 Tonight or today we are debating a universal common ancestry and we are starting right here for another epic debate This is going to be a lot of fun folks But first want to let you know it was your first time here at modern-day debate We are a neutral platform that strives to host debates and discussions on topics including science religion and politics So you name it sometimes even once in a while, you know the old Bigfoot debate stuff like that So we really do run the gambit here But want to let you know no matter what walk of life you are from we really hope you feel welcome folks And we're very serious about that so welcome no matter who you are where you're from and want to let you know as well A couple of housekeeping things for the channel before I introduce our moderator for today Basically if you have not heard folks, we are thrilled about this new Strategy you could say that we are putting together namely we are for the first time ever This is the first time we've ever done it. We are using Kickstarter to help fund a debate with Guests including dr. Michael Schermer New York Times best-selling author as well as the editor of skeptic magazine and Inspiring philosophy this is going to be an epic one folks We really do want to let you know about this in that we really believe that this is going to be a big one And so if you have not seen this it is linked in the description what we are doing is basically this allows us To take bigger risks some of the speaker fees out there and hey, it's well-deserved. These are busy people They have opportunities all over the place and so we think it's it's well-deserved We have no complaint about it, but we're like hey if we're going to start taking bigger risks Having bigger people and even doing in-person debates with bigger people in terms of these people like I said New York Times best-seller Michael Schermer and others is that Having Kickstarter allows us to take bigger risks with those Honorariums that we are paying to the speakers or the facilities that we might book for those speakers And so if you have not yet, we encourage you to pledge to the Kickstarter as that is going to make this debate possible We are determined folks. I don't care if I have to do a car wash in January I will make sure we reach the goal for this Kickstarter. We're going to make it folks And so I want to encourage you. It's just three bucks to watch it live. It's like a cup of coffee folks So anyway, we are excited about that as we like I had mentioned to the speakers before we got started Guests such as the epic ones we have today including Dr. Fuzerana and Jackson wheat are the kind of guests that we would like to have Debate in person as well. And so like I said this new strategy will help us get there So we are very excited. I want to kick it over to Erica She will be sharing what the format for debates or today's debate will be she also has her own YouTube channel linked in the description She is as we say YouTube's favorite daughter. We're glad to have you back Erica. The floor is all yours James, it's always a pleasure to be here. You know, I love to come on modern-day debate and help mod Especially when we've got interlocutors like we do today I know fuzz and Jackson They're both the delight and the best part about this for me is I get to kick back with my water and my cheese It's and listen to an awesome discussion and not have to do any moderating other than timekeeping because I know these guys are gonna keep it Ooh super chill, which is what we love to see So the format today is gonna be roughly 10 to 15 minute openers As as you guys know both James and I are very flexible with regard to how how long we Kind of let the speakers do their openers because we just love to hear the openers Followed by about an hour. So 50 60 minutes of open discussion and then everyone's favorite the Q&A So you're gonna want to tag a modern-day debate with those super chats and general questions as usual We tend to give the super chats preference. So if you oh, you're just dying to get a question one of these guys You help out the channel you you give a little donation and get your question answered So I'm gonna pass it to these two so that they can introduce themselves and then we'll hop right into these opening statements As usual when we do the opening statements, I try to give a warning at about 12 minutes Just so the the folks who are given the opener know where they're at time wise So I'll just wait for an organic spot to interrupt and be like hey, you're at 12 minutes And then you continue on your merry way. So guys introduce yourselves. Tell us tell us about them Who you are and what you do? Oh and one thing I want to add too as well Is just that before if you guys want to share about your channels in particular what people can expect to find your links I do have we wanted to do this well in terms of I had spoken beforehand and I wanted to get to read these Guys's introductions, which we have written up over here namely So I'll read this on behalf of fuzz and then over to Jackson wheat but for fuzz Thanks so much for being back again fuzz in particular fuzz is the vice president of research and apologetics that reasons to believe He's the author of several groundbreaking books including who is Adam creating life in the lab the cells design and Humans 2.0. He holds a PhD in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry from Ohio University so thanks again fuzz actually we'll do it right now if you'd like to share What could people expect to find at your links and thanks so much again for being here fuzz? Yeah, well if people just want to learn about reasons to believe in the types of materials we produce I would invite them to visit our website reasons.org and Then we've got a new project that we started at reasons to believe where my friend Steve McCray And I who have very different worldviews get together and we agreed to argue on a wide range of different topics and Coming in January. I'm not sure that the date off the top of my head. I should know this our publicist has been a really ring my neck but mid early early to mid-January on a Wednesday Probably the second Wednesday in January. We're going to be talking about the topic of hell. So Steve is going to offer a non-theist's perspective on the concept of hell and then I'm going to Engage that perspective from a the standpoint of the of a feast and we're bringing on board as a guest a friend of mine from He's a professor itself Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary can't keep waiting to to join in the conversation But anyway, I'd invite people to check that out. It's at agree to argue as the YouTube channel. So anyway Absolutely, and I have agreed to argue linked in the description as well folks Folks if you're listening to this channel if you're here at modern debate odds are really good You'd love agree to argue so do check it out And I saw you guys are coming up on a thousand subs and that was fast because that's a new channel as buzz had mentioned And so you guys have to check that out. Absolutely people are digging it and also want to let you know Quick intro for Jackson wheat who we've had he's even say a veteran here at modern-day debate We've had him numerous times including his classic debate with Kent Hovind The old the olden days, but we also want to mention that Jackson wheat has a popular YouTube channel as well Over 5,000 Subscribers now and many people are enjoying this debate channel or I should say this up You could say well, I'll let you explain it yourself Jackson But I want to let you know folks what that his channel is linked in the description and then Jackson Please do share what people don't expect to find at that link and thanks for being here. Oh Well, thank you for having me my videos are predominantly about evolutionary biology and Combatting creationism, although not as much as other channels who combat creationism I more like to look at evolutionary biology from a positive angle what are the origin of different groups of organisms the origins of different genes and and Functions and things like that. That's what interests me. That's what I'm going for in my college career and ultimately my profession And so yeah, if you like any of that I also host discussions on on my channel too sometimes so Yeah, go check all that out. I also have a book the rocks for there, which I co-authored with RJ I know he'll he'll be plugging it in the side chat Absolutely, so thank you so much and thanks for letting me jump in there Erica I I forgot some of those details to mention beforehand. So thanks for your patience Hey, you you got it if you got a commandeer of the ship. You got a commandeer of the ship Thank you very much for your flexibility and what we will do is we're going to now kick it over to Erica as The speakers will be off to the races in just a moment. Thanks again, Erica Who by the way Erica congrats as well just crossed over five thousand subscribers is linked in the description So thanks so much, Erica. The floor is yours. Hey, yeah, we we did cross five thousand subs So thanks to everybody who did that my videos are mainly about human evolution primates Zoology paleontology things like that. So if you're interested in that feel free to sub since we're all shilling anyways Before before we begin just just you know Gonna let Jackson know that everyone is complaining in the chat that no one can see you You're you're shrouded in darkness as if you were some kind of key witness. I have poor lighting Poor lighting quality and also there's the Sun behind me. He's getting me. See you got it You gotta be more strategic. I don't have a light on the room that I'm in I'm this is all natural lighting baby. So that would require turning around which I Don't want you guys to see the rest of my room. No, no can do Jackson I'm a Jordan Peterson like hey, you know, you can just see the one end and it looks okay But you can't see the rest. Sorry Jackson you got it. You got to do you I think personally I think it adds to the mood of the of the Seriousness of this discussion that will inevitably be hard core and not at all civil and fun. Oh, I don't know about that Yeah, I like Dr. Rana. It's not like I'm talking to Nephilim free. So Shots fired. So I that's all I've got to say I mean, holy cow me and me and James. We're we've got the dream team going on here We've got everything covered. So I'm gonna knock it over to you Jackson since you were taking the affirmative and I will start on your I have a slideshow I can screen share you Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'll just start on your first word and again I'll let you know when you're out about 12 minutes, but you guys are awesome at keeping time. So Okay, give me one sick My computer is slow. So you have to forgive me. Well, please and you see it. Yes, we can Okay, come on, come on. I can see it's trying Like I said, it's doing its best. Yeah, as Ken Hoven says it need to evolve a better computer Me oh Kent oh Kent Maybe I can do it differently Now they never work when you want them to You know close it, I'm just gonna do it this way Okay, let's just do it that way. Okay, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter All right, I didn't open the poinlet did I okay? All right, let's go Okay Well, hello everyone. Thank you again James for having me on. Thank you everyone for being here So today's topic is universal common ancestry So we must ask the question is it reasonable to think that all organisms are descended from a common ancestor? They're the process of evolution Now both parties of this debate need to define to what extent they accept common ancestry to pinpoint where exactly we disagree Otherwise, how could we have a debate if we don't know where the disagreement lies? I have debated this topic with other people before who accept some degree of common ancestry, but not universal For instance, they will readily say that they do not accept common ancestry between very distant groups such as plants and animals But when I press them to draw the line between any taxa that demarcates the related from the not related and how they come to this Determination I do not get an answer and this is a common feature for all Anti-evolutionists so far not just old earth creationists But also intelligent design advocates and even the young earth creationists whose bare monology tries to draw such lines But stumbles at the edges by leaving out relevant genetic and fossil data that would have blurred the lines Now I've talked to dr. Rana before however I'm not entirely sure what his stance is on the relatedness of different organisms beyond recognizing that he isn't convinced of universal common ancestry I Understand he believes humans aren't descended from australopithecines though We are separated by very little in terms of morphology However, he and many other anti-evolutionists are perfectly willing to concede much larger and more distantly related groups of organisms as being related by Natural common descent. This is the inconsistency. I want to focus on today My presentation today will involve showing a series of slides and asking where dr. Rana believes natural relatedness Begins and ends my hope is that during the discussion portion We can address at least some of these phylogenies together if you can't provide a consistent metric by which to differentiate divinely created Kinds types or whatever you want to call them Then I see no reason by which we can't simply extend the same logic that leads us to believe disparate groups of organisms are in fact Related by natural common descent This is what our rock calls the phylogeny challenge and to date. I've never seen an anti-evolutionist successfully respond to this challenge All right, the first version of this challenge involves some arthropods. My question is our butterflies related to horseshoe crabs These two are about as far apart as one can be while still being an arthropod But I also have here a series of arthropods that are more closely related to butterflies than they are to horseshoe crabs Are they all related? Are all butterflies related to each other? Are butterflies related to moths and other lepidopterans? Are they related to flies wasps and beetles who all go through the same stages of metamorphic development? Are these all related to other insects such as praying mantises and silverfish that all have a head Thorax abdomen and three pairs of jointed legs What about barnacles? Ostracods millipedes are any of these related to horseshoe crabs? If your answer to all these questions is yes Then you accept that the entirety of phylum arthropoda is related However, that means you should also accept humans being related to chimps since our common ancestor with chimps lived only six million years ago Meanwhile, the common ancestor of horseshoe crabs and butterflies Lived over five hundred million years ago If you accept all those arthropods as being related to each other then how about these? Calentia, Anomalycharis, and Obabinia are known as stem arthropods Because they possess some of the characteristics of true arthropods, but not all of them. Some might even call them transitional arthropods Two of the major diagnostic characteristics of true arthropods that they have a chitinous exoskeleton and jointed appendages Like true arthropods, Calentia has a fused head shield and Anomalycharis has jointed limbs Obabinia has compound eyes Aishaea is a worm-like animal with repeating limb segments and because of this researchers consider it to be near the velvet worm arthropod divide Is it related to Obabinia and true arthropods or what about Ealingia? It has no legs but is segmented with with each segment bearing three lobes like later trilobites Which remember are true arthropods is Ealingia related to true arthropods Or let's flip to the deuterostome