 Tonight, we're debating whether or not Islam is good or bad for society and we are starting right now with Hussain's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us Hussain, the floor is all yours. Yeah, thank you for having me. So I'm sure many people here today are probably atheists or secular liberals and most likely will not see any value in religious or religious teachings through texts. So I'll try and aim to simply show that religion is good for society and Islam is good for society as well. Islam specifically is the best monotheistic faith, in my view, and best religion as it is also a way of life and has more requirements for people. There's a theory of, for example, like stereotype threat as well as a Pygmalion effect. It's a PYG-M-A-L-I-O-N that shows that when we provide society with higher morals or higher expectations, people will have an attempt to fulfill them. This provides a better society overall. Islam offers this, again, as it provides a stable and great way to do good deeds as well as a discipline to be a good character. The contrast here would be atheism and liberalism, where for some reason a lot of them don't really like Aristotle or Kant and they're not very popular among atheists and liberals. They adhere to utilitarianism and personal pleasures in the form of happiness because of Islam's practices such as mandatory prayer, Friday prayer service, the cat ruling on marriages, infidelity, cheating, and premarital sex as well as drug use. The regular prayer is a constant reminder and regulates people to behave in a good manner. Islam teaches one to be humbled beneath God as well as thankful for one's current lot in life, even if it is not the best. So a good study of this is Enninger and Sean's LM 2020. It said Muslims had the highest life satisfaction out of all religions. Being Muslim made one happier than earning a six-figure salary even while being poor, whereas being an atheist made one unhappy than being a poor person overall and overall were the most unhappiest group in the survey. A good example as well to compare this would be atheist suicide rates versus theist suicide rates. Islam was, again, the lowest based off the study off of a World Health Organization. It looks like people who actually should be more depressed, i.e. the Muslim countries, due to invasion and control from foreign powers as well as really crappy dictators, as well as being poor developer nations were actually the happiest ironically. Another study found that negative correlation between both societies. It was called Islamic countries and Western countries, the relationship between suicide and Islam across national study. So essentially the Islamic countries had reduced suicide versus secular liberal ones. Islam also has a reduce of HIV and sexual diseases. This was found in a Peter Gray study. There was less prevalence of sexual diseases among Muslims. Another study by Amy Atomsack posted an American Sociology Association found that Muslims are more likely to have less premarital sex as well as affairs in a country as a country gained more Islamic influence. Its non-Muslim inhabitants as well had less premarital sex and adulterous affairs due to the surrounding Muslim population. So even non-Muslims were improved or had better social conditions due to these social pressures. So these things like when you take into account pair bonding, make gardening have led to society with stronger family ties, stronger life satisfaction and happiness. Religious families are less likely to divorce per a Stanford study of premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution, a reply to Manning and Smock in Cooperburg. This is from Rosenfield. We can also look at the statistics as well as a biological evolution with the belief in God and compare and contrast like conservative or religious people to atheists and liberal people. There's tons of studies on this. So many people have concluded that religious and conservatives were more happy with their family life, mental health and life in general. This is found in a W Bradford Wilcox paper, a research paper by Pew Research on 2019 by Joey Marshall also found that religious people are more likely to be happy than satisfied with life versus non-religious people. Religious people were less likely to drink alcohol as well as smoke cigarettes and had a healthier lifestyle. Family religious and risk of adolescence drug use. This is a paper by Stephen Behr, Susan Mogen found that religious people were less likely to abuse drugs as well. There's a great paper on how Islam eradicated alcoholism and drug use within Arabia. It's called the use of drugs in the Islamic world by Tosh Taha Bashir and then it shows how Islam specifically eradicated drug use and alcoholism through a step-by-step process. The relationship between spirituality and religion and psychologically outcomes and adolescence emerging youth, Amanda Ana Clover review by York found that more religion resulted in lower alcoholism, marijuana use, smoking, crime, depression, anxiety and resulted in higher self-esteem and well-being. Less resilient actually resulted in the exact opposite and had an overall negative impact on the life of in all categories. A minute analysis by William Janes found children raised in religious schools were more educated, well-behaved and performed better on all tests. Despite less funding, religious schools had a higher expectations of students, gave them harder courses and closed the racial achievement gap. Per utilitarianism and consequentialism, atheists should love religion. However, I believe Aaron, much like other atheists, actually swear allegiance to the master of freedom and hedonism and not actually happiness like Jeremy Bentham proposed with utilitarianism. Religion and Islam overall is better for the global population and leads people to have a more happy and successful life in general. Only atheists deny these facts just like they deny the inherent belief in God and religion found within human beings. Every culture has believed in God and religious belief in its evolutionary necessary confirmed by many studies and psychologists such as Wesley Raymond Wells, the American Journal of Psychology, as well as Biology and Religion, that's another one by James Fuhrman. If there's anything fundamental to human happiness, essentially if these things are so fundamental to human happiness and provide such a better life, why do atheists deny it or not want to have it? If there was a chance to increase your overall happiness of your children, even just by faking religious velocity, why would you deny that your child those benefits? So in conclusion, religion and Islam is inherently positive for humanity. Thank you very much for that opening and want to let you know, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Aid Debate, I'm your host, James Coons, want to let you know. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from. Atheist, Muslim, Christian, you name it and want to draw your attention to the bottom right of your screen, DebateCon 3.1. Our Debate Conference is going to happen on Saturday, April 22nd in Fort Worth, Texas. You don't want to miss it, folks. It's going to be huge, including we're very, very excited about this. One of our debaters that we have here tonight, Aaron Ra, will be debating Tom Jump on whether or not religion does more harm than good. It's going to be a huge debate. You don't want to miss it and we also want to remind you the links for watching that, whether it be in person or live, are down in the description box. I will also put those in the live chat right now as we have a crowdfund. All you have to do is you throw in a buck. You watch all the conferences live from at home, or I should say all the debates at the conference live from at home for that crowdfund. And with that, we're going to kick it over to Aaron for his opening. Thanks so much, Aaron, for being with us. The floor is all yours. Thank you so much. I have to wonder, my opponent has some very strange ideas about atheism. We're not the ones who deny the facts. We're the ones who don't want to believe lies. And that's probably the biggest mystery I have as to why believers are believers. I mean, it seems that they don't want to believe things that are true. They only want to believe things that are not evidently true. And so what is good for society? Equality is good, but Islam is against that. The last Muslim I debated said he was against equality, wanting instead for men to be legally superior to women in a system that would also privilege Muslims over everyone else. And Christians can be almost as bad, wanting not only to establish a state religion to force everyone else to live by whatever they deem to be Christian laws, but also to also to oppress everyone else's second class citizens. I remember hearing American Christian conservatives, American Christian senators accusing American Muslims of being godless devil worshipers. And the excuse that I heard for that then was if it ain't from Jesus, then it's of the devil. So apparently Muslims don't believe in any God, if they don't believe in the Christian God, if you don't believe if you believe in the wrong God, even though I guess technically it was supposed to be the same one, or at least maybe it's supposed to be his dad, regardless, as if Muslims worship the devil instead without even knowing it alongside atheists, even when we know that there is no devil and no reason to worship anything, Christianity may not be as bad as it once was. Maybe it's not as bad as Islam is now, but it's not good to be under the yoke of any religion. Having more requirements means more restrictions, fewer freedoms and thus not as good. To my experience, Christian dominionists and Muslim Islamists both spout the same sort of shameless goals of injustice that always happen whenever any religion holds the reins of legislative power. The result has historically always been a violation of human rights and religious legislators always wanted a privus of one right or another while awarding special privilege unto themselves. That's why secularism is good for society where it doesn't matter what fanciful fantasies you like to make believe on your own time because the law doesn't treat anyone any better or worse on the basis of what they do or don't believe because while all gods are all the gods that men have ever imagined, allegedly judge others over how blindly they believe unsupported assertions of impossible absurdity is told by a deceitful clergy who obviously don't know and really can't know what they're talking about. Such judgments would not be just. We need to do better than that with a system of justice that isn't all about vengeance and pointless perpetual punishment without redemption, rehabilitation or reconciliation and probably the most fundamental of all human rights is our freedom to think and to believe or not whatever we do for whatever reason makes sense to us. But religion and especially Abrahamic religion. Wants to deprive us of even that, forcing us to make believe things that are not evidently true nor even possible and they threaten a fate worse than death to anyone who doesn't blindly swallow all of that. They're all that they're they're being told by that clergy. It is unwise to believe anything told by another without question, reservation or reason, but religion is not a reasonable belief. It's an authoritarian dictate and the most oppressive system of government there is, which I find it funny that that when I debate Muslims, they accuse me of being for authoritarianism when that is the system they are promoting and which I have always habitually lobbied against. I'm absolutely against authoritarianism. Why do they think that being an atheist would mean that I'm authoritarian? Why do they think that being atheist means liberal? Why do they think that being religious means conservative? Not necessarily, you know, the balance may be a bit skewed here in here in the United States. But such is not the case. He's assuming too much. You know what is good for society? Progress, socioeconomic and scientific advancement, all of which required that we seek out the flaws in our current perspective and correct them. But religion doesn't do that. It doesn't even allow that because whether Christianity or Islam or Hinduism, they're all faith based belief systems, the most dishonest and auto deceptive position it is possible to have. It's good to have shared values, of course, but what I too often see are bigoted prejudice, hatred against others as if as if that's a value. Hatred is not a value and ignorance isn't a superpower. Holding to irrational beliefs doesn't make you any better than anyone else. And forcing everyone else to believe as you do or to show deference to your nonsense is very, very bad for society. And then just to address a couple of other things. If you see, he points out that you have less extramarital sex in countries where extramarital sex is a capital crime. What a surprise. As if killing people for following their urges is a good thing and allowing people to love who and how they will is a bad thing. I don't get that either. So it would be good for society if people could be allowed that. I also have to note that, I said that, you know, atheists are not the ones who deny the facts. I mean, I've seen so many statistics, you know, for areas that are highly religious, that's also where the crime rate is higher. The porn consumption tends to be higher. And also when you go to foreign countries, whether it's a state in the US, the most religious states are the highest crime rate. And the most religious countries have the highest crime rate. The more secular countries have a much lower crime rate. So you saw about what's good for society. Again, let's look at the facts. Statistically, the lower the lower crime rates are in the more secular nations, the ones that are not ruled by religion, because you should have, you know, where all secular policies we have a set has a where the law has a secular legislative purpose that doesn't favor or promote or or inhibit any particular religion. And one last thing, as an atheist, I don't swear allegiance to anything. So I don't know. I don't know where he gets that. He thinks I swear an allegiance to hedonism. I'm very curious about that. I have one thing that I really believe in over everything else, and that's the truth. The truth matters, not just the truth, but what truth is. And sadly, I find that religion doesn't even understand what that word means. They certainly don't use it. So I guess I'll stop there. You got it. Thank you very much for that opening. And we're going to kick it into the open dialogue. A couple of other quick housekeeping things, folks. As you can see at the bottom right of your screen, modern day debate is a podcast as well. If you haven't already, pull out your phone and find your favorite podcast app and look up modern day debate so you can listen to debates on the go as all of our debates are uploaded onto the podcast within about 24 hours of them being live here on YouTube. And I have to let you know, our guests are linked there in the description box of the podcast as well, as well as here on YouTube. With that, thank you very much, gentlemen. The floor is all yours. Right, I wanted to throw out something else too. While I don't believe you for a moment that believing makes you happier. I've heard that a lot, but I haven't seen it. I've heard the claim that what I have seen is some people I know in the atheist movement have started something called the clergy project. And this is to help priests, ministers, pastors and such when they realize they no longer buy their own bullshit. When they've been selling the story, they're in this job, they have a congregation, they're preaching at a church, that's what they do for a living and they don't believe it anymore. Because at some point in people's lives, the truth begins to matter. And at some point, people realize, hey, I'm lying to all these people and that's not a good thing. And they don't like being trapped that way. But what they've been reporting with this organization called the clergy project where priests can reach out to the clergy project, covertly, privately to gain some sort of moral support. And I'm not sure what other types of assistance they may offer. But one of the things that they've noticed against statistically here is that these people may have been whatever their prejudices and bigotries were early on when they realized that they don't believe anymore, they do find that they are more tolerant, that they are more curious. They're more interested in returning to school and they're interested in learning new things. They're more accepting of other people. And all of these are definitely beneficial. Do you have any comments on that? In case you're, let me check if you're on mute. Sorry, you know, I muted my mic. So you're asking if I have any comments on Christian preachers leaving the faith? I mean, that's- Well, it doesn't have to only be Christians. That's good. I mean, like that's good on atheists to provide a support system. I mean, I feel like it's something lacking within these groups. So however, when you're talking about like our religious people happier, I mean, so are you just flat out denying all the data that religious people- Once again, I am not denying all the data. Okay, so I think you are because we've seen, I've seen so many statistics that go exactly opposite, completely contrary to everything you just reported. So rather than denying all the data, I think I'm gonna have to tentatively deny what you've just reported because I've got volumes of it I can show in opposition. Okay, well then I guess, so if what I'm saying is true, right? And even if you don't believe, right? Even under a utilitarian framework, wouldn't it be better for society to act religious? So for example- Wouldn't it be better for society to oppress other people's rights and force them to hold a belief system that makes no sense and punish them if they don't believe? No, no, I think that would be abhorrent. That would probably be the worst type of society imaginable. So, but you're conflating rules as oppression. And this is the same thing that happened in my prior debate where if there's any rule or limitation on freedom, and that's why I said that- How else would we have Islam or any religion? Just to be sure that we get to hear from each side. Yeah, how else would we have any religion have the influence over society? How would you propose they do that? Well, of course there needs to be rules. So you have rules or you have societal pressures. So if all of society, for example, like through TV or media, is saying like, oh, cheating's bad, right? That's a way to socially pressure people to say that cheating is bad. No one would say, oh, it's oppression to try and coerce society to behave away, which is weird, because we have now coercion the other way where like Muslims should be accepting, you know, like LGBT and all this stuff. So- So it's coercion. Liberals use coercion all the time. When you're told not to hate people. But no one saying to hate people or kill people. Islam just says it's a sin. That's it. Okay, so it's not hate to accuse someone else of being a sinner, even when those people believe in God and their God, your God, presumably, although everybody's God is personal, it's always an imaginary being who understands what you do because he is you. Their God doesn't think they're a sinner. So what right do you have to pretend that your magic imaginary friend is stronger than theirs? Okay, but you're an atheist. So you don't even believe in objective morality. You're- No, I do. I do believe in objective morality where you do not. Just to direct- I've read the Quran. To the old point. There is no objective morality in there. You go by the dictates of what someone says. Without going on to objective morality. You have those subjective opinions of somebody professing what is moral or not based on personal judgments. You don't have an objective morality. You don't even have a way of constructing one. Without going into objective morality, I do wanna redirect us in terms of whether or not Islam is good or bad for society. Okay, so let me say this. So he's saying like, oh, Islam is forcing people to convert. Islam doesn't force people to convert. Even in Islamic society- But you just said you would have to have rules. Hold on. I do wanna give Hussain a chance to respond, Aaron. So even in Islamic societies, there's rules just like any society, right? Okay, those are Islamic rules. Just like America had similar rules. Okay, and it's to prevent or to enforce certain values. And that's what I'm saying. So if Islamic societies want to have certain values, like, oh, PDA is typically like, you know, outlawed. They don't wanna, you know, have a lot of PDA, right? And that's to have a certain value presented, right? They don't wanna enable that. Okay, you would say, oh, that's oppression, but that's only because you value freedom more than society's peacefulness or hegemony in a way. And I'm saying freedom is not the only value. And neither did I say that freedom was the only value or the priority value either. I said equality. But you're saying Islam is oppressive because it has all these rules, despite Islam's rules providing a happier society. Except that it doesn't. In my last debate, I showed statistics for this. Where your statistics are flawed because you're comparing two societies with different GDPs. Like no wonder. I wonder why Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran who are sanctioned have dictators, have all the might of the liberal world on their throats. Why are their people more unhappy than Sweden? A country of like all middle class people. Like that's not even comparable. And you can look at a country like Saudi Arabia, which is way higher ranking. They actually just got 25th in the world's global ranking. And that's a more objective comparison. And they're happy without a lot of the flaws of like these liberal secular states when it comes to like divorce rates and things like that. Well, we're talking about flaws. We're talking about at least people can get out of a bad marriage where apparently in your country they preferred country of example, they seemingly can't. But on the thing about happy, as I said, we've got conflicting statistics there. I just like to quote George Bernard Shaw. