 Everybody, today we are debating Atheist versus Christian morality and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate as today we have two guests with us ready to get down on the mat and wrestle through the issues. It's going to be a fun one, folks. Want to let you know first, if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as this is the first of many more, well it's not the first, it's like the 281st debate of many more debates to come. It's going to be a lot of fun. Whew, guys keep an eye out. I'm going to post an event soon in the next 24 hours for an epic debate on whether or not there are good reasons or I should say good evidence to believe that God exists. In the next 24 hours that event will pop up as we are like on the verge of confirming an epic debate of grand proportions. So that's one that you don't want to miss. So that's one reason to hit that old subscribe and little bell notification and then you'll see Destiny vs. Vosh is coming up next month. That'll be live and in person if this is your or I should say if this is your first time here as well. If you have a question fired into the old live chat during the discussion and then I will read those off or at least as many as we can get to during the Q&A session at the end. Want to let you know that both of our speakers are linked in the description. I put their links for you so that if you're like, hmm, I like that. I like what I'm hearing. Well you can hear more by clicking on those links below with that very excited. It's going to be a roughly like five to 10 minute opening statement up to the debaters on how they want to use their five to 10 minutes and following that we're going to go into open conversation. So gentlemen very thrilled to have you here. I am trying to remember who was it that said that they would like to go first. I don't know if we actually established that to be honest with you but either way I don't mind. Gosh it sounds like CJ wants to go first. Thanks so much CJ. First time here that we have CJ and so as I mentioned folks, both of our guests are linked in the description. Thanks so much for being with us today CJ. Yeah and thank you very much for, thank you very much for having me here. So should I just, just to clarify, should I just jump right into the 10 minutes? That's right. I have got the timer set and the floor is yours. All righty fantastic and thank you and like you said there, my name is CJ Cox. I run the Cinecog YouTube channel and I'm definitely very happy to be here. This will actually be the first time I've ever done any sort of a recorded debate with an atheist so that'll be fun and hopefully we'll have many more just like it but let's go ahead and jump right in because I don't, excuse me, don't want to waste too much of my time on formalities and things like that. So my position is essentially that so you know what we were here to discuss is at least I believe whether or not Christian or Christianity or atheism actually better justifies morality. It is my position that theism not necessarily just Christianity but theism is the only way to actually justify morality if you have to take an objective moral framework and that anything other than objective morality is actually a morality that can't be said to properly exist. So let me go through all of the different points that I have here. There's essentially three points. First point, morality does indeed exist. I think we all know this as a result of our own personal moral experience. Even the sociopath is aware that something unfair is going on when he is you know having something stolen from him or something along those lines. So I think our moral experience definitely proves to us that morality does exist. If morality exists, point number two, it must be objective just to say one more time so everybody is clear. If morality exists, it must be objective. The reason I believe this is because if morality is subjective then in reality it's actually just a result of your own personal opinion, your own personal preference and anything like a moral code or moral framework that means anything concrete doesn't actually exist in that regard. If morality is consequential on the other hand, moral actions really don't have any value in it of themselves but rather only their consequences have value. In other words, if the President of the United States was the only thing stopping us from being evaded by aliens or something along those lines but it just so happened that he was a child ready for us or something along those lines, the consequentialist would say that we actually need to keep him in power because we have to make sure that we're having the greater good fulfilled and all that kind of stuff. Whereas I would say from an objective standpoint what we would have here is a moral wrong and something that is in need of a punishment of some kind. So point number one, morality exists. Point number two, if morality exists, it must be objective. Also standards must be determined by an outside source. That is just the very nature of standards. You don't know if something is tall unless you are comparing it to some sort of an average that is outside of itself, right? Third point, if morality is objective, God must be the source. Why must God be the source? Well for one, the source of morality must be, excuse me, must be unchanging as we were already establishing here. This is if morality exists to something that is concrete, then morality would be objective and objective by its very nature would be unchanging, would be an unchanging standard. And only something eternal could possibly be unchanging, something like God. If it's not unchanging, it's not a standard. It must be personal, rational, and intelligent because only personal, rational, and intelligent beings understand law and morality. In other words, it doesn't really make any sense to tell a rock, thou shalt not murder. Nor does it even make any sense to tell something like an animal, like a cat, right? Thou shalt not murder or anything along those lines because they don't understand it in the same way that we would. So you need to be intelligent in order to understand morality. You need to be intelligent in order to give morality. You need to have consciousness. You obviously need to be animated and you need to be personal. Furthermore, you have to be sent to all that other stuff. Furthermore, it has to be outside of and greater than humanity, outside of humanity because as we were already talking about, a standard must be outside of humanity and greater than humanity because anything that is giving some sort of a law, of course, is going to be higher than the person that they are giving the law to. And also, whatever this is must be able to enforce said morality. The thing about morality is morality is indeed a law. It is some sort of a decree. You should not murder is a decree. And decrees due by their very nature, if they're going to mean anything, need enforcement. In other words, if the United States government were to say, for example, you can't commit treason against the United States, giving some of our different secrets to Russia or something along those lines, they're exposing them. Look at Edward Snowden or any of the different examples you have there. That really would be a completely irrelevant law if there was no enforcement there. And of course, only personal intelligent beings enforce any sort of a moral law, just like only personal and intelligent beings give any sort of a moral law. Some of the other examples that people will try to use to find something else that is objective, I tend to find very lacking for a lot of different reasons. One of the most common I find is consent or imposition of will. First off, I would ask the question, what exactly makes consent or imposition of will wrong? Secondly, why exactly are certain things that would lack consent good, but other things that would lack consent are not good. For example, you don't really have consent as to whether or not you're going to march forward in the army once you join. You don't really have consent as the serial killer who's being restrained by the police officer, so on and so forth. Also, it's a little bit too small of a tent to be honest with you. There's a lot of moral wrongs that aren't actually imposition of will, excuse me. For example, you're not imposing your will on anybody else by telling a lie, nor are you imposing your will on anybody else by being greedy with your own money that you had made through legitimate means. But these are things that we would consider to be morally wrong, almost universally. People will say nature is another example of how we can get something objective. I don't mean to be rude, but I personally find this kind of hilarious. All you have to do is look at what goes on in the animal kingdom to know that nature is an absolutely terrible way to figure out your morality. Lions, of course, murder the cubs of the lion who they just stole the pride from. Ducks actually will gang rape female ducks. Wolves hunt and kill for fun. Cats are known to torture their food and so on and so forth. This is definitely not, and of course, you can just look at human being's own nature. I would argue we're certainly altruistic by nature, but there's definitely a lot of dark stuff in human nature. So if we were just slaves to our own nature, we certainly wouldn't get any good humanity there, or morality there, rather. Some people will say human flourishing, I would say why. I would say which humans, because the Nazi would argue that only the strongest possible humans can survive. Only the area in your humans can survive. And that being that we were stronger, being that we were taller, faster, smarter, all the kinds of things that they think they were going to accomplish, that as a result would make us greater and we'd have greater human flourishing. Also define flourishing. What exactly does flourishing mean? Flourishing is a subjective term. And why does it only matter that we are flourishing? What about dog flourishing? What about dolphin flourishing? What about evergreen flourishing? And so on and so forth. If you have any sort of a reason why we're more valuable than the animal, than the tree, than anything else like that, other than straight up speciesism, which is basically I am a human being therefore, then I think you'd have to go outside of just this idea of human flourishing to get that. Some people will say societal or cultural, by which I mean not what your society did, but this is what works. So sort of a pragmatic approach to morality. I find this to be incredibly lacking because there are plenty of incredibly immoral societies that are immensely successful. As a matter of fact, the most successful societies have been very, very cruel to their fellow man. We of course have empires all littered all throughout human history, whether it's the Macedonians or the Persians or the Mongolians or et cetera, the Romans or et cetera, right? And even countries like the United States, believe me I'm very patriotic, but it's not like we didn't committed a genocide against Native Americans and have a horrendous slave trade and things like that in order to get where we were. There were other good things that led to that, but there were other good things that led to that in all these other societies as well. However, fact still remains, what works tends to actually not be very moral. It usually is quite ruthless and cruel. And other people will say, and this tends to not be anything academic, but a lot of the people on the internet level, on the lay level will say things like pleasure or pain is