 boom bada boom everybody can hear me now wonderful everybody we are going to have a little step in debate here mark reid is accepted to step in for matt dillah honey so we're going to get everything ready with our screens here in a moment as far as the names go but in the meantime we're going to get ready with our islam versus secular humanism which is best for society uh and issa uh would you like to go first i guess we didn't have a chance for this because we kind of launched into this last second so all right well where mark just got here i'll ask you to go first there issa and give mark a chance to prepare so uh floor is all yours all right here we go so i'm gonna share the screen oops second let's give us one second everybody all right let us know in the live chat right there if you can hear us now all right we can hear you perfect all right i was a little bit worried all right uh so yeah for your up to 10 minute intro the floor is all yours issa all right great can you see my presentation that's one second and there we go we'll get that's fixed up and we can see your screen now cool all right so it is a pleasure to see you all again my name is issa i am a person who loves to uh look for a kind of common ground interreligious dialogue uh i have done a lot of work within that so this is something i really care about is looking at how these kind of mechanisms work together and uh the connections so forth now the uh is it zoomed in too much i can kind of decrease if that's a problem no i fixed it on your end here so it's fine now all right awesome um so i kind of have a very difficult task here um there's really kind of a lot of bad feelings towards islamic tradition so hopefully we can kind of look at islam with a more positive view so i'm going to greet all of you and say peace and blessings and shanti that's a sanskrit just greeting everybody and um i think so we're dealing with it's it can be a very difficult situation and some might even view it as kind of like i'm taking this is kind of like a kobi ashimaru where in in star trek there's this kind of situation where new cadets in you know on the star fleet are kind of tested on their on their character but basically it's a it's a no win situation so that's kind of the framing of this this situation a lot of people might think how can we even engage this it's like it's you know because there's so much negativity towards it but however the way i want to look at it is kind of reframing the understanding of the whole situation i think this is an important situation so um in the kind of star trek lore there is a a protagonist named captain kirk and he basically is able to circumvent it by reprogramming the situation and that's kind of what i want to do i kind of want to re reprogram this kind of space of how do we engage this situation so let's start it off oops it's not where it's supposed to go here we go so what's islam so islam means submission and it could be submission through peace you know this is a construct that we could see it's founded on the teachings of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and it is an expression of surrender to the will of the last one on top where you know maybe you know blessings you know be the most glorified um so the quran is the central sacred text of islam and muslims cross the board believe in Allah or god um and that this system comes from god so this is kind of just a little bit of a rundown of what islam is now let's move forward what's secular humanism because that's kind of our conversation we're looking at what islam is to secular humanism so secular humanism means being ethical or good without a belief in a higher power now what's the struggle here what's our kind of conflict that is going on between islam and secular humanism um the thing is it really kind of depends on what kind of path or journey you want to take that is taken within life um islam as we could see with traditional theistic routes has a very kind of organized structure so islam kind of offers a space of you know what you would call the what the five pillars are the arkana of islam which is a shahadat i la ilaha illallah wa shahadu anna muhammad abduhu sallallahu wa akim wa akim ussala wa atu zakat islam al-ramadhan wa hadjab which basically means the you're doing the testification of bearing witness to islam the praying the five times prayer the giving of alms fasting and the pilgrimage to mecca so this is you know there's this that's the kind of overarching structure there's like a structure for you know pretty much everything in your life there's like dua or supplication so people you know may go to um you know how they use the restroom there's a whole kind of system for everything islam kind of offers this very organized structured situation now with secular humanism um the space is a little bit more amorphous so it requires people to kind of make more decisions about how they're going to live their life for example it could take something like veganism versus eating meat there isn't necessarily a clear answer on this situation secular humanists may take different perspectives on this and so that may be something that could be a deterrent it could be a difficult aspect for a person to kind of have that kind of situation so however the you know kind of looking at the pros and cons the um the pro to that kind of structure is that you can kind of figure that out on your own and there's more of an individualized kind of pathway to that space within secular humanism where islam kind of has the structure that you kind of can follow but there's many different kinds of and this is an important thing that I always think in any space is the engagement of monolithic versus polylet there are many different kind of perspectives within islam is not just one way there's different ways that of how people practice islam there is a general structure of what I had said with the five pillars but outside of that there's um other rooms like schools of thought and um different understandings of you know how to you know you have uh individualized reasoning like with idjihad and idjma with a consensus you have these types of different structures as well so what's the common ground between these two situations um so we're going to kind of look at the kind of islamic elements of how they're engaged with uh with secular humanism uh the one of the pillars that uh I had mentioned which was zakat um there's a word in arabic which is uh tazkia tazkia means like purification so purification of your wealth so when you're giving your these alms it's actually purifying your wealth uh within islamic theology um and then sadaqa it's actually very funny because it's very close to the Hebrew word to sadaqa which is you know these it's other kinds of giving of alms um and also the kind of thinking about supporting human dignity with supporting those who are um in arabic they have the miskin and the atim miskin and atim miskin are kind of people who are impoverished um and unhoused and your team are orphans uh those who don't actually have a family structure and this we could definitely see this comes out of seven state tree arabia where you have the space where a lot of folks if you didn't have like a clan if you didn't have a tribe you didn't have that grounding which is important so um these kind of perspectives that we can look at are islam's um universal values dignity of the human being pluralism and toleration of diversity um justice and excellence individual and public liberty so we're gonna kind of look at all these principles you know kind of moving through so universal values um the there are frameworks of an overarching and general values that you can see that are within the quran um the endorsement of human beings um and it's not necessarily just for muslims it can be a and this is kind of an important thing that you see within islamic tradition yes there are can be different places some people might look at the hadith and say hey you know there's some things that we find racialized but that's one component but overall the overarching narrative outside of that particular specific narrative focuses on um an endorsement for all human beings um regardless of their color race and gender or religion um so this is very important humanity is a very important uh element within islamic tradition okay oops so let's go to the dignity of the human being the values pertain to all human beings and we can see in sort of kaf um verse 29 uh the uh dignifying of the humankind requires respect and protection of well-being and the free choice of the individual this is an important element um there is this aspect of having this choice and freedom so we need to consider that element okay and again we need to think about this thing of because prejudice and um and uh discrimination is a really important thing that we don't want to have within our society okay so we're going to look at more principles here the toleration of diversity another universal value of islam is the equal origin of all humans regardless of their color race or ethnicity it's the recognition of diversity that goes beyond the mere forbearance of resignation so it's very important to have this equal understanding of human beings and this is an an important thing of how we see the engagement within um humanism in and of itself so justice and excellence there is a human dignity that is universal and it's applying to everyone and it's important that you know getting out of the space you know and in honoring impartiality um individual and public liberties um so it's important that you know political rights you know again to protest against tyranny you'll definitely see that within islamic history um there was a huge conflict between the matazi like government and actually what you have is the kind of uh your standard aho suno jama your suni narrative the four scholars of suni uh of the suni tradition which is um uh hanafi maliki hanbali and shafi shafi so you have these scholars they actually had a lot of conflict with the matazi like government at that time but there was a right to be able to rebel against this situation so it's important like we think of mazlo's hierarchy of needs you need it's important that there's food shelter clothing and education so this is an important thing that we can see and here's more further thoughts um so we can see humanism in islam in islam the tenets that are interconnected which is the singularity of humanity human dignity and justice so it's focusing on the oneness of humanity this is a very important thing with islam there is the five times prayer or the salat um or as i like to call it the masala muslim which is your south asian desi muslim um they call it namaz which is like a personized word so um you know that's um so in salat the you have all the ranks so it doesn't matter what your caste class or anything you're all unified in that space good um it's uh so you have the openness of humanity you have the dignity of human beings and it's the importance of having dignity dignity and it's in the importance of justice this is an important situation so let's look at the there's five components that we can see that come from dr. Ahmad al-deen Shaheen which is the value of the human being and this can be found in ibn uh misqa misqa misqawi um who is a philosopher from perjah and it focuses on the refined you know that there's positive ethical values which is moderation justice wisdom uh tactfulness generosity nobility and courtesy and the unity of humanity this is an important thing that is being reinforced the attainment of humane of happiness you see that a lot of the ancient islamic philosophers actually translated greek greek philosophers so that was kind of incorporated within the tradition there's a value of reason and knowledge you definitely there is historical precedent for that as well and uh cooperation for humanity to achieve happiness okay so now here's a little surprise this is the surprise where did i get all this information from every single point that i got comes from the american humanist association i think this is an important situation um and all i'm giving all the credit from all the the information check this out it's really kind of amazing because we can see that even within the human and this is the funny thing this is the the surprise that i when i mentioned in the beginning about the uh kobi ashi maru i said i'm reprogramming this situation here i'm taking this kind of difficult situation because a lot of people are like where are the human values we can see if we look within the situation that there are human values incorporated and um that's the thing we need to consider thank you so much all right awesome well thank you so much for your introductory statement there let's get back to our main debate screen as i get everything updated over here guys well thank you so much isa for your opening statement there we're going to kick it over to mark but i just want to remind you all that modern day debate is a neutral platform we do host debates on science politics religion and just want to let you know if you haven't uh you know realized already uh we're doing a live in person event that's happening saturday september 16th in houston texas uh we have our tickets linked in the description below and there are actually three debates that we have lined up now as david wood has just agreed to come and debate so um we actually have a crowdfund that we set up for this as well so if you want to check that out we really do appreciate it and you can get a signed photo of your favorite debater at the debate con which is going to be pretty awesome right uh so 100 of any of the funds that are in excess will be used to go to the next debate con which hopefully i will be there for that would be a lot of fun so without further ado let's kick it over to mark and thank you so much for being here mark thank you so much and i do apologize to everybody i took this very last minute so i don't have anything really prepared um i might just step into it and i'm i'm sort of did find myself agreeing with a lot of of of what isa brought up but um first i want to go through what exactly secular morality secular uh humanism is um and what secular morality entails because um basically um the whole idea that that sort of islam would embody secular humanism is a little absurd because sort of the secular part means that we don't take um the wishes of any god whether that be ala or buddha or any other god into consideration when we're forming a morality for the world so the humanism basically it focuses on the well-being or you know sort of different different humanists have different metrics but i i like to focus on the well-being of humans and human society um so the question becomes when does the the benefit to the human outweigh that of society and i think there's an easy way to get a or or a relatively easy way to get a few sort of very core rights for people um a feature of secular humanism is that we um focus on scientifically evaluating these things so um we sort of have um um um sort of rights based upon the psychological needs and the physical needs of humans um because human flourishing is the most important thing people cannot flourish without their basic rights met so we're looking at the physiological needs like food water shelter these things um we can look at things that sort of humans need psychologically in order to have a flourishing life we're talking about safety security um a ability to self-actualize the sort of capacity to love and be loved these things are essential for human well-being as well as community and