side of the tree are jawless fish related to acorn worms Anaspis, Jamoitius, and Lampraes are considered true fish while Metaspergina is a true vertebrate, but isn't very fishy Meanwhile, Zongzaniscus is an advanced chordate, but not a vertebrate Pachyia is a primitive Lancelot relative and Sacagossus an acorn worm along with the Canoderms are the next closest relatives of chordates All these animals share in common deuterostome development and bilateral symmetry as well as a number of hawks genes We share that in common with elephants, robins, lizards, frogs, sharks, Lampraes, tunicate larvae, Lancelots, acorn worms, any kind of derm larvae If the aforementioned characteristics are sufficient to conclude that we are related to everything within our phylum chordata Then surely the same criteria is sufficient to conclude that we are related to acorn worms and starfish though they nest outside our phylum Now on to worm phylogenetics. In theory, is it biologically impossible for there to have been a common ancestor of Pneumertians and Analyds? Is it genetically impossible for one lineage of ancestral worms to develop any versable proboscis and rincacele, as in the case of Pneumertians, or segmentation, as in the case of Analyds? Is it logically impossible then for Analyds and Pneumertians to share a common ancestor with Aplacaforens, who are actually secondarily worm-like mollusks? And is it logically impossible for them to share a common ancestor with Plotihelmythes, Pneumotoda, Pneumatomorpha, or Xenocelomorpha? Both panarthropods and deuterostomes trace their ancestry back to wormy animals and there is nothing inherently preventing different phyla of worms from being related to each other Thus, by extending the same method that allows us to conclude a man as the father or a person is of a particular ethnicity, or two species are more closely related to each other, than to a third species, we can easily conclude that all animals share common ancestry. This is the argument Dr. Rana must make. He must be able to explain when a gene shared by two taxa is the result of common descent or independent design. For example, if we take the Hox gene Pax6, which is involved in the regulation of eye development in all bilaterians, then Dr. Rana should be able to answer how many times this gene was independently created, unless he believes it is shared among all bilaterians as a result of common descent. And of course, we can extend this process further. Are all organisms that share the fusion of three genes involved in pyrimidine biosynthesis related? That includes all animals, fungi, amoebasans, and various other protists. If I showed you a phylogeny of different protists, could you tell which are and aren't related? If so, how? Is anything related to anything in your model? Genetics tells us that all these organisms are related. Chlamydomonas, diatoms, euglena, foraminifera, and nectiasporia are all related, though some only very distantly. Is chlamydomonas related to other green algae, land plants, or red algae? Are diatoms related to ciliates and dinoflagellates? The phylogeny challenge works at all levels of classification. It's a challenge to explain all the facts, not just the selected bits. So I ask again, is it impossible biologically for these protists to have descended from a common ancestor, evolving different morphologies under different selective pressures leading to the present diversity? Thank you. I yield the rest of my time. All right. That was about eight minutes. So, well, well under the time. So we'll just, we will shoehorn that into the open discussion, and I will go ahead and pass it over to Fuzz here to give his intro. So I will just start on your first word, and I will let you know when you're at 12 minutes. Okay, and let me go ahead and share my screen, see if I can fold this off. There's just no, there's no elegant way to do this. It's always something with the screen sharing. That is for sure. All right. Here we go. All right. So can you guys see that? Okay. Yes, it's struggling to go into the full screen mode, the full slideshow mode. I think he was doing the same thing with Jackson as well where it didn't want to. Is that better now? I don't see a change on my end yet. Okay. So, all right. Well, okay, thanks. All right. Well, first of all, I want to say thanks to James for having me back on modern day debate. And it's a delight to see Erica again and always enjoy the conversations I have with Jackson. And there's been a few instances where we've been on the same side of the issue and a few instances on different sides of the issue. And so I'm going to address the question, do all living things share a universal common ancestry? And my answer to that question is going to be not necessarily. So I'm not necessarily taking the affirmative or the negative, but some place in between, which I guess is part of the Jackson's complaint. So I'll address some of the questions that Jackson raised during the conversation that we have. And I'm just going to lay out my perspective on this issue. And what I'd like to do is start with actually what has now become one of my favorite quotes to discuss and to interact with. And this is from Theodosius Dobzensky, who was the late Russian geneticist of some renown and also interestingly enough, a Russian Orthodox Christian. And in 1970, maybe, I think was the year he wrote an article for the American biology teacher where he was appealing to educators to incorporate evolution more prominently into the curriculum. And as part of his appeal, he wrote these words, nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution. And these are now well known words. But the point that he was getting at is that today, the theory of evolution, for lack of a better way to describe it, is in effect the organizing principle in biology. It is the lens by which everything is viewed in biology, everything is interpreted. And as part of that interpretive framework, of course, is this idea of universal common descent, as Jackson is pointing out, which is in effect the central feature of the evolutionary paradigm. And so this is, again, the focus of our conversation today. And I want to just take a quick minute and make a clarifying point that I actually, and this is a subtle distinction, but I actually like to think of biological evolution in distinct terms from what I will call the evolutionary paradigm, which is this grand overarching claim that everything in biology can be exclusively explained through evolutionary mechanisms and this would include the origin and the design of life in its basic level as well as the history diversity and distribution of life. And this is the grand claim of the evolutionary paradigm. So I would lump the origin of life question into this larger paradigm, distinguishing it from, again, biological evolution, and this will become important, I think, and you realize why I'm making this distinction in a minute. And so, so, you know, my position is a view where I would argue for what I would say limited universal common ancestry, which again is something that I think gathering drives Jackson nuts that will unpack that. So how did I arrive at this particular position. Well, as a undergraduate student who was interested in going to grad school to get a PhD in biochemistry, I of course took courses in chemistry and biology. And at that time in my life I readily embraced the evolutionary paradigm this idea that everything in biology could be explained through evolutionary mechanism including the origin and the design of life. You know, would have held to this idea of universal common descent so that earlier version of me and Jackson would have very little to disagree with one another about in graduate school, my perspective changed significantly because as a graduate student I was immersing in the study of biochemical systems and became very impressed with the, the elegance and the sophistication, even you might argue the ingenuity of these systems and was really very curious as to how do the account for the origin of biochemical system and hence the origin of life and I on the side, in addition to all the responsibilities I had as a graduate student, I began to study the origin of life question and quickly reached the conviction that mechanism alone didn't seem to be able to explain the origin of biochemistry of life. And it was at this point I recognized that there were limitations to the evolutionary paradigm to this grand overarching claim. And, and so I realized that agency would be necessary, at least in my mind to explain the origin of life and this was 35 years ago. So I'm getting to be really an old codger these days. And, and, and yet I think the case for design and the challenge to the evolutionary explanation for the origin of life are more severe today. But at that time I would have held again a view that would have been very that Jackson and I would not have disagreed much about where I would have held to a view very similar to what Darwin closes the origin of species with that is once the origin of life was in had had occurred that evolutionary processes would essentially explain the diversity of life from that point on. And over time, I began to develop an interest in the philosophy of science and began to appreciate the role that philosophy actually plays in how we interpret the scientific record. But one of the ideas that really hit home was this idea that was implicit in everything I was learning as a scientist, but now made explicit through my reading in the philosophy of science and that is the central importance of methodological to modern day science. And in a nutshell this idea basically argues that every explanation that we bring to bear for the world of nature must require a mechanistic explanation that we cannot appeal to agency in formulating explanations about the world around us. And, and I realized that this becomes a constraint on the operation of science that would have invalidated my conclusion as a graduate student that the origin of life required agency, not because the evidence wasn't there to support agency as an explanation for the origin of life, but because of this philosophical constraint. And this got me to think, are there other aspects of biology where methodological naturalism is influencing how we would interpret the record of nature. I also learned about something called the underdetermination problem. And this idea here is that data under determines scientific theories, meaning that you can have two radically distinct theories that actually can accommodate the same set of data, and that that same set of data can actually be solicited in support of to again two very radically different theories. And then last but not least is this idea of the concept of teleonomy. And this idea of teleonomy traces back to a philosopher of science in the 1950s and his name escapes me at the moment, who argued that in biology of course teleology since the Darwinian Revolution was stripped from from biology, and yet biologists struggle with the fact that they are drawn to utilizing design language when they discuss and describe biological systems and so as a way to resolve that that discrepancy he introduced the concept of teleonomy, which was in a nutshell would argue that the design that we see in biology is not bonafide design, but produced through mechanism. But yet that then freezes up to use design language without implying teleological limitations in biology. Okay, so excuse me. So in light of all this, I recognize that you could actually interpret the the biological realm from a design framework, and that the data that is oftentimes used to support universal ancestry in this case, could also be understood from a design framework, where again nothing in biology makes sense, except in light of design so then what about all the evidence for evolution. And the evidence for for evolution and ultimately for universal common descent is really in two broad categories homology and the fossil record the features of the fossil record. And this idea of homology again is really central to I think the points that that Jackson was making, as he was arguing for again, you know, common ancestry in these in the different groups that he was discussing. And it's interesting to me because today the idea of homology is is deeply entrenched within an evolutionary framework it's intertwined with the evolutionary paradigm and again is the primary evidence I would suggest for for common descent and universal common descent. But interestingly enough, when you look at the history of biology, prior to Darwin, biology was a teleological activity. It was a teleologically driven discipline. And the idea of homology predates Darwin's theory. And one of the scientists who was prominent in elaborating the concept of homology Sir Richard Owen developed a theoretical framework to explain homology, in which he evoked the use of archetypes where he argued that what you are looking at in in homologies is a an ideal or an archetype that that for Owen existed in the mind of the first cause, but then is functionally manifested in the created order through a modification of that archetype to produce a wide range of different types of designs. And he elaborate he defended this idea in a in a series of lectures that he presented to the Royal Society in London. And you can, there's a it's a fascinating book to read on the vertebrate on the archetype of the vertebrate limb or something like that. But for Owen, the idea of homology was the quintessential evidence for design, interestingly enough, where he marvel that the fact that you could take these archetypes and they would be so robust that they could be varied in such a way to produce a wide range of function. And so for Owen, that was the ultimate expression of design. And here's a quote from from Owen that I'm not going to read just for the sake of time where he's essentially making that point. And so in other words, the evidence that is is oftentimes considered to be unequivocal evidence for universal common ancestry could also be understood as evidence for the shared design of organisms in nature. Okay, thanks. I'll hurry it along here. And, and so what what Darwin did is he took Owen's idea of the archetype and he evolutionized it into into a common ancestor. Now, of course, this begs the question, well, why would a creator employ the same designs? You know, why not a creator introducing a wide range of different designs within biology. So this is really a theological question more so than a scientific question. But as I thought about this, this interesting point, if if a creator created organisms with unique a unique set of designs with each organism, then in effect, biology would be impossible as a scientific discipline or be very, very challenging. And the fact that that there's been shared designs in biology actually makes biology really a robust scientific discipline where, for example, as a biochemist what I learned about the biochemistry of E. Coli has brought applicability across the entire living realm, which is mind boggling when you think about that. And so you could argue that that that the shared designs actually reflect a deeper aspect of design, namely that nature is designed for discovery and attractability. What about the fossil record? Well, it's interesting when you go back into the history of biology prior to Darwin, people like Louis Agassiz argued that the fossil record in a sense reflects a series of progressive acts of creation. And, you know, it's interesting to me that when we look at objects that are designed, we see progressive creations all around us, and we are comfortable interpreting these as evidence for design. So for example, the automobile, it's clear that when you look at the history of the design of automobiles that we realize that there are there's this prototypical