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness and by no means a necessity of life. So even if it were true, and I don't think it is but even if it were true that believers were happier and that certainly has not been my experience nor has it been statistical to my knowledge then it wouldn't matter. The truth matters more. And what you're telling us is you think a better society would be one that lives a lie. Yeah, if you follow utilitarianism and you're an atheist, right? Then that would be better, yes. That's a hundred percent the logical conclusion. That's a valid conclusion. So even if living this lie, atheists themselves are happier because they're forced to behave in a way that would be better. We're not the ones living the lies. We're not the ones telling lies. We're not the ones to have a belief system that is chock or block full of lies. We're not the ones following books full of lies written by liars. We're the ones that say we don't believe the lies. We're only gonna believe things you can show. Show me the truth of it. Then I'll accept it. Okay, so the only way to have you believe that Islam could be beneficial for society is that I actually have to prove that God exists. That's what you're saying. So you're not actually following the lies. You think there's advantage. You think there's a benefit to believing things that are not being completely convinced of things that are not evidently true. Yeah, people do that all the time. That's not, that doesn't mean it's good. People do lots of things all the time that are not good. You should try to go through a list of things you do that were not good. So Aaron, if someone's right. What is good about believing things that are not true? Yeah, so here's an example, Aaron. So say someone's depressed. My name is Aaron. Sorry, Aaron. How do you say it then? Aaron, Aaron, sorry. Okay, so say you have someone who's depressed and they have legitimate reasons to be depressed, right? So the psychologists say, oh, well, just be depressed. I mean, you have legitimate reasons to be depressed. Or do you tell them, oh, like, hey, even though you're depressed now, there's these things that you have that are good qualities or you can make these changes. And some of them may be like stretches of the truth, for example, but you tell them that and then they make them happy. They start believing it. Then they start making changes that are beneficial to their life. No. First of all, I think it's interesting that whenever we get into this discussion, and I'm not talking about you personally, of course, but whenever I'm talking about believers on this on the value of truth, right away, they justify lying. They start with the white lies. They start with the placebos, but they come up with some justification for lying. And then it eventually comes down to or quickly comes down to what's wrong with lying. So that's the whole point, isn't it? That's the difference between my perspective and yours. I value truth and you don't. But you don't, so I don't think it's lying. You can bring up a hypothetical situation where you talk about depression as if it's a momentary mood. And if you can tell them something positive, well, then they'll perk up and smile and walk away. But that's not the case. People that have a lot, awful lot going for them and know it can still be depressed because it's a chemical condition. I'm not speaking with any kind of medical understanding at all, but this is the little that I know about it is that it is a medical condition, chemical condition and it doesn't have anything to do with their mood in the moment or anything you might say to them. And so your lie is not going to be helpful. Okay, so you just said equality, right? So you gave these vague notions of what produces a better society. One was progress, okay? Are we progressing somewhere? Well, very good. You can make the argument that we have more depression, we have more anxiety, more mental illness. It doesn't seem like we're progressing anywhere well. Okay. Yeah, because we went from a population of what was it, three billion when I was born to eight billion now? You know what, that's gonna be more of everything, isn't it? You're also clinging onto so freedom and equality, right? So what is equality? That's also a debated notion. You're saying, oh, are me and you equal? Like how tall are you? You could be taller than me. That's not, we're not equal. I did specify in the terms of the law, right? Okay. Okay, so I don't get more rights than you. I don't pay more or less taxes than you based on my height. Okay, nowhere in the front does it say that you need to pay more or less. Nor did I say so. You're the one bringing up the weird hypothetical that is irrelevant. Okay, so let me ask you this. So is like the FCC good when they place parental controls? Kind of a blanket statement. I'm gonna say that putting down some kind of controls is probably advised in most situations. We can agree some rules are good. Yeah. Okay, so what makes a good rule or what makes an oppressor rule? Well, is it based on a secular legislative purpose? Because if you cite religion as your sole motivation for any action or policy, then you still have not given a reason. Okay, so Islam saying, hey, do this, this is better for society. God says so. And even if the conclusion is true, you're just gonna say, oh, well, we should just ignore it. It's not good for society because it comes from God and the Quran. Oh, how did you get that so totally backwards? I said the only thing that matters is whether it's true. And you said so, even if it's true, I'm gonna disregard it. How did you misunderstand that? Because I explained and outlined in the beginning, there's all these utilitarian reasons for why religion is beneficial to society. I mean, there's even psychological reasons for it as well. I mean, it's supposed to be hardwired into us. There's tons of evidence that suggests God is hardwired into us. There is an unfortunate aspect of a revolution that causes us to have tendencies towards supernatural unjustified beliefs, yes. Okay, so you're just hand waving that away. Is it just, is my life good or bad? What's that? Is biological evolution, like you believe in that, right? I don't believe in evolution. It's something I can demonstrate for you. Okay, so there's a biological evolution, right? There's a reason for why human beings believe in religion. It was useful in the past, right? For us to evolve, right? That wasn't what happened. It was a side effect. So the common analogy is there's a number of them, but if you respond to movement in the grass as though it is a tiger, and it turns out not to be a tiger, no problem. But if you don't respond to the movement of the grass as if it's a tiger and it is a tiger, well, then there's a problem. Likewise, we have a suspicion that somebody is always watching us because we're a social species. So we have to go about our day. Even when we think we're alone, we still have to assume that someone can see us. And so that tends to lead us to think that someone is watching us. And that just carries on to where somebody's always watching us. And now somebody can even read our minds. It's just a tendency that we extrapolate to extremes. Okay, so you're literally just hand-waving in a way. No, I'm literally not. You are. You were saying, oh, it's just a byproduct. It's not useful, but there's all this data that it is useful. But understanding what it really is is not hand-waving it away. Okay, so human beings need religion and you're saying- We don't. I mean, the vast majority of people believe in God. The vast majority of people have been fooled by their various societies and by the liars and the clergy of the various religions into believing a whole bunch of different types of lies that conflict with each other, for which there is no truth to any of them. So that doesn't mean that we need that. We actually don't need that. And we're better off without it. How do you keep saying it's not true if it's innate in human nature? It's okay. You're gonna say that because there are 800 million Hindus that Hinduism must be true? No, belief in God is innate. So how is that- Belief in God is not innate. It is innate. It is not innate. Hand-waving it away. No, it's culturally ingrained. It's not culturally ingrained. It's by-law. We started out with a situation wherein we have these edicts, like going back to Exodus wherein you kill the unbeliever on the word of one or two witnesses. And how many generations will it be before everybody in that collective all believe? Because you've killed all the unbelievers. So we end up with a society because of this artificial selection pressure that we just described. You end up with a whole bunch of people who believe because they were conditioned to believe since childhood. But that doesn't apply to everybody. It's not innate. It's not a need. It's not something we need to do. We need to stop doing that. It is innate. So there's- It's not innate. Bruce Hood, a professor at Bristol University, suggested that supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains. There's a whole of the dodgy- Yeah, supernatural beliefs. We have a tendency to do a lot of irrational things, but that does not mean that belief in God is innate. It is not. You're saying- I don't want to spend too much. Pardon my interruption, Hussain. I don't want to spend too much time on whether or not it's innate, unless it's kind of clear that innate would mean beneficial or not. I just, I know I'm being a little bit picky- But it is innate, and he's denying it. I don't understand- It's not innate! But, hold on. How is it that you could have- How is it that you could have cultures- Even for the sake of argument- Which we don't have organized religion, always controlling them generation after generation. Even for the sake of argument- In which those people are born illiterate, and litteralized, never believing in God. I'm trying to redirect us. Is even if it was granted for the sake of argument purely, that it was innate, I don't know if that means that it, like actually is good for you, because there might be some innate things that are not as good. So that's where I'm just, I don't really know if innate or not is that relevant. I don't think innate is necessarily healthy. Yeah, I get what you're saying, but what I'm saying is it's innate, right? So it's innate and necessary by human societies, and by human- But it's not innate. I just don't understand how it's beneficial, if it, or harmful. Cause you know, it could be argued one way or another, like whether or not it's innate, I don't know how that's necessarily means it's good. Yeah, James is right here. Even if you are right, and you are not, but even if you are right, that wouldn't get you any further to your point. Why wouldn't it? If you're, all you're saying is, oh, people use religion- Okay, so you're saying that all humans have this natural defect that we believe in all of these different weird ass religions, and some few of them believe in Islam. And so that means that Islam is better for society. Why? Islam is better for society for all the reasons I cited before it produces. So it's a way of life that works with the way human beings are versus Except that it doesn't for the reasons that you yourself just cited and apparently didn't pay any attention to. You have no way to tell people how to behave, of what they ought to do. Come again? You have no way to tell people how they ought to behave and what they ought to do. Yes, I do. Matter of fact, I have no way that you don't. If you have just, my magic imaginary friend says so, whatever the authority is, whether it's some self-appointed a mom, whether there's some guy pretending to be a prophet, whether it's some guy pretending to speak for God, whether it's the book written by men pretending to speak for God, whatever it is, you have an authority, someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, saying, because I said so, and that's all you got, that's all there is. And you have the empty threat of posthumous punishment in an afterlife that doesn't exist. Whereas I have actual reasons I can give, science behind it, as for why we should behave this way, why it is innate that we behave the way that we do. Why are morality- What's the scientific evidence that equality is a good value? Well, this is gonna be a very different debate. You wanna have that one at another time or are we gonna do this one? I mean, yeah, I would love to have that some other time, but I mean, I don't know, essentially I've provided a bunch of evidence how Islam is better for society. You reject that evidence and then you provided contrary evidence I already have that says the opposite. So I'm not gonna pretend as if I don't know about all of this other contrary data. Okay. So, you think it would be good to believe things that are not true because you've mistaken- I don't think they're true. You keep saying they're not true, but you're the person who thinks they're not true. Okay. You're making an unsupported assertion for which there is no truth in the statement. You're talking about things that are not evidently true. There are only two types of statements in every religious doctrine. There are those that are not evidently true and those that are evidently not true. You don't have any truth in any of them. No religion can show that they are any more true than any other or than all the others, certainly not. Is giving charity good? Giving charity, yes. Atheists have a number of charities that is good. Yes. Secular organizations have also charities like American Wake. So, is Islam saying that everyone should give the cat, which is a charity per year, right? So, you're saying that's a- Christianity argues for the same thing, and so does atheism. All religions do. So, that's oppression. And non-religions too. Secular organizations for charity do exist. Is that oppression then? Why would it be oppression? Because you said, oh, forcing rules by God because of God is bad. How could charity, even when we're done secular, how is any of that oppressive? I don't think it's oppression. Okay. Okay, but you're saying religion, right? Requiring all these things that produce good outcomes is oppression. And bad outcomes. What are the bad outcomes? You're cherry- You're kidding me. Yeah, you're gonna just say, oh, wow, like Crusades or something. No, I wasn't just gonna say that. I mean, I've got a hell of a long list there, but among many other things, let's say that you're just gonna be intrinsically religious. You're just intrinsic religiosity. So everybody in your community all just been taught the same thing since birth. They've all been led to believe the same thing. There's no religious conflict there and nobody acts on it. Okay, so that's the only harmless variety of religiosity there can be. But even that entails harm because studies have shown that children who grow up in these societies cannot distinguish fact from fantasy. You can tell them the story of Puss and Boot, still think it's real. So that's the mildest, okay? That doesn't get into all of the horror stories that I'm shocked that you're pretending not to know about any of them. And yeah, we could get into the Crusades and a whole lot of other things, but we don't have to because there are so many examples system-wide. Not just in your religion, but in all of them. And it's certainly in Islam as well. Plenty of them. So what you're saying is like, you're essentially saying humans use religion to oppress others and do bad things. But that's not the- That's the purpose of religion, isn't it? Okay, that's what you think, but if everyone learns Islam and everyone abides by certain general guidelines and it produces better outcomes, then it is just de facto beneficial for society. If that were true, but it was not. I don't know how you can deny that. And you mentioned earlier living in a Christian society, I would rather live under a Christian society than a secular one. So- Why? Freedom to me is not the only value. In our case, good. I would want to be put into forced conformity. Why would you want even your very thoughts to be inhibited if not prohibited? What do you mean? How am I thoughts prohibited? You don't understand what a belief system is? No, no, no. So if I'm under a Christian theocracy, for example, right? Okay, I can go home. I can pray to my God all right. I can talk about Muhammad, peace be upon him. Until you're found out, yeah. There's no spying in Islam. Oh, you think? Yeah. Until you're found out, yeah. Okay. I can just as easily give examples of like liberal governments doing that as well. Oh, are we arguing against liberalism? Yeah, I think you need to find a liberalism. He literally took Muslim children because they were saying that being gay is a sin. Okay, so I think if you're going to argue against liberalism, you should probably find yourself a liberal to debate with. I mean, I'm just saying that if you're going to only say religion is bad because of certain people doing bad actions. Or let's just, let's go down the whole thing because I started with the big picture. I started with the big picture. Religion is a lie, period. And you think it's beneficial that people are forced to believe one particular lie over a collection of other lies. And do you think it would be worse? It would be better to believe