and um sort of uh all of the things associated with community um that the problem that um all religions have is that they are necessarily built upon dogma and i'll sort of explain what dogma is as opposed to you know scientific interpretation dogma is in violatable law of whatever it is that that we have so dogmatic morals come from religions they basically say this is moral and this is not moral um it is then left to the interpretation of the individual or the group in order to find out what how to interpret these laws that are passed down um the problem comes that we end up with all of these groups with what they think is in violatable law of of the being that they worship and that leads to inevitably conflict because if you think you have an inviolatable law and another person thinks they have an inviolatable law though and they're different then that will necessarily cause problems and we've certainly seen that around the Islamic world that the current battle of Shiite versus Sunni has been going on forever with no um no and and that's simply um just a different interpretation of the same text and it's been you know responsible for tons of of heartache and bloodshed and tears throughout humanity there is no way under secular humanism you can have that situation you can never argue that war is good for the well-being of humans it's impossible um as soon as you start getting into that um you've immediately violated the tenets of secular humanism um so humanism basically designates the flourishing of humans and human societies to be the goal and that brings us to sort of um moral relativism which we sort of adhere to but in only a certain sense um it's called meta ethical relativism what it says is that we can agree on um what is important what our goal is for society then we can make some very hard distinctions in what is good for that goal and what isn't good for that goal um if we can agree that the well-being of humans is important and the well-being of human society is important we can then have a sort of so saying hey massacring people is definitely bad for humans we can agree on this um and that isn't a subjective thing anymore that is objectively true in virtue of that agreement and i'm using objectively a bit wrong here because it still starts dependent but it isn't really uh it's a goal-based designation not not a completely subjective designation um so if if we can all agree on that and and i want to point out that secular humanism doesn't preclude religion in its societies um it basically says that hey we should have goals that are in a religion independent because we have a mix of of islamic christian buddhist hindu a whole bunch of people everybody should be free to determine their own way but what the goal is for humans shouldn't be based upon any one religion um it should be based upon the flourishing of all humans together that we are all just one species and you know i can i can prove that scientifically so um that and sort of the the leverage of being amorphous and sort of this this thing that can change and yes it can change and i would say it's essential it change i mean there has been things that um in the past the humans have done that have been sort of deemed morally correct that we don't do anymore there's things in the past that islam has deemed morally correct that we don't do anymore it's imperative that as our understanding of what is good for humans and what is bad for humans updates that's in virtue of well-being um we basically can change our standards to say hey we're not going to do this anymore that that that is a bad thing and we've seen this from everything from sort of these these wars that have gone on and um you know slavery and all of these things they need to be changed being um flexible and being able to change which sort of that's the that's the strength of secular morality um it's not dogmatic it isn't it isn't rigid and can't change being able to change is a strength um i'm often often reminded of sort of how how do um somebody with with the holy text sort of talk about whether asteroid mining is moral how do they talk about whether cloning is moral how do they look forward and apply their holy book written in the past to future events how do they how do they possibly sort of talk about whether colonization of another planet is moral or should be done or or is good for society when they're basing it upon the will of a creator rather than what is best for humanity um really the strength of secular humanism is because you've got a a procedure a policy a a protocol for working out what is good and what is bad it can be applied to any situation and we can simply analyze consequences of our actions and then say is this good for the well-being of humans or will this make humans not flourish and we can apply that i i don't know how somebody who's relying on the authority of a god can actually apply that to things that the god doesn't even mention and not surprisingly the people at the time didn't know about it but at that point even even the most um progressive um islamic scholar will need something else they will need some other form of working out what is right and what is wrong they will need to say hey is this good for humans or not which is essentially what they do whenever they're sort of in encounter something that that is against um that isn't mentioned in their book or isn't touched on in their book they have to go to something else and usually i would proffer that usually it is humanism if not secular then an interpretation of their own book towards humanism either that or the religious people will disagree on how the word is interpreted they may pick out one verse and say hey no that's not allowed because the verse says that you know some some sort of interpretation of the verse says this well and not the one might go no it is encouraged because my interpretation says this and then we get schisms so yeah i think that sort of saying that that the morality is flexible is only to a certain degree and and flexibility is required because we can't rely on a inviolatable word of of of anybody to address problems in the future that that word that doesn't have and and the people that sort of draw upon this word they don't have direct access either they're only going on interpretation and we have seen the result of that over the years war death destruction sort of you know uh uh uh prosecuting those who believe differently we've seen it all before secular humanism is at least an attempt at saying that can't happen because you cannot violate people and cannot harm their well-being but i look forward to the discussion um thank you so much ryan i'll i'll hand it back to you mate all right awesome i'll let you both go just a little bit over time but that's okay all right everybody i just want to let you know we are going to do a q and a at the end of our discussion here tonight so if you want your questions to really get debated on get them in there early and without further ado we will kick it into an open discussion i'm going to hand it back to east uh to make some commentary on what he just heard and uh let's uh let's get it going well thank you ryan and thank you mark for showing up last minute and taking this on it's it's really amazing and thank you for your um for your piece um so i think the the issue it's it you brought this up in your kind of uh in your discussion the element of um mutual i'm thinking of mutual inclusivism so the thing is we humans are complex we have multiple elements that hold us together faith is one of these elements it's not the only guiding element so when you brought up the point about you know do people take on different elements as well i wouldn't see that as like actually a problem i don't think that that hurts that particular perspective and i think um like when we were talking you mentioned kind of the amorphous element um it's an interesting thing like will rethink about what different values matter like things like the environment our dietary stuff all of these different things happen and you have like i grew up with um at some point in my life with um shia muslims who were vegan and had guns so they were a very interesting kind of collective of different traits that all were brought together so my question to you is do you think it's actually really a problem um to have like for a person of faith to have other attributes being a part of their total as a human and does that kind of belittle their faith does that take away from their faith well um i just want to address just quickly sort of the the amorphous thing that you're saying i do acknowledge the flexibility of of secular humanism but i think it has a very um it has a very strong core um i think that sort of these things around the outside can be flexible but the core of not harming humans is very very strict kind of thing so um yeah it certainly isn't as as sort of organized as as islam and i i completely acknowledge that like i concede that completely but organized doesn't necessarily mean good there's been a lot of totalitarian societies around the world that have been highly organized but that doesn't mean that's good for people um so when you said sort of faith i really would like to like we have to have faith as humans i'd like to know exactly what you mean by that um because people use that in different ways um excuse me um and you sort of said okay so you want to know what individual values i think there are some things which are um moral necessities like things that you have to do in order to be moral as a as a as a secular humanist right if you kill somebody you're automatically immoral you have to be and i but i think there's there's sort of things that are um making morally superior okay so if you don't eat meat you may be morally superior to me who who i i occasionally do um but that doesn't make it a moral necessity i don't think you have that that necessarily have to does that make sense so people might vary on that but um i think that it is good that people do discuss sort of the the effect of morals um that the i i guess i i don't really have a problem with with sort of people that um are vegan and have guns i you know and depends what they're using those guns for um somebody who doesn't own guns might be morally superior but i i don't think it's a moral necessity um i would argue that having a way to register and and sort of keep track of the guns might be beneficial for humanity but somebody may disagree um and and that's okay um because what secular humanism is really looking for is um sort of a a um compatibility with morals it's not looking to say hey you have to share the same ones all we're looking for is what's compatible and if if somebody's version of Islam is the flourishing of humans and and human life and human um um well being then that's perfectly compatible with secular humanism yeah i completely agree with that i think that that's the important thing is that so what i think is really important to engage to is kind of like the elephant in the room we talked about like these really totalitarian states what's going on in these totalitarian states i kind of wish i talked about this more in the first space that i was in in conversation but um we can address this here now a lot of these countries are faced with like post colonialism situations where a lot of resources have been pilfered there's been a lot of destabilization there's been a lot of difficulties in these spaces and i would say that the countries that have Islam aren't really different than the countries that have Christianity with christian majorities they still have the same problems because what we're dealing with is violations of human ethics where people don't have resources people don't have equitability people you know because that's actually something i really care about in my life which is diversity equity inclusion it's something that's really really important for me so i think having equity is such an important situation and in a lot of these spaces there are like these power vacuums so people i feel take absolutist narratives and they basically use these religious ideologies to further their own agenda i feel that it's not necessarily the religion's fault that makes this problem i think it's a human problem humans have this element we have this potential to do so much good but we also have this potential to really hurt each other as well well i think that the the Quran sort of it sets itself up to be a not a totalitarian document but at least an oppressive document and the way that it talks about a digizia for for non-believers living in in the islamic state i think it does necessarily set itself up as a taxation without representation kind of structure it's sort of the way that it does suggest that it is the islamic law that should be the law of the land crosses that boundary that we like to set between religion and government the edicts that it lays down in in that that section is very sort of a governmental rather than religion based so i think it does have a difference with christianity at least this version of christianity where christians will say hey that you know our religion is our religion and and that is different than the country that they're in islam seems to make no such distinction between the two it never sort of says hey sort of render untoceses like the christians do for instance and sort of make that distinction between religion and state the religion seems to be the state and and we can go more into sort of some of the things in the Quran that sort of i think i think sort of don't conform with what you've sort of said about equality and and sort of you know the the sort of um um different things that you've you've sort of said um so maybe to bring one up and you still didn't give me a definition of faith by the way i i wouldn't mind getting that so i can sort of speak to whether whether i have it or whether i find it unnecessary um in my moral system um because definitions do vary but um maybe we can look at look at a few passages and see if they they sort of so you mentioned sort of um without prejudice and equality and and this kind of thing maybe we can we can sort of see how they fit in sure um so i'll engage if you don't do you mind if i engage some of the points that you said no not at all not at all yeah i'd absolutely absolutely um so the thing with christianity is i think modern day christianity is awesome historical christianity not so much even with the scriptures i mean there's a lot of persecution of jews like jews were murdered and killed and they a lot there's a lot of anti-semitism that we have to look at too using understandings of the new testament where they said well the jews killed jesus this is an important thing i don't i think a lot of modern day christians now don't take that perspective but ancient christians sure did when they did the crusades they went and killed jews first that was that was one of their targets were jews so um that was a big difficulty in america that's where i'm from the united states um there's a lot of anti-blackness that comes from interpretations of the of the Torah where they said you know the the children of ham were black you know were burnt but then they say they were black so there were christians of european ancestry particularly who are doing this particular situation transatlantic slave trade there's a lot of these things where they interpret the text i don't agree with their interpretation but how i would view that with islam is that you have muslims with very negative interpretations that do negative things but there are muslims who do have