 Hey everybody, tonight we're debating the slaying of the Canaanites, and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate, and if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, want to let you know a few things first, I'm your host, James Coons. Thrilled to have you here, as we are a neutral platform, hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. And so we want to let you know, no matter what walk of life you are from, folks, we hope you feel welcome, whether you be Christian, atheist, Democrat, Republican, you name it, folks. We are glad you were here, no matter what walk of life, no matter what your view is on all these different things we debate. And so with that, we are going to jump into this. So, want to let you know as well, folks, we are thrilled and excited that the podcast for Modern Day Debate has launched, and people seem to be downloading a lot, which is encouraging that people are finding it useful. And so, want to let you know, folks, if you have not yet, pull out your favorite, I should say pull out your phone, and pull up your favorite podcast app and find Modern Day Debate as we are very excited that, like I said, this is a great podcast for like long trips, long drives, maybe working out, whatever you want. And so, hopefully that's valuable to you, and also want to let you know if you're listening via podcast, I have linked the speakers in the description box for the podcast as well. And so, you can find our guests at those links in the description box either at the podcast or here on YouTube. And so, with that, folks, want to let you know we are thrilled to have our guests, and we want to give them a chance to let you know what you can expect to find at those links that are in the description box for both YouTube and the podcast. And so, we'll start with Skyler. We're thrilled to have you back, Skyler. It's been a while. What can people expect to find at your link in the description? Hey, everybody. You know, my channel is a channel of entertainment and debates, and we talk a lot about theology. I like to just say that if you want to have a good time, you want to laugh, you want to learn something, and you want to maybe see an intellectual debate, it's the place to come to Skyler Fiction Show. So, that's a little bit about what we do. You got it. Thanks so much, Skyler. Glad to have you back. And CJ, good to have you back as well. So, what can people expect to find at your link in the description, CJ? Yeah. So, I run the Cinecog channel. I have two different podcasts I do on there. One is The Watchdog, which is kind of a news-oriented podcast kind of centers a little bit more on not so much American news, but more like stuff in like Israel and in like the Roman Catholic Church and other global religious bodies and stuff like that. And then I also do one called Unapologetics. I actually just did a part two of an episode of that today responding to Brandon Tatum's claims on the deity of Christ if anybody's interested in that, Shameless Blood. But yeah, that's pretty much what I do is just a lot of talk about politics and religion. I get some philosophy and history in the future, though I say that a lot and still haven't actually done it, so nobody takes real stock of that. You got it. And so, we are excited for this, folks. What we're going to do is kind of that flexible 10-minute opening statement for the format followed by open conversation and then Q&A. So, if you happen to have a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat, tagging me with at-monitor debate so that I can see every question and put it into that list. And what we're going to do is CJ is going to start first. And so, I have the timer set for you already. CJ, the floor is all yours. And once again, thanks for being with us. Yeah, I appreciate you. And I appreciate, of course, Skyler for being here with us as well. Of course, I want to start just by giving all glory and praises to Jesus Christ and blessings to you all in His name. Of course, the question that we're having here today, that we're having put before us here today, it's not really phrased in the form of a question, but essentially, it's on the ethics of the slaying of Canaan. And for those of you who don't know, which I highly doubt is anybody actually watching this, because otherwise, why would you be here, right? This is specifically in reference to the Book of Joshua and, of course, the books surrounding Joshua, the command how this is supposed to be done, when, according to the Bible, the Israelites actually came into Canaan and destroyed the seven nations that were there, Gurgizites, Parasites, Canaanites, and so on and so forth, right? And the question, is this ethical? Obviously, in my opinion, it rests really on a God claim in a way, right? So, if the narrative is actually speaking to us the truth, right, which I believe that it is, that, of course, this is a justified slaying of the Canaanites. It's not even up for dispute. Why do I say that? Number one, God is sovereign and can do quite literally anything he wants. I want to stress this point for those who are out there and claim to be Christian, right? God is a sovereign being. He's capable of saving and only saving. Every purple panda born on the 7th Tuesday of September, if he so chooses, that, of course, would mean nothing, right? God is a loving God, so he does not do these things, but the idea that he owes us something is completely absurd, right? We are his creations. We are the pot in this situation. The potter is the actual focus in this particular equation, right? Just as it is in any other equation. So, we don't have the authority to sit there and start questioning God's morality, right? Now, that's only for believers, of course. That doesn't really have any effect on the non-believers, I guess I would say. But I just want to make that clear, right? That's the first reason why if the narrative is telling the truth, then, of course, this is justified. Secondly, if the narrative is telling the truth, then the second reason why if the narrative is telling the truth, this is completely and totally justified is because, of course, God being the sovereign judge, right? Not only does he have the authority, but he actually has an obligation to judge sinful and wicked peoples. And by the way, he does not show any partiality between nations. The slaughter of the Canaanites is considered particularly rough, but let me remind you that at one point in time and in some time in the future, according to the Bible, God has judged the entire planet. God has judged Israel on numerous occasions, judging them in the form of the Babylonian captivity, judging northern Israel in the form of the Assyrian captivity, judging Judah in its return in the form of the Roman captivity. God does not show partiality with any of these groups of people because God is the sovereign judge, the ultimate judge, a righteous judge who is thrice holy. What does this mean? It means that he is obligated by his very nature to destroy the unrepentant wicked nations. And I would like to stress, by the way, that that includes, at least in my opinion, in the modern day, in case that question is to come up at some point. And of course, that leads us to the third reason why this is obviously justified. The narrative is telling the truth, which is that the Canaanites are doing horrible and egregious things. If we go to the list of things which the Canaanites at least are accused of in the scripture, we'll start with Leviticus 18. Now, it doesn't explicitly say that everything in Leviticus 18 is being done specifically by Canaan, but it basically says that everything in Leviticus 18 is being done by Canaan. In verse 3, we say, After the doings of the land of Egypt wherein you dwelt, shall you not do? And after the doings of the land of Canaan, whether I bring you shall you not do? Neither shall you walk in their ordinances. It then proceeds to list out a bunch of things that you should not do. This includes sleeping with your own family members, sleeping with beasts, sacrificing your children to mullock, homosexuality, so on and so forth. Of course, some of those things being higher and lower in the actual moral claim than others. But the idea being that these people are indeed very wicked according to the scripture, according to what we're actually being set out here. And that's not just from a biblical standpoint. Even the atheists would agree, even the secularists would agree, unless they just are completely morally nihilistic in total, that sacrificing your children is wrong, that temple prostitution is wrong, that incest is wrong, that cruelty to animals is wrong, so on and so forth. All these different things that we see the Canaanites being constantly accused of. And by the way, we do know for a fact that this did indeed occur. There will be many people who want to whitewash history and say the Canaanites were actually these gentle nature-loving polytheists. That is simply not the case. We don't have solid records from before the time of roughly 800, 700 BC, but we do have some indication of what happens before then in a lot of their, what you, I guess you would call colonies, Phoenician colonies, right? So for example, with Carthage, right? We have a lot of reports from Carthage, or not from Carthage, excuse me, from the enemies of Carthage, the Romans and the Greeks, for example, saying that these people were very proficient in the slaughtering of infants. Human sacrifice was pretty common in the world. Infant sacrifice was a little bit less common in the world. So it was definitely of note when the Romans and the Greeks were dealing with these people. And if you trace back Carthage's history far enough, you will realize it's a Canaanite colony. You can do the same thing with Crete. Crete has a long history of what we would consider to be debauchery behaviors, licentious sexual practices, somehow they managed to get it in their head that they were having sacrifices every year at one point in time in a labyrinth. Whether or not that actually happened as a part of history is sort of irrelevant. The point is their myths show that they were a quite vicious culture that was at least, in theory, okay, with sacrifice for children. Once again, you trace their history back. You will see that this is a Canaanite colony, right? And the only real reports we have of the religious practices of the Canaanites when they lived in Canaan comes from the scripture, which I believe is a historically accurate document, which is showing indeed that these cultures were doing in Canaan the exact same things that they would go do on the island of Crete and over in Carthage. So if those three things are to be accepted as true, and I believe that they are, right, that God is capable of doing basically whatever he wants. He's the creator. That God is obligated to judge the wicked and that the Canaanites definitely qualify as the wicked. And I think the answer is obviously yes. God is not only justified in taking them out. Again, I would say he is obligated to take them out. And I would argue the exact same thing is true of any other nation that decides that as a whole, they want to turn away from righteousness and from God. And with that, I would concede. Thank you very much. Also, forgot to mention it at the very start, folks. We are pumped for this debate coming up that I am pointing to on the screen right now. Matt Dillahunty is confirmed for next Friday. It's going to be epic. That's going to be whether or not Jesus fulfilled prophecies with Samuel Nisan. And so I want to let you know, folks, you don't want to miss that one live. So if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and that little notification bell so that you don't miss that one live. And with that, we'll kick it over to Skyler for his opening statement as well. Thanks so much, Skyler. I have the clock set for you. The floor is all yours. Excellent. I guess here we are again, folks, talking about the word genocide and God. And in the context of God, committing a genocide. I don't know about you out there, folks. Let's just let's talk plainly here for a second. I want you to raise your hand out there and just note it to yourself. How many of you believe your God is genocidal, right? How many believe that your God is actually capable of committing genocide? Okay, I just want to put that out before I really get in because this is not, I want to kind of let other people know not a mainstream view what CJ is putting out here. Okay. This is what I would call very extremist view of the topic. Now, what I heard from CJ is basically God can just do whatever he wants because people are his clay, his creation. So it wouldn't really matter, you know, if he killed them because they were sacrificing babies. If he killed them simply because they were born with a sinful nature. Why are we even talking about whether it's the canaanite situation, right? Someone could just steal an apple and they're worthy of death. Right, because simply being born is worthy of death in your Christian worldview. So, you know, let's, I guess for some sake of argument, we're going to have, you know, I'm willing to grant, like, we'll just say there's a God, right? Because this is going to be a really boring argument. If I just say, hey, let's try to get you to prove there's a God first. Like, so we'll just skip ahead, right? Let's say there's some form of God. Now, you're trying to argue basically that it's moral in cases to execute children and babies. Because it's not like, you know, God just went in specifically and killed the people who were doing the wrong actions, right? He just wiped out everybody, anything that was living. Now, is that what we want to call moral? We're going to, you're basically going to call it moral to execute innocent children, right? I wouldn't even probably be having this debate with you just about the adults, right? I might be able to be persuaded to your side. I'm not for, right? I'm not even, you know, I'm not going to get into the historical aspect tonight of this, but I do disagree with some of the historical aspects that you've laid out. I don't think this is the key issue that I'm going to deal with here, but there has to be a level to where this all powerful, almighty God who can build universes, right? But can't be specific about the people that he's killing, right? You talked about how God, he has to do it. Like it's his responsibility, that might be your exact word, but like, okay, well, what about all the child molesters now? Right? What about all the people that are harming babies now? Right? Why would God not just strike all those people dead? Right? What about all those like, but not that that that's the reason why he's allowed to strike them dead, right? They were just born with the nature that he gave them, right? So it doesn't really matter what it is, but let's talk contextually like, you know, you're talking about how bad these canyons were. Let's grant it. Let's say they're awful monsters that ate babies, right? Well, there are people who do awful things to children these days. All over the world, we still have sex slave trades going on. Why doesn't God drop those people down, right? Why is it that God only seems to show up in places we can't verify it, right? And why is it when we look at the Bible, right? The stories of the Israelites and the violence and all the things it talks about is just like the cultures that were around them, right? They weren't different. The ancient Israelites sacrificed babies. There's a great episode, by the way, check out Dr. Josh Bowen on the Digital Hammurabi channel. He's got an interview with a doctor who has a whole book about Israelite child sacrifices. So in the end, here's what's going to happen, right? You're