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So I believe society is better off with religion and this is how I think about it. I think of religion as the software that runs on the hardware of human brain. You think about culture is the software or, you know, nurture is the software versus nature is the hardware, but it's that kind of divide and religion is like the source coding of culture. So if you open up command prompt, that level of code, that's like the religious level of code for the software, which is human culture. And there's good and bad software. And I'm going to make the argument that certain religions are a net positive for society. Obviously, there are some religions that are terrible. Like if there's a religion that says we should kill everyone but me, that's probably a religion that's bad for society. So just like there is bad software, you know, there are bad religions, but I'm going to use mainstream Christianity as sort of the template to argue from not because I don't think that other religions can be considered to be good for society. It's just because I am ignorant and I don't know much about anything, but I do know a little bit about Christianity. But a lot of the arguments I'm going to make can carry over to Islam or Hinduism or whatnot. Now I'm going to make this case from an evolutionary biological perspective. So I'm going to make the case that religion is an adaptive feature of evolution, which means that religion evolved because it benefited the people who practiced it. And this is a different perspective from the perspective of people like Richard Dawkins, a lot of the mainstream cringe atheists I like to refer to them, jokingly, of course. And I suspect T-Jump probably shares the same perspective, but I don't know for sure. But the Richard Dawkins perspective is that religion is a mind virus, a parasitic mind virus. Right. So the idea is just like there are parasites that will hijack the body of a certain animal, a host, and then screw it over. Religion does the same thing with humans, right? So religion is a parasite that operates on the minds of humans and just screws them over and causes them to sacrifice themselves for no reason and all that stuff. So like there's a there's an ant. I don't know what the exact fungus is called, but if there's a parasitic fungus that it spores latch onto ants bodies, and then the ant runs up a tree, pincers itself to a tree trunk, and then the ant dies and its body becomes food for the fungus, and then the fungus, you know, consumes the ant and then it spreads its spores everywhere. And so that's a parasitic relationship, great for the fungus, terrible for the ant. So that's how the traditional, I would say evolutionary biological perspective is of religion. It does that on human minds. But I'm going to argue that it is actually an adaptive feature of evolution. It's symbiotic relationship. So the common example of a symbiotic relationship is people have seen like there's little fish that clean the teeth of sharks, right? So the sharks benefit from having the fish eat the fungus off the teeth, and the fish benefit because they get, you know, food. And so it's a symbiotic relationship. And so the idea is that religion is a positive software on net, on net, not that there are no negative aspects to religions, where certain religions are terrible. But on net something like mainstream Christianity, or some sort of moderate form of Christianity is definitely good for society, good for the people that practice it. I don't go so the I think the nuanced issue that's going to come up in this debate is exactly to what degree or or how are we going to balance the negatives versus the positives because they're clearly negatives for religion. Right? So for example, hating people who do not believe in your God, right? That's a bad aspect of religion. That's not good for anybody. It's not good. Well, it's good for maybe that tribe to say we are, you know, the people of God and everyone else can go screw themselves. That's not good for society. Then you have things like repressing sexuality and the rest of sexual taboos. That's all bad. However, the nuance here, and this is going to be my point is that when you look at a little bit closer, some of these norms have again, adaptive value. And the question is, do they still have adaptive value in our modern environment? So for example, like hating people who aren't in your tribe, right? If you believe in a different God, that's, you know, you're bad for me. It's like, that's bad. However, if you had a religion that said, we are all from the same tribe, we are all children of God. And there is no humans are not the enemy per se. It's the evil spirit. And you outsource that enemy from a person to a psychological idea. And that's good for society, right? Because that fosters in group cohesion. And Islam does this Christianity does this. And I'm sure other religions do as well. But I'll be sticking with Christianity as example. But even something like repressing sexuality, it's like, okay, clearly. What did Sam Harris say? The only institution that produces more child abuse than the educational institution is the Catholic Church, which I agree with the Catholic Church is very regressive sexual taboos, right? And that causes the kind of sexual neurosis that we hear about in the news far too often. However, if you look at it from a adapt from an evolutionary point of view, you think, okay, wait a second. If we were living in a society where there was no birth control, there were no condoms, and there was the possibility of sexually transmitted disease, which was fatal, you could very clearly understand why, hey, guys, it's 5000 BC, we don't have condoms, we don't have anything we don't have any way to treat disease. Everyone should just have sex with one person that probably makes sense. And you would say, okay, well, you know what, we can argue about the morality of it and how it limits liberty. But you would certainly acknowledge that from an evolutionary perspective, the group, the population that does that, the population that imposes strict sexual taboos in the absence of condoms and whatnot, well, they're better off, right? And my point is that there's when you look under the hood, there's a lot of adaptive features of religions like that. And we obviously can separate the wheat from the chaff, right? We can say, okay, it's probably saying that everyone who had sex before marriage is going to help, probably not a good idea. And you can see the variations like in Eastern Orthodox, priests can get married. And as far as I know, the problem with sexual abuse is not nearly as high in the Eastern Orthodox religion as in the Catholic religion. So you can kind of, you know, we can we can look at it with a rational lens and sort of adjust. But the fund, the fundamental kind of tenants, the fundamental source code of the software of culture, are these religious ideas that for example, we're all the children of God that everyone should be created equal, right? Our entire, I would say, Western kind of ethic is built on the idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator. And we hold these truths to be self evident whatever the Declaration of Independence slash Constitution and all that outlines. And, you know, they say, in the Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self evidence. And I'm not suggesting the Declaration of Independence is the foundational text. But it does illustrate the ethic that we all operate in. And that's not one that's amenable to rationality. There's no rational reason why we should treat everyone as if they're children of God. It's a faith claim. It's a religious claim. And our entire moral and productive culture is built on that. So I'm very interested to hear what TJAP has to say, Tom regarding the whether or not he thinks religion is adaptive, whether or not he thinks there's any evolutionary kind of significance behind it and whether it's worth investigating. But yes, I'm looking forward to this this discussion. Thank you so very much for your opening statement, PF young. And with that, we will hand it over to TJAP for his up to 10 minute opening statement. The floor is yours. So the topic is society better off without religion. Now I agree with the vast majority of what PF said. Evolutionary is evolutionarily or religion is evolutionary advantageous and that it was a thing that was used in the past in order to group people together and make us more communities of a society which completely worked. But like every vestigial limb we've outgrown it. We have we have better societies without religion now today than we do with religion. If we compare crime statistics, rape statistics, marriage statistics, teen pregnancy statistics, people in in prisons just name it, education level, Nobel Prize winning, prolific literacy rates, just pick any statistic, the society to do the best of the ones that are non religious, the people who have abandoned any religious ideologies. And the reason for this is that even though religion was advantageous at some point, it entails a lot of baggage, which some of which PF mentioned that is negative. And so the advantages that were gained in the past are now commonplace today. And so the positives that are added by religion do nothing to gain society as we have other means, other coding or software to use his analogy to achieve the same positives that don't entail the same negatives. Thus, deductively, we can say if we have one means that achieves the same things without the negative consequences, then it is by definition better. We do have that in secular humanism and the secular ideologies that are prevalent in majority secular countries today that have less crime, less homelessness, higher wages, higher standard of living, higher life expectancy, lower crime rates, lower death rates, lower infected rates, lower teen pregnancy rates. You name it, secular societies are better. The only one possible one, like just a few ones that you can say are slightly worse, which is like depression levels, depression levels in secular societies are slightly higher, which is because less depressed people die in secular societies. So if you have people who are depressed of equal numbers in equal societies and in one