design, and that future designs are built upon prior designs and, and, and the designs that are yet to be developed will be built upon current designs. And yet we don't feel necessary, we don't feel the necessity of viewing this as again, evidence for common ancestry or common descent, but rather we see this as reflecting shared designs that are again progressively introduced. Or if we look at mosaics in the fossil record, we, we design mosaics all the time. Smartphones are the quintessential example of a mosaic design. I'm old enough now that I can remember when cell phones were a new thing. And, and then you had digital cameras and then, you know, internet devices and the iPod and things like that. And all of this is essentially compressed into a single design that represents a mosaic. And so why couldn't we interpret features in the fossil record that again, Jackson is alluding to from the standpoint of mosaic designs. So in other words, and I'm just going to stop there. In other words, I think that it's possible to develop a framework in which you could interpret the same evidence for universal common ancestry from a design framework, and make perfect sense of the record of nature. And so part of my project that reasons to believe isn't to poke holes in the evolutionary paradigm, but rather to try to come to the table with an alternative design or creation model that could actually again seek to accommodate the data that we see in front of us and and make sense of it from a design framework. So I'll go ahead and stop there and we can move on to the next part of the program. All right, cool, cool, cool, cool. That was about 1516 ish minutes so totally good. We'll just add, we'll add Jackson spare time to the open discussion. And whenever whenever you guys feel like beginning by all means please do. I will let you know when we're about at about 50 minutes, 50 and, and, and we'll just get the ball rolling. So, I think we can so as I did in my discussion with smoky. I'm not convinced that a biogenesis is really part of this discussion, because a biogenesis the origin of a biochemistry would have occurred significantly before the last universal common ancestor of all life would you would you agree with that. I mean, in a sense I'm not really looking at bringing a biogenesis into the conversation today. I just simply telling as part of my the journey I took to wind up where I'm at today. Okay, I got the idea of the fact that that that the original life to me looks like it requires agency. And that opens up the possibility that maybe the rest of biology could be understood from a design framework because that was really, really my point, although just we don't need to get into this too much but but I would point out that when you are talking about universal common ancestry, you are going back to the last universal common ancestor, right, whatever that is right whether it's a single organism or a and in a sense you could argue that the last universal common ancestor is essentially the end product of the original life process, right, again. And so in a sense the original life and you know the idea of universal common ancestry do form a continuum right where the line you would draw is arbitrary and what happens in the original life is imprinted on all life on earth from an evolutionary perspective. Sure. But but but to your point I don't think that is a way that we would evaluate the question on the table. Right. Right. Okay, I just wanted to. Right, just wanted to get that out of it. Okay. The thing about and I do really want to go through some of the some of the ones in the PowerPoint. We don't have to go through all of them of course but maybe at least a couple of them, because you are you became very much more interesting when you started alluding to Richard Owen and Lewis Agassi. Do you hold to the position of repeated creation events. What do you mean by that exactly like the because as far as I remember like Owen was under the impression that like God made the Pelezoic critters which at his time mostly like fish and shells. And then you had another creation event which was the dinosaurs, and then they were wiped out and then you have another creation event which is the mammals and that leads to today. Do you hold to that position. Yeah, I would say broadly speaking. Yeah, so I would say that that when you look at history of life that that that different eras in life history there were there were acts of creation, but I but I also allow for again limited, limited, you know, you know, common this limited common descent. In other words, I think what is it, you know, created would be some kind of our typical design that then would be very would be could be varied through evolutionary mechanisms that would be broadly interesting. That is very interesting. Okay. All right. So my question to that effect would be. The. Do you have, do you draw lines at the major eras, or where would you say your the creation events are occurring geologic wise. You know, that's a, that's a great question. You know, in a sense, and this is probably going to frustrate you, Jackson. So I apologize. But this is this is to me still very much. I would to be quite frank, a work in progress where I mean that's fair. It's a fair answer. You know, where I'm still sorting that out myself. And, and what I'm trying to do is is, you know, for example, again, I don't want to shape my, my apologetic at it poking holes and the evolutionary paradigm, I'd rather come to the table with a model that could, you know, be evaluated and make, you know, a constructive contribution. Sure. But, but I do, you know, like with the origin of life, I do think there are key transitions in life's history that at this point in time, I don't think evolutionary biology does a great job of explaining I think. Okay. For example, the origin of eukaryotic cells and I know the endosymbion hypothesis is the one of the prevailing models, and it has some strengths with it. But when you start getting into a lot of the molecular details about what would have had to transpire. Boy, it really, it really seems like to me that there's some real issues there. Or, you know, or like, you know, the, you know, or like I think the origin of body plans is still largely unexplained, you know, origin of consciousness, the origin of, you know, human exceptionalism. So I think there's some places in life's history where I don't think it's not to say that there's not models that are being proposed. Sure. I don't think those models are, are compelling. Okay. But, but all to your question, sorry, I apologize. Oh, no, you're fine. No, I think. I feel like I'm dominating here and I don't mean to do that. So, so, but that factors into where do I draw the line. Right. So, so to me, I would think in terms of organismal biology, I would definitely say at the point of Fila that would be probably where the creation event to be. Maybe you could talk about that classes. Maybe it orders, but I'm not, I've not sorted that out. I'm basically comfortable with evolution at the family level in below. Okay. So, a lot of stuff, a lot, a lot of stuff. We could talk for hours and hours on this, which unfortunately we don't have. But so if, okay, so, for instance, if we're talking about, if you're saying that you accept all, you know, the body plan as your metric which is in modern about the filing level, but these are taxonomies largely arbitrary. I agree with that. So by that, we would say that elephants and, you know, birds, for instance, have the same body. They have the same body play and overall right they have the features of coordinates, you know, the post anal tail notochord or pharyngeal arches, all that kind of stuff. So, so the Robin, the American Robin and the African elephant share a common ancestor under your model. Yes. Yes, yeah. Okay, okay, so I'm actually glad we picked this one because I didn't make a slide for that. Oh, I need to break in. Okay, so can you can see my screen. Yes. So that's that actually this very discussion about core dates. This is where the line start to blur in my opinion, my unprofessional opinion. So we have here at the top an asbestos and lamprey's right and these are fish, they're fish by our by what the researchers would call it they're all within, you know, the the vertebrates. And so then you have so they're all connected they all have vertebrae right and they all have have fins even if they're very small. But they're jawless fish they're not Nathan stones not sharks or a fin fish or seal of cats. They're jawless fish. So you would say that since all of them are within the core data. They share a common ancestor. Right. I would say that that would be to me an open question as to where does the where does the archetype play a role and where does, you know, where do you know evolutionary mechanisms play a role in terms of shaping the organism. Right. So, so, so to me it's it's it's honestly an open question so I very much appreciate that the thrust of your point in the maybe the frustration in terms of not getting a clear answer but but in a sense it's it's an open question from my perspective. See, and that's that's what's kind of interesting about when you mentioned the archetypes thing because oh and correctly predicted before we had fossils of it that the archetype of coordinates would look like Pacaia. We did that way way before. What was his name. The guy who Gould talks about in a wonderful life or way before he was, you know, fun calling Morris. No, not Morris. The guy who discovered the Burgess Shale by accident. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. But anyway, so, but, you know, so long before he was fiddling around in Canada. Oh and predicted that this is what the archetype of coordinates would look like and indeed he was right it does. It has these characteristics right all coordinates have at some point in their life even if they lose it like you know tunicates are are highly reduced in their adult morphology they swallow their brain like a professor with tenure. You know, they still have these characteristics. And so I get my point kind of comes down to. Couldn't any of these really be the archetype of their later of their descendants, like Medesburgina with its cranium. What could you you could say be the archetype of everything with a cranium. Zones and Niscus could be the archetype of everything with as shape Meyer mirrors and dorsal fins. Pacaia could be the archetype of all chordates sac a glosses, though it's living animals so obviously it's not the direct ancestor, but our common ancestor with that who had due to her stone development. Or we could go further you know all bilaterians or if we go to my other slide. What I mean by point about all the organisms in this slide fungi animals me bezones have a have a gene fusion for perimidine biosynthesis it's three genes all fuse together that participate in this activity. So we could say theoretically, the archetype of triple gene fusion perimidine biosynthesis was an amoeba. Right, and then just evolutionary processes went from there and we have fungi and now we have animals. Right, theoretically, we could say that couldn't we. Yeah, yeah, we could and, you know, again, you know, I'm not denying that that there is evidence that that one could bring to the table for universal common answers ancestry just like you're bringing that evidence to the table. But, you know, let's use the automobile as a as an example that I think might help address the point you're bringing from my perspective. So when you look at an automobile there's clearly an archetype for an automobile that all automobiles throughout the entire history of throughout automotive history all share. But as you go through the progression in terms of, you know, automobile, you know, development, that there are going to be points in time where there are these new innovations that are introduced that are then put on top of that that existing archetype so that you really have kind of a combination of archetypes if you will, and that combination of archetypes then in itself, in effect, in effect becomes that archetype for everything that that follows it in terms of, you know, automotive development. So, in a sense, you could look at, you know, the history of life that in the point that you're bringing in in those terms where you could say, yeah, all these these features that you're successfully pointing to that are typical could could be innovations in and of themselves introduced by the work of a designer that are then used that are then built upon and subsequent, you know, subsequent innovations. Sure, you could but then we could flip that and go the totally opposite direction we could say well every innovation of a new species is therefore an independent creation. Couldn't we it because if one species, you know develops a bird and the original population is brown, but, you know, a sub population develops goes from brown to being black, right. Well, couldn't we say, well that was an independent creation, even if we know the the mechanisms that that caused that would we be justified in saying that we could but the here it would be an instance where you're bringing in what we what we observe, as well as mechanisms available to us to explain those observations so, for example, you know, we observe, you know, what one might call evolution that that to me is has been observed we observe speciation events. So it's, you know, this is not this is not disputed we observe, you know, microbial evolution, you know, all around us. So, no, no complaint with that but the mechanisms that we have, you know, actually, you know, with natural selection operating on, you know, genetic variation can readily account for these kinds of transitions. And this is where I'm not convinced that the mechanisms available to us now, at least as what, as we understand it, are sufficient to account for what I would call biological innovation. You know, and so, you know, the, this is known as the novelty problem and evolutionary biology where there is, there is our real questions about whether or not, you know, evolution, the evolutionary mechanisms that we have can can account for novelty and so at that point that then enters into the conversation. Can these mechanisms we have available to us, explain the introduction of new novelty that then form essentially that that new kind of bind archetype right. Right, well, okay, but the thing about it is, if we go back to the archetype example, then we're talking about like the ancestor of, of elephants and Robbins was something like a lamprey, or Lancelot, be more precise. Right, so clearly, I think you would agree that there have been some novelties that have been generated between, you know, Lancelots and African elephants yeah. And this gets to kind of Agassiz view of the fossil record where it's a progression of, of creation events where, well, I wouldn't really call it a progression, but. Well, progression in the sense that it's going through the course of time, or, or, well, we can even take it back a little bit. If we look at, if we look at the African elephant, which is a modern animal. So you would say that it's related to the early Proviscidians in like the Eocene the early Cenozoic right. Most likely. Okay, so the closest relative based on genetics that we have of African elephants or elephants in general is manatees manatees and daugones. Nest within the clade, with with hyraxes and art varks and elephant shrews, because of course elephant shrews are related to elephants I think that's hilarious. But, but right so we have genetics, and this says, okay, all these afro fairs nest with each other. I don't know if there's a defining morphological character among them I didn't do research on it but but they all nest genetically with each other right. So you would say they had a single common ancestor