going to say, my God can do it every once because my God is whatever the perfect standard of morality. But it's not, you're going to say that, right? And I'm just simply going to, in some sense, dismiss it because if all you have is my God can do whatever I want, that's really not an argument. And it leads to all kinds of problems. What if God, what if God in those stories like got more specific about how he wanted all the people killed? Would that make it wrong? What if he was like, I want you to torture everybody first before you kill them? Would that make it wrong? Right? What if we took like the babies, right? We took the babies and we threw them in a pit of alligators. Would that make it wrong? Right? Is it because simply it was just swords that that's okay? Right? Is there any action that God could order that would be moral? And I don't think you're going to be able to say otherwise. You're going to have to say it's moral. All right. I think that's good for right now. I'll give up the rest of my time. You got it. Well, jump into open conversation, folks. So thanks so much, everybody. As mentioned, if you happen to have a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate, it makes it easier for me to see those questions. And so with that, the floor is all yours, gentlemen. CJ, how you want to start, bro? Yeah. Well, there's a, there's a couple of things that just cause I think they'll be quick. I just want to sort of somewhat, I guess, clarify not that I necessarily addressed them, but I sort of did. And you addressed them harder. You know, so you say like, well, there's all this, this all those stuff that people do today. Why doesn't God show up on the same day? I would actually argue. That he definitely does judge nations today. I'll give a perfect example with the American South, right? The American South blasphemously claimed themselves to be more Christian. And in case of devoutness, it was actually probably true during the American Civil War. And yet what were they doing? They were not only oppressing people, but oppressing even their own brothers and sisters in Christ, right? And what happens to them? They ended up getting horribly destroyed. Some areas of the South haven't recovered to this day. Right? Nazi Germany. Old Testament. Well, they were following Old Testament biblical practice for slavery. Well, that's certainly not true. That's certainly not true. That's definitely true. Leviticus clearly lays out this type of slavery. And in fact, if you look at the roots in the United States, you couldn't just do anything you wanted to your slaves. There were laws that were actually very similar to the laws in Israel, right? Now it wasn't based on race, the Israeli slavery that was there. But in the South, those laws were absolutely based on a lot of the Old Testament. So I just, I just have to clarify. I mean, you, you should actually know that this isn't true because you talked to Dr. Josh frequently, right? And it's a very well known. He agrees with me. South was not only was it worse than the Israelite slavery. It was worse than most forms of slavery throughout history. The American South and the African slave trade is one of the more egregious instances of slavery in world history. That's well accepted by historians at this point. Well, let's just push back though. Well, push back three things that are saying people were owned as property. Children were bought as slaves. People were kept for life. So you could beat your slave with a rod for discipline. Those four things were the same as American slavery. And I hate to say it. Those are kind of the big ones. I mean, I would argue there's certainly a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that has to go into them. But the thing is we're going to completely derail this. The point is I would just, Yeah, we don't want to get much good. I guess I would just say with a, to leave the topic, there is a slave Bible out there for a reason, right? It's because they wanted to cut out all the parts that told them about how you're supposed to respect your slaves as if they are still people. Right? And we can obviously have a con, maybe you even should at some point. I don't think I've ever even had a debate on biblical slavery with you or Dr. Josh. Maybe I have. I don't have a conversation. It's not the point. The point though I do think is that. Josh is rubbed off on me. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, you're totally fine. The point is those, I do think God definitely does judge nations today. I mean, I think you see the pummeling of Nazi Germany, the pummeling of ISIS, the pummeling of the American South. And I would argue, by the way, for the American forces is what you're talking about. American forces, not God. It's not God. Hang on. Hang on. You gotta understand scripture, my friend. It's very clearly listed in scripture. The Babylonians did not know that they were the instruments of God, but they were the instruments of God. Nonetheless, in judging wicked history, which by the way, you're going to get no argument from me that the Israelites sacrificed children. The Bible says they did and then says that God judged them for it. So like, no argument from me there, right? Don't you think that it would be definitely like, do you think it would be immoral of America to drop bombs on the country and kill everybody if they could just kill the bad guys somehow? Say there was a button and I press a button and every terrorist member drops dead in the world. Right. And the other button was a button I could press and it just kills everyone in the country where the terrorists are. Right. It kills the children, everybody else. What would be more moral to press? Which button? Well, to be honest with you, I think that would kind of depend. First off, I would say I don't have the authority neither do you, neither does any other human. No, I'm just asking you, not from God perspective, just you, right? Your morals are still based on God, right? So this, your moral frameworks that still be built into you, you should be able to be asked a question and you would know based on your moral framework, whether it was moral or not, right? Well, I don't believe that I under any circumstances, unless I like can provably know that God told me to do something. I don't think that I have any sort of a justification or authority to do that. Let's just say you were in control. No, no, just imagine you're a military general. Right. So you're just a man. Yeah. Like I would not do anything if I could. And if I had to take the method that would take the least amount of life because I don't believe that I am an authority to do that sort of thing. Right. Hold on. No, no, no, no. No, is that really why you think you wouldn't do it isn't because you cared about the children and you didn't want them harmed? You would do it just because God's the one who has the right. That's the only reason. Well, so I mean, obviously I'm going to have some of my own emotions in that for sure. But then I think that's where you have to get to a second point, right? Which is that, um, and this is something that's brought up frequently. Your heart tells you though, right? It would be the right thing to do to save the children if you could. Your heart tells you that, right? You know, business is the way it's supposed to be. Yes, right? Your heart. Yeah, but your heart does tell you that. I think consider the story of Abraham for a moment. Your heart goes against God. No, I'll give you a perfect example from scripture, right? This is actually explicitly a scriptural thing. Think of Abraham in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, right? Yeah. And God has decided he's going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He's going to completely wipe it out, right? And Abraham, who is the father of faith, by the way, who's beloved by God, right? He's not Christian. A guy who had a bunch of like sex slaves, the Bible, right? I mean, that's obviously. No, no, no. But God, you're saying he's a perfect, not a perfect moral being, but he was one of God's morally favored beings in the Bible. Abraham, right? Yeah, exactly, right? And, you know, a man who had many literal prost, not prostitutes, sex slaves, concubines. So God favors people who have concubines in those times. I mean, I don't think that you could argue that Abraham had any concubines for sure. He definitely had wives. But Hagar would be a second wife. It's in the scripture he has concubines. It's in the scripture he has concubines. But nonetheless, to get back to the point. I mean, I could pull it up, though, but I mean, but it is in scripture. It says that he has concubines. Let's keep going because it's not as relevant to the thing, but anybody can look it up later if you want in the chat. You guys can put it in there. Good. So when you're looking at the situation, though, you see God says that he's going to judge these people. And Abraham, who's his servant, whom he says, would you destroy it for the sake of 50 righteous? Would you destroy it for the sake of 40? So on and so forth. Right. In other words, we're expected. You see, even they're the father of faith, we're expected to have exactly the reaction that you are actually expecting from me right now. Right. The thing is God. Yeah. God being discussed. God, because you know he's doing something wrong in your heart. He's doing. He's doing something that would be wrong for me. Absolutely. It's not. He's the ultimate taker of all life. He's the ultimate judge. But even in that situation, even if you, but if you were watching him do it, you would feel it was wrong. If you watched him tell someone to kill a baby and you had to watch that person kill a baby in front of you, you're going to tell me that you would feel that God is perfectly good in this situation for having that baby executed in front of you. So hang on. So you're saying if I have got, so I don't think that would happen though, I guess, other than the case. It's going the whole nation. Okay. It's just a thought. It's a brain. But it gets it gets the whole. No. It's the same context. Just imagine you're a person standing there watching, right? Just imagine you're there in Canaan. Right? You're there in Canaan at that time. You watch a soldier walk up to a baby who's doing nothing inside of a crib, slice it open. Then he walks over to the child that's right next to it, slices that person open. Then he maybe kills the husband and decides he keeps the wife. Right. Well, maybe not what the K and I say to kill everybody in that scenario, but another scenario is he could have just, you know, brought her back home. But like, how would you feel? Would that wouldn't make you be like, that's wrong. Killing a baby is wrong. You wouldn't feel that. I would certainly feel like I don't like it. Absolutely. Just as Abraham felt that he didn't like it. Why don't you like it? Why? Why? Because I don't want people to die and suffer. Okay. Why does judgment need to come on babies? Well, I mean, actually, I think that's a pretty interesting question to be honest with you. I think number one, is that it is true that man is inherently sinful. You don't have to teach your children to lie. You don't have to teach your children to steal to be mean to each other. I mean, in some instances, like there's even horrible things that you don't have to teach your children to do. Right. Like racism, for example. Right. No, no, I think it's pretty much most of the time with racism. It's pretty much taught. I just agree. I think that kids are a lot smarter and more perceptive than people think. And one of the first things you notice is that that kids are mean. And if you want to be mean about that, you can be mean about that. And kids are mean. Noticing somebody's a different color is racism. No, I know. But like I said, if you want to be mean about that, about that fact, they are. Yeah. But why would you be like mean just because somebody's a different. That's a different point. Okay. This is the opinion that. Oh, I don't. Well, do you have any children? I'm around children and have my own. I have children and my children are actually very nice to me. But maybe I don't teach them Christianity. Right. Maybe that's the key difference. Maybe most of the kids that you see are raised in Christian households and that's similar beliefs. That's not true to be fair. I would just. Most of them are in what I would call just secular. They don't have religious opinions really at all. Well, let me tell you, children are exactly like you, right? In the sense of what you do, they watch every move that you do. And if you steal, if you lie, if you show trickery, they act the same way because they mimic you. Right. So really what it probably is, is more likely you see all these people, because the parents do these things, or they did those things, or they learned it somewhere else from something else. So, I mean, but this is still irrelevant. The point is, so you're, your basic thing is like, hey, you're born, you're worthy of death. God can take you out. Just to be fair, that is actually scripturally consistent. Oh, no, no. I just want to make sure. Yeah, but I just want to make sure you tell the audience knows though, that literally God right now would be perfectly righteous to take a baby, have someone RAP eat it to guess, and then that would be moral. I mean, so there's, there needs to be at that point, a clarification though, because I understand the point you're trying to make, right? You're saying, because if God obviously, I made the potter analogy, and the potter analogy is explicitly biblical, right? Saying that he's capable of doing literally whatever he wants. He has that authority, right? But there is also a second simultaneous biblical truth. I personally decided to term these things homilethia, because maybe I think too highly of myself, but the point being, that's a joke, by the way, the point being there's a second and simultaneous truth within scripture, which is that God is righteous in his nature. Does God have the authority to do whatever he wants? Yes, but he doesn't do those things because he loves human kind. Perfect. This is exactly what I wanted to talk about. This is right, right? Like God can't lie, for instance. Right. And that's an explicitly taught in scripture. Right. And there is no situation where lying is ever moral. Yeah. I think I would argue that, honestly. I think that there are situations where like you're, you're forced to make like one decision that's immoral and one decision that's outright evil. And in that situation, you take the lesser of two evils, I do believe, but I don't think the lying is necessarily justified. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, but so we can, it's very easy just to say right now, Hey, there's no situation. Lying is morally, okay, but for some reason, we have to draw the line at executing babies. Right. Like we can't say that there's no context where executing a baby is moral, but we can say there's no case where lying is immoral. So excellent point. Let me explain the difference. Right. So is it moral to be taking a human life? In my opinion, the answer actually would be no for the most part in God's absolutely perfect system. In fact, it's absolutely perfect system animal life to take. Frankly, it seems to indicate to me in Genesis that we were not actually given the right to eat animals until after the flood of Noah, indicating that in God's perfect world back at Eden, nothing is dying. Right. But I'd noticed the situation. I was just explaining with the lie. Right. Let's say the Nazi knocks at your door and you have to, you know, basically you have to either be honest, it would still be immoral, but you just do something immoral because it has a better outcome. Yeah. Basically, but it's never moral, but the executing baby is sure that we hear from, I think CJ, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So you're totally good. You're totally good. Um, but the point basically being though, like under an absolutist moral system, certain things are absolutely more valuable than others. And in this situation, the life of the Jew or whoever's being persecuted in this situation and the Nazi example, of course, is more valuable than your one little instance of truth. Right. That's a very common thing that happens to us all the time in a fallen world. And I would say it's the same thing when it comes down to judgment. You only have to judge things because people do wicked things. Right. In other words, you just use the death penalty. I don't know if you agree with the death penalty or not, but to use the death penalty as an analogy, you only execute somebody because they have committed a heinous crime. You're not just executing people, but babies have it. Well, from the perspective of only God, that's the whole point though. Well, so that's that. So then really, like I said, you're just born. You deserve death and God can punish you for it. Well, I mean, to be fair, he is under. Yeah, that is true. He is no under no obligation. Baby can't do anything. Right. Just sit there and hold on. I could just sit there and drink milk, but you know, it's worthy of death because it was born that way. Now, what about this? Could God have made that baby not born with a sinful nature? Well, that's a deep theological question. The answer is yes. Don't get me wrong. Like straightforward. He has the power to do so for sure. Oh, so he chooses then he chooses to create a world where we, where he gets to execute babies. I would rephrase that for sure, but he absolutely does choose to create us in a fallen world and then God has his reasons for that. Right. I believe personally that the best explanation I have heard is that this is the best way to get people into willing and right relationship with God is to see not the judgment aspect, but actually the salvation aspect. Right. The law as Paul says is a taskmaster to get us to Christ. And while the law shows us all of the different ways that we're actually worthy of death, Christ comes in the form of his, you know, Jesus Christ, of course, to basically relieve us from that. You know, the Bible says no greater love has any man than he gives his life. But only the people that believe though, it's just the people who believe in him that he gets relieved. It's not everybody. So like once again, like you would have believed, you would believe there's an age of accountability, right? You don't believe babies go to hell if they're killed. Like, let me ask you this. Did Cane night babies that were executed, did they go to hell? I do not believe so. No. Okay. There's an age of accountability. So if they're not worthy of guilt to go to hell, why are they worthy of guilt to be executed? Well, I think it's a matter of the nature, right? So to look to give an example of like a bear, right? A bear is not morally culpable for a things, for the things that a bear does. Yes. Okay. Perfect. CJ, you're exactly arguing what I'm saying to you. Yes. Okay. It's nature isn't right for punishment. Just like it isn't why wouldn't you send a baby to hell? Because at the age of accountability, why wouldn't you execute a baby? Because there's no culpability because of its nature. All right. Let's give CJ plenty of response time. I don't know if he was really done with his sentence there. Oh, I'm sorry if I keep doing it. I appreciate it. You're totally fine. You're gusto. I enjoy the spirited conversation, but what I would say though is like, I get what you're saying, but notice that doesn't mean that there's no situations where you're shooting the bear, right? For the things that the bear does by nature, if the bear is just in your property, right? And it's causing a threat to your family. You don't know where you can get rid of it. You shoot the bear, even though the bear only its punishment, right? His death, even though what it's doing is just simply being a bear. Right. But that doesn't work because like humans don't have, you know, God like abilities. If I had to build the ability to be like, Hey, bear, go away. Like the bear is going to go away. And then I'm not going to have to execute the bear. Right. Like, and don't pretend like this. It wasn't God who set up all these conditions in the first place. He's the one who set it up like this. And you acknowledge it. You acknowledge that he could have not had a sinful nature pass on to the children of Adam and Eve. This federal headship thing is my opinion, nuts. But anyways, so basically God chose the way to execute more children. That's what it comes down to. It doesn't. And you know, and here's the thing out there audience. If you think I really believe this, like this is what, you know, if I don't take his like this type of view on the Bible. Okay. What my only goal here is to show people, you don't have to believe everything literally in the story. Right. Because when you start believing in these stories, literally what's happening here to CJ is what happens because now you're stuck with all these weird things like God prefers to have babies executed than to not have a sinful nature passed on to them. Well, to be fair, though, I think that there are theological reasons people have given. And I know that now obviously to an extent this debate is in a way, I guess, assuming my world, you understand that just because obviously if the narrative isn't true, it didn't happen. Right. So what does it matter? Then, but if we, if we do kind of assume the Christian world view, you know, it is important to note that there are, there are people who have given actual reasons for this as to what, you know, why God would rather create a, in fact, Paul, the apostle is one of the people who, who describes why certain he's talking about people being hardened. It's not a hundred percent the same thing, but it's close in Romans, right? Romans nine. And he's talking about how this ends up leading to more salvation and specifically willing salvation, not steppford-wide. You got forced to do a kind of salvation. And it's interesting. This actually even goes all the way back to the book of Leviticus. When you were to give a offering to the Lord, it had to be willing. Nobody could force you to come up and give an offering to the Lord. Right. It's the self-same thing, I think, in this situation. Now, don't get me wrong. There are some horrible, horrible consequences to having the freedom to choose God or not. There really are, including but not limited to judgment and sinful natures. Wait a minute. But I think that is better than basically just being drones forced to, I mean, because that's, that's truly a tyrannical God right there, right? Who just makes beings basically to grovel at his feet all day. You know what I mean? Well, let me show you why this doesn't work in my opinion, right? So Adam and Eve, did they have a sinful nature before the fall? I'll be honest. I don't know how to answer that question, I guess. I would say. Because it was the fall that caused the sinful nature. It was sin that came into the world. It's the fall that sin didn't exist. I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I got to be honest with you. I couldn't answer that question straightly. I'll be honest. Well, here's why I bring it up, right? Because if they could have free will and not have a sinful nature, then it's completely possible. Right. Now you're just talking about God just arbitrarily throwing this in for some reason. So yeah, if they could have it, these other people can have free will and all you're talking about with free will is just the ability to choose God, right? To reject or accept him. So like having limitations doesn't like, like evaporate free will here as far as that goes. But you know, kind of going back more, let's go like, so let's talk about what makes something morally wrong. Right. So you're saying that God, is there any time God could kill somebody? It would be unjustified. Well, so it's a yes and no thing. Let me, let me explain because it know in that, I believe in divine command theory, meaning that I believe that human morality does actually come from God's commands. I believe those commands are written in our hearts. And so to a large extent, moral intuition is true, though not always, of course. But I do believe that that is ultimately where morality comes from. However, I think we see examples in the scripture of God and he refers to it as a test, but I think later theologians have sort of, you know, proven it's a lot more than that. But we see examples where God is commanding something he doesn't actually mean. And that situation is contrary to his nature. But as a result, it never actually ends up occurring. Right. I'm speaking, speaking, excuse me. I'm speaking specifically about the binding of Isaac in this situation. God is against child sacrifice yet he commands Abraham to do so. Now Abraham would not have been justified had he not followed through with the command yet we see in his loyalty to God's command, nothing ended up happening because God's nature is contrary to that. And of course, like I said, later theologians have extrapolated us what exactly this means. Right. But the point being, I think scripture answers your question there, right? That morality does come for us, at least on a biblical worldview from God and from his commands, but he does have a righteous nature. He doesn't want these things to occur. And even if he's commanding these things to occur, chances are he's not actually wanting these things to occur. This is probably some sort of parable you're living out because of course Jesus does say, I speak nothing but in parables, right? And the Old Testament from a Christian perspective at least is basically one giant parable that just happens to be lived out in reality. What do you got for BCJ? You got anything you want to ask me? I asked you a lot of questions. I feel bad. Well, I guess I would say assuming my worldview, because I know outside of your worldview, your question, your answer is going to be completely different, right? But assuming my worldview, would you think, like, how would you want to serve a God who did not have a line of punishing wicked nations? Because, and let me explain a little bit from my perspective, right? If it involves babies, it ain't going to be a positive. So at what stage, I guess, is a nation actually worthy of judgment? Like, for the Nazis, worthy of judgment? You can kill the parents, just don't execute innocent babies. It's that simple. You're God. You killed people before, like in the Egypt story, just make the people drop dead, right? Why are you making people, human beings, go to war? Everybody out there, you all probably know a soldier, an American soldier, right? In the last 10 to 20 years that was in Iraq, Afghanistan, those folks go through awfulness, terrible awfulness that they have to recover from from years from PTSD. And instead of what God does, once again, right, instead of God killing the bad guys, making their heart stop, he makes people go to war. He makes people violently kill people, makes people violently kill children and babies. Like, that's what makes it wrong. Okay, so would it be different if it wasn't people doing it? Like, so for example, when he flooded the nation, or flooded the world, for example, or when he rang Fire and Brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, is that more justified in your opinion? All he has to do is just, I would have no problem if he just killed the parents. Like, if you have parents that are sacrificing babies, I don't give a fuck about them, CJ. Like, execute them. Like, I'm pro-death penalty in a lot of ways, like for certain things, but like, but what the problem with these stories is, he kills everybody. That's why I bring up those specific things. Those are my objections, right? So like, there's no, like, this is a God who could do it, but chooses to do otherwise. Why would God choose a more violent way? It's the same outcome. There's no way you're going to argue, I'd love to hear an argument, right? How it would be, how the world would have been so much different had God just made the parents drop dead and then let the children live, or even if like, God had gently put the kids, like, to sleep, like just let them die in their sleep or something, right? That's not what scripture says. They wouldn't cut them open with swords. So like, I just don't understand why he chooses a terribly violent, awful, painful way for children opposed to just bad guys are dead. Well, so let me ask though, because I am curious, because you say like, that bad guys are dead, right? I've heard the same thing from T-Jump, heard the same thing from Rage, and I understand, right? I understand why you guys all come to that conclusion, because obviously it sounds, I don't know, I guess more peaceful in a way, right? Yeah. But like, let's be honest about what ends up actually happening when you just take out an entire generation's parents, right? You did it both ways. Okay, but the... We're just talking about the methodology, the same thing resulted to happen. Well, hang on, how do you mean, I guess, because... Okay, let's take like, we'll just say the Amalekites because I know that story best. It's simple, right? Right. Say the Amalekite story, right? Say instead, in that story, instead of God saying, hey, soldiers go in, slice open babies, kill the, and kill all the adults, right? God just made everybody in that city drop dead. Everyone dropped dead. No babies were sliced open. They just peacefully went to sleep and went up to heaven, right? Why would... Like, it's the same result. Everyone's still dead, right? Now we have soldiers that don't have PTSD, that don't have to kill kids, right? Like, and now we don't have kids that are executed. Why would we choose violence over poof? Well, I mean, I guess to a certain extent, I think that the differences end up being somewhat superficial with the exception of one. And that is that the PTSD, I think, I think that that's it. That is a decent point there. And there are, to be fair, explanations that people have tried to give about that, none of which I think I'm 100% sure on, but one of them is the notion that Joshua himself is... Now, of course, it's a different story. But just to use the Joshua example, that he is sort of a type of Jesus. In fact, they share the same name. Yahashua is a... Well, excuse me, Yeshua is a diminutive form of Yahashua. So it'd be like Josh to Joshua in our modern English, although obviously we translate Yeshua into Jesus. Not the point. The point being that when you are, I guess, taking hold of the promised land, so to speak, or this gift of eternal life, you do so, in a sense, violently. You don't play around with your old nature anymore, right? No, no, not in a sense. You're violently taking over this area. Well, you're violently taking over yourself, right? The language the Bible uses is supposed to be like purging. Think of like, for example, the cutting off your hand if it offends you or something like that, right? Of course, it's not serious. Sure, Joshua's getting to this point. So what happens next with it? The Jesus that kills children, basically? It's like he's the version of Jesus that executes babies? Well, just the point being that it's sort of like a parable lived out of that example, of that violent taking and not dealing with the sin that's left. And it's interesting you bring up the Samuel example, because Samuel, excuse me, Saul actually failed to complete the command of Samuel. In fact, Samuel chastises him