society, the number of depressed people die, well, then they're no longer counted in the statistics. And so the number of depressed people in secular nations would be higher because the ones in non secular nations are dead. And so in the small number of statistics, which are do have slightly negative outcomes relative to religious countries, it is due to the fact that people aren't dying at the same rate. And so they're not. There's not a survivor bias implicit on the data, which results in the fact that higher depression rates in secular nations because more depressed people live longer. So in conclusion, religion is not better off or society is not better off with religion, because we know societies can achieve all the same positive ends in secular nations without only the negative ends of the crazy belief systems that cause ridiculous ideological trends that are harmful to society conclude there. Thank you so very much, T jump for your opening statement. And with that, we are going to move into 45 minutes of open dialogue. Gentlemen, the floor is both of yours. Um, OK, well, sir, first my first response to some of what Tom said, he compared the statistics between religious societies and non religious societies. I don't think you can just draw a direct correlation causation from the correlation that you refer to. I don't know what societies you're referring to, right? Why? Well, because there's many variables that would differentiate a religious society versus a non which give me two examples of countries here comparing America and Sweden, Norway, Denmark, China, Japan. OK, I mean, we could pick any of them. Right. And there are any like if I take all religious countries and all secular countries and compare the data, secular countries are better. Sure. China, including North Korea, including Russia, Russia is actually a majority Christian, but I can include all the bad ones to we still win. OK, I feel like. The issue I would have with that is how do you know that those are there are not other factors that are causing that difference in the statistics you mentioned? Well, we agree that as you mentioned in your opening that religion is a software coding that resembles or encourages people to do certain things, right? Sure. So sure. But like if I compare like Sweden to America, there's plenty of other factors other than self reported religiosity that would contribute to the difference in the the measures of well-being that you gave, right? Yes. But all of those features would be things that are a result of the coding of the society that causes them to act in a particular way, right? It's not necessarily you could have natural Sweden has a lot of oil reserves, for example. Sure. So does Saudi Arabia, but it's not better off. I agree. Sure. Yes, that's my point. There's many different factors you can't lay at the feet of religion alone. So obviously there are many different factors. But the problem is, is that if we compare what are the best overall outcomes? It's disproportionately non-religious. Like if it was if it was a non-influential factor, we would expect to see that the proportion of religious countries would also be in the top two. It's just not. They're just all second. They're like by a huge margin. Sure. OK. Well, I think and this will be an interesting road to go down because I guess I would take issue with the degree to which self reported religiosity is kind of an accurate measure for for religion. So like I think most people watching this understand the term like if I say if I say politics is a religion, you understand what I mean by that, right? Sort of not really. But go back to what your original statement was. You said something like self reported religiosity is not. Yeah. So people who people who so so the reason I made the point about religion being the source code like the the command prompt level kernel code where you have and then you have culture built on top of that is that you is that human. Every society evolved out of a religious every culture revolved out of a of a religious tradition. And we still have remnants of that. So technically, like the Paranas and Parahas are the non religious, but every society evolved out of a non religious society. Monkeys weren't religious initially. So it's it's more accurate to say we started as non religious societies. Well, but humans ones. But what we what's your point? What is probably what point are you attempting to make? My my my point is that whether or not, and this is, I guess, different from the argument I was going to take it down, but we can we can go here. You say societies are better off without. My argument would be that you cannot escape the religious impulse that people have in any society. So if I say, for example, I don't believe in God, or I'm not religious, if you still operate in a culture that was shaped by natural shaped by selection, which you agreed with that selected for certain religious principles that are at the base of that culture, you can't escape those religious principles. That doesn't make sense as an argument. So like if I say, spears are good for society. Well, like today, if we use spears, our militaries are going to lose. It would be terrible. Yeah, but it's not it's not it's not that simple. So the fact that it was good or that a society was built off one that used spears doesn't mean that spears are today useful. So I agree that. Sure. Religion built some factors of society, but that doesn't mean that the fundamental factors of society. So for example, like I mentioned in the opening statement, the idea that all people are created equal like we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal. My point is the only reason that that's self-evident is because the people who laid out those terms were ensconced in a Christian culture because in no way is the fact that everyone is equal. That's not a self-evident rational claim. Well, actually, as those comes from the rationalist, not the religious people. In fact, from religion, not people are not obviously equal, which is why the vast majority of the founding fathers weren't actually religious. You can take that up with Andrew Seidel and his book. But sure, I would definitely that comes up from things prior to religion. Again, these principles predate religion. They're there from second nations. Confuciusism has this, what doesn't have a God in it whatsoever. These principles that you're describing, religion is an offshoot of natural human psychology. And so the principles in religion are a reflection of human psychology. I think your application here that you're saying that religion built these things like, no, these didn't come from religion. These came from human psychology, and they were just ensconced in religion. Yes, but I'm arguing that the religious impulse religiosity is inbuilt to human psychology. And my evidence for that would be that like what I said, people treat politics as a religion. Everyone agree. So what's the what's the point? So I agree that. So my point is so my point is really the the religious traditions that have been around long enough for selection to act against and survive contain within them a lot of useful information that we do not want to disregard too quickly. So if we say like we don't need Christianity anymore, it's like, OK, well, I don't know exactly what that means. But it would be like, OK, we're not going to respect any of the religious traditions that our culture has founded. I'm not seeing how that addresses my spear argument. So I agree there were many valuable aspects in religion. The spear argument is too is too simple of a metaphor for what I'm saying, because some argument here is that I agree that religion was good for some things. But now we have better tools that can do all of those things that aren't religion. So just I would say that those tools, those tools require those tools are built, those cultural tools, because the spear is a physical tool, which is the problem with that metaphor. But the cultural tools are built on a religious platform, meaning, meaning at the base of any rational claim or any rational moral system, you have to make fundamental faith claims and the faith claims that I'm totally lost right now. So so what do you mean it's built on religion? So like, so for example, I try to work with my analogy here with the spear. So obviously, again, I'm telling you, the spear analogy is not well, it works perfectly in your analogy that obviously we don't think society is a literal spear. Those are different things, but it doesn't break down the analogy because the analogy is, is a technology analogy. So the technology of a spear is old technology. It had a benefit, but now we have a different tool that does the same benefit better. And so using the spear as pointless, but the new technology guns were built on spears. We started with spears, sort of in the arrows and arrows, but it'll project sure. So sure, they're built on spears. If we didn't come up with spears, we wouldn't come up with guns, which is a natural progression. So the same thing applies to religion. We start with religion that builds social cohesion, which now we can achieve with more social means, which is the same thing. It's built on the religion just like a gun is built on a spear. But we don't need the spears anymore. We're useless. Sure. But you are yours. Yes. But when you when you make the metaphor as objects, what you what you're what you're excluding from the equation is that we were still operating with the same brains that were the brains that we're using, the hardware on which our current cultural software runs was in part shaped by religion because religion extends back in the early the the earliest semblance of culture is religious. Now, you've mentioned the pros. Well, I'm not following your relevance there to that point of what you're saying. Our hands are the same as they were with spears and our guns. We have the same hand. So what about this part of our brains is relevant to break down the analogy? It doesn't seem to do anything with it. And OK, so for so, for example, in what you said, group cohesion was one of the adaptive features of evolution. Yes. And you're saying now we don't need religion to still foster group cohesion. And I would dispute that because I would say the the way that we facilitate group cohesion and I don't know how maybe we can discuss how you kind of lay the grounds for what the moral foundation for establishing group cohesion is. But like the classic Western Christian idea is that we we take it for. Here's here's a faith. Here's the premise on which we're going to build our society. Everyone is created equal, endowed by their creator and alienable rights. That's the language it's used. And then then we go. Then we use logic and rationality on top of that. But my point is that premise itself is not a rational claim. We didn't arrive by that. We didn't arrive up to that rationality. Well, we arrived because it's a religious idea. Well, that's not a religious idea. But but it is endowed by their creator with that. It's absolutely not that predates religion in every single society. But what? How exactly are you? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. That that claim. Yes. How is the how is the statement? They are endowed by their creator. Moral Platonism had that moral Platonism had that before any religion. If there are like most atheists in philosophy, most academic, professional atheists or most philosophers are atheists and most. Sure. And all of them would. OK, so this is before religion. All of these moral terms come way before religion. Religion. No, I disagree with that. I disagree with that because all because all of the moral Platonism predates all except three religions, three of the biggest religions. The three, the three modern religion. Sure. So wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. And this is unfair. And like I said, you know, I'm I know of Christianity. I'm, you know, incredibly ignorant on many things. But but hold on, because I want to stick to this point because whether or not moral Platonism came from religion, which which, to be honest, I don't know. I don't know enough to not. Yeah, but I don't I don't necessarily buy that because you have the you have the what do you call it? You have the cult of elusis and people engaging in old religious traditions. So hold on. I don't want to get in that historical element. Let's just take it on the face. And we can because I'm making I'm making it a claim that is independent necessarily of let's compare this tradition to this tradition. My claim is that I don't believe that you can have a functional, let's say, socially cohesive culture that does not rest on faith claims. Right now, at my my my my additional claim, which I'm understanding now, it's probably better to go on this other argument is that faith claim is conditioned by religion. But unless you start from a premise that is made on what is that? What is so one? I need to know what faith is, but that's let's put that aside for a second. So my argument is I don't I don't even like you can have faith claims without religion as far as I can tell, like that doesn't matter. But I don't think that's so I don't think any you don't need faith claims at all for anything. I mean, I use zero faith claims in my life for anything. As you do secular societies. Well, you can bring it up in a second. But most secular societies don't use faith at all, but still have cohesive social networks. And so what like the name one? What's one secular society's community of Austin? The freedom for a nation, a country, not a foundation. Well, or a point here. Society. So the point here is just to say that we can have secular nations that specifically reject faith. I don't know of any countries that specifically reject faith, but there are organizations that specifically reject faith and still have cohesive societies of people. Sure. And my argument would be that those here's the here's the crux of the issue. Those societies that you're referencing have not been around long enough for selection to select against. And therefore we don't know. We can't say for certain that those are as stable and foster the social cohesion that religions do, which have a proven track record of fostering cohesion because they've been around long enough for selection to act against them. Had they not fostered that social cohesion, they would have they would have got wiped out and I would claim that what and I brought this up earlier when I say politics is a religion. I don't believe you can have this secular society that does not ultimately degrade down into making claims about like we're better than them or some fundamental premise that is not based on rationality or something like that. So it's supposed to be based on rationality. And I'm not I don't understand what you're saying. I don't understand. So so any of your faith claims there or let's take it. Let's take it to like foundational moral principles. What what are the premises of secular humanism that you build? Oh, I'm not a second, so I'm the wrong person to ask that. What are your premises? Whatever they are, sorry. Involuntary position of will is wrong. Is immoral? What is it? Involuntary imposition of will is wrong. Immoral. Yeah. Is immoral. And what is the rational basis for that? Following the evidence of moral intuition, moral progress, plotting it out on a pattern graph, seeing that there's a pattern described the pattern with the principle that most accurately describes the pattern, used the pattern to infer a hypothesis that we can use to make predictions. It's the exact same thing we use in philosophy for moral realism. I am going to be honest. I didn't really understand what that meant. Science. We use plot the data, find a pattern and describe the pattern and make a prediction. And who adjudicates between whether or not that's. Well, hold on. Wait. I asked you, what's the rational basis? Why is the client? So why is it? Why should I as an individual not be willing to impose my will on someone else for my own gain in any given moment? So moral claims in philosophy are treated like any claim. It's a truth claim to establish a truth claim that's to correspond to reality in some way. The way you test if something corresponds to reality is by predictions. Find a pattern, see, make predictions, see if they get right. And then you know who's right. And so. Well, no, well, I don't necessarily agree with that because I think I think the the validity of a truth claim is is how much utility it provides and prediction is one. You mentioned prediction, prediction is a type of utility. If we can predict something we care about, that's a form of utility. But if, for example, if it's if it's useful for me to treat other people as means to an ends and not like they're they have equal rights as me or whatever. And it benefits me and all my friends and all my family. Then what's the rational argument against that? What's the rational argument against me? Taking up, you know, taking over my neighbor's land or something like that. All right. Seems like you're thinking that rational argumentation has some relevance to morality. It's like it doesn't matter if there's a rational argument for to convince you of anything, whether someone is subject to the relevant. So like if you say it is beneficial for me and my family to believe that there is a giant gold brick beneath our house, but we tested and there isn't one, well, then you're wrong. I don't care if we can convince you, whether we can convince you, whether we give you a rational argument makes no difference. I'm sure you're familiar with, you know, the metaphorical truth concept, right? Yes, my claim would be that religion is essentially a compendium of metaphorical truth, right? The idea that is if you act as if something is true, then, you know, the question of whether or not it's true is like. It's more important how we act rather than whether or not it corresponds to reality as such, because, like, I don't know if you're conscious. So is it true that you're conscious? It's like, well, I act as if you're conscious and I assume that, you know, you and I are inhabiting similar mental spaces, but I have no way of proving that. It's a faith claim to assume that you're conscious. No, not in philosophy. It's you can have knowledge about certainty, but that's a separate topic. So to go back to this, you can have knowledge without certainty. Yes, it's called. OK, I believe I'm when you said I believe that when I say a faith claim, I believe that's what I'm referring to. So I'm saying you cannot you cannot make you cannot have a moral system that doesn't start with some claim that is ultimately irrational. We don't know. None of those words made sense to me. So I we can have knowledge without certainty there. Like, and you you're trying to refer to that when you say faith, that we can have knowledge that doesn't have certainty and anything. So you're saying knowledge, not without certainty is faith. I believe that's the definition of faith unless I'm completely wrong here. Knowledge without certainty is faith. I don't what's what's the difference in faith? What's faith to you? A belief without evidence or insufficient evidence is. And how is that different from knowledge without certainty? Knowledge has is justified true beliefs. We have a justification. So what does that mean? Has what is justified? It means a reason to believe the proposition is more likely true than false. Right. And if you don't have evidence for that belief, is that not knowledge with uncertainty? No, then it would no longer be justified. So so knowledge is a justified, true beliefs. You need you need to believe something and you need to have justification. If you don't have a justification, then it's just a belief. It's not knowledge. And for knowledge, you need you need to be a belief and you need justification and it needs to be true. You need all three of those things without the justification. It's not knowledge. It's just a belief. I'm not I'm not following this. I don't again. And I'm I'm I want to I want to focus on this point because I think this is where the disagreement is is like we like what. To the degree that Western society is functional, it's because we treat everyone with equal rights. We say, hey, it doesn't matter if someone is different from you. It doesn't matter what they are. They all deserve rights. They all deserve to be treated as if they are intrinsically valuable human beings. Right now. No. Well, OK. I mean, there's lots of societies