they included that we're not the ones that are going to be discriminating against someone merely because of their religious views And yet religious institutions when given power in governmental positions have consistently almost universally To the point of wars Marginalized the people who don't agree We are a nation of god. We are a nation of this god. We are the chosen people of this god We are the focus of this god. We are the ones to whom god gave this land Those ideas are all principles from religions including christianity that are completely incompatible With the principles of secular humus There is no sect or denomination of secular humanism at all But there certainly wouldn't be any that required someone to believe something that's not empirically verifiable That ordered the deaths of other persons that ordered to act or destroy property or government That have overthrown a democracy to impose a secular humanist regime It's never been the case that we've been connected to terror cells and violent activism I'm advocated for treating people different over their gender or their sexuality Uh advocated for disparity of rights and freedom for those things Those are none of those things that are consistent with secular humanism life freedom and equitable relationships are the cornerstones There's no list of thou shouts or thou shalt nods because we recognize That nearly every attempt at such a list of thou shouts and thou shalt nods at some point Fails as we learn more about our world and get better at understanding better Doing better and being better in this life. Thanks All right. Well, thank you so much for your introductory statement there matt I just want to do a little quick housekeeping and remind everybody and that we do have our live event coming up So you can see over there. I got witsett and leo up in the corner there You know, I can move it over and we can have a double feature We can make it rocky horror picture show and have a double feature. So you see in double matt's on the screen twice He's going to be at the debate con get your tickets right now in the description in the live in our event right now for this feed and Also, you can check out our crowdfund where you can get access to perks if you're not going to be in the area so From there. Yeah, I can hear my little buzzer going off. We're going to kick it over to bob for up to 15 minutes For his introductory statement. Thanks for being here bob the floor is all yours So i'm going to jump straight in thanks matt and thank brian um christianity is not a way of life built upon ritualism or legalism It's an ontological faith that emphasizes ethical conduct It emerged out of the flux of the jewish people's rejection of their messiah And should be seen in the light of second temple judaism historically Christianity has an ontological way of life which emphasizes a way of being human and employees means to that end Which can be understood narratively as being god's priest on earth Reflecting the image of and lightness of god in the world through the giving of themselves in a living sacrifice christians achieve this by directing their lives accordingly Embodying in the way they live both truth and virtue is defined by the faith This way of life is always and at every level a collective exercise this fashioning of being Is done within and not apart from the church, which is the people of god Those who have entered into the new covenant through baptism There is a deliberate emphasis on applying oneself to the task and this ethical conduct moral fortitude Or key themes in the christian way of being human Thus may outward conformity without any real inner change is challenged in any healthy expression of the church This exercise of fashioning Fashioning the inner self within the church into the likeness of christ is facilitated and aided by creeds scriptures prayer sacraments symbols exhortation self-examination relations to spiritual elders The study and practice of virtue the collective upholding of values and moral principles Mutual support and solidarity practice between the faithful and the creation of fellowships institutions and societies christian communities at their best should be engaged with the realities that christians face at a local regional national or international level This could be for example feeding the poor It could be helping the widow and the orphan campaigning on behalf of the third world Debt relief disaster relief campaigning for political and legal reform to create a more just society Defending the environment evangelizing the lost fighting in a just war to defend one's brothers and sisters Or supporting in some way other or any other christian that he's doing one of these virtuous acts or other christianity is therefore an integrated flexibility within itself Due to its absence of rigid forms or obligatory means to get to its telos the glorification of god It continuously pushes those that believe in it and through them the world around them to strive ever upwards All pulling in the same direction regardless of setbacks mistakes and at times lethargy In the great communal exercise to build a civilization in which justice flows like a river man's dignity is upheld In which compassion and love become chief virtues The consistency of vision and direction is achieved precisely because it has a fixed star of the dawn christianity moves from the lesser to the greater from the inner to the outer from the mind to reality from the parts to the meaning christianity one at the same time can be a civilizational exercise Employing rituals laws institutions and symbols Many of which have proven durable from the last christian civilization civilization into our present time Others which have simply fallen away and on the other hand in another context It can remain a loose ethical and relational force with a minimal set of practices adapted to the socioeconomic and political realities that it faces The church in all things is about making saints out of sinners and as long as it continues to do this It wins according to its own terms of reference If we want to if we want the best for humanity then the best thing to do is to fill it with saints How does one become a saint not with much time? But only with much love the way of the cross which can be summed up as follows to die to oneself to the sacrifice for the good of one's neighbor through a process christians call repentance as the Transforming's effects of the renewing of the mind and the life that flows from it in this We are encouraged inspired and guided by the saints who have blazed a trail before us and set as an example to strive after Some leaving manuals and guides for us to study and use ourselves and others societies and institutions into which we can join dedicated to some good end Due to the way that the church has evolved within the empires and kingdoms it grew into Christians have developed an understanding of secular and spiritual powers government in two forms Ecclesial and secular which we believe should be ideally integrated into a harmony working in symphony We believe that both should be filled with believing and practicing christians that should govern their respective realms Accordingly eliminate a eliminating through various means any activity that does not move us towards god and cultivating all those that do The christian is encouraged guided and inspired in this regard by the teachings of the apostles in their telling of the life Teaching and reflections upon christ jesus who is both the head of the church and its cornerstone Christianity is better for humanity Precisely because it is comprehensive to his being Grounded in reality and working both with and against his nature as his best for him Christianity has the strict monotheism of islam the rich historical traditions of judaism Buddhist like forms of contemplation and meditation The rich color and vibrancy of hinduism the universal appeal of bahai The reason and empiricism of modernity the humanity of the renaissance all contained within the christian faith Christianity quite simply makes all of their ideologies philosophies and religions redundant christianity could be framed as the working out of gratitude For the work of salvation wrought by christ done with profound humility Into the world we face a question of what it means to be disciples of christ into every given situation and context christians examine themselves to see how much of the truth and virtue they are embodying And consistently reflect upon how they can and should embody more personally and collectively in ever larger circles christianity connects being and doing as both representation of what one is and how one changes Thus we look for patterns and habits in the process of repentance And try to change and cultivate new patterns and habits that better embody our values and beliefs Sometimes even rejecting past ways of doing things For us true epistemology is couched in the narrative. It's not based on empiricism or rationality or skepticism All of which work within an overarching Meta narrative anyway Did and do christians reason in the past? Of course they did The superiority of the christian story is precisely because it is set up and above nature Which means it is not subject to the circumstances and events of the natural world It cannot and does not collapse Due to the collapse of an economic system or an empire or a marriage or a career The christian meta narrative is an existential all-terrain vehicle that can traverse disaster and triumph By contrast the humanist narrative will end when liberal democracy ends I want to mention 12 ways that christianity has made your life better One in each one in honor for each of the apostles christianity is a proven record of transforming lives which then go on to transform societies And this has reshaped the roman world And each civilizational epoch up to modern times christianity has elevated the value and dignity of children from property to person in their own right deserving of rights Something humanists are currently undermining christianity has transformed attitudes to sexuality and sexual ethics from male dominated libertarian To chaste and disciplined Establishing the dignity of women in the family and making the family the bedrock of stable societies Something humanists are again Undoing christianity has elevated the dignity of women and their position in society From that of property to people worthy of rights and privileges Something that once again humanists are currently undoing christianity has Emphasized and elevated the importance of charity Particularly to strangers Something and heard of before christianity and not in any way elevated to the same prominence in any society before christianity christianity has established and elevated health care as a concern for society establishing novel institutions to this effect and making the health of all a matter of societal concern christianity has supported Education of all directly because it thought that truth couldn't should be accessed by all Education was therefore always been a chief concern of any place where christianity has gained influence power or authority christianity Transformed the way we thought about work and time linking human activity to vocation Thus even the work of peasants is given nobility Thus removing the underpinnings of the slave trade Which have uh, which viewed which is linked to the fact that it was viewed negatively Contributions to the development of science and underpinning its meta narrative That governed the first natural philosophers and contributed financially to the study of nature with many christians Contributing to scientific inquiry is also a way in which christianity has made everyone's life better christianity has at its heart an idea of liberty and justice for all Which has resulted in the chastisement of both emperor and kings and led and created the scaffold upon which liberalism currently works christians have repeatedly abolished slavery in multiple places and times And one can trace a consistent pattern of liberation of slaves amongst christians This is because the christian narrative embodied in exodus and that of christ In a paradigmatic level involves the idea of setting slaves free The church has beautified the continents of the world through its contributions to culture art and architecture and literature Now it's not just these historical achievements that christianity has succeeded in It's also the fact that if we take a moment to look at scientific studies That have been done about the impact of christianity on society. It points to the following Things if you want a people to be less prone to depression and to cope better when they are depressed You should want there to be a more christian society If you want people to be less prone to suicide You should want there to be a more christian society If you want people to be less likely to be involved in substance abuse Then you should want a more christian society If you want people to be less likely to be involved in crime Then you should want a more christian society If you want your children to do better in school, then you should want them to be christian If you want your non-christian child to get a better education, you should want there to be more Christian schools. If you want people to have an active concern for the care of the environment, then you should want them to be, want there to be more Christian. If you want families to be stable, stronger, and have durability, then you should want there to be a Christian society and more Christian families. If you want the poor to do better academically, you should want more supportive, stable, stronger, and durable families. Therefore, you should want more people to be Christian and a stronger Christian society. In his famous poem Charles Swinburne once boasted, Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten, thy death is upon thee, O Lord, and the love of the earth as thou diest resound through the winds of her wings, glory to man in the highest, for man is the master of all things. What we've seen as modernity has progressed from the time of the Enlightenment is that far from being able to master all things, man in modern times has lost control of himself, lost control of his environment, and has lost control of his future. If we want to regain that mastery of ourselves, then we should submit ourselves to the discipleship of Christ. Thank you. So you had actually two minutes left there, that's fine. So just to let everybody know, we had 15 minutes for our intros there. I want to remind everybody in the live chat that we're going to be doing a Q&A at the end of this for our speakers. And speaking of our speakers, if you like what you're hearing, they're both going to be linked in the description, however you can reach them through their social medias and here on YouTube. And most importantly, once again, Dallas, Texas. Let us know in the live chat where you're going to be November 4th, November 5th, or where you are right now. Like I'm hanging out in Nova Scotia. Let us know where you're hanging out. But Dallas, Texas is where we're going to be November 4th. See the tickets in the description. We're going to do 10 minute rebuttals now, everybody. So we're going to kick it back over to Matt. So the floor is yours, Matt, for 10 minutes. All right, this may, I hope this comes in less than 10 minutes since we're doing it all on the fly. Is a really good kind of introduction to Bob's take on what Christianity is. There was until the end, there was not a whole lot about what would make Christianity better for the world. And there are a lot of questions like if the purpose of Christianity is to reflect God to the world, I think you need to show why reflecting your idea of God to the world makes the world a better place, not just that it does. The same thing is true when you talk about a consistency of vision and direction. If it's consistent, then why are there thousands of denominations that disagree on every single point of doctrine? I don't see Christianity as consistent. I think you're going to find differences between the first Baptist Church, the second Baptist Church, the Pentecostal Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, and all the others that you're going to find on one block in Austin. Now, there's still some commonality between them for sure. But if the goal is striving ever upwards, he said upwards towards what? Towards a God, towards a heaven, towards an afterlife. There's no real clarity that this life means anything within Christendom. Other than it's where you are essentially being tested to see which afterlife you're going to get, either whether you consider that just a dispensation of grace that is irrelevant to what you do here, or whether you think that your actions here have consequences on that. At the end of the day, all of this, according to Christianity, is going to go away. Now, if the goal is to fill humanity with saints, I'm still not completely sure on what saints are and why having many of them would be good. So that'd be a good point to potentially hit on later. But it seems that he's also wrapped up Christianity as if it's going to adopt all the good things in the world. But stay out of secular things, like there's some non overlapping magisteria going on here. It's better because it's, it's comprehensive of God's being in nature. But what makes that better? What makes the Bob that God's advocating for? What makes his nature better? And if he doesn't exist, then clearly his nature isn't better. And if he does exist, and he has a better nature, then it'd be nice to be able to actually demonstrate that. If we look at all of this, one of the keys is that Bob's take is the true epistemology is based in the narrative, not on empiricism, not founded on skepticism. This is probably going to be one of the key areas where we're going to disagree. And it may be an absolute roadblock to any hope of agreement. Because if you think that truth exists in a narrative independent of empirical verification, that you and your opposed to skepticism, I don't know what to say or do to help someone realize how bad that is for determining truth. It seemed to suggest that the Christian story being set above nature was one of its strengths. But if we're talking about what's best for society, saying something is above nature doesn't do us any good, because you're talking about a magical realm that we have no evidence exists or impacts nature. Now, on the list of things where Christianity has impacted our lives, neither myself nor any reasonable atheist I know would ever deny that Christianity has impacted our lives in good ways and in bad ways. That's that's the reality of one of the world's foremost religions, if not the world's foremost