for it, right? Yeah. And interestingly enough, what you find in the book of Esther is Agagites, descendants of Agag, the king of the Amelokites, who have come back yet again to try and reach vengeance on the Jews, right? In other words, it does appear and we know that this is true because in, you know, we see this sort of thing happening all the time. The CIA calls a blowback, right? You go and take out Saddam Hussein. ISIS comes up in their place. So God didn't get the job done, basically, is what you're telling me. He didn't complete his mission. Well, in that particular situation, he was placing the mission on to Saul, right? Saul is the one who didn't complete the mission. So God, wait, wait a minute. This is so washy, washy, washy, man. Okay. So God puts the responsibility on Saul to make sure the mission goes through. And if it doesn't... What's the command with him? Yeah. I mean, does God want to accomplish the goal or not want to accomplish the goal? I mean, because if he's not going to accomplish the goal, obviously, he knows he's not going to accomplish the goal. So was it God's plan that the goal wouldn't be completed? Well, actually, I think the answer probably to be fair, I think the answer to that is yes. I think God does everything in a particular way because he's like a giant author, basically, right? How weird is that? Like, how weird is God's like, you know what? I'm going to tell you to kill everybody, but you're not going to kill the game. You're going to make the mistake, but I'll still tell you to do it. And then I'll punish you for the thing I knew you were going to do in the first place. Do you see why this seems so unreasonable to people like DJ when they hear it? Well, I mean, honestly, I think that there's no contradiction really in that, right? If I know what you're going to do, I just have innate knowledge of your nature. Oh, I'm not saying it's a contradiction. I'm just saying it's asinine of God. I mean, it doesn't seem like a perfect God logic, right? So this is just like, so God set up Adam and Eve to fail. So did he want a relationship with us in the garden? Or did he not want a relationship with us in the garden? Because if he knew we were going to fail, I guess he didn't want that relationship. I mean, to be fair, there's a lot of theological conversation to be had there that I think that I probably am not even the best to get into. No, that's fine. But I do think that, like I said earlier, I do think that there is something to be said about the largest number of people coming to a willing knowledge and relationship with the Lord. And I think that's a huge portion of why things are done the way that they're done. I also do think that he's another perfect example even from the scripture, right? God goes to Cain and tells Cain, why are you Roth when he doesn't accept his fruits, right? Why are you Roth? Don't you know that if you'll do good, you'll get the same? And Cain, rather than just going and doing what God has commanded, beats his brother over the head with a club or something along those lines. I guess nobody really knows how he killed it, right? But he kills it is the point, right? Well, in that, Cain has proved himself, right? And God's knowledge of the fact that Cain has proved himself before it was actually gonna happen doesn't mean anything other than for us, it justifies for us why Cain is punished. He could have punished Cain before because he knows about his evil nature, but he instead allows Cain to actually prove himself. And then to everybody, there is now justification now, okay? Cain is punished, right? I think that that has a lot to do with these situations as well where it's like we are actually like, sure, he knows what we're going to do because he's outside of time. I'll be honest, I'm very Calvinistic, but there's a big, there's a big asterisk there. I don't think it's an either or question. I think, I don't know how this works. I'll be completely honest with you. It even sounds like a contradiction. It's even the reason I came up with that term. I used earlier homilethia of simultaneous truths, right? I think somehow it is true that God like an author does everything by his pen and also that since he creates actual reality rather than fiction that we do in a real sense have free will and free moral agency. I think it's both hand. Kid, so you basically believe predestination, the idea that God writes out exactly everything that's going to happen in the world and this is literally the way it was supposed to play out from the very beginning. Well, and like I said, it's like a yes and no. I think some, I don't know, like I said, I don't know how. What it's called is a compatibilist. It's the same thing what Matt Slick argues. It's where you believe some kind of have somehow there's free will within that. The problem there isn't. There's no way to have free will with that type of mind view because literally it's just like a computer program or programming and making a program or an author writing a book. The characters are just living. If you're making it like a real world kind of thing, right? You're just virtualizing the characters. You're making them real and they have to just experience what's been written, right? Now what's really screwed up about this is now think about all the things we've talked about. Right? So now it's just, hey, God decided. He was just going to ask people. He decided and that's not just those things. Everything in the world, the awful things too. Right? Child abuse. That was authored by God. I'm going to take a line from a video I saw the other night. He was hilarious on the gospel truth and that Calvinism. They were arguing about like, you know, Calvinism and one of the Armenian opponent was like, you're telling me that every porno video in the world was predestined by God. So God wrote out the actions of every porno video in the world, all part of God's plan. Is that true? That's an interesting question. Honestly, I think, you know, I think it has to be certainly within his knowledge. Absolutely. Because he has absolute knowledge. But I do think he also, he makes clear when he's, we're talking about the child sacrifice, right? That it's not something that he approves of. And the words he uses are interesting. He says it's something that didn't even come into my mind. Now he is a fan of child sacrifice. Sacrifices children. He's not sacrificing. He's doing the same action. One calls it a sacrifice. One calls it an execution. Is there any difference in what happens to the baby? I mean, I would argue, yeah, absolutely. Just to be fair, like you talk about, you know, you were here, you were talking about, you know, peaceful deaths, you know, being getting sliced open with a sword is a hell of a lot better than being thrown into a fiery pit. I think virtually anybody would agree with that. I mean, time's not up yet, CJ. God still has an opportunity. And as you said earlier, you said he should be doing it right now, right? Maybe he'll burn America and that will be righteous. And all the children, the babies of America will die. And you'll think that's a morally good thing because you know what, they deserved it. They were born. Well, and to be fair, I mean, not that it brings me any pleasure to say this because I love my country, but I do think we're teetering on that point. I'll just be honest with you. I mean, we, like, I think we, we, there's no, there's no point where it's ever going to be moral to execute the babies, no matter how awful parents are. CJ, I know, lots of abortions, lots of abortions. I'm sorry, CJ, go ahead. No, you're totally fine. I know. No, no, no. Well, here's what I'm saying. You're about to bring up the abortions. I mean, one million a year. I'm not prone. You know, I'm not, I'm not someone who supports abortion by any means. Okay. But, but just like the porno videos, every one of those abortions were planned out by God. He wrote the book. So why does God have a problem with abortion? If he wrote the book about it, he's the one who brought it into existence. He's the one who made it possible. He's the one that said, Hey, you know what I'm going to allow my creations to do is to destroy the precious life inside of them. Right? There's all types of things that I have limitations. I'm going to say this last thing and please you can go on. But I always use this analogy for folks, right? Free will is the idea that you can freely choose God and accept God, right? Without coercion. All these extra things that are oftentimes kind of like grouped together with free will, like the idea of all these individuals sends you can commit. You can go jerk off. You can go lie. You can steal. You have the ability to do all these kind of things, right? In the Christian worldview. Imagine we just took away some of those abilities. Let's take away the ability for humans to have abortions. Let's take away the ability for child molesters to be able to molest children, right? God set it up like this to do it this way. Right? And imagine like what? Here's one thing I can't do. I can't grow out of wings out of my back and choke a motherfucker. Right? I can't do that. Right? It's impossible for me to sin in that way to grow wings out of my back and choke motherfucker. But in the end, right? Does that mean I don't have free will? Absolutely not. So if there's a world possible where I can have free will. And babies don't need to be executed. It seems like we have a real moral problem here. Go ahead, CJ. Yeah. So I mean, the first thing I would say is I think that when you're talking about like why these other things are grouped in with the ability to reject or accept God. The reason is, is from the Christian worldview. And I guess from the Jewish worldview also probably the Islamic worldview. Most Abrahamic religions probably agree on this. I mean, things like not even just morality, but even like creativity and reason and stuff like that. And of course that's a huge philosophical conversation for later. But the point is we do believe that they actually find their self grounded in God. And then when you turn away from God, you turn away eventually from the source of all those things. So, but I think I would also point out you use the analogy. Right? I don't have the ability to choke somebody with my wings. Right? Yeah. But the thing is now think about that now thinking, because you do have the ability to go choke somebody. If you so fit or so choose, right? The only way you wouldn't have that ability and still maintain your free will. So if you didn't have any hands or if your joints didn't lock, you know what I mean? Like you start to get to kind of absurd territory at that point, right? Like for example, you brought up, you know, and it's a horrible thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm not justifying it. There are any circumstances. I personally think they should be executed, but you brought up pedophilia, right? Well, I mean, realistically, how do you, how do you stop humans from being capable of that? Like, do we not have sexual reproduction period? Because if you're capable of having sexual reproduction, you're capable of doing that with basically anything. Unless there's like, you know what I mean? Like, well, let me throw something kind of like, this is more just kind of out of the box. Let me just throw it at you, CJ. He's thinking it might be fun, right? So, okay. Why is it like in our world? Let's say that I'm sorry, James. You're not going to get monetization on this video after all this. So I feel like I should just continue to say so. Okay. Okay. We would probably admit, right? Okay. Here we go. Right. Okay. So we both, we both agree, you know, molesting children bad, right? And that's a sinful act, right? We'll just say just both simple act, right? Okay. I would imagine it would still be sinful. If somebody fucked a garbage can, right? It's still, you're lustful. You're fucking a garbage can. It's completely sinful. How many people in the world today are fucking garbage cans? Do we have a mass problem? Sure there are some. Right? Right? But okay. But if that's like a natural sin inclination that could be inside of you to do something like nasty like that, right? Like that's there. Why, why isn't there a way that God could limit those inclinations towards children or just not make it possible? Right? And to make a brain in a way that there is no way that it will be sexually attracted to children. Right? It seems like that that's very simple for God. And that's what I use disgusting analogies, but I think it's just rougher to get you to it. You're welcome James. And, you know, I'm getting back at James because of questions he came on my channel and asked me. And we got it. I always see. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a, I think that's an interesting point though, because it actually, I love it. I love the facts. You asked the question because I really do think it kind of makes my point very strongly. Like you think about what you said, find a way to limit the mind. Right? There's a word for that. It would be limit your will. Right? Because there are tons of things that you're outside. In fact, one of the reasons why me, you and virtually everybody else on the planet agrees so wholeheartedly on pedophilia is because you know, there's a lot of things that people do that you can actually sort of naturally justify, meaning like you could, from a naturalistic perspective, know why it happens. Right? Pedophilia is not that way. It's just so horribly egregious. It doesn't make sense even from a biological, any sort of logical, right? And it's one of them. I don't agree with that. I think there's, here he's, I think there's some serious biological issues that you have with it. I think that they, they say you can't hear me, but this, it's. But notice the point though, right? Like that's something that humans to their core, reject. Oh, like things that you probably think are by, like you said, they're probably biological, right? Well, I mean, I reject it because it harms children. I mean, that's what I, I rejected for it. Don't get me wrong. That's, that's obviously a part of my mind as well. Right? But I mean, like, in totality as a species, right? Why have you come to this point? Well, what we would both agree on, regardless of whether or not we agree on where the morality comes from, right? Is that there does seem to be something different from this crime than other crimes. And incest is actually another one, which is interesting. It's another one that carries biological problems just for the record. Well, well, once again though, like, so you could have a world. Okay. So let's say the mind thing. Let me go with that real quick, right? So God limits the mind. That's not free, but we're not, that's not the free way. This is what I was talking about with the free will thing. What is free will free will means you can freely choose God. It doesn't mean that God gives you the ability to do anything, right? And that's the heart of my analogy. Right? Sure. There are things that we view that are sinful because they are within our world and we can conceptualize them. They're within reality that we view what we may view as a sinful, but like saying that like it limits the mind isn't really what free will is about, right? Not having the option to do a thing or something simpler, like make humans reproduced in a different way, right? God seems to be obsessed with sexuality in the Old Testament and in the Bible. I mean, so much that like virgin women were cherished in a sense and stolen and forced into marriages, like, and everybody else would be executed. But like we could have made people in a way where they reproduce in a manner that is impossible to rape somebody, right? And the fundamental belief of free will would still exist. Your ability to be able to choose God freely, love him freely. These others are just extras. Well, I guess to a certain extent that would be true. But I would just argue you'd have to at that point now change so many different things unless you just want to get rid of a couple, right? But like, you know, if you don't want to show people you have to get rid of hands. You don't want to be able to bend your joints or something like that. You know what I mean? I sure God could figure it out. He built universes, right? I think God can figure out a way to make a species where they don't rape each other, right? Or don't abuse children. But the truth is the reason these things are here is because there is no God, right? That's the way or the God that is out there. If there is a creator God, he's certainly not involved with anything, right? I think this is why we get into these things. Like, like I said in the very beginning, right? In the end, well, all it's going to come down to you, CJ, is you're going to say God's right because he's right and he's the perfect moral just standard. So by that standard, he can do whatever he wants unless it's logically impossible. And that, I mean, that's all we're going to get to like it's just not much. We can, I don't know if there's much further you can go with it. Well, I guess to a certain extent, I would say that's true. But I would ask some just some rhetorical questions, I guess for the audience. Yeah, please. If, and it's the same question I already asked you. I would just want people to ask themselves if God does exist, is there a point when he is actually, you know, justified in being fed up with humanity and saying, we're done, especially if from default, we're actually sinful by nature. And yet he decides to give us grace anyways, allowing us to live these lives. Are we sinful by nature? What do you mean? Like why do we have a sinful nature passed on to the children? I mean, I guess I'm not 100% sure why that's the way that it ended up working out. God doesn't really tell us in the Bible. Well, but you admitted earlier, God could have chosen another way where it's logic. It's not. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the, all you're saying to the audiences is, hey, my Christian God made it to where if, if these telling the audience, this is the way God made it. And if you tell people this is the way God chose to do it, it sounds more monstrous. Right. If you, if you had said like you were asking like the question, right? What, if there was a God and he was moral, what, where would be the tipping point, right? The tipping point is where you have to execute children. And I think most people, even the atheists in the audience, if you have a country full of ISIS members and God was like, you know what, I'm going to kill all these ISIS members this weekend. I'm going to make every, you know what, when every ISIS member takes a shit, a TNT bomb goes off and they're dead. Right. Just the ISIS member. Right. You think atheists out there are going to be like all upset about it. No, they're not going to judge that. Right. Because they don't feel that would be wrong. But what comes in and we're all of a sudden like, Hey, what feels wrong here? Killing in some babies. Like, I always, I don't, I hate, I would imagine the amount of times we've said it. There's got to be a record. It's almost an account. The amount of times I've said that phrase, but like that's where the more that's where people to disagree. Well, be fair. I believe you that that's why you disagree. I really do. But I think quite a few atheists don't like the idea of a God judging them period. Right. I think that's a good. Sure. I could be fair. It's fair enough. Well, yeah. And I guess, you know, to an extent that is really what the debate is. It really is. It's not, you're not wrong. Right. It's this question of, you know, number one, is God justified in doing it? And number two, I guess, you know, it would be my follow up question of if there is a God, is there any point in which he's not justified? Right. But I, it really does kind of boil down to that first part. And I guess I would just argue from the biblical perspective, you know, that the potter doesn't have a right to stay or the pot, excuse me, doesn't have a right to stay to the pot or why have you made me thus? You know what I mean? And now, again, I don't think the Bible leaves it there. I think the Bible puts that as like a stepping block up to what he actually, you know, because again, I don't think that God is a wicked being, right? I think he says, for example, I'm not willing that you should perish, right? But I think what Paul is doing there is trying to address the hypothetical, well, if he was willing that we all should perish, you know, and I do kind of agree that, I mean, you don't, what are you going to say? What is the Mims, Sims character going to say to the game designer? Nothing, of course, right? What is the pot going to say to the potter? Absolutely nothing. That's not how God is, but I don't, I do believe that to a certain extent, that is the way that we should somewhat think about it. And I think that's perfectly explained. I'll kind of end it with this in verse in James, when he's talking about asking God questions and for revelation, and he says, ask God liberally, but do not expect an answer. Now, people think of that as don't expect an answer as in don't expect something to come. But actually, if you think, if you look at the context of what James is saying, it's like, basically, it's like, don't demand an answer, right? It's kind of the same way like you said that, you know, your children, if your children are just coming up to you, you just want to ask a question. Well, you're their dad, you love them. You want to, you know, answer whatever the question is, even if it's a dumb question, right? Even if it's like a question that's like, okay, this is just something about some story I've never even heard of before. You know what I mean? And whatever it happens to be, right? But if they start walking up to you, there's like demanding to know what's happening here. And I think you need to tell me this stuff, dad, right? It's like, okay, you know, this isn't going to work. This is not how this, where were you when I was paying these bills, right? Where are you? You see this house? Are you paying for it? I didn't think so, right? Check your stuff. You know what I mean? It's a big step with genocide. I don't know. Well, of course, of course you wouldn't, you wouldn't kill your child, obviously, right? But I think you get the analogy. No, no, no, I do. Let me ask you this. James, let me know if we're going in. I don't want to go over time or anything, but, uh, let's say I came to you CJ. And I said, my God wrapped Jesus. Uh, as decided he's going to execute all of the first born of the United States for the sins of abortion. If he was the ultimate authority and power, would that be moral? Well, yeah, do you be fair? Yes. In the mind of my worldview, it would be. Um, I believe, I believe we are lucky to have the biblical God as our God, not like the Islamic God or something like that, where this being does seem to show genuine care and concern, not only for us, but even for animals and creation. Uh, but I mean, if you came to me and you had a revelation for raptor Jesus, and you could show me for sure, the raptor Jesus was the true God, which to be fair, wouldn't be very difficult if you were an actually a prophet. Right. I think that'd be relatively easy. Um, then yeah, I mean, what am I going to say? Well, raptor Jesus is my creator. What am I going to do at that point? You know what I mean? Like, Well, what I guess I'm more saying, like, if I just told you that right now, how would you argue against it? Still, let's, let's pretend, let's switch the feet. Right. Let's switch against this. Right. Because obviously you don't believe in raptor Jesus. Right. Now, right. How would you prove me wrong and say, Hey, Skyler, no, that's immoral. Right. Okay. No, let's do something. What's something immoral in the Christian religion? We lie. Okay. So in under, you know, if being a raptor bait, it's morally okay to lie in certain situations. Right. Now. How would you, uh, and, and there, I fucked this up. Sorry. Um, how would, how we, what questions would you ask me to try to figure out if this is really the morality of God? Like how, how would you even start? Well, I guess to an extent it does, it would be, it would depend entirely on my phraseology of the question. Um, I would want to start in order to get to that point, point you're talking about, I would want to start with, okay, how can we prove that raptor Jesus is the God who is the standard for morality? Right. Um, in the question that we're kind of asking now, I think like, if I were to ask, okay, what justifies raptor Jesus in killing the firstborn of, of America, right? Yeah. At that point, I think I'd be stepping into your worldview enough to where the only way I think I could really contradict it is if something raptor Jesus said in whatever his scripture was, was actually contradictory or something along those lines. And I would want to argue from that perspective, right? To say like, this is internally inconsistent or something along those lines. Um, but you see what I mean, like it kind of depends on what exactly the question you're asking is. I think when you're asking is X action justified and it's an action that God has taken, like the slaughter of the Canaanites or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, whatever, right? Um, unless there's internal inconsistency, I don't know, I guess how you necessarily do argue against that. The best, I guess I could see is you could argue that these things are just simply not immoral and God is cruel for that reason. Um, but to be fair, I don't actually say, in fact, you even indicated today, that's really not even what you believe. It's actually just a certain segment of the population that you're concerned with. You know what I mean? Which is fine. Um, but the point being. Yeah. Okay, please. No, I was just saying that, you know, the point being just that like, you know, um, that doesn't tend to be people's position. I think, right? It's more than it really does usually boil down to a question of does God have the authority and justification to do so? Or is he actually the moral arbiter? And I do think those are kind of different questions in a way. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, technically, if I just grant it, if I, if I grant you the Christian worldview, like if I just grant most of the premises. Yeah. I mean, God can ethically do whatever he wants, like under that worldview. Uh, I, that's, that's just because he could do anything and anything he does is good. Right. So I think at the end, I mean, that's really what it comes down to. I don't know. This was a good debate. I think it's a good time to go to Q and a and. Uh, if you're feeling it, I know. I know my good. Well, I guess. I was, you know, I would just say, I guess, um, just one last thing. Um, yeah. So, uh, shoot, I kind of lost it actually. Hang on. No, you know what? It's gone. I'm not going to get it back. Sorry. I did a couple of those. This one. Quick. Can I actually, I do remember. I was just going to say, um, Skyler, I do think there is actually a way because of my second premise of God's justifications and basing them off of the Bible. I do think there is a way you could argue against God's justifications. And basically it would be to, to show if you could show that God is, is unjust by his own standards. I think that would be a very solid internal critique. Um, for whatever that's worth. Oh, no, well, I, here, here's, I'll say this. And just to kind of respond to it. So what I used to do a lot is I would just say that this is a contradiction of love. Right. So there is like God is love. It is part of his nature. God cannot do something that is unloving. Right. And there is no context where it would be loving. To execute a child. Right. So the reason I've kind of stopped using that is that I, what I find is Christian just say this is loving. Right. So it's just no point. Right. It's just like saying executing babies is just okay. Executing babies is moral. Okay. Right. Like, even though love justice morality. Executing baby would never be in any of those three categories for me. Right. There would never be a time where I would see a context where it would be just moral. Uh, to execute a baby. Right. Are loving to execute a baby. So like in that sense, it's like, I stopped making the argument because really in every time the Christian just says, this is just, this is love, this is moral. This is why it's just, it's. And I think it's a dangerous mindset you guys have because it's just, it's, you just reinforce yourself. There's no way to like falsify it here. There's no, like you just believe everything God does is good. So it's good. Even though it sounds atrocious and it is what it is. Like it to you, it's in the end. It's like you have, even though I think in your heart, you recognize like it's, you said it makes you uncomfortable. Right. I don't think you would ever do any of the things we've talked about. Right. Uh, I just think in the end, it's like all I can do is just say, okay, it just doesn't match any kind of context, which we would use the word love justice or morality within a real world. That's it. I'm sorry. If you have anything else you want to say to, if not, I'm good to go to. All right. That's definitely a, I think that's good. Final word. I kind of said my final word. Juicy. So jumping into it. Want to remind you folks, our guests are linked to the description and jumping into your questions. Thanks for your super chat coming in from. You guessed it. Standing for truth says. Okay. Very embarrassing. It says James is jacked. Little brown noser. He says epic debate on my channel immediately after this Matt slick versus Derek Barnes on morality. Well, we hope that goes well. I hope it's fun and Kent Hovins CPA highly doubt it's really his accountant, but says, okay. Most of these don't seem to be related. So I'm going to just for the sake of being looking for more serious questions. Steven Steen. And yet another says congrats CJ on your easy win. Bravo. A thumb in the eye. Always stings when it comes from him. Always stings. Are you guys buddies? Is it just playful teasing? Or is he putting a thumb in your eye? I can't. Listen, I'll leave it up to the audience. I'm just going to say it stings when it comes from him. Gotcha. And by the way, Will Stewart, thanks for your question. And I got to let you know, Will, if I remember right, Skylar, you're looking for Calvinist to debate. Maybe do I remember that right? That is correct. That is correct. Actually, yeah. Yeah. Will Stewart is as far as I know, a five point Calvinist. That's my guess at least. So that might be a future debate if you're up for it. Yeah, let's make that happen. Yeah. Skylar, in your opening, you entertained a God. If there is indeed a God, you were projecting human consciousness to a being far beyond our comprehension. Is it genocide for you to fumigate an anthill in your house? I know. I don't view it as genocide. But if you want to equate human beings to ants, that's on you, right? I think, you know, apparently it's almost like we forget the idea that we're in the image of God, like we are created in the image of God to have not just necessarily the sinful nature. CJ was talking about, but also some of those good things. Right. So like it's not like, I just, I find that it's funny because we think about God as like the source of love, morality and justice. But somehow it's just me confused about why he executes babies. You just, you're just so confused, Skylar. You just don't understand that that's morally correct to do. I don't, I don't think it's a crazy, like I think even CJ would honestly say, like for someone who's like not him, if he met another non-believer, they didn't hurt him. Like he wouldn't even say it would probably be sound unreasonable for somebody at first glance, right? Without the context that someone might add or the whole story. So yeah, I'm sorry that I think that your God would be better than a God that would execute babies. Like I just, I just want you to think better about your God. That's all I'm looking for. Gosh, and this one coming in from Will Stewart, the person who just sent that. We love a live debate challenge folks. There's nothing more spontaneous and fun than that. Will Stewart says, I'm in. So if you want that debate, Skylar, that could be a juicy one. And thanks for your question. This one coming in from full Monterey says, Sargon debate coming up soon. PS, thanks for your amazing work and want to say that I love that you care enough to respond to non-paying chats. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We're going to try really hard. We've got a lot of questions already, so we're going to try to get to the standard chats as well. But Sargon may be coming back on. We basically, through Brenton, there may be a very juicy debate involving Mouthy Infidel as well. So I know a lot of people were disappointed that one didn't happen last month. It looks like it's, I think odds are good now. Povellophagus, thanks for your question said. Question for CJ, you keep citing Dr. Josh, despite him showing your claims to be either false or disingenuous. Why do you continue to do that and then double down? To be fair, that's not necessarily from him. So I will not blame him for that comment. However, Dr. Josh would like to challenge any of the times that I either quote him or refute him. My channel is open. Juicy and Cider and Port, thanks for your question says, CJ, children need to be taught to be racist. It's learned behavior. If a child mocks someone for their skin color, that is learned behavior. I mean, I won't disagree necessarily that it's learned per se in the sense that you have to put the pieces together that would make you do that sort of a thing. But I definitely don't buy this notion that, that or numerous other things that we do for the record that we just focused on at the moment. I don't buy this notion that this should, like you have to teach people this sort of thing. Like I've been around kids and watch them start to put pieces together about them being different colors and people. And then weeks later start put, like picking on those people because they were different colors. Like I've watched that happen without any influence from parents. In fact, the influence from parents came in later saying, hey, we don't do that. Right. So I just don't, I just flattened them believe you. Gotcha. And thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from Will Stewart strikes again. He's got your number, Skylar. He says, Skylar, if God exists and we have eternal souls, as scripture says, is it not more merciful for God to recall babies before they are accountable than to spare them and allow them to become accountable for their sin and parish. You just use the word recall. Oh my goodness. That's hilarious. So I don't make sure I'm understanding this question. Correct. Like is he saying, would it be more moral of God to end the babies in the womb before they lived and he could end them? Is that what he's saying? I don't, I just want to make sure I understand what his saying here. I think what he's doing is kind of couching it within a Calvinist worldview and also so saying that if God exists and we have eternal souls that beyond earth will like continue to exist. Isn't it more merciful for God to basically call these babies to the afterlife, ending their lives on earth before they are accountable than to spare them and allow them to continue on earth and then be accountable for their sin and parish. Now I get it in the context of what we're arguing tonight. Okay. Yeah, I mean, if we're going to follow that logic, we should just approve of all the abortions that happen in this country because by that logic, then every one of those babies get to go right to have it. In fact, you might argue these women are saving these babies from a chance at hell. Right? I mean, literally, I mean, they could think like that. And that would be correct under that logic. I don't think in those terms, by the way, but I just want to, to your question, like if we're going to go that kind of weird logic, then yeah, then see where that falls and it doesn't make sense. Gotcha. And next up, coming in from nightmare says, good job, CJ. You got a fan out there, CJ. And then long nights, YouTube. And thanks for your super chat said, modern day debate, liked and subscribed because of it. Well, thanks for your subscribing friend. We're glad you're here and want to let you know folks no matter what walk of life Christian atheist, you name it folks. We do appreciate you being here. So thanks everybody. And Nate, the lawyer, thanks for your question said, Skyler just advocated for the snap Thanos wins. Mmm. Yeah. Then cider import. Thanks for your said, I emailed you about a debate with Kay. That may happen folks. Keep your eyes open for a potential tag team debate with cider import and a partner. It'll be a kind of a male and female team versus a male and female team. So it'll be mixed. Alright, guys. Thanks for your support. And Brandon, Ardeline says Christian say. Abortion is wrong even if the child may grow up to be a criminal. Also Christian say. Those babies needed to die. They would grow up as Pagans. You get that? Well, so there's actually a multifaceted answer there. So the first thing is just for again, a matter of authority, right? And that's a part from the reason, right? You just don't have the authority to take human life period, in my opinion. That's not the authority given under you, right? And there are certain situations where we do have that authority, I think. Unfortunately, these are situations like the death penalty, self-defense, you know, warfare, I think in certain situations can obviously be justified, but I'm actually getting more pacifistic at times going on, to be honest with you. But so that's the first thing, right? The second thing is, I do also think there is something to be said about our own, I guess, knowledge, right? Like, you know, people always say like, you don't, you know, you know, X, Y, and Z is going to happen, so therefore you can take the life, but of course you don't, just because somebody is born in a poor area or to parents who don't want them or to, you know, whatever the situation has to be, right? You have no way of actually verifying that that means that that person is going to be like a terrible person, whereas on the flip side with God, you actually do, right? You do have full ability to understand what that person would be doing and at what point in time. And of course, I don't even necessarily know, which is sort of the rap in all this, you know, what exactly God's reasons for all of his justifications are, right? He could have reasons that he decided not to give us within the scripture. I just kind of, I don't know, I'm putting a little bit of pieces together from what we do have, and yeah, that's that. Gotcha, and thank you very much, CJ, for that. Also, next question coming in, well, thanks, Hardcore X Darkness or Hardcore Darkness for your support again, and then, Riffert, thanks for your question, says, James, how are you a Christian when hosting debates here? I appreciate that, I get that a lot. And the answer is, it's true, no doubt about it. I learned things from this YouTube channel, like hosting debates. I learned a lot. At the same time, having had like a Masters in Philosophy, like you could say the foundations of my belief or lack of belief in different worldviews has been strongly influenced in prior years such that I would advise people to hopefully moderate debate is of value, but peer-reviewed literature, both from atheists and Christians, is of value as well. And so Hardcore, or Hardcore Darkness, thanks for your question, said, debate topic for you, James. Is darkness the absence of light, or is it something more? I think they're referring to the kind of old apologetics response to the problem of evil. So I don't know if I can't tell if he's serious or not, but we, maybe we will do that. That's juicy, and thanks for your support, Hardcore Darkness. And fact-based living, thank you for your question, says, CJ, what is the point of a God judging anyone? Why would it have that right? Simply for creating things, the whole story seems pointless. Well, yeah, I would say that being the creator does actually give you the right to judge these things. In fact, the things we create aren't sentient, so we don't usually use the word judge, but do you not have the full authority to smash a pot when it doesn't fulfill its purpose anymore after you've made it? Right? Of course you do. Furthermore, God is not just the Creator God, right? According to the Bible, he is also the God of morality and righteousness, right? He is a God who is thrice-holy, as the scripture says, and he is a God who has placed his moral law, according to Romans 1, at least, into the hearts of man so that we would actually be able to see it. I don't know, maybe that's not the right word actually. It might not be Romans 1, but nonetheless, says that he wrote the law on our hearts, right? The point being that, and of course, in Genesis 1, it says that we're made in the image of God, right? The point being that he's not just creating in this deistic sense where it's like, alright, I made the stuff and I'm kind of out. I'm done with this. I made the stuff and also I'm dictating the morality and also I want to put myself in a way at least within these people. I want to have relationship with these people, so on and so forth, right? And basically, your question is essentially like, well, what gives the judge the right to judge? Well, the fact that he's the judge gives him the right to judge, right? Maybe you shouldn't be committing crimes if you don't want to be judged. In this particular situation, of course, there's a little bit more theological talk to go into that, but I think that's sort of the basic idea. Gotcha. Thank you very much. This one coming in from Spicy Rhodes says, why didn't an all-loving God just make an all-loving planet like heaven? Have you ever seen the movie Stepford Wives? That, well, for those of you who have, that is why he does not just make everything, you know, make everything peachy keen, right? You can have perfection if you want, but if you're just perfection by default, that's called control, right? If you're perfect because you don't have any other way to be, right? You're like literally not capable of making the choice I want to be with God. I want to worship him. I want to follow his laws, those sort of things. I want to be in communion with my fellow man, right? If you're not actively making those choices, you're just a drunk. And yeah, I guess I would say, if you haven't watched Stepford Wives, watch Stepford Wives. It's kind of a bad movie. I'm not going to lie. It's not very good, but, you know, the premise is interesting. Gotcha. Peter and Port has a, you know, kind of a roundabout debate request for you. Skyler in particular says, reply to your email, James, would Skyler be willing to defend the pro life side? I mean, I don't know. Maybe a tag team. Oh, I could do a tag team. Maybe we could do it. I mean, it's something complicated because I am not black and white on abortion. So anyway, I would maybe be interested. We don't talk about it. You got it. And thanks for your question. Fact-based living says CJ, what is the point of a, what is the point of a God judging anyone? Why would it have that right to do so? Simply for creating things? The whole story seems pointless. I think that's a repeat question, isn't it? Yeah. I think that's the one you just did. Sorry. I was like, this one's a lot like one that I just read. Okay. Brandon, our lead, thank you for your question says CJ is what God does good because God does it or does God do it because it is good? Yes, is my answer to that question. I think that from our perspective, the commands of God and the facts that God has actually given us in his image are the only way that we can know morality. So from our perspective, things are true because God has said them. But God, according to the Christian worldview does not just make up morals arbitrarily, but they are grounded at least in some way. Although we may not have the best ways of explaining it within him. So I think both and are true, not either or. Gotcha. And thank you very much. This one coming in from Tippi Baer. Skyler, what is wrong with killing babies? Every time someone asked me that, a little part of me dies inside when people ask me that. Well, I mean, one thing I mean, from my perspective is, you know, I care about them. Right. And I love them and I don't want to harm them. You know, my morality is based on my emotions and my opinions, you know, and, you know, I tend not to, you know, do immoral things that go against like what I want to do, you know. I just feel like why is it immoral? Well, first, they're innocent children. They don't deserve anything. There's no just reason why you would, you would execute one. Right. You know, second, I love and care about them. Third, I have human empathy. Right. I know you have that out there. I know that exists in you, unless you're a sociopath. But yeah, that's, that's, that's why I feel it's wrong to, you know, kill babies, but you know, you don't have to agree with me. You can really, if you want to take a position where it's morally okay to kill babies, that's on you. Gotcha. Next up, thank you for your question. This one coming in from Paul commission says CJ, if I could create life and this life as feeling like pain, pleasure and love. Let me just reread that. If I could create life and this life, I think they're saying has feelings like pain, pleasure and love. Would it be moral for me to torture and kill that life? Interestingly enough, you know, you're not going to like my answer, but only because you are a sub creation and therefore are not actually an ultimate creator. Because of the fact that there is a higher morality than you because of the fact that you are created in this person is created by you and you are created in the image of God, right? You are bound by a higher morality. You don't get to dictate that sort of thing, even if you are creating things. Now, if you were, you know, a God creating your own universe, then again, you could, I guess you can do whatever you want, right? No, I mean, who's going to stop you? Obviously nobody. You know, if you're the one who's dictating what morals are and are not, then, you know, who's going to stop you again. But in this situation in our modern world, which is the one where, or not the modern world, but in the, in our actual world, right? Not in a hypothetical where I'm answering the question, you are bound to a higher authority and that higher authority makes it to where no, you would not be. Gotcha. And thank you very much for your question. Hard core, hard ex-core darkness says, did you know this number? They donated $6 and 66 cents, AKA 666. They say, did you know this number has no biblical significance to Satan? Research. That's just false. But I mean, I guess it best I could be generous and say potentially that they are basing their understanding off of Irenaeus's understanding, which came out to 616 rather than 666. But