in other people's lies that you know are not true and that you only secretly pretend, you pretend that you believe in them but you secretly believe in a different set of lies. You think it would be better to be living under the oppression of one set of lies than to be in a truthful society where we don't say things we don't know to be true. Yeah, society would be better off. Yes, that was the whole point of this debate. Islam, people would be better even under, this is, again, I'm using your framework. You only care about consequences. No, I don't. You care about utility. You have no idea what my framework is. Okay, most. You've got nowhere close to it, even when I described it to you. Sure, what I'm trying to say is most atheists, right, they appeal to consequences and utility, right? And utilitarianism. Well, I said, Under that framework, under that framework, any religion would be better than what we have now. Okay, so you're arguing. I personally think so. The way you're framing utilitarian, you mean that when I present reasons, that's the utility that you're objecting to. So you just want to have a belief for the sake of believing and there's no utility. There doesn't have to be any truth to it then. If you only care about consequences, yes. But what if I care about truth? What is that? What if there's the reasons we behave a certain way or should behave a certain way is because of the social cost benefit, even to ourselves, as well as other people, if there's all kinds of rational descriptions for why this behavior is preferred, why we should be pro-social as opposed to anti-social or selfish, why we should be honest as opposed to dishonest, you think all of that is bad or there's not reasons. That's just me appealing to utilitarianism. Whereas you don't have any reasons at all, you just have the authoritarian dictate. And so your response to that was to accuse me of authoritarianism. No, it's not authoritarian dictate. There are rational reasons to believe in God and to believe in religion. Okay. There really is not. And that's a whole different debate. I'm gonna leave something for nothing. I mean, which is like a logical fallacy. So, excuse me, every logical fallacy has been used as an argument for God and every argument for God is a logical fallacy. There are no rational reasons to believe in God. The whole point of this debate is that I think Islam is beneficial for society. Again, because even under your framework, it provides utility. It provides a way for society to behave. It has a way for... It doesn't provide the utility and it wasn't my framework. Okay. Under Atheist framework, right? There's no Atheist framework. All right, yeah. Okay, yeah. In an atheist society, if everybody in society just happened to not believe in God, then we would be following secular laws. And the laws we passed would have reasons behind them. Prejudice wouldn't be a reason. It wouldn't be nobody saying that my God said so. We would have to put in reasons, justify the reason that we're proposing this law. Other people would have to evaluate it and realize if there are consequences to that and evaluate them accordingly. So that we work out, yes, this would be a good law to have or no, we can't have this law for this reason. So, do you think human beings need spirituality? No, there's no such thing as spirit. So why would... Well, there's a schism right there. I mean, I can never convince you because it's just biologically needed. It's not. It is, I don't know. It's not, how am I living without this need? You're coping. How are so many people? There's more atheists all the time. Atheism is on the rise in all 50 states and around the world. How is that possible? Secularism is on the rise, which is- Eseism is on the rise. Secularism- In the last 20 years or so, since I've been an activist, when originally only 8% of people reported as being atheists, it's now understood that the unbelievers, the not affiliated with any religions, the people who answered polls by saying that they don't have a religion themselves and that religion is not important to them, but maybe it's important to other people, those people now outnumbered, we first outnumbered the Jews, then we outnumbered the Catholics, and now within the last three years or so, we outnumbered Protestants. Do you know Jonathan Haith? No, I don't think so. Okay, so he's an atheist and a secularist who wrote a book on how religion is useful to society. Okay, I know how religion is useful. Manipulation of the masses is very productive. Okay, so- For your personal ends, to the manipulation of others. Okay, again- It certainly argues against your position about if you wanted a better society. I think if you need to look at what makes a society good and realize that Islam doesn't provide these things, not unless you assume a whole bunch of things that are not supported by the data, like that belief in God is innate, because you are denying the facts there. Okay. Or that people need spirituality when we do not. So you are professing facts not in evidence while accusing me of denying the data. You are denying the data. I mean- So for example- I don't have any data to deny. You provided none, there is none. Okay, yeah, every study I cited- It didn't cite any study that says belief in God is innate because it is not. So 2011 study in Oxford University Humans are predisposed to belief in God in the afterlife per- They are predisposed to- Two super natural- Called born believers- Yes. Buller theologians- That does not make it innate. There's- So belief in God, many people are born never believing in God. And I get reports from people a lot that say, okay, I don't know what it's like living in America. I live in the UK or wherever. I live in Norway, wherever, where we- I just never met anybody that believed in God. I was shocked that people still believe in God until this day. This is what I get every day. That's a learned trait actually. So Oliver Petrovich at University of Sydney- You're telling me that babies are born. Let me, let me have babies are born. Hold on, just to be sure there's one at a time. Preschool children constructed theological concepts as part of their understanding of the physical world. So children actually are predisposed to religion. And again, that's actually confirmed by Oliver Petrovich and you want to deny that. So you're saying- I don't want to deny anything. I'm not the one who- You asked me if I believed in evolution, yet you're going to turn around and tell me that I'm the one that denies the facts? I'm not going to deny anything that I haven't read or seen or seen any justification for. I know that believing in God is not born into you. You're not born into that belief. That's it. And we don't need spirituality. That's not true either. Yes, children will have a number of irrational beliefs. Yes, I'm fully aware that we are predisposed to supernatural beliefs and that sort of thing. And I can give you the cultural reasons why that is as well as our evolutionary reasons why that is. But you don't believe in evolution because you think I'm the one who's denying the facts while you believe in magical creationism. Without going too far into the debate on whether or not it's innate. But we're not going to get out of that because that's apparently what it really is. Because some things may not be good for you but still might be innate. I just don't understand. If you can give in like two sentences the same why something being innate would necessarily be good for you. Do I understand? Did you say before? And I might be wrong. So if I misunderstood you, were you trying to say that if it's innate it allows for some kind of sort of like metaphysical kind of moral system where people will kind of have this thought of this God and keeping its laws. Is that what you're saying? No, so there's intuitions built in humanity, okay? So for example, like there's intuitions on morals, physics even, time, and there's physicists for example who talk about how like time may not even be real. I need you to get to regardless of whether or not time is real in two sentences. Can you tell me just maybe if you need three but just directly and quickly without shifting or I'm not saying that you're doing it on purpose without drifting to something else. Like what makes it good if it's innate? Cause you know, like I think that people have a preference for like fatty or sweet foods. I think that might be innate. You know, so it's like things could be innate but not be good for you. So I don't understand. Yeah, I get what you're saying. So what I'm saying is like, so if it's true, right? That God and religion is built into human societies, right? And it serves this function. It's good for societies and it's good for human beings as individuals themselves because it gives them peace. And that's something worthy of pursuing but I'm sure he's gonna just say it's a lie. So it's not just a lie. It's just a bunch of assumptions that are individually also all lies. Yes. Okay. I hate to press you. I just, the only thing I don't understand is like I think you just said like if it's innate then it could potentially give you comfort maybe during times of like immense stress or something. It seems like why wouldn't you just make the case for it like just being a potential psychological like comfort or whatever it might be during those times of stress regardless of whether it's innate. Like I don't see like the innate-ness. I just don't understand how it's like, what are some of the studies from like Jonathan Hite? You brought up the book from Jonathan Hite. If I can, I'm not trying to press you. I just wanna, before we go down the rabbit hole on the innate-ness idea, it sounded like you might have other studies you wanted to bring up. And before we go into Q and A and maybe about 20 minutes or so, I wanted to be sure that we kind of keep moving to maybe a fresh new topic or two. It's fine. I mean, there's a bunch of, like he's saying for example like children don't have these children believe incoherent things, which isn't true. There's another study that talks about how children know about causation, right? And so human society seek causal ends all the time, right? And then God is a causal end. It's the column argument, all that stuff. That's talking about- Except that the column cosmological argument is itself a collection of fallacies. Not just one, there's two of them ingrained in there. Go ahead and sing. We'll give you a whole minute and a half. It can be rational. That doesn't have anything to do with being born believing in God. Okay, so here's an example, the law of non-contradiction. There's people who they're saying essentially can't be proven, but it's intuitively true. And we act as if it's true. Same thing, free will. We can't technically prove it, but it's useful to act as if free will exists. And human beings naturally believe in God. So it's useful to act as if they exist. These things are all valid. The same thing is religion. It produces good results for societies. We should keep- I often argued myself that regardless whether we have free will or not, we have to still hold people accountable to their actions. They may be completely predictable. Islam certainly does not allow for free will to even be a possibility because God controls absolutely everything we do or think and then punishes for it anyway, at least according to the Quran. But that doesn't mean that we can't in a legal system still hold people accountable for their behavior. That's not how Islam works at all. I know, but that's what the Quran says. But the whole point is it's a scale at the end of your life like you get judged on your good deeds versus your bad deeds. I know what the whole point is. Believe what I told you for no good reason even though it's impossible and makes no sense or else you'll be punished forever. And you'll live in an apartment that is on fire. Yeah, I've read it. And if you're really, really good, then you'll get to sit in the hotel lobby of God's hotel in the sky and be served non-alcoholic beverages by children who exist only to serve you and who never grow old. Yeah, I've read. Yeah, it's crazy. You're getting all that, but all right. The Quran, you should read it. It's wackadoodle. Sure. So even if religion, like again, so... Did you know that you get sex robots in heaven in the Quran? You don't get 72 virgins. I was surprised that's not in there. But you do get virgins, but you get virgins that don't have souls. They didn't live on this earth. They exist only in heaven. They were created just for your pleasure. And you also get your wives from this life too. They live with you as well. And now they have to take turns not only with each other, but they have to take turns behind the sex robots too. Before we go further on, if you wanna give a really pithy response to saying I can give you a chance, but I just don't want us to drift too much into whether or not the Quran is moral or true, unless of course it kind of ties directly to... There's... I'll give you a chance to respond to say that. I'm not trying to... There's no way to answer it, because like I said, my whole argument is even if you don't believe it's true, right, it's still beneficial to society. And I like to think that I laid out a bunch of statistics on that. So teaching lies is true to children who now cannot distinguish fact from fiction and oppressing certain demographics of people unequally. These, my opponents somehow imagines are beneficial for whatever reason, I don't know. Because things he doesn't like will be oppressed somehow, but he doesn't call them oppressions. He just calls it rules against things he doesn't like. Yeah, sure, that's it. All rules are oppression, man. I do... No, not all of them. And I would follow a great many of them even if they weren't written down. Okay. In terms of, you had mentioned some of the other things from Jonathan Hite's book. Are you talking about the, I can't remember what it was called, like the better nature, was that him or Pinker? I can't remember. Was it about the five different like ethical foundations of different kind of categories of people on a kind of a political spectrum? I think it, but I'm curious about like any of the studies or arguments from Jonathan Hite. Or it doesn't have to be Jonathan Hite. I'm just saying that because you mentioned him. It could be other kind of studies that you wanted to make the case for. The other thing is, if you had like a meta analysis or whatever it might be to make the case that intrinsic religiosity was more healthy or helpful, that is something if you wanted to do a screen share, you could do that too. But I do want to cover any last topics related to this before we go into the Q and A. I mean, there's like the American Journal of Psychology, like the biological value of religious belief. There's so many studies on this. I mean, Jonathan Hite dedicated a whole book to it. Jonathan, what's his name? Jonathan Hydrick or something? Was the other one I was reading about? I mean, I just, I don't even understand how you can just deny it. If your child, if you had a child and even if you can just say, hey, like even this guy, I think Jonathan Hite argues, oh, just lie to your child, tell him God exists. It's beneficial. Why? Why isn't it beneficial to lie? When people believe in a all power for God that's recording their deeds, it produces better outcomes because they're like- It certainly didn't work for me. I remember being 12 years old and praying to the God that I still believed in as a child, asking him not to take my soul. Just let me die because I couldn't deal with the idea of being in heaven, in stagnation for all eternity, when there's no way to just let it end. And there's no way to progress. You can only progress so far, even if I were to become God himself eventually. I would still be, the eternity would still be overwhelming. There's just no benefit in it. And certainly not to be sitting in a hotel in the sky. I mean, imagine thinking of like an eternity in paradise is boring and then that's- Not just boring, it's far worse than much worse than just the monotony of it. The other things that you have to think about a little bit more deeply when you get to that point in your life, when you start evaluating this and start realizing, the reason that they invented hell is because people would think about heaven for more than two minutes and they start finding problems with it. Okay. I mean, that'd be like a logical fallacy. Like if- No, it wouldn't be like a logical fallacy. It would not. Analyzing something to the deepest ends a little bit more deeply than you ever have, that's not a logical fallacy. Okay. Well, go ahead and try to, I wanna give you a chance if you need 60 to 90 seconds in terms of why you'd say it's a logical fallacy. Like what type of fallacy? I wanna give you a chance to unpack it. This is just skewed view though. Like to the vast majority of people like living in a heaven where you're at ultimate peace or bliss that would be paradise. But to- While your children are in hell? Why are your children in hell? You're not responsible for your children or- Okay, so you're in heaven. You're in bliss. You're sitting in God's lobby having the non-alcoholic drinks by the little soulless children. But your own children are roasting in perpetual damnation forever mercilessly being tortured every day. And you're aware of this. My children won't be. I mean, maybe you're- Well, you don't know that because attenuation is the way that religion is dying. So the new generation, every new generation for the last 100 years has become less and less religious. Yeah, and they're more depressed, more suicidal. Well, you know, you can say something about suicide. All these benefits for religion. We're not more depressed. That's a chemical thing. But as far as suicide rates, if you think that when you kill yourself, you're now going to be faced by a judgemental God who's going to throw you into hell, well, then you're less likely to kill yourself. But if you understand- That's a good thing. That's a good thing. You're denying it. You're denying it. You're like, I should have the freedom to kill myself. That's what you're speaking about. But if you live in a theocracy and you're a trans person and you're being outed by the rest of your family to a government that is going to imprison you, I think I can understand why you would be driven to suicide. I understand why a lot of people in this desperate situation- You should really love them. When they live under your beneficial society's rules, feel the need to kill themselves. If they don't believe there is an afterlife, then that is in fact the escape. And there's a number of other people who have killed themselves for very different reasons. The guy that voiced Sher Khan in the original Jungle Book from 1966, he killed himself when he was something like 80 years old because he said in his suicide note, I've done everything. I've seen everything. I'm done. Yeah, that's really inherently pessimistic that you would view that. Oh, so you should really look into more- Why is it pessimistic? Depression caused by the chemical imbalance? It's not caused by that. How do you imagine it being pessimistic to come to the reality-based determination that I just did? Yeah, so you're telling me, okay, you have religion. Don't kill yourself. Keep existing. Raise a family. Be happy. All these stats that show you you're more satisfied with life- Sacrifice everything you have. Give 10% to the church or the mosque or whatever. Give us your money and leave us alone with your children for unsupervised visitation. And service the church forever for the rest of your life. And then when you're dead, we'll give you an impossible promise of a posthumous reward that we won't really have to pay you because you'll be dead. Yeah, look at the value differences here. I'm telling people to work for their