 Hey everybody! Tonight we're debating whether or not there is reliable evidence for God and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This is going to be a fun one, folks, and I want to let you know if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, I'm your host, James Koons, and we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. And we want to be sure that everybody, no matter what walk of life they're from, gets to make their case on a level playing field. And we want to let you know as well, no matter what walk of life you're from, we hope you feel welcome. So thanks for being here with us, it's going to be a lot of fun. And if you happen to be kind of sick in the head, like us, you like juicy, controversial debates, well, have to let you know. Consider hitting that subscribe button below as we have many more debates to come. So for example, you'll see at the bottom right of your screen, we are very excited as we will be having Matt Delanty partnering with Dr. Josh this Friday night. And that is going to be against the real life father son duo, Cliff and Stuart Nettle. And so that is going to be a really fun one on the topic of biblical slavery. So with that, really excited to have you here, folks, want to let you know for tonight's format, it's going to be pretty easy going. So it's going to be roughly 12 to 15 minutes from each side, and that's flexible, followed by about 50 to 60 minutes of open conversation. And then about roughly half hour of Q and A. So if you haven't had a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat. And if you tag me with modern day debate, it makes it easier for me to get every question in that list. With that stoked to have our guests here, we are thrilled to have these guys. These are very experienced debaters. And we'll start with Randolph, who is the president of Canadian atheists. And he's been here. Let's say a veteran debater. He is linked in the description so you can hear plenty more where you hear or from what you hear tonight. And I want to ask Randolph, thrilled to have you here. What can people expect to find at your link in the description? James, it's always a pleasure to be here. I really enjoy the way you host these debates, and it's always a lot of fun. People can find out more about the organization I run, the Canadian atheists at www.canadianatheists.ca. You can also find me on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com slash Randolph Richardson. And remember, that's Randolph that's spelled with a letter F instead of a P H. And one more link I'll give you is for an upcoming program that myself and a friend of mine named Neil the 604 Atheist will be hosting a live atheism call-in program where we'll cover topics of pretty much anything except for politics because we want to have a good time. Politics aren't always enjoyable. So that one you can find out more about at www.truenorthtalk.ca. It's probably a couple months away before we'll actually be able to get to a point where we'll be able to start that program. But we are looking forward to that. Thank you very much, James. And thank you in advance to Ben. I'm looking forward to this. Absolutely. The pleasure is all ours, Randolph. And thrilled to have another seasoned veteran debater. These debated people such as Matt Dillahunty and he himself has his own ministry and we're thrilled to have you here, Ben. He is linked in the description, folks. So Ben, if you'd be willing to share, what can people expect to find at your link? And thanks again for being here. Yes. Thanks so much for having me on the program this evening. So the ministry that I run is just simply called Ben Fisher Ministries and among other things, I'm part of the adjunct faculty for Teen Challenge Leadership Institute here in the cities, which is a Bible school one year program for preparing individuals coming out of chemical dependency for the full time ministry. So that's one of the things I do where I teach New Testament and apologetics. And then as well, I run a web based ministry called Ben Fisher Ministries, as I noted that has a variety of resources on plethora of scholarly issues related to evidence for the faith. So if you would like to become part of our online community, you can do so by requesting membership of the website or else looking us up on Facebook and Ben Fisher Ministries. So thanks so much for coming on the program and certainly looking forward to having a spirited discussion with Randolph and looking forward to what kinds of discussion we might have tonight. You got it. So thank you very much, Ben, as well. And with that, Ben is going to get the ball rolling with his opening statement. So thanks so much, Ben. I've got the clock set for you. The floor is all yours. Well, thanks so much again, James. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to come on to your program this evening. And special thanks to a whole gang at modern day debate for folding me into their schedule. As well as special thanks to Randolph for being part of tonight's discussion. I'm certainly looking forward to wonderful exchange of ideas as we discuss the question, is there reliable evidence for God? Now, in my opening statement, I'm going to be making the argument that there really are a few good arguments for God's existence. And so we'll discuss our way through how it is that we come upon those sorts of insights and explain what some of those evidences might be. So as we do, we'll just go ahead and jump in by engaging with some ideas that have been around for quite some time, the idea of skepticism and the such like. We'll work our way eventually towards the question of whether or not there really is good evidence for God. So let's begin. Now, skepticism has probably been the dominant approach to engaging in religious discussion for over 20 centuries. And yet, from what we have seen in the past several decades, the kinds of views offered in defense of it have been, as some say, challenged. So therefore, a relevant question for tonight is what is the proper basis and foundation for knowledge of any kind? Perhaps the most exhaustive approach to answering that question was undertaken by the early Greek thinker, Sextus empiricus. And so therefore, it will be useful for us to spend some time in our discussion examining his arguments carefully. So let's jump in. Now, Sextus empiricus was an early critic of Plato's teaching. He lived and wrote in roughly the mid-second century. And Sextus thought that there were three main challenges to grounding our knowledge of any proposition. The first one we'll discuss is called the problem of the infinite regress. Essentially, the problem of the infinite regress is a difficulty, which naturally arises due to the skeptics' demand that everything must be proven by something other than itself. In other words, justifiable proofs are demanded for everything without limitation. So therefore, the need to search for proof is never fully satisfied. Now, of course, this sort of demand seemed extravagant to some, a point which eventually gave rise to more conservative and rational philosophical positions within the Western tradition, because as the ancient Greeks quickly recognized, if everything must be proven, then nothing can. Now, to see why this is so, think about the question, does God exist? How do we go about answering it? Well, we might suppose that the way to settle a question like this is by using something called the rule of independence. And the rule of dependence essentially says that in the case of any pair of contingent propositions, i.e., any propositions which await our conferring evidence upon it, what we need to do is to defend the proposition by using something other than the proposition itself. Of course, keep in mind that skepticism essentially held that it was a sheer given that all propositions invariably are contingent. So based on that assumption, we reason forward in our inquiry as follows. Contingent proposition A is proven by contingent proposition B. Contingent proposition B is proven by contingent proposition C. Contingent proposition C is proven by proposition D and so on and so forth until we reach proposition Z. The problem, however, is that once we reach proposition Z, we are now faced with a very serious question. How precisely do we determine the status of Z? Well, traditionally, the argument of infinitism is held that we show Z is proven by making a contingent upon, call it, proposition A prime. So contingent proposition A prime is proven by contingent proposition B prime. Contingent proposition B prime is proven by contingent proposition C prime. Then C prime is proven by D prime and so on and so forth until once again we reach proposition Z prime. But once again, we are now faced with the same question as before. How do we show that Z prime is no longer contingent? Well, infinitism predictably holds that we simply continue our string of proofs by arguing that Z prime or Z1 is now contingent upon A2. So contingent proposition A2 is proven by contingent proposition B2, so on and so forth, ad infinitum. As the problem we're seeing here is that there seems to be no proper stopping mechanism for the inquiry. The string of proof just continues onward forever. And this means that we are essentially saying that our initial contingent proposition, call it A, was eternally contingent, which means that it can never be proven. And it's obviously a major problem because it raises some significant questions about the overall universal foundations for human knowledge. And so with the absurdity of the first problem, firmly settled in our minds, where do we turn next? Well, Sextus' answer is that we must now move on to door number two. That's the second possibility which Sextus explored was the argument of coherentism. Here Sextus suggests that perhaps we should have responded differently to the previous challenge when we reach contingent proposition Z. So rather than making Z contingent upon A prime, we should have argued that Z was contingent upon some previous member of the original set of proofs. And so in that case, we might have responded by saying something like this. Contingent proposition B, or Z rather, is proven by Y. However, this really does seem to be unacceptable. The reason is all the appearances of radically adjusting the overall goal of the inquiry because the inquirer is now being offered something called a circular answer. Z is proven by Y. In other words, we're simply circling back to the previous proposition in the original set of proofs. And of course, this immediately raised the additional question, how is that really different from claiming that Z is contingent upon A? Well, to this, Sextus replies that what we are discussing here is whether coherency rather than independence is to be favored whenever settling a matter as closed to further inquiry. In other words, what we were asking is whether the fact that the list of proofs coheres well with one another forms a better conclusion to our inquiry than the idea that nothing can be proven. But this ultimately seemed to be unsatisfying to some as well for how does this show that we have now identified a proper basis for closing knowledge to further question? So as a result, our inquiry is thus far seen to prove that all philosophical systems are just doomed to be based upon flimsy, tottering, self-defeating arguments. Because as we are now seeing in the case of coherentism, the theory becomes the proof of the arguments and without a proper footing, it simply folds like a house of cards. So where does that leave us? Well, Sextus concluded that it left us really with only one viable option and agreed upon foundation. Thus, the third and final trope in Sextus's argument is an agreed upon foundation. In other words, we must agree to some sort of acceptable foundation upon which we rest our final arguments and our final conclusions. Mind you, these would be things that we deliberately choose not to question because without settling upon some kind of premise which we exempt from all proofing, we cannot escape from the dilemma caused by the first two arguments allegedly. At this point, we should probably note how troubling this is for some skeptical people because we are essentially suggesting that maybe we should have responded by claiming that Proposition Z wasn't contingent upon anything. In other words, maybe we should have simply responded by saying that Proposition Z does not need to be proven. So in the event that that sort of an answer is unacceptable, as in fact it was to Sextus, how would our inquiry conclude? Well, the answer Sextus surmised that our investigation has really left us with no ability to properly ground anything. In other words, it shows us that it is baseless for us to say that we can know something as well as as baseless for us to say that we can know nothing. But there are several good reasons for thinking that Sextus had really reached the wrong conclusion in his argument. So to wrap up our discussion of Sextus' work, let's examine the two major approaches that foundationalism is historically taken to grounding our knowledge of any true proposition. Hence, foundationalism has traditionally taken on two characteristically distinct forms. That is, historically, it is either argued that one, we must presuppose that Z doesn't need to be proven or two, that we must demonstrate that Z may be axiomatically proven. Of course, the difference between a presupposition and an axiom is that a presupposition is merely blindly assumed while an axiom is self-evidently true. In other words, an axiom proves itself to be true by virtue of being something which we are never justified in questioning. Take, for example, this argument. Is it not axiomatically certain that there are only three ways to settle the contingent status of Z? That is, we can either argue that Z is proven by A prime, Y, or Z itself. Notice that there are no options for us to choose from other than this beyond our pointing out that in the case