Irenaeus is contradicted by literally every single other church father, as well as every manuscript that we have with the exception of like three. So yes, just wrong. And Ziropha takes your question said, should a mother consider the love of a two year old child towards her worthless? Since it's mostly instinctual and not free love and the full understanding of death doesn't develop until age five. Worthless? No. But it's certainly not the same thing as when that child is older. Absolutely. In fact, perfect example of that. The love your dog has for you, which I'm sure if you own a dog, you probably can tell it's pretty genuine, but it's not the same love that your mother has for you, that your brother has for you, so on and so forth. There's something in that dog that makes it to where he does not have the ability to love you at that level. It's not his fault. It doesn't mean it's worthless. And obviously a baby is going to be more than the dog, but you get the idea and the analogy. There is a difference between the love that something with little to no understanding has and the willing love that something that is completely cognizant would happen. And to be fair, I'd be willing to bet most people would agree with me, including probably the person who asked the question. Gotcha. And thank you very much. This question coming in from Will Stewart. That's right, Skyler. He's coming back for more. He says, so remember, he's the one that said, hey, Skyler, like, wouldn't it be more ethical for God to bring these children to the afterlife? He says, yes, on that logic of abortion, the child is shown mercy. The woman is still held to account for her sin. Just like Joseph and his brothers. Then really, honestly, I mean, if we really fall, we want to follow this rationale through, like you would be doing the greatest service to your children by aborting them before they they're born. Because at least you guaranteed, right? They'll get to go to heaven. And you know what, you could still repent later on, right? You could genuinely mean it, right? But hey, you saved a child. And hey, I mean, the more abortions you have, the more babies you save. How ironic is that? Now, here's what's weird, right? Like, why is it that a woman could technically save more people than Jesus could if she just kept having more abortions? Right? Like it's just, it's just weird. This is a weird scenario. It's a weird way to think about it. But this is where you get with Calvinist theology. Good. We're good. Gotcha. And Code 5601 says, thanks for remembering me, James. Of course, Code. We're glad you're here, friend. And Jordan Rich, thank you for your question, says CJ. So if God is all powerful, could he not have made a world with less or even no evil? And since he is all powerful, couldn't he deem that best? Well, I mean, I guess the second part of your question, not necessarily, right? I mean, if, if what is best is based within his nature or something along those lines, then it, like I said, it's not like he's arbitrarily making it up. But so could he create a world where there was little to no evil? I mean, the answer is yes. It is literally yes as far as his ability to like be able to do things, right? But again, the question at that point would be like what things is God trying to accomplish by what it is that he actually decided to do? I think that again, this is just my opinion, that it's probably true that this is the best way to get the highest number of people in a willing relationship with God. That's, that's an argument that I've heard and it worked pretty well for me personally. I don't know that that's true. It's an explicitly biblical. It's just something that, you know, people have suggested and stuff like that. So, I mean, I, I don't know exactly why God decided to make the world the way that he did, but in his wisdom, he has decided that this was better than an alternative and I trust him, frankly. I mean, I know that sounds like a faith-based claim doesn't have any, you know, it doesn't have any place in the debate, but, you know, that is the faith I'm here to defend, I guess, right? So. Gotcha. James Alastair Hanna. Thank you for your question. It says, James, let's do a response. When you say that it helps have a debate with a partner. It's true. If you're a newcomer to modern day debate and we don't know if you have a lot of debate experience that we can look at, we do ask usually that you'd be willing to do a tag team debate so you can get a feel for you. And then they say, so CJ, would you be willing to initiate me onto this platform against either some socialists or some atheists? Yeah, I guess. Sort of depends a little bit on the position. My one thing with the religious debates, I'm not super strict, but there are, there's just certain sects that I don't consider to be Christian and so therefore I don't think it's honest for me to tag up with them. So I can't do tag team debates with Mormons, with Catholics, with Jehovah's Witnesses because I don't believe that we follow the same faith. Don't mean that it insults. I just, I just, I actually think the exact opposite. I think it would be insulting of me to take that position with you when I said that you actively did not, we're not a member of my faith group. So as long as those things are not true yet, shoot me an email. It's going to topic them. Totally done. Gotcha. Just a couple more questions. Will Stewart. Oh, look in your face. Skyler says regarding your comment. You remember who this is? So they say, I think they're referencing Paul from I think Romans six one, they say, should we sin so grace may abound? No. Yeah. But you could save more people. Like I guarantee if you have a woman right now that has had a bunch of abortions by this logic, she's probably saved more people than you have. Right? Like if, like, I don't like this logic you have is insane from a Calvinist. I mean, and once again, from a Calvinist perspective, they believe everything is predestined. Right? So all these abortion that he's complaining about are literally predestined by God. They're written out by God and they're literally happening because this is exactly the way God wanted it. So I don't understand what you're upset about. Literally everything's happening important to God's plan. Get with it or don't. Maybe he'll save you if you're lucky enough to be chosen for whatever his good pleasure. Next question coming in from Brian Steven says, Are we perfect in heaven? If so, aren't we a drone in heaven? In other words, we have no free will. I don't actually have the answer to that question. I don't think anybody really does. What best I could say is if we don't have free will in heaven, I guess it would be voluntarily given up. And if we do have free will in heaven, I think that living and having being brought to relationship with God in some way would be perfecting our will to where we would not want to do those sorts of things. But I don't even know that to be fair. That's just sort of off the top of my head answer. I don't think anybody has a really good answer to that question. Gotcha. And James Alster, Hanna has a question, a follow up for you. It says, can I follow up asking about Eastern Orthodoxy from your perspective? CJ. Well, I've noticed either Eastern Orthodoxy seems to be sort of, I guess, I don't know. It's weird because they're organized. They're very strongly organized, but I don't seem to find them all necessarily believing the same thing. So it would depend, I guess, a little bit on your own particular position. So like, for example, iconoclasm, I do think is a violation of the second commandment. I don't know if that necessarily makes you not a Christian, but it is something I have a serious problem with. But we can probably hash that out. It's not the thing with some of these other groups, like, for example, Catholics, I think Catholics are an outright violation of the Galatian heresy, which is basically when you add something to the gospel that is not actually there. In the case of the Galatians, they were even adding things that are from the scripture to the gospel. And yet Paul says they are anathema. And I think Catholics definitely do that with things like papal supremacy and phallibility, et cetera. It kind of depends on the Eastern Orthodox with things like that, right? But for the most part, as far as the other things, they tend to agree, deity and Christ, salvation through grace alone, right? Although even that one, I guess that depends on the individual. A lot of people do not believe in salvation by grace alone. But, you know, again, we can hash that stuff out. Gotcha. And with that, folks, want to say thanks to everybody for hanging out with us. Our guests, Skyler and CJ are linked in the description, folks. So if you want to hear more, those links are at the very top of the description box, both here on YouTube and if you're listening via podcast. So huge thank you. Skyler and CJ, it's been a true pleasure. Thank you guys so much for hanging out with us tonight. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having us on. Absolutely. And thank you guys so much, everybody, for all of your questions. Sorry we didn't get to every question. But just for the sake of it, we do want to respect the time of the debaters. CJ, I know that you wanted to start early. I hope that you're not going to be late to whatever is coming up next if you've got something next. But thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you guys having me on. You know, obviously, you know, everybody has their own things that they're doing, right? So I kind of, I try to be as open as I can, right? Just so that we can actually get these things going. And I appreciate you doing the same. Yeah, CJ is a very honest debater is one of the things I really appreciate about debating with CJ is he, I think you truly do want to try to understand your opponent, what they're saying. I don't, I think you acknowledge when things are, you know, when they need to be acknowledged. So I, you know, I want to just applaud CJ. Even obviously, obviously I disagree with him, but to be able to come into a debate and have someone, even though it may seem like we're talking a little bit or we joke, but you can see we have good spirit towards each other. So I appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate you as well. And I likewise actually very much enjoy having these conversations with you. One of my favorite debaters on the opposite side to be fair. So I appreciate it. Yeah, respect is mutual for sure. Always fun, gentlemen. And also I have pinned to the top of the chat. Converse apparently is hosting an after show. And we are willing to link the after show for either side. So if there's like a Christian channel and atheist channel, Muslim channel, you name it, we're willing to link your after show in our description. Box. So I will add that in addition to it being pinned at the top of the chat to the description box. So thank you very much, folks, for all of your questions. Thanks for your support. You guys, I will be back in just a moment with a post credit scene, letting you know about some of the upcoming debates that we are stoked about and that you don't want to miss. So be right back in just a few folks. Thanks again, though, to our guests, Skyler and CJ. It's been a true pleasure, you guys. Thanks everybody for hanging out here. We love you guys. I always love getting to quick stop by after the debate. In addition to sharing about upcoming debates, which I am pumped. We do have some epic ones coming up, but also just so I can say hello, get to hang out with you guys and you guys make this fun every night. I appreciate it. Every night that we get to do this, I always tell the debaters right before we go live. I'm like, thank you guys. This is a blast for me. I just love it. It's a lot of fun being here. And so it is a blast and Elhud. Glad you were here, my friend. I see you in chat. Brandon Ardeline. Glad you were back. Brandon, good to see you. A perfect one. Glad you're back as well. And then Stripper Liquor and Brian Stevens. Regulars here. Glad you guys are here. Thanks for being with us. Jay Pacific. Wait a minute. Jay Panic. Thanks for being with us, Jay. And what's the takeaway? Thanks for coming by. Glad you're here. Heat Shield. Good to see you again. Il Chamo. Glad you're back, friend. And then the Supreme King. Pumped. That you stopped by. Master Optics. Glad you're here. And Ronin Kenushi. Thanks for being with us. And thanks for your positive feedback. Jay Pacific. That means a lot. Seriously appreciate it. Caligula. Says, this was epic. Thanks Caligula. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. And all credit to the speakers. I love our guests. They're honestly, we love them. And so they're linked in the description by us. They're linked in the description, by the way. And Heat Shield. Good to see you. It's a sea of James. I hope you have a good night. Heat Shield. Samuel Lilleholm. Good to see you again. And then Stripper Lickers. Says, modern day to beta. And Fox Sushi. Glad you're here, my friend. And then also, yeah, yeah. You gotta look out for that fake sushi out there. It's a real problem. All over Catwell. There he is. All over Catwell. Good to see you, buddy. Thanks for coming by. New moderator. Appreciate your help. And folks, as you know, I once in a while we mention it, because sometimes people are surprised when they're new to the channel. The moderators can say whatever they want, as long as it's not hate speech, obviously, because that's basically the only thing that we ask the moderators to be like hard on. Like we don't give warnings for hate speech. It's just like, eh, come on, for real. You don't, like, don't act like you don't know better. But we're pretty like lenient about even, you know, Caps Locks. What's the new guy's name that always uses his Caps Lock? And he always claims his keyboard is broken. So I like that guy. A funny guy. But yeah, so we're pretty lenient about Caps Locks. We'll eventually ask, like, hey, are you okay with not using Caps Lock every single chat comment? But yeah, we're pretty easy going about spam. We'll give warnings before we even time out people. And then we'll eventually go to the timing out if they just persist. I mean, some people, it's, you know, some people just want to watch the world burn. So, you know, we got to put them in their place once in a while. But let's see. But yeah, I'm pumped, you guys. The cynic, and I have to make sure I'm pronouncing it. Cynicog. That's what it's been this whole time. CJ, I see you in the chat, man. Thanks for your being on tonight. That was a blast. Larry Letz. So thanks for having us. Larry, thank you, man, for being such a huge supporter of the channel. Thank you, not only always being supportive in chat. Also, want to give huge credit to Larry Letz folks as Platium also. Among others in the past have helped us with the Discord for modern day debate, which is linked in the description, and all credit to those guys. I am embarrassed to say it is hard to learn Discord. You guys, it was hard for me to learn Twitter. I don't know what it is. Maybe I've got, like, boomer, extra boomer medichlorians in my blood. I am just so... I'm, like, as boomer as they get. It's hard to learn Discord, so I'm thankful for the guys who are running the modern day debate Discord. And Stripper Liquor says, Good night, and smash that like button. I agree. Feel free to smash or caress. Maybe tickle the like button. That does help, and we really do appreciate that support, you guys. Thank you, guys, for being so supportive. I'm honestly blown away by just how supportive you guys are. Seriously, thank you, guys, for being super supportive of the channel. I'm dead serious, you guys. You make