who gave rise through natural selection sexual selection to these these various species correct. Possibly, I mean that that that's a that's a possible interpretation that would be viable within my within the framework. Okay, but but it but it's also possible that you're looking at, you know, instances of, you know, some kind of creation event as well. See, I find this interesting because, in other words, I'm not I don't hold. I, you know, I don't hold tightly to any one particular interpretation but I'm willing to let the data, basically, you know, dictate where where the answer to that question lies. So again, I would reject the notion of universal, you know, common descent. That's way a field from what I'm talking about like at the moment. Right. Okay, so just if we're talking about just like elephants and manatees and hyraxes and elephant shrews. Would you be comfortable with saying they all share a natural common descent from a single ancestor. What I'd be comfortable with it. Yeah, yeah, I would be comfortable with it. It's a possibility I would be very much open to that. But I would also be comfortable saying that maybe they don't right and that's where I would would want to, you know, I'm a biochemist not an organismal biologist and so I would need to roll up my sleeves and spend some time in the literature to really look and see at, you know, what the detail is, you know, available there and then and then assess it based on that. Right. Well, we have the genetic evidence is very is very much nonequivocal in the question of elephants manatees hyraxes are all the closest relevance to each other. Right. And they also share a biogeographic pattern. Right. They're all all of them. Their ancestors come from Africa. The earliest Serenians are in like Egypt. I think the the Fiam area, and you have the earliest hyraxes which are from Africa, they're always the elephants. And so you have this biogeographic data, this fossil data, this genetic data, which is all concordant. And then you have and so you have them kind of all together. And so each of these are different orders. Right. Heracordia, probesidia, Serenia, these are all different orders. Although, of course, order doesn't really mean anything. Class doesn't really mean anything. There's no, there's nothing tangible. We can't touch a phylum. Right. We can touch a species, although that's a different conversation that we don't really have time to get into. But but these are just terms that we've invented for ease of classification. Right. And when we're talking when we're going from elephants to manatees to hyraxes, we're increasing clades. But we're still talking, we're still talking about the same thing. It's just speciation events over time. Just this biogeographic pattern with the speciation events, which is occurring over and over and over and over. Right, right. And, you know, and I'm, I would agree with your point, which is part of I think the first, the frustration, even for me in terms of the model that I'm embracing is, because, again, species does sort of have some kind of biological aspect to its definition, the same with phyla. But once you're in between, you now are, again, and what constitutes a family for one group of organisms doesn't necessarily constitute a family for another group of organisms. So it's really hard to talk about this in general terms. It would be more in terms in specific terms. Right. And that kind of gets, well, I mean, see, even talking about phyla, because again, I have a little thing for this, makes it difficult because you start getting into things like like clusters of clades, like clusters of phyla that all nest really close together, such that it's darn hard for the people who study this for a living to figure out which is sister to which, because either they have, like in this case, if you look here, so trochophore, so we have the Aplacophoreans, the Aplacophoreans, anilids, and the myrtians. So these are all, these three phyla are all very close together. They're all like core utrochizoa, right, so within Spiralia, they have a characteristics like the trochophore and in a few other things, developmental genes like lox 5 and things like that which connect all of them. And so, again, it's like, these are different phyla, right, the body, the body plan of mollusks, if you can call it that is basically they all have a dorsal visceral mass and that's about it. Because even the foot, the radula is not shared among all mollusks. So they kind of really only have this one feature which is sort of similar. And their ancestors in the fossil record are sort of wormy. And yeah, these other very closely related groups which are also kind of wormy. And so it seems like they're all sort of descended from a wormy ancestor who went in different directions, either for the reversible proboscis for the myrtia, segmentation for anilids or the radula or dorsal visceral mass for mollusks. And so it seems to me that these are not super crazy in terms of like their biochemical structure or what have you. So it seems like it very much could have been a common ancestor of these three phyla, who then through natural processes gave birth to each of these phyla. Would you be. Yeah, yeah, and this is where, you know, you know, where I think, you know, other other considerations would come into play so sure, you know, since we're dealing with the origin of phyla and, again, I'm not an organismal biologist so, you know, bear with me on this but, you know, when it comes to like the origin of duder stones at least my understanding. I'm just going to point in time back in the day when, when I when soology did grief. You know, when you talk about the origin of duder stones I mean that the traditional model has been that the kind of that a kind of demota was the, you know, was the phylum that kind of rooted duder stones and that out of a kind of duder demota came the chordates and the hemi chordates as kind of two branches where in within the chordates you would have your chordates first and then cephalochordates and then after that the craniates right so that was kind of broadly speaking that the evolutionary model right for for yet when you look at at the Cambrian in, you know, record and you look at the Shangjing biota in China. It looks as if all of these phyla are coexisting. And so, you know, so to me that then is another piece of evidence that, you know, I think argues against, you know, common ancestry at least with regard to those phyla because they're all co-occurring, including including you know, the, the, the jawless fish that are, you know, were also discovered in that in that biota. So it seems to me like when you're looking at, again, the origin of duder stones. That's another piece of evidence that comes into play is that you don't see that clear ancestor ancestor and descendant type of relationship among the phyla, but rather they co-occur. So that would be a piece of evidence that I would say then would, I would incorporate as in to justify my interpretation that at least with the duder stones these represent our types that were that were created. So I've preempted that response. And last night I made a couple of slides talking about different pre Cambrian biota that have been assigned to various phyla or sets of phyla, which appear before their ancestor the relatives in the Cambrian. But also I do want to point out before I get before I jump into that we get too deep in the fossil thing. I really don't have a problem with these clades of being alongside each other. I suspect in the case of chordates and their, their duder stone relatives, which are all very close to each other, or that they are living alongside that they probably occurred originated pretty close in time, which is also probably why there has been such a debate among researchers over which branches first phyla chordates or your chordates are hemi chordate sister to the kind of terms or they a separate group, or actually in a recent paper, and I don't agree with it per se, but I'm just using this as kind of an example. They argue that the kind of terms actually branch before, or may branch like separately from the rest of the duder stones, which Xenoturbella, which is one of the Xenocelomorphs also flipped from being a relative of terms to being a Xenocelomorph. They're all kind of I agree with you they are very close around there, but that that's because they branch similarly in time not necessarily because they were separate creation events I would think if they were separate creation events they would be radically different in some respect or another not. Okay, here we have a bunch of species some of which are kind of similar to each other but some kind of not and they all have a lot of these features. Well, and this is where the point that I made about why would there be these shared designs that we see right in biology why I took the time to make that point. Because, you know, think about, you know, it's interesting to me that, you know, when you look at the interpretation of the Cambrian fossil record which I think is just one of the most one of the most remarkable scientific accomplishments. Oh, absolutely. You know, in, you know, who is the guys, Whittington and Derek Griggs and Simon Coggey, that group that really did. The Ravlev and Wood and all those guys, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, what an incredible scientific accomplishment, but they were in effect able to interpret the Cambrian fossil record because of the shared designs that we see, you know, that in other words that organisms that are alive today, then now form, you know, form an interpretive framework that allows you then to go that far back in time and make sense of some really unbelievably fascinating and bizarre creatures that are just amazing to Compton plate. So, so to me, you know, when you talk you talk about well, well, from a creation event why would there be these kind of features. I just I see that as again, part of the creating a world that's designed for discovery, so that there's, you know, that the shared features are not only reflecting an archetype, but reflecting essentially a means by which, you know, the the biological realm is intelligible. So, you know, so I think that for my for my model perspective, when you ask that question that's how I would engage it or address it. Well, and so see that's what's kind of interesting about it because it's within the Cambrian you have a number of organisms any within the late pre Cambrian the the Akron, you have organisms which at this point if we're talking about a design model we're saying God basically made a set of transitional forms than another set of transitional forms and then decided to make the crown groups, because that's what we're looking at what's here because if you look here we have. So, Namakalathus, Kimberela, Claudina, Elingia. So Elingia, which I mentioned earlier in my opening is as an early pan Arthrapod, it has these lobes on each of its segments which are its trilobes just like trilobites which are crown Arthrapods. Namakalathus is low for four eight. Now it's only listed. Now these two are large are clay are clusters of phyla pan Arthrapoda is Arthrapods tardigrades and onica fords the velvet worms right. So here you have an ancestor who seems to be sort of at the base of all of those doesn't have legs, but has these features which are what has these these lit these segments, where each segment bears these little features, which is reminiscent of later true Arthrapods that didn't appear into the Cambrian. And for Namakalathus, it's a lofa for eight. It's a primitive lofa for eight. The lofa for eights are brachypods for foreign aids and bryozoans. Right. And so this guy has the features, which have led researchers to classify it as sort of at the base of that clay same for Kimberela. Some researchers classed it as a mollusk some say it's more basal than that, that it's in fact kind of at the base of utrocozoa, because it sort of has this little shell and it has a sort of radula like foot. Right, but it's not a true mollusk. It's not quite like any of the later mollusks who appear in the camp in the Cambrian. This is called Dyna is an anilid, possibly a polycate. I just say it's an anilid. I'm not quite convinced it's a polycate per se. But, but here we have these and also did another slide on it. But so we have, or again, you know, with Dickinsonia and Ikaria, we have stem bilaterians who are at the very end of the pre Cambrian. So it's like it's, and then, you know, earlier than these guys we just have like how to which is an adiacron, you know, say at the sponge and maybe a sponge the jury's kind of out some say it is some say it isn't so that's why I put a question mark. And then earlier than these we just have like some protists, and we have some algae and some fungi, and that's really about it and so it looks like if we're talking if we're talking about these in stages, and I kind of ask, again, like I asked earlier, where do we draw the line in terms of the biota that God is making and then letting it run for a little while and then he's creating a new set of biota letting it run for a little while because is is Dickinsonia part of the same biota that the Cambrian is because fun fact, the some of these some of the pre Cambrian adiacron fossils extend into the Cambrian there's a continuity between certain things like Claudinids and like the Ikaria, there's a continuity here so they sort of overlap with some of their descendants. And then the descendants take over the earlier guys die out and the descendants go off and diversify. And so it doesn't seem like there's any design event happening there at that boundary. It seems like you have stem bilaterians. And you have this continuity you have some crown bilaterians like like here, and then you have the crown members of these phyla. Once you get into the Cambrian, like the Kaia and as you mentioned the Cheng Cheng biota, you know, things like that. So your, your, your point, if I'm understanding correctly is that there's not. There's no break per se. There's no break that you would expect that there are these design events that they would be these very clear, distinct brace. Yeah, that's so that's your point. Yeah. Yeah, that's that I mean that's that's an interesting point. And, you know, I would have to think about, you know, that that point a little bit in terms of, you know, why would it necessarily look like that. You want to be careful about adopting the mode that anything you can necessarily explain just as simply the way God chose to do it. I would like to say that there's there's a rationale that would undergird why things would appear that way. And so that would be a place where, you know, I would have to give some thought to to it as to why I mean that's a fair answer. But on the other hand, I don't I don't know that there would necessarily have to I mean that anything would necessarily demand that there would be these nice clean clear cut breaks necessarily. Well, okay, I mean that's I can grant you that. But at the same time I would, I would be kind of confused because then I would still have to say, Well, which is designed and which isn't if we go to the, the Cambrian. And we're like, Okay, we have Kimber Ella who's an early mollusk relative. And then we go, you know, we kind of bounce over the line to the Cambrian we say, Okay, here we have a Waxia and Halki area. Are these part of the same design? Are they descendants of Kimber Ella? Or are they a separate design event? How could we tell the difference? Yeah. Yeah, and that's a fair, that's a fair point. And I think this is where again, I think there's other data that needs to be factored in. So, you know, part of part of the challenge here is that we don't have a really good understanding of how the genotype of an organism relates to the