of the second option, it becomes just as valid for us to say that Z is proven by Y as it is to say that Z is proven by A. And so an axiom is therefore properly speaking a self-evident irreducible prime. It's something which upon inspection must necessarily be true and cannot be false. But this also means that no independent proof can be reasonably demanded of an axiom since to do so would be practically tantamount to deny the status of the thing under question. So now that we've seen that axioms are necessarily true, we arguably have discovered contraceptives that we really do have a philosophically acceptable basis for grounding or religious knowledge. That is provided that our proposition is established on some sort of axiom, whatever logically follows from that proposition is equally as certain as the proposition itself. Of course, if this is true and it hardly seems that it could be false, we would now be in a position to do precisely what the skeptic has denied. In other words, we would now be able to rationally ground religious knowledge, which would lead us to a welcome response to the various skeptical arguments we might explore. So with these things in my list of brown return to the name question for tonight, is there good evidence for God? Given what we are shown, what argument might we use to show that God's existence may be axiomatically established? Well, consider the closing argument as one good possibility. Let's start by imagining for the sake of argument that we are all just brains in vats. As this is the common classical skeptical argument, we'll just start here. Now an evil mad scientist is cleverly wired your cerebrum and is now controlling your every century experience. Would it perhaps surprise you that you could still disuse even in those dire straits that God exists? In fact, the argument is virtually irrefutable. Come what may, the divine inclusion persists. The case here, however, will ultimately hinge upon our prior discussion, since the key to the whole windup becomes connected to our view of math. Because it's alleged that it's self evidently true that whether we are awake in the real world or asleep in the matrix, two plus three always equals five. Now from what we know of math, it's flatly impossible for mathematical truths like that to somehow wind up being false. So thus we can safely conclude that the rules of math are axiomatic, even if it turns out that we are just sleeping in the matrix. Now this in turn prepares us to answer the skeptics challenge because it leaves the proponent of atheism without a founded case. Because if math is truly trustworthy, as we've in fact argued that it is, then time in the matrix must be finite and not beginningless. As noted philosopher of time, Professor William Lane Craig has argued, if the past were beginningless and the present could not have occurred, but surely that's absurd. We would therefore have to conclude that the matrix world itself must necessarily have a beginning. Now to explore this point a bit further, consider the following illustration. I refer to it tonight as the ever pending birthday. Imagine that you've walked into a room only to encounter an infinite row of tumbling dominoes. Each falling tile collapses to subsequent member causing the preceding domino to plummet toward the earth. And each successive domino takes all of one second to accomplish its inevitable collision with the floor. And now just imagine that the row of dominoes is utterly beginningless leading to a final domino standing near your foot. And down you notice that the domino bears an inscription which reads the exact date of your birth. You then begin to wonder if the set of dominoes is infinitely long. How much time will it take for my birthday domino to collapse? Well, the answer is unavoidable. Your tile would never fall. Consequently, this would imply that you could never be born. And so for this reason, the matrix world and closing cannot be eternal. Some initial trigger had to set the world in motion because since a brain could not be embedded if its person were never born, some inaugural set of affairs is necessary for us to create the proper story. Moreover, the initial cause would have to exist eternally since any finite cause would itself require some causal parent. And from this point, only one additional proof is needed to show that God is indeed Lord of the matrix. Thus, our final query is truly the capstone for the case. If the causes trigger the other causes, then what is the founding reason? Well, if we say that the reason is something which lies outside of the cause itself, then it and not the cause is the real reason why the matrix world exists. Thus, the parent cause of the world necessarily causes itself to cause the other causes to be set in motion. And this doubtlessly implies a conscious will at work in the creation of any world that we might imagine to exist. From here, refuting atheism becomes very simple since our case for God's existence surely applies to life outside of that because no matter the world the skeptic imagines God would be the cause which means that God exists in every possible world that we conceive of. Therefore, since it is not possible to conceptually erase God, the force of skeptical doubts are effectively neutralized. Nothing seems to be gained by them since God's existence is axiomatic, a point which would seem to imply that God cannot fail to exist. And so since God's existence can be grounded axiomatically, we have the firmest sort of proof for God's existence. And so I now hand the mic back to our moderator and back to Randolph. Thank you very much, Ben Fisher. Grilled for that opening statement, we will kick it over to Randolph. Thanks so much for being here as well, Randolph. The floor is all yours. Well, thank you very much. That was a very interesting set of perspectives. I'm not, they're kind of new to me, this idea. But first of all, one thing that really stood out to me was the idea of imagining that we are all just brains and vats. And to that I would have to say, of course we are. If you can all bear with me for a sec, I can prove this, put your hands on your head and I'll explain what you are holding now is essentially a vat. Your brain is in your skull, which qualifies as a vat. All kidding aside, reality is, as far as I can discern real, this is what I have to live with, what I have to work with, unless my interlocutor here can show me how to leave the matrix. So I'm just gonna go through a couple of things here because it seems that there's an attempt to try to bring cast doubt on skepticism which I have no problem with. Skepticism, as I understand it, is a suspension of judgment. And I see that as an opportunity to put critical thinking through its paces. So we can apply critical thinking to the different ideas that are being presented. We don't actually have to take a position on something. That is true skepticism until, and we try to do that in a non-biased way. So critical thinking is an essential part of this. It is both, and it's important to understand that critical thinking is both skill-based and attitude-based. So we have the skill of applying logic of testing evidence and different things like that. But the attitude is also very important for considering the veracity of various claims and ideas. So an attitude example would be if somebody were to tell you something and you're immediately denying it or immediately agreeing with it. That is not necessarily critical thinking because a better approach to critical thinking, I believe, is considering the idea that's being presented and say, oh, really, let's find out more. Maybe my own idea is in error. But this is a very hard thing for people to do. And most of us all the time with all kinds of little things we take for granted and assume because it's necessary to function in life. So we tend to reserve critical thinking for the more major questions such as the question in this debate. There is a need for evidence. And evidence is, of course, known very commonly as the available body of facts or information indicating whether belief or proposition is true or it's valid. And that's very important to have reliable evidence. So the difference between just regular evidence which is somebody can say they saw something, we want reliable evidence. So we'll know that what the person saw actually is what they saw. And they weren't seeing an illusion or something. Ben mentions axioms. Axioms, and he compares them with presuppositions. So a presupposition is very often viewed as a blind assumption while an axiom is considered to be, is something like an assumption that is self-evidently true and just normally accepted. It is a statement of propositions regarded as being established, accepted or self-evidently true. But it's very important to remember that critical thinking still applies. Even if something that we recognize as a fact, later on we can turn up new evidence, we can discount that fact. This happened in our history where people used to think the world was flat until new evidence came about and suddenly it's different. Now it's a different landscape and now it's challenging ideas. And those who strive to be proper skeptics or at least really good with critical thinking, both attitude-based and skill-based will have an open approach to considering this new idea and trying to test the ideas out in their own way and if they have the capability to do that. So when it comes to evidence, so evidence for a deity, I want reliable evidence and for me, I need something that will, without any question to me, prove to me that the deity is real. So in the case of Christianity, which Ben is representing here is that the Christian view on this as I understand, please correct me if I'm wrong, Ben. The Christian deity as I understand it has a number of characteristics and at least two of them are omnipotence which makes the deity all-powerful and omniscience which makes the deity all-knowing. So while I regard those as a paradox and I see that as already a failing for the whole idea itself because for example, the deity knows with its omniscience that say tomorrow we're going to have rainfall in our city. But uses his omniscience the next day to change that so that it's not rainfall but instead we get sunshine or we get snow or something. By taking that action and making that change and exercising his omnipotence, he has now invalidated what he knew the day before and therein lies the paradox and that makes it a problem. The other thing that I would like to know if I would like to have this deity to prove to me if it's possible and this is what I would accept as evidence is if this deity could grant to me for a week or two, a week or a fortnight, omniscience or very close to it and omnipotence or very close to it so that I can go ahead and explore the universe, the whole cosmos perhaps and run some experiments maybe even bring some friends with me and verify all of this for myself because I would want to know for certain that this is real and that's I think what it would take because this deity has such super amazing characteristics I would want to at least be able to test drive them so to speak. So those are kind of where I'm at with those things. So I think that's probably I guess where we can go with this. Oh, one more thing is when it comes to atheism it's very common I find for a lot of theists to say theism has to be proven true or disproven, proven false and it's a common misunderstanding that I've encountered with debating with theists. Atheism is just a classification of not believing in deities. Answer the question. Do you believe in deities? If the answer is not yes then you're not agreeing with that if you were to look at it as a proposition you're an atheist. You just don't believe in deities. It is sometimes conflated with anti-theism which is an opposing view to theism and I do think that the anti-theistic point of view does carry a burden of proof just as much as the theistic one does. So to say that something does not exist or to say that something that does exist both carry that onus of justification or burden of proof. Thank you very much. You bet. Thank you very much Randolph and we will kick it into open conversation folks. So should be a lot of fun and with that the floor is all yours gentlemen. I'm sure you have some questions man. Why don't you go ahead? Yes. Oh, pardon me. I just kicked the microphone stand by accident. Well, good. I'm glad to have gotten the chance to hear a bit about your opening statement and hear just some of the thoughts that you have on our discussion and just to have written down and scribbled out some points and questions which. Feel free to ask for clarification because it could be hard to keep up with the writing. I'd love to ask for clarification on a couple of things. And also if at any time during the discussion you would like to ask the same sorts of things of me I'll do the best that I can to answer those as well so that we can have some good back and forth discussion. You started out by in your opening statement by speaking about brains in the vats. This is the example that I gave toward the end of my opening statement. And here is I was just simply drawing upon the most extreme example in the case literature to show that we really can't have knowledge about a good many things. And therefore how could we have certainty about something like the existence of God if we can't even know whether or not our senses are reliable than how on earth could we know about God's existence. And so that was merely the reason for the opening illustration. It could be something of course less extreme I think and that might be helpful rather than choosing the most extreme example. But the thing that makes that one so compelling is that it seems that it if God's existence can be shown on some rational basis to be true in the matrix world and perhaps there's a good reason to show that the same arguments extend to this world as well. Well, except that the