the way that we determine human good. This is of course incredibly subjective. The kinds of things that would bring a serial killer pleasure, for example, are not gonna be the kind of thing, that bring me pleasure, which are not gonna be the kind of things that bring Mr. Jump here pleasure, which are not gonna be the kind of things that bring you on and so forth pleasure. It's also, it kind of can lead you to some really weird paradoxical places if you actually think it through. For example, you could argue that if pleasure is the ultimate good, then taking away somebody's ability to have pleasure would be a moral wrong and then you get into weird consent issues with violence and sex and things like that. It's also immensely unhealthy. Let's be perfectly clear. The vast majority of things that are actually quite pleasurable are not healthy at all. I think we just have to take a look at Big Macs in order to prove that. And it's just definitively wrong. We know that many painful things like working out and childbirth are actually very good. And we also know that many pleasurable things like heroin and sadomasochism are very bad. So when you go through all the different things that people tend to present as a way to ground an objective morality outside of God, they're always very lacking in many different ways and even in ways that I have not mentioned here today. So again, my argument would be, number one, morality does exist. Number two, if morality exists, in order for it to mean anything, it would actually be objective. And number three, if morality is objective, it has to come from an outside source, namely a God of some kind. And that would be the basics of my point. You bet. Justin, time, thanks so much. We really appreciate that from CJ. And by the way, folks, if you were here on Friday in that stream that almost happened Friday during the day, that was CJ who's been extremely gracious. And Tom has as well as that was, we had a dropped one there, but we are stoked to have it right now. We are going to hand it over to Tom. The timer is set, the floor is all yours, Tom. All right, so the question tonight is what better explains or grounds objective morality, the theism or atheism? Well, theism doesn't ground objective morality at all. The idea of a God completely fails as a basis of objective morality. It can solve none of the philosophical problems. It has even more problems than any of the other proposed solutions in ethics. So even though my opponent is right, that there are problems with many of the versions of morality presented by secular models, the God hypothesis is far worse. It has all of those problems and then more problems. Nothing about a God works as an objective basis of morality. It completely fails in every regard. And we can prove this pretty simply if you have two universes, one with a God, one without a God, and then these universes, a person kills another, they're immoral in both. So therefore you don't need a God. Deductive proof argument over God does nothing to ground morality. For morality to be objective, it has to be intrinsic to the moral, to the action of the morality. So for example, if it's someone kills someone that in action itself has to be intrinsically immoral, independent of any other source, including a God for it to be objectively moral. If it's only immoral due to the existence of a God that by definition makes it subjective. So a God by definition makes morality, objects morality impossible. It can't act as a basis of objective morality. What could act as a basis would be something like an undiscovered law of nature. A nature doesn't care what we feel like, it doesn't matter if we can understand it. Like my opponent mentioned that you need to have a consciousness of the ability to understand morality, to be able to judge morality for something to have a basis of morality, to let know that's just false. You don't need to assess moral statements to have things be moral, just like you don't need to be aware of gravity to have gravity work on you. Laws work by fiat, they just apply regardless of whether or not you know they apply or regardless of whether or not they are judged. He also mentioned that they need to be judged. Well, no, they don't. It just needs to be moral or be immoral. It doesn't need to actually be assessed or punished for being immoral. You mentioned the standard has to be unchanging. Well, that's not necessarily true. Gravity is objective, that gravity is also changing so things can be objective and change. God, by definition, changes. You can just look at the Christian Bible and he changes all the time, specifically says so. So the Christian God can't be that standard anyway by his own definition because the Christian God is changing. He mentioned that morality can't exist and be subjective. That makes absolutely no sense at all. I mean, if evolution was true and morality is just a product of evolution and biology or that morality exists as a product of evolution and it is subjective, so it can't exist and be subjective. It just would be subjective morality. He mentioned that only beings can enforce laws. Well, that's false. I mean, we have examples like Hinduism where you have karma and if you do immoral things then you're punished by being re, what is it, reincarnated as a lower being, essentially. He also said, line is immoral. No, line is not immoral. You can say, are the Jews in the basement? No, they are not. I just lied. Is that immoral? Is greed immoral? No, greed is not immoral. Neither of those things are immoral. So I don't know what his point was there. I mean, lots of people can be greedy for lots of things. It doesn't make them immoral. He mentioned that we can't use nature as a ground for morality because nature is horribly immoral like how animals and lions kill their cubs. Well, the Christian God drowned millions of babies. So by that own argument, the Christian God definitely can't be a basis of objective morality because he's killed more than any other human ever by his own admission and done lots of other immoral things like forcing us to be here without our consent, creating a hell that we didn't have a choice in, not giving us a veto option. There's all kinds of things. The Christian God definitely cannot be a basis of objective morality by any standard ever. So by the topic of tonight's debate, the Christian God, ritheism, cannot ever be a grounds of objective morality by definition invalidates objective morality. For something to be objectively immoral, you need it to be assessed independent of any other third party. It has to be. If you kill somebody that's immoral because the action of killing is itself intrinsically immoral regardless of a third party. Any addition of a third party like that by definition makes it subjective to that third party invalidating the entire point of the debate objective morality. So the only real contenders for objective morality is to our secular models such as utilitarianism, consequentialism, other kinds of models like my model of morality versus just the best of all possible worlds. Those kinds of abstract things apply independent to people and they don't require a third party. They're just measurement assessments. And those can qualify as objective means of morality or an undiscovered law of nature or something like that. God definitely cannot. And that's where I will conclude. Gotcha. Thank you very much, Tom Jump. We will now go into the open discussion part. So if you have any questions, as mentioned, feel free to fire them into the live chat. It'll make it easier for me to see them if you tag me with an at modern day debate. And also, if you want, Super Chat is an option. If you do Super Chat, it will put your question at the top of the list for the Q&A. And it also allows you to make a statement regardless of how provocative that might be. We even read Steven Steen's. So with that, gentlemen, the floor is yours. Thanks so much. All right, so you mentioned what essentially can be boiled down to the God's arbitrary argument, which is that God, by his very nature, if he's the one giving the morality, would be subjective, right? Because in other words, the morality is contingent upon his own decisions. But doesn't that assume a non-eternal and changing being? No. Why not? If you have two universes, one universe with the God and one universe without, and someone kills someone else in both universes, they're both equally wrong. Why do you know that, though? You've never been to a second. It's obvious. It's just intuitively obvious. I grant that your first statement that we understand objective morality is real due to our intuitions. We can intuitively look at these two universes and say, well, it's still wrong to kill somebody in the second universe with no God. And if your position requires you to say, well, no, no. It's not wrong to kill people in the second universe. Well, because there's no God in it. So I mean, your position is obviously intuitively wrong. Well, I think there's a few things that are kind of different category areas. Your first stuff, God would certainly not be within the confines of his own universe. But secondly, and much more importantly, you can do thought experiments to your own detriment sometimes, I think. For example, we could argue, well, what if the theory of gravity made it to where all planets had to be triangles? Well, yeah, what if? But that's not something that is within the confines of reason. In other words, if this universe required a God to create it, by definition, you couldn't have a second universe without a God. That's begging the question. It's irrelevant to the analogy. So the analogy is just an objective, deductive argument. You don't get to refute it. It's like you have a universe with a God, universe without a God. You don't get to modify it. A person kills another person in each universe. It's both a removal. You don't get to try to impose your God on the other universe. You don't get to modify the analogy. It's an objective analogy. Clearly, there's no logical contradiction in it. If there was, then you could object to it. But since there's not, you don't get to object to it. I'm sorry, can you repeat that last part one more time? There's no logical contradiction in it. And if there was, then you could object to it. Like if I said, there's a square circle in a second universe, well then you could say, well, that universe probably can't exist because it has a square circle in it. But since there's no logical contradiction in these obviously two possible universes, then you can't say that it's, you can't argue against the universe. You can't just say, oh no, since God applies to all possible universes, because he's the greatest possible being unless begging the question, it doesn't work. You don't get to refute the argument that way. And you can say, well, I don't know, since God created the universe and you need a God to create a universe, also begging the question. So you can't use that to object to the analogy either. Well, I mean, I feel like that's a little bit, excuse me, that goes a little bit both ways there in that regard, because of course, having never been to a second universe, and of course, you know, this does depend on your own personal belief. But if you were to assume that there was a God, then if you'd never been to another universe without a God, and of course, I'm not here assuming that there is a God. There's no logical possibility, none of that matters. So again, just the fact that it is coherent to imagine it makes it possible, makes it a valid argument. So the fact that we can imagine another universe, one universe