religion, having impacted nearly every aspect of this. But if you take a look at the things that he listed, not one of his positions compares Christianity to secular humanism. There is no comparison there. There is no secular humanist regime or government that you can compare it to. And so when you say, Oh, Christianity did this Christianity did this. Yes, Christianity has built hospitals and schools. But that doesn't mean that without it, we couldn't or wouldn't have built more hospitals or schools. When you're in the position of power, when you are in a position where you are essentially a sanctioned by the government, where you are in a tax free status, there are certain privileges that come with that. And Christians are full of Christianity is full of really good people who want to do good things who want to go out and explore nature. Of course, they care about universities and educating, because in their view, learning about the natural world, all of the naturalists from from science is history would view this as we're trying to better understand God. And in the process, they better understand nature. They didn't. Nothing they did ever did ever came to any sort of better understanding of a God. There's no demonstrations. As a matter of fact, the more they did, the more God was pushed out of these realms, because we have no need of that hypothesis, we have no need of appealing to a God, we are trying to understand nature on nature's terms. And so when you talk about Christianity transforming lives, plenty of things can transform lives. I don't know which things he's trying to claim that humanists are actually making the world worse done, but I can I can have my suspicions. I'm sure we can talk about some of it. But the very notion that Christianity was crucial to freeing the slaves. No, Christians in many cases were crucial to freeing the slaves. Christianity was not and the Bible definitely was not as the Bible allows it permits it. The Bible doesn't have men and women as equal. So the notion that Christianity promotes equality and dignity for women is countered by the various times in the Bible when the Bible expressly says that women are subject to men, that men shall rule over them. This happens New Testament, Old Testament, Genesis three up through first Peter three. I mean, maybe further, I don't have all the verses memorized, don't have all of them in front of me. But the notion that men and women are equal within Christianity, that may be true in some denominations in some churches, but it's not rooted in the Bible and it's not rooted in the normative history of Christianity. It would be almost as bad to come in and talk about how the Bible or how Christianity is really nice to gay folks because you went to a rainbow flag gay church in San Francisco that claims to be Christian, despite the fact that there are no firmer grounds with the Bible than are the people who are suggesting that Christianity itself is opposed to slavery or Christianity is increasing women's dignity, only if you redefine dignity to being subservient to a man. There are many ways in which Christianity is impacted the world. There are many ways in which Islam is impacted the world. Some of them for better, some of them for worse, some of them we don't know. But there's nothing on his list where he can say, ah, here's a direct comparison between secular humanism and what it has done and would do. And here's what Christianity has done and would do because many of the things that Christianity gets the credit for like, Hey, let's go study nature. Let's let's build hospitals. Let's create universities. All of those things are of value to secular humanists as well. And they wouldn't go away under secular humanist regime. It is happenstance of history that the religious favored position was the one to establish many of these schools and hospitals within our society. Whereas had religion not become as prominent. Do we think that we would not be teaching people? Do we think that we would not be exploring the world and trying to understand it? This is the fundamental nature of who humans are. This is the what secular humanist manifestos one, two and three to some extent, we're all advocating for when we talked about setting up reason and knowledge as the foundation for understanding the world and that art and emotion were not to be sidelined for this. And so I have no doubt at all would not deny at all that Christians have done good things. I don't know to what extent Christianity has done good things because I don't know how much the ideology ideology can get credit for what individuals do, especially if those individuals were likely to do that beforehand in either circumstance. For example, I'm not trying to settle Bob with anything. Just making a point. There are Christians who are KKK members. As a matter of fact, the KKK is by definition in its own words a Christian organization. When I was a Christian, I would have never included them. I don't I would have said nope, they're not Christian. Nope, they're not Christian. Nope, they're not Christian. But they think they are. And it's very difficult to be pointing to a Bible as a foundation for ideas about race and slavery when it advocates for slavery. And then say, no, this is not this is not what we're about. This gets into the no true Scotsman fallacy. Now, the reason I've preempted that by saying I'm trying to settle Bob with anything. What I'm saying is if you want to claim what Christians have done in the name of Christianity, you have to then take both the good and the bad until you can demonstrate what true Christianity is and requires and necessitates and what necessarily comes from that. You can't have one without the other. All right, well, thank you for your 10 minute rebuttal there, Matt. Just once again, not to be a broken record, going to remind you all tickets are available in the description along with our crowd funds. So see those links in the description. We're super excited for the event coming up. Bob, 10 minutes for your rebuttal statement. So 20 thesis to critique secular humanism. Matt, if you are invited to take down the numbers of any that you'd like to discuss, thesis one, human flourishing should be grounded in the organizing of man by his nature. Man is an habitual creature and should be directed to goals above mere self interest or material concerns to bring the best out of man and man out of himself and away from a selfish perspective. He therefore should be directed to a higher plane, which is concerned with matters of truth and virtue. Thesis two, personal freedom is an essential element of the secular humanist worldview. Freedom, however, is not innate to the nature of man, but a condition of circumstances. Therefore, to build a society around the belief in the individual autonomous agent is flawed. If it is a weak reality and most people have limited power over their own lives, a different foundation stone for society should be sought. Thesis three, families are an obviously better foundation for society as they contain more wealth and power. They provide to society its first line in education, policing, counseling, health provision, social benefits, social care, and as such, the state should focus on the family as defined by the church. Thesis four, progressives abuse freedom. For them, freedom is framed as a private concern connected to private property used to private ends. In contrast, the Christian understanding of the use of freedom is as a fruit of knowledge directed to a proper end, which is expressed in the pursuit of the common good. Thesis five, if I suggested, if I suggested the individual as a weak locus of liberty and power, it follows he is easily manipulated and formed in a myriad of ways by outside pressures and forces such as commercialism, observation and self reflection strongly suggests this is true. It follows that the subjective claims based on the individual self are therefore weak grounds upon which to order society. Thesis six, progressive hyper individualism undermines the humanitarian ethic and thus shows the contradiction of ideas that pervades this worldview. Progressive thought on race and gender critical studies cuts away at the coherence of the common narrative that binds us together and thus increases the fault lines of conflict leading to an increase in pain and suffering. In short, heterogeneity undermines the basis for securing the universality of human rights. Thesis seven, secular government is a Christian hangover from the medieval period. It is not established as rationally better, showing that humanists are as the historian Tom Holland put it, goldfish in a Christian bowl. Thesis eight, religious freedom signified the death of the Roman idea that the peace of the society rests on its peace with the gods, an idea that carried over into the church and medieval Christendom, religious freedom is a fruit of religious diversity. But such diversity, though, has largely been cosmetic as Christians hold essentially to the same worldview. We've genuinely only experienced real religious diversity for the last 80 years in Europe, at least, and it has brought nothing but blood to our streets and is a source of strife and conflict in our society, just as you can see today. Religious pluralism is a delegitimizing force against the secular state, because a truly secular government has no legitimacy, because it represents no one. Thesis nine, the state takes its own side and fills itself with an ideology to suit known as nationalism, and therefore is not neutral. A true state neutrality would lead to insipid values that are as unaffensive as they are ineffective. The claims by secular humanists like Matt to want a neutral government on Machiavellian in nature, they desire soul control over the national curriculum. The secular, the secular humanist wishes his humanist religion to rule over the state. Secular states not committed to ideologies of any substance have replaced ideas and values with consumerism. A consumer attitude is prevailing over all aspects of life, because the story is this life is all you have. So enjoy it. This creates an ambiguous relationship to values and to cultural traditions, which is responsible for the weakness of liberal secular society. Thesis 10, secular humanists, governments cannot resist Islamization. The political commentator Douglas Murray has argued that the Enlightenment has failed to go deep or to go far. Humanism is an already dying idea. The sociologist Peter Elburger argued that the beliefs become normalized in society or immaterial to whether they are true. In this argument is the fact of the danger of secularism. It cannot stop the normalization of Islam and all that follows. Thesis 11, the concept of humanity is unsustainable from a materialistic perspective. It only exists because of a Christian scaffold of metaphysics. And when this is denied, it collapses. It was culturally defined by certain elite groups to the exclusion of others. And we find that secular humanists continue to do this and a wholly inconsistent around the rights of the unborn child. Thesis 12, rationality leads to tyranny as the ordering of society along rational lines leads to a restriction on thought and practice. Everything becomes measured by a cost-benefit matrix. Everyone is seen as an end to a means. Functionality and advantage trump all other considerations such as value, truth and aesthetics. Rationality strips man of his dignity and turns him into a cog in a machine, the tool of a rationally ordered society. The tyranny of consensus follows in the footsteps of the priests of reason. Thesis 13, the secular study of religion is given by the sociologist Roderick Nynian Smart holds that a religion should be studied for its content and practice in the following fields, doctrinal, experiential, methodological, ethical, ritual, historical, social and material. The application of this study, as Matt has already seemed to admit, that humanism is an Epicurean religion. We can see that secular humanism is taking on the trappings of a religion and has done so before see Auguste Comte. Humanism as religion is bigotry against Christianity, which it is constantly defining itself against and constantly contending with in society as a historical matter of fact. Thesis 14, humanists accept an ordering of being and place humans on top. However, on what basis can they accept any order of being to do so? Why is man more important than an ape? Why save your neighbour's baby from a burning building rather than your neighbour's cat? The dignity of man is innate, however, within the Christian narrative, innate dignity cannot be established within a humanist narrative as they are committed to a materialistic worldview as viewed scientifically, which can convey no priority. Christianity raises man's dignity to that as a little below the angels rather than as the humanists would have you believe a little above the ape. Thesis 15, humanism devalues nature's intrinsic dignity as a mere resource and tool to man's achievement and betterment. Nature has no intrinsic value, but as it approaches the concerns and needs of man. Christianity by contrast teaches that nature has an intrinsic dignity independent of man to which man is responsible in his role as God's priest in God's world. A world declared good before man was created by God. Thesis 16, truth narratives influence how we perceive data. There is no epistemic neutrality that is possible. Evidence is always interpreted by a narrative because there is no neutrality we assert truth within our own paradigm. The paradigm we think in sets the limits of the horizon that we can see and what we believe is possible. It does not therefore represent what horizons are real. Thesis 17, humanists are stuck in a materialistic prison with epistemic epistemically which epistemically preferences parts over purpose in their discourse of nature. However, metaphysics comes before epistemology as the narrative is used to frame the evidence that you can only defend a theory of knowledge in the light of the knowledge that you have already attained. Thesis 18, the supernatural is beyond falsification. It stands above nature. Miracles therefore can only be experienced and witnessed. Thesis 19, non-material realities do exist, such as laws of logic, consciousness, mathematics, meaning, values, emotions, they exist and yet are not material realities. Therefore, we can believe in something based on effects or experience alone, without direct observation of the thing itself, emergent properties like gravity, wind and the mind are the other examples. The essay is not subject of the the essay is not the subject of the empirical study, but the effects or the source of its origin and is yet evidently present and remains part of the real. Therefore, we can say the non-material world exists and does interact with the material world, such as, for example, dying of a broken heart, the ending of addictions because of mystical visions. Therefore, if minds are an emergent property of bodies, could it not be said that knowledge of the property of minds and non-material connection to a supernatural reality verified by countless experience? I'm probably not going to finish this one. I'm afraid unless you give me more time. The last one, sir. Go for it. Yeah, go for you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's very gracious of you, Matt. So Thomas Cunn demonstrated that science is based on assumptions about the character of the universe rather than merely an empirical facts. These assumptions are a paradigm and compromise a collection of beliefs, values and techniques that are held by a given scientific community, which will legitimate legitimize their systems and set the limits of their own powers of description. I would add which are built upon a Christian narrative. So for example, there's no empirical evidence that demonstrates that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers that this objective reality is governed by natural laws that are consistent and repetitive that reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation that nature has uniformity of laws and most of all things in nature must have at least a natural cause that experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without any deliberate or an intentional mistakes that will influence the results that experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions and that random sampling is representative of the entire population. However, Christianity underpins these unproven assumptions. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much, both of our speakers for the rebuttal period there. We're going to go in an open discussion format just remind everybody we're doing a Q&A at the end of this. And once again, we're going to drop that needle and get your tickets for our live in person event. You want to come and see Matt debate in person. You see him on the side there. He's going to be there. But let's not get too off base. 35 minutes of open discussion. Let's let's hit it gentlemen. Thank you for being here. So, Matt, thank you very much for your presentation and thank you for being gracious in allowing me to to to have a little bit of extra time. I just want to ask you first off, do you recognize a nine month child unborn as being alive? Yes. Do you agree that therefore in a termination of that unborn child that we're ending a life? We don't do that. But yes, you don't end alive. No, we don't tend to eliminate a nine month feed as generally speaking under extreme circumstances, something like that might happen. But yes, it would be ending a life. But so we do. No, no, actually, we don't. We don't. So there's no nine. The overwhelming majority of abortions take place in the first trimester, then later into the second trimester. And generally, we have limits on what can legally be done. And any abortion, by the way, is the termination of a non viable pregnancy at that point. A fetus that can live. What we do is deliver it at the eight month at the nine month point. That by C section, whatever else, it's generally speaking, there is no right to that and abortion, by the way, is not the right to kill is the right to terminate a pregnancy, which is a matter of the natural order will result in the death of a fetus at most points throughout pregnancy. But I don't see where that has anything to do with this. But go ahead. OK, so I allowed you to speak, so allow me to reply. The reality is go ahead. Yeah, the reality is that we do have nine month terminations. We do have them increasingly on demand. I'm speaking from the British context, perhaps things are different in America, but it's a pretty much known fact in the UK that we've got abortion on demand, regardless of whether the child is viable or not. But the point that I'm getting to is that am I right in understanding that you and the vast majority of secular humanists would agree with the idea that you particularly would agree with the idea of abortion right up to nine months? Is that is that a fair or am I? No, you don't agree, because first of all, I don't get to speak for the majority of secular humanists. But also, as I just pointed out, it's not an abortion at that point, it's a delivery. You have the right to terminate a pregnancy. You don't have the right to kill. Okay, so this is just semantics termination. It's not semantics termination termination is the end of a pregnancy. It's not the end of fetus. If we sorry, if we're just going to talk over one and then I'll just talk over you and this whole conversation breaks down. Well, we need to tell the truth and you're not going to take the answer. No, no, I'm not one second about your sophism and your use of language. That's fine. Don't accept it. Go ahead. Thank you. So the reality is that that as I understand Matt's position and he can correct me if he's wrong, but he does support the idea of abortion without limit. Literally just corrected you on that right before you said it. So literally just correct. You just redefined it. So you did just thank you. Okay, just redefined it. Just one second. My correction is a redefinition. You're still wrong about what my position is. I'm going to ask you mute there, Bob. So let's try to mitigate the crosstalk if we can't find like a rhythm that we can get into with each other. We will go into one minute back and forth. So let's just try again there, fellas. So basically the thing is Matt has been saying again and again and again and countless and repeated debates that humanism doesn't support killing. But it does because it supports the idea of abortion and abortion is the taking of human life. Let's be clear what happens in abortion, especially as in the later forms of abortion, it involves things like ripping the limbs off of babies, ripping their legs off of their bodies, ripping their arms off of their bodies, crushing their skulls. This is killing. Matt might want to call it termination. He might want to dehumanize them by saying that their fetuses and he might want to pretend that the late term abortions of viable babies, the abortions of viable babies aren't occurring, but they are and Matt wants to defend them by saying that we're not killing anyone. We're terminating a fetus and we're doing it because no one can force a child or no one can force a woman to have a pregnancy. Are we going to let them respond? So we'll kick it over. Bob's a filthy liar and is putting me on trial when the subject of this debate is Christianity versus secular humanism, not what Matt has said or what Matt's opinion is on abortion. My position on abortion is completely irrelevant to secular humanism because secular humanism's position on abortion is not clear and defined. So if you're going to compare Christianity to secular humanism, you have to compare it to what's actually presented. And if you're going to say Matt's position is this and not let me correct you, as I've done several times, and then when I do correct, then you just say, well, Matt's redefining it and calling it a fetus. It is a fetus. You are lying about what happens as a prominent position or as the dominant position within abortion. And you are not representing my position. My position is that no one has the right to force someone to remain pregnant against their will that that consent is required. That means that a pregnant that an abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. Sometimes that results in a loss of life. Sometimes it results in a delivery. That's my position. There are laws in place that I'm generally okay with. But to come in and sensationalize and talk about ripping the limbs off of babies is absolutely ridiculous. That's not anything any of us have ever advocated for. It's not a principle of secular humanism. It is sensationalizing. And I was hoping that would be beneath you to do that. But evidently it's not. So since none of your rebuttal actually addressed my opening statement in any specific way and was a pre-canned chat GPT ASMR. Do you have anything that's a rebuttal to what I actually said, or are you just going to rebut strawman? Okay, so let's just be clear, Matt, you are simply simply upset because you've been called out on something that you've repeatedly said in a number of debates. The fact of the matter is you're here representing, you're representing secular humanism, you're representing the secular humanist manifestos, the secular humanist manifesto supports the idea of contraception and the full use of abortion. No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. And people can go, okay, so people can go in and check. It literally says the word. It does not say you're interrupting me once again. Yeah, I was muted when I interrupted you. So could we have some consistency in moderating why? All right, so we'll thank you. Can I finish what I was saying? We'll move one minute of rounds back and forth just to mitigate the crosstalks and we'll try not to throw too many points out there. We do have a couple subjects that we can kind of hit on as we go through this, but let's try to work through through the through this issue first, and then I'll throw some suggestions in there. OK, so Matt has claimed that I'm misrepresenting him. I simply invite everyone to go and look at the humanist manifesto. It is in favor of contraception. It is in favor of abortion and abortion does equal killing. And Matt has just nodded his head. Abortion is killing. So when Matt says there's nothing in the humanist manifesto in favor of killing other people, he is either knowingly lying or he is unwittingly lying. So to call me a filthy liar for calling him out on that is unfortunate for Matt because he's going to be embarrassed when people read the manifesto and check to see which out of the two of us is lying. And we can come on to some of the things that you mentioned if you want to. We can already do that because I read that portion of the manifesto. What I said you were lying about is that the secular humanism advocates for unrestricted abortion. That is not what the secular humanist manifesto says. I read the section about what it actually says at the beginning. I also offered clarification as to what my position is. And even after doing that, you still decided to misrepresent what my position is, claiming that I'm just, I don't know. It doesn't matter what is your objection. What was the demonstration that secular humanism is inferior to Christianity when it comes to society in this world, because you haven't really done that. Well, that's your claim, Matt. But it is my claim. It is your claim. It is your claim. Exactly. Yeah. So so let's stick on to on to this situation of abortion, because you've stated that you've stated that it doesn't talk about when abortions occur. It doesn't set any limits. You yourself are here representing secular humanism. But when it suits you, you say that you are not, you know, you're not speaking for all secular humanists. But when it suits you, you are representing all secular humanists. I'm never representing all secular humanists, never claimed to, never do. Right. So but the reality is, I mean, people can check the manifesto for themselves. Yeah. The new manifesto, by the way, doesn't mention abortion at all. Well, I mean, does it didn't does it? Does it call for the stop of genocide of tens of millions of people? No, does it stop? Does it call out? You said it was sensationalizing. What what was what was a false description about my description of ripping limbs off little babies inside the mother's womb? That actually happens. That's what abortionist doctors themselves say. Yeah. On occasion, that happens after the fetus has been terminated. But you're the one who is a secular humanist support. Are you going to let me finish answering your question or not? You're the one that sensationalize it calling it genocide. Meanwhile, the manifesto three does not mention abortion at all. So you have to go back to the 1973 one, which I already know, which I already acknowledged mentions abortion. But then you have to pretend that it is for abortion without limits, which it's not. And the newest version of this does not include anything about abortion. Okay, so I mean, the we're talking about the humanist manifestos that it doesn't mention for or against, which demonstrates that these humanist manifestos are themselves a poor form of guidance, because they fail to cover all the necessary issues. They fail to give the guidance that they claim. And the the reality is that I don't see any repudiation of the previous manifesto. If I'm right, the third manifesto claims to build on the second manifesto. Is that not true? They're all building on each other. One of the things. So it's not one of the absence of the statement in the first one of the things. One of the things one of the things that it's building on is that we can learn more and that we get better at things. And one of the things that it says in various incarnations, this is the thing, the very thing you're criticizing that it doesn't include instructions. I address that in my opening if instead of doing a pre written rebuttal that address nothing in my opening. If you'd actually listen to what I said, took notes and replied to that, we could have addressed what I said about why thou shouts and thou shouts nots are problematic and aren't included in the manifesto. But you didn't do that. Now I made a rebuttal of secular humanism, which is what we're here to debate. You made a rebuttal of the straw man, not of the position I presented. You made a rebuttal of some other position. And once again, you've interrupted me. And once again, I noticed that when you interrupt me, Ryan does not interrupt you. Well, I was pointing that out, guys. So I tell you what, I will not say you are for the rest of the game. And once, yeah, you can't run off. Can you, Matt? It's unfortunate you haven't got the power of the the hang up button in this. You think I can't hang up on you right now? Yeah, you can't hang up on me right now. Let's not test it. You're stuck right there. I'll refund the money for the debate. You're stuck right there. Yeah, so as I was trying to say, can he make any so so so can I can I so so I was trying to point out according to according to Matt, when according to the secular humanists, you're saying that it gives guidance, I would say that matters of life and death are quite important in terms of where life begins. Where does where does the secular humanist manifesto say that humans receive their rights? Are we replying? Oh, sorry, was that a question for me? Yes, Matt, that was a question for you. Did I address this in my opening about where it says they receive their rights? No, I don't I don't remember hearing that. No, that's unfortunate. You should have been listening because I did actually. Well, people can judge that. I'm in the middle of the chess game right now. Can you wait? Yeah. So there we go. I mean, here's Matt having a debate and you can see the arrogance. Does this does this make does this make for our society a better place, Matt? This kind of this kind of arrogance. You're asking me, where the sec where the secular secularist manifesto asking you because you're going to let me finish the question. Yeah, I'm asking you because you're the one here saying that humanism is better guidance to than Christianity. So and where it is the question. Well, it is and I made my case. Wow, this is hilarious. You're saying where does the secular humanist manifesto declare that life begins? It doesn't. And where does it talk about where we get rights from in in the second one? It talks about ethics and morals being derived from human experience. I mentioned that in my opening, if you hadn't just shown up with a prewritten rebuttal and a decide and a decision that you were going to address topics like abortion in a dishonest way that doesn't represent either myself or the manifestos. Maybe we could have had a discussion about that. Now, I'll let you go back to your chest game. But whilst. Yes, thank you. So now let me just point out something that here Matt is saying to you that humanism is guidance. And yet humanism, as he has admitted, gives us no guidance about when life begins. He says that we should reflect on humanist experience. Now, if I ask Matt what his personal view is, and then challenge him on his personal view, he'll say, well, that's just my personal view. That's not a criticism. That's not a criticism of secular humanism. So whenever it suits him, it's his personal view. Whenever he doesn't suit him, it's secular humanism. That's a lie. We get that. So let's try it then. That's a lie. So I've never I've never done anything. Sorry. Am I interrupting your chest game? No, wait, Ryan, when he interrupts me, you never say anything. Well, I've got to be fair. You've stopped talking. You are asking him a question and then you're sitting there lying about me and misrepresenting my position. Do you want me to respond or not? I would like you to respond to my question. Yeah. Cool. Restate your question and just to make sure that I don't answer the wrong one. OK. So given human experience and knowledge and science, when does life begin? I have no idea. There we go. I feel like this would be a good time to move into one of those other topics, you know, whether Matt wants to refresh on some of the things that he brought up in his intro. I'd like to actually have a discussion. But yeah, so the issue here is whether or not I know when human life begins or whether or not anybody knows when human life begins is irrelevant to whether or not secular humanism is superior to Christianity for society. And the reason I say that is because whatever point we decide that we're going to consider something like, for example, when a sperm and an egg combine, were each of those alive independently beforehand? Possibly. Did life, a new life begin when they joined? Almost certainly. Does that make it a human life, a human person? That's where the debate begins. And even if it's a human person, doesn't have the right to use someone else's body without their consent? These are the complicated issues that we have to face in a reality when we're determining individuals' rights. We don't get to just say this is the foundational principle of secular humanism is we don't get to just say, I think God makes life and therefore I'm going to rule over other people as if I'm correct. You have to demonstrate that you're correct in order to do that. Christianity does not demonstrate that it's correct. Christianity and God does not serve as any sort of confirmation about when life begins or when abortion would be wrong. It's merely an assertion that is without evidential support. OK, so I'm going to reply and let's see if Matt doesn't interrupt me and go back to the chess game. There you go. Look at that. He's interrupting. And just carry on, Bob. I want to give you what you want. There we go. Ryan, are you going to do anything? Well, we can. Yeah, I was going to say, I'll have to. Sorry, Matt, we'll place Matt on. I just want people to see. I just want people to see. Anyway, because Matt has a tendency to do this in his debates. He complains any winters when people make points and he throws ad hominem attacks at them and he doesn't address their arguments. And we see this in a debate after debate after debate and it burns him because he can't just put the hanger down on me in this debate. He's got to sit there and he's actually got to listen to what I've got to say anyway. So the reality is, ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, there you go. This is the arrogance that we're dealing with. This is the kind of presumptuous arrogance of the secular humanist on display. He's sulking. So whilst Matt takes his toys back off the floor and puts back in, let's try to get back to Christianity for discussion. So so the thing is, he said that he said that Christianity doesn't tell us when life begins. Christianity does have a position on when life begins. He starts a conception. That's a starting point. Ten seconds. As Matt has just admitted, secular humanism gives us no understanding of when life begins. He says that life begins at conception. He admits it. But he refuses to commit secular humanism to any position because it doesn't give us guidance. All right, that's time. So you're going on mute and Matt, one minute for you. So Bob seems to think that all this is incredibly simple. I've already given the answers that were relevant. And by the way, when I was first asked, I gave the answers immediately without hesitation. And it wasn't until Bob mis represented things that I even attempted to interrupt or clarify anything. You can shake ahead all you want, but that's the order. They can go back and rewind. You asked me about whether or not a nine-month fetus was alive. And I immediately without hesitation said yes. It wasn't until you misrepresented as you've repeatedly done. Now, let me remind people this debate is Christianity versus secular humanism, which one is best for society. And it is not anything at all about what's Matt's position on abortion. But Bob in his stunning attempt at making a case has decided that this is the easiest point of to a sale that because I'm OK with a woman's right to choose and to terminate a pregnancy, which in many cases will in fact end the life of the fetus. Matter of fact, in most cases, it will end the life of the fetus because I'm OK with that. And he's not. He thinks he's got a slam dunk knockdown. I didn't say Christianity didn't have a position on life beginning. I said Christianity can't demonstrate that its position is correct. All right, that's time there. So I'm going to inject here is probably a good point to launch pad off into another discussion, maybe somewhat tied to the abortion idea that we're talking about right now. But yeah, rights for men and women under your worldview, we're going to give that 10 minutes. So rights for men and women under your worldview, one minute on the clock for you, Bob. OK, so right now, secular humanism and particularly the progressive element within the secular humanist community is undermining the rights of women. Now, obviously, Matt will do his thing where he says, well, you know, my position is not the positions of secular humanists when it suits him and then will assert secular humanism when it suits him. And so it's quite a good rhetorical device, which means that he thinks that you can never keep poisoning the world. Secular humanism. Well, look, once again, interruption, I'm sorry, but again, you're poisoning the world and there we go. Just