that don't treat people. Yeah. And I would say they're not functional, like what? What's a society like Saudi Arabia? It's very functional. It's not the most functional, but it's functional. China is extremely functional. Very interesting that you that the that the atheists is the one claiming that Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia is a very functional. Well, functional means the people are starting to death. We were you from a from a point of view of individual well-being. Well, functional is like we're contrasting all possible governments. Though a non-functional government is where the people are starving to death. That's a non-functional government. Any government or one that represses gay people, for example. Well, I mean, no, because that like the definition of what what the job of a government to do is to succeed at providing the majority of the population with survival and reproduction. And so it can be very bad towards some people, but very good towards other people and still be a functional government. I'm not sure like functional government doesn't mean perfect government. We don't have a perfect government. There's no such thing. So some are worse than others. And our government is very discriminatory towards certain groups in a very similar way to how Saudi Arabia is discriminatory towards LGBT people. That doesn't mean it's it's dysfunctional. It's still a functional government provides food to people. But I don't really I don't I have no idea. Oh, did he cut out? It looks like apologies for that. Looks like he dropped. I'm not sure why. I'll adjust everyone's camera. If you'd like to keep on talking for a second to jump, maybe he will come back. We like to play in chess or something like that. Send in a love out there to everyone in the shadow sphere. Please don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoy even more fantastic debates. And hopefully he will come back. Might be having internet issues. But he was better than the previous debate or at least makes coherent arguments. Oh, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Welcome back. God was upset with me. I bet. OK, yes. And for the record, I don't literally believe in a literal like Jesus rose from the dead in all. In case that was I didn't make that clear in front. Are we good to go? Sorry, I don't want to. Yeah, where were what was the last thing you remember? I freaked out as soon as my connection went out. My my challenged. We were talking about unjustified truth claims and knowledge without certainty. I'm saying the the the functionality of West the functionality of art of. In order to have a society that is functional from the perspective of maximizing human well-being, it has to make certain assumptions in its. Well, what do you mean by functional matrix? So by functional, I mean. Maximize is not starving to death. That's one that's one consideration. But if everyone is not serving to death, but they're all under a tyranny and have no rights. We're talking about maximizing well-being. I mean, do you buy the idea that there is a moral landscape and there's different peaks and valleys of well-being? None of them maximize well-being. So what do you mean by maximizing well-being? Which what is like you need a more specific definition here? I don't I mean like from. I assumed it was self-evident in terms of like maximizing people's rights and freedoms and capacity for meaning and social connection like libertarians have this argument all the time that we're infringing on everyone's rights. Like, yes, we are in lots of ways. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad and there are ways in which the US government oppresses people just like there are ways that Saudi Arabia oppresses people. Sure. But the degree of oppression is different, obviously. Right. But that's what I'm saying. That's what I mean. You're not giving a principle of what defines a functional government. You're just giving this arbitrary like utopian definition that you think the things that get closest are the ones that are functional or something like it doesn't really tell us anything of what you're saying. I feel like this point is not as complex as you're making it out to be, right? A society that treats its citizens as if they have inherent rights is I think we can say is generally a better is a more desirable society, a more morally functional. I'm using kind of words, assuming people can understand them just, you know, on the face of it. That is better than a society that treats people as if, you know, some people are better than others. And my point is the ethic that all people should be treated equally is a faith claim, right? There's no, what is the, again, what is the rational? I'll use the example that Matt Dilla-Hunty had in his debate with Jordan Peterson. I think this gets to the crux of the issue is Matt Dilla. And I don't know to what degree you share your beliefs with Matt Dilla-Hunty. But the idea is if, okay, good. That's a good, that's a good sign. But the idea is if you, if you can't arrive at conclusions that I should treat all people as if they have inherent worth outside of a faith, outside of starting with a faith claim, because like in Nazi Germany, the claim was, the idea was, hey, it's rational for, if you're a German or an Aryan, it's rational for you to go along with all of the horrible crimes and whatnot and seize the resources of a smaller population. It's good for you to go for your family with the society. There's two points there. One is that every academic philosophy and ethics is going to disagree with you and say, that's bullshit. Okay, I completely reject that, but go ahead. Well, is that not, hold on. Is that not an appeal to authority? I believe it's... No, appeals to authority are only fallacies if they're not actual authorities. If the actual authority is in the field of ethics. Who decides who the authorities are? The people who can actually make progress in the field and understand the field the best, which is not you. So the academic professional philosophers in ethics use arguments and evidence and logical structures and Bayesian epistemology. Continue your point about, continue your point about. Yes. So the academic philosophers use evidence, not faith to make conclusions. Okay. And the second thing is that even if it did use faith, you can have faith without religion. Like you... No, I don't believe that. I think that's a definition. And this is a definitional thing. To make, to have a faith claim is a religious claim. Wow. Those are completely separate topics. It's mostly the case that religious people use faith, but there's no logical entailment of either. Okay. And maybe we just are operating in a complete different frame. When I hear the term faith, like religious people base their ideas on faith, faith at the Bible is the word of God, whereas atheists base it on... Evidence. Right. So there's, right. So you can't, right. And my point is you can't talk about evidence and you can't make claims about evidence without operating in a framework that is defined on faith claims. Like the idea that... That doesn't make sense, but I want to go back to the original question. Why do you think you can't have faith without religion? Because I understand that most religious people base their religion on faith, but it's a coincidence. There's no necessary connection. Fair enough. And I might just honestly be definitionally confused. What's an example of a faith claim that's not religious? Faith claim that's not religious. Well, there's many different most atheists around the world believe in spirituality without a God. And those are faith claims. So like ghosts, Reiki, energy, crystals. Okay. I wouldn't differ. Well, I would argue that's just a different form of religion. I mean, what, well, hold on. Maybe we should, maybe it would have helped at the beginning. What is your definition of religion that I curiosity? An institution of beliefs set around worshiping a God of some kind. OK. OK, based around a God. OK, the problem with that definition is that if I say something, this is why I brought this up earlier. When I say something like politics is a new is a religion for a lot of people. Everyone watching understands what that means. But according to your definition, that doesn't line up. Right. Because it's a figurative usage, not a literal usage. And so the literal definition of the dictionary would not apply for football or politics or football. OK, that that's an appeal to Webster's definition. No, it's language. Language is how we use words. Yeah, hold on. But all. OK, and this is it's a shame we only have 45 minutes because we could have a good discussion. All language is is ultimately based on a metaphorical on metaphorical cognition. This is George Lekoff. What? Hold on. So let me let me explain. For example, hold on. Let me explain. Because you tell me what it metaphysical cognition is metaphorical, not metaphysical, right, which doesn't clarify anything. It means that all of our language is is is is ultimately. And this is a complex idea, but it's ultimately based on non. On non literal. How do I say this? All language is metaphorical to some degree. So, for example, we're having a debate, right, plus one equals two. Hold on. That's mathematics, which is a different realm. But hold on. That's that's a language. Well, hold on. Let me give you a simple example. Let me give you. Yes. But math, mathematics, I'm talking about language, like linguistic language, like semiotics, not mathematics. Hold on. If I if we're having a debate and like we in a debate, you attack my ideas and I defend my ideas and I attack your ideas. Right. That's a metaphor. And if I say, for example, like prices are rising or temperatures, that's not a metaphor. Hold on. Because I'm not literally attacking your positions. Am I right? Spear. Right. But you're you're well, actually, you you are attacking them because it's I'm attacking them. No, no, literally, literally attacking. Yeah, because attacking doesn't mean physical attack. Attack can mean any kind of. Right. Because it's figured out something. Well, no, no, attack as a literal word can be. I know this would be. We need to have an experience. I don't understand how this ties into the topic of the debate here. What