phenotype. Right. I mean, that's the that's the those are that's the $64 million question in biology today, right? And that is of course related to the issue of how do you explain an account for the origin of body plans it's all kind of tied up. And without really having that that understanding, I think it's very challenging to to address, you know, to address some of the specific questions that you're bringing to the table and they're they're fair questions. Right. But without that understanding, I think it's, it's, it represents a challenge, I think, to, you know, to the to a creation model. But I don't, but I'm not completely convinced that the evolutionary models got it buttoned down, right? I think it's just as much an outstanding question from that standpoint as well. Well, the genotype phenotype thing, sure. But well, yes and no to the question of body plans because from the literature that I've seen when you look at papers on say the phylogenomics of some, some phylum. What we see a lot of is acceptation we see a lot of building on pre existing things I was actually just the other day looking at the paper on the, the genome was sequenced for lingula, which is one of the, the living fossil brachypods. It was this paper was done back in 2015. Well, one of the things they were talking about was the shell of lingula is not necessarily derived from a shelled ancestor with with mollusks, but they used a similar pathway, which a similar chemical pathway to build shells. So they sort of co opted the same pathway to build different types of shells mollusks have calcium carbonate shells and brachypods of calcium phosphate shells. So they're co opting the same thing the same pre existing thing, but for different purposes. Same with, if you look at like, what is it, the, the, the mycorrhizaea fungi. Right, they didn't have to invent a whole new genetic system for their little mushroom roots. Right, they, they were building on pre existing genetic structures that were already there. Same for papers on on the the origin of animals that are metazo and are always talking about lots of duplication events occurred after our common ancestor with Coeniflegelitz. So between Coeniflegelitz and our common ancestor with sponges, they have a whole bunch of gene duplication events expansion of a lot of gene families. And that's kind of what we see all throughout animals. It's, it's not a whole lot, though there is some obviously there are some, you know, a de novo gene pops up here and there for whatever reason. The majority of it is, here's this gene that already existed or here's the structure already existed. We're just going to use it for a new thing now, because you know natural selection favored it doing this thing now rather than what it was originally doing. Right, and, and so coming back to sort of the body plan thing do you find that significant. Yeah, and in and you know this again goes back to the some of the points I was making in my opening presentation and that is, you can interpret the same data, I think within a creation from a creation model framework, as you can from an evolutionary framework which you're, you know, you're talking about, you know, would be genetic and examples of genetic and biochemical archetypes that then be, you know, varied to produce different types of functionality, you know, within systems. Right, so the real question then becomes, you know, so the way you're interpreting it as a course from an evolutionary perspective is through a process of, you know, acceptation, you know, and, and you're cobbling together new, you know, new, you know, new physiological system, right. Whereas I would just say this, this could be understood as again, you know, a creator, utilizing the same archetypical. Well, yes, different ways. But that's my question is, which one was the archetype was the archetype, the archetype of brachypods or the archetype of brachypods plus mollusks or the archetype of brachypods plus mollusks plus crabs. Which one was the archetype, and how exactly do we pinpoint that archetype, where do they live historically in time and how can we know that. Yeah, and, and, and again, you know, not to, to repeat myself. But again, it would be again going back to the automobile example where you could have archetypes that are then stacked upon each other, you know, where they're different archetypical features introduced at different times. And when that happens, you're in effect creating a new archetype that's a combination of pre existing archetypes, you know, plus, you know, new art, a new archetypical features that are tacked on. And couldn't everything be a new archetype then just stacked on top of an old archetype. In that case, couldn't we go all the way back to like the eukaryotic common ancestor and say, that's the archetype. Everything else onward ferns to humans are stacked on top of that archetype, but not by creation event, but by evolution actual selection. Yeah, and this is where, you know, that I that the point I'm making is not so much to argue against universal common ancestry or argue for kind of an archetypical interpretation of life's history but is that to make the point that I think both interpretations are equally valid. What distinguishes the two interpretive systems is in effect philosophical consideration so we're, we're bumping into right now Jackson is the consequence of the under determination problem. The point is that it's the same set of data could be interpreted in two very different frameworks, you know, and where we what you would probably have to do is come up with some kind of series of tests that would say one that would give favor to one framework over the other as a way to kind of break the tie. Yes, yes, I would agree with that. I would definitely agree with that. And so I would say evolution has already done that. I would say my, and I would say that would that can be done in say predicting transitional fossils something like tiktolic or micro raptor or Arthur Nathan. Things did in fact share a common answer or well, we phrase that if this group is descended from this group. We should expect something with a blend mosaic of both characters, not necessarily all the extreme characteristics diagnostic of both, but somewhere you know sort of in the middle like the tiktolic has some of the features of the earlier lobe fin fish but also some of the features of micro raptor has some of the features of birds, but also some of the features of non avian dinosaurs and Arthur Nathan is like a beautiful little synapse and transition. And so that's why I would say, we can do that. Right, maybe not for something is, if we go back far enough our ancestors like worms and protest and it becomes sufficiently difficult to make a fossil predictions about that. But, but I would also say my, my, my point to you would be sort of figure out like where because there's the continuity as we talked about earlier, where's, where's the design event. And I guess, I guess to you that I would be my, my, just my main point. I don't know maybe maybe it's a project for future work then huh. Yeah, well, you know, you know, I mean the approach that we take it reasons to believe in. I don't know that this comes through if you would read some of my individual blog articles but it's much more evident I think if you take a look at some of the books that I've written. But our approach is is in effect to develop what we would call, you know, a creation model, where we are in a sense saying this is, you know, our framework for understanding, you know, in this case. Biology and then, you know, we develop a set of predictions that can be then used to evaluate the model and so right in the book origins of life we lay out a model and then who was Adam we lay out a model, you know, and then we then look at what the data says and what the device accordingly. Right. And so that's, that's essentially, you know, the project that we're undertaking. And, and so there's, there's this, frankly, features of our creation model we've yet to actually probe. Sure. So probably one of the next projects I'll tackle would be, you know, essentially trying to produce a genomics model. So how can we make sense of the features that we see in the genomes of organisms from a creation model perspective. In other words, we're, we're assuming the burden of proof, as opposed to forcing the burden of proof on the evolutionary paradigm, acknowledging that, you know, that again the evolutionary paradigm, you know, is, you know, is the mainstream thinking it's, it's, it's evidenced. Right. But I also think that because of the influence of methodological naturalism, there are places where real issues with evolutionary explanations are given a free pass. So, I mean, and I, I'm most familiar with, you know, what happens in original life research and I don't, I know we're not going to go there other, I'm just going to use this as an illustration. You know, where there are these problems that, that arise that are really intractable problems if people are honest with it. And original life researchers are very quick to acknowledge the severity and the significance of these problems. And yet there's this idea that, you know, it's just a harder problem than we thought, you know, we're going to still continue to pursue evolutionary explanations for this in the midst of that problem, which is, which is perfectly reasonable response. But when there's also, at the same time, evidence that suggests the work of agency, that's simply just shut down. That's simply ignored. You know, there's a famous statement made by Paul Davies in his book, The Fifth Miracle, where he said, hey, you would be forgiven if you would interpret or if you would conclude that the original life is a miracle, but we're not going to go there. That science is all about discovering natural process explanations. So what happens is, there's a past that's been granted in light of that real intractable problem that's been, I think, masked by the by the influence of methodological naturalism that prevents other counter models from coming in and suggesting an explanation. And so, you know, I'm not saying that there's not evidence for common, you know, common dissent or universal common dissent. And you did a good job of laying out, you know, some of that evidence. But I'm also, I also think there are some places where there's some real, in my mind, real questions confronting the evolutionary paradigm that are significant questions that maybe will be resolved with future work, or maybe they won't be. But those are places where I would see cracks in the paradigm that at least should allow for an alternative explanation to come. If that explanation is evoking agency. Well, we've answered everything I've written down about your opening, so. So let me ask you this question, and this, you know, I'm asking it sincerely now. You know, trust me, because I said I'm asking it sincerely. You know, so do you see cracks though in, you know, in the evolutionary paradigm, or do you just see them as unanswered questions so for example, one of the things that that I think is a little disconcerting to me would be the fact that you see in congruities in the genetic trees, you know, because in, in, in, you know, I remember sitting at that dinner table with Francis Crick, sorry, not Crick Francis Collins sorry, my, oh, I wish I was but no in Francis Collins he's a pretty cool guy. Yeah, no, enormous amount of respect for him. And he and I were having this very discussion about incongruities and phylogenies. And, you know, where, depending on the genetic marker that you look at you can get really very different evolutionary trees. And his point to me was that once we start moving into phylogenomics. And all these problems are going to evaporate. Well, I've got, you know, papers, you know, somewhere in my office, where people are beginning to be phylogenomic studies and they're still seeing, you know, these incongruities in phylogenies. So I see that, for example, as something that that I think should be troubling to, you know, to like a universal universal common descent interpretation. I wouldn't really find, well, most of the, I would say the vast majority of issues that have been touched by phylogenomics generally have, we have come quite a ways from, you know, where we were prior to genomics, right, you know, the purely morphological studies were all over the place. And then once genetic sequencing kind of came into the picture. It all to a degree, though not great. And now with genomics, things are really starting to come into ever clearer focus. And, and so there are discrepancies between some absolutely, you know, but do I say that's a problem for evolution? Not really. And I would also say, remember, some of these lineages are stretching back 500 million years. And some of them have very relatively recent speciation events from each other. Things like, like, say with the mollusks and analytes and the martians. Well, who's sister to who exactly? Well, because in time, you know, maybe within just a few million years, they all sort of had us went their separate ways, their separate lineage ways. So when I said actually a problem, not really, I guess kind of depends, you know, you have things that would that make reading phylogenies more difficult, or can like, you know, incomplete lineage sorting and you can have horizontal gene transfer and all those sorts of things. But when I say that's a problem for evolution on the whole, not really. As you, you know, questions, sure, problems, not really. We might have time for another one or two quick issues before we jump into the Q&A. Thanks guys. Mustard on hot dogs. We're at about 50 minutes just like you guys are just nailing it on the timing today. So, you know, by all means, I could be here for as long as need be. So it's completely up to you guys. Okay, well, you know, one other one other issue and I'm curious to see your reaction to this would be. I think the widespread occurrence of convergence that to me is perhaps the one issue that I find really troubling from an evolutionary perspective and, and I go back to the to the work of Stephen Jay Gould and his book Wonderful Life where he talks about, you know, the historical historical contingents, sorry, the historically contingent nature of evolutionary processes where he makes a big issue about the idea that if you rewind the tape alive and replay it, that the outcome ought to be different every time. And, and yet in light of that you wouldn't expect there to be the extent and the degree of convergence that you actually see, you know, within, within nature. And so, to me, I see that as that is, is, is deeply problematic. And some of the examples of convergence that have been discovered are, you know, absolutely mind boggling in, you know, so you know. So anyway, that would be another place where I would see, I would have some real concerns, you know, where, you know, here we're talking about kind of a companion concept to universal common ancestry. Well, I, again, I really don't see that as a problem when different organisms inhabit the same or similar environments they have similar selective pressures which under certain contingent mutations can lead to having superficially similar features. I don't really see a problem with that. You do have to remember the time in which Gould was writing wonderful I was published in 1987. The view that Gould had of the Cambrian and of the preceding pre Cambrian was radically different from the view that we have now right and he takes an almost mystical tone with the Cambrian which is I discussed just the other day with Walker. I find that problematic, because he refers to it as nature swapping out different arthropod parts and coordinate parts and things like that. And I was kind of like, Yikes, that's not a great way to describe it in my opinion. It's