really positive interpretations who do really positive things so i don't like me personally i don't see christianity as being superior to islam or islam being superior to christianity i see them as having different kinds of goals they have a different kind of narrative and a different kind of goal of where they're going um so and i think it is important to allow muslims to kind of define their space it's very unfortunate because the the the minor the loud minority is making a lot of noise like with the cartoons and stuff you know of the prophet of drawing the pictures of the prophet of islam there are better methodologies that you can use you can just write a paper you can write an article and say hey i disagree with let's say the satanic verses and i can write a book so really i think we have to take a pluralistic narrative i think that's an important thing for me in the way we view this there's many different types of interpretations and some interpretations hurt humanity and some interpretations help humanity so i think my goal in even in these kind of conversations how do we get the interpretation that best helps humanity um sure sure and i wouldn't disagree with you and i certainly don't disagree that that sort of christian um sort of organization has been incredibly bad in the past um you look at the cathars being wiped out and some of the heresies that have been laid down sure i completely agree however um it doesn't it's not really of concern to me um so much what they've done in the past is going forward whether they do conform or they are compatible um you sort of said we want to define define your space kind of thing and yeah i i get that but you're talking about having a um um a enclave within another country of maybe different laws as as it sort of pertains to the the quran um so no civilization is an island and and we kind of have to live with each other in the world um i'm of a mind that humanity can flourish best when we all do get along um and as a humanist if if people are being mistreated in other countries then i will have something to say i may not have the power to change it but i will have something to say about how those people are being treated um even in the western world even if it's my own country um now um so so sort of defining your space um i i can't get on board with that if you're sort of talking about an enclave where the laws and indeed the the sort of laws of the land are different than than the country that it is in um because that will necessarily lead to conflict um because the the people of that country can't sit aside and say hey those people are being mistreated will just leave it be and and sort of what what you've described is that you sort of take a humanistic approach and then apply it to the quran for your interpretation which is a sort of odd way of doing it um most of the the islamic people i've met um would say that they their interpretation is god's word um but it seems to me that perhaps you're just um applying a humanist approach not a secular humanist but a humanist approach to what the quran says um and i i do note that you haven't actually defined faith for me after all of that but i want to talk about a couple of the verses as well i can i can define that for you it just because i wanted to engage that point i was going to get to that for you sure whatever i can i'll i'll go to that point yeah yeah sure um so um like a couple of the um like i've always already brought up the jizya and why that would be a problem um so for instance if you have a muslim enclave that is have their own laws or define their space i mean correct me if i'm wrong that's if that's what you mean by define your space because i'm not entirely sure what that means um that they might have a problem with a group of people tax doing a tax on non muslims within their space um okay so i'm going to engage several things i want to engage that faith elevator because that's an important thing that you have brought up several times i wanted to engage the other thing um a faith can be just like a complete confidence or trust in something and i didn't really say you have to have a faith i was i'm actually fine if people have faith or don't have faith because i take the view of pluralism so we probably actually agree on majority of things honestly speaking but um yeah i think that having faith it's like it's a like a trust in something um so when so with these situations people have different ways that they view faith that's what i'm saying i don't think there is one box and when you mentioned that point about um what was it the um about the that it's the word of god we're always going to be an arbiter that's just how it is you're going to have an arbitration you're you're going to have something where you it's going down a pipeline it's going to have a human interpretation that's just the way it is people can claim that but it's i think it's a pretty arrogant egotistical position to say i can speak for god or something that's way transcendent than you that's we're humans we're stuck to the same limited structure oh i totally agree yeah and i i totally agree it is it is human interpretation um but the problem is that this the um religion um i believe it necessarily lends itself to people speaking for god yeah or a god you have that element yeah so i i that this is why i think that morality and and sort of how we should interpret morality on society should be independent from any god like it should just be instead of saying hey what's um you said you know what what would hurt humanity um or help humanity i mean why not just skip the book at that point and just go with what we know will hurt and help humanity it's i actually i think it's a cool kind of idea a lot of there are states you know actually originally it's funny um the state of pakistan originally was trying to be a secular muslim state because the founder was actually a secular human uh secular muslim um and that was kind of the goal initially speaking but unfortunately what happened was people came into power and they had other initiatives and what's really unfortunate with a country like pakistan um i'm sorry to interrupt that i'm sorry i've you said a secular muslim did you mean like a muslim humanist maybe a secular muslim doesn't seem to make any sense there's a lot of them like in turkey okay it's a kind of thing where you're like culturally ethnically muslim sort of like gotcha okay yeah culturally yeah you know what i mean that's what i mean by secular it's like yeah like i kind of believe in god but i don't really follow these things i just kind of do my own thing you know yeah yeah sure sure sure now i get what you mean i get what you mean probably in australia you probably have a lot of folks like that too like yeah yeah they're just yeah yeah absolutely they're just sort of cultural cultural muslims or cultural christians or cultural jews you know they just don't really follow the religion it's just part of their identity and that's fine no i totally get what you're saying yeah so i think he was that he was like trying to preserve the kind of muslim identity that was in south asia um and i was like my joke the masala muslims the south asian muslims they're all different kinds of spices um but um with within pakistan what's unfortunate now is there's different kinds of muslim communities you have the ahmadiya community you have the ismaili community um you have shia's that they're ifna ashri which is the twelvers and you have um you definitely have sufi's because a lot of pakistan were actually originally the south asian muslims were practitioners of suvism later now after post nationalism they kind of say we're not they kind of distance themselves but there's a lot of like sufi shrines that are in pakistan but there was a kind of a pluralism of different muslim identity however unfortunately throughout pakistani history um not all these muslims were treated well the ahmadiya they said well because there's certain interpretations they say well these ahmadiyas are blasphemous even though there's two kinds of ahmadiyas you have a low-horim ahmadiya and you have um the kind of traditional ahmadiya because they said there's a new prophet so there's a huge problem there's a huge crisis with this and kind of the leadership is predominantly from the sunni trajectory and this creates difficulty so i actually kind of agree with you i'm like if we give one group power it's only one interpretation of Islam this is my issue like is Islam this one arcing thing and a lot of people are like well sunni Islam the very kind of traditional sunni Islam is Islam as opposed to it being a a interpretation in a form of Islam that can fit along the other side the other forms of Islam and i think that depends on sorry go ahead no please that was it okay well i think it depends on who you ask and that's part of the problem i mean the shiai certainly wouldn't say that sunni is is the real Islam you know that's that's the bone of contention there so um it all depends on who you ask and whoever believes they have the right Islam is going to say that their version is right um from an outsider's perspective i've got no way to tell who has the correct Islam if anybody has the correct Islam um there's there seems to be no specific way to tell but um i i do want to get into sort of some of the verses like uh Quran uh 434 the the beating of women kind of thing i i don't see that aligning with with a society of equality for all humans as as you sort of pointed out now i do i do acknowledge that maybe you can make an argument of equality for men or most men some men that i don't think you could say equality of humans do you want me to read the passage oh no i know what you're talking about you're talking about the darba passage to strike this is a passage that people bring up all the time yeah it darba means um so we have to understand historical context of what we're dealing with too it's the way that i would say we kind of engage the Torah as well the Torah has certain elements that people are like whoa this is insane like if a woman gets assaulted and she doesn't scream take her to the gates and she gets the sound punishment we have to understand we're dealing with ancient societies that have a certain kind of ancient rules that they're engaging with um so there was a certain kind of gendered element within this society however what i would support is that Muslims are allowed to kind of engage these texts and see how to view it some Muslims say i'm not saying this is the right way but i'm saying this is an interpretation that kind of mitigates the blow of this particular kind of verse they say it's like a mishwak it's a it's a kind of a technique dealing with conflict resolution um from this particular kind of time period dealing with this time within this space that's the important thing to engage you could take a metaphorical reading about some kind of spiritual conflict within you could do something like that maybe you're wrestling your own elements but i think the issue is do we take this in a literalistic interpretation some can i think it really depends on the Muslim how they deal with this this is where i say the equity and the in the perspective of pluralism that there's going to be different interpretations most Muslims that i know would never take this position they say this is completely off the beaten track so that's something to consider well i i i totally agree with you it was sort of a bygone relic of the bygone age and and sort of um but sort of what you've described there is is moral relativism you've sort of said well the morals have changed from the past because in the past it was sort of seen as normal and we've learned a lot since then that is by definition moral relativism um and the fact that it says this outright um i i don't think it is an unreasonable interpretation to take that literally um because it sort of spells it out in black and white i don't think that's unreasonable at all whereas a secular humanist would say well any raising of a hand towards another person if it's not in self-defense is necessarily an immoral act um that is sort of by by definition immoral so i would say it's a pluralistic position for this so i said i think you can take a literal interpretation and some Muslims do and that's their interpretation of how they engage this some Muslims don't that's what i'm saying i don't really think we can just put all the Muslims and say this is Islam this is the box it's the same thing i don't like the hostility that we see towards atheists and secular humanists it's the same problematic element where people are like oh these atheists they're demons they don't believe in god they're so terrible and bad and i'm like yeah that's not what atheism is that's not what secular humanism is but it's it's this fear tactic and i think it's like Muslims aren't the people who are on 24 the some of them are some of them are but not everyone is and and you could say reasonably you're right some Muslims can take it that way but it doesn't have to be that way and that's the kind of position i would take in you could say there is a certain relativism and i'd say a lot of Muslims have adapted do Muslims use cell phones a lot of them do do Muslims drive cars yeah they're not riding on camels you know what i mean they're not using sundials they have compasses they do use other tools so people adapt with the times that's a normal thing even the most extreme literalistic interpretation is going to adapt with the times that's just granted well i mean um it is it is completely normal to adapt i completely agree with you it is it is completely normal to adapt with the times and and sort of um sort of change what we do and how we treat others on what we know now as opposed to what we knew in the past because as a species as humans we're always learning what benefits us and what doesn't benefit us what's good and what's bad but i suppose that i mean i completely agree with this and i would i would support sort of ignoring the texts in the Quran that that are detrimental to human well-being absolutely would it's a very unusual position to sort of take that that Islam is so fluid though that this isn't sort of some proclamation from a god who has set it in stone as how you should behave and rather sort of a thing that you lay aside um and i suppose i would return to my previous point if if you're you're going to evaluate the Quran with what's good for humans and bad for humans like you would in in sort of humanism um why have have like why sort of pay attention to any of the stuff in the book and why not just hold it as a holy text that shouldn't be implemented in society and i think this is the interesting thing this is the question because you mentioned this before yeah why are the Sunnis and shayat she has battling if there was a really a one unified defined perspective wouldn't everyone agree they don't they don't agree you have the mutasi like to get the all the rationalists you had all these people battling each other with different kinds of narratives there's never been this consistent thing where everybody's on board and all in agreement and i don't think that's a bad thing i think this is just a human thing that we're going to do that in fact it's not even argues that in the traditional sunni narrative there's a hadith that says that there are 73 groups of muslims so i'm like this is not like a shocking thing and i think some muslims do hold to that standard where they're like look it's like you know the monarchy in um in the uk it's like this is kind of here we respect this we love this um but