with a God and one universe without, and we can imagine a person killing another in each universe makes this a completely valid analogy. You don't get to argue against the analogy, there's no logical contradiction there. Well, that wouldn't make any sense though, by the very definition, God has to be outside of a universe. That's again, that's your circular reasoning. So you don't get to apply your circular reasoning to the argument. So this applies to the logical strategy. Well, no, but that's what I'm saying though, if you have a God who's an internal being, by his very definition, he has to be outside of time, space, and matter. That doesn't make a difference. You can't have a God that's going to confine the analogy. So I can just grant whatever you want to define God as and say, okay, here's your God created universe, and your God is outside of that universe. Whatever relationship you want between them, fine, you can have that. And then I'm going to say, well, here's my model of the world, which doesn't have a God and only has a universe and the person kills another one. And we're going to say, we're going to contrast these two models and by your definition, in this world that I've defined as my worldview, you're saying that killing isn't immoral because there is no God, which is obviously false. So if you use our intuition to say that you don't need a God for something to be immoral, someone kills another person, it's immoral in all possible worlds with the God and without a God. It doesn't make a difference if there's a God or not. So it makes no difference if you apply God to this world because it's going to be immoral, regardless of whether or not there's a God in the universe or who created the universe or didn't create the universe. It makes no difference. Well, I'll leave aside the question of the creation for a minute, because I would argue that, once again, that you can't have a world without a universe, but understanding that is not the argument for today. What would make it objectively wrong? In other words, why is it obviously wrong to murder? Why is it obviously true to murder? I think that's your first premise of saying that we understand objective morality is real due to our intuitions. And so I can just say, yeah, due to our intuitions, we can just grant it objectively more. Now I can say there's lots of different potential candidates of what makes it objectively more, what grounds the ontology of it, like an undiscovered law of nature or a platonic object or a model of ethics or best of all possible worlds. There's lots of different potential candidates for what causes the, what grounds the ontology of objective morality. God isn't one of them. Well, so, and I'll get to that in a minute, but I still want to know, because so you're not really necessarily giving me some sort of an answer to the question, right? In other words, we're saying more of murder is objectively wrong here, but murder has to have some sort of a standard by which it's objectively wrong in order for us to deduce its objective. Right, and there's like infinitely many standards we can propose, like in a mignonian object, a platonic object, abstract, best of all possible worlds. All of those are potential candidates for a standard of objective morality that could ground the measurement tool. There's lots of different potential standards that are used in ethics. They can all work. God doesn't work as one. So that is an answer to your question. Like any of these can work as an objective standard. So how could a best of all possible worlds exist? Isn't that beg the question of other possible worlds existing? No, a best of all possible worlds is a platonic abstract, like the perfect triangle. Perfect triangles don't exist, but a perfect triangle, the idea of a perfect triangle is still an objective measure of how good a triangle is compared to this idea. So we can say that a perfect triangle is a triangle that has perfectly straight lines on all three sides or whatever. And so we can, in this world, it's impossible to draw a perfectly straight triangle because if you draw one as best as you can and you zoom into it with an electron microscope, you'll realize the electrons go in bubble shapes. So it's impossible to draw a perfectly straight line. So the existence of a perfectly straight triangle is impossible in this world, but we can still use it as an objective measure to see how close we are and measure how we're getting closer further away from the idea of a perfect triangle. The best possible world is that it works the same way. It's an abstract, it doesn't need to exist to still be a standard. We can still say, here is the best way the world could be as this abstract object. And then use that as an objective standard to measure how far away we are or how closer we are moving to do it. Yeah, but I have objective tools outside of the math problem I'm doing in my paper in order to measure mathematical problems and things like that in order to measure gravity and all that other kind of stuff. So what is, because essentially what you're telling me is this is best of all possible worlds. This is just one of the examples you gave, I understand that. So it's best of all possible worlds, but who's to define what best even is? Isn't that what we're arguing about? No, again, that part's irrelevant to the question. So that's the part where I said there's lots of different contenders for objective morality in the field of ethics. And so there's lots of different ways to define it and they're competing and we can't prove one or the other, like solving objective morality isn't a solved problem in the field of ethics. We don't know what the solution is, but we definitely know God doesn't work. God faces all the same problems of the secular models and then more problems. So we don't have a solution to objective morality like a proof that says this is the model and we're done and we can just go home like we do for the globe Earth that it's not flat. But we do know that the theist model is worse is like if we're going with abductive reason what's the best, the inference of the best explanation theism is the worst possible. It's one of the worst explanations. And these models that I'm talking about are far better explanations using abductive reason. So why? Because they have less problems than the theist model. So there's lots of problems with objective morality which is why we haven't solved it, but the theist model has more problems. Like for example- Right, but like what problems? In the introduction. In other words, so what exactly are the issues that you are seeing in the theistic model that is making you conclude that these other models are actually less flawed? Well, for example, the one thing I listed that if you imagine one universe with whatever thing you're saying is the standard in one universe without whatever thing is the standard and you kill someone in both universes is it still immoral given your definition? So if you're saying that there is the ontology this thing that exists, that is a God and it exists in the universe and without this thing that it's not immoral to kill someone but obviously it's still immoral to kill someone there's a contradiction in your model is what obviously fails. Now, if your model is a platonic abstract or something like that then it doesn't actually exist or doesn't need to exist to be a grounds of objective morality it's just an abstract. So in that model, regardless of whether or not this abstract actually exists in the universe because it's an abstract it doesn't exist in either universe. So the morality is intrinsic in the action of killing someone because it doesn't move us towards this abstract essentially the abstract doesn't need to exist like the perfect triangle doesn't need to exist for us to know that a squiggly line is not a perfect triangle. I mean, in this particular example I would certainly argue that it does though because and I understand that to a certain extent this begs the question but I'm obviously not coming here assuming that God doesn't exist clearly on my side I assume God does exist and I would make the point that we live in a universe where God does exist and therefore could not possibly imagine a universe where he doesn't and in fact the universe where he does exist. So the fact that you can't imagine it and you obviously can't anyone can imagine the universe without a God it's pretty simple. You just say okay. Anybody can imagine a square that's called a triangle. Okay, that again this is pretty simple like everyone grants this in philosophy you can imagine the universe without God. So anyone who just does to define God is anything that pretty simple. My point is anyone can imagine anything. No, I can't imagine a square circle. I can't imagine a pork chop. I guess to a certain extent that's true in a sense that like I've never seen it but there are definitely plenty of things that I can imagine that aren't true. Like I can imagine a completely dormant universe that's completely dark but that doesn't mean that it happens. Stop, stop, stop, stop. You're missing the point. It doesn't matter if it's true. All that needs to be is imaginable. If you can imagine it then the argument works. That's all you need. It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if there is a universe without a God or not, it makes no difference. It's not true though. There's an entire... Let me give you a perfect example as to how that can't possibly be true. There are entire fan fictions around certain fictional universes, right? Like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and stuff like that where they go out and try to prove theories and film theory and all this kind of stuff like MatPat and stuff like that. And they show very plainly how a bunch of things that these people came up with that they imagined don't actually work, right? Whether it's scientifically, whether it's because internal logic, whatever. So you can imagine a universe without God but that assumes that a universe without God could possibly exist in the first place. Yeah, which is obviously true. There's no logical contradiction. So for there to be an objection, you have to find a logical contradiction. There isn't one. So again, this analogy is flawless. You don't get to object to it. So you can imagine a universe if there is a universe without a God. It doesn't matter if it's possible or not in your world, it makes no difference. If there is a universe without a God and someone kills someone else in it, that action is still immoral. The reason your model is obviously wrong is because if there is a universe without a God and someone kills someone in it, by your definition, that isn't immoral. So there's a problem with your worldview. Your worldview doesn't work because for something to be an objective standard of morality, it has to apply to all possible cases of immoral actions. The action itself has to be immoral. Again, whether this is possible is irrelevant. It makes no difference at all. You just have to say if there is a universe with no God, is it immoral to kill someone or not? Objecting and saying it's not possible is irrelevant. Well, I certainly would argue that it is relevant but even continuing with the fact, the reason I would argue that it is relevant is because if you live in a universe where you are conceptualizing morals in the way that we obviously are, then you live in a universe that by its very definition has morals. So any universe you are going to conclude exists will end up having morals and it will end up having all the other different things that we actually