one second, Matt. So I will say I'm going to just pause the clock for a second here without talking about Matt's what Matt might say or what he might respond with. Under your worldview, what are the rights for men and women 30 seconds on the clock still? OK, so as I was saying, the in terms of the dignity of men and women, it is something that is given to them within the Christian worldview as they are as man and woman in secular liberal in secular humanist progressive thought, the idea of woman is undermined as an objective reality and thus the rights attached to that are themselves undermined. All right, time and over to you, Matt, one minute. No, they're not. The Bible doesn't hold men and women as being equal. Secular humanism does end a story. Hey, back to you, Bob. Want to come off mute there? Let's try to see if we can get a little bit of open discussion about the rights for men and women here, guys. So he says he says no. He says no. He says no. But secular humanism believes and advocates for. And of course, this is where Matt says, no, it doesn't. It's just it's just my personal opinion. But you're going to poison the well in time. I'm going to call it out of your time. Poison the well again. Once again, interrupting. Once again, not open discussion. Notice when Matt's speaking, I'm muted. But when I'm speaking, Matt is not muted. We just observe that people. We did just say we're going to try to do an open discussion. So if we need to go back into one minute, it's supposed to be 35 minutes of open discussion. And you're poisoning the well every time you start talking about me. And you're literally starting every one of your things with Matt's going to say this. Matt's going to do this. It's called poisoning the well. It's relations. It's disarmament. And it makes you. All right. You're both on mute, fellas. I'm sorry, but you're both talking over each other. Nobody can hear what anybody's saying. And yeah, I was going to say we're trying to address the topics, you know, like in the back and forth without, like, like when I ask you for your side, but I do want to hear like what your thoughts are, not what you think Matt's thoughts are. So I'm sorry if it seems like I know that that's part of the debate strategy going into the conversation side of things. But as for like introducing the idea, you know, I'm not picking a side in that sense. But if you do ask a question, you got to let somebody answer it. And if you do spend most of the time talking about what the other person might say or what they might think, then we're going to have to let them respond and clarify, you know, what's going on. So, you know, we only got a couple more minutes, guys, before we're going to go into the Q&A. So, you know, hit the like button, hit that share. We appreciate all your support there in the live chat. But we're going to try, do this one more time, one minute back and forth. We're going to kick it over to you, Bob, for one minute and then back over to you, Matt, on this topic. Okay, people can decide for themselves whether they think that this has been moderated fairly. So the reality is that in terms of women's rights, in terms of their rights, in sport, their rights for private spaces, to not feel that they are being oppressed by the presence of men or threatened by the presence of men, secular humanists are quite largely in bed with the idea of trans-activist rights, which undermines the rights of women. Why? Because these progressive secular humanists do not accept that women are objective realities in and of themselves. Simply to deny that would contradict everything that Matt has said on other platforms, in other places. And I don't understand why he's equivocating, except that he's got a nice rhetorical device to go. It is secular humanism when I like it, and it's not secular humanism when I like it. It's time. One minute for you, Matt. And we got to get off the mute there. You're back on the mute, and Flo is yours, Matt. I don't know what to say. Bob's already at every single point declared what I'm gonna say beforehand, and that I'll say it's my position and when it suits me, and that it's humanist position when it suits me. No, that's not true. Everything that I talk about as my position is my position. When I talk about secular humanism, as I did in my opening, I stuck to the manifestos. I pointed out where I disagree with them. I pointed out where I don't. It's not a matter of it's secular humanism when it suits me. No, I'm a secular humanist. Either my positions are in accordance with the values of secular humanism, in which case I think they are, and or they're not. Now, whether or not the manifesto, and keep shaking your head, whether or not the manifesto says anything about it, is independent. I don't get to come in and say, here's what secular humanism is. I can talk about my take on secular humanism. And so when he asserts that trans rights activists are undermining the rights of women, all I can say is, no, they're not. All right, well, that's a good launching pad again. I'm going to inject. We got what, another 10 minutes here before we go into our Q&A. That was the actual time. So let's try to get into another topic if we can, where Matt just brought that up. Rights for minorities, LGBTQ people in your society. One minute on the clock for you, Bob. So in terms of rights for minorities, I'm not so sure that there's gonna be much of the debate. As a Christian, I believe that all people are made in the image of God and therefore have equal rights. However, it's equal rights to the good. It's not equal rights to anything that they want. So for example, the right of a homosexual couple to have a child, particularly in matters of surrogacy, deny the right of the child the right to their parent. And I don't see how, and it creates this idea that children are simply commodities to be passed over and handed over. No one has the right to a child. You either can or you can't have a child. I agree with the idea of adoption, but you don't have a right to a child. It's not a handbag. All right, 10 minutes on the clock, or one minute on the clock for you there, Matt. Sure, so I don't think I recall anything in any of the three secular humans manifesto specifically about adoption. However, in the case where a same-sex couple or a child was couple or any couple decides to adopt a child that was birthed by someone else, the same rights for a heterosexual couple to adopt should be afforded to a homosexual couple to adopt. And if you're going to appeal to the rights of the child to have its parents, that has been denied in both cases. And I'm not aware that any such right exists or could exist as no child has a right to its parent because its parent could die or put it up for adoption or any number of things. But the one lone objection that you have to gay couples adopting applies to straight couples adopting as well. And surrogates, by the way. That's time. One minute, back to you. I think that Matt probably has misunderstood my position because in a minute's worth of talking, it's hard to get everything out. I'm not against the idea of gay adoption. What I'm pointing out, though, is that we have examples within our society in which people are practicing their individual autonomy, their right over themselves to treat children like commodities. Matt likes to talk about slavery in the Bible, but secular humanism emphasizes the idea of the individual autonomous agent and emphasizes the idea that you have the right to do whatever you want over your own body. And that is creating an environment in which children are being treat like commodities and passed over as if they're handbags. Secondhand, I'm not against the idea of gay adoption. I know for a fact that adoption is basically a straight line to prison. And if the alternative is to put them in a loving gay home rather than keep them in the adoption service, then I would favor that as the lesser of two evils. All right, one minute for you, Matt. Oh, we gotta get you off the mute there. I'll make sure that if anybody feels like I'm being unfair, I'll make sure that I make it fair. So let's continue on. One minute for you, Matt. Then I have no idea what Bob's point is because if he's okay with gay couples adopting, I don't know why he brought it up. Is he okay with surrogate surrogacy? I don't know why he brought it up. I don't see this treating children as commodity. What I see is both many Christians, as a matter of fact, Christians predominantly run adoption agencies, both of my niece and nephew were adopted through Christian adoption agencies because in many countries and in many places, those are the only organizations that you can really go through. But if Bob doesn't have an objection to that, I don't know why he brought it up because in my perspective, from a secular humanist perspective, I don't see anything specifically about adoption in the manifesto, but my take is that getting kids into loving homes is the priority so that they don't wind up in the system. And on that front, I don't know why this subject was brought up because it seems that we agree. All right. He's absolutely right in terms of the alternative between leaving children in the adoption services or getting them into stable homes, we do agree. However, the point that I've made and the problem that I seem to be having is that what I'm trying to get across to Matt is that humanism emphasizes the idea of the height of the individual autonomous agent that they have the control over their own body and what they do with it. But they go beyond that to what they do with other people's bodies, including things like insurrogacy and inabortion. These are questions for society. So let me just ask Matt straight out. Does humanism give guidance about surrogacy and abortion? Because these are real questions. The death of 90 million people could be affected by the answer in the past. We've had 90 million abortions. These aren't little questions. They are relevant questions. And if you're admitting humanism gives no guidance, then you're admitting that Christianity because it does give guidance is better. My man. Well, there's a massive amount of fallacious thinking there that no guidance versus some guidance means that some guidance is better. No, some guidance could actually be worse if it's guiding against things that are better. Humanism in its manifesto too included abortion as a right. It just didn't outline everything about it. For the same reason that didn't outline any number of other things because we're still learning and still drawing lines. And at the time in 1973, this was an issue that needed to be spoken on. And it will again here in the United States now that the right has essentially been demolished by an overtaking of the Supreme Court. But when it comes to secular humanism, not valuing autonomy, I don't know where surrogacy comes in. Are you suggesting that surrogacy is a problem because it turns a fetus into a commodity? People want a kid. They use one of a couple of viable methods to have a kid and you're saying that something's wrong with that. One minute on the clock for you. Okay, so yes, it's a problem. Surrogacy is a problem because you don't have a right to a child. It is not a right that you have that you can have a child in the same way that you have a right to water. You can either have a child or you can't have a child. But what children cannot be are handbags. What they cannot be are commodities that you just give over to someone else because they want one for their designer family. And we do see that within the surrogacy kind of practice. Now, he's admitted that there's no guidance from secular humanism on these questions. But he hasn't demonstrated that the guidance offered by Christianity is bad. He's just implied that it's bad. He's just suggested that it could be bad, but he hasn't demonstrated that it's bad. So let me ask him that. Are secular humanists and you being the representative of them here in this debate are they in favor of surrogacy? I have no idea, because as I've said several times, I'm not the representative of surrogacy. Whatever shtick you think you're accomplishing by constantly trying to do this, you look incredibly goofy. So what you're suggesting, and I think there may actually be some case here to be made, but when you say things like, you don't have a right to a child, but you think a child has a right to a parent, something that may not necessarily possible. First of all, the way we go about establishing rights basically is to say you have all rights until we limit them and we need to limit them for good reason. The other way to do it is to say you have no rights until we specifically grant them. But that is an incredibly stupid way to try to go about it because you would be sitting here granting rights constantly. Instead, you start with maximal rights and you limit it. So yes, under the law in the United States and other places, we do have a right to seek a surrogate, to have a child. That is a right that is protected in the United States and in many other countries. It would be a right that we would need to limit if you could actually show that there's something wrong with it. When you're pointing out that I didn't say exactly why Christianity was wrong with its take on abortion, it's because I was pointing out that your argument was fallacious, not that Christianity was necessarily wrong. Once your argument is fallacious, you have to start over. You don't get to just say, Matt didn't prove me wrong. You've done that over and over again for the Matt didn't disprove God. It doesn't work there either. That's time. And the last minute, before we go into our Q and A, Bob, one minute, and we will do our closing statements after our Q and A just because that sometimes gets some new thought to the surface. So one minute, Bob, to answer to that and we'll kick it to Q and A. And I think, aren't the closing supposed to be before Q and A? I'm asking a clarifying question. You smug, obnoxious, impatient dude. Oh, shut up, you child. Put your dummy back in your mouth and stop. Don't make me. Hold on, fellas. We're going to try to keep this. Give over you little child. We're going to try to keep this out. Yes, I'm the child. Go ahead, you liar. Yes, yes you are. Yeah, we're all adult men in this room. Let's just try to keep it up here with our level of dialogue, okay? So one minute and respond to what he just said there, if we can keep it on the subject and then we're going to go into the Q and A. Okay, so I'm happy to let the audience decide whether I've made a fallacious point. My line of argument is to demonstrate that humanism does not give us guidance on key matters of life and death, of key matters of importance, that it contradicts its own ethics in allowing people to have, saying that it's in favor of human rights, while denying the rights of the child and being, whilst not responsible for, but whilst being an apologist for one of the largest mass murders that has ever occurred in human history. Because as it states in its manifesto, it's in favor of abortion. Now, you can decide whether I'm making a fallacious argument, people that are watching this. I don't feel that Matt's commentary on the debate has any weight at all, but what I did see is that he made a lot of commentary and he didn't make a lot of arguments. Okay, let's kick it in the Q and A everybody. Hopefully everybody hanging out in the live chat has found this a lively and interesting discussion and we got some good thoughts out on the floor. Hit the like button, hit the share and put it into those contentious spaces. Matt, you got your hand up, what's going on? Well, yes, this is what I was trying to clarify because now it's twice you said we're going into Q and A. My understanding, according to the format, is that there would be five minute closings and then we would go into the Q and A. That's what I was trying to clarify that Bob wanted to throw a hissy fit about. Okay, sorry, I'll be darned. Yes, it does say here, five minute closings. I usually do them at the end, but yeah, we got a different format here today, guys, so let's do the five minute closings. Who wants to go first, I should ask. You guys have both been kind of champion, so who wants to go first for the closing? Oh, what the heck? I'll go first every time, why not? Five minutes on the floor. Cool, so I gave an opening. The debate was supposed to be, is Christianity, Christianity or secular humanism, what's best for society? My opening specifically gave a case for secular humanism in that its foundation is about what's best for society and that Christianity isn't necessarily about what's best for society and that the aspects of Christianity or any other religion that would be consistent with that would be included within secular humanism. For example, whatever the correct position is on abortion and when life begins, that would be a part of secular humanism. I then gave my rebuttal going through the various things that Bob said I couldn't hit all of them because there was also a 12-point about it transforming lives and then the dignity of children, sexual ethics, women's dignity, property to people, there's so much to go through. And then Bob's rebuttal was a 20-point rebuttal to some straw version of secular humanism that exists elsewhere, that wasn't a part of my opening. I don't know if people realize this, but in a debate, you are here to present the case and to address what your opponent's position is as presented there. Not what you think their position is, not what you think their position is from some other debate, not what they've said elsewhere. Shockingly, I'm not the subject of this debate and neither is what my personal take is. Only thing that's subject here is my defense of secular humanism, which is why I stayed on the topic with that. Going through the secular humanist manifestos, talking about the advantages and benefits of it. Now, if your assertion is that no guidance is better than some guidance, that's fallacious because some guidance could be bad. Telling people that the afterlife should be a focus, that their relationship with a God should be their focus. If there is no God, that's all bad advice. So the fact that secular humanism doesn't expressly get into the details of what the position should be on abortion or other issues is not a problem because it begins by acknowledging that, which I also included in my opening statement that these are not a list of specific positions, but are about values and putting things first, about freedom and autonomy. Now, what did Bob bring up? Well, he wanted to spend a lot of time on abortion and he tried to spend some time on trans rights. And while I mentioned abortion in my opening, I was specifically reading the one passage from the humanist manifesto