the matrix is a story and but I know you're talking about the concept if that concept was actually the case. So we're dealing in hypotheticals here. So we need to somehow establish an agree that that actually is the case. I used a bit of humor. I tempted I'm sure because you're delivering humor with the yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You enjoy sure. So flies was typically I'll go ahead. Oh, but then I got serious with that by talking about how what I experience in reality is the best that I know that I can do and I understand that my perceptions can lead me astray and I'm willing to accept that. So that's that's an important thing. So to say that we have a hundred percent certainty on anything I think is very difficult and this is why I say that an anti-theistic point of view carries a burden of proof as well because they're going to have to prove unequivocally that there is absolutely no evidence for this deity anywhere. So yeah, for you you have an easier time of it because your your deity apparently interacts with human beings on planet Earth. Am I correct? Oh, certainly a Christian God definitely does but the argument to be fair that I've offered tonight is just simply a description for how we know that an entity like God exists. And so this could really be applied to any sort of monotheistic God. It doesn't necessarily show that the God of Christianity exists. There we would be working with arguments that would perhaps go a bit farther field from the question for tonight which is is there reliable evidence for God? Well, that is the topic. So yeah, that's the topic and and and we may, you know, perhaps you would think it would be fruitful for us to head that direction at some point tonight but my opening statement anyway just simply dealt with the debate challenge at hand. Yeah. And would you go ahead when you talk about that it could apply for any monotheistic God I wonder a couple of things. Why not a monotheistic Goddess? Does it have to be male? Another one would be does it have to just be one? Why have you have you somehow ruled out that it could be multiple deities who all share the same omnipotence and omniscience and work together as a team to achieve the same aims as your monotheistic, your preferred monotheistic God? Yeah. And so here in terms of the nature of God this is related to something essentially which Christians would categorize as revelatory theology. That is by revelation. Christians know that God is three persons in one essence that this is not something that we could deduce on the basis of reason alone but God himself would have to tell us but properly speaking it would be an admission I think on the part of atheists and to say that there is a good argument to show that a female God exists as well as there is a good argument to show that a male God exists because it still leads to the conclusion God exists and so. Female would be a goddess but I'm just quickly. Yeah, sort of a God or a goddess but the atheists at that point seem to be conceiting the principle question under discussion. They do say that Satan was the first to ask for equal rights. So I guess I'm following along with that. Yeah, sure. So yeah. Yeah, so you know you're talking about knowing things for certain. I think what often happens is that there is a level of confidence that we can have in things and ideas in positions on things in life. Like I can't say that I'm 100% certain on anything in life but I can say that my confidence level is really really close to 100% for many things. And actually there is something I can say for certain. I can take this phone for instance this telephone and I know that if I drop it that gravity is going to take it downward as it just did and I just caught it so it didn't hit the floor and smash and break. More confidence I have. Now of course if I was to really get into it I still can't say for certain I had 100% confidence there. There's a tiny tiny not impossible scenario that I couldn't rule out such as a major earthquake struck at the moment that I was dropping the phone and suddenly I'm down and the phone stays where it is and goes up in the air or something hits the planet which I hope never happens that that's sure. But you know I can't rule out those possibilities but now that it's happened I can say with great with 100% certainty that I just dropped that telephone and gravity the demonstration of gravity worked. So I think I've just provided you with an example that counters your claim that your assertion that we can't know anything 100% for certain. That we cannot know anything 100 I think that I made the claim that it's possible. Oh, I misunderstood you. I'm very sorry about that. Oh, no, no, no problem. Because in that case I think that you and I would be in agreement but I think that it's possible for us to have a 100% certainty about something. But getting back to your question your claim here that it's not possible for us to have 100% certainty or knowledge if you will of any given proposition. This would be essentially the argument of Plato before the turn of essentially Christ's birth in the turn of history. And so I think that it was Sextus empiricus who challenged the notion that it's impossible to know anything because that would itself seem to be a form of dogmatism. And so he used the various tropes that we went through in the opening discussion that there are three ways to ground our knowledge of any true proposition and one of them is that you could use the rule of independence as proven to be CD and onwards until you read Z once you read Z what do you do? And so you could just simply iterate the proof backwards in infinite number of times in which case the original proposition is never proven or you could go about by coherentism once you reach an acceptable grounding proposition whatever you think there that it is or arbitrarily choose it to be you just simply start by passing the warrant for the proof of say contingent proposition Z back to Y or some previous member of the set or you settle upon the form of foundationalism and sex is this point there seem to be that we don't know which ones of these that we should choose and so therefore to assert that we can't have knowledge is baseless because these are the only three ways to reason so would it be fair to say that you don't have full confidence in the accuracy of the Bible then or you do well now with regard to the accuracy of the Bible my confidence there is going to be based on arguments such as you know arguments for the resurrection of Jesus who held that the Bible was indeed the word of God if that event can be shown to be true and I think that we have good grounds for believing that God's word indeed is precisely what it claims to be but I wanted to ask you so where are you a couple of I wanted to just quickly follow along with for a moment and then I'll be happy to answer your questions sure because it's on on topic here so it kind of sounds like you've got some hypothetical concerns there about the resurrection of Jesus from the way you just talked about it where are you in your level of confidence roughly on whether that is an accurate depiction then because my understanding of the Christian God is it's all from descriptions in the Bible yes and I think it's important here to recognize that the historian the practicing historian is not relying upon deductive arguments to fascinist conclusions. He's rather read relying on inductive arguments which would be appraisals of evidence and inference to the best explanation and so there I am as certain as I am about any historical event concerning the resurrection of Jesus as as certain as anyone could be now I suppose that I could come up with some psychological reasons to entertain doubts but they wouldn't be based upon reasons and so therefore they don't tend to fascinate me so for that reason I don't find that that I that I entertain much conjecture as thought of them but I did so you hold a very high confidence pretty close to a hundred percent would that be fair I I think I do yes concerning the resurrection of Jesus yeah so my understanding of the Bible is it's the inspired word of God this is what's often told so it's not actually God who wrote it it's people who are inspired by what they perceived of God and do you have a reason to to consider those people who wrote that to be reliable well yes I do for a variety of reasons but probably the the most strong reason is that there their predictions many of them were fulfilled in a single person namely the life death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and so if that occurred if they were right about that I think that there are good reasons to say that everything that they said about their predictions was true and everything that Jesus said about their predictions that he construed them as reliable descriptions of what will take place in the future that these are all going to happen as well the resurrection of a dead man does tend to be an epistemic game changer so to speak okay I think that's a fair answer and I think yeah it sounds like those are your reasons for believing what's written in the Bible and then those are your reasons yeah so when I've mentioned what my expectation is for some evidence which is obviously very different from yours but you have some questions for me so go ahead sure sure well so one of the things that that I think is is was an interesting ideas is that you felt that we would really need to have we would need to possess the attribute of omniscience to know whether or not God exists and I wonder if that's really the case given the argument that I walked out if we can somehow conceptually erase a first mover then perhaps you know there are some good reasons to doubt what I've shown because then in that case God's existence couldn't be furnished on the basis of some axiom couldn't be shown to be sure on the basis of that but since we do have that and since that seems to be a necessary basis for knowledge and axioms here would be things like a plus b is equal to b plus a would be things like logical basically self-contradiction et cetera okay well b plus b is equal to b plus a that's that's so if a is is one and b is minus two do we end up with the same results well I I think that what I've just said is important to recognize your a plus b not or you're talking about compounding them it doesn't matter the order of compounding them correct yeah exactly and that would be an example of axiom a mathematical axiom okay sorry yeah yeah sure so by the way I really enjoy these kinds of things and I hope others out there are enjoying the discussion as well but the question I have is is do we really need to have omniscience in order to establish that something is true it seems to me for example that even if I didn't have a single operational instance of one plus one equaling to anywhere in the universe I could still be confident that the proposition one is true because it seems to me that me plus you equals to whether we're standing in heaven on earth or in hell it doesn't really matter so it seems like certain things are just true and and so if it turns out for example that it's axiomatically impossible to sort of conceptually erase a first cause out of any story then that winds up showing us that we have a good reason for believing that that first cause really does exist in this world well I think trivially I can show you that one plus one is equal to two I have two in my hand now two USB memory sticks these ones have DB and linux and Ubuntu linux on them but they're I've got these things in my hands I can count them and so it's very trivial and easy and a common thing in life to demonstrate that so this kind of axiom is very easy to accept because it's a very simple and straightforward kind of assumption that's being made based on things that we do in everyday life we're picking up fruit from the store and we're easily adding them together things all kinds of things like that yes it comes to something else that we don't have direct access to such as somebody claiming that there's a deity who can create entire galaxies that's a much different claim that has a different level of sufficiency for proving it and that's that's where it came to the point of well we don't have anything in our technology today Star Trek unfortunately is not real we can't travel around the universe and and do all kinds of interesting things and and have philosophical exercises with the alien species which would be pretty awesome I think if we could so sure I think sci-fi fan yeah yeah hey why not do you like the orville yeah that's that's one worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing it's a lot of fun the the thing is this is why I came up with this criteria for myself somebody is asking what would it take atheists to believe in a deity and so that was my answer that's what it would take I thought about it for a while and I thought yeah that's what it would take because a lot of other things could be somebody could be fooled into that but this would not be this is something that I would be able to prove for myself and so some could test drive yeah traits sure and some interesting objections came up one of them was you don't need that much time they're trying to negotiate the time down I thought that was hilarious a lot of them said you don't only need it for a fraction of a second and or even a single plank time unit is what some people were saying but I said nope this is my criteria I want one week or two weeks some some short period of time like that but nonetheless and considering the universe is infinite our time is infinite it should be nothing almost like nothing in comparison that the other the other one objection that came up is Oh how can we trust you not to use that omnipotence against God so I said okay I'm willing to have a condition imposed on that that I can't do anything to God and can't interfere with his plans so that would be that seemed to end the conversation I didn't get a