have. For example, you can't imagine a world without logic. You can't imagine a world without reason. You can imagine some sorts of things that we have here. Like for example, you said you can't imagine score circles and stuff like that but you can't imagine a world without consciousness and all that kind of stuff. So it's not like absolutely everything is missing but there are definitely worlds that you can imagine that you can't imagine that are missing certain things but that doesn't necessarily matter because those worlds don't exist. Those are ifs, they're what ifs. Again, this is irrelevant. You're not understanding the point. It doesn't matter if it exists. It makes no difference. It does matter if it exists. Perfect triangles don't exist. They don't need to exist. There's no perfect triangle anywhere in existence ever but I can still use the idea of a perfect triangle to try and draw a perfect triangle and get as close as possible. Saying that, oh well, perfect triangles don't exist does not affect the argument. So I can say, so just think about, this is like what your argument is. So I'm saying that we can use the idea of a perfect triangle to try and get as close as possible in our world. And you're saying, oh, but perfect triangles don't exist. Don't have that objective. No, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. So again, CJ, your argument is saying, well, perfect triangles don't exist. I've never said perfect triangles exist. There's no part of my argument where perfect triangles exist is a premise. It doesn't matter if it exists or not. All it has to do is be an idea in our head. If it can be an idea in our head, the argument works. So you arguing that perfect triangles don't exist doesn't stop me from using the idea of a triangle to draw a triangle. So the same thing applies to morality. I can say, if you can imagine a world, universe without a God, that's enough. It doesn't matter if it exists or not. And if in this universe, you imagine a person killing another person, if that action is immoral, then your God model fails. I mean, so it doesn't make a difference whether this universe exists or not. It's totally irrelevant to the argument. Just like saying a perfect triangle doesn't exist. Like, great, it doesn't need to for the argument. See, but there's so many different things that are finding the issue with that there. So first off, we do actually have pictures of quote unquote, perfect triangles. They're at least as close as we could get. Now, obviously they're not 100% perfect. We understand that it's impossible to get an actually 100% perfect triangle, okay? But there is an objective standard that does exist, right? It's as close as we can possibly get it. And there's math that we can actually prove to show that this is an objective standard. In other words, a 90 degree angle can be mathematically proven to be a 90 degree angle, right? So what is that standard that's allowing you to say that it would be wrong? And if you don't have that standard, how does the God model fail and how can you conclude that it is wrong? Well, again, like I said, there are lots of different potential candidates for that. That is, so I mean, I can pick one if you want. It doesn't make a difference. I mean, there's lots of potential alternatives to gravity, but they're all wrong. Right. So again, morality isn't a solved problem. We don't have a solution to objective morality. There's lots of potential candidates in the field of ethics. One is like the Platonic object. One is the best of all possible worlds. One is a perfect abstract. One is a Minionian object. There are lots of them they can all work. They all work better than theism does. So I mean, it doesn't matter which one I pick here. I mean, there's always going to be problems with every single one of them which is why we haven't solved objective morality, but they all work better than a God. They're all abductively better than a God. Yeah, see, I would certainly argue that that's not the case in getting even back to your example of imagining another possible universe. I can imagine another possible universe where two plus two equals five. That may not make logical sense, but I can imagine it. You can imagine. I just did. I just didn't. I even vocalized it into the air. There's a universe where two plus two equals five. No, like imagine the square circle is impossible because there's a logical contradiction in the statement. Imagine there's a logical contradiction, in my opinion, in having the creation versus the without the God, in other words. So there is no obvious contradiction there. Like a contradiction has to be a priori. So it has to be like definitional. Like a square circle, a square is by definition object that is four sides. A circle is by definition object has no sides. So the definitions of the objects entail the contradiction. Your definition of a God is you begging the question. I don't accept your definition of the God. So there is no logical contradiction in what I said unless I presuppose your definition which no one, which I think these don't do. So there isn't a logical contradiction here. Most people- See, there's only not a logical contradiction if you're right though. Because it isn't a matter of opinion. God either exists or he doesn't. So if I am right on that situation, there is indeed a logical contradiction. That's again, that's begging the question until you can- It might be begging the question, but to be fair, the argument isn't necessarily whether or not God exists, but whether or not atheist morality versus Christian morality actually makes it make more sense. But according to the Christian model, your analogy would be contradictory. No, like I could say that a universe can't exist without me. And well, because my, by me, by definition exist in all possible worlds. But then I could say, well, you don't accept that. Maybe your definition is wrong and maybe I do exist in all possible worlds. Anybody can make up that kind of gibberish. It just doesn't work as an argument. So- It does though work as an argument because the fact of the matter is either you or me are right. That is a fact. You would agree, right? No, we could both be wrong, but- So you would, so you would not agree that there either is or is not a God? Yes, so either is or is not a God. But we'll talk about morality. So on that issue, either I am right or you are right, but neither one of us can both be right. And since the issue is just a yes or no question, it's not like both of us can be wrong also. Would that be right? Right, right. In the case of a God, when we're talking about morality, we could just both be wrong and there isn't any subject to morality. So then what I'm saying is with the moral question, obviously I'm coming to this with the presupposition that God exists, right? Because that's leading into my argument, just like you would be coming into this with the presupposition that God doesn't exist, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Apologetics onto this evidentiary versus presupposition. No, no, I did not presuppose God does not exist. God's existence is irrelevant. Well, you do at least presuppose that a universe can exist without God. But if God does indeed exist, then a universe can't exist without God. No, that's again, that's your presupposition, which is baseless. That's like if I say a universe can't exist. Well, that's not a presupposition though. If the God of the Bible does exist or the God of the Quran or any of these omnipotent creator gods, if that being does exist, then a universe aside from that being's existence is not possible. No, that's again, that's false. Again, that's false. That's not false though. No, no, again, it is by definition, that's false because there's no logical contradiction there. That's just a definition you've picked. So I could say, if me, me, if I exist, well, then I exist in all possible worlds. Like, what is that true? Yeah, that's not different though. You're not the omnipotent, timeless creator God of the Universe. Exactly, that's the point. You're just saying it. You're just claiming that if God exists, a universe can't exist without him. Okay, but that's- I can claim that if I exist, the universe- God exists as the creator of all that is reality. Stop, Jay, stop. I can say that if I exist, then a universe can't exist without me. It's just, I mean, that's not true. It's just made up. I can make stuff up just like you can make stuff up. You can make up if a God exists, well, then he exists in all possible worlds. There's nothing to support that. It's just something you've made up. And I can make up that if I exist, I exist in all possible worlds and the universe can't exist without me. Those claims are equally stupid. They don't work as an argument. Something that is made up though, because the claim that the Christian or the Muslim or the Jew or anybody who believes in one of the monotheistic Abrahamic gods is saying is that this universe and all the other, anything else, the creation itself, whether it's angels or whatever, doesn't matter any realms, doesn't matter anything else, the creation itself is a product, rather, of the creator. In other words, if our worldview is correct, then it is indeed impossible for a universe to exist. And so you can say it. You can say I imagine a universe without God, but that's just like me saying I imagine a universe where squares are circles. No, again, the reason that fails, the reason that is a completely stupid argument is because I can say I exist in all possible worlds by definition. If anyone believes in the religion of T-Jump, well, then they believe that T-Jump exists. All right, well, if anybody believes in your religion, then yeah, that's true. Maybe you have a set doctrine that says you created it. Right, right. Exactly. Anybody can make up this nonsense. It's not an argument. You can't use this as a premise in your argument because it's just nonsense. Like in an argument to try and convince someone who holds a different position, you can't say, well, my position is, is God exists in all possible worlds. Therefore, you can't imagine a universe without a God. I mean, that's no. The answer is no. No, that's not my position. My position is not that God exists in all possible worlds. My position is that if God is the creator of the worlds, if God is the creator of matter, if God is the creator of space-time, all that stuff, then there is no way that stuff can exist apart from Him. Again, again, you're not understanding. Like if I was a flat earther and I'm trying to convince you the world is flat, I can't just say, well, I presuppose the world is flat. So you can't even imagine a world, you can't even imagine the world is round. That's not allowed in the argument. No, no, no. You can't do that because the world is flat and I've defined it as being flat. Therefore, you can't even imagine a world where it's round. That doesn't work. That's a stupid argument. You can't just impose your own presuppositions on the person you're talking with. It doesn't work that way. So when I say, I imagine a universe with a God and a universe without a God, this is not, you don't get to object to this. This is the two worldviews. Okay, then I imagine a universe where two plus two equals five, and I mean- Again, that doesn't work. Because that's not imaginable. There's a logical contradiction there. My example- It's also a logical contradiction to have a universe without a God. No, there is no logical contradiction in my worldview. I see no logical contradiction. No atheists sees a logical contradiction. You've just assumed that. So- I