this fun. Like, you're the... Like, you make it fun where it's, like, a show and it's fun to be here live, and, you know, things are moving fast, and sometimes the chat is on fire, which reminds me, folks, I got to let you know about... This is not in stone, so don't take it to the bank just yet. But I want to let you know, this is, like, the... I'm telling you guys, like, the... Don't... Please just don't go up to, like, some of these people that I mentioned. Don't go up to them and be like, Oh, I heard you're doing a debate. It's not confirmed yet. And so, sometimes people get turned off when we, like, mention a debate that we're setting up with them, even though it's not confirmed. And so, I'll just say that we're attempting. So, to be fair, that's, like, fully honest. We don't have it confirmed at all. But we are attempting, and we are in touch, though, because I was going to... Last month, I failed big time. I was going to set up a debate with Sargon and Mothi and Fidel. It was the trans debate. It was going to be controversial. It was going to be juicy. I thought I had the right Sargon Twitter account, because Sargon had a fake Twitter account that he was using, and then it disappeared on me, but there was some imposter using the fake Twitter account. Very meta. Basically, yeah, the fake Twitter account itself was fake, in that it was also not even Sargon posing as a phony account, mind-boggling. Obviously, that debate didn't happen. We are now back in touch, vicariously, through Brenton with Sargon. So, we might. Brenton's idea was to have Sargon and potentially not confirmed. Aerial Scarcella. Big team there. That would be pretty epic. Against Brenton and... Who was it? I don't know who Brenton said his teammate would be. I can't remember. He told me. Darn it all. But anyway, that might happen. So that would be... Oh, Mothi and Fidel would be his partner. The guy who... Poor Mothi. I feel bad, because last time he was on, we were all getting ready to debate and then obviously Sargon didn't show up because it was some betrayer. A betrayer of the cause on Twitter, pretending to be Sargon that tricked us. So, I wasn't... Liam plays. Thanks for being with us, by the way. Just saw you in chat, buddy. Red Fang, good to see you again, friend. Basically, what happened was Mothi and Fidel... I felt bad for him, because he was excited to debate Sargon. Then what happened was... You know, we were tricked. It was... I kind of... I didn't think it was funny. Normally, I would have laughed, because I was like, wow, someone totally tricked me. And I think they didn't even care. They weren't even out for me. They weren't trying to screw over a modern day debate or me or you guys or anything. They... I have no idea if they have any opinion of the channel. But they... I think they were just like, eh, they think I'm Sargon? I'll say yes. But Will Stewart says, Q&A time is my favorite, but it's costing me a small fortune. Well, thanks, he says LOL. Thanks for your support, Will Stewart. We do appreciate it. And we were excited to have you on air debating as that could be a juicy one with Skyler. It doesn't have to be Skyler, but you know, he's... I thought I remembered. He always said he's like, hey, I would love to debate a... Five point Calvinist. Are you five point Will Stewart? Do you mind if I ask? Brandon Ardeline says, ranch versus blue cheese debate, when? Ooh, that's a good question and I haven't bought blue cheese in so long. I should do that. That'd be great. Mr. Bubble says, hi, James. Hey, glad you're here, man. And glad you're pumped. Appreciate your enthusiasm. I've got to tell you folks, yeah, I think I'd probably go with blue cheese. It has a distinct taste about it that I just have had too much ranch. I've been told that like the Midwest, people do use too much ranch. And that might be because I'm sick of it from my childhood. The Cinecog. That's how you pronounce it. Thanks for that feedback, CJ. And yeah, I'm going to go in just a minute so I know that Converse is having that after-show. And so that is... Oh, crap. Now I lost it. But I'm going to put it back. I'm going to hear it. I'm just putting it in the chat right now. There it is. Converse is after-show. I... Let me put... I'm going to title it Converse is after-show. Okay, there it is. That is back in the chat. So thank you for that. And then, Saffron, good to see you again. Felix Rodriguez, good to see you again. And perfect one. You're right. Perfect one says, Even a boomer should be able to find the like button. You're right about that, my friend. And so thank you guys for that support. That means a lot. But yeah, you guys, seriously, I can't express it enough. Thank you guys for everything. You guys make it so fun and it's spontaneous here. And it's also a community. It's got all these different kind of properties. Some that might be... It's complex. People might be like, it feels like a community and yet it's spontaneous. You know, people debating and just surprising and all that. And so the chat really is fun. And so Chewy River Rivera, thanks for being with us. I hope I'm saying it right. But we're glad you're here. And let's see. Standing for truth, you wily coyote. He's going to have a debate over there with Matt Slick versus our dearest friend, Derek Barnes. You guys remember him. We really like Derek, really cool guy. He moderated sometimes. And so we hope he's doing well. We hope that debate goes well. And we hope it goes well for Matt too. We hope they have a good old time. And then, yes. Jay Panick says, it's the mold. Oh, is that what's in blue cheese? Tastes great. And Brian Steven says, stay here all night. I love... I really do love it being here. Brian Steven says, James looks good for 85. I was joking with G-Man the other day when he was on. I was like, G-Man, the rumor is you are 60 years old. You look great. He's not 60. He's way younger than that, which is good for him. But yeah, basically, Denkonos is waiting for Pathfinder versus D&D Debate. That could be juicy. Will Stewart says, I'm a 4.75 Calvinist. I have some marked, griskellish views on the atonement, but follow the John Piper theology on depravity and sovereignty. I get where you're coming from, man. I like it. And we're pumped to have you on. And yes, you guys, what I was going to say though is, we're excited about the future. Don't bet against us, folks. We are thrilled. You guys, I'm pumped. You guys make this fun. Thank you for everything. And want to say, we are going to do big things thanks to you guys. You guys are so supportive and so helpful. And so I'm just thankful for you guys. You guys have helped us in so many ways in terms of like sometimes people are like, hey, James, you should host this person. I already asked. They said they'd love to debate or love to come on. And I'm like, thank you. Seriously, I'm just a guy that's just, I'm just having a good time and just like moderating. It's fun. I shoot a few emails out, but like I just hope you know that it's like you guys make it fun here. Thank you for all of your help and believe me, folks, we are going to do big things. We have a vision, namely, that debates would be hosted on a level playing field for everybody. That is our goal, folks. And there are a lot of channels that already do it and we're thankful for them, but we want to make that the standard on YouTube. We want it such that people say, you know what? That's what I want is I want it on a level playing field and where it has a huge impact on YouTube, the internet, all over the place that people will be like, hey, this is awesome. People are getting their fair shot to make their case on that level playing field. And it's us against all of the haters, folks. Believe me, we are going to do it. And a lot of times I think, you know, I see like bigger channels and it's like, well, you know what, folks, believe me, don't bet against us. We are going to do it, folks, and I don't care if it's us against the world, it's going to be gigantic and we're going to have a positive impact hosting debates on a neutral platform. And this channel will always be a neutral platform. I will never start putting out, like, here's a video from James on my views on this. Not ever going to happen. This channel, as long as it exists, is always going to have two sides of any particular issue. And so we are excited, folks. We appreciate it. And we are stoked about the future. We're also stoked about the fact that it's like, hey, we have a lot in common, folks. We all want to see the world become a slightly better place than you could say, had we not existed. And that's why we really do appreciate all of you guys' support when we do that monthly charity stream for a charity watchdog, evaluated charities such as Save the Children. So thanks, guys. We are excited and believe me, we're going to do big, big things. Believe me. Even with all the doubters out there, we are going to do it. It's going to be huge. And you guys, this summer, I've got huge plans in terms of in-person debates. I plan on being all over the country, like in-person debates, and it's going to be fun. It's going to be epic. And it sounds like odds are pretty good, folks. I've been hearing lately things should be pretty, in terms of the vaccines getting out fast enough. And so it's like, we should be able to do some live debates and not have to worry the way we have for the last about a year now. Holy smokes. Yeah, man. About a year since we heard about the news of COVID. So thanks, everybody, though. Wolfgang, good to see you, buddy. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being a moderator as well. And Brandon Arlene. Good to see you, Ann. He says, fandom debates would be pretty entertaining, too. I'm open to that, for real, Brandon. Like DC versus Marvel, I'm open. That would be a fun one. Let me know. It's also like gaming debates. Like if people want to debate, like, what's the best game ever? I mean, I know it's pretty obvious that it's Zelda Ocarina of Time. Nothing beats that. That's for sure. But, hey, we're open to letting other people try to make their case. So thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Anthony Salvatore. Thanks for being with us, buddy. We hope you're doing well. And so thank you, guys, for hanging out with us. We hope you have a great rest of your night. And we'll be back for sure on Saturday. We've got one booked for this Saturday. It's going to be epic. This Friday, I'm figuring out the details still. But yeah, thanks, everybody, for your support. We love you. Appreciate you. Hopefully, it feels like a community here. We hope you feel welcome. And so Heat Shield says, James, you really did have great timing to push through. The climate is prime for this kind of show right now. Heat Shield, I couldn't agree more. I never thought modern day debate would be like, is big and fun. And, you know, the more the merrier, we love it. It's a lot of fun. When I started it, yeah, I don't know. It's been encouraging. It's been a pleasant surprise to see that it's grown as fast as it has. And I think you're right. I think there is something to the idea of good timing. I don't think it means that, like, if like a debate, and I don't want to discourage anybody. If you're thinking about making a debate channel, don't be discouraged. Don't think like, oh, I'm too late. Because we've been doing it like two years. But I would say, hey, probably, it makes a difference in terms of timing to be harder or easier at certain times. But I don't think it means that, like, you shouldn't do it. We want to be very pro other debate channels. Like, if there's debates happening on other channels, and people tweet us, and like, we're happy to retweet it. We want to get the word out. And it's like, we want you guys, the audience, to decide, you know, where you want to watch or what you want to watch. Like, hey, we're happy to plug other debate channels that ask us or, you know, reach out and stuff. And so, I would say, hey, you know, if you want to start a debate channel, it's a great idea. And, you know, like I said, you know, tag us on a tweet. Is that what they call it? Tagging you? Boomer. Basically. But yeah, I do think it is true that the timing's been really, really good. It's been encouraging. Let's see. Thanks for your kind words, Brandon Ardeline. Let's see. You're funny. And, but yeah, thanks for everything. Baldur's Gate 3. Is that a good game? But yeah. But yeah, thanks guys. Love you. Excited to see you either this Friday or Saturday. And yes, also, thank you so much for your support via the podcast. Just that people have been downloading it. We've seen more ratings. Thank you guys for giving the podcast a rating. If you haven't yet, that's a way that helps the show and we do appreciate that. Seriously, it does mean a lot. As you see on the far right side of your screen, so let me do an Ant-Man trick here, guys. Check this out. Okay, so it's like Ant-Man when he has to do it. So, okay, now I am super size mode. It's like still here. Okay, so basically, see this little banner right here? I'm pointing to it. It says, subscribe. And then it says, if you're sick like us and you want more controversial debates. And we are excited to host a lot more juicy controversial debates. It's going to be epic, you guys. And then underneath, you can see it says right here. We're also on every podcast. I am so excited. We just got approved for another podcast. At this point, I feel like Darth Vader between episodes three and four, trying to hunt down the last of the remaining Jedi. Because we're on, like, virtually all of the big podcasts. So, like, Spotify, Apple podcasts, Audible, Google podcasts, Pandora, Amazon Music, podcast addict, iTunes. So that's awesome. And so now we're kind of looking for any of those smaller podcast apps that we have not yet gotten on. And we just got approved on another one, another two, Deezer. And then there's another one. I can't remember the name, but we are pumped about that. And so, let us know, Albert Bitcoin has entered the building. Let us know, though, folks, if you cannot find us on your favorite podcast app. And we hope that's useful to you. Like I said, long drives or just driving to work or working out. It's something that we hope that's valuable. Hopefully it's useful. And so, thanks everybody, though, for your support of the podcast, as that launch has been exciting and encouraging. Zaldrizo, thanks for being with us, said still would love to see a debate on biblical inspiration and inerrancy, preferably with an atheist, progressive Christian, and a fundamentalist Christian. Thanks, friend. I appreciate that. That's a possibility, you know, depending on who's up for it. So, I appreciate your feedback and want to say, though, thank you guys for everything. Let's see. I'm so surprised that, I mean, I thought debate tonight was a blast, but I'm like, wow, some people just really love the debate tonight. Bible burner says tonight was probably my favorite debate so far. Well, that's encouraging. So glad to hear that, man. That's like really good. Albert Bitcoin says, hi James and everyone here. Thank you, Albert Bitcoin, for being here. We hope you're doing well, buddy. And so, yes, let's see. Aftershow. I have pinned it to the top of the chat and that is in the form of Brian Stevens' chat. That is chilling there for you and so highly encourage you to check that out. Thanks, everybody. And we are excited for the future. Thanks so much for your support. Thanks to everything, everybody. We're going to do big things, folks. Believe me, despite the doubters, we're going to do big things and we're going to make it happen. So thanks, everybody, for being part of this community. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable, everybody, and take care.