reply after that but I'm going what the point I'm trying to make is that I'm going forward kind of criteria here because I think that this would be something that I really would like to know if that's true and this is what it would actually take to prove it to me or and so you know essentially my my question here with regard to this and this would maybe my question to you okay is is why would with someone need something on the level of omniscience in order to know that an axiom is true you went back to one plus one equaling to you can do that with two usb drives but I I essentially since Lee ask the question with regard to that criterion why is it necessary to have a single operational instance of one plus one equaling to anywhere in the universe in order to show that one plus one equals to it seems that's established on the laws of logic which cannot be reasonably obviated and so that therefore it just seems that were to resort to something like that in the face of a bonafide axiom and it seems that we have in the case of God's existence we need there to be this initial parent cause of the universe called the first Domino that sets the string of Domino's in motion because if the Domino with your birthday written now let's call it the red Domino in order for that red Domino to fall there needs to be a finite number of causes behind it you could say that that red Domino signifies anything it could sing signify your birthday it could signify the events of the capital revolt that took place in Washington DC it could signify the assassination of JFK it could signify any event in history but it seems that there needs to be us a singular cause that sets the other causes in motion minimally in order to explain why it is that the red Domino collapses and if the red Domino is is is is basically preceded by an infinite number of Domino's and that Domino never goes down in which case today never happens so the principle here is essentially that a universe which isn't itself triggered will itself trigger nothing within it that's a conundrum that I don't think that we can get around and so if that causes necessary and sufficient to explain the rest why shouldn't we conclude that in the face of the fact that it appears we can't conceptually erase that that that causes important whether you're talking about this world the world of the Swiss family Robinson or what have you it doesn't matter all these sorts of conjectural worlds require this this is a fantastic discussion I'm really enjoying how we're getting right into all this this is something I've been looking forward to for years I had no idea it would be tonight this is great thank you first of all you're you're asking me why would omniscience and omnipotence be needed to to validate an axiom yeah that would not be my purpose my purpose is very clear it is to prove that reliably that the deity exists so that is my focus and you to call it to cut it down to an axiom kind of doesn't really it kind of trivializes it I think I'm sure that many religious people would think of their deity or deities as so much greater than a mere axiom but the more important point is so you're asking why it's my criteria because it is the omniscience and omnipotence are such fantastic and all-encompassing characteristics I'm not really I don't know any other way that those could be demonstrated to me without me actually being able to test drive them so to speak and to to give them a try to try them out and so unless unless there's something else that can that can do that like I say Star Trek's not real we can't explore the universe and and the cosmos and watch this stuff happen and and and broken products scientifically to figure it out or skeptics figure it out so sure now I would like to get to the first cause but I I sense that you have something to say to the so I go ahead if you do sure I don't know you know the don't want to respond yet well the response of sex this empiric is to play does Academy was essentially to walk them through the tropes that I identified in my opening talk so essentially he would you know essentially ask the the accommodation well why do you think that's your your conclusion here is truth conducive yeah this is a good good way to say it do you think that's truth conducive what you've done at that part at that point is you've pressed the button and you've restarted the infinite regress if you answer the question and I can just simply point it back to you well how do you know that that's truth conducive such that this could be iterated endlessly in which case we never know whether or not what you said is true the very argument you offered as no basis if that was insufficient to the opponent a sex to see what simply said well then well where there's always door number two you could always argue for coherentism so you could say that you know that that's true on the basis of something you mentioned reliable so Reliabilism as is we have reliable processes et cetera for how we come upon these things and so what you're essentially doing it's it's a coherent just argument that we have these coherent processes that seem to furnish to us proofs the question which naturally becomes raised at that point is how does that show us that we have a proper foundation for the the bottom of your assertion do you think that that's truth conducive if you give me an answer it's different from one of the previous answers you gave then you've once again started the infinite regress if you give me an answer that's the same as the ones you gave you're just simply arguing circulally which seems unacceptable to most people at which point what then is the only other alternative it seems that it's foundationalism so once again if you assert what you just asserted we could just simply say do you think that's truth conducive you might say something like well I don't need to show that it's truth conducive because it's self evident there you're out actually arguing for an axiom but my question which immediately becomes raised is how do you know that what you're saying is an axiom is it something that's based on a a fundamental self evident irreducible prime some sort of law of logic that cannot be obvious that if avoided just simply demonstrates the necessity of the thing under question that we need laws of logic to even try to say that there's no law of logic because that's that's the law of contradiction so I'm actually okay with saying I don't know whether something I've asked or said is axiomatic yeah and essentially cultures it could be and others nobody's heard of it right right and my my response here is just simply that which ones which three of these which one of these three to choose from therefore we're at a lost to show but but the way that I reply there is just simply say but but sex this you have these three conclusions that you're talking about and it has to be one of the three isn't that an axiom isn't an axiom manically surgeon that the contingent status of propositions Z whatever that was is either demonstrated by saying Z is proven by a prime or Z is proven by why or else some other previous and that seems to be axiomatically true therefore axioms are reliable because they give us arguments like that correct me if I'm wrong here but you you highlighted that sex just empiric is arguments boil down to those three points which were the problem of infinite regressed the argument of coherentism and the agreement upon foundation the only remaining option yeah am I getting that right yeah yeah that's good my notes are correct okay I made notes while you're doing your sure I'm going to pay close attention yeah especially those points so I think where you and I are at is at number three where we're trying to find and agreed upon foundation which I think takes us to your next point where you were talking about there must be a first cause but so that I've got a few questions are you convinced it seems to me that you are that our universe has a single first cause well I think it it needs it needs a first cause because the effect requires some kind of an explanation the effect which would be if you believe it has a first cause yes I do I wouldn't believe that because the first cause would you be willing to have been the first out of the picture have you ruled out the possibility of there being multiple causes that occurred at exactly the same time and initiating our universe yeah this would be a standard argument from skepticism the skepticism essentially has a very recognizable classical form to it okay if I know that P I know that not Q I don't know that not Q therefore I don't know that P now not Q and in this case be how do I know that there are not multiple gods back there and if I don't know that there are not multiple gods back there then I don't know whether or not I wasn't asking about multiple deities I'm asking about for example maybe I'll try to put in different terms okay multiple like a lot of people saying is from the big bang so what about the possibility of multiple big banks occurring at exactly the same moment but in different areas and converging to create our one universe have you been sure ruled that kind of thing out that I'm assuming that you are okay with the idea of the big bang being the start of our universe well I mean this is my this is my correct this would lead us down a huge rabbit hole but I don't mean to I'm just trying to know that's fine that's fine I mean I think this conversations you know like this it's a little bit more casual than a very formal debate but my confidence that the big bang is the right construal the beginning of the universe is really low because the big bang posits the existence of a singularity that is comprised of infinite qualities infinite heat infinite density and it seems to me that infinite heat cannot become cool infinite density cannot be downwardly adjusted infinite smallness cannot increase to the size of the universe that we see around it so I just I just have no confidence that these models furnished to us and explanation for why it is that the universe is expanding now I don't claim to know what that is I have no idea but on philosophical grounds I'm really skeptical that the big bang has got a good handle on things and if we were to explore that it would we would be talking about cosmology all night and we would just get off the philosophical so maybe that's probably not the best place to go I can accept that because I'm not 100% convinced that the big bang or multiple okay because Stephen Hawking and Penrose as I understand it worked together and updated their theory to support multiple big banks and that's kind of why I was bringing this up but sure so multiple big banks yeah because of quantum physics they they had to adjust it accordingly new evidence as I had mentioned earlier so but I think like I've encountered some Christians who actually quite a few who tell me that they believe that the big bang was put into motion by God and almost automatically that's a very common sounds like a lazy solution which is called working smart I think if you could be something like that and it's reliable why not but this brings me to the next question then and I okay and I think it's probably fair to assume that you believe God created the whole universe however he's done it big bang or otherwise however it happened yes all right yes so in that case are you thinking because you're saying that everything must have some kind of cause that triggered it what are you do you also apply that to your God yes and again this is oh what started your God right this is the infinitist argument well of God created the world what created God and you need to provide reliable evidence of this God and so this is why I'm asking yeah yeah and the proof that that you that one shouldn't just arbitrarily iterate backwards and say well what created that God is because the question can be asked fairly straightforwardly of the atheist you know if God created the world and what made God couldn't I ask you the same question of someone made the God that made the world and who made that someone well you could ask me a similar question if yeah and the point of a question like that I think because I do have some ideas on but oh okay sure sure yeah alternative to your God but it's but I'm not sure right right but there again I think the thesis would just simply respond by saying but that's still an admission to the existence of God because you're just suggesting a different God it doesn't really get around the issue but it was a deity I didn't say it was a deity I said it was an alternative okay sure full so it was an alternative so if it it's an alternative if something made the God that made the world and I would just simply say them one then what made that something it seems that something would need some sort of an origin story I'm if if one is to say that everything including a first cause must have a cause the very the very fact that I'm not convinced that that's actually the case what in reality what isn't the case that everything must have a cause yeah well I would say that if if it's not the case that that the universe has a cause then I would say how long has the universe been here it certainly could could not have been here for an infinite amount of time it's it simply seems incoherent that there have been an infinite number of temporal seconds so you're saying that if the universe didn't have a cause it couldn't be infinite did I hear you correctly no no I said sorry no no problem yeah the the cause of the universe needs to be there because if that's not the case then then there's then it's just if there's no first cause then that immediately leads to an infinite number of causes which means that whatever cause this moment to happen never happened and neither did this one and that really seems to me to be to pose some enormous problems and well yeah and one of the problems that you'll have is having to to show that there why the universe actually can't be infinite then I would think that would