mean, that's perfectly fair. In other words, I guess the main point of this, because we might just want to move on from this particular thing, but there's no way you'd ever convince a theist with that argument, I guess would be the point. Because if we are already agreeing that there is a creator God, then the idea of a universe apart from a creator God is in fact a logical contradiction. And to be fair, again, if we are right, then that is true, because creation requires a creator. Right, and that proves why you're wrong. If a person matters reality of all that is a creation, then it does require a creator. Right, I understand that's why you're wrong. That's why it proves you're wrong because your only defense of your position is, well, it's impossible for God not to, or for a universe to exist without a God. I mean, it will obviously- To be fair, that's not the whole position. That's only about this particular point where you're saying you imagine- Right, I know, but that's the point. It demonstrates your argument is circular. You're just presupposing your conclusion before you even made an argument. You're saying, oh, well, it's not possible for there to be a universe without a God. Therefore, we can just invalidate the possibility- You're doing the same thing though. You're saying, well, it is possible for there to be a universe without a God. Right. That is presupposing that your worldview can be true. Obviously, because there's no logical contradiction. So that's fair. But there is a logical contradiction having two different universes, your worldview and my worldview being true. My worldview cannot include your worldview. Again, you don't understand the argument here. You're not understanding it at all. If there is no obvious logical contradiction, like if I have a worldview that is coherent and that many people hold to, and I present this in an argument, you're not allowed to dismiss it by saying you don't think it's logically possible. I know one cares. So the fact that you have presupposed your worldview is the only possibility is what means that your argument is circular and it doesn't work. You aren't allowed to consider alternatives. You're just saying, this is the way it must be. I'm right. That's like if a flat earth are said, I can't imagine the circle globe because it's logically impossible in my worldview. That doesn't work. That just means you're not considering alternatives. It just means you're unopened to any kind of logical criticism, which means your worldview fails. That's why theism fails. You can't even imagine an alternative, which is obvious and easy to imagine. It's like saying, I imagine the universe without apples. Yeah, but like I said, you can claim that, but that's just like saying, I imagine a universe where two plus two equals five. No. The fact of the matter is, at least for my worldview, I will grant that we have, but to be fair, that's not the argument. So that's part of the reason we're not going into those sort of things, does God exist, all that kind of stuff. No, again, that fails. Two plus two equals five entails a logical contradiction. You can't implose those. Then a universe without God also entails because it's a logical contradiction. No. God did in fact create reality, and therefore reality cannot exist without God. And I know we're not actually getting to that point right now, but nonetheless, like I said, that's why this would never be something that could possibly convince a theist. Because it is a logical contradiction. The goal isn't to convince a theist world. You're not getting it. The goal of this argument is to prove that you are making a circular presupposition which fails 100%. You can make any circular presupposition you want. And if you refuse to accept any kind of contrary viewpoint, your position fails. You have no grounds. You have no evidence. You've just presupposed your conclusion. So if you presuppose your conclusion, your argument fails. And the point of my example in this showing that a universe without a God, it's still immoral, proves that you can't even consider alternatives, which proves your argument is presupposing your conclusion at circular and it just fails. You can do that for anything it's not evidence. So if you can just presuppose whatever you want and say, well, I'm not going to imagine any alternatives, like a flat earth or says I'm going to presuppose the world is flat and it's logically contradictory that the world is round because God or whatever you want to insert, the fact that you are unwilling to imagine the alternative, which is obviously possible, means you have presupposed your conclusion and you have no evidence. That's, it's a proof that your argument is unsupported. Now it doesn't need to convince theists. I don't care if it convinced theists. It's just an obvious proof that your position is unsupported just like flat earth is unsupported. Right? No, I do. Sorry, I thought you would finish there, go ahead. No, that's fine. So I do find it interesting definitely that you would take a hypothetical, which is a thought experiment, which by its very definition could not possibly be a logical hypothetical, if indeed that you're wrong on the other question, which to be fair, we're not arguing, saying that that minus any sort of an objective standard that can be proven can still actually show us that morality is objective. And then somehow saying that the argument here that I'm bringing is a contradiction. I just, I don't know, that seems kind of amazing to me on my personal opinion. It's pretty obvious. This is a pretty simple logic. Like if a flat earth or says I presuppose the world is flat and you creating a hypothetical where the world is round, well, that's logically impossible. I mean, if you can't see why that's stupid, then you need to just reimagine or reevaluate your understanding of basic logic here. If a flat earth or just says, I can't imagine a world with realm because it's a logical contradiction, they're just being stupid. That isn't an argument. That doesn't support your position. That just shows how insecure and unsupported your position is. Well, to be fair, that's not the same thing though. That's like saying, I imagine a world without God and I presuppose that a world without God. No, I imagine a world with God, sorry. And I presuppose that a world without God cannot possibly exist. Therefore, I have a conclusion on the world without God. What I'm saying is that there is an entirely separate argument here, which would be does God exist, right? Which we certainly can't have at some point. I'm certainly down to have that. Nonetheless, there's an entirely separate argument here that since both of us would have to be coming into this with the presupposed idea we're having because we're not arguing that point, you're coming from an atheist perspective, this is true and this is why it better explains. I'm coming from a Christian perspective, this is true and this is why it better explains, right? Et cetera. Well, if indeed I am right and the Christian point of view is true, then that is a logical contradiction, it can't exist. And furthermore, I would just like to point out since it's not something you've ever seen, you don't know for a fact that morality would exist the same way there. If we were to go to this hypothetical world without a God and somebody were to murder somebody, well, maybe the moral experience of the people who are living there are different. I mean, obviously I just imagined that and by your logic, if I can imagine it, it must be true. No, again, you don't understand the argument. This is very, very simple. If a flat earth earth says, I'm going to say a globe is logically contradictory and you can't even imagine a possibility where it's alternative, they're stupid, that's it. So if you say that it's impossible to imagine a world without a God, well then your argument's just as stupid as a flat earth earth are saying, well, the world can't possibly be a globe. Is it possible to have math without numbers? Math doesn't exist. Is it possible that math without numbers? There was math without numbers. Yes, there was, unlike Cuneiform, there wasn't numbers, there was just slashes. So they didn't have values like one, two, and three. No, those didn't exist until like the, I don't know, was it 1200? So those were made, those were made up languages. Math is a made up language. Numbers don't exist, they're just words. I'm not talking about, the values of numbers certainly do exist. This is one pen objectively, right? Regardless of what language you call it one in, it is one pen. Right, reality exists. And reality is... The reality of mathematics needs the value of numbers, is that true? The value is the language part. Reality exists and reality is described by numbers, but this doesn't help your position. Again, so two plus two equals five is a logical contradiction. Anyone can see this. You can't imagine two plus two equals five, it doesn't work logically. And you can't imagine the square circle, it doesn't work logically. Your brain is not capable of picturing that happening. Picturing a world without a universe is easy. Or picturing a world without a God is easy. Anyone can do that. It's like picturing a world without Bob. Easy, or without apples. Easy, there is no logical contradiction there. Unless you impose one by making up a secondary definition. Well, at any rate, I don't think that this particular point is actually gonna go anywhere. So I do wanna kind of move on a little bit. And like I said, if that's something that we wanted to come back to at a later date, we certainly can. But I think considering the fact that we're definitely gonna have to be coming at this with our own presuppositions anyways. Well, no, no, no. Instead of the nature of the argument. Again, so this has nothing to do with my world. You can imagine this just as it's written on a sheet of paper. There's no presuppositions, no worldview in my argument at all. It takes nothing. It just takes a basic understanding of logic. By the theist worldview in meaning if you don't have the theist worldview, you have a separate worldview, you can make it, right? By the theist worldview creation. And actually, not even by the theist worldview. To be fair, creation can't exist without creator, period. That's not a worldview thing. That's just a matter of fact. But if reality is indeed a creation, then it can't exist without a creator. Right, so again, again, there is no argument here. So the point is there's no worldview. That a creator is required for a creation. No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about my position. My position does not entail a worldview. There is no worldview in my position. It's just basic logical fact. If you have A and B. It's not just a basic logical fact though. Because if you haven't proven that there isn't indeed a creation, right? Then that's not, it's not just a basic logical fact but it's not a creation. The reason I like this argument is because it shows how stupid your argument is. That's why I like bringing this up. Because it just demonstrates how dumb your argument is. So I can say there is this thing called God and there's this thing called the universe. A and B, logically. If A and B have separate properties then they are not the same thing because A equals A, all of identity. So you have two things, the universe and the God. Take away the God, you get rid of A. You have B left, you have a universe out of God. Poof, done. Simple logical possibility. Okay, but it's not a simple logical possibility because what I'm saying is, so it would be like the same as you need A