that addressed what they wrote in that version that they thought should be rights. I also pointed out which things in the manifesto I agreed or disagreed with because I was trying to be an honest representative of both what my position is and what the secular humanist manifesto says. For Bob, that's me saying, well, if it suits Matt, he'll say it's his position. And when it doesn't suit him, it's then it's secular humanism. He's portraying it as if I'm being dishonest here when really this is the humility and honesty that is prevalent both within secular humanism and within science. Science doesn't pretend to know things and I'm not gonna pretend to speak on behalf of any or all secular humanists other than myself. If that humility gets written off as, oh, this is a big problem, it shows you the top down dogmatic authoritarian view that is prevalent when you toss out sound epistemology and go with the narrative as the source of truth. There is bad guidance. There is bad guidance on human rights and owning people as property. There is bad guidance on equality between the gender that comes from the Bible that many Christians have set aside in favor of a newer version of Christianity, perhaps a better version of Christianity that is very consistent with many of the principles of secular humanism. Secular humanism isn't pretending to know everything from the start. It's recognizing that we are all on a journey that Bob has a God that he'd like to point to for his answers. Daniel Hikikachu has a God that he'd like to point to for his answers. I don't believe in either one of them but the three of us have to share space. And I'd much rather share space with Bob than Daniel despite him thinking that he's just gonna keep representing what my position is and getting it wrong. And the reason for that is obvious when you look at the subjects. Bob would be okay with gay parents adopting because that's preferable to kids being in the system. But also listen to how he talks about the people who seek out a surrogate, people who are childless and they seek out a surrogate that they're trying to come up with their designer family and treating children as a handbag. That is a bald assertion that is a judgment and assessment of people that Bob does not know. And he's propping it up as if it's a shutdown for secular humanism when it isn't what I talked about and isn't a reality. Alrighty, well, thank you so much, Matt, for your closing statement. We're gonna kick the five minutes over to Bob. Thanks for being here, everybody. And Bob, the floor is all yours. So I do have a pre-written statement but I feel obliged to just come off it slightly just to point out that I'm criticising secular humanism as seen in the manifestos. I know from watching Matt's debates that if you criticise him or what his statements are, he'll swap feet between saying, well, this is me, not secular humanism or this is secular humanism as is best for him in the debate. And that is why I go after the manifestos and people can judge for themselves. Go over my 20 thesis, go and read the manifestos and decide for yourself whether there's actually a criticism of secular humanism being made. Children do have rights and those rights are not to be used as handbag swapped because people desire something that they can't have otherwise. Now I'm gonna return to my written statement. So in conclusion, the choice between Christianity and liberal secular humanism is akin to you being asked to wager a bet between two cost-country rally cars. One called Credo backed by its team, The Church, a pedigree racer that has already accomplished itself over 2,000 years of competition against famed teams like the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphates, the barbarian kingdoms, the dynasties of China and Japan, the nationalistic empires and has outperformed them all. Not without its scratches, bruises and crashes granted. Some losses in the qualifying sections, it's raced over the plains of feudalism gone into the valleys of plagues and disasters pressed through the swamps of corruption, passed over the mountains of achievement and due to the deserts of oppression and rode through the forests of civilization. Fueled by faith and reason, a fuel whose balance you need to get right for the most effective payoff. Against this pedigree is a new challenger, the car named Cogito backed by team humanist who have a largely, who've largely stole and copied the design of Car Credo, minus some elements and using an explosive new fuel called rationality, driven by an untested driver known as Self-Ego, an untried and untested rally against a champion of renown to which you as the audience have to decide if you were a betting man, where would you put your money? Now, I didn't address a lot of what he said as I was writing it down because I wanted to press a certain kind of argument in the conversation. However, that doesn't mean that I that I wasn't listening to what Matt was said. It was just that what Matt was said was not particularly significant, I felt in terms of his statements. It wasn't a particularly strong argument. So for example, he pulled out a trope, an anti-Christian trope, a Christophobic trope, this idea of trying to link Christianity to the KKK. He did that for a motive effect. And this kind of argumentation is common amongst the new atheist brigade, a common amongst people who push the idea of secular humanism. And his argument was that they are Christian because they think they are. Well, there are some people that think that they're a woman, it doesn't make them one. If I was to turn around and to say to the Afro-American community, I think I'm black, does that make me black? No, of course it doesn't. The reality is that Matt is using these kinds of commentary, these kinds of arguments to a fan base, a fan base that loves the catchphrases, that loves the quips, that loves the put downs, that love the arrogant, well, I'm playing chess while having this debate, but that doesn't advance the conversation. And when pressed on abortion, which is what I wanted to talk about, and then riots of minorities, as I was asked to talk about, contrary to what Matt said, the reality is Matt has already admitted that he can't find any guidance in humanism. He can only give his opinion, his personal opinion. But then if you attack his personal opinion, he says that's not humanism, it's just his personal opinion. And this is the rhetorical trope that he uses again and again and again in debate. You've got to decide out of the two presentations has offered a better argument for their viewpoint. And I leave it to you, I don't need to comment. All right, well, with that, we're going to get into our Q&A, everybody. Thank you everybody for being here, a big round of applause for our, well, virtual round of applause for our speakers for being here, the lifeblood of the channel. So thank you, Bob, and thank you, Matt, for being here. Let's get right into your questions and keep those questions coming in. We're going to try to, once again, set like a one minute timer here, I think for these questions as they're coming in, because we might get really down the rabbit hole, I think on a few of these. So in defense of the gospel for 499, thanks for coming out, secular humanism doesn't start wars. They quietly stand for the 600,000 deaths of children each year in the name of rational and freedom. I think that one's for you there, Matt. Okay, not a question, but no, we're not quiet. We're actually, a good chunk of us are in favor of a woman's right to choose. I've actually debated abortion. I think it's funny that Bob said he wanted to talk about abortion. He could have scheduled a debate on abortion, but instead he did it on this and then tried to smuggle abortion in. He could have just arranged for a debate on abortion, which I've done before. Although I have some concerns about the optics. Of dudes debating abortion, but I've done it. And yeah, no, I don't stand idly by. I stand in support of woman's rights to choose, period. Alrighty, next one coming in from T. Will, this $5 Canadian, oh, Canada. Hello, my fellow Canuck. Matt, Matt's wrong. Christianity was crucial to freeing slaves because without the Bible, there wouldn't have been slaves to free in the first place. Well, that was back. That's a twist of the wig. I was like, what do you mean I'm wrong? I literally said that Christians were instrumental to this. Ah, okay, there wouldn't have been slaves. Actually, you're wrong as well, commenter, because Christianity, nor Judaism, nor the Bible, none of that invented slavery. So when you say that there wouldn't have been slaves without Christianity, you're just wrong there too. They were already slaves. It's not like Christianity invented the concept, nor did Judaism. In defense of the gospel, strikes again for $9.99. Don't worry, Bob. So just sit tight and we'll be right with you. Matt Mosquitoes the Bible and Matt misquotes, sorry, misquotes, jeez. Matt misquotes the Bible and takes it out of context on purpose. He needs to, in order to lead his sheep who won't seek the truth for themselves, has society improved the more secular it has become? It's time for glasses. So it's cool that you can just assert that I misquote the Bible and misrepresent the Bible, but you actually have to make that case. And considering that a good chunk of the videos that I've done for my own channel are me actually just reading the Bible and doing the entire context, I think you've got some heavy lifting to do. But at no point today has anybody made a case that I've misrepresented the Bible. However, your argument is fallacious because when you say has the world gotten better, has it, as it's gotten more secular, in many ways it has, but my case is about secular humanism, not about secularity. There are secular regimes that are completely antithetical to secular humanism that are murderous, vile regimes. And so for you to suggest, oh, has the world gotten better, has it gotten more secular, is irrelevant to the subject of this debate? But in many ways, yes it has. People generally living longer, we have better access to healthcare, better access to more information, but it hasn't solved all our problems. And I'm not saying that it hasn't solved our problems merely because there's not a secular humanist government. I'm saying it hasn't solved all our problems because there are still ideologies in the world that are not secular that are controlling things. Let's just look at what's going on with Israel and Palestine right now. Okay, this next one coming in for you, Bob, from Mystic Hydra. Nice to see you again in the live chat there. Do you think all religions are better approached than secular humanism? Are a better approach than secular humanism or is a humanist approach better than, say, Scientology, for example? No, absolutely not. If I had a choice between living in anything other than a Christian society, I'd probably choose secular humanism. And the reason for that is because secular humanism is essentially Christianity-like. It borrows from a Christian scaffold. It borrows Christian metaphysics. It stands upon Christian metaphysics. It borrows Christian forms. It borrows Christian attitudes. It distorts many of them in the process of the borrowing. It borrows from Christian doctrine. The reality is that secular humanism is a distortion of Christianity. And as such, secular humanism is better than Islam. Secular humanism is better than Hinduism. Secular humanism is better than Scientology by far. And so, no, I don't believe that it's a case that all religions are better than secular humanism. Actually, secular humanism trumps a lot of religions. Alrighty, big thang flying, Wayne flying in again for $5. Rationality leads to tyranny. I know some slave-owning founding fathers that would say Bob is too conservative and extremist in his faith. Who's that too, sir? I think big thang flying, Wayne. I think this one's to you there, Bob. Rationality leads to tyranny. That's in quotation marks. I know some slave-owning founding fathers that would say Bob is too conservative and extremist in his faith. They can say that. And they're probably from their perspective right. I would come across as very different to them. The thing about humanism or that understanding is the centering of the ordering of the state around the idea of the touchstone of the human as the principal object of moral discourse. That is why communism and fascism are both forms of secular humanism despite what Matt Dilla-Hunty thinks. Matt Dilla-Hunty's, Matt, Matt, Matt. Well, okay, fair enough, and you've interrupted me, but. You've just said his name, I'm sorry, but if you're gonna imply him. If you're gonna talk about what I'm gonna say and you're wrong. Well, I mean, people can judge your statements in other debates to see whether you've denied it like with Jordan Peterson. But the reality is that these are forms of secular humanism. The kind that the manifestos propel Oh yeah, coming back to tyranny, that was it. Tyranny of reason. Basically, the tyranny of reason argument is the idea that rationality leads to everything being measured by consequence and functionality. And that doesn't give grounds to other things like truth, like virtue and meaning. And everything becomes measured by a cost benefit ratio, which is harmful, it's tyrannical because it closes down other measurements of human activity, that's the problem with it. All right, let's go. So since it was brought up in my discussion with Jordan Peterson, when Peterson tried to also say that there had been secular humanist regimes, I corrected him as well. Those were not secular humanist regimes, they were not found in the secular community. And you were wrong to do so. Sorry, what was that? You were wrong to do so because they are. No, I was still correct, none of those regimes. No, you really weren't. None of it, I really was. You're gonna keep interrupting me? I mean, I let you do it twice now. I mean, you interrupt me, let you do it. I know, but I let you do it twice, but it's like you're gonna keep doing it now. You're ready? Are you upset? No, I'm not upset, I'm annoyed. All right, I will warn both of you. Because you're annoying. If you do imply the other speaker, I'm gonna let them respond. But the Soviet Russia was not a secular humanist regime. Yes it was. It did not use the secular humanist manifesto. It did not rely on secular humanist principles. It essentially had the state as the government. Well, this next one. So in reply to that. Sorry, the state is religion, God. Sorry, in reply to that, the silent liberal is what everyone is missing. Like the humanist manifestos represent a liberal reading of secular humanism. I would suggest that certain speakers are progressive liberal secular humanists, but the communists are a fruit of that shift from a God-centered to a human-centered society. Well, you're like one step away from being Daniel Hikikachu, who thinks that not only was this all secular humanism, but so was George W. Bush, a secular humanist, a secret secular humanist. You guys should get together and discuss what is, because you guys are both equating with anything that you see as liberal progressive that is not tied to your religion, a secular humanism. And that is just wrong. No, I'm equating the idea of using humanity as the touchstone and the basis of human activity and moral judgment as a humanist worldview. And communism and classical liberalism and fascism are all examples of that. They're not, but okay. People can decide for themselves. Let's try to move on from there and just to let both our speakers know, just because I don't know if you heard me when I said that. When answering the question, if Matt says, Bob would have you believe X, I'm gonna give Bob a chance to respond. That's just how we usually go about this. So Bob- But it's also courteous to let them finish, Ryan. Yeah, that's, yeah. It's also courteous to focus on the subject of the debate and not come in with a pre-prepared rebuttal and a pre-prepared closing. This is just gonna be your refrain throughout the debate. Stop sulking. All right. The next one is coming in. If you're gonna accuse me of sulking here, your closing remarks still focused on me. I am literally in reply and people can judge whether that statement is true or not. Some of that common, some of that common tree is true, but not all of it. Yeah, you also lied during your closing saying, I said we can't find any guidance in humanism. And that's not true. I said there's no guidance on this. And I gave two particular examples. I said there's not, I thought it was, I gave two particular examples. I gave two particular examples. All right. I said there's not guidance in humanism. I should show me a poll in this debate. And you can't hang out. And you framed that you liar as me saying that you can't find any guidance in humanism. You liar. All right. I'm gonna just let Bob unmute here and we're gonna give Bob last closing on this one here and then we're moving on from there guys. I know there's, you wanna both respond to what the other one's saying, but we got lots of questions flying in. And so 15 seconds there, Bob. Yeah, I'll just note again that the only time that Ryan ever hits that mute button is to mute me, even though Matt is the one that interrupts. I don't, I don't think I was gonna say, I think- Oh, people can judge. I think I've muted you guys both an equal amount, especially once we got into that back and forth. But anyways, we won't hyperanalyze that. We're doing everything we can here. So Ember, sorry, polarity coming in Matt. There are countries where both Christianity and secularism have succeeded in making working and decent societies. How much do you weigh results versus theory versus beliefs for what is best? I don't know. I think I said that. The problem is that while they're, for example, the United States is supposed to be a secular nation. It's not a Christian nation. It's founded on secular principles. However, in practice, it's never truly been a proper secular nation because the predominant religion in the United States has been some version of Christianity or some collection of Christianity. They'll go with Judeo-Christian, even though it's not a real thing, which is a very, very, very, even though it's not a real thing, which has resulted in a number of different problems. But all I'm doing is looking at the ideas and the focus. And that's why when I presented what secular humanism is according to the manifestos, it is very clear and humble in the sense of saying, we're not claiming to have all the answers. We just want to go about finding the answers the best way we can. We want to make the best world we can. And so we're going to use reason and science and knowledge about the world to figure out