a wonderful book. Right. The great the book is great overall and I do agree with his point on contingency. There were a few other things I took issue with. It turns out, well, I mentioned Opa Benia and anomalocaris in my, my intro, he was of the impression that these were separately derived from probably wormy ancestors right when in fact they weren't they share a common ancestor who had compound eyes and had a chitinous exoskeleton and then they then later anomalocaris developed jointed appendages. But yeah, I mean I really don't find it. I don't find it troubling or anything like that. That kind of leads to an interesting debate on, which did occur between Conway Morris and Gould on the nature of contingency. And I definitely fall in the Gould camp rather than the Conway Morris camp. Like, you know, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs rewind the tape of like, you know, would that strike again. They probably not would, you know, the would the Burgess decimation leave Pacaia, but not anomalocaris. Yeah, well that's why I call it a decimation it seemed highly random why did Pacaia survive this little wormy guy but not the big predator anomalocaris. And so I think that that is actually quite an interesting discussion to have about about the nature of contingency the nature of organizational body plans things like that but a prop but again a question. Sure, a problem, not really. Yeah well you know, I mean when he comes to this idea of convergence there's really or sorry not convergent but historical contingency there's really two facets to historical contingency one is what are what are events happening in Earth's history that are shaping the history of life. The other would be that the process itself. You know, so what what's happening internally in the organism that is essentially setting up its evolutionary trajectory, and that those events to, you know, have a historical contingency to them. Oh it's a fascinating discussion and I enjoy it, but you know I don't really consider it a problem for evolution. And this is where I see it I do see it as a as a significant issue and you know so for example, you know, one of the most remarkable examples of convergence is the visual system of the sand lance and the chameleon, they both have these eyes that are that that move independently, and they use the, the cornea to focus not the lens and there's have identical musculature and the attack trajectory for the fish and the tongue extending from the you know the same and things like that. And yet you know they live in very different types of environments. So it's hard to argue that the same selective forces were at play. And so that that was to be one example, you know, I'll give you another. Along those same lines like the intelligence and the visual acuity of cephalopods compared to humans right you know cephalopods are intelligent, intelligent by our standards of like mollusks and things. But you're right that was it was very different selective pressures which led to that they their visual acuity their chromatophores their intelligence, all seem to relate to being at the bottom of the food chain for most predatory and so you have to have a lot of adaptations to avoid being eaten. And so you're right it's two different routes. In our case it's having. We have a, you know, long social history with other members of our group and in their case it's they're not social at all but they're preyed upon which is why it results in this. Not so much a problem we have a Darwinian mechanism which accounts for for this in a sense and so again I don't really find that to be a problem. Yeah, well you know that the debate between Conway Morris and gruel was an interesting debate well absolutely yeah you know where Conway Morris and I'm just beginning to really appreciate Conway Morris is argument where he was in effect arguing that there seems to be something, you know, built into the laws of nature that seem to drive evolution to the same endpoints over and over again so I guess you know that it would be an idea that would be related to a school of thought called structural capitalism. Yeah, I'm familiar with that's arguing it's not natural selection that shaping the history of life but it's essentially the laws of the physics that are constraining certain outcomes. And, but, but you know for for Conway Morris who's a theist. If I'm reading him correctly, he seems to see, he seems to see some pretty profound theistic implications. You know that is kind of like a biological anthropic principle so he sees some pretty significant theistic implications or teleological implications and in that view of evolution compared to you know historical contingency. Right. Yeah, yeah, I, well I think it's interesting, but at the same time. You can pick loads and loads and loads of convergent features and the well part of the problem with convergence is, I think there's a bit of, of superficialness to it, sort of necessarily, because it's not the same structure. Right, it's a different structure for a different purpose. And so we kind of have to ask ourselves at what point do we stop considering something convergent. You know, is the triceratops and the buffalo, are they convergent. They both have horns, they're both, you know, they both grays and all this, but are they really convergent. Well, that depends on how you use the term. Okay, so you also, you see, for example, convergence of echolocation in citations and in chiropractor. And it turns out that the genetic changes that are supporting both forms of echolocation are virtually identical changes. And so that would be an example where you're seeing convergence of two highly similar systems that also have the same kind of genetic undergirding so it's not just simply a superficial instance of convergence but it's, it's, it's kind of fundamental to design so Right, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's a, I'd like the example of, of like slots, or not slots, porcupine, like arboreal porcupines and plotterine monkeys like they both have, you know, prehensile tails, which they evolved through separate evolutionary roots, but squirrels are also hugely prolific arboreal mammals, but they don't have prehensile tails. So clearly both of these work. Right, they're all living in the same sort of environment or it's arboreal, although, you know, the plotterines and principle, and the arboreal porcupines are in the tropics. Right, and so it's sort of similar, or they're living in the same environment but they're coming to different, they're living in these environments in different ways you know squirrels are their little grasping claws and they're very good at running up trees and stuff, but they're using their tail to grab tree branches. So clearly they're still very prolific, but they're not doing it the same way. Right. And so, and stuff like that is, it's kind of why, like, well yeah convergence happens obviously, but to what extent do we call something convergent. There are lots and lots and lots of examples of things that aren't convergent. And it kind of depends and that's why I say it's an interesting debate if very very much is at what, you know, what point is, is something converging what point isn't it, and all that sort of stuff. I find that a very fascinating discussion that could be like a separate debate all on its own, you know, yeah. Guys, we are at about one hour. So, how do you feel about a Q&A? Let's do. All right. Okay, I think James was going to go ahead and read our super chats because most of the super chats today are just very sweet and complimentary and not, and then I'm going to tackle the general questions afterwards. So take it away James. My pleasure and also Erica, I did a quick. James, can you hear us? James, have we lost it? Thank you for your patience. All in. So, I did a quick update on Twitter. I sent you a screenshot. So what we can do is I'll read the first super chat and then if you want to read the second super chat, we'll work through them together alternating back and forth and then we'll jump into those other questions. I just want to start with, Nancy Sorvisto, thank you for your question, said happy holidays from Finland to everyone and have nice Yule or whatever you're celebrating, you find people, no questions, just wanted to support. Well, thanks so much. We do appreciate that support. So for $4.50 approximately of Australian dollars, we have from Ian Chen, best platform, best mod, love Jackson. So there you go, Jackson. Ian is coming at you with the. Feel my ego. Yeah, a compliment knuckle sandwich, so. Nice, Ian Chen, lighten it up says MDD chats are always just as fun as the debates. Glad you enjoy them Ian. And then Ian Chen again for three Australian dollars question. Why is Jackson and Erica so awesome? Thank you Ian. That's very sweet of you. One of life's greatest mysteries. Nice and Ian Chen. Thanks for your other question. Oh wait, did you, I think you just read that. Sorry about that. No, I got you on that one. Flat Earth Preacher, one of our local trolls. Glad to see you again. Flat Earth Preacher says no debate today here, but have a great day all. Only looking for those flat earth debates I guess. I was just thinking about it, it's like out of all the things that people take, you know, a big issue with today. Some would use the flat earth, but you know what, you're welcome no matter what your issue is. We hope you feel welcome folks. I'm just glad that Flat Earth Preacher donated money despite the fact that James runs the channel and you know from what I know is definitively a globe head. I think we are a globe head if memory serves, which you know, that wouldn't run in line with Flat Earth Preacher's. I am a globy it's true. Ian Chen for three Australian dollars. Again, Ian is just like really rolling out the cash for MDD today. Happy Festivus to James, Rana, Jackson and Erica. So thank you very much Ian. I guess Ian is made of money, which is very- Must be nice. Yeah, must be nice. Thank you Ian. And thank you so much for your question. Jumping into the standard questions as well. We did have a new one come in from Jeremy Wilson. Thanks for your super chat Jeremy. Appreciate it. Said in recent times people seem to prefer to shut each other down rather than discuss differences. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Yule, etc. Thanks for all you do. Well Jeremy, we appreciate you and we couldn't agree more about the value of engaging with people from all walks of life. So thanks so much Jeremy Wilson. That means a lot. Alright, so for our standard questions, this one is from Nestle 20 and it's two fuzz. A good theory makes falsifiable predictions that can be tested and do not depend on attacking alternatives. Can you provide any predictions for your theory on its own merit? Yeah, it'd probably be easier for me to do that with respect to let's say the question of human origins because I've written a book called Who is Adam where we kind of lay out a creation model for the origin of humanity. And there for example, the prediction would be that human beings are exceptional compared to other creatures that would be one prediction we would make. One prediction that would be also made is that you could trace humanities genesis back to a primordial pair. So those would be examples of the types of predictions you could make using a creation model. Currently, and this is kind of a back burner project right now working on, as I mentioned a probably a book project on a creation model for genomics. And there we would make some very specific predictions about the nature of the structure of genomes that you know could in principle be falsifiable. But you can't escape the implications of the philosophy of science and, you know, it's, you know, part of that question too is implying that falsification is the gold standard for a scientific theory. And I think making testable predictions would be, but it's very difficult, frankly, to falsify predictions or it's, it's a really difficult thing to do. So many times what scientists actually are doing is making observations and then pointing to the those observations as confirming the theory or forcing a theory to be revised if that that observation can't be accommodated by the theory. So, but, but nevertheless, I appreciate the point and, you know, it is possible to make falsifiable predictions. I'm not giving a lot of thought to it in the context of the question we're discussing today. You got it. Thank you very much, Dr. Rana. And kicking it over to rational mind. Appreciate your question. It is for Dr. Rana. So Fuzz, what creation events today? Oh, sorry about that. What creation events does he think, does Fuzz think occurred between the origin of body plans and the origin of consciousness as well as tetrapods, mammals, etc.? You know, again, I'm going to frustrate you with that very fair and important question. And I've still am sorting this out myself. I, you know, the points that Jackson are making are good points to be fair. And that is, you know, how do you distinguish between something that's clearly a creation event versus something that reflects the outworkings of an evolutionary process. And that's something I just have not given appropriate thought to. But to be fair, there's a lot of things that I have given the thought to primarily dealing with the original life and in with the nature of biochemical systems that's been over the last 25 years my primary focus and focus of interest. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you again, but this is another one for Fuzz. You're getting. That's okay. You're, you're getting, you're, it's a blowout for the, for the specific questions. This one comes from RG Downard. And for Fuzz, just as cars have different designers on what scientific grounds can you limit the alleged designers to other, to other than many ones? I think what he's asking is essentially how can you, we look at multiple cars and we know that there are other, you know, multiple different designs for different car types. How can you limit if you're supposing a designer for, for life, how can you limit it to a single designer rather than many? Yeah, and that was essentially Hume's criticism of Paley's or of the, of the design arguments of his day was how do you know that it's a single designer, not multiple distinct designers. And to me, the, the response to that would be the fact that you see a universality to biochemistry. You have essentially two fundamentally distinct cell types. So there's a universality to cell biology, if you will. And, you know, we see shared designs throughout biology. So to me, that would be suggestive of a single designer, not multiple designers. Thanks so much. And this question coming in from, let's see. Well, actually, next one, Erica, if you want to read the next one from James Downard after I read this quick one from Nestle 20 that I missed earlier, they had asked for Dr. Rana evolution. They said evolution predicts specific mosaics, but excludes others, such as Pegasus. Why do we only have ones that are predicted by evolution and none that are excluded? So, I guess the question I would have back and maybe Jackson could jump in here is, I'm not so sure that evolution necessarily predicts specific types of mosaics, but rather, in my experience, it seems as if people are discovering mosaics within the mosaics and also record that would have a blending of characteristics that they then would argue is consistent with that being an intermediate form. So, I don't know that somebody, you know, has set out and said we predict these particular types of blending of characteristics that those predictions actually been made. Diorarthrognathus was one example who I know RJ is familiar with. There was a synapsid from the Triassic. This guy, oh, I forget, Bebe, William Bebe, predicted that if mammals are