plus B to equal C or somehow A equals B or something like that. Therefore, if you were to take away the A, you would not have the B, right? If A equals B, then if you take away, or if A plus B equals C, then you won't have C unless you, if you, let me rephrase that. If A plus B equals C, that's not a logical contradiction is where they're all entailed in the same thing. So you can't say like if you have A and B, like two and two, you're two plus two equals five or whatever. If you take away anything in two plus two equals four, you don't get four. It's not an option. There isn't, you don't have to add in this other presupposition, that's just by definition. So that kind of presupposition doesn't work. Yours is just completely ad hoc. Like I can just say I exist in all possible worlds, okay? Or I can say a flat earth, it just says, well, nope, only the world, the only possibility is the world is flat. Now, maybe they're right. Maybe that it's logically impossible that the world is round. But it's clearly logically possible to imagine it, just like it's really logical possible to imagine the universe, imagine a God, get rid of the God, you're done. This is simple. So the reason I like this point is because it just shows how incoherent that the exposition is. It's like, oh no, we have to presuppose that that's impossible. No, there's a God in the universe and oh no, you can't have one without the other. That silly presuppo ad hoc presupposition just does nothing. We can easily disprove the its morality just by saying universe is out of God, God kills a guy, my world will do that tomorrow and your real view, it's not, clearly your real view is wrong. Well, again, I think we're just gonna have to move on and this is quickly just becoming an argument as to whether or not you can have a universe without God rather than anything about morality. Right, that's the point, yeah. Well, I mean, that could be the point, but to be, it's not actually a good point because, I mean, here's the thing, right? And I don't wanna get preachy because this isn't anything like a sermon, but God does exist. Now, like I said, if you wanna have that debate, we can definitely have that debate, but what I'm saying in my position is God does exist definitively as a matter of objective fact. And if he does exist as a matter of objective fact, and if this universe is his creation in matter and time and reality and all that kind of stuff, his creation as a matter of objective fact, then those things cannot exist a part of him, sorry, as a matter of objective fact. Now again, if we want to get into the debate about whether or not God exists, that is a different topic, we can talk at that particular time. However, if we've not made any point there to try and prove that a universe even can exist apart from God, then yes, I am concluding that a universe apart from God is a logical contradiction. Okay, and so the way we began the argument was you asked, why is the secular alternatives to objective morality? Why are they objectively better explanations than the God hypothesis? And the proof of that is that with the God hypothesis, if you have these two universes in this second universe, the killing guy in the universe without a God isn't immoral in your worldview. So this proves that your model is inferior abductively to the other models. Now it doesn't matter, I can just grant, let's just say we're both theists talking in heaven and with God's like right next to us, we can just grant God is real. That doesn't, my argument still works. It still shows that objective morality when tried to ground in a God is still subjective. It still doesn't work for this reason of this argument. The point, so it doesn't matter if God is real. It doesn't matter if God created the universe. It doesn't matter if a universe without a God is logically impossible. The fact that this analogy proves is that morality is contingent on a God making it by definition subjective. So it doesn't matter, the existence question beyondology here is irrelevant. It's purely just a valid structure of the argument kind of the question. The fact that you need a God to exist or killing to be wrong makes your morality faulty. I don't need that. My morality can work without a God. It doesn't need this third contingent character to describe morality. So my view of morality is objectively better because it's not subjective on this third character. Well, and so that essentially what that ends up being and people have brought this up before they call it the God's arbitrary argument at least in some of the circles that I've seen. I don't know if you've ever heard it called that but essentially the idea that they have usually brought up is something along the lines of well, if God decided that murder was legal tomorrow then would it be legal or would it be moral rather? To a certain extent, that's a little bit the same here in the sense that you're saying that well, it becomes subjective because now it's just contingent on this outside third party rather than the humanities. There are two things I would actually, humanities, sorry, that doesn't make any sense rather than human beings. There are two things I would actually say in response to that. Number one, the God's arbitrary in my opinion is not an argument, it's just a simple statement of fact. From human perspective, yeah, it is subjective based off of God's will. Now, I would argue that God is an eternally unchanging being, but yeah, the only reason, certainly the only reason that we believe that morals exist is because it has been ingrained in our nature by God being made in the image of God that morals exist. I definitely think that that is true. The reason I would argue that that's not arbitrary in reality even though it may appear to be arbitrary, it may appear to be just based off of the subjective standard from our perspective is that God is unchanging by his very nature. In other words, God didn't wake up one day and decide, well, murder is wrong, right? The whole, the youth road dilemma where they say, did God say that it was good because it was good or is God good and therefore things are good because he said it? The answer really is yes, things are good because God said it and also God is inherently good. It is within God's nature to be good, it is within God's nature to not take the life of the unrighteous and et cetera. Therefore in his creation, that is the morality that we get portrayed here. So it's not an arbitrary. That wasn't my argument. So that has nothing to do with my argument at all. That's the youth of the road dilemma. So my argument was is that if there is no God in the universe, then killing a person isn't wrong in your worldview by your definition. If that is the case, then morality is subjective. It is contingent on your God. It doesn't matter if God exists, it doesn't matter if God exists. It's not subjective, it doesn't matter if God exists. It's eternal and unchanging. It doesn't help your argument. It doesn't matter if God is unchanging. I can grant God exists, I can grant God as objective and it's still the case that if killing a person in the universe out of God isn't immoral in your worldview, then that means that the morality is contingent on your God, so it's subjective. Doesn't matter if God's unchanging, doesn't matter if God exists, doesn't matter if it's possible for a universe to exist without a God. It's still the morality is contingent on your God, making it subjective. So it doesn't work. It fails as a model of objective morality because there can be, the killing isn't inherently wrong in and of itself. It's the God that makes the wrongness and the rightness. Okay, but killing is inherently wrong in and of itself, but it's only wrong inherently in and of itself because we exist in a universe where God exists. That's part of the reason why I ask about the standard. If you're gonna replace the objective standard, just naturally- You just contradicted yourself. You just started, you said morality or killing is inherently wrong and then you said killing is not inherently wrong because it has this other contingent factor. No, I said killing is inherently wrong because we exist in a universe- That's a contradiction. That's a contradiction. So it can't be inherent. Inherent means there is no third party. So inherent means it's just an intrinsic part of the thing. So if killing is intrinsically or intrinsically wrong, that means God is irrelevant to the question. You can't say because. Because is a contradiction with the inherently. Inherently means there is no because it's just a part of the thing. So saying killing is inherently wrong, then because is a contradiction. You can't do that. You can't be inherently wrong because there's a God. I mean, it's not inherently wrong to kill. It's only inherently wrong to kill because there's a God. True at all though. I mean, an eyeball inherently by its very nature is supposed to see things, but there's reasons why eyeballs see things. No, what? Inherently eyeballs are, no, no, no. It's not what inherently means it's an intrinsic property of the thing. Eyeballs do not have the intrinsic property of sight. That's not a part of eyeballs. That's a function of eyeballs, but that's not what intrinsic means. So if you said like intrinsic would be like an inherent property of the thing, like God is intrinsically unchangeable. You couldn't just say that, well, God is unchangeable because he exists in a universe with Bob. Well, that would make it not intrinsic, right? Because it's contingent on this other thing. For it to be intrinsic or inherent, it has to be a property of the thing with no other third party involved. Like if I said, God is only all powerful because he was given this power by Bob, you'd say, well, that's a contradiction. No, God is uncreated. So in order to say it's intrinsic or inherent, so the killing is inherent and long, that means you can't invoke a because there. Because if you do, that would be like me saying, God created the universe because he was created by something else. It's a contradiction. Yeah, I'm ready for that. Okay. All right, well, so I guess I kind of, sorry, I got thrown off my train of thought there a little bit. Would you repeat the last part there of the argument, please, Mr. Jump? Right, right. So if you say something is inherently wrong or like if killing is inherently immoral, that would be like saying, God is inherently all powerful. And if I said, God is inherently all powerful because he was created by a different being, like the super God or whatever, you would say that's a contradiction, right? Like, no, no, no, no, because all powerful means he wasn't created. It inherently means it's just a part of who he is intrinsically. You can't say it's inherent and then say, because something else did it. That's a contradiction. If it's inherent in God, that means it wasn't done by something else. It's just an intrinsic part of God, right? You follow me? Well, I guess in that particular point, that does have a lot to do with the worldview itself and I will definitely grant that because obviously from my point of view, God would be the very designer of the nature. And I guess to an extent that would be another one of those, well, that's something that's assumed on your worldview. No, no, this has nothing to do with, again, so don't ever say my worldview because I've never brought my worldview. No, I'm saying my worldview. I'm saying on my worldview, it would obviously be assumed that people's nature is designed by God. Right. But what I would argue is that it's not the point of the argument. The point of the argument is the