what the right answers are because we don't get to say, God told us. Because until God comes down and actually tells us, God hasn't said a thing. Let God be true and every man a liar. You can't just assert that your God holds some position and therefore that's the just position because now you have no way to resolve the conflict between Jews, Muslims, Christians, Scientologists, anybody else who's just going to say, no, no, no, this is what my religion is. Instead, secular humanists are saying, until such time as we have good reason to think that relying on supernatural intervention is a possibility, we're going to operate as if we're all stuck here on this planet trying to solve problems together. And that means we need to rely on data. And the problem is that this has never been fully put into place in any government. And by the way, I didn't say that today. I said this previously. I'm not advocating for secular humanism as a government. The fact that I advocate for secular humanism as an ideology does not mean that I advocate for it as government. Just like people who confuse communism and socialism when one of them is, well, one's economic, one's political, it's different stuff. And when you lump it all together, it just shows how much you don't understand it. All right. Yeah, what we'll do is we'll set some one minute timers and get through these questions. They're flying in, guys. Ember, we'll keep them to the side that we have them for, too, if we can. So Ember, one of our treasures here at Modern Day Debate. Bob, you spoke of ripping limbs off babies. Did you confuse abortion with the Bible, with all the dashing of the babies? Hard to claim moral superiority. One minute for you there. Yeah, it's quite easy. I mean, this is a repeated fallacy of many a militant secular humanist who simply reads the Old Testament without actually understanding the idea of covenants or ever integrating the idea of covenants into their critique. They straw man Christianity and they turn the argument into an argument, the Bible versus secular humanism rather than Christianity versus secular humanism. There's, you know, people have done that about slavery in the Bible repeatedly, despite the fact that, you know, when slave owners gave Bibles in the Southern States to slaves, they redacted the Bible because they scared that it would inspire revolt. And so, no, I'm not confusing my critique of contraception rights that is upheld within the humanist manifesto with the Bible. I am calling out the fact that people advocate that the manifestos don't legitimize killing but they do and they have justified the abortion of millions of lives. This next one is coming in. Actually, yeah, thank you so much for the super chat there, Amber. And also, yeah, everybody else that put in their super chats. And I also wanted to make a quick shout out Big Thang, Fly and Wayne. Great having a conversation with you the other night, buddy. That was a lot of fun. And just what the doctor ordered, I needed some music talks. So I appreciate you, buddy. Frankenstein coming in for 1999. Well done, Matt. This donation is for the well cleansing. No further questions. Well, thank you for that. For the well cleansing? I'm not sure. Oh, because he kept poisoning the well. Oh, okay. I think, yeah, so 1999, that was from... How does that benefit this debate to read that? Well, I was gonna say, I didn't exactly... Is that you attempting to give commentary on the debate? As you saw, I did not... It's a Q&A. So money goes to the channel. They read the things that people give super chats for. Do you not know how the internet works? No, I don't know how super chats work. I don't use them myself. Yeah, there's already a super chat here that I am going to reel in just because it isn't a bit ad homie. So let's just... Yeah, behave yourself. Chris at the speakers corner. If this debate is about whether secular humanism or Christianity is better for society, then isn't the subject of abortion of immense importance given its modern relevance? Who's that to? Well, let's give you both a minute. Let's kick it over to you, Matt, and then we'll kick it over to you, Bob, to close us out. So one minute there, Matt. Sure. I think abortion is one of many important subjects. And because I read in the Secular Humanist Manifesto that it's support for abortion, it does not give guidance on the specifics of it because abortion laws change over time. My position is that no one should have the right to you whether they're... Whether you count a fetus as a person or not, it shouldn't have the right to use someone else's body without their consent. And I don't know under what kind of moral or legal, and I care more about it from the legal standpoint about what people are permitted to do rather than people's moral assessment of it. But I don't know under what grounds you have the right to say, no, no, no, I get to force you to stay pregnant against your will. That's the bodily autonomy is paramount. You can object to it all you want. You can call it vile and disgusting or whatever, but those are all of your assessments that don't actually get to the rights of the individual. 10 seconds. Oh, or maybe you were done right there. That works out. Next one, coming on in. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like Bob gets to go. Oh, sorry, yes, sorry, that's right, you're right. Right over my head, thanks for reminding me, guys. One minute over to you, Bob. Thank you very much, Matt. So like no offense, but we've established therefore that I was right to raise it in the chat because it is a legitimate question. Women have to take responsibility for their actions. The vast majority of pregnancies are not connected to rape. The vast majority of pregnancies are connected to consensual sex. The idea that women have the right to abort their children because they can't be forced to be pregnant because they have bodily autonomy. We take bodily autonomy away from people all the time when they try to kill someone else. We put them in prison. They don't wanna be there, but we put them there and then we regulate their lives. And so therefore, if you get pregnant, you don't have the right to kill someone else. And that means you lose the right to bodily autonomy because abortion is about killing someone else. And that's why they don't have the right of bodily autonomy over the life of someone else. So for example, I didn't say you were right to raise it. I said you were wrong to focus on my position rather than on secular humanist position because my position isn't the subject of the debate. I, secular humanist manifesto support the idea of abortion. That was the argument. Thank you, yes. All right, let's continue on from there. Hate stares for $5. Great moderation, Ryan. Don't let the haters say otherwise. Oh, thank you. Thank you, hate stares. Sometimes I worry, you know, you can't always hit the right moment and figure out exactly how to operate these online discussions because sometimes you don't know what you're getting into. Again, you're offering commentary on the debate, Ryan. This is a Q and A. That's great. I'm going to question this for me. Yeah, so we do try to keep it fair. No question there, that was commentary. Oh, sorry, commentary. It came in from a super chat. They read the super chats. People pay to get their commentary and learn how this works. Yeah, and I already kind of edited that one out because the rest of it's an ad-hom against you, Bob, and I'm not going to read it because I'm not going to do that. As you shouldn't. So. Correct. Let's carry on there. And, you know, like I said, we're going to run this the way I'm going to run it. I'm sorry there, Bob. Gay-est Husky says, why does Bob have to lie about atheists, humanists, and trans people? And has he ever talked to a kid who has been in the adoption system? Okay, so the answer to the first question, the answer to the question is yes, actually, one of my closest friends was adopted. The issue is not about whether adoption is a good thing. It's obviously a good thing. The problem that I have is that to my understanding of the humanist manifesto, it seems to support the idea of surrogacy because it seems to support the idea of your rights to do what you want with your body and your rights to have a family. And as part of that, as an emergent factor of that, the idea of gay couple adoption. Adoption, having a child is not a right. And treating children like commodities to be passed over is not to the benefit of society. And from my reading of the humanist manifesto, that is something that humanists would seem to be in favor of. And that's not a lie against atheists or secular humanists. That's a critique of the secular humanist society. Okay, that was our first start. Society manifesto. Okay, no problem. The manifesto doesn't discuss that. Sorry, are we doing a debate again? Because you seem to jump in whenever you want. Sorry, am I not allowed to respond during the Q&A portion of the debate? Yes, as a matter of fact, I am allowed to respond. Oh, I see. I'm sorry that you don't like my responses. And that's too damn bad. Once again, that's too damn bad. If Matt sneaks in a little something at the end, you're welcome to take time to respond to it there, Bob. Thank you very much. I will do. So the reality is that the, and I would, you know, it's a shame that I can't ask questions directly to Matt, but maybe the next time. You could have if you hadn't wasted the discussion portion. Once again, you're interrupting and once again, doing so unchallenged by Ryan. All right, let's just give it. But not unchallenged by you. Keep talking shit about me. I will. I will, because you can't hang up and you can't run away and it burns you. It doesn't burn me. You're an annoying little petty bitch. There you go. Stop being a child, my friend. Stop being a child. Pick up the toys from your pram and put back in your pallet. Whatever you say, daddy. This next one is, I think, on point. Aaron Leet says for $10, requesting a temperature. I didn't get a chance to reply to Matt's comment. All right. 15 seconds. Yeah, we'll have to move on because they're coming in. He had more than 15 seconds, but okay. So the reality is people can judge for themselves whether the humanist manifesto supports as an emergent characteristic of its values, the idea of surrogacy. And then they can see whether surrogacy is essentially teaching children or treating children like commodities, which is why we can't take any lectures from secular humanists about slavery. All right. Next one coming in from Aaron Leet. He says requesting a temperature decrease, please. More light, less heat. Thanking you both in advance. Yeah, I don't know if that's... If he's asking us to just bring down the temperature of the debate, or if he's saying that we look like we might be too hot over here. But you know what? Yeah, I was going to say I'm hot. I know, it's fine. I'll rock it. T. Will. Bob will be so embarrassed when he realizes he spent the first hour of the debate arguing against abortion, then goes back to read the Bible and realizes it actually endorsed abortion in Numbers 5. One minute there. Okay. So again, Numbers 5, the passage that is often debated about whether it supports abortion, it's not actually clear whether it's giving abortion or whether it understands what's happening in that passage to be something supernatural. That's the truth of it. If you read that passage, you can come out with one of two interpretations. Both of them have commentaries that support those interpretations. However, this is the fallacy that secular humanists always make, is that they try to turn the debate into secular humanism versus the Bible rather than secular humanism versus Christianity. Christians have always been against infanticide. They've always been against abortion. That has been a consistent practice and a consistent standpoint from the times of antiquity right up to the present day. It is a way in which we elevated the rights of children and it is something that the secular humanists are undermining as they are the apologists to one of the greatest genocides in history. All right. Let's carry on from there. Gajasthoski says again, thanks, Bob, for making a dishonest bigot. He's just saying that this is going to be recorded forever. We know Gajasthoski. Sometimes I scroll up and I just grab them and I start reading them and I'm like, let's just carry on. Thanks, Gajasthoski, but five dollars are not really offering too much to our conversation. Skeptics and scoundrels, Bob, do you recognize a difference between a human life and a human person? If so, what is the difference? Yeah, there is a difference. There is a difference, but I wouldn't want to overstress the distinction. A human person is obviously that instantiation of an I am that interacts with other instantiations of I am in the way that I'm interacting with Ryan and Matt right now. Sorry to interrupt. Just very quick, he does go on to say, if so, so if you do find a difference, does life have rights over a person? And I'll give you another 45 there. Yeah, and to answer that question, yes, life has rights over a person. A human person that is a female does not have the right to kill an embryo that is a life, even though that life is not yet a person in its own right. And that would be the distinction. So I don't think I need to labor that. I think that's clear. All right, next one. Oh, Matt, you had some, I mean, we only had clarity. I nodded in the middle and I didn't want people to think I was agreeing with Bob because what Bob's advocating for is special rights for fetuses that other persons don't have. And that's what I disagree with. So we're at odds there. Can I reply to that now? Sure thing. Yeah, I am. And the reason why is because in a just society, you defend the weakest and the most vulnerable. And the fetus is the weakest and most vulnerable. Let's carry on from there. Thanks for your questions, skeptics and scoundrels. Once again, enjoyed hanging out with you on the air the other day. Aaron Leitz, we can disagree with one another, but we don't have to hate one another. That's kind of open floor. So Matt, 30 seconds, thoughts on that? I don't hate Bob. I find him annoying and dishonest throughout the debate, but I don't hate him. All right, 30 seconds, Bob. Over to you. And I don't hate Matt. And I state that categorically. I mean, he might be sulking right now and he might be throwing a temper tantrum, but I don't hate him. I just think he's a sore loser. Alrighty. And just a reminder to everybody in the live chat, we love you guys. Hit that like button because you don't make me get too mushy on you guys. And another reminder, tickets are going to be linked in the description to debatecon4. Lots of great speakers are going to be there. You're not going to want to miss it. So if you're in Dallas, Texas, let us know in the old live chat there. And we'd love to see you over at the conference. If you're not in Dallas, Texas, let us know where you're at anyways. Just drop in the live chat. We'd love to know where you guys are from and where you're tuning in from. Next one. Beretta 9 millimeter, well, mm, $5. Bob, can you at least this once make an honest attempt to steal man Matt's position on secular humanism versus Christianity being better off for society? Where that one kind of implies you both will give a minute first to you this time, Bob. Okay. I mean, the commentary aside, obviously this is a Matt fan, but the position of the secular humanist is the idea that because we cannot prove metaphysical claims about God, therefore we have to make judgments based upon scientific inquiry and that we have to base our moral understanding using humanity as a touchstone as the basis to make moral judgments because we share this space and we have to live together. I think I've criticized that throughout. I think my 20 thesis do that. I don't think I've strawmaned that and you can commentate that I did, but obviously if you've come here with presuppositions that Matt is always right and anyone against him is always wrong, then ultimately nothing I can say can convince you. Okay. 10, well, one minute on the clock there, Matt. Thoughts on the question there. I just think it's funny. I mean, he doesn't necessarily think he strawmaned it, but he came in with a pre-written rebuttal with 20 points that didn't address my thing. There's a reason the two of us show up to debate and that's that I present my case and he's supposed to rebut my case, but instead he's got to rebut some other case and then he's going to pout about how the people who are calling him out for it are just Matt fans. As if I'm not being called a liar and names and a Nazi, every time I step into the cesspool that is modern database chat room, it's ridiculous. There was, I came in in good faith, presented my case, addressed his case, and he showed up with a pre-written opening, a pre-written rebuttal to some other thing that, why did I, I didn't even need to be here. And then when it came time for the discussion, there was no open discussion. It was one minute or you're muted, one minute or you're muted. Let me go on and on about your personal position on abortion as if your personal position on abortion is in any way representative or indicative of secular humanism. It could have been and it's important topic and there are plenty of other topics that are important, but when you show up with everything pre-written, how do you, I don't know how you can claim you're not straw manning. Okay, can I respond to that like you said I could because he did bring me into his comments. Sure, sure thing. Yeah, so let's just get something clear and people can judge for themselves. Your commentary is irrelevant to the fact. I criticized in my pre-stated statements, the manifestos. That's what I criticized, the ideology that comes across in those manifestos. People can judge whether I succeeded or not, your commentary has no effect. The point of the matter is, I didn't think that you made a very strong argument to criticize. And also, I know from watching your previous debates, if someone criticizes your position, you say it's my position, not humanism. But they're exactly, so what's the point in criticizing your position because you immediately say it's not humanism if someone criticizes your position? And let me just remind you, the reason why we did minute minute is because you interrupted and that's how we were forced down that road. Why did I interrupt? People can go back and watch you first interrupted. People can go back and watch you first interrupted. Thanks for not answering. Okay, let's carry on. Frankenstein for $4.99. Nice poetry, Bob. Was that, I don't even know, Iambic? Arthur Swinderman. Yeah, what's that all about? Nice poetry. He was a humanist