we're not necessarily it's not necessarily going to be implemented in that way because how do you implement it this is the question because you're going to arbitrate it there isn't one standard that is going to um arbitrate this narrative and you're you brought it up look at all these countries do they all function with the same exact understanding of the sharia they don't they're quite different from each other so i think that that kind of goes into that point yeah i i i feel like you're making my case for me he said that um that that's sort of implementing islam and and sort of having it i i don't i don't see how that's better for society um i see it as this fractional thing where where there's going to be groups i mean you you brought the hadith that says there's 73 groups of muslims well what happens if it's sort of group schisms and there's a 74th group um what happens to them probably more fighting over whether they are muslims or not because it has been designated and this is the problem with dogma that you've got to accept it as in viable it's it can't be argued against and as you pointed out different groups have different interpretations that is their dogma that is their inviolable truth that's why they keep fighting um what i'm sort of saying is best to society is that we drop all of this and just base it upon the the the rational way we can make humans flourish and and address our needs as a people um that we don't need to have all of this stuff which says hey my way is ordained by god cannot be wrong and you know because if i can be shown that something i'm doing is bad for humanity i will change what i'm doing in an instant because um that that is the essence of humanism it can change whereas all of these dogmas that you've described all of these factions because it is dogma it cannot change it cannot adapt with the times and it cannot make allowances for other people's different interpretations well i do have a question why can't it be why can't we have a pluralistic situation why does islam have to be stuck into this kind of fetid stagnant space why can't it be viewed in a dynamic space just like and be in collaboration with humanistic thought that's that's kind of the space that i was looking at why i can't do that collaboration why can't the quran have different understandings because it seems like it already does you know i do i really know i was gonna say i do want to inject here just uh i thought you were done there i'm sorry i didn't want to cut you off uh but i do want to remind everybody we are going to do a q and a at the end of the discussion here so get your super chats in now and we will pull them and ask those questions to our speakers and we're having a really good discussion night we got about 20 minutes of the consented time but you know we're welcome to let our speakers you know speak as long as they'd like to uh one of the things and i know that i don't want to make assumptions you know it's 2023 but uh we're three men in a room uh let us talk about what would be the rights of women uh under each system and i'll let mark read kick it off there and okay that would be i think that would be a good place to launch off there because that's usually something that people want to talk about in these discussions so let's let's kick it off sure sure well the rights of women be the rights of any human um they they that that would be the rights i'm sorry to sort of give you a really short answer there ryan but um humans are just humans they all have the same rights that's essentially where it comes from oh boy i knew that you had to bring out the hard one this is always a difficult situation it's like oh let's talk about women we have to talk about polygamy we have to talk about this the beating situation we have to talk about the witnessing it's like oh my gosh i have to go i'm sorry i i don't know what i've done what a can of worms i've opened but i i i had to ask you because i know we've only got you know like i said we have 20 minutes left of what we can send it to you can talk as long as you want uh you know if you guys want to go later that's okay by me but uh you know i did want to throw that in there just because i know that's one of the main things that comes up in this debate so let us carry on or i'm going to try my best this is a very it's a difficult topic and it's controversial i'm like it's not easy by any means like being very transparent to engage with this topic okay so again i think i have to go back to this pluralistic space yes if we take an extremely literalistic interpretation we're going to deal with things that may not be viewed as humanistic we're not going to be viewed with things that are equal and we're going to see things that look inequitable um so i think the way to engage this space is to say there's definitely there's a historical space as we see with other spiritual traditions where there may be um there may be some disconnect but you also have Muslim feminists that exist too which need to be understood you have like the uh the Muslim feminist Amina Wadud you have the feminist like translation of the poem by Layla Bakhtiyar so you do have these spaces that exist so i want to give voice to that there are feminist muslims who do engage this situation i am a guy i'm not a woman so i can't speak to all the female issues so i'm i'm not going to um take that voice as you mentioned ryan this is an important thing um but i would say in my limited purview of this it is complex this is a complex thing that theism has in general historical theism particularly Abrahamic traditions deal with this situation and it's a very difficult issue but i would say that there are multiple interpretations and there are more interpretations that are geared to um kind of a holistic space so i think i think it's my best foot forward on this one it's not complex under humanism it's just humans have human rights it's it's so easy oh yeah i mean i agree with you i'm just saying because i'm engaging the kind of muslim interpretation of dealing with these aspects so that's what i was engaging yeah and and i i i i want to um say i i admire your your sort of pluralistic approach i think it's it's very good i you know i i think that that is perfectly compatible with it with a humanistic approach i would have no problem with any muslim that sort of you know embraced the well-being of people like that um and the flourishing of society like that um it's just your earlier question was why do we get these wars and why is it it it's because that this book is held um by most i would even say most as sort of um the word of god which which can't which you know sort of lends itself to a literalistic interpretation um like the the verses with cutting off your hands kind of thing um a lot of muslim um countries where sharia law is practiced that that still happens in in you know sort of uh when when somebody does steal something of value that their hands are cut off and that's a problematic situation and the thing is who gets to have the power in these discussions that's the thing it's like a power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely so it's like this is the danger with these situations i think a way that we can engage these texts and these warnings are like how do you do inner purification within yourself if we're going to take there's a concept like people say well muslims believe in jihad you know like this kind of struggle that's what it literally means struggle um and conflict what about an inner purification and working on how to be a better human being um when you say that the struggles and conflicts i think human beings just have this problem in general this is just a crisis of humanity and we need to work on making a pluralistic society where people have different identities people are muslim people are christian people are jewish there's a lot of spaces of interreligious interfaith dialogue i've been in these spaces and they work together and secular humanism all of them coming together and bringing their points together i think can happen all right last monkey wrench i want to throw in sorry i i'll leave wrap up sorry go ahead no no go ahead i was gonna say last monkey wrench i want to throw in here because it's usually a you know one of the main points we want to talk about speaking of you know lots of identities uh let's talk about lgbtq plus rights uh let's kick it over to mark read to describe what would be uh well what that would entail on his worldview and then we'll kick it over isa humans have human rights i same as women they're they're humans like everybody has equal rights because they are humans it's humanism is is like that um unless that nothing can be shown that that um anybody in the lgbtq a bus space is doing anything harmful for either society or themselves it just isn't um so yeah humans have human rights this is always difficult well glad you didn't bring up the apostate thing i was like i don't have to deal with that again so i did have that on my list that i was gonna get to that i was like don't have to deal with this too uh yeah i have a lot of difficult things that i have to deal with a lot of things that could be considered problematic i'm aware of it um but i think we can engage these points so lgbtq i a plus i've actually done a lot of research within islamic tradition on this so the problem within this space is it necessarily the identity it's the act so across see this thing i don't like to call it islam i don't like just as a box this is the thing i keep hearing it islam is this box i think there's a lot of nuance and complexity and complexities and groups and nuances so i want to give voice to that um and i always try to remember butt and ants like adding and and i would like to kind of engage the situation of um how it could be viewed like in a lot of traditional spaces so looking at it because i know that's like what a lot of people want to do is looking at the traditional model of islam the traditional model looks at what they call ludax they have a thing called sehak and what they call liwa sehaka that basically means like pounding so it's referring to like lesbianism that's the term that they use in the sources and liwa is um backdoor action i think it's the way i can put it um that that's a problematic situation um which is referring to male male interactions so the issue is the interaction it is not the identity because that was never really dealt with it's kind of the same thing that i would say abrahamic face the way that they view this like you know like what we see in like in the jewish tradition it's the same kind of thing of like it's this the acts that are the problem not the person it's not the identity so basically the person is doing acts behavior is not appropriate behavior but um the identity is not the problem so that's kind of the traditional argument towards that yeah so that that's sort of problematic to me um a very problematic because especially since you've talked about equality and sort of polarity uh priority um these these whole ideas that everybody is equal um you've sort of brought up in your presentation but the whole idea that somebody cannot engage in certain behavior that they wish to do that is not harmful for society is not an equality based idea it's sort of saying hey we've got one set of people they're acceptable and another set of people what they were sorry one set of people what they do is not acceptable and and another set of people what they do is acceptable so um that is sort of inequality right there so it kind of bewilders me how you can bring up sort of this idea of equality and then apply inequality um two different positions to people that if if they engage in a certain behavior then they do not get the equal rights of the others for that behavior to be protected um and i'm wondering what standard you're basing that on so i think i you haven't really engaged the point that i was saying about the plurality i don't see islam as just one box the position that i was saying traditionalistic position okay i'm sorry my apologies not all muslims are saying that i think some muslims are more open might you have pro there are queer muslims that exist there is an lgbtq i plus community of muslims other muslims might say you're not real muslims but who get the i brought this up in the last conversation i had the no true scotsman fallacy who is the true scotsman like you could say all scotsman eat haggis well if i'm a scotsman and i'm a vegan that disproves that position so not all muslims are the same thing and i think sticking muslims all in one box it's not healthy it's not good and it's not right do muslims have things that bind them together sure they believe in god they believe that there's the belief in prophets they believe in books they believe in these things they have that together but the way that they view it is different and i don't think it's fair to put them all in one box and that's kind of my issue with the situation is saying well islam is this islam does that i don't i don't think it's fair well my apologies isa i didn't mean to misrepresent you i'm very sorry i will maybe because i thought that was your view on what islam says about it maybe you should give us your view of what islam says of it rather than what some view of islam says of it um i also just quickly i want to point out that nobody's fighting over eating haggis so that that's the difference eating haggis five minutes yeah yeah i'll kill you for not eating haggis kind of things it's not what we get but i mean you know like people will kill each other over all kinds of things like in some spaces people will kill each other for like um like over a can of soda over like a partner people will fight over all kinds of things and it's it's an immaturity of humanity so we need to kind of evolve and grow and be better people so my my thing is not that i feel that islam is really in conflict with secular humans that's kind of the whole point of my opening argument that i use the secular humanist website to make my arguments for me instead of me that those weren't my arguments they all came from a secular humanist website that took that that was all their arguments i did that on purpose because i wanted to say hey look these things actually coexist they don't have to fight they don't have to be in conflict and really the issue isn't necessarily completely the ideology it's really the person so we can make these ideologies work and work together yeah i i will agree that the people fight over over all kinds of things that the problem here is you're adding a quran which is supposed to be the word of god it contains more weight than just you know whether you drink Pepsi or cola or cola kind of thing brand sponsorships and modern day debate are open by the way um and yeah people do fight all over kinds these kinds of things um i do agree with you but the the really the the handing down of dogma that is supposed to be inviolatable and then and then sort of getting people to interpret it is is the problem um and i feel like um or what i think is that you are a better person and you're you're sort of more um equitable to people and you're more egalitarian in spite of your religion than because of it um that that there's nothing in the quran or the teachings of islam that that i'm familiar with that would support this kind of stance from you but i'm glad you take that stance i am glad i think it's a good stance to take um because um it it helps people flourish um but i i i you know i think that's in spite of your religion not because of it well and i thank you for your kind words and i