descended from reptiles, clodistic people in the channel tear me up over that, but I'm going to say it anyway, they're descended from reptiles, then they're going to have a very particular jaw joint called a double hinge jaw joint where you have these two articulations between the jaw and the rest of the skull. And so that was found as Diorarthrognathus. Archaeopteryx, actually Darwin talked about if there should be an ancestor birds with unfused wing fingers. And then just two years after origin, they found Archaeopteryx, which has unfused wing fingers. So yes, it does happen. I think in the case of Tectolic, it was more like we're looking for something that's sort of fishy and sort of tetrapoddy in this time period. But yeah, for other ones like Diorarthrognathus, it's going to have these characteristics because it necessarily had to. It couldn't do otherwise. Right, so from RJ for Fuzz again, surprising all of us. RJ asks, what would an evolutionary precursor for chordates look like and how likely would it be to be preserved? What would an evolutionary precursor to chordates look like? Yes, and how likely would it be to be preserved? Well, I don't know the answer to the first question. And again, I've not given it thought. And so just right here off the cuff, I'm not sure what that answer would be, but if I give it some thought, maybe I could suggest some things. But the idea of how likely is something to be preserved, I think, is a tricky question, right? Because when you get into the pathology, the science of pathology, I mean, obviously things with hard body parts are going to be much more amenable to preservation than organisms that are primarily made up of soft body parts. But this is part of the, I think, the remarkable aspect of some of the Cambrian logger stop is that you had these very rapid burial events that preserved organisms, number one, with soft body parts and number two, a wide range of different orientations which allowed for reconstruction of the organisms in a remarkable way. So it's hard to know what its likelihood of preservation being, right? So I don't know how to answer that question. Jackson, if you've got any thoughts on that? Well, I'm mostly in agreement with you. Yeah, if you have hard parts, more likely to be preserved. If not, you're a lot less likely. And so you hope it's going to be preserved so we can find something really cool. I think if it was, you know, an evolutionary precursor to a core date, the likelihood of it having a, it's going to, the likelihood of its preservation would be pretty remote. You got it. We are, want to say thank you to our guests, want to say thank you to Erica for coming on as well to help. And I want to let you know, folks, if you have not already known and checked them out, all of the guests' links are in the description. What are you waiting for? You can listen to them plenty more after this. And so we really do appreciate them. Also, I want to mention, folks, we will have a post-credits scene coming up. And so I want to say thanks everybody for your questions from the Q&A. Thanks so much for your support. It's always a great time. And I want to let you know again, no matter what walk of life you are from, we hope you feel welcome. And so thanks for hanging out with us here at Modern Day Debate. With that, as mentioned, and as usual, folks, keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Hold on. You missed one last super chat. This is from Josiah Hansen for $2. Merry Christmas to all. And then an inside call out to me for not forgetting something. So thank you Josiah for the $2. Thank you. I did miss that. Appreciate that, Erica, having my back. That's what I'm here to co-mod for. Come on. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. And so, yes, thank you very much, Josiah indeed. And thanks everybody else for your questions, support, and everything else. So thanks so much. We will see you next time. Oh, by the way, you guys, I didn't even wish it yet. Next time will be tomorrow night as Erica will be coming on with her partner, Dr. Seigart. Will be back. Should be a blast. And that will be against good ol' Otangelo and Erica's truly best friend, John Maddox. So that should be a juicy one. That's right. Well, it's going to be really fun, really simple. It's going to be great. I'm really excited. No doubt about it. So thanks so much everybody. We'll hopefully see you for that. And we'll be back in a few. Thanks so much. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Folks, thanks so much for hanging out with us. Just want to give a quick update on the Kickstarter. We are pumped, folks. We are excited as we are as of right now. We are at around close to 50% of the way there. It's in the 40s somewhere. I can't remember exactly. But believe me, folks, that there is a very good reason for this. There are, I could say, several good reasons. In particular, one is this debate itself is going to be epic. And I know that you're like, I'm like, okay, maybe I'll check it out. One thing I do want to mention is that if you're like, hey, you know, cool. Is Christianity dangerous? I think that'd be fun. You're like, I don't know. You know, like, what's the idea? Why a Kickstarter? Well, the reason is there are a lot of guests that we have never had on and we want to have on. And you could say that the Kickstarter allows us to make or take bigger risks. In other words, there are a lot of debates, folks. A lot of people don't know. We already do. You could say we could pay a pretty good amount for some of our debates. So for example, it's not uncommon that we might pay in honorariums like $500. Sometimes it might be $1,000. So for example, like Ray Comfort versus Matt Dillahunty. That was a $1,000 debate. And oftentimes we get the, you could say the funds are replenished for the paying of the honorarium by ads and super chats and things like that. However, if we are doing big time speakers, that might be asking $5,000, for example. That's a risk that it's hard for me to say, it's hard for me to justify that. We have had debates where sometimes we pay honorariums and we take a loss and it's okay because you've got super chats from other debates and stuff like that. But if we want to go for these, you could say bigger fish. If we're going for these huge guests that might be like $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 and sometimes more for their speaking fees, well, we have to find new ways that we can take those risks and kind of have a safety net. The Kickstarter is our way of doing that. If everybody puts in three bucks, let's say everybody in the stream right now, that by itself is a huge chunk of our goal. In other words, I think that that might be close to getting us, that certainly put us, I think, close to two-thirds of the way to our goal. And so, this is kind of a strategy that we want to see how successful will this be and the link to that Kickstarter is in the description, folks. So I want to say, if you pledge three bucks, you get to watch it live and it makes sure that the debate actually happens because that's the trick is that we have to reach our goal in order for the Kickstarter to kind of come through. Otherwise, if we don't reach the goal, nobody's charged at all and there's no debate. And so if we want to take these bigger chances, if you'd like to see bigger battered guests from all over the place and don't get me wrong, we love our guests. We've had tremendous guests so far, no doubt about it. But in terms of seeing new guests, new awesome guests, new buzz saws in the debate world, this, I think, is the way that we're going to be able to do it. And so, do want to encourage you folks. If you have not yet pledged to the Kickstarter, it's coming quick, folks. Don't let it sneak up on you. We do want you to for sure get to watch this debate live. So it's on January 8th, so it's only less than a few weeks. I think it's like two and a half weeks. And so, don't let it sneak up on you such that you might miss the live showing, folks. It's three bucks, that's the price of a cup of coffee. That's the kind of thing that even if you were like, oh, I completely forgot. I don't know how you'd forget because this is an epic debate. But even if you were like, ah, I forgot. It's like, ah, three bucks. Yeah, who cares? I'm fine. So we've purposely made it as affordable as possible for people from all walks of life. And so, like I said, you could say that many hands make light work. In other words, if we spread the risk of paying out big speaker fees, if we spread that risk to many people, like let's say a thousand people are like, hey, I'm willing to put three bucks into this, a thousand people. That's $3,000. We can start getting newer, bigger batter speakers from all walks of life. If you want to see those debates like, for example, I appreciate that. Slam is right. There is already $1,067 pledged of $2,500. So we're close to that 50% mark. And praise I am that I am. It's just three bucks. Now I want to mention, if you are a Patreon, if you're a Patreon, don't pledge any money. As a patron, we want to say thanks. You're already included. So you are already going to get your personalized link. And if you are not a patron though, hey, you're joining our Patreon as you would automatically be in for the live show for that debate that is coming up between Michael Shermer and Inspiring Philosophy. And I want to let you know folks, this debate, it's going to be epic. There's another detail about it. So I had mentioned that we have the live showing for it. You can see it here on the screen right now. I'm pulling it up. So right here, you see at the top right inside of that red circle or oval. You see that it's three bucks. That basically allows you to watch the show live as it happens. It'll probably be released, I'd say, you could say, to YouTube publicly to the world within a couple of days after. But like I said, folks, if you're like, well, I'll just watch it then. It's like, well, but it might not actually be, it might not happen at all if we don't have enough people putting in. And so do want to say that not only allows you to watch the debate live but also allows you to watch the, or I should say, makes the debate possible, period. And so do want to encourage you. There are other tiers. So for example, you can see on the screen right now, I'm zooming in on two of the other ones that are below, which is watch it live and make the event huge. If you put in $6, that helps us for our, we have a chunk of the pie, you could say, of our costs are we are trying to make this big in terms of promotion. And so that also helps, you could say, give us an idea of how well will it work if we let's say try to have a debate between, I don't know, mega speaker Jordan Peterson and, you know, Sam Harris or whatever it is. If we were to try to get those guests on, and we see, hey, look, the advertisements actually worked really well because you can put out YouTube ads. And if we do that and we find out like, hey, this actually works, that again helps us make it more affordable for everybody. So we are trying to test out a promotional or advertisement plan for this one. And that helps support that. If you give to that, watch the, watch the show live and make the event huge. Then you'll see below that it has, let's see, $10, your name on screen in the thank you list. And so just like we have, as you'll see on the screen right now, you can see on the bottom here, we have the little Patreon ticker, which has the names Adam Elbilia, Steve Hosfield, Converse Contender, Nathan Thompson. Nathan Thompson is not even a Patreon member anymore. Get him out of there. I'm kidding. We hope you're well, Nathan. But basically that list is what that thank you list is referring to. There's another option. I think it's like 20 bucks is that if you put it in 20, basically what it does is we will read your name out loud on screen during the, like at the end of the debate and just say, like, you know, for example, thank you, SlamRN or you know, whatever it is, no pressure. But yes, now solely DeoGloria says, can people donate through Super Chat and have the money go towards the debate? We thought about trying to do that. One of the challenges is that YouTube takes 30% of the Super Chat. So it's kind of like, it's just a little bit of a bummer where basically if you, let's say, gave $10, which is a generous Super Chat. It is. Like $3 of it goes to YouTube. And it's like, ah, geez, you know, YouTube has enough money. Like, so long story short, you might say, well, what about when you do those Super Chats where, like, we did it with the Dr. Friedman and Dr. Wolfe Debate where it was a fundraiser and YouTube didn't take the 30%. They only let us do that if it's a nonprofit and we don't have nonprofit status. There's like a number of hoops you have to jump through that we don't have the ability to call ourselves that yet. Maybe someday we've thought about, like, should we go in that direction? We're not sure. But yeah. So anyway, it's like, ah, yeah, I totally know what you mean. But it's not as easy as I'd like it to be regarding those solely Deo Gloria. I appreciate the question, though. Then let's see. Thanks for your guys' support, though. A lot of people are really positive about it. That means a lot because a lot of people, it's like, they're excited about it. They're like, they buy into the vision that it's like, hey, we want to have a neutral platform. We want to have a debate channel that doesn't have like an after show that just says, oh my gosh, so and so sucked so bad and that view is so stupid. We want it to be truly fair. If people in the comments or, you know, if the audience wants to judge whose case was most persuasive, have at it. It's a free country and, you know, you're happy, you know, we're happy to have you post those comments or whatever. However, at the same time we as a channel, we want to be neutral. And so, long story short, the only reason that I said that is if you buy in the vision, which a lot of people have, a lot of people have put big donations in, believe me, folks, we're going to make this goal. Like, I am determined. I don't care if I have to do a car wash in January. We're going to make this goal. I guarantee it. I've got some people that I'm going to reach out to and say, hey, are you willing to put in kind of some bigger donations? Some of those backers, you'll notice I think we've got like 35, 30 something donors. We've got like a thousand bucks. That's because some people I reached out to and I've said, hey, will you help us? You know, you've been all in for the vision. Are you willing to put in like, you know, a couple hundred bucks for this? Maybe even a few hundred bucks. And some people really have. And so we really appreciate that. And I have also put in some cash to kind of help get the momentum going. And so it kind of, in a small way, I would say as long as we have enough help, it helps spread the risk out. Like I said, I just, for big, big honorariums, we want to spread that risk out. And that's going to allow us to have people like, we do want to have, I always see Vosh's name comes up, Vosh versus Esha. I don't know who Esha is, but it sounds dank. And that's something that we honestly want to do in person. Sticks and hammer, 666. We've, for real, no joke, I've actually reached out for two sticks before. We've never heard back. But in order to, let's say, if we had sticks and Vosh or somebody else in person, we'd want to get a good venue. And that's another thing that costs money. We had a debate, one of our debates was free to the public. The honorariums alone cost, I think it was a thousand dollars. Then the, and that's not including the travel costs. That's not including the facility. So booking the place that we actually had the event at. And so it's like that stuff adds up, folks. And so