why are you saying how did it come up? How do we get to the topic? The question is, is how can you have or why can't you have faith without religion? I what what was the example of the faith claim that that was faith that was not religion? Well, because we talk about spirituality and whatnot, right? You said spirituality is not religion. Well, I would argue you you haven't given your definition of this is right. This is how we got back to it. You had given your definition of religion is a belief in a God institution around belief in God. And I would say the fact that people regularly use the language of politics as a religion and everyone understands what that means indicates that religion is something. Religion is something you hold sacred. Religion is something you would give your life for. Religion is something it's not it's it's not one propositional definition, right? Or religious are those beliefs you hold most sacred, right? That's your that's an individual's religion. And you say, well, OK, that, you know, it's like that's different from the institutional aspect of religion, which I agree with. OK, I'm totally lost here. So like if religion is the things you're going to give your life for or whatever, like those can also be your religion or the beliefs that you hold most sacred and the beliefs that you hold most sacred are not based on rationality. The things that you take on faith, right? But like a political system can be purely based on rationality. You know, none of it's sacred. It's just this is the rational rules. Like you don't need to hold any of the political system like what? What's a political system that's only based on rationale? Don't run stoplights. That's I agree that's rational. That's that's it's very if anyone's watching, it's rational to not run stoplights. But what's the assumptions that are built into that? You shouldn't run stoplights. Why? Because it might kill someone, right? Yeah, which it was purely logical because it damages society. Right. But this is my point about and why is all that bad? Because it's ultimately bad for the well being. Well, no, so that's I think I think I can. So there are multiple ways to assess why that's bad and you don't need some kind of a God or a religious basis to conclude it's bad. You can purely be a logical computer and say, if I want to maximize the economy's growth or maximize this value, I want to make money. Then in order to do that, I need more people doing more stuff for longer in order to make more people more do more stuff and need to die less, sort of die less, put in stoplights. Purely rational, you can get exactly the same results without any kind of appeal to some kind of religious gobbledygook. Here's why I disagree with that for two reasons. Number one, the world is so complex that it's it's not possible to take in all of the variables that you can account for. How do we map? You can you can make a very sophisticated model of how do we model the economy and whatnot, but there's too much information and too many variables that there's no way to rationally compute the infinite amount of data. You don't need to compute all of them. Why is that relevant? You just said, hold on. Slippery, you just said that you could just rationally compute if you just had any one factor. So I can compute any one factor that is damaging the economy and make a law to mitigate that one factor. I don't need to consider any of the other factors. What? That's the opposite of that's that's literally. That's literally the definition of like an offer. So, for example, if you make a model and I'll give you an example, I'll give you an example that was literally every other relevant variable. I'll give you an example that was literally applied in St. Paul in St. Paul. They added there was a statistic that says people are children who have a college savings account of greater than one dollar are three times more likely to go to college. Therefore, St. Paul implemented a policy that says all children born will be given a college bank account of fifty dollars. So they just said, here's the data. Yeah, I don't care about anything else. It's working. And you can attribute that in your one hundred percent certain that it was attributed to the hundred cent certainty. It is very, very certain, but I don't need a hundred percent certainty. But the point here is that policy. We were religious claimants. You don't need you don't need faith. The point here is that the policy was looking at data from a data. It made an inference about a conclusion and it said, here is the policy in order to increase the number of people who go to college had no no religious basis is here whatsoever. It's purely economical. And we don't need to calculate literally everything in the economy to do this. Nobody does that literally. If we had to do that, there would be no policies ever written by anybody. No politician to read essentially anything that they write. They're just trying to do things based off their intuition. Nobody has you don't have to know all of the data to make a political decision. That's not how it works. OK, I agree. And I'm going to take it for granted that people watching this can understand why a single variable analysis of an economic policy is not. You cannot draw causal inferences from that. I just I don't I want to argue that here's the deeper point. What what you decide to value? You say, well, OK, we want like why? Why do we care about increasing the well-being of kids in Minneapolis? It's because we believe. That those kids deserve a better life. Why should you and I care about some kids in Minneapolis when you and I could, you know, not pay our taxes for that and we could benefit independent of that? Why is it not a rational plane can can determine certain value statements without any or any faith claims whatsoever? Like evolution causes you to not like. We've gone over this multiple times. I just I don't I don't believe and this does tie into the conversation about metaphorical cognition, which I'm reading right now that I'm actually. This is it's called metaphors we live by. It's George Lakoff. He's the founder of the field of metaphorical cognition and embodied cognition. Well, you were appealing earlier to all the philosophers and what to claim to make because it was directly related to your claim. But what? Sure. And and and my. My point, and this is and this is obviously clearly we're running into a lot of definitional barriers of like when you say like there are atheists who believe in spirituality and there's atheists who believe in the value of other people just because it kind of makes sense. No, because of actual arguments, never the same way we use everything in philosophy. So not religion. Who? Man, I don't know. You say you say how we do it in philosophy. I'm sure there's plenty of people in philosophy you disagree with and yet you keep referencing them as. So how who is this we in philosophy that you keep all of them? All of the people I agree with and the people I disagree with. We use the same logical arguments, the same Bayesian epistemology, the same way of assessing evidence like we come to different conclusions, but we use the same evidence. Really? Do you think that postmodernist do the same thing? I don't know of any postmodernists in that field. Which field are we talking about philosophy, philosophy and ethics? Well, then you severely underestimate the degree to which society is in danger of bad ideas. Can I name one? Postmodernist, that is an academic professor of ethics. Sure. Kimberly Crenshaw is one of the most prominent. She's not a professor of ethics. Her work has vast implications in the field of ethics as it relates to political decisions. Does it not? Intersectionality? What does that have to do with the academic field of ethics? That's completely irrelevant. I feel like we're getting too into the weeds in this. Let's go back. Why do you think you can't have faith without religion? Again, maybe I can make a different example. That doesn't require a definitional rabbit hole. People hold, like I said, people hold values sacred, right? People orient their lives around sacred values, right? Values that they just take as like the fundamental orienting principle of life. Do you disagree with that? Sort of. Let's go with it. OK. For example, like... Grant it. Give me one. Sure. OK. Therefore what? Therefore what? Therefore, when people act on a set of beliefs they hold sacred, those actions or at least the extreme versions of those actions are religious. So let me clarify because the reason I'm using this relatively broad term, and I believe and I agree with the statement that politics is a new religion. And I think just because other people agree with me doesn't mean it's correct. So fair enough. I'm just saying that I take that as I understand what that means. Therefore what? Therefore, well, as it relates to this argument, therefore, if if if politics is a religion, we accept politics as religion, then that is in line with my claim that all culture, all cultures are built on religious. No, no, I'm trying to figure out like what do like do you mean by religion? Any value claim at all? What do you mean a value claim? I'm saying that the beliefs that people hold most valuable, most sacred, are their religious beliefs. And here's my point. Here's why I think that definition is good and useful in the context of this argument. Religious extremism is as bad, but I would say not worse than any form of like secular extremism. And that's because people are because people hold their political values as sacred as their religious values. So when you make the claim like, well, atheists believe in spirituality or they're they're atheists who are just political. It's like the fact that, for example, there are people who are willing. All of the worst aspects of religious extremism are also embodied by people who are quote unquote not religious. But then I think, OK, yes, they are. Yes. So like to give you an example, Jainism religion. Well, sort of it doesn't have a sure that's religion. Yes. Extreme Jains never blow themselves up. It doesn't happen. Yes. Jainism is a pacifist religion. And so people who are extremism or have extremism or are extremists will accentuate the factors of whatever they're extreme about. And so