not be an unfair requirement to put on you what pardon if you're claiming that the universe is not infinite like it had a beginning then it's not infinite I think we we would know fairly certainly that if the universe were infinite because we would see no stars in the sky the what the celestial objects would have receded beyond the range of our telescopes to be able to see because then at that point the stars would have receded so far that it would the distance would exceed the ability of light to travel from those distant objects to our telescopes so the whole sky should be black you're making some assumptions here I think I think I'm based on laws of science aren't I I mean I'd think that most people most scientists would agree that we would need to have if it were true that the infinite that the universe has been expanding you know why why is it that we see anything at all in the sky if it's just had an infinite number amount of time to recede away from us why do we see anything so yeah I have no problem saying that the universe has a beginning I think you're assuming a specific point in time where all these things are going on and as being much further back than it was in that case when you're saying stuff like well yeah I mean you're you're positing you know an infinite universe and I've and I've already pointed out that Hawking and Penrose have identified that it's because of quantum physics research advancements that there it can't just be a single big bang that'd be multiple big banks and they're not saying they'd all necessarily be that itself would seem to need to have a cause as well okay that you know that the creation of a multiverse also begs for the same thing as the creation of this universe I wasn't talking multiverses I was talking multiple big bangs Oh so are you talking about some sort of you know sort of membranes beating together over and over again and expanding and contracting for eternity is that what you know possibly I'm talking about we have this idea with a singular with a single big bang that our universe may be shaped like a sphere or an oblate spheroid but with multiple big banks I think it'd be more likely to be shaped like a lumpy potato and I I don't mean to be funny here I'm just this is it's I'm I'm where they are right maybe that I'm unaware of any cosmologies that require the shape of the universe to be a potato a lumpy potato but if there's multiple big banks it's not going it's going to be an irregular shape is what I'm saying right because they're they're going to be in different places perhaps like unless we know it's it's going to be conical because and in the case of the standard model it comes to a hard point which is a further most extremity physical extremity of the space time universe if it's going to be a quantum gravity model as you suggested from honking and Penrose with sort of the rounded off yeah shape that is sort of say shaved away the hard edge yeah that would be the case of sort of interpreting one of the dimensions of spacetime that of time as another dimension of space but that has been shown to be just sort of all it hasn't been shown it's been admitted that this is probably just a mathematical contrivance and even honking himself admitted that when you take away the you know sort of imaginary time which is the mechanism used to accomplish this wonderful trick the traditional singularities to appear with point in completeness at the beginning of the universe you sort of a lack of a surveiable geometry so I think that you know some of these things are conjecturing is about what we see in terms of the scientific models in this world it's not it's not totally settled I agree with that it's it's not it's it's it's very much it's a question about but this is an interesting thing is is that as it turns out just on the purely philosophical sort of thought experiments I offered it seems that you would need to have a grand parent cause of the universe it caused that causes itself to bring the other causes into motion I'm willing to such that I'm willing to grant the fact that there are there there are people who are not convinced the universe is actually always expanding and you know it's yeah I don't think anyone really thinks that yeah it's well you know it's hard to know but I don't think it really is all that conducive to giving us reliable evidence for is paradoxical with those characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah you know I suppose there that you know essentially this this sounds to me like basically the discussion of philosopher early Greek philosopher Epicurious and Epicurious essentially reasoned a set of five premises for an argument that included therefore God does not if God is all powerful he can create any world he wants if God is all loving he prefers a world without suffering if an all-powerful all-loving God exists it follows that suffering does not suffering exists therefore God doesn't there's an interesting I know Pascal's wager comes up a lot to as in those kind of discussions and it's a very different discussion but mm-hmm yeah I'm my to me that's pointing out that is probably the the best argument for for what I would call propositional atheism you use the kind of like the idea of more of sort of lack theism just sort of lacking the evidence lack theism derogatory term I I don't like it I just not atheism is already covers it so mm-hmm some people say non-theism it's the vast majority you're sending atheism but it's the the point where people are saying God really that actual position mm-hmm those are the antithesis that's the anti identifying yeah and that would be the argument you mentioned on yeah and those would be the antithesis arguments and for the purpose of this debate we kind of need to get into those because I need to kind of push against your ideas and challenge them right so yeah but I I am stuck at this point of this claim that this deity of yours is that that you prefer is and this is again where sufficient evidence I think is required to to demonstrate that yes this is the real thing and to me what qualifies as sufficient evidence is for myself personally the ability to test drive those two abilities yeah to test drive all of that yeah and to me I guess that the difference between you and I is that I'm just simply not convinced that something that extravagant is necessary when we're talking about an axiom because you know I I I think that you know for example I think it's it is the case that that you know universe is not our universe can't really it it can't really be infinitely old it seems to me that that's impossible math shows us why and in fact you're probably aware of this but but essentially emergence of theorems which have showed that on any universe which exists in the stage of expansion eternally into the future that none of these models can be eternal in the past but all of them must have a start with a space time singularity and so that holds to be true whether you're talking about quantum loop models quantum gravity models whether you're talking about string theory a variety of different you know elaborate proposals like these all of these depend on the existence of a singularity at the beginning and ready to explain their existence was is another way of saying that that they have to have a beginning and I have to reject that the singularity part of it because of the update from Penrose and Hawking which I I think makes sense there could be multiple but how does one know whether or not that sort of a response is not just simply a matter of sheer scientific real world seems like something like that is just simply a mathematical contrivance that's come up with because I think Frank Tipler has shown that essentially it's it's it's it's not thought of by scientists that really space is really like our time is really like another dimension of space no one really believes that's true it's just that the equations lead to sort of a shaving off of the hard edge so it's a matter of convenience to deposit. Well, what if space? You know, what if time really isn't like another dimension of space? Oh, I don't I don't think then at that point the singularity show up in the equations again as Hawking admitted and so it's time as a dimension I think of it as more just a reference point but we have predictable things that we can use to measure what we perceive as time so it's it's not the time is thought of as a dimension by by scientists oh, it's it's expressed is that for sure I'm I'm not convinced but I'm not a scientist like I say so like when I look at things like we have an expanding universe expanding out from a singularity one of the big questions for me that comes up is why is it that and the Andromeda galaxy is heading straight for ours instead of going away from it if everything's expanding does this not perhaps give some good reason to consider the possibility that Hawking and Penrose are on the right track with saying there are multiple big banks creating that have created the universe yeah so there the the notion of there being multiple big banks there's there's a big bang per expansion phase in any of these models okay but there there is no sense in which you know there's there are events that occurring in this universe that sort of pinch off to new ones I'm Hawking essentially that was the subject of from what I understand a bet that Hawking had with another colleague of race and he essentially lost the bet and say no all of the all of the information sort of stays in this universe it doesn't go into other universes so I don't think that that's necessarily what's being talking about talked about by Penrose and Hawking and sort of you know the shaving off of spacetime into a yeah have sphere like that I'm yeah so in order to demonstrate the rationale the the the reliable evidence for your God we need to have we need to have some reliable evidence so you've talked about axioms and things like that and we've had a wonderful discussion about a lot of different things and I've enjoyed this thoroughly but yeah is my question though so my question reliable evidence yeah my question about reliable evidence is that you say that you need to have omniscience and my question for you is again to just sort of resort to the tropes of sex just why do you think that would be true what I mean but you like I want why why would that be truth conducive and when I asked you some things like about the people who wrote the Bible you agree that people are infallible and there could be mistakes with that so you know I'd like to know what what is your reliable evidence for your God something that can be relied on or you know something I convinced me that I should consider some different evidence as reliable like me the Bible looks more like a claim or a set of claims it's not so much as evidence to me it's it's certainly evidence that this is what people thought a long time ago I can grant that no problem but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what they actually witnessed and that that's the concern for me especially from a time when literacy was kind of rare yes well you know I think that what I would say here is that you know essentially I would go back to your claim that you'd need to have omniscience to know that God exists and my question becomes why would that be truth conducive as to the proving of settling the matter of God's existence is firmly probative how does that show that what I told you what I said is that that would definitely do it for you so that's not necessarily a proof of God's existence well and so this is why you know we're discussing reliable evidence so we need some I'm looking for you to you for some reliable evidence that and I gave you at that as an example of a criteria that would definitely work for me and I suspect that if God were to give you omniscience and omnipotence for a couple of weeks you'd probably be delighted with that because well I don't I don't know I suppose I could always ask the question how do I know I really have omniscience maybe he's only given me some of it yeah exactly but even if he could give you some of it that enough to do what I was suggesting to do to test out some things that that could that could work right yeah get down to perception of reality again here in this case yeah I mean how much information would lead me to the conclusion that I have omniscience I'm not sure that I would be able to say in myself whether I have all the information necessary to show this and you know essentially as it comes as it relates to the issue of Christianity and I think I don't know if James is you know wanting to sort of pivot at this point but I think that when it comes to the claims of Christianity becoming a Christian here the evidence that leads a person to become a Christian is not just simply evidence that God is real that's not going to do it for anybody it's not just simply the claim that we have this great book it's because a man named Jesus of Nazareth went around the ancient world performing miracles and exorcisms raising up expect basically messianic expectations almost everywhere he went and then claimed that he was going to the cross to die for the sin of the world that he was dying in atoning death and then for me I think probably for any Christian that's washing this becomes the principal reason as to why I commit my life to Christ and become a Christian but that isn't something that comes to me on the basis of just simply a prizing whether or not it's true that God exists that's certainly part of it that's constituent to the broader inquiry but it is not the linchpint the linchpint becomes the cross and so as these basically these these questions that I have that I struggle with become answered it's almost as though these obstacles to my standing and sort of clear view of the cross become removed and suddenly I can see the face of this man who says he died for me and that's what turns me into a Christian that's what turns all of us into Christians I think so the sacrifice