poet. Oh, okay. Nice poetry, Bob. What was that an Iambic pentameter? I'm not sure what that is. Pentameter. It's a poetic rhythm. Oh, okay. See, maybe I should know that as somebody who writes lyrics and sings a lot, but now I feel silly. Ember, Bob, your strawmen have strawmen. Where do you buy? Well, let's clean up that question a little bit, Ember. He's accusing you of making a strawman, so one minute on the clock. Yeah, I mean, the people can decide whether it's a strawman for themselves. Obviously, Amber's got her opinion. Matt has his opinion. Other people can have their opinion. You can read the humanist manifestos. You can look at their presuppositions. You can look at their values. You can look at their goals insofar as any goals are stated at all. And you can decide whether the 20 thesis that I offered is an actual criticism of those manifestos. Now, if you read them and you conclude that I failed, then fine. That's your opinion. If you read them and you think that I have made an actual critique of the manifestos, then I've achieved my purpose. But your commentary is irrelevant. The critiques are there, and the critiques, basically, I feel, demonstrate a number of flaws and problems with the humanist, the secular humanist worldview. OK. They're not strawmen. All right. Let's carry on from there. Dan, it says for $5, Bob, if we force women to remain pregnant against their will, what is your solution for the 90 million unwanted children and the traumatized mother? Oh, that's Bob's hand up over there. Bob, I know this question was directed at you, but would you mind if I did it first? Yeah, go for it. One minute on the clock. This is a really stupid question that Atheist asks all the time. What are you going to do with all the unborn? Look, it's primarily Christian organizations that are dealing with the overrun of the unborn. Babies have no problems finding homes. It's older kids that have problems finding homes. So when you come in with something like, oh, if you deny abortion, what are you going to do with all those babies? Those babies are going to find home, and a good chunk of them are going to find home through Christian adoption services. That is a shit argument that Atheist tried out all the time. There you go. All right. Thank you. Just to build on what Matt said, he's absolutely right. It is a completely shit argument because a society is judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable, and the unborn child is amongst the weakest and most vulnerable. Women that don't want to have their pregnancy, I accept that they should not be forced to look after a child that they don't want past the point of birth. In a decent society, we would allow those women to give them up, and we would facilitate them in giving them up, and we would support them in the pregnancy itself as much support as is needed. Then when the baby is born, we find them families that want to look after them. And Matt, I just want to say thank you for raising awareness about the fact that in the adoption agencies, it is children of the higher ages that are the ones that are struggling. They're the ones that are getting left behind, and it is a straight line from adoption systems to the prison system, and that is why, even though I'll get slagged off for it, I would rather see a child adopted by a loving gay couple than left inside the system. All right, let's carry on from there. Lots of questions still pouring in. Crypt Lee says, Matt argues for bodily autonomy, is there not a de facto guardianship for a living being, being that can't choose otherwise, is withdrawing consent to continue pregnancy, not immoral most of the time? So my position on abortion is all about the legality, but as a moral issue from my standpoint, no, there's nothing immoral about what... So first of all, consent to sex isn't consent to pregnancy, it's consent to the risk of pregnancy. And that risk of pregnancy can be abated by a number of different means. Consent to pregnancy is not consent to remaining pregnant. There are any number of situations that someone might become pregnant, even as a matter of volition, and not wish to remain so. And so no, withdrawing consent, just like if you go out on a date with somebody, that's not consent to sex. And neither is inviting them back to your place, and neither is making out with them and engaging in some petting. And neither is getting naked and starting to have sex. You can end sex and withdraw consent at any moment. Similarly, you can withdraw consent for the fetus to continue using your womb. Most of the time in the early stages, that's going to result in the fetus not continuing to live. In some cases, late stages, it is going to result in a delivery by C-section. Then you also can give up your parental rights as well. It's time. There we go. All right, so let's carry on there, guys. Lots more questions coming in. Berry Berry, $5. I'm confused by Bob. Was this topic supposed to be about Christianity versus secular humanism, or was the topic matte? Yeah, well, we'll give it a minute, I guess. Okay, so yeah, I mean, the point is, this is why I made a pre-written statement criticizing the values, the goals insofar as they stated, the ideology and the philosophy, the epistemology of the manifestos. And then, you know, Matt complained about it and said, you didn't argue about my position. But if I argue about Matt's position, he just turns around and he says, well, that's not a representation of all secular humanism. That's just, and I'll let you reply, obviously, that's a representation of my position. Matt gave a particular argument that I did not find particularly strong. And I felt that there was more value in this debate to continuing with my own critique of the manifestos and continuing with my own interrogation of abortion as an issue that affects society that both worldviews should give some guidance on. So my objection was not to having someone have me defend my position. It's, I made a presentation, my opening. That is, so for those people who have never been in a debate, in a rebuttal, you are not in a structured collegiate scored debate. You are not allowed to bring in new arguments, okay? But I don't care about that. I wish there was less structure. Generally, there is less structure in these debates. But when I present my opening, that's what is the subject of the rebuttal. Not something you heard me say in another debate. Not something you heard me say in another context. Not something you heard me say on some other show or anything else. That's what I'm objecting to. Him focusing on a position that he thinks I have, but got somewhat wrong. And then wants to re-spin it and claim that I'm the one redefining when it has nothing to do with the case that I presented. I did mention abortion in there specifically in that context as it is written in the manifesto for the purpose of acknowledging that it does not go into detail about the when and where because secular humanism is about constantly understanding and getting better at getting better. As a matter of fact, I think that was the closing line of my opening. My objection is not to being held to defend my position. It's the position I presented in this debate was ignored for a pre-written objection to something else. And during what was supposed to be an open discussion, it started with Matt's position on abortion, which is a fine debate, but it ain't this one. All right, let you finish up that there. Bob, did you have any thoughts before we move on? Well, I just think that an interrogation, a critique of the manifesto, since that's what we're here to debate is a fair critique. And the interrogation in the dialogue is on a topic that Matt brought up from the manifestos. And me asking Matt what his perspective is in a debate about that invites him to restate his position based on the manifestos for further conversation. But instead, he just slipped straight into his rhetorical device of, well, now you're talking about me, not the manifestos. He could have just responded with, well, this is what the manifesto said, and we could have talked about that. But he just started playing his rhetorical sidestep. Yeah, it's not playing. When you just a second ago said that you were going to do a critique of the manifesto. Which is it? You're not supposed to be here to critique the manifesto and you're not supposed to be here to critique me. You're supposed to be here to critique what I present. And you didn't ask questions that were designed to critique the manifesto. Your first question was about my personal position on whether or not a nine month fetus is alive. That is not in the manifesto. That's about me. You have made it about me through this entire debate right down to your closing. I'm happy to defend my positions, the ones I presented in the opening. But when you pre-write everything, you're not going to get to address what I actually presented. And the reality is that you're here to represent the secular humanist manifesto. If I ask for your position. Yes. So if I ask for your position. My position is not the manifesto. No, hold on one second. Let me finish. In the terms of the debate, you were the representative of the secular humanist. So you are the one that is representing that worldview. So if I ask for your position, I'm asking for the position of the secular humanist. You've been very vocal on this in many, many different platforms. Many, many, yes, many, many different platforms. And I believe that your position is a position that is widely held amongst the secular humanist society, even whether it's the majority. And thus to interrogate that position, I don't think is unfair. But apart from us winging about it, I'm happy to let people make their own mind up. Your fanboys are getting back to you. My fanboys are getting back to me. And then other people that are coming in this and looking at it neutrally or from a third position can decide who's marshaled their arguments better. Yes. But I don't trust that that's going to happen without commenting to clarify. And that's why I clarified. And that's why I also clarified. Thank you. All right. Well, we're all clear now. Clarity and clear. It's almost like we made an advert there. Let's carry on, guys. Carry on. And I have to screwed. And King Josiah of Judah, first super chat. Thanks for that. Bob, what do you have to say about Matt's claims about slavery and Christianity? So, Matt, do you want to take a minute and clarify what your position is on that? And then we'll give you a minute there, Bob. One more time. Because I heard you say Bob and I got distracted. Yes, they said to Bob, what do you have to say about Matt's claims about slavery and Christianity? So, if you want to take a minute, Matt, to clarify what. I don't need to say it again. I've done entire videos in multiple debates. The Bible advocates for sanctioned slavery, tells you who to buy, who you can enslave, how long you can keep them, allows you to beat them as long as they don't die within a couple of days. They specifically says that your property may be passed on to your kids. And it has different rules for Jewish slaves than it does for Goy slaves. That's it. All right, one minute over there to you, Bob. Thoughts on that position there? Yeah, so it's a total fallacy. He tries to create a strawman, which is the Bible versus secular humanism, rather than Christianity versus secular humanism. When slave owners in the Southern States of America gave Bibles to their slaves, they redacted them precisely because they were afraid that the Bible might inspire slave revolutions. That clearly tells you that they saw something in the Bible that Matt has missed. Let me try and tell you what that was. It's things like in Philharmon, where it says that the slave goes back to his owner, not as a slave, but as a brother. It's the fact that in the scriptures, in Paul's writing, it talks about that there is neither slave nor free in Christ that they are all the same. The reason why Christianity was so successful in the Roman Empire was because of its radical egalitarian ethic that put slaves and masters and slave owners around the same Agape feast and around the same slave table. And so simply quoting passages outside of the New Covenant understanding shows that Matt is being dishonest in his dialogue with Christianity. Okay, so there was a screen share going on there. I don't think we were able to see it. Was there something that wanted to show us? Sorry, it's just Exodus 21. You can go read it. There's nothing in the Bible that says Exodus 21 was wrong. Okay. So actually Christ himself said that I've come to set the slaves free and as I prophesied that when the Messiah comes that the Messiah would set slaves free. And the reason why Christians have fought against the slave trade for 2,000 years is precisely because we're disciples of Jesus, not of Moses. Jesus said, for slaves to obey their masters, even the cruel ones. Jesus did not say that. Oh, sorry, that's Paul. That's Paul. Thank you. Get it right. I got it. I got it. Yes. I'm sorry to saddle you with the other things that are in your Bible. Yes. Jesus never said that slavery was wrong or immoral. And I'm sorry that you don't understand the Bible or its historical context. Let me just point out to you that Dr. Barthurman, Tom Holland, both point out that the reason why Christianity succeeded was because of the radical explosive scene of allowing slave owners and slaves to sit at the same table as equals. Christians from antiquity to the present time have fought against slavery and abolished slavery multiple times in multiple places. And this is just something that you like to skip over and ignore because it doesn't suit your argument. No, I'm sorry. But I'm actually talking about what the Bible says. Yes, I'm I. No, you're actually not. Yes, I really am. Where does the Bible say that slavery is not allowed and is immoral? Where does the humanist manifesto? Where does the human humanist manifesto say that? Yeah, which yeah, I might have missed it. Does it say it now? Promises. OK, so where does it say slavery is immoral? So the humanist manifesto probably doesn't say the words slavery is immoral. So the Bible so the words don't need to be there, did it? The Bible, the words don't need to be there. Thank you. Unless somewhere else in the manifesto, it said who you can enslave, how to enslave them, how much to pay for them, that they become your property, that they are you denying what it says in Exodus 21? Yeah, but what I'm doing is I'm. Are you denying what it says in Exodus 21? Can I answer your question, Matt? I'm I'm just. Can I answer your question? I'm waiting. Thank you. So I'm framing it correctly for you because what you are doing is you are ignoring the fact that in Christianity, paradigmatically, we have a covenantal understanding of scripture. And you want to throw that out because it suits your argument. This is not a debate of secular humanism versus Exodus or secular humanism versus the Bible. This is a debate about secular humanism versus Christianity, which means that unless you're deliberately trying to straw man Christianity, you have to include the covenantal system in your interpretation of scripture. And in the interpretation of scripture, we see in Isaiah that at the time of the coming of the Messiah, he will set the captives free. Christ claimed that exact prophecy for himself. And that is why for 2000 years, disciples of Christ have been inspired to fight against slavery and have done and have died doing so in their thousands. Yeah, so I get accused of deciding what portions of the secular humanist manifesto I'm going to stick up for as a matter of convenience. And Bob gets to pick and choose from the Bible as to what he's going to stand up for as a matter of convenience because Exodus, Leviticus, and elsewhere advocate for slavery. And at no point is there a statement saying, slavery is now forbidden. Slavery is immoral. Thou shalt not enslave your fellow man. Free all slaves. Never have slaves again. None of those things occur. So what's happening here is you have a very specific set of instructions that permits something and you take later messages and interpret them in a way that is convenient for you to dismiss what the law says. So allow me to reply to that because this is just a drivel. Anyone who is watching this debate can just google now whether Christians believe in covenants and they will see that Christians do. And so it is a legitimate part of the defense, something that Matt wants to skip over because he wants to turn this debate into secular humanism versus the Bible rather than secular humanism versus Christianity. What he forgets to tell you is that Christ himself said, I have come to set the captives free. The captives were the slaves, Matt. Now he's also and I might have missed it. I might have genuinely missed it because, you know, there's three manifestos to read. I can't remember every single statement. But to my knowledge, I don't remember coming across any statement in the humanist manifesto that said that slavery was wrong. But as I argued earlier, humanists support the idea of surrogacy. That seems to be an emerging characteristic of their values and surrogacy is about treating children like commodities. So no lectures, please, Matt. Oh, I'll lecture. When Jesus says that he comes to set the captives free, he's talking about any spiritual sense, those who are captive to slavery. It is not a statement against slavery as a whole. Meanwhile, secular humanism, if you Google and just go through the manifesto, you'll find that to enhance freedom and dignity, that's the seventh one, the individual must experience a full range of civil liberties in all societies. That statement is the antithesis of slavery. And the word freedom appears over and over and over again in the humanist manifesto. So you can pretend that your host-hoc reinterpretation of what you think Jesus said somehow overrides what the Bible literally says about slavery, but you can't claim that's a secular humanist manifesto in any way could support slavery as it repeatedly supports freedom and individual autonomy. Except for the child. No, not a child. No, sorry. I allowed you to speak without interruption. Allow me to speak without interruption, please. Well, maybe if you spoke in ways that were on. Once again, Ryan, allows you to interrupt. You guys have been on a long, open dialogue and it finally got to a point. I know you're not surprised because you're a liar and you're used to getting called out for. Well, people can judge for themselves. Your commentary is immaterial to facts. So allow me to reply. The thing is, Christians don't need to take any lectures from the secular humanist. The fact of Christ's teaching and the fact that the earliest Christian community