appreciate you as well and i would say that when we're looking at again i think the most important thing that we need to look into the conversation is when you said it's the inviolable word of god well it's really what the word speaks to the individual human so this is the kind of thing that we're dealing with the issue is like if you read the quran it's it has it has space of interpretation it's not necessarily like you know um this kind of black and white narrative and i think it's it's that that's intentional and i think that's how it is with religious texts in general i've read a lot of different religious spiritual texts and they all kind of have this space where it's really up to the person in their relationship with their religion and their text um and there is a space even in traditionalism that's why i said the traditional view not my view because i want to make sure to separate that in the there's people in the chat and there are people who are here or like i want to know the traditional view so i'm kind of engaging that because i'm trying to be fair to the traditional view and not just pushing where i stand on this you know what i mean i want to be fair to what the traditional narrative is um and i think in the traditional narrative you have like i had mentioned this before like ht had where you kind of do your own self reflection within the text um to help guide yourself um and there's different kinds of islamic traditions you have a islamic tradition called saul for irfan um which is your the mystical form of islam it's very similar to like kabbalah and like judizm where you have like a spiritual guide you have a sheikh a spiritual guide a teacher that helps you through understanding different situations it's not really just you and the text so you have that kind of space um you have spaces that kind of follow a state model that use a kind of a statist situation which kind of implements kind of post-modernism with particular people who are empowers interpretation of islam that kind of fuse together but i think like just like our body we have cells we have organs we have all these things that are collaborating together at once there's really not one way to just say i'm going to isolate this one variable and call out that variable and everything else is inconsequential i don't think that that's a fair analysis well there's there's people that would vehemently disagree with you within islam in fact to the point of getting very militant about it the the thing about humanism is that it doesn't say hey this has to be taken as this it simply is well if you can show me how it's harmful for humans and harmful for human society it can change so again i do i do want to reiterate the sort of the idea that humanism is amorphous and is is necessarily it is flexible to change when the circumstances arise um we don't have to go through um you know hundreds of years war to try and change sort of humanism to to fit to accommodate what we now know is terrible for society we can just say hey we can study these things we can study like a for instance the the Quran forbids the drinking of alcohol that's great and in a certain sense that's great however alcohol can be shown to be good for the heart it can be shown to reduce diabetes in small amounts i want to make that clear so um the problem is that we don't have this because all that needs for me to change my opinion on alcohol is just we said hey we've studied it and it does this which is good for humans and then it changes whereas in islam and this is the terrible thing that you will get people on both sides willing to fight each other over whether that is true or not and i think that what you pointed out is a weakness is in fact a strength of secular humanism that adaptability to new information is a hundred percent of strength i actually didn't say it was a weakness i was saying that these are different types of paths that's what i was trying to argue what i was making okay sorry my apologies i never said that this is a weakness i said it depends on what kind of journey you're on i don't see it actually as a weakness i say it's a potential it's a potential kind of stratum it could be a great strength it could be a difficulty depending on the person but it can be a potentially a great strength you know that's just how those kind of things are all right well this might be a good time to maybe move into our q and a to stir up our conversation a little bit so make sure uh you know guys i'm looking at the screen right now and that like button is asking me to take it home but i'm a married man so you're gonna have to smash it for me instead uh that's terrible that's a terrible joke all right we're going to go into q and a get their questions Islam you can be a point stop i'm trying to do housekeeping hold on now you behave all right so we're going to move into our q and a we're having a lot of fun this has been a good discussion everybody uh so yeah definitely give that like button a hit share this out in those spaces where you like to have these discussions and uh you know get into you know a little bit of the contentious stuff that we get into over here on modern day debate but these guys are really amicable they're getting along really well and we enjoy having a really clear discussion so let's go into our q and a get those questions in there lj for $1.99 moderator is a chad mark earth is still flat me chad get to the chapa you know when my phone's dying get to the charger i i share that meme often yeah so yeah we're gonna actually have a few flatter debates coming up and you know what question ryan it's not a question i i do want to remind everybody of the live event that's coming up and i'm gonna remind you of it at least once before i you know play you some music to end the show but uh i i do want to remind you as well that mark is actually going to be back on sunday and we're going to be having another discussion about uh morality islam versus secularism so you don't want to miss that so get that on your notification bell if you haven't already hit the bell on this uh on this stream here because that notifies you whenever we're uploading a video and as uh it was put in the live chat before matt and isa are going to come back to have this discussion uh matt unfortunately had to step out so we will carry on and we do appreciate you being here mark reid this has been oh my honor yeah this has been great thank you very much yeah no after my last one i was sort of like um worried that it's going to be another dumps fire but but ace has been very pleasant and an amazing person to talk with i really enjoyed it so thank you so much isa i really appreciate it i appreciate you too mark and you know you're such a swell guy you don't deserve what happened to you last time i won't i won't comment but what mark said yeah um yeah think think of me sitting there oh god all right let's continue on all right um i must have a job for a dollar ninety nine i isa do you support jizya a why or why not okay so i think i should explain what the jizya is first because maybe the audience doesn't know what that is um the jizya is a poll tax that non-muslims paid particularly in more like ancient islamic tradition um during like the caliphate um there was this thing called the dimmy which was like a protect it means protected class but some may view it as a secondary class but muslims also had to pay a tax too they paid this a cot so non-muslims did not have to pay this a cot and the um the uh the non-muslims had to pay the jizya and the muslims had to pay a cot so that was the kind of institution of the time um do i think that that needs to be instituted we're not really in a structure where this is existing um i also personally and this is my personal opinion i think we need less taxes i think we should do less taxation and be more productive with whatever finances whatever resources we get within governments i think a lot of governments really we're functioning the best that they could at those times um but i think we can allocate and get resources in a better way i think actually the ottoman empire kind of had a sort of disbanding of the jizya towards its end um you know that we can research that and quote that but um i think we're in a modernistic pluralistic society so this type of thing is not something that we would be looking into i think we as humans i'm sorry i just i was reading the live chat and i shouldn't be i gotta turn my mic off for that riley yes don't make me laugh but yeah no i will cut glass with this jaw uh that's hilarious don't make me laugh while i'm looking at the live chat uh let's carry on uh did you have any comments mark before we move on to the next super chat no i i just i just sort of think that people should be either taxed the same um or sort of you know according to their income is probably the way we would do it now um i believe the um muslim tax the zikiat isn't it zikiat um zikat zikat yes the zikat um i yeah i believe that was a percentage tax and the jizya was a yearly tax on non-muslims which could vary sort of wildly in how much they were taxed so it does seem like an inequality that sort of wouldn't fit into our modern interpretation of of sort of governments and and again i'll just sort of say that any tax where you aren't represented in the government that tax is taxing you is sort of very um anti-democratic and does isn't good for societies because you are in fact sort of you should be represented if you are contributing towards a nation yeah and looking more like what the jizya was supposed to do because we're dealing with like an ancient time so we have to kind of understand the context of it empires weren't really a wonderful great situation we just have to look at that but in this ancient time so basically what it was is that you're paying this tax so you are basically protected by the state this is a protection state because you're not a part of you're not a part of the community but a lot of communities were like that we just looking at a historical narrative so we kind of need to look at it contextually as well all right well it looks like we're wrapping up there everybody we're gonna move on i'm gonna move marx head over here in just a second because it looks like he's moved over that way uh let's get on to our other super chats everybody oh look at him he's got the fancy stuff to fix him himself mustfajav once again strikes for $1.99 mark round two with ross if so what topic um okay so would i debate ross again probably not um i would definitely need it to be timed sort of back and forward and that being strictly enforced um definitely um what topic um well i mean he wanted to do an arc i'm happy to do Noah's arc i'm more than happy to do that and he you know he wanted to do also wasn't it sort of evolution he wanted to do oh no the subject was evolution he brought up a couple things i didn't i don't want to choke the way that ross kind of naturally engages but yeah maybe maybe in a year mark we'll talk about that well because i will agree i really don't i only had one screen that night and it seemed like every time i clicked on zoom it would take forever to actually open and then by then yeah i won't get into it but it's fine it's fine like if i did engage with ross again it would probably be time segments and strictly timed at that so um but yeah see what happens all right well yeah i was gonna say i got my two screens back up and running everybody so uh you know if we have any really hot debates again we don't have to worry about uh me making sure i have my mute options on hand see look there's my little hand there boop got you on what was the score at the end like 152 to one or something was the score at the end uh something like that i'm not sure but let's continue we won't talk about people who aren't here because that's okay yeah that's true that is true and that is fair but you know we're we're paying the toll all right xx ylz xx uh $10 does isa see all interpretations as a valid does the cron have an original meaning did the author all right all right you've got a lot of questions here let's go through them one piece at a time we'll set a one minute timer and you know if mark you have commentary we'll launch into discussion so does isa see all interpretations as valid um i think we can't i don't think we can try to say one in tape interpretation is better because that's what happens you have the no true scotsman fallacy i don't think that's fair i have interpretations that i value as better but i can't say that they're they might be right and i might be wrong i don't know i can't speak to that um but because we're in plurality there are different going to be different interpretations and they all have their own value and i could probably find a good value in each of these interpretations even the ones that are like really super literalistic i think there's always you know like i try to be optimistic and see the glass half full so yeah any thoughts over there mark do you want to move to the next oh yeah i don't i don't i think that when you when you say valid it's just was there original meaning and yeah there probably was an original meaning um and it suited the context of the time um sort of the that societies that they lived in at the time um i don't think that a god wrote it so it's not coming from sort of a god um or even a prophet handing down their their interpretation i think it was the interpretation of a human um even originally so and it fits the the environment and the society that they lived in it makes sense for that time but it doesn't anymore all right let's move to the next question in this super chat and just want to remind everybody we are doing q&a right now so get your questions in there if you tag me at uh ryan thai mod uh because that's what i'm logged in as right now uh i will take your questions in uh out of our live chat if we run out but if you put your super chats in i will make sure to get to them in case we've run out of time but let us uh take care of this xx wl zxx question because that's a great name to say does the koran have original meaning isa i love how you said zed that's so canadian because we all in america we say z you say zed too right in australia yes yeah i think it's a commonwealth thing right uh okay who is there an original meaning i think there are multiple meanings so um and i think you can even see that like within islamic literature i think it's in like natural black which is a shia literature that like ali akumar allege was saying that there's like multiple you know there's so many meanings to all of these verses there's so many and um and it's really i have to kind of compare islam to judyism because it really fits alongside like scholastically speaking it fits a lot within the jewish narrative um like as a religion it's like the closest to judyism i would say um especially based on like litigiousness and legalism um there are different levels of the text so i think there's a historical cultural um narrative as mark brought up i think there's a spiritual narrative um i think there's um a political narrative there's a philosophical narrative so i think there's many different strata like how do we gauge it well calm me between your drink all right any thoughts there mark yeah i think there is an original meaning i think i think i mean um he says probably right um there's probably different levels um that the the original author was writing it on but i think when you look at it in the context of a um small um sort of um very very tribal society that was surrounded by enemies a lot of it does sort of make sense in in context