appeals to you it doesn't appeal to me I think that dying for somebody else's wrongdoings is unethical I consider that's vicarious redemption I have a big problem with that but that's of course not the topic here but it's it's good to know that that's that's what you believe you're clear on it and I I respect that and I have no problem with that again trying to get back to the topic or James did you want to move on to another segment here I don't I can tell you I don't feel like I've seen reliable evidence that that's just but I'm sure you're not surprised by that sure sure well we are stoked folks to jump into your questions we appreciate them we appreciate both of our guests they're linked in the description folks so if you want to hear more hey what are you waiting for you can right now by the way you must have I mean Ben I'm don't worry good things to say about you Randolph don't worry they're coming up but I have to say with the utmost respect I want to say thank you to Ben for all his patience and this wonderful cordial conversation this was so enjoyable absolutely and we're starting our questions or comments off this is a super chat from stupid whore energy appreciate it says Ben looks a little like Ray Leota do you ever get that Ben you kind of do especially in the eyes I've know I've never heard a comparison to Ray Leota definitely I think it's true if it's like the hunter eyes but okay also we had somebody in the twitch chat as well I've been much happier than Ray Leota I just looked them up we do have twitch folks and somebody in the twitch chat also said you sound like Nick cage you've got have you ever heard that then Nicholas no no wow it is written all over you the Sultan of swag we shall call you so thank you very much I would say Nicholas cage with a little bit of Ronald Reagan mixed in to the voice and I think that might nail it very nice and also this one's from everyday valet says Hey man can you please give me the testable evidence well we'll see every day valet if you this is early in the debate so we'll see let us know in the chat if you were pleased with the testable evidence you were asking for if you were pleased with Ben's or I should say yeah Ben's response Anna Gruber thank you for your super chat said lost me a z prime I don't know what that means you guys Oh he's referring to something Ben said in his opening statement about the oh yes very good sex to some Vargas mm-hmm so if if we have a proposition call it proposition a skepticism says proposition is contended upon our conferring evidence upon it to show that it's indeed true we don't know if it's a true proposition yet so how do we prove a all presumably by b b is proven by c so on and so forth until you get to z but now you've just sort of you scratch your head you say to yourself well now that we're at z what do we do and of course this is a thought experiment that's all that sexed has ever claimed it was and he just simply said well you could on infinitism argue that what you need to do to show that the contingent status of proposition z is settled whatever that is then you can say well it's proven by proposition a prime and you just simply iterate the inquiry further back how is a prime proven b prime how is the b prime proven c prime and so on and so forth until you get to z prime but once again you're you're kind of stuck with the same question well how do we go from here and what it shows is that there appears to be no proper stopping mechanism on the argument of infinitism which essentially is invoking the rule of independence you need something other than a itself to show that a is valid and and then of course the other two tropes in the experiment were a way of showing well there's other ways to do this if you don't think that that satisfactory because what that winds up amounting to is that a is really never never proven and that's a very sad thing if that's true got you and jay I'm not convinced it is I think I'm going to be looking into sex to some pericas after this sounds to be true you got it sure jay mix and appreciate your super chat said it's an error to assume all options have been exhausted just because we reached the limits of human knowledge I agree then what do you think it's arrogant to assume that we have reached the limits of human knowledge no they said it's a it's an error to assume all options have been exhausted just because we reached the limits of human knowledge in other words you're saying like we even if we reach the limits of human knowledge we should not assume that all options have been exhausted sure yeah because there could be some sort of hypothetical other thing you've not yet considered and not necessarily hypothetical it could be real and we just haven't discovered it yet mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah and I would certainly grant that and I'm assuming that here the questioner has in mind the notion of science that we're always reasoning forward and sort of groping forward and and in the dark and that there could always be something else out there that's that's sort of a kin to this infinite regress that we've been discussing the thing is is that how does that show that we have a foundation for human knowledge and sex this talked about the other two possibilities coherentism and foundationalism and I think I've pointed out that essentially the reason why I think that doesn't lead to a knowledge stalemate is because in the family of arguments that would naturally be you know fall into the species of foundationalism is axiomatic arguments and to me we're just never justified in questioning whether things like mathematical propositions are somehow false like a plus b is equal to b plus a no that's false you got it and it's just unimaginable to me thank you thank you for your question this one comes in from everyday valet says if God is real he should be able to show himself to be a fact this is madness lol think they're saying it's madness that God if he is real hasn't shown himself to be a fact yeah well to me is it factual to say that one plus one equals two no and that's just an axiom and I I as I've already mentioned in our discussion why on earth would we need an operational instance of this happening anywhere in the universe to know that that solution is true so so why does why does the fact need to manifest in a physical way in order for us to know that it's real there we get into all kinds of problems philosophically in the area of epistemology is that is a that's a massive train record that that direction leads to the collapse of a lot of other important well principles for evaluating true propositions see I I think when it comes down to sufficiency that the the criteria changes depending on what it is that we're trying to demonstrate as I said earlier we can easily and trivially demonstrate demonstrate that there's they know that a certain number is prime at that has 100,000 digits that's going to take a lot more work it's going to be a greater sufficiency for that so depending on what it is how sophisticated it is or how powerful it is or how what's involved in there there's a sufficiency aspect here that needs to be considered I'm now remembering the question that I had with regard to this issue are you saying that that one plus one equals two because you can do it in the physical world and see it and is that the only reason you're confident or are you confident because the laws of logic dictate that it must be true isn't that a fact is that is that does that fall under the fact family first way that we must go to the next question first of all the problem with that question is that it attempts to limit the scope of my answers okay are a number of different factors involved in that and so when it comes to a trivial thing say are sufficient for demonstrating that and for practical purposes I don't really need a heck of a lot but when it comes to fixing the engine in a car or putting up or designing the frame for part of my house or something there's a lot more I need to know in order to to have confidence in the fact that I'm doing it properly so the sufficiency changes depending on the complexity and depending on how much knowledge I have about it okay you got it and thank you very much coming in or you could say every day valet says you could tack this onto their last they said it may be stupid but I'm not understanding where the evidence for God is well maybe they've changed your mind since that was in the early part of the debate but Jay mix them thank you for your question this is for Randall finally we got one for your Randall he said we don't assert a God therefore we don't have to prove him Theus oh no I'm sorry what they're doing is there they're saying basically that atheists say quote we don't assert a God therefore we don't have to prove him and they say that Theus in response say God is axiomatic so we don't have to prove him so and they say God says dot dot dot I'm you need to stay that in a Stephen Colbert imitating Trump voice dot dot he says it really well the the way that's phrased almost sounds like it's a special case just for atheists and I don't think that's what they meant but I just want to make it clear that that's not what it meant we have anybody who's not making a claim isn't carrying any kind of a burden so as soon as somebody makes a claim about anything if you want to convince somebody else who's not convinced then of course you have an on us of justification or burden of proof on that that's just standard so that the same goes for proving something is real or some proving something isn't real if you're making a claim about something in reality then you know you you obviously have have some kind of a burden to somehow demonstrate that's true or or to prove its veracity or something like that so yeah anybody making any kind of claim somebody who's not taking a position on whether the Marklar on Planet Marklar are real is not doesn't carry any burden of proof there got ya and thank you for your question this one comes in from Cider and Port appreciate it says me and Leo versus CJ and Smokey on socialism versus capitalism could be a very juicy debate if you and host us I'm open to that that could be juicy indeed so shoot me an email appreciate it and Amy Newman thank you for your Superjet says after after show midnight and she linked it and says Ben is there a reason for why you became I think you could say maybe is there a main reason for why you became a theist and specifically a Christian and by the way Amy Newman's after show is linked in the description folks but then go ahead on that question well my personal testimony is that I feel that I had what I would call a God encounter on a college campus in Springfield, Missouri and there happen to be some revival services that were happening on the college campus and there was an evangelist by the name of Sam Farina that preached and was moving in the hearts of many of those young people in that auditorium to give their life to Jesus and I didn't go up for the altar call but I did have an altar call of my own I guess you could say that way out in the grassy commons of the the college campus it was a pretty clear fall night and I can remember being impressed with this sensation that I wasn't alone in that field and so there was a very real thing that happened there and that is something that I've always carried with me that that presence really hasn't left me throughout all of my Christian life since it's been over 20 years now and that's never left me so gosh thank you very much and thank you for your question this one is coming in from okay not reading that okay us let's see Oz says great conversation Randolph's for the Randolph for the win and I so you had a fan out there Randolph we also had one that was arguing on behalf of Ben claiming victory but something I'm just not going to read in public Xerophah we've got some sick individuals but Xerophah thank you for your your questions they're logically coherent explanatory hypothesis of possible mechanisms of purely immaterial a temporal causation a temporal correct causation not temporal hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm well um you know I would say that's I think that this might be sort of a nod to um to our current understanding of space and particular particle physics um and empty space the science of empty space now I'm a little bit rusty on some of this material but I think that if memory serves right it seems that those particles in that physical space you know according to modern science have a beginning and so therefore um it isn't the case that this rules out the possibility of causality um so I think that I don't think that quantum mechanics furnishes us a proof of this concept perhaps that's not what the questioner was referring to so I did the best I could to try to interpret what they were going after you bet observation though and thank you for your question this one coming in from Oz who says question for Randall are you grateful that Ben's camera view is from shoulders up compared to your last debate I think that uh we'll let Randall tell the story oh that was we just I know what he's referring to I had a I was just debating ten commandments two days ago and my interlocutor I it turns out he wasn't wearing pants through the whole thing I thought he was I just assumed he's wearing pants that matches skin color and I didn't see it probably because I was looking at my notes and listening to what's being said apparently at near the end of it he stood up and walked all the way around in his room and people could see a lot more than what they had bargained for so yeah I I don't think I'll be debating with him again and uh I feel sorry for the atheist roundtable having to endure that because they've been nothing kind and rational to everybody you know just Randall rest is short I'm wearing pants I have a high level of confidence in that that's really even as a skeptic well I'm not a skeptic I'm trying to be one mm okay very yes