if you're extreme about a religion that's very violent, you're going to crash planes into buildings. But guess what? Secular religions don't have that. There isn't any of them. None of their ideologies have that. Is I would say, OK, Marxist Leninism is an atheist religion, right? Is it as an atheist belief system? We'll we'll avoid the religion term right now. No, Marxism was an ideology and the social system of communism is what killed people. Nothing to do with like the Marxism didn't kill people. It was the communism that killed people. The Marxism had nothing to do with communism. No, Marxism was like a principle that they used to try to found the communism. Marxism doesn't say anything about star people to death or adopt. What it does say things. It does say things about religion, correct? And the yes, it says things about religion, which has absolutely nothing to do with the mass murder. Like nothing in Marxism says mass. Really? OK. OK. Yes. Again, this is my point about we're all of the examples of mass. We're taking a lot of assumptions. I assume that most people like. I agree that there are, for example, I agree that there are good ideas in Marxism that we can evaluate, but to claim that the that the ideology on which communism was based on did not play a fundamental role in the down in the worst extremities of communism seems absurd to me on the face of it. But perhaps I'm offering things that killed people in communism was the was the adoption of Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism was an alternative. This sounds review of Darwin. And when Stalin adopted Lysenkoism, he planted plants in such a way that literally caused them to die, which caused them to not have enough food caused millions of people to start to death. It was not like because of Marxism. It was because they adopted bad science. It's like saying that's like saying, you know, when when the when the Christians went on the Crusades, it wasn't because of there's nothing in the Bible that says anything about the Crusades. It's just that, you know, they they took this one wrong thing. It's like, no, no, no, the Christian societies that were based on Christian doctrine, that was probably probably made bad decisions based on the flaws in that Christian doctrine. Sure, you could say like if a Christian decided to build a bridge or something or destroy a bridge doesn't say destroy a bridge in a Bible, which is completely correct. They just made a bad scientific error that the Bible says nothing about. Then yes, that scientific error would have nothing to do with the Bible. But if they do something that's literally commanded by go out and take all of their peoples, that's a direct commandment in the Bible. You can just read the Bible and it says to do something like that. And I believe in the Communist Manifesto, it says something in the effect of kill the bourgeoisie and their children because their children have been contaminated by bourgeoisie ideas. And you're saying that's not that didn't have any influence on the. There's no mention in Marxism of I don't know about that claim, but there's no mention of Marxism of Lysyncholism. The predominant killer of people in communism was the adoption of Lysyncholism. And there's nothing I think you are narrow. I think just like your claim about we're going to look at one dimension of the Minneapolis kids and say we did this one. We make we change this one factor. And therefore that was the causal factor. You're you're somehow laying at the feet of communism. It's only Lysyncholism that caused the come. Never mind what Mark said about killing the bourgeoisie and their children from starvation. Wasn't it? Yes. Look, why did people starve? Was Stalin just taking their food away? Why did they starve? What caused the starvation? Was it a lack of food? And then P.F. after you answer that, we got about four or five minutes before we switch into the queue. And that's fair. That's fair. That's fair. That might be a little bit more productive. Um, OK. Well, uh, mostly I actually think. Well, but beyond that point, because I think we're just going to go on a rabbit hole there. Beyond that point, I genuinely actually think a at some point, Tom, if you'd be interested, a longer discussion to kind of understand where it's less of a debate where I have to present claims. I'm genuinely curious to understand more on your perspective because and I'm not saying I'm right. Um, like because you said there's you can you can have faith faith without religion. I was I'm under the assumption that a faith claim is a is a religious claim. But but but you know, you made the point about like, OK, there's atheists who are spiritual and stuff. It's like, OK, that's fair enough. That requires me then to kind of iron out, you know, well, is spirituality just a kind of a decentralized religion type thing, which is a different claim. But but clearly, I think we've gone. I have done a poor job clearly of articulating. Well, I don't even have the I mean, finished the book yet. I got to finish the book for I can make better claims. But I think we there are just some sort of assumptions that you and I have that are that are just different on the face. I have to tease out to have a more stronger examples. There would be like many scientists believe that their pet theory is going to be proven to be true. That's nothing to do with any kind of religious. Yeah, like Richard Dawkins and the selfish sheen, right? E. O. Wilson, that was correct. The selfish sheen was correct on pretty much everything. Uh, to some degree, there's people that dispute that who are more more credible than you and I, for sure. Not really. Like it's a pretty basic claim that you don't think you may need substantial claims. I feel bad because we're I think you and I have knowledge on this, but not everyone watching this. So we're kind of just talking like assholes right now. Well, the selfish sheen was a book about publicly informing the populist about things that had already been discovered. Selection at the level of the gene. No, no, no, no, no. There were no novel things that Richard Dawkins proposed on that. He was just. He's not even a scientist. He's a journalist. No, he is. He is literally right. He is a PhD, but he's never. I don't believe he has published. That's part of the dissertation process. You absolutely have to publish to be in that field. But you know, Wilson was infinitely more credible than Richard Dawkins accused of being a journalist. I'm taking that for granted. That's foolish. He's he's publishing already researched, published stuff. So it wasn't which people dispute. People dispute that none of the stuff in his book. They dispute because it's very, very basic stuff. No, no, they just because because people argue that group selection and multi-level selection actually has not that's not contradiction to anything he said in the book. Like that's literally. No, this is my point. It's just you and I talking. We're not even the audience he grants. That's literally the central claim is is is Richard Dawkins is not a militant. No crusade. You could say for using religious language. Again, it's not exclusive. It's just explaining the one concept of natural selection. It's not saying all of the other ones are false. It never said that in the book ever. I don't know. And on that note, guys, if you would like in either order to say what you got going on, in fact, we have both of our debaters links in the description below and then your final thoughts on the subject before we move into the Q&A. Yes, well, ultimately, the reason I care about this topic is because I'm worried about political polarization, which is a lot of what I focus on my channel. My last video is called Jeanette McCurdy is a fascist. So if anyone is interested in understanding my views, they can check that out. But I believe that the religious impulse that when I say politics is like a religion, you know, and maybe I should have phrased mine to take my argument from that perspective. I mean that like you can you can rationally critique religion, but then ultimately what happens is because we because we evolved so long alongside religion that it shaped our psychology and shaped how we think. What ends up happening is people just take their sacred beliefs away from while God is the ultimate highest good in the value to, you know, our country is the highest value or our country is the most important thing that we should protect or fighting for the oppressed is the most important thing we should protect. And then people act out extreme behavior as a result of those sacred beliefs, which you say, well, they're not religious because they don't appeal to a higher God. But again, you know, I just kind of came in here assuming most people understand what people say when they say politics is a religion. And you made the point that that's a figurative figure of speech to which I owe people a more sophisticated explanation of why using language as a figure of speech. It's not you can't you can't dismiss it that simply because because all of our language is ultimately rooted in like metaphorical symbolism like, you know, time is money. I spent my time in this debate. Do you see what I'm saying? Right? Do you see what I'm saying? Do you understand me? Do you comprehend what I'm saying? Right? There's all these all if you take every single word in the human language and trace it down to its roots, it ends up being a physical reference to a physical concept because it's built out of our bodies, much like the number system base 10 is built off the number of fingers we have every word in every language is based upon a physical reality. So meaning like, hey, when we say prices rise, like, well, prices don't actually exist. How do we understand the idea that prices rise? Because we have it in built in us that something rising is going up. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it. So thanks for having me on the on the first time. I'll I appreciate everyone following along as I try to explain myself. But, you know, we're here to learn. Lovely to have you here on modern day debate. And all right. With that, no, what? What is skipping me? What is this? What is this with that T jump? That's what I'm saying. The floor is yours. What do you come on time on? And what are your final? I sell bathtubs. Check out my YouTube channel. YouTube.com slash T jump. Give me money. A Patreon to join my Patreon. You can block Scotty on. I should say give me money. Give me money, too, by the way. Don't give me money. My money is better because my money doesn't take faith. No faith money. Yes, I actually don't have any option to give me money. So it's good. Thank you so very much, a T jump. And in fact, thank you both of our inner walketers. But with that, we are going to move into our Q&A. Keep on sending in your questions by tagging me and Amy Newman or sending your super chat to the front of the line, including $5 from Hale Santana who sends a super sticker of saying keep it up while lifting weights. Thank you so very much, Hale Santana for the support. Well, the spice is real coming in from Foxfire. Why T jump? Get real debaters like Dr. Maze or R and raw, even though I agree with him. He is so bad. Can't you do better? Good gosh. I'm going to stop watch it. Sending love Foxfire Dr. Maze. Um, I am not sure though we love both of our inner locketers here with us tonight, but we also appreciate our super chatters for the support. So thank you, Foxfire and $10 from Mark Reed. Was that Mark? I was going for young. Can someone have faith in their sports team? Even though the evidence is that their team is terrible. Does that make the sport or religion? Should they get a tax exemption under religious status? Um, as a Chicago Bears fan, I, uh, empathize with the even though the team is terrible. We still root for them. Um, I, um, someone made this point of, um, all of the riots that occur after football games that people die in and cause all kinds of damage. It's like that level of extremism, which people genuinely die in. It's like to me, that's an example of that. That's people acting as if their football team is religious. Right. And so should it be treated as a religion with a tax exemption? Um, probably not. Um, I actually don't even know if religious institution should be treated as, um, should have tax exemptions. But, but, but if someone is willing to kill someone else for their sports team, I don't think it's accurate to describe it in any other way than it's basically a religion for them. That's just me. Thank you for the super chat and the answer $5 question from a flaymo tea jump. What is your best debunk of discord ism? What? The I think it is a joke, but, um, discord an ism. It's not a very funny joke. If we have to go, I think it's a joke. Only, uh, Gilbert Godfrey can explain a joke and make it funnier. That's fair. But sending love to all flaymo, um, if we got your wrong and it was a very serious question, then just tag me and we'll read it again. But thank you for the support of flaymo $2 super chat from John Mathers, uh, quote, the greatest show on earth by Richard Dawkins. Documentary. Thank you so much, John and $5 super chat from Stephen Mulroney. Like sycone ism is related to mark ism. I completely butchered that. Leetwin. Yes. Leetwan and co-rejected stability of traits, genetic determinism as reactionary. Tom doesn't know history of biology. What? I'm going to try that one more time. Laysync ism is related to mark's ism. Lay Newton and co-rejected stability of traits, genetic determinism as reactionary. Yeah. Yeah. Laysync based his evolutionary theory on mark's ism. Um, Mark's didn't. So the fact that Laysync wanted to try to impose mark's ism on biology and thinking mark's ism is true fact about biology doesn't mean that it's a fact of mark's ism. But killing the bourgeoisie and all their children is in the communist manifesto Laysync or ism or not? Wait, why is that? The communist manifesto which one marks right? Uh, didn't he write the communist manifesto with angles? Um, kill the bourgeoisie. I don't remember that part. You can also look up Mark's in the n-word and that'll show a bunch of times. And with that we are moving on to a $2 super chat from Stephen Moraney again. Luton et al just had different prescriptions. So kind of a follow up to his last one. What was the question? It was just basically bouncing off because he said the last one relating to genetic determinism but he was also saying that Luton et al just had apparently different prescriptions. I don't get it. Send in so much love Stephen. Uh, five dollars super chat from Big Bad Mama. You've invented a guy- I can't find the word kill. I just pulled up the communist manifesto. The word kill isn't even in it as far as I can tell. Sure. I uh, he might have used a different word than kill. I left my communist manifesto at home in Chicago. I got to get it in a month but we can have the receipts. A $5 super chat from Big Bad Mama. P.F. You've invented a God concept in your mind that is different than others. How can your own self delusion and a billion others not be divisive? Oh, he used the kill. He either would kill once socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone was the one usage in the entire book. Sure. Um, well, I will uh, I will have to follow up on the exact phrase he used. I don't maybe he wasn't as obvious as kill the bourgeoisie. He might have said massacre or, uh, or he might have said, um, purge or something like that. Um, maybe someone in the massacre used one time and it's describing the French, the revolution or the February revolution is not a person. I will, I will, um, next time we talk, which I hope we can talk at length in a, in a much friendlier setting, I will, um, I will start with the receipts on that. Um, sorry, what the question was what my self delusion is divisive? Well, but if I subscribe to a belief that all people are equal and all people have something about them that's that's valuable and it's not up for me to say, well, just because I can take advantage of this person, I should. Um, then I think that's not divisive, but certainly if, if your belief is I'm the best one here and everyone else should serve me, that would be divisive. So it does, like I said, it does depend on what the religious, um, exactly what the religious claims are. Someone suggested eliminate, eliminate also used one time and it's, um, eliminate social abuses. So it's not about limiting people. So eliminate also not it. And what I will throw out there is it sounds like there's an upcoming fantastic political debate that you guys have to have here on modern day debate. Marxism, baby. Yes. Let's do it. Well, I'm not even a fan of Marxism. It's just what you're saying is well, you certainly come across what? No, I'm just kidding. Oh, the spice is real. $5 super chat from skyline studios for T jump. Your argument of getting rid of religion, even though it made your culture is like killing your grandma. Um, well, I mean, I'm not going to use my grandma's understanding of science or politics or philosophy in order to make accurate decisions today in society. That would definitely be a bad idea if you think that using grandma's policies in order to understand science, that's you'd be wrong. You don't have to eliminate her. You just say that. Yeah, grandma, we have, we have better ideas now we've made some progress since then your grandma ideas are not the best anymore. Thank you so very much for the super chat and the response a $10 super chat from john Mathers. What does Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of cannon say about the origins of Judaism, Islam and Christianity? Why is it worth downloading for free from internet Archive? Is this like a like an ad for his PDF now that now that I get to the end of it, it does sound like I'm about to add, but wait, there's more with 499 but sending love, John matters. Well, he's also sending another response. So he's really sending us a love $5 Yahweh and gods and goddesses of cannon by John Day. There you go. You got your plug, but we send in love for the support of really appreciate however comments and questions for our fantastic interlocutors up here. Continuing for well, I think we should all check the book of T jump T joke. Patreon that www.patreon.com T jump check by the book of T jump. That's right, baby. And we're also sending love out there to all of our fantastic viewers. Don't forget to like follow and subscribe. But Mr. Monster, a member for six months, sending in a $5 Super Chat. If you could pick one religion that would be best for society, what religion would it be and why? And it seems like this is for both of you. He F unionism, which is whatever religion I believe in. We're all we're all cosmic entities. We all are connected in some divine way and psychedelics play some role in that. And and yeah, I'm far too far too ignorant in my spiritual journey to suggest that I have the answer to that question. But T jump might not be. I mean, depends on what you mean by better. Like what is the most pragmatically useful religion? It's probably the ones adopted in secular societies, some kinds of secular humanism. Thank you. And we are moving on to some of the normal questions. This will be your chance for you to ask either of our interlocutors once again, but you can get it sent to the top of the line by sending in super chats. Delaney question has P. P. F. Young heard the quote religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together. Quote James Madison. I have not heard that quote. I would say that the government on which we are founded makes is based on a religious system. So James Madison could say that, but you not believe the founding father. All of the founding fathers are I don't believe any of the founding fathers are divine in their in their claims. But so I mean, I believe aren't their founding fathers who are like, not slavery is cool or something like that. Or we're like, we'll just deal with that later. I think that was a bad idea. So they can still be wrong. But you make if you make a system based on we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created by their creator with inalienable rights. That sounds like a religious claim to me. So I think it's more that all of the founding fathers use the words religion as something separate than political and foundational beliefs. But based on your definition, any words such as the separation between church and state was just meaningless because by your definition, you can't have a different no, no, because