sort of the even the more um um problematic verses kind of thing that makes sense in their culture it makes sense why you punish people so harshly and without mercy um it makes sense looking at from their point of view but it it doesn't make sense anymore and that that's the whole point um that that uh the the person that does believe in Islam has to drop a lot of what the original um context was because they don't live in that time um that's that's moral moral relativism for you all right any thoughts there you said before we move on um yeah i mean i think um i definitely like i like i said i agree with mark that there is there there's definitely a historical cultural component that we can't ignore and it's definitely a part of it and i think that like i said it's like i'm very consistent with my narrative i think there's a pluralistic space so that is one of the narratives that's there um and i do agree with mark there it was it's a very difficult time it was not an easy time to live in um the seventh century and it's like the same thing i give the same credence to the jewish narrative a lot of people are extremely anti-semitic and hate they're like look at how terrible and barbaric jewish people are and i'm like dude like you didn't live at that time you weren't living in these conditions that's not fair for you to judge these jewish people based on your modern standard situation you know and i think that's the same way that we can view the kind of historical component of the islamic narrative is that yes it might seem problematic and modernized but it it's fitting in it can that element is fitting with the contextual narrative of that time all right let's move on to the next part of this question uh because there's all kinds of uh good ones flying in right now but let's uh continue on with your question xx w l z xx so did the author of the book have intention what kind of intention like is there a specific kind of like what intention do we mean all right let's ask the next part example in 415 did the author intend for there to be four witnesses for sex i'm not sure what oh my god it is so funny i have to deal with all this stuff it's rough it's rough i have to deal with all these difficult elements um it's coming at you i'm so sorry i know i know that all these questions are kind of like dude you need to crap on islam and make islam look like a piece of crap and i'm like i i don't want to do that i think there's value and um we're gonna have to negotiate and navigate through these difficult spaces okay um so with the four witnesses to sex it's again we're dealing with a historical cultural narrative people wanted to keep a kind of a kind of a healthy element within society so sexual behavior was something that was kind of like regulated it's kind of this thing that if you do certain things it can create disruption within this very small kind of society so it was a way of kind of having protection within the society um so that's kind of like the ethical argument for that kind of space does that fit in our standard now i mean that's a debatable question i would say for a lot of people it doesn't well it doesn't for me um the whole idea that that sort of you needed these witnesses was that because it was a misogynistic society it was a male dominated orientated society um we now know that that is not good for a society to be we can sort of evaluate the harm that can do um with not um believing people and not taking them at their word because they are a human and sort of one human's word against another human they should be sort of held up and and sort of you know given credit for each until i'm sort of treat people as themselves not the gender you are so um sort of what we want to try and do is have a society where um it doesn't matter where you are in society that you you sort of have a equal representation from that society or equal equal rights from that study um i think was john walls that sort of described that as the veil of ignorance that for a good society you want to construct it in a way that no matter if you don't know your place in that society you're going to construct it in such a way that you would be satisfied being a member of that society no matter whether you're born a man or a woman or or uh whatever race you're born whatever religion you are that you're all treated equally and that is the essence of humanism any thoughts there is so before we move on yeah i i'm in agreement with that um i just think that islam can have we interpretations of islam can have that as well and that's the thing that's why i made the whole point of like that there isn't just like a unilateral space when we're looking at islam and that's yeah so i'm fine with that cool all right uh let's move on big thang flan wane isa tired of apologizing for chosen source material what's going on there so yeah what they're saying basically is they're saying look you're stuck with this really difficult space and you're just having to defend all these things and what i'm trying to do and why i'm even here in this kind of platform is saying look there are different ways that we can view this space it doesn't have to be monolithic there can be a polylithic view yes there may be a common strand and it's like i would say probably like that's the point i was making with like secular humanism is that you're gonna have different secular humanism humanists who have different kind of ethical positions and that's that's fine there's nothing wrong with that um and i think that this is the kind of thing with the pluralistic space so yes i think people i'm going to be very straight up here people are stuck with this sort of protestant ethic it's this solely fide solely scriptural kind of solely particularly solely scriptural type of position what the text says is what it is and i think a lot of people see religion through this very modest in view most ancient religious people academically speaking did not see religion that way this is a modern view of how to look at religion so people are like so this writer this this uh sponsor is basically saying well you have these texts you must defend these texts and i'm saying hey i'm doing i i'm reprogramming this situation i'm not stuck to that limitation you're saying this text is important i'm like there's different ways of viewing the text the text does not have to be viewed in this like linear way it can be viewed you know in a three-dimensional way and i think that's an important thing to take into consideration all right any thoughts there mark or do you want to move on from there yeah i'm an i'm an equal opportunity uh counter-apologist so i will sort of you know back up acer a little bit and sort of say hey christians have the same problem with the old testament and all of the sort of really bad things in there and they generally will do the same thing as acer is doing interpret in such a way that that sort of it can fit with our modern ideas of what is good for society and what is bad for society um i don't i don't have a problem with that in fact i i i do want to sort of say to to acer it's a good thing that you do that because obviously uh you know implementing some of these sort of um literally medieval punishments are sort of really problematic in current society all of the flogging and cutting off hands you know we don't we just don't do that anymore um but i i i i do want to say and maybe this is a bit more controversial is that i think that acer is um he he is better inspired at his book like by just sort of ignoring what it says than if he took it as what it says to do um so what i would encourage people to do as as sort of a counter-apologist is just drop the book and just go with what is good just you know i understand your culture is important and it certainly is but the the religion isn't um it probably will just hold you back but there is so do you want to move on sorry um i think yeah i i don't know i want to i think it's i don't want to say it i hear the point about being better than the situation i just think that we need to it's just like if we're let's say we're not looking let's take it like a secular position i'm going to take an interlocutor's position the secular position it's like if i look at harry potter if i look at literature any kind of piece of literature if i look at shape spirit i look at dickens i can read multiple layers and levels into the text i think certain people it's very easy and a simple kind of basic way to look at the most superficial way to look at a text and um that can be beneficial it has its benefits but there are benefits to look at the text in different ways so i think that we um need to be open to multiple perspectives oh ryan's ducked away um well while he's gone um but you do understand that harry potter and stuff about that fiction while where the the quran is not supposed to be fiction it's supposed to be an accounting of sort of i completely understand i was saying i'm taking like a i was saying i'm comparing it that looking at the view of looking at multiple levels of a text so i'm saying even if we look at just a basic literary text we can see there are multiple levels of that text like even harry potter like even a piece of fiction has that element that that's the point that i was making oh absolutely yeah it certainly does have sort of moral and ethical things that it says about the world absolutely i think there isn't a text on the face of the planet that doesn't have that though um which sort of begs the question of or it says to me why the quran is important beyond just a text you can take these these things from because i can be a humanist and take from every single book on the planet and that that's fine um what makes the quran special in that case i guess would be my question um i think what makes the quran special is the meaning that it has on people it's the same way of like how the bible has an impact it has a meaning on people it means something when someone opens the quran it means something like it's healing for them it brings love for them it brings joy for them and usually a lot of people they can open the text and then they said i'm feeling resonant with this type of text just like reading the bible or reading um you know like the you know you know the tripodica or reading so any kind of spiritual text you can read the text and you feel empowered by it so it's a very human kind of feeling you get support and granted from it and so people may not i said probably that against a lot of text a minute i used to feel that way about well i'd still do feel that way about when i open water the rings to read it i love water the rings talking to on point i it's an amazing all right we've agreed on something absolutely have 100 percent i will agree that he's a lot of the rings fan debate over yep i was gonna say i and i'll agree that i probably should read the books i am i am bad at reading and getting to books i'm a big fan of like getting to games that i missed out on playing like i finally have beaten all of the final fantasy series up to final fantasy 10 which is something that i was like i will do this as a child so that's my that's my type of reading when i'm listening to youtube in the background let's continue on everyone a nuzzy d 499 issa how is your entire position on not a not a no true muslim fallacy can you demonstrate any part of your faith is in fact real not just man made what i think that's the weirdest thing because it's engaging that is the point of the no truth you can't prove that that's the whole point of why i'm making that point and they're saying oh you know it's real we can't prove what's real or not it's what the meaning is to ourselves you can't say oh i know that this is real that that's such a silly kind of thing to engage with where you're like um you know what part of it's not man made who knows you know i think that's that's about me you know i think that's in key with what uh our in our live chat riley was saying i have no memory of this place uh keeping up with one of the rings references i want to back up um issa i do because it's not a no true scotsman because issa's not saying that other muslims aren't muslims okay if he was saying hey he's the muslim and the other muslims aren't then it's a no true scotsman um it's more that there's other muslims out there who would say and i can say this with quite confidently that issa isn't a real muslim and they would be committing the no true scotsman um it i do agree with your question though like how do we know the things portrayed in the quran are true if we we can't take it literally how do we know that any of the miracles happen that god is real this debate isn't about that though it isn't about the truth of the quran it's about whether the the religion would be better for society so it's a completely different question any thoughts over there issa before we move on yeah well i that's exactly it that's the point um and it and then i think that is the difficult like with this particular topic that was the difficult thing that i was trying to do it's like i'm saying like look i actually see that they can kind of work together that was kind of my platform i see that these worldviews don't necessarily have to be in conflict they can be in conflict but they don't have to be in conflict and that's why i used the presentation that i did all right uh let's continue on from there we got a few more super chats that are coming in keep your super chats coming in if you want to see this conversation continue on because we are getting close to our wrap up here doctor tapioca weasel who we're going to get on for a debate here soon we're going to talk about getting that done uh we're just getting some stuff in the works mark why you ozzy's lie about round earth for nasa that's exactly how it's written so yeah um yeah speaking of somebody upside down at the moment um yeah the earth is thick i like a thick earth it's definitely um a a fat earth um it's an oblate spheroid it's like slightly bulging the center but it's a beautiful earth so yeah it's beautiful and around what what are your thoughts on on the earth are you saying i'd love to know your thoughts on flat earth versus round earth i actually had people tell me about flat earth it's it's it's kind of hilarious i mean like i don't i don't know why people want to stick to this type of narrative we have scientific method we have scientific theory it works that's it it's like people are like i want to deny all these things i'm like why there might be science that just proves what we have now but it's the best method we've got at this moment so it's better to stick with what we've got at this moment that's how we've been able to cure all these diseases is that we keep advancing and our technology is growing it's it's a beneficial thing and scientific method can be used in detrimental ways too you know but there's a lot there's a lot of benefit i think and um we can see that the world's not like that's just saying all right this next one coming from nazi d i might add i just quickly to that i i couldn't agree more is that that is absolutely true 100 percent agree and um i think that the scientific method can inform our morality like what's good for us and what's bad for us it can evaluate that although you're right that science doesn't tell us what to do we can't we can't sort of science makes no designation of what we should do but that doesn't mean it can't inform us if we make you know talk and find out what we're actually after science can inform how the best way to get to that goal is all right well let's move on to the next super chat and i promised anathema