that's a great line I'll think I'll quote you I'm not a skeptic I'm trying to be one I'm striving to be one yeah yeah thank you very much and let's see this one comes in from 100th monkey says modern day debate rocks thanks for your encouragement friend we're excited about 2021 you guys this is going to be this debate is one of many more epic debates to come we're excited for it and so Oz also says Randall is Canada's God wow you're this is a new religion and everything Randall Oh Ben do you want to take this one first No no I don't think that that Randall would argue that he has existed from eternity so I don't know that we can have a good grounds for saying that Randall is God oh yeah I am not a God story yeah but yeah I am not and human girl thanks for your super chat said thanks for your channel James well I want to pass on that thing we appreciate the thank you for sure human girl and also want to pass on the thank you to the debaters who are the lifeblood of the channel and so that's why you guys their links their links are in the description right this moment so you can go down there just click right in there and you are at their links as we really appreciate these guys and the kind of guys that this is theoretical like it's just like we're just kind of feeling out letting it like kind of trying to find out where people are we want to do a lot of in-person debates this summer and both of you guys are kind of like the caliber of speakers that we'd enjoy and so if you guys you know depending on your location it's not a guarantee but like hey like you guys are kind of guys that like let's talk let me know where you guys live if you want to do an in-person kind of event we'd love to have you and so and so Sider and port thank you for your email to smoky try in to set it up happy you'll have us be glad to be back on a in a while thank you Sider and port who I think is a fellow Oh wait just to answer your question I'm in the greater Vancouver area of British Columbia Canada got you the Vancouver I'm in Minnesota yeah Oh that's right Ben yes okay I St. Paul right so yeah the Minneapolis St. Paul area that's where I live got you okay because I used to live in Minnesota myself both of you guys gentlemen you guys are both tough as nails because both of your locations I imagine right now are so cold Oh wow yeah it is yes over here I I had to stop walking around outside in sandals just two days ago because it's starting to get a bit too cold for that really I believe it and so I grew up here so I'm kind of used to the colder climate anyway but people aren't from in here find it you're wearing sandals on a day like today it's so cold that's I yes that is it's impressive it's a bold strategy and Jay mixed and thanks for your says you could say compliment they said I was going to think Randolph for his personable and amicable demeanor let's see but I found out he's Canadian that's an unfair advantage that's right the Canadians are friendly you know we've always had that we found that they're always friendly it's like it's there's something in the water up there I don't know I have to say to Jay mixed I'm I'm very sorry about that I couldn't help it that's oh yeah I that's funny and also Cider and Port said I definitely recognize you Cider and Port I know that you are formerly known as religion is BS and now the new name Cider and Port I definitely recognize you buddy and so Oz thanks for your super chat said Friday is going to be awesome Dr. Josh boss yes it is going to be epic folks on the bottom right of your screen you are seeing biblical slavery debate this Friday with Matt Dillhunty that's right yes Ben you had a good one with him or I think it was over the summer maybe that was fun and so they'll be on this Friday that'll be against like I said the father's son duo Cliff and Stuart so that should be a fun one folks don't miss it and next in I let's see iron chariotier tier thanks for your question said that he or she will have no drugs in heaven they're serious though probably no drugs in heaven yeah I don't think the call to not use substances that I think would be just proper to Christian sanctification does not necessarily imply that God is against having altered states of consciousness nice so so I don't I don't at all think that that we're not going to have you know extreme elation at the level that you know one could rightly say hey that looks like that dudes on drugs in heaven sure you can quote me on that so so in heaven you could have like the poppy fields to the the west and the no I'm saying that there's a thrill in heaven that's way bigger than that oh okay it's it's way bigger than that and I think it would have to qualify as an altered state of conscience thank you very much and thank you Mr. lightning 20 says Ben how do you distinguish between the Christian God causing the universe versus the thousands of other gods proposed by other religions why is a thinking agent necessary why is a thinking agent necessary here I would just simply go back to if the reason that the cause the parent cause of the universe causes the other causes to be set in motion is something outside of itself then that other thing and not itself is the parent cause of the universe I that makes sense I therefore so therefore the the reason why the parent cause causes the other causes to be set in motion is itself and not another so it causes itself which in applies person agency and that directly implies a person so it's it's easy to kind of reason your way back there to get to that it's it's not in my opinion that's that is not you know gymnastics mental gymnastics I think it's really sound so I also I also think that omniscience and omnipotence to be useful together would require that you got it and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from Ryan Price says question for Ben if you have reliable evidence for God doesn't that mean you don't have faith anymore you can't have faith in something you already have reliable evidence for mm mm yeah this is really I think one has to understand that the Christian when he says I am a theist is not saying that he is in the position of having the psychological condition of believing that God exists he is saying that he knows that God in fact exists in other words theism is a knowledge claim no and essentially that you know that that you can look to the Christian scriptures and you can see that that the discussion on the knowledge of God proliferates the book of Proverbs and not just that book but other books as well so the Christian is definitely claiming I think that he knows that God exists now whether or not that means he has a good argument for God existence is entirely immaterial the point still stands that the Christians knowledge of God is knowledge in the proper sense from everything we know about theology so so my understanding is the word theism actually is about belief in deities and word Gnosticism covers knowledge of the mystical such as deities so there would be they're but a lot of people who believe also feel that they know and I think that's yeah that's yeah you know Paul Draper for you know Paul Draper has pointed out and you can see this in the Stanford encyclopedia philosophy his wonderful article and atheism points out that knowledge claim that God in fact exists which is his reason for asserting that atheism should also be construed as a knowledge claim that God does not exist because it's it's essentially derived from theism that's not how I run that article and I do have some problems with that article but that can be a conversation for another day yeah all that there's most things as as is the case and virtually every philosophical discussion are quote unquote debatable but it wouldn't be philosophy if there wasn't dissension next up top dog shattuck appreciate your question for this one's for ben they say where do theists get the information of an intelligent designer in real life instead of just nature and the observed I'm not sure that I understand what the question is asking I kind of think they're asking if I were to put it in my own words I think they're kind of saying why do you get the idea that there's an intelligent designer rather than it just being not an intelligent designer yeah I'm not I think that what you could go to because you know if you're going to fault sort of a not a not so intelligent designer aren't you still essentially conceding to the point that the first cause argument as I've described it shows that God exists and so again I would just say that that would be a strange position for an atheist to assume but I think that if if you were to look at the appearance of nature what's called the teleological argument the argument from the perfect order of creation it's it would be a strange thing for the type of order that we have seen in the universe to come together just simply by random processes alone just sort of random stochastic processes bringing about all this that's that's a hard one I think even for some scientists to swallow just to be clear I'm not aware very many atheists to claim it's random it's just just how things work in our in our universe in reality right right and there the argument is for necessity as as as opposed to the mechanism of chance but I don't find that alternative to be persuasive either sure and then with with with atheism it's not like a lot of time people are thinking Oh atheists need to answer scientific questions since they're not an answering religious question but no we don't if we're scientists and we're interested in answering those questions sure if you're posing the question to a scientist then that makes sense and I would agree with that got you and thank you for your question I think we are pretty much caught up we had could have sworn we oh this is an interesting we just had this one come in appreciate it this one coming in from Bali Nax says question for Randolph is Canada more or less religious than America Oh we're definitely less religious but there still are a lot of people here following religions and there's I think we have a lot more variety diversity in the different religions that people follow here and the thing though it it can be a little deceiving because people are basically a lot of theists and atheists here don't don't publicly declare it where everywhere that everywhere we go it's generally here thought of more is is a private thing so you might see people with a little bit of religious symbolism here and there but it's it would like when I look at what's going on the U.S. and you see people make a big deal of it we we don't see nearly as much that here couple things up front folks or you could say at the tail end one you guys most importantly our guests are linked in the description so check those links out we appreciate these guys also if you like podcast well hey our podcast is out there it's just like YouTube you know it's just open for the public if you can't find us in your favorite podcast app let me know we will work to get on there so pull out pull out your phone right now see if we're on your favorite podcast out because we want to be sure that we are and hopefully that's a value to you is it's cool thinking that many more people will hear this debate not only on YouTube but then our podcast is picking up momentum and so we also put the guest links in the podcast description now as well so if you're listening by podcast you can also get to Ben or Randolph's link by clicking on those links in the description so thank you guys it's been a true pleasure Randolph and Ben we really do appreciate you guys being with us thank you very much pleasure with that folks to meet you Ben nice to meet you we this has been such a cordial debate I had a feeling it's like these guys they're so cordial they're it's going to be a tremendous debate we just appreciate that it's like people get it's like it's not a WWE Jerry Springer type of thing so we appreciate you guys and so an extra thank you guys and so with that folks keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable I will be back in just a moment with a kind of an after post-credits scene which is just be a quick channel update on upcoming debates and stuff like that so with that thank you though everybody keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable for I love that it was just it was an exchange of ideas it was super cordial it was super charitable just appreciate these guys so much their link to the description folks so hey you can hear plenty more where that came from we really do appreciate both Randolph and Ben and so we are stoked as well you guys for this Friday but first let me just say I appreciate you guys hanging out here so let me say hello seeing you guys in the chat it's nice to oh thanks Jamie Russell for your your support of super chat who said this is a super chat proof of the Matrix James may be a GPT 3 avatar beta version love you bro keep it up we'll love you too appreciate it Jamie seriously means a lot it's encouraging I'm excited about the future you guys we're excited about the debates we want to host a lot of which you know and you know there's no guarantee we'll see we play it by year but we'd like to this summer do a lot of in-person debates like modern-day debate on tour and so that could be really fun and so that's what we're hoping for that's one of the big things we want to do a lot more of as a man it's been a while already it's been almost a year since our last one the very last one we had it's funny that was with Matt David would and I'm appreciate so much that those guys were willing to do it because that was just as news was breaking that COVID was happening so they carried through with it though and so that that was a fun or most recent in-person one but Manic Panda is good to see you as well Henry Hanson see you there what I see you there Otangelo as always Matthew Steele good to see you it's been a while I really hope you're doing well and Maya at at Kissen thank you for your kind words a great