community and their society and help benefit them and you're saying just do whatever you want and go kill yourself. That is remarkably not what I said at all. I was talking about how religion was manipulating people. It's not all about charity and everything. The little that religion does for charity is mostly a PR stunt to cover the horrific atrocities they are actually doing. But I am not saying what you're saying I'm saying. You haven't gotten anything of my position right even when I'd explained it to you explicitly. You still get it wrong. Okay, so all these stats about how atheists have the highest suicide rates. Religious people, Muslims specifically have the lowest suicide rates. Yeah, because what do you promise? I just explained to that. You're telling me I denied it. I accepted it. You got even that wrong. Is there anything in this debate that you didn't get wrong? Again, so you're saying, okay, so you agree with me. Why is it bad? Why is what bad? Why is it bad that people aren't killing themselves? Why is it bad that people are not killing themselves? Yeah, because they believe in Islam. Why is that bad? I didn't say it was bad. No, you did. Anything right at all? No, the way you're contextualizing it is that it's inherently bad. How dare Islam oppress them and tell them that they're gonna go to hell? How dare they? Not what I said, what I implied. That's the way you're contextualizing it. No, it's not. Because it is. No, I accepted that one statistic and I gave the reason for it. Okay. That is not denying, I accepted it. I didn't deny it. Okay, so then why is it bad? Why isn't it better? Why is what bad? Why is it not beneficial that Islam makes people not kill themselves? Because it is a lie and the truth matters more. I would rather have an ugly truth than a beautiful lie. Okay. Any last thoughts? Otherwise, I didn't. Yeah, I don't wanna be deceived into believing anything that is not evidently true. He does. I mean, I think it's true. I think there's a lot of reasons for it to be true. I think every viewer who's watching this should look into the biological evolution and why human beings naturally believe in God. But we don't. That sounds like another debate you're gonna lose later on. Let's schedule it. I love that. The only thing out of curiosity, and this might be, I'm keeping an eye on the chat because I wanna make sure I get any questions that come in, stuff like that. But just to be sure, I still just don't quite grasp how religion would be good if it were any. Like I said, there are things that are, you know. You said we couldn't talk about that anymore. You said, you brought it up again. Well, if Hussein had like a two sentences on like, hey, if it is an eight, here's how it's good for you. You know, reasons X and Y. But I just, I feel like it was it, maybe I'm just my attention's been divided to where that's why I haven't, or it might just, maybe just my verbal ability just isn't quite good enough. I should really do a video on this, but it's like a psychological hypothesis I have. So for example, there's biological realities. I think God existing is one of them. When you deny it, it's a schism. And then it needs to be questioned. No, you don't understand. You don't make an unsupported assertion of an impossible absurdity. But just to hear, I do want to get Hussein a chance to finish. You haven't presented the reality. There is no truth to the thing you just said. I just to give him a chance to finish. I do want to, if we give him maybe 30 more seconds and then we'll give you a chance to rebut. I'm not trying to give him a chance to make a speech without you getting to respond. I just, for some reason, I'm just so bothered that I don't understand this. And I'm doubting my own ability, frankly, because I'm thinking I'm, you say that because it is the case that theism is true, I think you're saying like, it's therefore good to have the innate belief. I think that's what you were saying. Yeah, so if it's biologically rooted, right? There's a lot of data that shows that it's biologically rooted. Denying this leads to what I would say is like a mental illness. It's the same thing, like when you deny, if like I'm a man, I was born a man, like if I deny that, then it would lead to a schism and it would lead to unhappiness. And I think that's why a lot of atheists, for example, are more mentally ill for the data. Again, we've got to challenge that data, and I will. But what you're effectively saying is it chronically masturbating when you're 13 years old is good? No, no, who's saying that's good? The reasons you just explained. Who said that's good? Well, you just said if it's innate, this is part of our natural being that we should pursue this. It's innate to human psychology, yes. Okay, so chronic masturbation when you're 13 is by your definition good? No, no, who's saying chronic, chronic and habitual habits are always good? The reasons you just gave that describe that situation also. Okay, show me the evidence that human beings need to chronically masturbate, because that's not true. But humans do need religion. They don't need religion. And yeah, when teenage boys have a tendency to do that, I'm surprised you weren't aware of this somehow. With that, we will jump into the Q and A. I want to remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description. We appreciate our guests. They're the lifeblood of the channel. Do want to remind you in the live chat or in the comments afterwards, please do attack the arguments with all of your rigor and fierceness. But in the terms of attacking the person, please don't do it, just attack the argument. We want to say thank you very much though for all of your likes. If you've enjoyed this debate so far, please do hit that like. We do appreciate it. Sigwall, thanks for your question, they said so. With that reasoning, all I have to do to disprove any religion is to be just a bit more moral than whatever holy books we're talking about, right? I think they were saying, they were talking about your earlier discussion of Islam relative to other religions that came up. Hussein, let me know if you want me to read it again. I know it's a longer one. Yeah, I get what they're saying, but I mean, if you want to try and be a prophet, dude, go for it. I mean, try and make a way of life of living that has survived this long and produces good outcomes. You got it? He wants to do that, go for it. This one coming in from Thunderstorm says, thanks for the offer. Let's say they say, but I don't believe in Islam. I prefer my own culture and they are a Star Wars fan. Bitter truth says, Quran claims everything wrong. Science, God, protecting Muhammad, sexual desires in the Quran. They say, Hussein, do we really need to take this as God's word? I think they're saying, given the alleged sexual mores of Muhammad according to the Quran, like is this really the word of God? I mean, I don't know what ones they're talking about. If they're talking about like certain hadiths, I mean, that's not the Hadith and the Quran is separate and those are two different things. So I don't know about what they're talking about when it comes to like, I think they're trying to, it should be like Aisha's age probably, that's probably what they're going for. And that's like a Hadith thing and like a historical thing that doesn't have anything to do with like, that relationship is not in the Quran. So I don't know. You got it, this one. This one coming in from, do you appreciate it? Samuel Bass says, question to Hussein, would you, woodry, Buhana, Quran 4 verse 34, your wife, if you lived under Sharia law, Allah commands it if you fear rebellion after all. If I remember right, that word from a past debate means some sort of punishment, so let me Google it just to be sure. Yeah, what's the- It might be the small stick that- What is it? What is the? It says a recent translation by Ahmad Zaki Hamad says, renders the meaning of the same word I just said, says strike them with a light hand rather than a stick, my mistake. So you say strike them with a light hand as punishment. Yeah. So what they're saying is like, you can punish your wife if like a little hit, if you, but you can't strike them in the face if they're being like ungrateful rebellious, essentially you're like unduly rebellious, like you haven't done anything wrong. So, me personally, I wouldn't if that's what they're asking. This one from Samuel Bass says, question for Hussein, Sharia promotes child rides, females get blamed for being raped due to adultery or fornication. How is Islam good for society while promoting and dismissing these types of issues? So that's like an orientalist or like right wing talking point, essentially. Like nowhere in the Quran does it say you can punish people for being raped. In fact, there's like a capital punishment for the rapist. So I mean, there's a difference between what religion says and what religious people do. I mean, there's, yeah, there's bad religious people who abuse their power. That's what makes when you have power oppression. So if you abuse power, you're oppressive. If you're just with power, then you're a good ruler. Yeah, there's another thing I need to bring up with that because I've also seen a number of statistics from American prison systems that we're talking about. The more religious someone is the worse an offender they are, when it comes to child abuse, when it comes to physical assault. See, the more religious people tend to endorse the death penalty, where the less religious people tend not to. We don't see the death penalty as being necessarily a punishment. And certainly not a justified one. But in cases of like child sex predators, the more religious they are, the more victims they have and the more extreme the abuse. This one coming in from coffee mom says, how is Islam better for anyone other than cis men? I think cis means heterosexual and non-trans. Okay, so what you do in your home, you can do whatever. The whole point is to make guidelines for all of society to behave a certain way. And so if you wanna be gay, you can be gay in your house. No one's gonna care. Spying is forbidden. It's actually, they've had it where someone did spy on someone and caught them in like a homosexual act. And then they tried to like bring them to trial and they threw out the trial. So, you know, what you do in your home, that's fine. The whole point of these rules is how to behave in public and promote, you know, a cohesive society. So. Yeah, I read that story about the imam who raped the nine year old girl because he thought she was of legal age when she hadn't even developed any secondary sexual characteristics and caused her a great deal of physical damage because the rape was so violent that it left her permanently internally scarred. And his, what he suggested since he was untouchable by the law where he lives, I think was Afghanistan. He said that his way of resolving that situation of making it good again was to marry her. Okay, I mean, I don't endorse that and they should just kill him. So. Yeah, well, what are you gonna do? You can do it again. You can do it again. He's a holy man. I don't know if I can say that, I don't. This one coming in from Bitter Truth says, Hussain, why are there blasphemy laws in Muslim countries and mob lynchings? Okay, like, there's two questions. So like mob lynchings, like people have done that throughout society. So if someone betrayed society, they would kill them. As far as like blasphemy laws, I mean, usually those have not actually been met with the death penalty. Like you can look up the history of the Ottoman Empire. So they're on the books to essentially discourage. Again, there's coercive measures. Just like for example, like if I said something about the president, like the FBI could come and question me. So every society doesn't have unlimited free speech. That's like a myth. So people do that to protect societies. I don't know what you want. That's what governments do. Yeah. There's no coming in. Just accused me of making things up. I don't, I actually can cite this one because I've already given a speech on it when I referred to the story. So when they came out. This one coming in from Keckers says, can I strike my wife as a last resort in order to get intimacy from her? They don't give a verse. I assume that they're trying to imply that that's in the Quran. But like I said, there's no verse. So I don't know. I think it's for you though, saying. So they're saying like, is wife feeding alone? For the purpose of intimacy to twist someone's arm into doing that, I guess. So from what I understand, it says that you should ignore them and actually deny sex from them. So, but then someone in the last debate said that's emotional abuse. So I don't, I don't know what in the Western world are you supposed to do if you want sex then, you know. You got it. This one coming in from Zahran says, Hussain, if believing in God is biologically hardwired which gene or chromosome is attached to it? So I haven't finished the book. They're saying like the God gene. I don't know if they've actually found like a God gene. I mean, they say they may find a gauging but they haven't found a gauging. So I mean, I think much like Aaron Arron will probably admit science is not a hundred percent yet. So you got it. We have so many questions for Hussain but we don't have very many for Aaron. So do want to see folks in the live chat if you happen to have a question tag me with your question for Aaron as we do want to keep Aaron involved in that debate as well. It's quite all right. It's quite all right. I listened to the debate. I assumed all the questions were going to be for him. You got it. This one from Mike MC says, that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence as well. And then they say Christopher Hitchens, peace be upon him. And then they say this is in regards to quote unquote the claim that God is innate and you're hand waving. They say this is for you Hussain. Yeah, I guess they don't believe in the law of non-contradiction. This one coming in from bitter truth says, how can Islam is a good religion? How can it be a good religion where marriage, child marriage is allowed in slavery is okay and not allowed to say anything against it? Hussain. Is this the same questions on every Islamic debate? Just child marriage, like, so in Islamic societies- Don't you hate when the indefensible points keep coming up? Say it again? Don't you hate when the indefensible points keep coming up? It's not indefensible. The- Child marriage- There was no legal during the Islamic Caliphate. There was no legal age of consent. That's a modern thing typically. And it is simply just was a woman physically and mentally mature enough to essentially agree to marriage, right? So they decided that that was nine? That's individually based. So Aisha was a hot nine-year-old? So that's debated too. Oh, so by the way, if you're an atheist and all you agree with is biology, then you should have no problem with this. Why would I not have gigantic problems? When is an adult? From biology. When is an adult? I get the suspicion that maybe you shouldn't ever talk about biology or evolution. So when is an adult? You're out of your net there. They hit puberty, right? So that was the- So when is an adult? It's when they hit puberty, right? So if you only believe in biology, then it should only be that. Islam doesn't say that. No, it's not. It says you hit puberty and you're mentally smart enough essentially to consent to marriage. And that's changed in the modern world as well. And your brain doesn't stop growing until you're 25. Yes, a girl will have breasts when she's 16, but she doesn't have a full mind and neither do boys until about 25 or 26 years old. Another flaw in our not very intelligent design, I would say. I guess maybe we should change the age of consent to 25 or maybe 30 now with current data. I mean- Why was there an age of consent in there in the first place? Because that's a secular law, thus disproving your earlier assertion. Yeah, I told you there's no age of consent. It's when someone's mentally matured- Right, so until secularists come along and say, no, we can't allow seven-year-olds to marry their cousin. We need to put some laws down here because there's biological reasons why you can't give birth when you're, even if you're capable of becoming pregnant at nine, you shouldn't give birth at 10. That's so- So what you're saying though, like mentally, right? When is someone mentally capable? Islam acknowledges that and you're just ignoring that. Islam acknowledges- There's an answer for that. Do, too, under your framework, how can you say someone's mentally capable? I mean, it's subjective. And I didn't- And I'm not mentally capable. They just described their biology, not their mentality. Yeah, so the age of 18 is irrelevant, too. No, not necessarily. They had to go by averages. So you can give birth safely at 18, where you can't at 10. Okay. So that's part of the reasons I was giving for this. Now, as you said, individually based. Some people mature faster. Some people mature a little bit better more efficiently than other people do. But physically and mentally. So they had to come up with an average. What's fair for the most people? What one law to govern everybody is going to be the most effective for everybody? It's really weird. Now you're for averages and what's beneficial for a greater society? Right, because that's a secular law. We have to come up with one law for everybody, don't we? Yeah, so when religion is beneficial to the average person, on the religious institutions, that was a secular law. Okay. This one coming in from Lady Firebrand says, Hussain needed, let's see. Okay, that's more of just a jab. This one from Ronald Monaga says, Hey James, I've seen every debate since your inception. Maybe interfaith debates would be more entertaining. I've been waiting seven years and God never shows up. Well, we do have an interfaith. Actually, we have a couple of interfaith debates coming up at DebateCon, the conference that I had mentioned and that as you can see at the bottom right of your screen is going to have not only, you could say not only interfaith, but you could say interworld view. We're having like three, three out of our four. We're having two debates where it's a Muslim versus a Christian. And then we're having one debate where as you can see at the bottom right of your screen it's an atheist versus an atheist debate. So we're actually, want to let you know, it's going to be epic, we're excited about that. Link in the description. I want to chime in on that. I saw one interfaith demonstration at an atheist convention, which I thought was hysterical. So they had a Catholic and a Protestant priest, both of them, and then they had a Jewish rabbi and a Hindu, I forget whatever, and then they had this Muslim up there. And I remember that the Jew was saying that he's a secular Jew and he says, I should be in the audience with y'all. I don't know why I'm on this stage. That was funny. Whenever the Hindus said something that was so unfamiliar to our backgrounds living in America that we all kind of just give it a laugh and chuckle. We all know the arguments of the Protestant and the Catholic and we may as well just be watching them fight with each other on stage, that was amusing. But every time the Muslims spoke, especially everything he said about how women should be treated disproportionately, I was thinking, trying to telepathically contact this guy to say, just shut up before this army of pacifists tears you apart. Juicy to say the least. We will have two Muslims at the event, Daniel Hakekichu and Kenny Boomer in those debates. For real folks, check out the links in the description. You don't want to miss it. The crowd fund is down below as well as in-person tickets if you're in the Fort Worth, Texas area. Bitter Truth says, if religion is biological, you