definition of the word inherent. The definition of the word inherent means it's a part of the thing fundamentally. So it is inherent that God is all powerful in your worldview. But it would be a contradiction if I said it's inherent that God is all powerful because he was created by a different thing. That would be a contradiction because then it wouldn't be inherent anymore. Then it would be a property given by something else. Inherent means it's not a property given by something else. It's intrinsic to the being. So if you say morality is inherently wrong, or it's inherently wrong to kill, you cannot say it's inherently wrong to kill because someone else says so. That's a contradiction just like if I said God is inherently all powerful because he was given the property by some other being. Do you understand that the word inherently means it is just the thing, it's a property of the thing in and of itself with no third party. Well, yeah, so I understand that. But what I'm saying is that it's, being is that we live in the world that we live in and if this world is created by God, which of course, like I said, I grant that this is something that is a little bit presuppositional in that particular regard. But the intrinsicness that I guess if you say there's a different word to find there than so be it, would definitely be dependent on God. What I would say, I guess that would push it over to the highest standard. So then what does God give this morality from? Well, God inherently good is good rather than your present. Yeah, God inherently is good. Pause, pause right there. In other words, the objective morality would exist but I guess by what you say was just let him finish his thought for God. You just said my argument. So I wanted to just clear up that at one point. You said that if God exists, so then that morality is only true because we live in a universe with God, which means morality isn't intrinsic. There it is not intrinsically wrong to kill. It's only wrong to kill because we live in a universe with God, which means morality isn't intrinsic. It is not intrinsically wrong to kill. It's only contingently wrong to kill because we live in a universe with God. That's the whole point is that in your model there isn't an intrinsic morality. It can't be objective. It can't be inherent because it's all contingent on being in the universe with that God. It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if God exists. I can just grant that. I can just grant God is unchanged. I can grant every part of your worldview and just say, okay, your worldview is true and we live in a universe with God. In that case, the only reason it's wrong to kill is because we live in a universe with God, which by definition means it's not inherently wrong to kill. It's contingently wrong to kill because we're in a universe with a God. That third factor is the problem. That's why objective morality doesn't work on theism. If it's okay with us giving Tom the last word just because we let you start CJ. And with that, thanks so much for all of your questions, folks, we're gonna jump right into it. So I appreciate Andrew Hanselman. Thanks for your super chat. He said, pre-show loot. Appreciate that. Thanks for your support of the channel. Steven Steen, thanks for your super chat. Who said, that sexy clam chair is the alpha of the debate. It is. It's like we get to see Tom writing a clamshell every night, terrific. Michael, the Canadian atheist who will be on tomorrow with Tom Jump's father, Darth Dawkins. Thanks for your super chat from Michael. He said, get spicy, Steven Steen. Okay, genius tracks, thanks for your super chat. They said, CJ, the animal kingdom without humans are not intelligent enough to maximize their community's wellbeing with cause and effect analysis like we are. Okay, but the animals don't have morality. So that's completely irrelevant. We can maximize their wellbeing, right? So why is it wrong? Why is it not wrong for us not to maximize their wellbeing? I don't care if they maximize their own wellbeing. We are intelligent enough to defend the lower life forms on the food chain. My point there was is why is it human flourishing? That is the point. Why if humans have the capability, can't they make animals or dolphins or ants or mosquitoes flourish or whatever it happens to be. Gotcha. Thanks very much. Next up, Steven Steen. Thanks for your other super chat. He said, Tom's chair, give me STDs. Very, it takes a lot of courage to admit that, Steven. Thank you. Tioga, thanks for your super chat. She said, James in capital letters, thanks for your kind call out there. Shout out. Super energy, thanks for your super chat. She says, how does God act outside of time if there is no before, now or later? So I will admit that that is a question I personally don't have a direct answer to. I kind of go back and forth with the whole presuppositional kind of thing, which ends up having a lot of the same questions as how does God act outside of time? But I will admit that's one of the questions that I will leave to apologize just a little bit wiser than me. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Labzor, hopefully I'm saying that right. Thanks for your super chat. They said, if we grant the axiom of both sides that God exists for the theist and intuition for the atheist, how was the Christian side more illogical? I think that's a question for you, Tom. What was the question? What was the question? Just if we grant the axiom of both sides that God exists for the theist and intuition exists for the atheist, how is the Christian side more illogical? I'm not sure I understand the question because in both of our worldviews, the way we know about morality is because of our intuition. So it's not saying that our intuition is the same as the God. The intuition exists in both. The reason the theistic model is less plausible than the atheist models is because it makes morality contingent on the God. Killing someone in a universe without a God isn't wrong because there's no God in it, then your worldview is wrong. It's just obviously wrong. Killing someone in any universe with or without a God is always going to be wrong because it's intrinsic. It's inherent to the action of killing. So if it's only wrong because there's a God, well then there's a problem with the view of morality and so it doesn't work. That's why the theistic model is wrong is because it's contingent on this other thing that doesn't need to be there for any reason. Gotcha. Stupid or energy, thanks for your super chat. She said, God is unchanging and yet animal sacrifices and slavery are no longer legal or morally permissible. I think that's for you, CJ. Well, so there is a few things with that. God never changed first off in regards to the animal sacrifice. If you have a proper understanding of the Bible, the animal sacrifice first off is something that is only supposed to be existing in time, but second off and much more importantly is actually a type for the Jewish people to be pointing towards the sacrifice of the lamb, namely the Messiah Jesus. So it's more of a teaching mechanism for humans that only exists in time rather than something akin to an actual change. As far as the second point, what was that again, sorry? No problem. They asked, let's see here. She said, God is unchanging yet animal sacrifices and slavery are no longer morally permissible. Okay, so on the second point, slavery, if it is practiced as defined in the Bible by the Hebrew scriptures has never been repudiated. And quite frankly, nor should it been because if you actually look at it the way that it was practiced there, it's really no more different than some of the things that we do with like the military, for example, right? It's a completely willing practice. You give yourself over, you can even be paid for it. There was talk of slaves being rich and having their own slaves. So that actually never was repudiated. Gotcha, thanks for your super chat from our next guest who said, Philip, good to see you Philip. He asked, for CJ Cox, if we grant that God exists, what would happen if God was apathetic about morality? How would you expect humans to behave as a result? I think we would behave very apathetically in this hypothetical provided that he does some of the same things he does with us, for example, making us in his image and we'd certainly be pretty apathetic to kind of give you a real world example of all of these questions. Cause people will say, well, what if God this and what if God that in regards to divine command theory, which I certainly am a divine command theorist. Islam is a religion which teaches as far as the nature of God and the nature of morality, basically the exact same thing that mine does, but the moral rules are different. If Islam is true, I am sorry to everybody who disagrees, but marrying six year olds and committing jihad are in fact morally permissible and sometimes even morally required things. And there's absolutely nothing that we can do about that. Whether or not humans are supposed to act that way in your own personal opinion is irrelevant because if Islam exists and the law of the Quran actually created the world, then that is what is the case. Now I don't believe that, I believe instead that the Bible is true, so you turn the other cheek to your enemies, you win them through preaching the gospel, other things like that. But the fact of the matter is if I'm wrong about that and Islam is true, then the laws that that God said were moral are in fact true. So in a sense, that's just kind of, we can argue all day, well, what if this and what if that as far as what if God had laid out these rules, but whatever the rules are, if those were the rules that he had laid out at the beginning of time, because that was what was in his nature to do, then those would be the morals that we would have to abide by. Gotcha, thanks very much, appreciate it. And let's see. Pax Americana, thanks for your super chat. They asked, is evil, if evil is objectively wrong because God decided so, or I think they're asking, is evil objectively wrong because God decided so, or would evil still be objectively wrong if God himself was evil and thought it was right? So I think those are kind of two different questions. The reason is because God does not decide anything is wrong. It is within God's nature to act in a certain way and act, I say, as a matter of, you know, as we see it, of course, because, you know, we just, we already asked the eternity question. In other words, God did not, you know, like I said, Frank Turrick often says, God didn't just wake up one day and say, oh, well, you know what, murder is wrong. No, God, as always, within his nature, felt that murder is wrong, and however exactly you want to imagine that working is up to you in that regard, but it's not like, it's not a decision. It's inherent in the nature of God that more, not morality, sorry, that murder and things like that is wrong. Now, as to the second question, if God was, you know, an evil, well, that doesn't make any sense. If the creator of morality says morality goes a certain way, then that's the way that it goes. You don't really have the ability to call that evil because he's the one who established what morality is, he created it, right? Now, God is not evil. God happens to give us very kind and loving commands, but if he had given us different commands, then those would be the commands that would be considered righteous, which once again, like I said, you can play that thought experiment all day. Gotcha. Next up, appreciate your super chat from Stupid Whore Energy. She asks, if there