i give him some love so by here's to you buddy love you you are awesome thank you for doing all you do for the modern day debate discord and hey if you didn't notice he tagged it in our live chat right now and i'm gonna ask him to comment it as so that we have that link because i want people to know that we do have a discord where you can contact me you can talk contact mark a whole bunch of people that are hanging out there at the modern day debate discord you can hone in on your skills there's all kinds of rooms that you can hang out in and uh why wouldn't you join us over there that'd be a lot of fun and speaking of fun and joining us don't forget about our live event september 16th uh we got three debates lined up and uh it's going to be a really bomb in time uh let's continue on uh nazi d for $1.99 how is jizya different than racketeering pay or die i mean that isn't biased at all that's not a biased question that has a certain initiative and goal to get the being to answer it in a certain way um okay so again we're dealing with ancient times we're dealing with the empire we're dealing with this kind of particular situation we're not dealing with modern day mafiosos it's a different kind of context we're comparing an apple to an orange but i get i get the line of the situation um also there were rights given in these spaces are they perfect for our modern time a lot would argue no but they did get rights there were rights that the dimmies had in this space that i would say probably weren't in european christian empire if we look at this how were jews treated in european christian empire not great not great at all and we can look at shakespeare we can look at literature and see how jews were treated in european christian empire there was no protected class if someone wanted to come and say you poisoned the well they just kill you there wasn't like you give some money you couldn't own land if you were a jew in europe under the christian empire i'm like that particular version of christianity i wouldn't say that's christianity but that version of christianity not too good for jews so i'm like in this if we compared this european christian empire to islamic empire yeah there's a lot more rights given in the islamic empire than there was in the european christian empire so just i think that's an important thing to engage we have to look at the context of the time all right any thoughts there mark before we move on to the next super chat yeah well this doesn't doesn't believe in implementing the jews yeah so it's not something i can kind of you know sort of say against him it is it is kind of a protection racket for the time i will agree on that that it is hey we're going to protect you in exchange for but this has been a feature of societies for a long time now essentially that's what feudalism was it was you know you give us your stuff and we will you know have lord over you and protect you from the other lords who are all sort of fighting among themselves so it's not unusual for the time at all it's just um very detrimental for our society to have sort of one class of people that are the protected people within society because the thing that they're protected from is the the wrath of the upper class basically so yeah it is it is a bit like that but you know i don't think he's a sort of saying we should implement something like that these days so um that that's fair enough all right let's continue on to our next super chat and just a reminder to keep him coming in we'll keep the conversation going uh the next one comes from oh there's some there's some weird guy in our super chats who is this isa kebir oh my goodness he's he put $1.99 in here i swear i i thought i talked to this guy one day before i told him to stay out of our super chats no thanks he said he said thank you modern day debate mark and ryan well thank you isa for being here we super appreciate you and i this is the first time i've gotten a chance to host you uh you know this is exciting so i'm glad we had the chance to have this discussion and you seem like a cool guy i'd play games with you uh you know uh video games everybody you behave yourself in the comment section all right nuzzy d nuzzy d that's a little inappropriate so what i will do is i will divert and i will bring up a different subject uh that usually gets brought up in these debates uh which is usually i think it's at the hd it's and it's about the relationship with isha which is something a lot of people talk about when we're having these discussions and how we handle um underage relationships let's say so let's just leave it at that nuzzy d uh and we'll ask that question instead all right um uh it's historical context i have to keep going back to the same point this is a historical situation some Muslims don't even agree with this age they think it's different so there is varying opinions yes i've heard the people say look at the sunni traditions they say it's nine she was playing with those i'm aware of all of that i understand the argument and i would say that there is a differing opinion on this um the prophet son was actually monogamous to his wife who was actually senior for quite a few years so we need to think about that too um yeah i i think it's historical context so i'll leave it at that all right any thoughts over there mark before we move on no i know that's fine i think i've sort of covered it that i agree with historical context um and i again it's it's nice that um you know modern muslims can sort of not implement atrocities that's fine all right before we get to our closing statements we're going to ask our last question which is xx w lz xx question for mark what's it like being bald and i'm going to answer that because we shouldn't ask those types of questions but i will let you answer it i want to tell you what it's like being bald it is like when you let your 16 year old when you're 18 and you you just moved out with your 16 year old girlfriend and she says oh my mom's a hairdresser i think i could cut your hair and and then you just say just shave it i don't know what you did but just shave it there are pictures of me with my head shaved at the age of 18 because that was a decision i made uh so that that i i have a feeling of what it's like uh but that's yeah you know let's let's hand it over to somebody else and i will say just as a side note what it's like being bald in this space it means that when matt dilla honey cancels we find mark reid who is very willing to step in and there is another bald man who is willing to debate isa on this subject which we had a little laugh about before but mark over to you yeah so so um starting to lose my hair i was all worried and you know being a young man you're like worried and stuff i think i was just 430 or something um and then you stop that now well you know just a young guy um but but like once i shaved my head it actually so number one i have not paid for a haircut in 10 15 years kind of thing like i haven't paid for a haircut number two i've never had a bad hair day um like it actually in australia where it gets really hot it's really cooling downside is you do get sunburnt so do use the sun cream a lot if you do shave your head but apart from that i'm more than happy i i actually find it very uh liberating not to to care about hair and if your hair is sitting badly and stuff like that it's it's a load off my mind in more ways than one oh i understand because the less of this the better honestly like it's a real handful um and i i agree i'm not in the superficial mindset of that you know i just you know whatever angel quiles five dollars if mohammed was alive and do you think he would have been on ebb since island i saw it in the chat yeah i was gonna say i just i just read that last but you know what i'll let you say it so you go ahead and i think they're just gonna understand these questions it's like it's like are you interested in having a real conversation or are you just trying to troll like this sounds like a trolling kind of question they paid five bucks for this i'm so sorry but that's not something that is really substantive you're not adding to the conversation i'm so sorry to call you out but you're not adding anything so let's continue on this is one that was in the chat that's a little bit i think i think again there is something in the Quran about women that have not reached puberty and marriage um however like as again isa isn't isn't sort of saying we should implement what's in the Quran so um sort of it is it is sort of straw manning his position a little bit to say hey this is this is what you're saying um but yes there is something in there regarding that it is problematic as isa has acknowledged there is a lot problematic in the Quran there's a lot problematic in the old testament as well so and it's a historical context we're dealing with iron age bronze age we have to like look at things through their time you know like even ancient america united states was not a great place and i'm sure you can even talk about like australia with the indigenous folks of australia the history is not good you know actually one of my favorite bands um oh my god what am i forgetting the uh was it the the song is the beds are burning midnight midnight oh midnight oil it's an amazing band where it's very like culturally aware like i guess they call me a wokist which i'm fine with i'll take it as a badge of honor but i think that it's a great band that talks about the issues and he says we have to give this land back we can't do it gets a very activist song and it's a very beautiful song and i'm like but we have to realize our histories aren't perfect we have difficult histories and we can't really sugarcoat it i was in a space where people were debating the crusades are the crusades moral and you know for a christian point of view and i'm like it's not moral for anyone kills anyone if most of those are killing people it's not moral if a christian kills people it's not moral it doesn't matter who does the killing it's amoral regardless that's where i stand you know immoral yeah yeah yeah no i get you um yeah so i i guess the problem is holding up a book that sort of says this stuff is is the problem for me i understand the historical context and we can find books that sort of said hey um this thing should be done or you know um you know these books um and and you're right you're right you're absolutely right the bible has has similar stuff in it it has this these problematic verses in it so i i again i sort of i question why we should hold these books up in such a steam when they clearly have this problematic stuff in them i would rather we sort of say hey they're they're a product of their time and sort of really sort of implement that these these things are are wrong rather than holding up the book as any kind of um sort of perfect word of god and i think you know and i think it's a fine perspective i don't think there's anything wrong with it i think the situation is for people why they value the text is it has meaning in their life it gives them meaning and it gives them hope and it gives them value and they interpret it the way that gives them that value and gives them that hope and i wouldn't say we should take that away from them i think it's important that they keep that they are able to hold that the only issue is and i you know and we're gonna be in agreement about this is your rights and what another rights begin so if the text is explicitly saying you can take other people's rights away yeah you're gonna have to stop it right there because you don't have that right you don't have the right to take anyone else's rights away in any situation that's wrong all right i think we're all in agreement with that that's a good sentiment and we are we got another uh super chat that came in and we have two other questions that i did pull so if you guys are okay with it we'll just answer these questions and we'll wrap up is that all right with you isa and mark yeah i'm i'm good all right well thank you fellas for being here and staying a little bit extra mystic hydra ryan the mod for isa do you think the mass amount of subjective interpretation of islam renders it not the best metric to be best for humanity well i think this is this is the human situation is that there's a metric of subjectivity and i agree with mark i think subjectivity is not a bad thing i think there is a good thing about it and that's why i said there is this interconnection of things i like the name hydra by the way i'm big into mythology i think it's awesome so um it's kind of cool to hear freak mythology i'm actually studying ancient greek right now so my wife is huge into greek mythology as i look around i'm like where is that little she went out to uh the a poem of heffestus tonight so she's she's right into it there's a theater that's opening down the way and they did like an hour of what they've been working on but anyways i'll let you expound on what you were saying because uh that just kind of triggered me because she's such a huge fan of that literature well and i think you mentioned final fantasy final fantasy is an amazing platform because it has all that mythology in it you see all the mythological characters you know that are incorporated in it and there's also another great video game series called shin megami ten sides of japanese um video game series and it has the same kind of cool thing about mythology um yeah i think people have their different stories and that's okay as long as we're not hurting each other we can have our story and i in is it the best thing like again i said islam's not a monolith so i can't say that there is this overarching islam there isn't some leader of islam controlling islam there's no colleagues that's running us right now so there's multiple interpretations it's pluralistic yeah well i think over most islam i would sort of say the overarching my problem is with the overarching goal of islam not you personally is there i'm not sure if this is your goal but it seems to be um to uh fulfill or to to sort of promote the will of god um and that that to me can be interpreted in so many different ways um the will of god is highly subjective um across all of islam and we do see that from the moral diversity that we get from the religion um whereas sort of humanism sort of the goal is to promote humanity and and to make humans flourish and contribute to the well-being of humans um it doesn't really vary at all um that that goal um how we do it does very sure um i guess how we do the will of god but i would actually say that the goal of the will of god is more amorphous than the well-being of humans i mean that's an interesting idea to think about yeah it's like blood is the will of god i mean it's really up to the person in their understanding of it i think it's very weird when people say i can interpret the religion i'm like who who are you to say that what makes you the great you know kahuna that you get to make that narrative i i don't think so i think it's very individualistic it's very up to the person and their relationship with god in their scripture and that's it if they're religious and if you're secular humanist then your relationship is just finding your own human goals and how to make humanity work together you know like you know it's and i think that that's the one thing that's always a little difficult in this kind of conversation about secularism versus theism it kind of in a lot of ways if you if you take it like unbearable and there's different kinds of goals but that's why i have to say there's a kind of convergence and i like to focus