don't need to teach your child about the Koran or Bible. Would both of you please answer on this point? Yeah, children are born atheist until somebody lies to them. And then they have to have all of this theology and everything planted on them. Any thoughts Hussain? I mean, it's just literally not true. I mean, again- Okay, so you're telling me that Hindu children are born believing in Islam? No, but they're born believing in one God. So even in Hindu cultures where they have- Yeah, in Japan, there's one, for example, Japan, they're Shinto, but a study between Japanese and British students that were like age five and they all had preconceived notions of God. And when they asked for example- By the time they're five, they have their culturally conditioned beliefs in God then, but it's not innate. They're not born believing in God. Okay. So you're saying the Shinto people who don't have like a one all-powerful God somehow convinced these five-year-old Japanese kids to believe in an all-powerful God like in Islam. So the kids who grew up in the culture where that religion is dominant absorbed the dominant culture. What a shock. Most of it, Japan is like either secular atheist or Shinto and Shinto's don't believe in the same God, same type of concept of a God as Christians and Muslims, but they somehow still described a God like an Islamic God or a Christian God. Okay, here's one of my problems. I'm gonna need to see a direct citation so I can look at it. And the reason why is because when I have explained my position to you directly, you threw it back at me, totally perverted into the exact opposite of what I just said. You accused me of swearing in allegiance to hedonism and a whole bunch of other ridiculous things that are not even remotely close to anything I've ever said and I've made my positions explicitly clear over and over and over again. So if you got all of that wrong so many times just in this one conversation, then how could I trust your citation of data on this other aspect again? Because my experience has been, whenever a creationist brings up a scientific document to justify a creation or to attack evolution it'll say what it says, I go read it and it never says what they said it did. Never once. Again, so here's the citation. So Oliver Petrovich, right? From Psychology at Oxford. Send it to me. Science and spirit. Give me the link in email and I'll be happy to look it up. This one from Emma says, Is your real law beneficial for society or just for you guys that think and believe such as yourself? No, I mean, it's like, were they listening? I think it's beneficial for everyone. Women included. I mean, there's plenty of studies how Islamic women are happier, less body image issues because of hijab and less infidelity. There's tons of it, tons of benefits to them as well. This one from Bitter Truth says, Aaron, I'm an atheist and ex-Muslim. I left Islam just because they can't accept, I don't believe it and don't have to protect. But Hussein, why do you need to believe in Islam and why do you need to protect it? I mean, so the first step would be, do you believe in God? Okay, so I came to that conclusion and then now I have to observe all the religions and I think Islam is the best religion. So you came to a conclusion? Yeah, that's what it is. Okay, however, we don't need to argue about how you came to that conclusion. That admission contradicts your earlier statement that belief in God is innate. So I innately believed in it, okay? Right? Okay, we're just gonna do both. Okay, fine. I've got to both sides of your mind. And why? You want my personal story, right? So I grew up, right? I believed in God, okay? Hang around a bunch of atheist people. They influenced me to question it. And then I do more research. All the research to me points to God being God existing. I believe in God and now I'm rewriting to Islam. Okay, so it's innate and you need it, but you went for a time where it was not innate and you didn't need it. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that I fully accepted like atheism. It was more just like, oh, you know, like do I need to follow all these rules? You didn't need what you now say you need. I don't need. And most of this audience doesn't need. So when you tell a bunch of atheists that they need spirituality when they know better, how well do you think you did in this debate? I think I did well. I mean, I think you can look up all the data, but you're ignoring it. I mean, I'm not ignoring anything. All right, I said, send me the links to James and I'd be happy to review whatever you think I ignored. I guarantee I didn't ignore anything, but you perverted an awful lot of what I said. This one from Kavi Mom says for both, can you please steel man each other's position in two to three sentences? Who'd like to go first? He believes what he believes because he believes it and it makes him feel good to believe that. So he thinks everybody's gonna feel good if you believe that. So if you believe and if you live in a place where suicide, unless you're a suicide bomber, if you're committing suicide for God, then it's okay. But if you're not committing suicide for God, then committing suicide is gonna get you sent to hell so less people will go sent to hell. If extramarital sex is criminalized so that people go to prison or get executed for having extramarital sex, you will have less extramarital sex, even if they should and have the right to have extramarital sex. We're gonna continue that. We're just gonna say that that's bad. So the edicts that we want to live on ourselves, we're gonna impose on everybody else and because it makes me feel good, it'll make everybody else feel good too. And I have statistics that show very specifically handpicked statistics that contradict a whole lot of other statistics that I'm just going to ignore. Then I can say that this is good for everybody, the same oppression for all. And women will like being hidden under the hijab and not having the freedoms that they have anywhere else. Cause why would anybody want freedoms? Why would you need equality? Just do as I say and believe what I tell you and it'll make you happy. It did me. That was a lot. So cheating good, freedom good. I mean, I could be just as disingenuous. It wasn't really much of a steelman. So, Arn's is a religion, is it true? And then therefore because truth is the ultimate value essentially it's bad for society. That's correct. If it's not true, it's worthless. The only value any information can have is in however accurate we can show it to be. And if you can't show that it's accurate at all, it has no value at all. Yeah. So physics, there's a bunch of things in physics you can look into that it doesn't have a hundred percent validity or anything like that. I didn't say a hundred percent. No value though. Show me the truth. No value. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Chubby fun stuff says Arn, given that the imperial truth states religions should be abolished, would you be a believer in the God emperor of mankind? I don't know what that means. You're gonna have to say that question again. They say, given that the imperial truth states religions should be abolished, would you be a believer in the God emperor of mankind? That doesn't make any sense. Any of it. Yeah, I was confused by that. What's an imperial truth? What is a God emperor? I think he's saying, if you were like the God emperor of the world should you outlaw religion? Or do you not? No, I'm an atheist. I'm among the strongest defenders of freedom of religion. We believe in freedom of thought. Religion does not. Islam especially wants to prohibit free thought. That you're told what to believe and you better believe it. You're not allowed to think what you will. It doesn't control your thoughts. I mean, you can go be an atheist. Yeah, but you're still gonna be sent to hell for your thoughts. It's the thought crime. It happens in the Bible and the Quran, several times in both places. Why are you mad about God condemning you to hell if you don't even think it exists? Because it's a lie made up by people to oppress other people, to manipulate other people. That is the detriment of your religion against society, the way that it oppresses other people, to manipulate them, through dishonesty. Deacon 9981 says, for Hussain, why are there so many suicide bombers if Islam prohibits suicide? Dude, what is this right-wing talking point? Like, oh, wow, why are there criminals in Islamic societies? Like, oh, and God must not exist or like Islam's bad because there's criminals. Like, this is like the mind of a child. Like, what is this? Like, oh, I'm not gonna be like, oh, you know, I'm sure Aaron is like a perfectly upstanding person. I'm not gonna be like, wow, he's the akin of Mao and Hitler who are like, irreligious. Like, I'm not gonna say he's the same as them. Like, that wouldn't be attacking his point. This one coming in from Zahar Zaharin again, says, right now in Germany, child molesters go to jail. But if they are priests, most of the cases are closed and they can continue their work at another place, is religion good or bad for children? Again, this is like a straw man. Like, religion isn't bad. Religion never said, hey priests, go molest those children. Like, you can't, again, condemn Christians and Christianity for like one bad priest. And yes, even under like Christian societies, like they should punish them. Like, I don't understand this logic here at all. Like, you're just saying like, well, bad people exist. Like, uh-huh. People often in like, I'm seeing in the comments here, there's not a lot of what I suspect is anti-Semitism where people criticize me for not criticizing Jews. Why do you attack Christianity and Islam? But you never attacked Judaism, despite the fact that I attacked the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible almost exclusively. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Beautiful Joe. I didn't see your question, but let me know if you had one you wanted to attach. Cruz Van der Wark says, hail Aaron Ra and hail Satan. Do you agree, Aaron? I think they're asking if you hail Satan. Well, that's good. That requires a complex question or explanation. There is no Satan. There is no literal Satan. Satan is the opposer, specifically the opposer of faith. My interpretation of Satan and that of a lot of other. Satanist is it Satan was somebody that was trying to reason against faith and that's the ultimate sin apparently. So when you say hail Satan, you're saying hail to yourself, hail to other people of rationality. That's one interpretation. That's the shortest way I could possibly describe it. This one from Bitter Truth says, Muhammad killed whoever was against or made fun of him. Modern Muslims are just interpreting, but this is where blasphemy law made Aaron Hussein won't accept this. I don't know. Let's see. Let me try to reword that. There's literal stories about Muhammad accepting people into the faith and into society and forgiving them who tried to kill him, who also like made fun of him. So. But he doesn't accept people not in the faith. So there's people who fought against them, right? And they didn't accept Islam. They were prisoners of war. They didn't just auto slaughter them. Okay. Again, these are like weird orientalist right-wing talking points from. You know I'm not in the right wing either. I know, I know you're not. Like I'm not saying you're doing this by the way. Thank you. It'd be again, like me comparing you to like Mao just cause you're both people who were irreligious. Like again, it's it's dumb. This one coming in from Paula Olson says if spying in Islam is illegal, then how did the government justify their actions during the Iranian revolution and the 1970s? I don't know whose government they mean. I think they mean like the Islamic rebellion of like the overthrow of the guy that was in power who's like a US and Euro back secularist kind of thing. So they wanted to overthrow him. I mean, isn't that good under liberalism? Like they have the right to do whatever they want within their country's borders. I have no idea about liberalism. I'm a leftist. No, I know, I know, I know you are, but I'm saying like even under liberalism and this is a more of a political debate, but liberalism states, right? You have to respect other people's autonomy, right? So if China wants to do something, then China can do it. And you have no saying what happens in China. We're using two different definitions and I'm using the one that is colloquially more common in the States because people have this political fixation on the left versus right, not realizing the importance of the authoritarian versus the anti-authoritarian or the libertarian alternative. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Ghazi says to clarify a previous question. Aisha commented on Allah's hastiness in fulfilling the prophet's desires after he revealed al-Azab, 51, per Ibn Kathir. I am not familiar with this, but I think that they're suggesting from this passage. Ibn Kathir is what he wrote the, oh, what is it? I can't remember, I can't, I'm having a senior moment. It was one of the many references that I had to use when I was reading the Quran. I had to constantly refer to Kathir. You got it. Looking it up now, I'm reading that it says, known as Ibn Kathir, highly influential Arab historian, an exegete scholar. Okay. And I think they're saying- Because I realized that for a Westerner like myself, raised in a predominantly Christian society, that if I were to read the Quran just by myself, just read it, I wouldn't understand any of it. Much like if somebody was raised in Punjab India and had never met a Christian and tried to read the Bible, they would have no idea that the serpent was supposed to be Satan, or that Jesus was supposed to be his own dad. These are things that are not in the book that are just part of the tradition. And I realized that I had to talk to other believers or people who were raised in Islam and who spoke Arabic, who could then explain to me what it is that I'm reading. And before I could even address them, I had to compare multiple English translations, two Tufts Seers, and of course that meant many references to Qathir. Got it. Any thoughts on that Hussain? I don't know what they're talking about, because I can't even find that. And I think what they're talking about is like a Hiddi, but about, which doesn't necessarily have to do with the Quran, and I don't see anyone about like swiftness. So I don't know what they're talking about. I thought, I was under the impression that it was suggesting that Muhammad was trying to rush the process of consummating the marriage, to be honest. Well, not many people consummate a marriage three years after the wedding. Yeah, that's true. So like in the Islamic tradition, I mean, the wife doesn't have to move in right away. And they can agree to marry off someone. And then when the wife is ready to move in and mature enough, then she can decide to go. Or if the family with her will decide to go. So I don't, again, I don't know what they're referencing. So. You got it. They said, this is chubby, fun stuff. Did we get this? They say, we got that one. Kathy Tudor, thanks for your question, says Hussain, if Islam was taught to you by a woman with a matriarchal slant, and says, example, women having multiple husbands, would you still find Islam beneficial? Like, so you're saying in an alternative reality, that's what God said? Then sure, yeah, that's what God said. And then yeah, why would I, who am I to deny like God's words, I don't. Because it's not God, obviously. It's the words of men pretending to speak for God. Yeah, well, I have to agree to disagree. This one coming in from- You don't have to be right all the time. You can disagree with me if you like. Yeah, thanks, thanks. Bitter truth says, even Muhammad saw infant girl, said, if I'm alive when she is, you and I will marry her. Aron, I don't know, how have you finished with Aron? I don't, I guess that's for you, Aron. They says, even if Muhammad saw an infant girl, they said, if I'm alive when she is, you and I will marry her. Yeah, I have no idea what they're saying. You got it. But I feel your pain, because I'm reading a lot of these comments in the chat and I'm, there's a lot of it that is written unintelligibly. Yeah, that one was hard for me to understand. I think, let's see, this one coming in from, don't worry, bitter truth, this one, thanks for your question, this one. Again, bitter truth. Is this the only guy? He's put in a lot of questions, almost every other one right now is bitter truth. He says, did you find God? Can you show me this, Hussain? This is kind of a lot like the question asked earlier on what you believe and why. Mike MC said, so you hand-waved my comment about hand-waving, just checking on you, Hussain. He says, what Islamic country would you live in? And why not move there right now if it's so great, Hussain? Yeah, let me just pick up and move, nice meme. I mean, is he funding my move? Yeah. Does he wanna find my move? You got another troll in the chat that I'm familiar with, I recognize the name, who wants to make that argument that rights come from God and that's why women have the right to drive in some countries and not in other countries. And women have the right to vote in some countries and not in others, because they all have the same God, right? No, no, no, God doesn't give rights. All rights are bestowed, maintained, or repealed by legislators, humans. You got it, this one coming in from, do appreciate your question as well. Mike MC says, oh, we got that one. This one coming in from Bitter Truth. Oh, you hit it, let me see if I missed one. I could have sworn I missed one. Two seconds, just reloading. This one from Mr. Kreenin says, who's saying, how do you reconcile the Sufis saying all of the Quran is allegorical with the historical literalist scripturalism of Islam? I mean, so that would be like up to you as a person to decide. I mean, you can seek God however you want. I mean, you wanna read about Sunni Islam. I mean, there's Shia Islam, there's Salafi, there's tons of different schools. I mean, if you wanna just start with, do you think God exists, right? And then go from there, man, I mean. Whereas if there was one God really, and he really cared that much, whether you believe in his truth, there wouldn't be hundreds of different religions and thousands of different denominations. Well, humans corrupt things. I mean, I'm sure you're aware of that. This is God, right? Infallible, and he's a telepath. And he's gonna damn you if you don't get it exactly right. Again, maybe you're like too entrenched in Christian theology, but you know. No, no, no, I'm talking about from the Quran, where even the people of the book, the Jews and the Christians, they will be accepted in one verse but rejected in another. If they hold to the thing, if they don't accept Islam, then you're no longer Jewish, are you? And if you're Christian, if you believe that Jesus is the son of God or a prophet of God, oh, it should be not a prophet, it looks like a prophet. If you believe that he's the son of God or that he is God, then you're still going to help. Okay, so, I mean, Islam says you have to submit to God. So if you do that. Yeah, and then it has, and you gotta be very specific about that. Yeah. So that Trinitarian Christians, they're going to help. Now you may have lived your entire life, devoted, you've been abstinent, you've been renunciate, you've been devoted to God of your whole life, your celibate and everything. But when you die, you find out that you dedicated your life to the wrong version of God. There's a slightly different version that a perfect God would have told you about and made sure you knew, but instead, what have we got to go on? The empty assertions of people who obviously don't know what they're talking about. I