show thanks appreciate that Maya thank you for being with us and master objects good to see you as well as gotta yeah Jay Mixon thanks for your hearts there your shining hearts and your support Boogarty says hello hello back friend Teemo thanks for sharing we do Teemo put it in the chat and I'm going to pin it to the top of the chat we do have a Patreon so if you didn't know that hey you know it's pinned to the top of the chat so it's convenient if you want to check that out I think we've got three tiers as they call them and so yeah we are pumped about that and then as you'll see on the screen maybe you're like I'm not really into Patreon like that per se isn't what I'm looking for another thing is we finally it was like we have our PayPal for the channel is working again so that link is in the description and so if you guys want to support us just like a one-time deal you don't want to do a monthly commitment like totally cool too and bottom right of your screen you are seeing is Bigfoot real is this Saturday you guys that's going to be epic I honestly just get a kick out of those topics that's seriously fun stuff so that'll be a fun debate human girl says LOL but not that Bigfoot and Amy Newman thanks for your heart as well and thank you so much seeing you guys in the chat Martin perfectly thanks for being here with us chaos theory good to see you again you've been here many a days and good day to you sir as well thanks for being with us and let's see Argatha and Bollinax good to see you as always Randolph good to see you says hello everyone and thank you for tuning in to this conversation slash debate and I'm pinning that to the top of the chat we appreciate that Randolph thanks for positivity and Colin Lorenz says got another twitch debater who says they'd be interested I sent him the discord link thank you Colin Lorenz that would be rad I am open to it depending on what the topic is but yeah I appreciate that and let's see we have yes says is that debate real oh it is real I'm dead serious Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum who you are seeing pictured on the left there this you guys this guy's like someone in chat earlier said it when I announced at the first time a lot of times I've mentioned him people are like I know who that is like I discovered him I was watching a Netflix or no not not Netflix Amazon Amazon Prime I was watching a documentary about Bigfoot and he was in it he's a great university and basically he was being interviewed and I was like this guy is really articulate like this would be really fun if we get him to come on for a debate so we are thrilled to have him come on he has a book that's linked linked in the description for that video by the way folks and sometimes I think you guys are like oh people are trying to sell books I I would say some of you not a lot of you but a small percentage of you sometimes are like oh they're trying to sell a book huh and it's like yeah it's like there's like there's nothing wrong with like trying to get your book out there so that people know about it like if you think it's positively impacting the world of course and so I he didn't even ask me to put the he didn't even mention the book I found it on my own and put it in the description so wanna let you you guys know about that we're pumped to have him on it's really gracious of him to give his time of course he's just like sure I'll come on and so he'll be debating newcomer Maddie she's a PhD student and so she is in the sciences as well James Nixon says James we have to bring more Mythesis or semi-mythesis on a lot of these guys speak about Christ with great assurity we are actually I reached out to David Fitzgerald upon a possible debate at the end of this month so that may happen Cider and Port says are you coming to tour Ireland we no joke I do actually there are a lot of people it's it's a tough one Cider and Port I've been to Ireland I loved it I was in Dublin not surprisingly because you know Dublin's maybe I would think one of the best spots to see I loved it beautiful city there on the river and I'm trying to remember what the name of the river is though but I was it was amazing and I got to see the the epic library that I had been wanting to see for so long that I think it's been a long day that at Trinity basically like the Harvard of Ireland basically that as well as of course the great treasure within the library and so yeah anyway long story short maybe Ireland it's a possibility though there's a huge concentration of debaters down in London there's a ton of them so it's not impossible but Randolph Richardson says Elijah and Tuna's if you want to get in a debate contact modern day debate he'll make arrangements with you yes we are open we do ask for a few things usually like prior debate experience is a big one debate experience if you have a link of it let's say also it's not necessary it depends on the topic you know some topics I just don't know if they fit our style so I can't guarantee that we'd want it but you know it depends and Randolph said fun fact it's illegal to kill Sasquatch in British Columbia Canada this province only though oh that's funny so don't kill Bigfoot if you live there and yes we are pumped though you guys as we have a lot coming up in fact next month let me show you this poster if you haven't seen it yet I am pumped for this Doug Wilson one of the you could say kind of the half half of the stars of the documentary collision with Christopher Hitchens Doug Wilson will be on and so you could say an old friend of Christopher Hitchens he's pictured at the left in the poster that you're seeing on-screen for the upcoming debate pastor versus professor and Ben Burgess who is a professor in philosophy will be debating him on whether or not atheism is immoral so get ready to be triggered folks there's going to be a lot of triggering and Cider and Port says Trinity College yeah massive library yeah come to Ireland I'd be so stoked to do an in-person one thank you Cider and Port we appreciate that and oh my gosh if I could get to see Ireland again it was absolutely beautiful so and I didn't even get to see that much because I was finishing up my paper but sometimes things just drag on the paper not Ireland I wish Ireland would drag on Amy Newman says it's skeptic theme channel um but we welcome all views atheists or theists and yeah he seemed like a really nice guy or are you talking about us we do welcome everybody I would say we don't even have a theme for the channel because we're like that's the thing folks we're like a buffet we got science religion politics we're a pretty dynamic channel and frankly a lot of people would say that it goes against quote unquote best practice of YouTube but we do like the variety and so yeah we're I think that we're really kind of we're stoked to hopefully welcome people who are just big on ideas like hey I love politics I love religion debates I love science debates like all those things I can find a lot of stuff interesting in all of those categories you're probably high on the personality trait of trade openness big on ideas big on new ideas you want to hear them and think about them so yes you're kind of like the if you enjoy this channel you're kind of like the the the Athenians who they told the apostle Paul they said hey like what's this guy talking about bring him up to the Aeropagus let's let's hear so rant Randolph Richardson says Douglas Wilson is also famous for debating with Christopher Hitchens on a number of occasions I'm glad you're getting him on he seems like a nice guy that should be an epic one you guys I'm pumped for it I still haven't watched that documentary I feel like a knucklehead because I think it's out there public now the debate the documentary between Christopher Hitchens and Pastor Doug Wilson who you're seeing in the bottom left of your screen that I think is if you Google it you should be able to find a free copy of it they released it I think to the public now so it's like a public film for everybody to enjoy you don't have to pay a dime and so that's the impression I get that's how I understood it when I read about it and so yes that documentary I'm stoked to I'm going to watch that probably the next probably in the next week maybe and so but I got Disney plus so it's also it's like it's like I'm watching end game I don't want to stop but I do appreciate you guys hanging out here Amy Newman good to see you as always and so yeah we do appreciate thank you guys for hanging out with us please let me know is there something that I can do to make your day easier is there something that I can do that you're like hey yeah actually there is like shoot me an email at modern day to bait at gmail dot com that's my actual email no spaces or hyphens it's just modern day to bait at gmail and so yeah like come come check us out like or come say hello and let me know we do you guys encourage me and are just super supportive of me I appreciate it so much this makes my day when I get to do this I always tell the debaters before we start I'm like you guys have this just makes puts me such a great mood I'm excited and so I love doing this you guys and I love hanging out with you guys Jared good to see you it's been a long time a lot of you guys don't know I've yeah it's one of my debates was with Jared I forget to mention because I a lot of times I mentioned like past debates and like one or two of them like in person that I did that I've like re-uploaded on the modern day debate as like a throwback Thursday thing but I also yeah Jared and I had a fun debate I really do appreciate Jared he's like a friendly guy I just Jared I hope you're doing well buddy and I'm glad you said hello or came by that has to be the same Jared I remember is I think it's like the same YouTube account that like I originally he left to check a comment on non-sequiture show where I went on there for a who's that? I think that was against what's the name of they say he has a beautiful beard and he does but he's got the static face I can't remember I should know this but I debated him and then in the comments I said hey Jared Jared let's debate now wavy Davey gaming says I see a demon right now heads up wavy Davey so but Randolph Richardson says if you ever want to come to Vancouver let me know beforehand and I'll and bring your hiking boots because we have some great forest here I believe that I definitely would love to see it I appreciate that Randolph and I've only seen a little bit of Canada it was the Toronto area but I did love it is really fun people were kind and I appreciated that and Sodium AI 314 says he is here debating appreciate that friend you're here and so yeah I would say my I've got heart palpitations because I'm trying out the keto diet I'm serious I feel pretty good I do feel like I'm in a good mood my heart palpitations though are sometimes so big of the today had one that made me cough I don't know if that's like I'm starting to get to the point like this is normal but we're gonna make it so want to say thanks everybody for being here though we're excited other debates coming up we've got another one booked for let me see I like telling you guys like the secret debates coming up that we haven't put like we haven't put the event up yet but they're booked in the sense that like over email people committed to doing them and so let me tell you about any of the other ones because we have these fewer patients we have another one on the very same week oh I think it's Tony if I remember right Tony Reed will be back we haven't had him for a while so that would be cool I think that's it'll be against a newcomer that he had found and yeah I think oh and then at the end of the month on the 30th we have a brand new Flat Earth fellow named F to Apple World edgy so he'll be on oh yeah Jane Mixon you got it right Profit of Zod that was who I had a friendly debate with a long time ago Oz is right I lost over 100 pounds on keto look at my face you guys really thin face but I'm doing all right Michelle Louise Davis says hi I'm banned well I'm afraid on this particular day you are not banned and you are wrong like I have no I remember you emailed me you were like hey I'm banned and I was like I'll try to see what I can do I told you I took you out of the ban list do you think I'm making this up but St. Nick thanks for being with us glad you are here we appreciate it Randolph Richardson says I have to head off to dinner take care and thanks again for everything thank you Randolph it's always fun this is honestly a pleasure for me and so Oh someone said the Q word in the chat can't say that can't say that on the air for real otherwise it's bad YouTube notices that word more than any other word but yes we do have if you want reminders via Twitter we are on Twitter and so we post out almost all of our debates sometimes they get really busy and I get behind but otherwise we usually tweet out our debate every day that we have one in the morning and so hopefully if you're following us on Twitter that's useful I don't know we get like I don't know we don't get a ton of engagement on Twitter but it's hard I can't it's hard for me to like hang out all over like I'm still trying to learn discord I'm frankly still trying to learn Twitter but see you friend glad you were here but yeah want to say appreciate you guys let me know I just I'm having a good old time I'm going to wish you well I hope you have a a great rest of your Wednesday or Thursday depending on where you are appreciate you guys love you guys thanks for all of your support thank you for everything seriously I just I'm excited about what's going on Ryan Stevens good to see you man better late than never but yeah stoked to see you but yeah I'm I'm excited about the future you guys and I appreciate you guys you have honestly just the more the merrier it makes this channel fun and so appreciate you guys hope you have a great night or day keeps everything out the reasonable from the unreasonable everybody take care