like Islamic theocracy cite the Quran as a legal text, but in the United States or any European country, I believe they don't cite the Bible as a legal text. But that is based on your definition of faith and religion. Those things would all be religion until there isn't you can't have a separation between religion and state. No, you can have you can have an ethic that was conditioned by religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean you have to cite a specific religious text. But wouldn't that ethics still be a religion by your definition because everything is a religion that has any value claim at all? The all the the beliefs that people hold the most sacred in their own lives is their religion. That's what I believe. Hence the term politics is religion and everyone knows what everyone knows that means. Everyone else knows what separation between church and state means to. Sure. The church is not the same as religion. What's the church is the institutional aspect. And a two dollar super chat from James W. What is up after show on Amy Newman's channel open mic that is right? Not only is there going to be a open mic after show on my channel, but if you decide that you want to run your own after show on any of the debates we will help out for you. So feel free to send those in because we love the community out there and send in love. James that is in the description and the chat and we're going right back into a few more regular questions. But if you want your question read get it in now because we only have a little bit more left for it a lock it is to have some fun with a question for P.F. Do you think religion has historically opposed technological progress? I.E. the Catholic Church outlawing the lightning rod and artificial lights or Islam opposing ice. And doing dissections of the dead bodies is also opposed to that and so did the Christian Catholic Church. Yes. Religion has definitely done all those things. In fact, they've done far worse things if you're talking about the Catholic Church, but I don't think that alone is a critique of religion or things that therefore religion is bad for society because it causes opposition of science. You could make that claim and now I would say it's a fallacy, but or what does it call when a is it non sequitur is when it doesn't follow from the premise? Sure, but that seems non sequitur than that seems to follow quite directly if religion causes people to ban science. Science is good for society. Water water kills people. Therefore water should be banned. That would be a non sequitur. Yes. Sure, right. Religion does bad things. Therefore religion is bad. Also non sequitur. Religions are the title of the topic. Anyway, and a $5 super chat coming in from John Mathers, any atheists who doesn't read Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of canon by John Day is lazy and any religious person who doesn't is scared. Oh my, the spices. Thank you so much, John. John, you could just super John. You could just pay me and I'll read it on stream. Just pay me and I will read it for you on stream. And we just are sending that love right back to you. We love all of our atheist and theist brothers and sisters. We'll see. Hopefully this will be on time, but I want to read all the spice. P.M. Young said utility equals truth. Therefore trans rights. Yeah, to some degree, sure. Yeah, I don't know what that exactly means, but I think letting adults do whatever they want and live the life that they see best fit for them seems like that would be utilitarian and therefore it's true that that would be a good thing. Unless I'm that would be libertarian, not utilitarian. Utilitarian would be against that. Why would a utilitarian be against that? Because we want to limit people's freedoms and rights to do what's best for society, not what's best for them as individuals. We're doing what's best for them for individuals. I'll be a libertarian. Well, maximizing people's rights is arguably good for society. In fact, the societies that are best off are those that maximize individuals, right? So no, I don't think that's right. No. And we're moving right. There are more laws in America. There are more laws in America that we have less rights than most other countries. It's not. Oh, we do in America. Yes. Oh, interesting. Okay. Again, this goes back to the we very much operate in different realms of facts. $2. Super chat from Heechield saying money for fish food for T jumps clam chair. Thank you so very much. You're sitting into the wrong place. You got a I thought it was I thought it was a croissant, but I guess it's a clam to in order to feed the clam tree to super chat me on my channel. Not giving James. Mine does not help feed the plan here. Amy, I think you're muted. Have to do it once a podcast. Hey, there asked if religion is bad for society. Why do religious people have less suicide rates? I think I teach I've actually gave a good explanation for it. Isn't there what was the explanation you gave? I don't think they do actually. I think they have higher suicide rates. They only have lower suicide rates in countries that are disproportionately more religious. So for suicide rates, if you're in a society that is disproportionately religious and you're non religious, you don't have as much social cohesion. So you're more depressed and so you have higher suicide rates, but in most secular nations, suicide rates are lower than in religious nations. And so overall, technically the rate of suicide is lower for secular nations than religious nations. Sure. Let's go with that. Question from Cameron for PF young name a scientific discovery given to us by religion. I don't think religion is in the business of scientific discoveries. I think religion is in the business of telling us how to live our lives. So say moral discoveries, the idea that hey, if we treat everyone as if they are children of God and we're actually all one tribe rather than looking at the people around us as a different tribe turns out that's better for society. So I would say that's a significant moral discovery, which is just as important, if not more so than a scientific discovery. And all right, it looks like we only have one or two more questions. So unless you get it now, it is now or never because we respect our interlocutors time. I do want to thank them again. Question from ma gammo. Atheists can change their values as we progress, but can religion keep updating its values? Question to young. Oh, argue depending on the religion. So arguably, yes. And this is the claim of someone like Jordan Peterson, who I know the only fan bigger of Jordan Peterson on this panel than I am is T. Jump. His claim is that Logos logic, which is the basis of logic, which he jump loves. And so do I. Like I said, it's his claim. I'm not saying it's true is that although I'm not saying it's not true is that the process of honest dialogue and honest communication is the updating mechanism and I'm not smart enough to articulate exactly how that process is unfolded. But the idea is if you have a religion that at the as its highest value is the exchange of honest ideas, which presumably we're having here. That's a good thing. And that's healthy. And the Christian idea, or at least Jordan Pearson interpretation of Christianity is that religion contains that self updating mechanism within it as its highest value, thus making it very valuable. I understand it. And all right. I see one just came in. So that means we have two, but Delaney P. F. Young harm is objective. How is this faith secular humanism all day, baby? Harm is objective. I would agree with I think pain is objective. The experience of suffering is objective. But then we get into a problem with language because pain is a subjective experience, but it's objective at the same time because you can't argue it away if you're experiencing pain. It's like it's an objective feature of your experience. I think this is I think the subjective objective dichotomy is one of the most hampering and handicapped notions that we have in philosophy because pain is objective. I like put your hand on a hot stove and you know, tell me it's not objective. So I don't know if there was more from that, but you look confused time. Do you disagree? Yeah. Yeah. Objective means stance independent truth. Subjective means stance dependent truth. So something is true only because a stance dependent on some stance or opinion like I like chocolate and stance dependent pain exists is obviously objective. I don't know why you think this is a confusing distinction. Okay. Well, we're going to have to get into it. I guess it's fine. All right. And the last question of the night, but thank all of you guys for sending it in T jump and P F young. Why hasn't either of you ever taken a religious anthropology course or a world religion course? If you feel comfortable debating about religion, form out your asses. I've taken both of those courses. I mean, they offer those high school. I've taken those courses. Those are like, I don't know. I don't know what the point here is. I will say sending in love. I do love reading questions, but the ad hominems are not always we like attacking. Yeah. Arguments ideas. Right. People ideas. Screw this guy. No, this guy sucks. We love all of our insults. I'm not like actual insults are better. The spice insults are fun. I'm not going to bonus points. If you call James a potato, I'm going to watch it. Oh, well, I do want to thank everyone out there for joining us tonight on modern day debate. We are in fact a neutral platform, a welcoming everybody from all walks of like even life. If you enjoy the show, please don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. It really does help us reach an even wider audience, including more fun debates. Like is society better off without religion with our debaters t jump and pf young here to help us find that answer. Plus, if you like what any of our guests have said tonight, all of their links are in the description below. Thank you for hanging us. Plus, if you're looking for more fun after there will be not only an after show, but go check out the mdd discord in the description below with that. I am Amy Newman with modern day debate. We hope you continue having great conversations, discussions and debates.