can exist a possible, bizarre world where God's nature was different than theist reality is subjective? I think it depends on your definition of the word can. Can it in reality? No, but can we sit here and pretend to imagine such a world? I think we'll certainly, I can pretend to imagine a world where two plus two equals five. That doesn't mean it's not possible, or that it is possible. That doesn't mean that there's any sort of logical coherence in the statement. It just simply means that I can imagine a world where certain things are a certain way. Yep, you bet, Chet. Thank you very much, just responding to somebody in the chat. Brink of disaster, thanks for your super chat. They said, CJ, why should Tom argue against your peace of positionalism? Well, I guess to a certain extent that maybe the question, by which I mean the thesis of the debate, which would be totally my fault, by the way, I'm the one who proposed it, is a little bit limited in that regard. Because really the presupposition kind of inherently exists as a result of, I mean, in other words, I wouldn't be here defending the Christian worldview if I didn't have the presupposition that Christ exists as the savior and creator of the universe, right? So in other words, the argument of whether or not God exists, I think is a separate argument, which is why I said, you know, have that debate, we certainly can, it'd be certainly be willing, but assuming that that argument is at least questionable, I don't think a universe without a God can exist and therefore that would end up begging that other question, at least in my opinion. Gotcha, thanks so much. Philip, thanks for your other super chat, let's see. Yes, they said for Tom jump, I heard you say that preventing imposition of will is what human morality will converge to, but do you think it is more wrong to impose on two people's will than one person's will? There's different considerations there. I mean, it depends on the amount, like giving one person a paper cut would be less immoral than giving two people a paper cut, but killing one person would be more immoral than giving two people a paper cut because the amounts of will that you're imposing, like you've imposed upon that one person who you've killed their entire will, you just destroyed it, whereas opposed to just giving two people a paper cuts that wouldn't be, you haven't imposed on their will to the same degree that you've imposed on the one person's will who you've killed. So it kind of depend on the level of the imposition. Gotcha, thank you very much. Next up, appreciate your super chat, Jay Shy. He asks, if morality is not objective, then there is no absolute standard and you shouldn't force people to an objective standard or you are a moral realist. I am a moral realist. Gotcha, he's a proud moral realist. Look at him there. Okay, next up, appreciate your super chat from Nathan Artwork, asked CJ, do you have tangible evidence for God's existence? If not, be honest and accept defeat. How do you like them, Apple, CJ? So I believe I do. For example, I believe that there is, I have to list through them so I can't really give the evidences with them. That's of course an entire argument in and of itself but I believe the fine tuning argument is solid evidence for God. I believe it's pronounced Kalam, a cosmological argument is good evidence for God. I believe there is incredibly solid evidence for God from prophecy, as in prophecy in the Bible, which would be even specific. In other words, that's not evidence for a general theistic or deistic God but actually evidence for my God in particular. I think there's good evidence to believe the resurrection. I think morality is good evidence to believe God exists and reason is good evidence to believe God exists and so on and so forth. So I guess to a certain extent, evidence is in the eyes of the beholder but I think there are certainly some very objectively solid reasons to believe that specifically the Christian God exists. Gotcha, thank you very much. Next up, I think we can get to some of the standard questions as well. They and them in all caps. Thanks for your question. They just asked, or I should say, this is actually earlier in the debate, just for context. They said, is it possible that organized religion is man's corruption of true faith? I would actually agree to an extent and I know that may come as a shock but I think if you look at the Bible, the organization as we understand it today is definitely not something that Jesus had ever taught. It is certainly something that was taught in the Old Testament but once again, that is only as a means to an end. It's almost like a very elongated parable but very clearly anybody who met the qualifications of an overseer, which husband of one wife, somebody who's not quick to coral, things like that, they could be a pastor and you didn't have to get some dogmatic decree from a pope or sign a membership card or anything like that. In fact, that's precisely what got Jesus killed is that he didn't fit the status quo. So I would actually completely agree with that point and if you wanna add anything to you, Jump, I wonder if that might have been for you also. What was the question? They asked, is it possible that organized religion is man's corruption of true faith? I don't know what true faith is. I mean, I usually take the atheist definition that faith is by definition a belief or something without any evidence. So I don't know what true faith means exactly. Gotcha. Thanks for your question. Kill a doggy, one, appreciate it. They asked, CJ, do you think it's important to make people feel guilty for behaving immorally? Yeah, definitely. Actually, in fact, I would argue we have this sort of cultural disapproval of shame. Shame is definitely a useful emotion and it's something that all human beings should feel at least a hundred times in their lifetime. The fact of the matter is I think unless you feel guilty about something there's no way to change it for one. And for two, and I know this isn't directly related to the question, but I would argue that the punishment of evil in and of itself is a moral good. So regardless of what form we believe that punishment should take, maybe it's making people feel guilty, maybe some people think it's stoning, maybe it's everything in between like a prison or whatever. That's not really relevant, but I do think the punishment of evil is definitely in and of itself a good thing. Gotcha, thanks very much. And John Robertson, thanks for your question. Try to get a question in for T-Jump. Asked for T-Jump. Why should one promote or preserve universal well-being? Well, I believe there's an objective world. I believe there's a best of all possible world. So I think that we should pursue trying to get to that best of all possible worlds. I'm not, I don't agree with the well-being model. Sam Harris's well-being model. I think that if people want to, in their life, they should have the freedom to do so regardless of the well-being. I think that if they want to drink alcohol till they die, they should have that choice and we shouldn't stop them. So I don't want to agree with the well-being model. I think that like human well-being, it may be the case that if we stop reproducing, then all humans will die off and that'll be bad for the well-being of humanity, but people should have the freedom to choose to do that if they want. So I disagree with the well-being model. I think that freedom of choice supersedes well-being. Gotcha. Thanks for your super chat. Brink of disaster, just fired it in. That's CJ is slavery as commanded by God in Leviticus 25. Quote, your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you. From them you may buy slaves. Is that the same as the military and is it moral? So it is not the exact same as the military in the sense that they are one and the exact same thing. Clearly there is some nuanced difference, but it is certainly the same thing in the sense that it is a willing endeavor that you sell yourself into that has certain rules and parameter around it and that you essentially become the pawn of something that has greater authority than you. In other words, you don't have the opportunity, once you've joined the military, you don't have the opportunity to now say no. Some militaries actually used to even kill you for such a thing, which I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the point being. That's not something that you don't all of a sudden have the right to start disobeying orders and things like that once you've joined the military. And for those of you who would say, well, what about certain situations like prisoners of war? Well, there is the draft. So it's not like the military is always a willing endeavor either. As to the second question, is it moral? Absolutely, absolutely. I think it's even a net benefit for society. I have a video on that if anybody's interested, if not shameless promotion of my videos aside. Basically, it is a very good way to ensure that people who are incredibly poor, as long as you have the right rules around it, making sure that you're not going after certain folk in a way that is abusive or anything like that, is a way to make sure that people who are incredibly poor to the point where they literally cannot provide for themselves actually do have a way to be provided for. And of course, this is before the existence of things like welfare states or anything like that. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate it. And with that, I wanna say thanks so much, everybody. It's always a pleasure. I honestly appreciate your guys' words of encouragement so much. You have no idea when I see people in the live chat saying encouraging things about the channel or the speakers or me and just, I'm like super lifted up. I'm uplifted by that. So really appreciate all your kindness. And I could not agree more. I have to tell you, CJ and Tom, if you hadn't seen the live chat, people are really enjoying this. This has been a really good debate. People have just been giving a ton of positive feedback. So wanna let everybody know, just a quick reminder, both of these guys are linked in the description. I put those links conveniently down right, just right down there for your convenience. So wanna say thanks so much, CJ and Tom. Really appreciate you guys being with us tonight. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on. Always a pleasure. I'll go ahead. Absolutely. And tomorrow, Michael, the Canadian atheist, takes on Darth Dawkins, now known as Duncan Atheism, AKA Tom's dad. Really big one, very exciting. And then Tom jump, maybe we can't get rid of this guy. He's gonna be back debating the definition of atheism. We haven't had that for a long time. That's gonna be with Benjamin Blake Speed. That's gonna be a lot of fun. Then we have a triple threat on Thursday, no joke. Communism, we have a communist. Yeah, it's the first time we've found a communist. Adam friended, if you're listening, I saw you in the live chat. If you're still here, we are pumped because I know that he's been excited for that. So we have found a communist, a capitalist, and a socialist who will have a triple threat debate and then keep an eye out as we are hoping to, like I said, for Friday, the big dukeru, we will hopefully release that in the next 24 hours an event that you'll see here on the actual channel page for future events, which is coming up this Friday. So just kind of waiting for the official confirmation on that one. So very exciting stuff. Thanks for being here with us, everybody. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Take care.