mean, it's not going to be spelled out for you. So if it's a test. Yeah, because there is no God. It's all people making stuff up. And so that's what it is. And they can't agree, and that's why it's not spelled out. If there was a God, it would be. Okay. There's one coming in from, you guessed it. Bitter Truth says, if Quran is the book of God, there should be real science and true human anatomy. But all of them are wrong. Why should I believe in that book? I think they're saying that the Quran doesn't have any scientific truth. Hussein, what would you say? I mean, that's not true. I mean, it's one religious texts in general. They don't claim to be scientific books. They're books on how you ought to behave and live your life. There is some scientific truth within the Quran that you can feel free to Google and research yourself. But again, it's not like a science book. So I don't know. Yeah, and there's an awful language that the Quran says about science that it's dead ass wrong. Huh? There's an awful lot that Quran says about science that is completely wrong. Okay. I mean, you can agree to disagree again. Again, I can show citations. Yeah. When it says that one of the signs of the end times is when the moon and the sun are both orbiting around the earth because the people who wrote the Bible or the Quran didn't realize that the sun is bigger than the earth and that the sun doesn't orbit the earth but that the moon does and that it's much smaller than the earth. They thought that the moon was bigger than the stars and that the stars were just projectiles that are stuck in the firmament so that angels can grab the stars and throw them at devils who get too close to the hotel at the top of the sky. Okay. You really ought to read the Quran. It's fantastic fiction. Yeah. Some of it, you know, there's again, there's a debate even within Islam like some of this is allegorical, right? And some of it isn't. So I get it. It's just like with the Bible. It's exactly literal, except where it isn't. Yeah, so. This one's coming in from, do appreciate your question. You guessed it, bitter truth. It says, Hussein, I'm disappointed from your reply. You simply don't know, we're just trying to fool us. Like about what the child marriage thing or like, I don't know which right-wing talking point should I be responding to here? What makes it a right-wing? Because I mean, you and I, I am against right-wing talking points all day. I've made a career out of arguing against right-wing talking points, but I'm not recognizing them here. So, I mean, even in the debate, you made like an innate bias thing. And I'm sure I did too. But for example, you said like, oh, like the rape thing or- The rape thing. Yeah, you made some comment about some country and then like allowing rape or something like that. And then you have like the innate bias where like, it's okay for Christian priests to like rape kids when it really isn't like, nowhere in Christian- Did I say ever anywhere that anybody says it's all right to rape kids? No, I'm not saying you said it's okay. I'm saying you're saying that religion excuses it when that's people within a religion, not religion. I don't think I even said that. I said there's no law against child marriage that much I said. The religious law, that we do have secular laws with secular purpose, secular reasons given. Not religious reasons, but biological reasons. Yeah, which one, it's funny by the way you say like your anti-oppression, right? So what's more oppressive? Individualized plans. So like if I have a daughter and she's like really mature at 14 and she's already past puberty and she really wants to get married and then there's this 25 year old who has like all these good qualities if and they like each other and I agree that they should marry. I mean, that would be like a bad under your secular system. Why does it become your decision? No, it's her decision ultimately. I said if they want to meet and I okay it, right? Or like, no. And you okay it, so it becomes your decision. I'm part of the family, right? So you're the responsible adult because she can't be? No, she can't. I just said she has to agree to that. Okay, so she wants to do it and you don't. So you're no longer the responsible person. So she decides she's 14 years old. She's gonna marry a 25 year old. She's gonna marry somebody more than 10 years her senior and you no longer, you don't have any say in it because you're not the responsible adult anymore. She at 14 is and her word overrides yours. Are you agreeing with that? That depends how you want to look at it. I mean, our parent relationships apparently have precious to you. I mean, if I want my child to eat broccoli and they don't want to eat broccoli, am I now oppressing them? Because that's what you're saying. No, but I'm gonna give up trying to explain things to you if you're gonna go with that. What do you mean that's what you're saying? That's the same comparison. If I try and exert any will on my child, it's a question. No, that is not, that's how you're seeing it. Okay. This one coming in from, do appreciate your question. Mike MC says, Aaron, what are you drinking tonight? Local brew, The Temptress by Lakewood. Nice. Staying with it. Thanks for your question. Is Islam against LGBT rights? I believe so. I, they say, I believe so. So then how can Islam be good for society? Who's saying? Okay, so I mean, not to get too much into that, but there is a lot of data that states that, like, you know, a lot of people who are gay or molested, I mean, you can look into that data. And so it may be like a, like a coping, like a coping mechanism. So I mean, should we try and use psychology to try and solve that? And you know, who knows? All it says is, is a sin and you shouldn't try and you should try and refrain from that. Plenty of, you know, gay Muslims. I don't care what they do in their own home. I don't know what these people want. I think it's interesting also that I'm, I've been throughout this whole thing saying that it's, we shouldn't let children have these, you know, get involved in these sexual relationships. We need to have, we need to have the responsible adult decision. We need to have some restriction for their own sake. And people in the chat are twisting that again into the opposite, saying that I advocate for child marriage or something. I mean, how could it, how did people twist these things around upside down like this? I don't know. This one though, from Gino Star 07. I haven't gotten to chicken on the chat as I've been trying to vet these questions, just so don't pull a run burgundy and read something I shouldn't. Gino Star 07 says, everyone, what's your favorite type of food? I would say Mexican, maybe seafood. What about you guys? I guess we're the first. I mean, I like all food. I mean, you know, there's good food in every culture. So you should go try it all. I like Moroccan Tajin and I like a Japanese food. It has like a very good palate, you know, like a good result, a little bit of everything. Today I had dim sum to celebrate my wife's 52nd birthday. Cool. Nice, any favorite food, Aran? Forderhouse steak on my barbecue. Nice. This one from Bitter Truth says, that's right, Bitter Truth says, what are scientific truths in the Quran who's saying? Maybe, so maybe if you give them one or two. Without Googling, okay, so we'll come back to that if you have some. I don't have it on like on top of my head, but they talk about like, we made every living thing from water. So will they not believe? Well, he was asking for a truth, though. I mean, is there water in like all living things? Yes, I mean, that's true. Yeah, there is, but are we made of it? No. Okay. This came up in the Kenny Bomer, Matt DeLahunty debate at our last debate conference. So that was, it's a juicy question, but this one coming in from Bitter Truth, we got this one, DeCon 9981 says, Aran and Hussein, do you consider Islam to be conservative or liberal? I think they mean like politically? Like what does it align with most? Or like what does it happen to be parallel with most? I mean, there's conservative and liberal Muslims and like politics. I mean, in America, like a lot of them were conservative at one point and now they vote Democrat by and large. So, I mean, people aren't a monolith. Like, you know, I know I did say like a lot of atheists believe these and that's what I was trying to say like stereotypically, but at the end of the day, like every atheist probably has their own individual reason for believing something. So there are plenty of conservative and libertarian and right-wing atheists. Yeah, I'm sure. This one coming in from Bitter Truth, says angels shooting meteors towards gin or demons. Is it scientific or God placed mountains onto earth or God holds birds in the middle of the sky? Are these claims scientific? Hussein. Why would a supernatural event like the end of the world where like, why would that be scientific? I mean, that's out of the realm of science. Like even atheists and scientists will say like science isn't devoted to proving supernatural events. So stars in the sky are not scientific and how birds fly is not scientific. No, what stars are in the sky is scientific. If an angel can come and take a star and throw it is not scientific. It's also not true at all, right? So we know. We don't know until it happens, man. I mean, I'll see you at Armageddon. This one coming in from Kent McLeod, Jr. says salam to Hussein in sincere respect for going up against Aaron and for question to Hussein, what did you expect when going up against Aaron? I'm not a monolith either. I'm just some guy happy to play along. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't trying to say you were. I mean, it kind of went how I expected. I mean, in a way, I don't know how to prove anything to any of these because I think it's ultimately just gonna come down to fundamental differences and they don't believe that God exists, right? I don't know how to prove anything to a believer either because I can show them the facts to demonstrate the truth of it and they just ignore it. Yeah, there's, what is it? Birkin something wager where each side will view a different set of facts in correlation that it will lead to their thought process. Or one side has a list of facts and the other one just has empty assertions based on authority and nothing else. And we'll ignore all the facts so I can present the facts. You know, you and I were talking about evolution versus creationism for just a split second there when you asked me if I believe in evolution, right? I can show you all the facts of evolution, all the proof that you need to see but you won't even look at it. I mean, I'm agnostic about evolution but I mean, for example, like I can use the big bang as proof for God and just like you can say the big bang is proof not for God. Okay, a thing exists so therefore God. Well, no, the creation of the universe exists. I got that today. I got some of you. And therefore there is God, yes. Somebody, I was arguing with a believer today who said that eclipses happen. Yes, the sun and the moon sometimes passes in front of the sun from our perspective. Yes, okay, that's a fact. Yes, okay, therefore God. That was his argument, not even kidding. Okay, I mean, I don't. That was on video earlier this morning. Well, that's not what I'm saying. Okay, what we're saying, big bang happened so no evidence of God, absolutely not, equals evidence of God. There's a causal chain. Causal change, we cannot attribute to a magic invisible man. And so you're going to assume a magic invisible man. Yeah, so nothing came out of nothing to you. I don't believe there was ever nothing, period. So, okay. So there was never nothing to start with. So there was nothing to come out of nothing. So how did the big bang happen if there's nothing? I'm not sure that it did. I don't do cosmology. I don't have a belief on that. But I have talked to cosmologists about this, a number of them, famous ones. And they don't believe that everything came out of nothing. Okay, so theists would look at the big bang and then see a causal change. And that's why there's the Kalam argument or the causation argument. Which again is a cluster of... Continue the argument. Yeah, the Kalam cosmological argument, the first premise failure, is anything that begins to exist. So they tailor the argument so that they can talk about an eternal God and ignore an eternal universe. So you think the universe is eternal? Yes. Okay. Well, I don't believe that. I use the word believe differently. When I say that I believe something, that means that this is what I think is true or closest to the truth. But I can't prove that. I can't show it so I don't know it. But believers pretend to know things they don't know. And so they make believe. So there's a slightly different context. What I get from cosmologists is that the universe was eternal. I don't have an opinion either way because it doesn't matter. Regardless whether or if or how the universe had a beginning, that doesn't change the fact that all scriptures for every religion or man made mythology and that we are evolving AIDS. That doesn't change. Not even the existence of God would change that. We gotta move to the next one. Paula Olson says who's saying what's wrong about the Iranian revolution was this. They say Khomeini overthrew the pro-Western government and started an Islamic state that spied on people. How is that good? Okay. I don't know. This is like a political topic but Western powers spy on people all the time. I mean like if you're just saying spying makes a country or a government bad and like news flash all governments are bad. The USA is bad. So I don't know what you want. I gotta, I'm sorry. Say your thing. No, you're good. You're good. I just like they're on. I get tired of all the accusations of lying when I never lie. And I'm seeing that all through your comments. I shouldn't even be looking at the comments because I get distracted by all these damn trolls. Don't go into the churches. I'm talking with Sean Carroll who's a famous nuclear or excuse me, cosmologists. He's an astrophysicist and he's explaining how his model is that the universe is eternal. And even in models of the Big Bang that have a singularity, the singularity is itself eternal. A universal wave function is eternal. Material energy is eternal. So I'm not lying and it's not a belief. This is a singularity that's eternal. I shouldn't even look at your chat because I get sidetracked. I apologize. Just to clarify. So you think there's a singularity that's eternal? No, I don't think there's a singularity. Okay, okay. This one coming in. We're not hearing about a subject that I don't study and therefore don't have an opinion on. The experts in that field, I'm going to have to trust what they're saying by if there's a consensus among them and there appears to be that even in models that have a singularity, that singularity is still eternal. But can't that singularity be gone? I'm confused here. So there's a singularity that created the universe. Can't the entire mass of time, space, be a magic invisible man? No. We don't know what that singularity is. It's probably outside of our comprehension. Well, everything would be inside of that. But what we do know is that the Quran is wrong about a hell of a lot of things it says and so is every other scripture. They were all written by people. They're all flawed. They're all full of nonsense. Okay, so science is flawed all the time. I mean, you could definitely take a philosophy of science course. Science is a self-correcting process where religion is not. It's not. It's not wrong and gets wronger over time. There's a heavy bias and it always is influencing. Excuse me, what? There's a heavy bias and it's always. In religion, yes there is, but science has a means of reducing or minimizing or eliminating bias. That's the goal. This one coming in from Jack Schwartz says happy birthday to Aaron's wife. Sorry that I don't know her name. Lilandra. One second. Yeah, but seriously, the way that science works is by making sure that you can't make a postulation without the evidence to already back it up. You have to have the evidence. You can think as long for the scientific method. And then it has to be demonstrable to other people and then other people have to be able to test it. So it eliminates or at least minimizes bias as much as humanly possible. Yeah, you should think as long for the scientific method. I would if that were entirely the case, but when you have a belief system that requires that you credulously accept an authoritarian dictate, then yeah, that's not science. I mean, it's bonded, so. This one from? Bitter truth says genetic variation is proof of evolution from generation to generation. DNA is a solid evidence Hussain. Okay, there's literally flaws in that theory. I mean, like we have the same DNA as like a banana and stardust. I mean, if we all came from the Big Bang, it's only logical that we have similar DNA. It doesn't mean it can come from a big bang. A big bang has nothing to do with evolution. What I mean is if we all write the Big Bang happens, okay? And it was 10 billion years, billion with a B before evolution begins. So we can't equate those two. We can't equate them. Okay, why are, what I'm saying is there's gaps in the theory of evolution or adaptation. Really, are there? You wanna have a discussion on that on my channel? Let's schedule that one. Let's talk about these gaps. And so I'm being serious. I would love to have the conversation on that exact topic, that one. Let's spend an hour with you failing to list any gaps. Okay. This one coming in from, do you appreciate it? Last one of the night, Hilary D says, oppression is never good for society. It causes danger in the underground. As long as Islam suppresses or blankets answers, it won't do good. Hussain, would you follow the religion or the medical facts? Say it again? So they say, as long as Islam suppresses or blankets answers, it won't do good for society. Would you Hussain follow the religion or the medical facts? I don't know what medical facts they're talking about. So it kind of depends on like, medical facts are changing. I mean, it used to be, for example, like we were talking about trans issues that used to be just classified as a mental illness. Now there's a bunch of societal pressure and then they're changing it. I mean, the guy who released the gender construct is a theory literally said he made it up and Google that. And so it always changes. It's always, there's a bunch of flaws with science. I don't know why these atheists aren't continuously skeptical. We are continuously skeptical because we, unlike you, are aware of the flaws in science and how the thing that you're talking about right now is a legislative thing, not a scientific thing and how the science is a self-correcting process that improves knowledge and increases understanding. We're aware of that. That means that you have to correct the errors in your previous perception. I believe I said something about that in my opening statement. No, you did, but I'm saying like, whatever. Let's go to the next question. That's it for the night in terms of questions. I wanna say a huge thank you to our guests. We wanna let you know, folks, our guests are linked in the description. If you enjoyed this, hey, we're at 920 live viewers. That's huge. We have 310 likes. Feel free to hit that like as it's a small thing on your side, but we really do appreciate it. It means a lot to us. So I wanna say thank you so much, Aaron and Hussain for being with us. It's been a true pleasure. Yep, be sure to schedule that thing about the gaps in evolution because I really wanna have that conversation. Oh gosh, I have to do a lot of research on that then. No worries. Juicy to say the least. And with that, folks, stick around. I'll be back in just a moment with a post-credits scene letting you