in a society in Rome, in which slaves were the common currency of all, made masters and slaves equals and states. So in the Bible is the very undermining of slavery itself and leads to dignity. Matt is borrowing from a Christian paradigm in the manifestos for everything that he is saying right now. And the reality is Christians have abolished slavery multiple times in multiple places. In England, it was abolished in the 10th, in the 11th century, even before William Wilberforce. But he hasn't addressed the fact, I don't believe, that whether he believes humanism supports surrogacy and the ethical implications of turning children into commodities within that paradigm. I don't know if secular humanism supports surrogacy. But wow, throw your hands up as if you made a point. You didn't make a point. Let me finish my sentence. You smug jack. Grow up, you child. No, sir. I'm going to keep calling out your lies and your petulant little throw up your hand stuff. You can call them lies and people can check whether I'm lying or not. Because you are a liar who's misrepresenting. The secular humanist manifesto does not expressly cover surrogacy, but in the principles of freedom. And as I pointed out in my discussion, that we begin with maximal freedom and we only limit those freedoms under good reasons. There's no reason that I can see that a secular humanist could limit surrogacy. Nor do I accept your bald faced assertion. Nor do I accept your bald faced assertion that surrogacy makes children a commodity. Nor do I accept your bald faced assertion that a fetus is a child. You just admitted it. No, I didn't. What delusional fucking thing do you think I said where I admitted what I didn't say? You just said that from your reading of the humanist manifesto you can't see how it would limit the practice of surrogacy. Correct. Thank you. That does not. Wow. Wow. You can, you know, I mean, the showmanship doesn't help you win a debate. It's staggering. A showmanship does not help you win a debate. Oh, yes, it does, by the way, especially when you're faced with a liar. Well, maybe maybe if someone is naive, possibly. All right, let's carry into the next question there, guys. Let's see here as we go up. And thanks for all your super chats, everybody. I know it's been super lively and we're having a good conversation, good time, I think, getting through these. Just, sorry, can I just as a point of order, how much longer do we have, sorry? Well, if we can keep it to the one minute per side and not mention the other person, and yeah, we'll be able to get through them a lot quicker. So we got quite a few more minutes. No, this is a practical question because I live with other people. Oh. And it's getting late over here in the UK. Oh, no, it's all good. Sorry, I'm not trying to be here. If we could have had this debate earlier, I could go on for hours more. But like, there is a practical concern. I just didn't. I don't think I'd wrap it up whenever. Yeah, let's carry on with the question. Can we say another 15 minutes? Well, let's. At most, yeah. Yeah, let's, I'll set 30 second timers and just remind you guys when we're getting to that point with these questions. Next one. Sparky Steve for 10 euros. Bob, your whole religion fails when you can have the most evil serial killers on death row, repent their sins and meet Jesus in heaven. Other than straw maning, Matt, did you even say anything? 30 seconds there. Yeah, so Christianity succeeds within its own terms when it can turn sinners into saints. So if it can turn murderers into saints, then it succeeds. That's not a failure. That is a success. There are examples of murderers on death row who have become Christian and become in the end in the last days, very noble human beings. That's not a failure. That's a success. Again, I just deny flat out the commentary made by Matt's supporters that I'm straw maning. I'm just not. I'm arguing with the arguments that are made by humanists from Manifesto. All right. Next one coming in. Sparky Steve again. Thanks for your super chat. Bob, you had a great chance here to platform yourself and intellectually test yourself against the best. Your actions tonight, however, speak volumes. 30 seconds there. Again, this is just commentary. That's not even a question. That was just commentary. And the reality is that if modern day debate wants to put a commentary without question, then what can I do? Fanboys are going to be fanboys and they're going to back Matt no matter what he says. I can't convince a fanboy. This is just commentary. Next one is from... Why is it? Gave us $19.99. Thank you so much for that. There's no question attached to it, so we'll carry on. Dan at for $5. Why does God have an issue with murdering men, women, children, and unborn answering, reflecting on the flood? So I don't believe that the flood should be taken literally. That's not how I read it. It's not how many of the church fathers read it. It's a typology of Christ talking about the fact that Christ is the one by which we save ourselves from judgment. But the reality... I mean, what can you say in 30 seconds? But the reality is that in terms of history, history is complicated. That's all I can say in the little time that I've got. I'm afraid. All right. Clarity just in case this comes up. You're saying that the flood and the arc didn't happen and is a metaphor for Christ? I'm saying that I don't read it as literal as say some Southern fundamentalist Baptists might have read it. Alrighty. Next one coming in from... Matt. When is your next debate with someone who is of good faith? We'll just clean that up a bit. Thanks for your first super chat. So... Let's not dignify that. I have no idea. We need to. I'm trying. I can't predict the future. All right. Cryptoly $5. Matt, can you give an advancement or value that you claim comes from secular humanism and was not within Christianity before? 30 seconds. That there's no God over me. That as a human, my primary focus is me. That principle is antithetical to Christianity, to Islam, to Judaism, to all of these things where God is first. Now, if there is a God, cool. We could... We can work on that. But that principle... Five seconds. And I can't say that this came from secular humanism because there's a whole lot of philosophical lines that led to the first humanism manifesto and the ones that arrived after that. So I can't say that it began with her. But since your question was didn't come from Christianity, the fact that I am not beneath a God didn't come from Christianity, for sure. All right. So next one coming in. Sorry, Jay. We're going to skip on here and get some of the questions that are a little bit more applicable. That one's also not really great. And I like that we can do that. Sorry about that. Yeshua De King asks, can you guys shake hands after? I don't know if they can do that through the internet. Kind of long distance. Just for the record, I'd be happy to shake your hand, Matt. As much as you may or may not appreciate the way this debate has gone, I have no hard feelings or animosity towards you at all. Me neither. And I shook hands like... I didn't shake hands with Daniel. I didn't even barely look at Daniel. I wouldn't want to touch Daniel with a 10-foot pole. But almost everybody... I mean, Cliff Connectley and I got really hot in the last debate and we're still friendly and laugh and have times that with. You guys got to remember, despite what some people think, because I see all over the chat, Matt won, Bob won, Matt won. This isn't a fucking WWE event. It's supposed to be about presenting ideas. Now, I got my complaints and concerns, but I don't look at any of these as a win-lose. Except for the Daniel one. I whipped his ass. Donkey Kong with a bongo over there. All right. So Q, a question from Matt. Do you have any grounding for any objective moral standards? No. And neither does anybody else, as far as I can tell. The foundation of morals, even from a secular humanist perspective, the foundation is ultimately subjective, but it allows you to make objective evaluations with respect to that, just like the rules of chaser, arbitrary, but we can tell what a good move is and what a good move isn't. The biggest problem that I see is that on morals, there's not a single objection to secular morality that is in any way solved by appealing to a God. His divine command theory is still just an assertion until some God shows up and says, yes, this is actually what is moral. All right. Next one coming in 30 seconds from T. Will. We're just going to make this a little shorter one there, Bob. Sorry, T. Will. It says, Bob, how do you determine which parts of the Bible are true? Christ is our paradigm. We use Christ and we use the teachings of the apostles and the teaching of the apostles that is embodied within the living, breathing community of the church. So basically Christ fulfills the law and in his fulfillment of the law, there's a whole series of completions that lays things to rest. And then you look at things that are descriptive and prescriptive and things that are descriptive, like, for example, the wars in the Old Testament. Okay, sorry. Sorry about that. We're going to try to get to you. 30 seconds is difficult for me. It is. We're trying to get through as many of them as we can. So let me shush and continue. Vesper says, humanist philosophy centers around the principle of reciprocity found within the golden rule. Do you take umbrage with that, Bob, of Speaker's Corner? So 30 seconds. No, one of the key points that I made in my 20 criticisms of the humanist manifestos is that they're constantly borrowing from Christianity. The humanist is just a goldfish in a Christian bowl. They're using Christianity all the time to create values, to have goals, to have assessments of outcomes, and so on. So no, I don't take umbrage at all. All right. In three seconds, the ethics of reciprocity isn't unique or tied to Christianity and Jesus' version is one of the weaker ones. Next one coming in from Emery King. Bob said that LGBTQ people adopting is the lesser of two evils versus the child going into the system. How is adoption in this case evil, Bob? And then they said, love you, Matt. In the context that the lesser of two evils, the optimum is always to place a child in a heterosexual couple, a stable marriage of a heterosexual couple. That would be the optimum. Why? Because children need male and female guidance in their life. They need male and female energy in their life. And if one is missing, then there is efficiency. And that's why it's the lesser of two evils. What if it's a heterosexual Islamic couple that's part of a terrorist organization? Is that still better than a gay couple? No, that wouldn't be better. All right. I wouldn't argue that it was better. All right. Sorry about that. So next one coming in, Disciple Day. Off topic. How can Christians call terrorists and Israel who kill Jews evil yet call a God who burns those same ones for all eternity good? Because the attacks by Hezbollah on Israelites are attacking non-combatants, which is against the Christian principle of just war, whereas those that are in hell are there because they do that, which deserves it, in that they insult the honor of God and that they continue to sin in hell. And so they continue to be worthy of their punishment. All right. Matt, you look like you might have a thought there. Did you want to carry on or? No, let's not slow it down. That's just a weird question. Okay. I saw you kind of hanging backwards. I could hear you. Gaye Staski says, No insults, I promise. LGBT youth account for half of the homeless youth while the churches that vilify them make billions of dollars pay no taxes and then cry persecution when they can't hurt others and get away with it. It's kind of more of a declaration. Ed, did you have thoughts on that for 30 seconds or carry on? Yeah. And the groups that are helping the homeless the most are Christians. We pile millions upon millions in helping the homeless. Some charities do it better than others. I grant that. And Christians have a consistent concern for the homeless and the destitute. I've got nothing to be embarrassed about by our record in helping the homeless. And therefore that means if the stats are right, we're helping a great number of people from the LGBT community. So I'm not sure why that's a criticism. Although when it comes to helping the homeless, both humanists at work and atheists helping the homeless will be out offering supplies and food to the homeless at least here in Austin where I can go witness and watch and not holding sandwiches hostage until after someone has hurt a sermon. And while Christians do massive amounts for the homeless, the way they go about it is not as good as it could be. Just to help people. And the most common question we get is what church are you with? And following that is, wow, you're just going to give me this? Yeah. Because we care about people and not proselytizing. I think that's a bit of a trope and a bit of a characterization of the reality actually. As someone who's worked with Christian charities helping the homeless. You know, here we go again with the interruption. The reality is that, you know, Christians go out there. I've known loads of Christian organizations that go out. They don't give sermons all the time. I mean, whichever groups you're talking about, I don't know. But I suspect that humanists are just doing it because they want to try and prove to themselves that they're as good as Christians. And that's why they do it. Wow. What an absolute statement. That is the most pre-use statement you've made in the entire thing. And it tells everything about you. That here we are helping people and me. And my experience is different. I sat there and watched the church services and sent down the invitation to your sermon. And you're going to serve. All right. You guys are both muted to the live stream right now. So you are an absolute bigot that we can be just as good as the Christians. The fact that they ask you... The Christians aren't good. You're not good. You're not good. No one is good. No, not once. Can you follow your own fucking religion? All right. So when you guys were wondering earlier in the chat while we moved into muted rounds, these guys, they can get pretty excited and have a lot to say. We got to try to wrap up her Q&A here, guys. I know... We're wrapping it up. I'm done. All right. Excellent. Yeah. Sorry, guys. It looks like we've gotten to the end of our time. So thanks for coming out to Modern Day Debate. I'm sorry if we didn't get a chance to answer your question. There's so many of them. We're definitely going to be back later on this evening for a debate, Aaron versus Kyle. So set your notifier for that. And once again, check out the link in the description for tickets to the live event coming up here in Dallas. You won't want to miss that. And we also have our crowdfund there. So once again, big round of virtual applause. Like I said, no matter what you hear here, these guys both said they'd shake each other's hands. So we're going to clear on out of here, guys. But thanks for coming out. And we'll see you next time. Cheers. Boy, you guys are a lively bunch. Well, thanks for coming out, guys. Yeah. Thank you very much. Well, I was going to say we actually ended up going a little longer. But thanks, Matt. And we'll see you in a few weeks, I guess. Yep. Later. Cheers. But all right. Thank you very much, Matt. Well, he's gone. You look after yourself, Ryan. And I just want to say, bro, I felt I had to call you out on stuff because I took Umbridge at the fact that you silenced me when I interrupted Matt. And that was probably the right thing to do. But you didn't silence Matt when he interrupted me. And I do recognize, and I want to say that I do recognize that I feel as the debate went on, the policing became fairer. So for what it's worth. Well, I was going to say I did my best to try to make sure that nobody would be confused about the fact that I'm not. When I muted you earlier, it wasn't that I was being biased in any way. If you go back and watch the debate, I would definitely put this back on you on that point. If you asked a question and literally said, what I want to ask you, Matt, you'd ask the question and he'd start to respond to it. And then you would cut him off. So that was where it was a little bit different than somebody just being like, no, I didn't say that. If you'd inject and you just say something like, no, that's not what I mean. I'm probably not going to go, oh, Bob, you're on mute now. You know what I mean? If you just had... Yeah, maybe I wasn't clear about the rules. But anyway, I mean, I don't take any of it personally. And if I go over the debate and I see it like you say, I'll be happy. Oh my. All right, thanks. Cheers. Got to forget to mute my mic every once in a while. Worse times, of course, right? How's everybody doing? Yes, thanks, Logan. Love you two guys. Yeah, always having a fun time out here at modern day debate. But yeah, that was definitely a very lively conversation. Hopefully you all had fun hanging out there on the live chat. But yeah, I just wanted to pop back in here. I was working on a little promo video earlier for modern day debate. I'm trying to get the darn thing to work. So let me just see if I can open it up in the media player. And then hopefully we can use this going forward. Let's see here. Boop, boop, boop. Now I got to take that window there. This is the fun of it all. I'm on the OBS. How's everybody doing, by the way? Once again, Dallas, guys. Dallas, is that where you're going to be for November 4th or 5th? Let us know where you're at right now and where you're going to be on debate night for the debate con. Let's see here. I'm just going to pop in the live chat one more time. See what everybody else is saying. Well, I get this lovely thing up and running. See that? That didn't work like that. I'm going to just do a little window capture. Media player. There we go. This is what we got worked out here. A1, it's a work in progress, everybody. I got together with a drummer there a couple ago, a drummer, JC, a friend of mine, and we laid down some tracks. So we're working on getting that ready here so that we can use it hopefully by the end of today and open up the next show with it. So I hit the like button, everybody. Share this out in those spaces where you like to have these discussions. I see there's still about 1,000 of you guys hanging out. So yeah, definitely hit that like button and let's boost it up. I've heard ancient lore that if we pass 666 likes, that Bruce Dickinson will show up and sing a song. So definitely hit that. And yeah, I'll close it out on that little promo one more time and then we'll end the show. But thanks, everybody, and I appreciate you coming out.