on that convergence all right well that's good because we like to make sure that we have dissecting lines just like when we have you know crowd funds and you know funds that are going towards the the children's charity there you know we hope that we have agreement across some lines of what is right xx wlz xx coming in well how does isa know it's meant to be interpreted within historical context but and not universally across time i mean i never said that it's not well what i'm saying is there's different interpretations of this situation i'm sitting at the side that wasn't even an argument that i ever made so i don't know why that's being asked but i'll try to address it okay so the position is that how can i know how this is interpreted if it's just a correct universal the thing is i i think it's the the information is in the details if there was something that was universally applied that you could have one universal interpretation that everyone would have it do they have that okay you have your answer sir anything to say mark well i think it's sort of it lends itself for those different interpretations i think i think that that having the text say these things it does lend itself to some muslims interpreting that literally i think how you interpret it is largely how you're indoctrinated into it or taught it i suppose if you prefer that word i don't mean indoctrination in a bad sense it just means the impassion of doctrine upon people so i think it really does depend on how you're taught the religion whether you interpret it literally or sort of in a metaphorical or or a hyperbolic sense i i strongly encourage people to look at it in s's view because that that seems to be the best of humanity but then again i'm relying on humanism to tell me that um so yeah but i i do believe that the the um the window is open there that that if you do want to interpret it literally um it certainly can be interpreted literally to the to the detriment of of human societies everywhere and i wanted to say one thing to that too so let's say someone literally interprets it and puts it under their thing why are they right because other people are going to disagree with them so obviously they can't it's they're not just going to be the absolute correct group because other people are in disagreement with them there isn't just some kind of like i don't know i think of i don't know if any of you've seen the invasion of the body snatchers it's a very interesting kind of horror film that's basically these aliens kind of come over and kind of take over humanity and they replace humans with their forms but they're kind of like a hive uh hive mind type of situation that's not what islam is it's not a hive mind and i think that this is the issue people are viewing islam as a hive mind everybody is thinking the same thing we are all robots i'm like no that that that's not how to look at this situation and you're right mark you can lend interpretation to that type of thing it's like if you go to like any kind of fan convention people are going to have very strong opinions about different kinds of things they might view and say well i view you know the star trek property the star wars property the final fantasy property i'm going to look at all these properties and my view on this property is the correct view and you're wrong because you miss this detail and this detail from this bible of this this this vision of this thing you know and i'm like i don't know how that helps us but certain people are going to have that interpretation any thoughts there mark or do you want to move on oh well the the problem is there that that you know just because you disagree on whether the last uh the next generation or the original is the best star trek series you're not implementing these things into society you're not um you know taking a view of of um apostasy or you're not um punishing people for thievery like it's simply a disagreement in in your your perspective um i think that's that's fine like if if muslim people want to disagree on that that's fine it's when some of them go and actually implement it in the real world that's when it becomes a problem again fictional properties don't have this problem because you're not implementing any kind of law or any kind of institutionalized thing into society but the people that believe the the quran literally they and the bible for that matter are implementing that interpretation into the lives of others who don't have the same interpretation um so to that point um you can have violence for fictional properties i could take the slender man property as a precedent of this situation there were several girls who got obsessed with slender man and they went on a killing they killed their friend based on this thing because they were obsessed with this property they said we need to make a sacrifice to slender man i think people do do that you know what i'm saying and i think if someone is a secular humanist you don't think any religion is real so you think all i would say not i'm not going to speak to all secular humans but i would say a lot of secular humans probably see religion as fairy tales right so it is another form of fiction to a secular humanist right so people will kill based on fictions you know they are going to and they have done that like some people say well you know if someone believes in saying some people don't believe in saying something i killed my children from saying i think the real issue is mental illness some people are really kind of psychotic so they use certain kind of interpretations from spirituality to do really terrible things um and they're not well and they need help i mean i do i'm my job is on the therapist so that's the work i do so i believe in empathy compassion and stuff like that all right well let's move on to the last one and i've just been reading the super chat and uh simon ellen you've you've triggered my my randy savage all right let's read that last super chat everybody all right oh there's two of them all right nazi d says all right how does any faith make any society better now i know that's to me um right well well i mean i can take it that's okay isa i'll give you a break so it depends on what you mean by faith right so um isa gave the definition of their faith is simply a confidence in things right that that's fine like that can make things better if you have confidence that say for instance um you know this this thing is bad to society or that you want to cure cancer that we can cure cancer that's good for society there's nothing wrong with that um if you're talking about the faith as in um and a lot of it a lot of the way that atheists get faith is from the definition of the bible which is the confidence in that which is unseen um i don't think that's good for society at all you're basically believing things that aren't can't be demonstrated can't be proven i think that's bad but that's not asa's definition so you know i'll go with go with his i don't know man some seems wrong with that answer all right i'm gonna stop doing my randy savage i'm doing it as quiet as i can because my wife's in bed i've worked so hard on that impression it's so hard to do quiet all right on absence two dollars how can there be predestination and free will i don't think we talked about that but um i'm a i like philosophy so i can try to engage it i mean i i just i don't think it was something that you talked about but i think that that is if a person takes that position if so like some Muslims take that position and that's probably what their argument is they're saying some Muslims take the position that there's predestination and there's free will how can that be if god has designed everything how can someone have free will um and this is the question that you would ask for pretty much any faith and i think the traditional answer to that question that people give for this you know the theological answer is that um you know we may not know so it's actually free will to us as human beings but god knows and because god is all knowing all seeing and all hearing you know god has all power so since god has all power god knows all these things so humans have free will in their own limited space but god already knows i think that that's the way to kind of it's it's a it's a paradox it's a conundrum so that's the traditional answer it's not something i'm concerned with or even care about but that's something to be fair since someone paid there's an answer for the payment all right any thoughts there mark before we move on yeah we didn't discuss predestination in the slightest and be interesting to see whether you think predestination actually exists or not um the whole idea is that if god already knows everything that it will happen and happens in the future then there's no possible action you could take that's any different than the one that you would take so they kind of like i agree with isa that it is sort of a paradoxical thing that it seems impossible to overcome the idea it merely then is the illusion of free will if everything has already been plotted out by by a deity then you sort of have the illusion of free will um i'm i'm more lean towards compatible compatible is strangely enough i think that um you can have free will aside from sort of the more hard determinants who say everything is but um i'm not a hundred percent sure i don't know if there's a way to prove either that's the thing like i don't know if there's a hard determinants someone that says hey everything is a result of previous set conditions would say hey the only reason you're doing that is because of the things you've learned and the things that you know it's all pre sort of determined by by how what what went into your actions i'm not sure i agree with that and i don't know how you could prove that's the case but then again i don't know how you could prove this free will either so i'm really underside on that one i'm gonna i'm gonna take a pass on that sorry i'm flipping do you want for me to say i don't know sorry go isa um and i agree i'm like we don't know these are things outside of human curfew and i think it's really funny that you could see a lot of people they claim things that really don't have knowledge on you can believe it you can have faith in something but you can't know it you cannot know if you have free will i would argue we have a thing called limited will if someone has free will that would mean you would have to have infinite money infinite resources infinite knowledge to be able to make choices if you don't have that you don't have free will you have a limited will based on your limited choices in your space you're born in a certain family um uh heidegger talks about this in philosophy it's like a throism you're thrown into a certain reality right we're thrown into realities you know some people might argue that there's some ancient there's a pre-world um in islamic in some spaces in islamic tradition there's this thing called ala mawa there's a world of souls so maybe the souls made decisions but in this world there's talking about this world now we have if we're going to argue any will we have limited will we don't have free will we just can't it's impossible all right before we get to our closing statements i just want to do a quick little shout out here to anathema in the live chat who was gifted uh me a membership so we all along with several other members have been gifted a membership uh so we have access to the modern day debate emojis thank you so much for that anathema uh we all appreciate you being here and everything that you do uh we're going to move into our closing statements here it's going to be one minute per each side if any more superchats come in we are welcome to them uh but in the meantime we are going to move into those superchats and no the moderator does not always have to be serious especially when everybody's having a good discussion nobody's having a bad time here so why not have fun let's move into those closings one minute and we will start with mark read and close with isa so mark the floor is yours yeah um this has been a great debate i just want to say thank you so much for isa for being sort of a great interlocutor and and just you know having a great conversation about about this kind of stuff it always fascinates me um the different perspectives that i get but um really i i just want to sort of say well if if you are sort of evaluating your book through the lens of of what's best for humans and what's best for the the us in general us as beings on this planet sort of you know trying to get by together um i don't think you need the prescriptions from the book and i think you need the religious thing of the book i think you can culturally sort of say hey the book's important for your culture and that you can sort of look at it in the lens of of the past and and sort of acknowledge that hey these things were wrong um and they would be wrong today um i don't think you need the religion at all i think at that point you sort of you can drop the religion it doesn't make any difference you can still be a good person you can still do good things um i i don't see um religion as being necessary for that so um i kind of would encourage all muslims to sort of look at whether you do need the book to be good or whether you can just make the decisions to be good by yourself all right awesome well thank you so much mark read for being here and everybody a huge round of applause for mark read that is his closing statement we're going to kick it over to isa who has been he's over there clapping and everything he's been a great sport this whole entire debate and so is mark we've had a great discussion isa the floor is yours to close us out i want to thank my interlocutor here mark i think he was great pleasant wonderful gentleman from australia um with an english accent yeah i'm sorry i'll start your minute now go for it so i um i want to say that i want to thank mark very much it was it was a really wonderful conversation we definitely covered a lot of difficult topics um there were definitely a lot of interesting chats that were along this journey that we've had for two and a half hours um i think the focus that i've had throughout the entire debate that's super important for me is pluralism i actually i think mark and i agree pretty much on mostly everything i even i accept the position about the scriptures i think that the point is you know people can respect a scripture and don't necessarily have to literalistically follow it i don't think there's anything wrong with that i think that's totally fine um and i do think it's important because i believe in um empathy compassion and mercy so i think it's important that some people faith is a very important thing for them in their life and i think it's really important to be supportive and allowing people to express their faith through scriptures as long as they're not hurting anyone i think that that's fine and i think we can all live together in harmony oh well i got you right at the end there kumbaya i think was the last thing you said there so uh everybody we had a really good discussion tonight so let's close you out on uh some of my uh pre-recorded music not the live stuff because that's a little bit better than i i i guess i was not muted but that's fine so a big round of applause for mark reid thank you as uh as well for being here with your closing statement there uh if i forgot to thank you for your closing statement it's been awesome hosting you fellas uh let us close out and thank you all for being here we will see you tomorrow for more epic debates cheers everyone