know about upcoming debates at that conference that you can see at the bottom right of your screen right now, including Aaron Raugh himself versus Tom Jump. You don't wanna miss it. I'll give you more details about that in just a second. So stick around. Ladies and gentlemen, as I mentioned, Aaron Raugh and T-Jump, as you can see at the bottom right of your screen as I open the Zoom window back up, you don't wanna miss this debate. It is going to be amazing. And it's going to be in Fort Worth, Texas. If you live near Fort Worth, Texas, you can watch this debate live. It is going to be huge. You don't wanna miss it. And maybe you're like, well, James, I don't live near Fort Worth, Texas. I live far away. Maybe you're even in England. I don't know. We have a lot of viewers from England, Canada, Australia, and we're thankful that you guys watch. Seriously, it means so much. We love having people. In fact, a lot of our guests actually have been from those countries. Wanna say, my dear friends, you can watch it live. In particular, you guys might be wondering, you're like, James, what is this that you've been talking about this like conference? Well, let me show you. As you can see on screen right now, DebateCon is our own conference. So this is put on by modern day debate. It's ours and ours alone. And it's where we host huge in-person debates. As I mentioned, it's in about a month. You don't wanna miss this, folks, on Saturday, April 22nd, as I mentioned in Fort Worth, Texas. So basically right next to Dallas, it's going to be huge. Links to the in-person description, or I should say links to the in-person tickets are in the description box. And not only that, you might be like, well, yeah, okay, James, that's interesting. But what exactly is it? How many debates are there? Well, you can also watch, and I'm gonna put this link in the old live chat. You can actually watch these debates from this conference at home. So you might be like, well, James, how does that work? We, I'm putting it in the live chat right now, and it's also in the description box if you wanna watch or check there later. If you put in as little as a dollar, you can watch all of the debates for the entire conference. And by putting in a dollar, I mean I'm linking the crowdfund where you can actually put in that dollar. We use Indiegogo. You can watch all of them from at home. So for example, these are the debates that are gonna be at the conference. Going from left to right, you can see David Wood versus Kenny Boemer. That's going to be on whether or not Muhammad's marriage to Aisha was ethical. It's gonna be a slobberknocker. That first one was a huge debate for us. That's still picking up 3,000 views every couple of days. So about 1,500 per day. It's been a really popular debate. That's one that we hosted about a year and a half ago. Well, actually a little over a year ago. And that is going to be a rematch. Then you can see on screen Atheist versus Atheist. The next debate between Aron Ra and Tom Jump. It's going to be on whether or not religion does more harm than good. You don't wanna miss it. It's gonna be huge. That's gonna be epic. We're really excited about that one. As we have these debates that are, you could say interfaith or in this case, inter-Atheism debates. The next one, as you can see there, I've gotta update the picture. Atheist versus Muslim, Matt Delhonte versus Hussain, who you just listened to tonight in this debate, as well as last but not least, Mike Jones versus Daniel Hikikachu on whether or not child marriage is acceptable. It's gonna be a huge debate, you guys. All of these debates are gonna be huge. And like I said, if you're like, hey, James, that'd be fun to watch. Like, I'd love to watch all of those live. Well, for 25 cents each, basically, you can watch all of them live on Saturday, April 22nd. If you throw a dollar into the crowd fund, as I mentioned, that crowd fund link, that link is pinned at the top of the chat. It's also at the top of the description box. And you might be like, well, James, I don't know. How does this all work? Well, first, as I mentioned, if you wanna watch it in person, you can go to the Eventbrite link, which is in the description box. And you can watch it in person. And we invite you to join us as there's gonna be lunch with the speakers if you get the VIP tickets, as well as dinner provided if you get the VIP tickets, where you'll get to eat with the debaters, like Aaron, Ra, Matt, Delanty, Tom Jump, David Wood, Kenny Boomer, Daniel Hakeekichu, and Mike Jones, as well as Hussein Embers. It's gonna be gigantic. Not only that, though. Like I said, if you're like, James, come on, get real. I'm not anywhere near that. I'm far from Texas. Well, Indiegogo, as you can see on screen, is the, you could say it's a crowdfund website, just like Kickstarter. You've probably heard of Kickstarter. Indiegogo is so easy to use. Cause you might be like, James, I don't know. Do I have to create an account in Indiegogo? You can sign in with Facebook. It's that easy. You don't even have to create an account. I mean, you can create an account if you want. But if you're like, ah, just give me the speed. You know, I want the speedy checkout. You know, kind of like speed through it. I'll throw in a dollar. You're sure you can use Facebook to sign in. It's that easy. Now here are some of the perks. We've added some perks this year. So it might be hard to see. The first one is, if you throw in a dollar, you get to watch all the debates live. This is a unique conference where if you're not throwing into the crowdfund, you can still watch it without putting into the crowdfund if you're a Patreon supporter. That's our way of saying thank you for being a Patreon supporter or if you were a channel member of Modern Databate. I see some members in the chat tonight. If you are a channel member or a Patreon supporter of Modern Databate already, you don't even have to throw into the crowdfund. You already get to watch it for free. We're gonna share those links at the Patreon for those supporters as well as for the channel members. We will share that in a post that's a member's only post. But you're like, maybe you're like, wow, James, I don't really wanna be a Patreon member at this point and I'm not really interested in being a channel member. Well, hey, for just a buck, just a dollar. I mean, we tried to make it so it was less than a dollar. No joke. Indiegogo wouldn't let us make a donation amount less than a dollar. So we had to put it as a dollar. And in that case, you can watch all the debates live. It's all or nothing for this conference. So in the past, we've had some conferences where you could watch all the debates for free, like nobody had to put into a crowdfund. Then we had one conference where half of the debates you had to put into a crowdfund and then the other half were free to the public. And this time, we were like, you know what? We need a safety net because we're going big on this one. In terms of these debates and all the flight costs, you're like, okay, this is adding up to a lot. So right now what we're doing is, hey, if you throw in a buck, you can think of it as many hands make light work. So if a person throws in a dollar like, yeah, sure, a dollar, like what? I'm not gonna miss it. That's even I'm the type of person. That if I spent a dollar on something and I was like, oh, I forgot. I forgot that it was that day and I didn't even watch it live. I'm the type of person and I'm very frugal. I'd be like, eh, no, no, worry about it. So we want to make it as affordable as possible because I know that some people are like, hey, James, are you gonna try to stiff us with like, you can watch the conference live for $40? No, we're not gonna do that. Just a buck. But here's some of the perks. One dollar, as you can see at the very top of the screen, watch the whole conference live. Or if you put in three bucks, you can watch it live and give just two extra dollars for us to promote it. So that's through digital ads or support without a perk. So if you're like, hey, I'm actually working all day that day so I can't make it. Well, you can throw in $5 and we appreciate that support as it means a lot. If you're like, hey, I've enjoyed this channel. I've gotten a lot of value from it. That really does mean a lot. If you put in $10, we will send you an embroidered postcard with the modern day debate logo you could say or emblem embroidered into the postcard. And that's with a handwritten thank you for me as we really do appreciate your support. $25, your name will go into the credits. So that's pretty cool. We will have credits at the end where it says huge thank you to our supporters who gave it the $25 level or more as all of the tiers as you can see on screen. If you go in, for example, let's say you go in for the signed emblem from all debaters. So this is another words it's got a modern day debate picture of the emblem of modern day debate and then it's got the signatures of all the speakers. Let's say you're like, huh, maybe you're like, well, I'm thinking about this. And you're like, I want that, but I also want, you know, I'd like to have my name in the credits. Well, don't worry at whatever tier that you donate at. So for example, if you gave a signed emblem from all debaters, theoretically, you'd also get your name in the credits and you'd also get the embroidered postcard because you could say every tier that you donate at, you get that perk plus all the perks from the tiers below it for smaller donations. So $60 have your question read during the Q and A and then $75 signed photo of your favorite debater and then Zoom Chat one-on-one with James. So we want to encourage you, hey, consider it. And I've got to tell you, some people will still say like, oh man, like too expensive, a dollar. Alpha, I see, Uno in chat says, eventually though, just like super chats are getting priced up, so will these debates. Actually, we've only priced up the super chats for two particular debaters. There are certain debaters that we pay an honorarium to to get them on, frankly, Matt DeLondi and R&Raw. And we do say for those so we can get them out on time. We do sometimes have it where it's like five or $10 minimum for super chats. So that's actually pretty rare that we do that. So to be a little bit more accurate, that's like kind of the exception rather than the rule. But they also say, well, so will these live events, eventually they'll be priced up. And I would say, well, yeah, like if the prices go up, like let's say we went in and we were like, hey, like let's go for it. Let's try to get Richard Dawkins and his honorarium might be $5,000 to $10,000. And you guys might say, oh, Richard Dawkins, that's a joke. He doesn't deserve that much. He's not that smart. He's not that good of a speaker. Well, I don't know. Well, then I would say don't donate then if you don't think it's worth it. Now, maybe you're like, I think it's worth it a dollar, 25 cents per debate. That's not worth it. I was like, okay, I don't. I mean, I don't know if you're gonna be hurting financially if you put in a dollar and you thought the debates were lame, I think you'd be okay. But I would say if we let's say had Richard Dawkins, yeah, it's a possibility that we would raise the price because for us, if we were gonna give Richard Dawkins $5,000 or $10,000 for the honorarium that he requires, well then, if you're benefiting it from watching it, Alpha Uno, then kind of sounds fair that we'd say, hey, would you be willing to put in a few bucks to watch it live? So I think a lot of times, so for example, Alpha Uno, a lot of times people don't think about like the cost that for us, you might be wondering like, what are the actual costs? Well, I'll give you an example. Here's our little pie graph. This goes to show just some of the, actually darn it, I don't have a pie graph, but I can list you the cost for the event. For example, the flights definitely cost us money. So we fly in the speakers, we pay honorariums to Matt and Aaron that cover their travel costs as well as their preparation and hotel nights, that's another one, is we do cover the hotel night for the debater for the night before the event and the night after, then the venue cost, that's another usually hefty part of the deal. And so yeah, there are costs that are involved and that's why if you're really offended, Alpha Uno by a dollar donation, or if we did, let's say we had Richard Dawkins and we said, hey, would you be willing to put in $5 to watch the conference? Like if you're really offended, I was like, well, you know, we do have costs as well. Like I don't want to go into debt where it's like, oh, yeah, like going to debt and then people like watch the debates and like, oh yeah, I watched it live, it was awesome. No, I didn't put anything in, like nah, like James will foot the bill, like it's okay if he goes under water on this, is you say, yeah, like we're still gonna release it to the public too. So if you're like, James, I can't afford a dollar and you're greedy that you would ask for a dollar is let's say it's, if it's either of those scenarios, if you said nope, James, they will still be live to the public. So in other words, they won't be live to the public, but they will be available to the public after they're live. So that's something to keep in mind. Alpha Uno says, paywalling these debates will decrease viewership. It is true, they say you should look for sponsorships. I don't know Alpha Uno, we're experimenting, we're open to that in the future, but I've got to say, when you say that the viewership will be smaller, it's true that the viewership will be smaller, but only for the live ones. Remember Alpha Uno, because I just said that we actually release them to the public after they're live. So actually, the viewership in total probably will actually be at least as good. In fact, we think it might even be higher because we think that if people are actually pumped about actually going to the conference, digitally speaking, that the average watch time will be higher on those debates, so. But yeah, we are testing, don't get me wrong, we are open to the idea of let's say doing sponsors, but we are testing to see how crowd funds can work. That's the thing though is, but yeah, like I said, Alpha Uno, it's just wrong to say that the viewership will be lower, because like I said, we're releasing them to the public anyway, so it doesn't really make sense to say that they would actually be lower viewership. But if you have a more persuasive argument than that, I'd be willing to hear it. But yeah, sponsorships, we're open to it. In the future, we might do it. It's something that I've got to see, like who would be wanting to sponsor it. Mr. Greenin says, I'll pony up a dollar, but I do very much appreciate that you make it available to all people as well afterwards. Thanks for that, Mr. Greenin. And yeah, I would say that's the thing is, we always release them to the public afterwards, so, meh. But some people will look for anything to complain about. Like they're like, you want me to pay one cent? I wanted everything for free. I don't wanna, I wanna watch it live for free too, in fact, I don't wanna just watch it afterwards or it's not live, I wanna watch it for free and I don't wanna pay anything, James, just deal with it. And I'm like, well, okay, when you get more experience in the stuff you might understand. But sir, general, thanks for your support. Appreciate it. As well as, thanks for all of your guys' likes. It means more than you know. Thanks for your positive feedback in the chat. ADGs, I love you guys at Modern Databate. And wanna say, we appreciate all of your support as well as Akeel. Good to see you there. And then I've gotta remind you, wanna say we are so thankful that people have been super supportive. And I wanna be fair and accurate when I say this. 99.9% of you are positive and you're awesome. And even if you have something where you're like turned off by something, you're like, oh, that debate sucked or all that moderated into a good job. I do wanna say, this is something I did wanna address, is we do, it's cool to attack the arguments. Absolutely. But one thing I do notice is like the guest mods, sometimes people are very unkind to them. Not a lot. Like I said, 99.9% of you are nice and it's cool. And I am super appreciative. Like seriously, it means a lot. But sometimes you guys, when I see things like comments where it's like, oh my gosh, get rid of that moderator, never have him on again. It's like, Ryan is doing a better job than I did back when I started. And so we want to encourage you to either encourage the new mods or if you're like, James, I'm not gonna encourage them. You're asking too much. Then at least don't say, oh, this moderator's the worst. Get rid of them. That's not supportive for the moderator. The moderator, so like I said, 99.9% of you are reminding you, you guys are awesome and you're supportive and you're positive and I appreciate it. But for the 1% who are sometimes just nasty, I have to say, the moderator is actually doing like the moderating so that there can be more debates. So in other words, it's like, if someone's like, oh, I was like, it's moderators. Like maybe they're not a perfect moderator. I agree. I'm not either. I'm not perfect, obviously at moderating or anything. But I do want to say if you could, if you see someone who is really hard on somebody and they're just like, oh, this moderator sucks. Get rid of them and don't have them back. Please do challenge them and say, hey, you know what? They're doing their best. By having guest mods, modern day debate is able to host way more debates because I just don't have the bandwidth anymore. I've got to finish up my dissertation so I can graduate this year and it's exhausting. It's a really stressful. It's known for being a challenging and emotionally grueling, emotionally exhausting point in the PhD when you have to do your dissertation. I'm pretty exhausted. So for me, like I can't host more than like one or two debates a week anymore, at least for a while until I get some oomph back. So in the meantime, if we're gonna have more than one or two debates a week, Ryan, Amy, Kaz, I'm trying to think of Converse. Converse is once in a while, he's around. Hunter's basically not ever around anymore but we love him still. But they allow us to have those debates. And so I do, like sometimes I look at the comments and I'm like, let's go over some examples. So just so we're all on the same page, if you're like, James, what do you mean? Like, James, are you being, I'm not trying to say everything has to be like happy. Here's one that I'm like, okay, I'm not crazy about it. Oh, actually, this is an insult for one of the debaters. I was gonna address that too. Is it's cool to attack the arguments. But like if a person says like, oh man, this person is so deluded and brainwashed and like let's say they in this, let's say theoretically in the comments after this, some Muslim speaker, this is just a theoretical. In the comments of saying like, oh, Aaron is so deluded and brainwashed. It's like, well, it's not really attacking Aaron's arguments. And so please address Aaron's arguments rather than calling him deluded and brainwashed and all that stuff. And that goes for Muslims as well. So like if someone says, oh, Hussein is so deluded and brainwashed, it's like, okay, attack the arguments instead of the person. It's not helpful. Just call them brainwashed. Each side can do that to the other. I think amazingly sometimes people don't realize like they call the other side brainwashed and they don't realize like someone can take your comment, copy and paste it and just take the name out and switch it with the other debater's name. And it like, it's, there's no like contradiction or anything wrong with the comment. Cause all it is is just a comment that's just insulting them. It's just an assertion. And in fact, I see sometimes like people will do that where I'll see like an insult in the chat where, you know, someone will copy and paste that insult and put it in a reply comment and just switch out the names just to kind of demonstrate to a person. So that's a big thing is I've got to say, we do care about that. We do want to foster a positive community. Is a positive community attacking arguments? Yeah, that's fair game. That's okay. There's nothing bad about that at all. In fact, I'd encourage it. Is a positive community attacking the person? And you know, if they say like, Oh man, this person just shouldn't even debate. They're terrible. Okay. That's not a helpful type of comment. So I'm looking in here and I'm looking at the comments. And I would say a lot of these are just that. They're attacking the argument and that's cool. I'm happy about that. And so I'm looking at, yeah. And then some of them are saying, you know, like atheism is true or Islam is true. That's fine. It's fair game. But I just don't like the attacks on the person. And again, 99.9% of you are positive where you either say something positive or you attack the argument or you just don't say anything at all. You're like, I don't even feel like commenting today. Fair enough. That's okay. But there is like a 1% like where it's like, okay, please don't try to discourage the new mods. I want the new mods to stay because the new mods are excited to do it, but they don't feel as encouraged when they see someone in the chat say, hey, that person's stupid. Or, you know, they were so bad. It's like, yeah. But I've got to go. I'm pretty, pretty tired. Jeremy Nolan says, sorry. I can be naughty sometimes. I'm sorry, James. Thanks, Jeremy Nolan for owning it. I never thought of you. I didn't even realize you did it, Jeremy. But maybe you did. And the fact that you're willing to own it shows a lot of maturity and strength because that's the thing. Some people, they will say things and then they'll just be like, I didn't do anything wrong or he made me do it. He made me angry. So, you know, that's why I said it. It's like, well, he didn't make you, he didn't make you say it and he didn't really even make you angry really. Like you have control over your own emotions and whether or not you're gonna let yourself get angry is a matter of whether or not you need to take anger management. Like, so I love that you're owning it, Jeremy. You're the, you're doing awesome when you're like, hey, sorry about that. Sometimes I'm guilty of that. And I may be guilty of that too. Like sometimes like I'm maybe too stern with the debaters. It's true. Sometimes I've even told the debaters and I regret this and I feel bad for it. Like sometimes I've said things like, you know, I'm starting to wonder if you have an impulse control problem. I shouldn't say that. Like that's pretty barbed. That's definitely mean. That's not a good host. So I have things that I can improve at. We can all improve on these things together. I just wanted to point that out because sometimes people, and that's the thing too. So Samuel Bass is first, hey James, sometimes debaters are lying quite frequently these days. What's the rule on that? Thanks for your question. Is, I think that sometimes in the chat, we forget that if someone comes on and they say Christianity is true or Islam is true. And this might not be what you're referring to, Samuel, but I will say that some people do this. They go, they're lying. They're lying. James, you can't let them say that. And I'm like, you have to have a, the ability to perspective take. If they knew that Christianity or Islam was false and they were coming on and saying, it's true, then yes, it's a lie. But if you say something that you really do believe to be true, you've read books that have made you come to this conclusion, it's not lying. And likewise, if they come on and they say the earth is flat, I'm not a flat earther. But I have the perspective taking. We all have to have the perspective taking to where if they come on and they say, well, the flat earth is flat. And then someone says, they're lying. James, you can't let them tell lies. Interrupt as a moderator, James. And I'm like, I would agree that what they're saying isn't accurate, but I wouldn't say first. I wouldn't say that they're lying. And second of all, I can't interrupt just because it disagrees with my view or the other debaters view. Like they may say things that are inaccurate. It's the job of the other debater to address that. So that's where I would say, I do see a lot of times, that's the thing too is in terms of being charitable, if we really wanna press ourselves to be as intellectually mature as possible, then we all have to be as charitable as possible. And we have to say, okay, this person is making this case. I don't believe it. I think the arguments are terrible, but it's not intellectually charitable to say, oh, they're being disingenuous. This is the most dishonest debater I've ever seen. Is a lot of times I think people say that because the debater won't yield. They're not convinced of a point. So for example, let's say theoretically that a Muslim says, hey, studies show that Islamic countries are the most happy. And then let's say an atheist says, here's a study and it says that atheist countries are more happy than Islamic countries. And then the Muslim says, I don't believe that. I'd have to see the studies. I don't buy that. And the atheist says, well, I'm telling you, here are the names of the authors and I'm screen sharing it. And then here's the abstract. They say, well, I'd have to look more deeply into the study before I believe that. Which is fair, because if they've seen a lot of other studies and say Islamic countries are more happy, they might be like, okay, well, that's weird. Like this guy found something that says that atheist countries are more happy rather than Islamic. So they might think I wanna go read and see what that study says. But someone might say, well, they're being dishonest. Like they're not yielding the point. It really gets to that sometimes where it's like, I don't think they're being dishonest. I think they just want a chance to read about that. They haven't seen every study. So I know that Samuel Bass that's probably not what you were talking about. It's kind of a spinoff. My response was kind of a spinoff on what you were saying. But long story short, it should be the debaters that do the job of saying, hey, what you're saying is accurate. And it's true. Sometimes the debaters like, maybe they're not prepared enough. You know, like they're not gonna nail every point. That's true. I mean, there's so much information that comes from debates that it's really hard as a debater to nail every single point that your opponent set. Both because of time constraints and because even just remembering all the points or writing down all the points as they're said is a challenge. So, but I do want to encourage everybody. It's to always say, like, oh, they're being intellectually dishonest. It's the most intellectually dishonest debater. And the funny thing too is not always, but I oftentimes see the same people say that in virtually every debate. Like, they just, in every day, there's just, I really think that in those cases, there's a lack of perspective taking going on. Because when you see it that often, it's like, you know, like I said, the door swings both ways. They could, you know, they could say the same thing about your side and say, oh, you know, Aaron or Hussein or I don't know, who's the last Christian we had on? Stewart, they're being dishonest. That's like, you know, you could say that about anybody. Like, especially if you don't give a way in which you can show that they were intentionally misleading people. If you're not able to do that, it's like, well, you can just call anybody that. But want to say thank you guys for your support. We are so close to getting to 400 likes. Seriously, it's essential. We can get to 400 likes. If you haven't yet, please do hit like. It means more than you know. And let me quick take some melatonin because I'm going to sleep soon, you guys. I'm an old man. I don't know about you guys, but I'm an old man and I need to go to sleep at a decent time nowadays. And Shrol says, can we get some impending doomsday preppers debate? I don't know, just curious. That's a great idea. I love that idea. Seriously, I think it's interesting. It's like a topic outside of what I'm used to, so I don't know who's big in that area, but I'm totally up for it. And, oh, but one thing I want to say too, because I feel like I was maybe a little bit hard on. If someone's critical, I didn't share this. This is an important piece of information. So for the crowdfund that I mentioned is that people might be like, and like I said earlier, I was kind of saying, hey folks, we invest and we're just trying to not go into the red. And what I mean by that is I don't want to have it where it's like, ooh, we lost $1,000 on that conference. We like to break even. That's what we're hoping for or better if we do better than break even. In other words, if the money that comes in through people buying tickets and through the crowdfund, if it exceeds the amount of money that we spent on the event and then YouTube revenue too, because that helps. So like the ad revenue we get on the debates. If it exceeds it, we're reinvesting the excess monies back into the next conference. So theoretically, so for our first conference, I think we basically broke even. We might have been a little bit under, but I think that we probably came out like $100 a head or something from the YouTube revenue because one of our debates is still doing really well from that first conference. So we're maybe like $100 a head, I don't know. We've reinvested more than that amount in the last conference. So in other words, we're reinvesting all of that money that if there is any extra money, the last conference, I think we probably have come out like maybe two or $300 a head if you include YouTube revenue. If you don't include YouTube revenue, we definitely lost money, but YouTube revenue counts. Like that's a way in which you make money from the conference, so it counts. It's, I don't, I feel like it's not the greatest, it's not the greatest like model or like business model, we're not really a business. I don't know about business, but I will tell you this. If theoretically we came out like five or even $1,000 a head, as we're hoping we might be able to come out a head on this next conference, maybe by like 500 bucks, 1,000? I don't know. That's the hard thing to predict about these, but let's say we do come out $500 or 1,000. People might be thinking like, oh, James, so that's why you wanted to do that crowdfund. Now you have $500 or $1,000 that you are gonna spend on a trip to Hawaii. No. His sideshow nav is someone that I'm financially accountable. He's our head moderator in the live chat. And that money's gonna be reinvested into the next conference. In particular, you might be wondering, like, well, who would you do it for? We, for example, we have considered Richard Dawkins. He's still kind of above what we're willing to risk financially, because Richard Dawkins would be like, I don't know, I think he's like between $5,000 and $10,000. And that's just, that's too risky for us at this point. We just don't have, we don't have enough experience at doing this well to risk that. But Lawrence Krause might be like more affordable for us. So that's an example. So if we had like that $1,000, like that would be an honorarium for Lawrence Krause, because Lawrence Krause is a big name. So that's theoretically like we're considering that. I don't know. Let me just really quick. But yeah, so now you kind of get the idea though, that like that's why I'm kind of saying like it's not, when we do kind of ask if people are willing to throw support in, hopefully people know that it's like, it's not that we're being greedy. Like the fact that we're reinvesting into the next conference, I'm like, it's, I think it shows that we're like we're committed to modern day debate rather than my personal finances. I have to take my valerian route too. I'm like Gabba. Norman Bates says, my mother said, James is handsome. Thanks, Norman. I appreciate that. Means a lot. Akeel says, who would you put against Lawrence Krause? Mike Jones wants to debate Lawrence Krause. Surgeon General says, 390 likes. Come on, 400. We are super close, you guys. Let me count the zeros here. Now one thing that I've got a, oh, I was gonna blow my nose two seconds. But I want to say hi. I didn't even get to say hello in chat. Living room speakers, good to see you. ADG, good to see you. Norman Bates, thanks for being with us. Barron Vaughn, quickly. Thank you very much, Barron, for being with us. Master Optics, glad that you're here. David, is it Mueller or Mueller? Thanks for dropping in, appreciate it. Islam is the way, PS. Thanks for coming in. We're glad that you were here. Akeel says, how can we find Hussein? He said he's got a link. Why is my nose so plugged? He says he's got a link that he's gonna email me. So I'll put it in there once I have it. Turner SB, I see you there in the old live chat. Thanks for being with us. Hannah Anderson, good to see you there in the live chat. Says, go get a good night's sleep. I should, it's getting late here. Somer says, what's up, James? Great seeing you. Sorry, I missed the debate. Good to see you, Somer. I hope you're doing well. Julie Bittner says, I'm writing a dissertation right now too. This was a great distraction. Thanks, Julie. That means a lot. I'm so glad you liked it. And yeah, I get that dissertation grind. I'm pretty tired. But I like it overall, even when it's exhausting. Akeel, let's see, oh yeah, we got that. True Tech, good to see you there. I see you there in the live chat. Moran, please. Thanks for coming by. Says, James being all healthy and drinking brusky. Oh, it's just water. I've only got water in the jug. Koff, HMO4 says, get to Elanti versus Krause on diversity. That'd be pretty cool. I agree. Cosmic, Tommy Towner says, cosmic skeptic would be fun to see. That's a good idea. Let me put him in the, yeah, I like that. We haven't done that. Let's see here. Maybe even for the June conference. So we are planning a June conference right now. You guys believe me? Isn't that crazy? Oh, I just thought of something. Let me think about this. Let's see. Let me count the zeros here. Oh, you know what's interesting? Let me pull you guys on this. I would love to get your feedback. So use an ad blocker on YouTube so that you don't see ads on YouTube. And let's say we put this, I have to see. This is interesting. I've never pulled this is, do you guys use an ad blocker? I just put this question as a poll in the live chat. I'm curious what you would say. Summer Rao, is it pronounced Roe, summer? Sorry, you should know this. It says, what are your thoughts on a quote morality of gene editing debate? I like it. If it was with big enough people, it could work. But I can tell you that if it wasn't with big people, like JF versus a big person, it could work. If it was JF versus anybody else, it probably wouldn't be that good. If it was like JF versus Destiny, which that would never happen because they hate each other. But if it was, then yeah, it would be a big debate. But it's such a niche topic. That's the only reason that I'd be nervous about it. Jeremy Nolan says, chemist James Tuer PhD would be great, him versus Professor Dave. That would be cool. I agree. Is he a PhD? That's right, I think he is. That's cool. And Mr. Kreen says, what genuine subject is your dissertation about, though I'm sure you're sick of it by now. It's just about the science practice gap in my field, specifically whether or not what we know from research is being applied in organizations. Because my dissertation is in industrial organizational psychology, which you could basically just call the psychology of work. Surgeon General says, nope, I pay for YouTube premium so I see no ads ever. I actually spring for YouTube premium too and I'm super frugal, but I do. And the reason is because if you look at the amount of time you save and the fact that you don't have to pay as much for data each month, it's actually like a reasonable financial decision. Wow, 38% of people use an ad blocker. I'm surprised. I wasn't sure if it was gonna be higher. I was kind of wondering, I was kind of thinking like most people did, but in reality, it's probably 38%. I mean, it's hard to know these polls might be, these polls aren't really a true random sample. So whether or not it's really 38, now it's up to 40%. Whether or not it's really that much, I don't know. But let's see, Skellington Jetpacks, I see you there in the old live chat. It says, I did used to let the ads play out on my favorite YouTube channels because I heard that helps increase revenue if they're monetized. Wow, you're a loyal YouTuber if you do that. Or even if you used to do that. Mo Salah 100, glad to have you here. I see you there in the old live chat. Western Spy, glad that you were here. It says, can we have Rabbi Tovaya Singer on a debate? Yeah, that would actually be cool. Let me put that in our, that would be cool, it'd be cool to change it up. Man, I'm pretty tired. I'm gonna let you go. We're at 400 likes, thank you guys. Seriously, that means more than you know. We love you guys, thank you for all of your support. Oh wow, KUF says Dave versus, what is it, a tour is happening in person somewhere else in May. Wow, that's pretty cool. And then Coffee Mom says, I don't want my kids watching ads. It's worth the money. That's true, like, get what you mean. Nowadays ads can be all sorts of weird stuff. True Tech, glad to have you there in the old live chat. Space Cadet, happy to have you here. As well as Claire, good to see you there in the live chat. Western Spy, glad to have you here. As well as to know, Hack equals Suna, and Salaf Al-Sala, thanks for coming by. Good to see you in the old live chat. And James McDougal says, one more like, thanks James. And thanks for all your guys' likes, thanks for your support. Here's one last thing. If you enjoy debates like this, one thing that really does help, actually, hey, let me say this. If you have a podcast app, which I'm guessing most of you do, like maybe you don't use it a ton, but maybe you use it here and there, please right now, do me a favor. Look up Modern Day Debate on your favorite podcast app. So you're probably holding your phone. I see in the YouTube stats that a lot of people actually watch Modern Day Debate on their phone, even on the regular. Is please do find Modern Day Debate on your favorite podcast app and rate us. That helps a lot. Please follow us as well. And then when you get a notification for when the next debate drops, you can decide like, yeah, do I wanna watch it in person or not? All that fun stuff. So thank you guys for all of your support. I appreciate it more than you know. I love you guys. Thank you guys for everything. You guys make this fun. Thanks for all of your support. Everything you guys do to support this channel it means more than you know. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. And I will see you guys at the next debate. Have a great rest of your night, folks. I love you guys. Thanks for making this fun. And if you, last but not least, like I said, if you go to that podcast app and support us there, it really means more than you know. Like I said, even just giving us a rating or following us or subscribing on your favorite podcast app to Modern Day Debate. Seriously, we appreciate that. And then like I said, when you go to notification you'll be like, yeah, sure. I'll listen to that debate on the go. Maybe you'll like it. Who knows? Thanks guys. Love you guys. Check us out on your favorite podcast app and we'll see you at the next debate.