that's why I know that you're probably like, James, why a Kickstarter? Why do you want our help? The reason is that, like I said, we've had a lot of free debates that we trust that the super chats and the ads will replenish what we pay. But when it gets to these big time speakers that want big bucks, and understandably so, I mean, they're popular people. People want them all over the place. That's usually how our opportunity works, is once you get bigger and more opportunities, you get additional big and additional opportunities. And so it kind of like snowballs. And so it's like, hey, you know, like I don't blame them. Like if they are like, hey, you know, we need $2,000 to do a speaking thing on a modern day debate. And it's like, yeah, you're a busy person. Like I know, like they get paid more than that by some places. And so that's why it's like, hey, we want to try to kind of meet the speakers where they're at. And so let's see. To be fair, I know that some, like I try to be grateful. Let's see. Maverick says, James, sell your Blazers. Well, I appreciate that you've noticed. This Blazer, I think it's called Houndstooth. That's what my girlfriend, Frank, told me it's called Houndstooth is the pattern. This is $5. Not trying to brag, but I shop at Goodwill. Only the best deals, you know. I'm always shopping at thrift stores. And so if I sold my Blazers, that would give us $35 probably. But maybe, hey, well, we'll think about it. I appreciate that. Maybe, but you're right. Maybe like if I put it as a Kickstarter reward, I don't know if people would, why would you want my smelly old Blazers? I don't know. Colin Loren says, tell him Daddy Trump is watching. Well, that's, I don't know what you mean. That's a, I don't usually call other men Daddy, but whatever. All right. Thank you, Solidia Gloria says, think your answer was addressing being able to view the live stream, but my inquiry is more about just donating through Super Chat to secure the debate to happen. Right. Yeah. So, Soli, what I'm saying is, if you donate through, if you're kind of like, hey, can I make my donation through Super Chat, like 30% of that gets taken by YouTube. And so we're saying that if you want to give the most so that your donation actually is actually being used for what you want it to be used for, namely like supporting this project, then the best way to go or a better way to go at least is Kickstarter does not take a whopping 30%. They do have like, I think it's like 8% or 10%, maybe total, but it's at least less compared to YouTube. And so we had mentioned that we do use, like we sometimes have debates where, let's see, we have debates sometimes where it's like, yeah, we pay the speakers and we don't, you could say that we don't make up for it in Super Chats and Ads on that particular debate and we use other Super Chats from other debates to try to fill in for that. So let's see. Invisible Ninjas says, I just increased my pledge to $20. We can do this. Thanks so much. We really do appreciate it. And then Brian Steven says, was it Ray or Matt wanting the 1,000? Oh, it was 500 each. We paid them. So Ray Comfort and Matt, I probably shouldn't say this because it's usually kind of like secret, but to give you guys an idea, I don't think they'd care anyway. It's not a big deal. I mean, that's the thing. I would defend our speakers and I would say they're popular people. Like they could get paid more than that. And so I always feel like we try to, you know, ask, you know, what can we, we try to kind of get a good, you know, you could say a good deal. And so long story short, yeah, I mean, let's see. But yeah, thank you Invisible Ninja for your support. Seriously, it does mean a lot. And I am determined, folks, we're going to get there. I don't care what I have to do. Maybe I will sell my blazers. We're going to reach this goal. Believe me. And this is going to open doors for us, folks. I mean, if you want to see people, like name your guests. I mean, like no joke, like maybe someday Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, William Lane Craig, whoever it is, like, let me know who you want. That's what we want to do. We want to take it big time. If you guys have seen these debates with like Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillahunty or Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, like they've been epic, huge debates. We want to go in that direction because we want to think ideas are important. The exchange of ideas, especially is important. We want people to kind of see those exchanges take place. And so, Lillia just said, could you make me a mod on Twitch? I didn't know that Twitch allows that, but I will. Said all you have to do is click on my name in the Twitch chat and there should be an option. We're trying to keep things alive over there. Thank you, Lilliajah, for that support. And I think somebody else was talking about Twitch too. Let's see. Poor Erica. I was like, Erica, I'm so sorry. I've got to go. We appreciate Erica and she will be back tomorrow night. We really do enjoy Erica. Let me try to, oh, one thing, so sorry, Lilliajah, I promise next time I will make you a mod on Twitch. I emailed Twitch asking for my password. I'm still waiting on the email. I'm embarrassed to say I don't know my own password. It's embarrassing. But I want to say thanks so much. The Maverick says, I'll pay $50 at least for Jordan Peterson. Well, we want to have that. To be honest, folks, if the Kickstarter, part of that eventually potentially happening is if we see that the Kickstarter strategy is effective. So if you feel like this channel has been a joy to you and you're like, hey, like three bucks, like a cup of coffee, that support means a lot. And it also shows us that Kickstarter can work because it shows that people are like, hey, you know, to see bigger debates and to see that this strategy actually works so that we use the strategy again to hopefully get Jordan Peterson or whoever, please do consider giving actually to the Kickstarter, which by the way, last, I'm going to put that in the, it's in the description. So if you have not already clicked on that Kickstarter link I want you to know that it is handy. It is convenient. It is in the description. And we are up to about, it's at 1,097 dollars. So we're almost up to 1,100 folks. Believe me, we're going to make it. I absolutely believe we will. And so I am determined. And so that link to the Kickstarter I just put in the chat. And so Lily, I just said in the meantime, everyone should follow on Twitch. Yeah, they've been, let's see. Brenda says, use a password app. They have those. I didn't know that exists. But, and I'm being serious, I didn't know that there's such a thing as that. Soly thanks for your kind words who said, love your, love this channel. That means a lot, Soly. We do appreciate it. And we are on Twitch, which I just pinned in the live chat. So if you prefer Twitch, if you're like, James, I like this channel, but I wish I could watch it on Twitch. You can. It's already on Twitch. So whenever we're live, it should show over there. And so I think the word on the streets is that we can eventually, if we get enough subscribers, that Twitch becomes monetizable or something, which can help us get speakers as well. And so we do appreciate that, folks. We have a goal. I'm determined. Like, this is what, I love doing this channel. I am passionate about it. It is fun. It's something that I just get. I'm happy to get up and just start shooting out emails and doing everything I can to help this thing go because it's just, I just think it's a blast. And so we do appreciate all of your support. And let's see. As I had mentioned, that Kickstarter, now I've lost, there it is, okay. I am pinning the Kickstarter to the top of the chat. And so do want to say, we do appreciate that. And then solely Diego Gloria says, I can, I only use gift cards on Google. Therefore, super chats are my only avenue to give money. Gotcha. Well, your super chats mean a lot. It is, like I said, if we have a loss on a debate, and by the way, I am definitely investing into this Kickstarter myself. I don't want to fund it. I don't want it to be too much me because that defeats the purpose. Like, if it's like 75% me basically donating to the Kickstarter, well, it doesn't really alleviate the risk very much in terms of getting those big speakers that might want $3,000, let's say, in the future. And so that's why I am asking you to join with me. And so let's see. Brenda says, use last pass or keep pass. I didn't know that. But pray for me. Thanks for hanging out with us. Says, happy birthday, Jesus. Must be your reference to Christmas. Let's see. I would guess. We want to say thank you so much, everybody for hanging out with us. John Smith, manic pandas. Thanks so much. Failed education system, 7-1-0. Thanks so much for hanging out with us. And also, let's see. Brian Stevens, thanks so much for hanging out with us as always. And you guessed it. Slam-R-N. It's been a long time person hanging out with us. We appreciate that. Anne C. Servisto said, James, oh, you got me on Richard. Lost me, Peterson, and got me back on board with Matt. I will try to remember to pledge to the Kickstarter tomorrow. It's getting late and I'm using a phone. Well, thanks for that. We really do appreciate it. And, folks, I'm telling you, you're going to make this. We haven't made 50% yet. Believe me. Sometimes you have to. I've learned in my life. I've been in enough. And you guys have probably learned this, too. I've been in enough trialsome circumstances, enough hard circumstances that I was in them and I thought, is this going to work? Can we make it? Are we going to win this? Are we going to pull through? Like, is this going to turn out? And when I thought, you know, I felt deep down like, the feeling tells me no, but you just keep pushing through. And sometimes things are their darkest just before the light breaks through the clouds. I'm telling you. So, I don't think we're, you know, it's not that dark. We're at, like, about 50% almost. So, we're doing all right. I expect that a lot of people will probably sign up in that last week before the debate actually is live because there's more of a sense of urgency and also people kind of see, like, well, we're close. We can actually get there. But we do want to ask, hey, don't let it sneak up on you. Don't miss it. Please do check out that Kickstarter link in the description or that is pinned at the top of the chat. And so, thanks so much, everybody. It's always a blast. We appreciate you. And so, we will see you next time. We appreciate it. Hope you have a great rest of your Tuesday and we'll be back tomorrow night. I've got to get the event up still. That's the event for, let's see, Erika and Dr. Seigart against Otangelo and Maddox. Otangelo, are you still out there? Man. Otangelo. Yeah. Otangelo. Where are you in the chat? Lillia just says James. True. Mantic Pandas says, hey, James. Hey to you as well, friend. And Slamaren says, okay, I pledged. Well, thanks so much, Slamaren. Seriously. We want to bring you high quality debates. We hope it's of value to you. We hope this feels like a community. I know that, I mean, it's natural. It's kind of hard to fight. Because I've always wanted this place to feel like a community where people would feel like, you know, it's kind of a place to belong. And everybody, I wanted them to feel that way. But my point is that I know that sometimes it's like a debate channel. So, not surprisingly, sometimes the live chat is quite fighty. In other words, people are sometimes doing battle. But we do nonetheless want people to feel welcome. I know sometimes it's rough and tumble here. Sometimes I feel like, I don't know if I've ever told you guys this. And I'm, you know, it's just the way it is. Sometimes I just feel like, in a way, we're almost like sometimes the criticism we get with the controversial topics or the speakers. Sometimes I feel like we're a little bit of a black sheep among the YouTube channels, especially ones that host apologists, Christian apologists and stuff. And so, it's not really what I was ever going for. But we do, despite all of those things, we hope it feels like a community. We hope you feel welcome. We really do appreciate your support. I'm excited about the future, guys. Once the COVID restrictions lift, we want to use Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other sources or links to host some epic debates. And so, we really do hope you buy into that with us. I'm telling you, I'm determined. I'm crazy, folks. I'm crazy. And we're going to make it. So, thanks for that. And then, I thought I just saw somebody, Invisible Ninja said, can't wait to have you on David Feldman's show on the fourth. We will get you some... Oh, the chat moved on me. Get you some... Get you some supporters. Thanks so much. We really do appreciate that Invisible Ninja. That means a lot. And so, Lena Powell says, Tangelo and John versus Erika tomorrow. It's true. It's going to be epic tomorrow. So, I'm pumped about that. It's going to be a lot of fun. And so, Brian Stevens says, hit like, everybody. I just pinned that in the chat as well. Thanks for your support, Brian. Seriously, it does mean a lot. Adam Albilia says, Wednesday started here. He's ahead of the curve, everybody. Don't tell the Flat Earth preacher that. He might not like that. I don't know. But, or she? I don't know. Jonathan Guzman says, keep up the good work. Thanks, Jonathan. That seriously means a lot. Thanks, Amy Newman, for your support and your positivity. And then, Will Marcus says, sick in the head. True is true. I'm sick in the head. That's why we have all these controversial topics. So, but we are up crazy. Amy Newman says, I'm crazy too. Yeah, that's right. Sometimes you got to be a little crazy to push through and to do things that people think like, are you sure you can do that? Are you sure it's going to work? Oh yeah, believe me. We're going to make it work. So, thanks so much. We really do appreciate it, folks. And with that, I hate leaving. I seriously hate leaving. I'm supposed to be, I'm running late. Right now I'm supposed to be somewhere, but I'm like, I just like hanging out here. So, it's nice to actually get to connect to you guys. Nephilim Free has arrived. Nephilim Free says, this channel is destined to become the foremost debate arena in the world. Mark my words. Thank you, Nephilim Free. That seriously means a lot. And seriously, no joke. That's what we're going for. I really do want this to be a monster platform. My dream. I know this sounds maybe narcissistic, but you know what? It's not a result of thinking that I'm special. It's a result of thinking that what's happening here with people from different walks of life and people being willing to engage with each other and that it's hopefully a neutral platform. That idea I think is special. I think it's something you don't see in the mainstream media. I hope someday, no joke. I hope someday that we are so big that CNN and Fox News that basically people would be like, wow, that's a big platform. And they'd be like, wow, that people would be like, this modern day debate, who knows? Maybe it will be on TV someday. I don't know. I know it sounds crazy, but seriously, I have big aspirations. Shoot for the moon, land among the stars. Hey, maybe we don't make it to be quite as big as we had dreamed of, but it's going to be big, folks. I'm telling you, I'm absolutely determined. I've got high hopes, and I am dreaming, and we're going for it. So Slam Our End says, but you are special. Appreciate that, Slam Our End. Appreciate that. I love the positivity. Colin Lorenz says, cheers, James, with a heart. I seriously do appreciate that, Colin. Thanks for your positivity. That's a big thing, too, folks, is like, I thrive, I thrive off enthusiasm. I'm an idea, man, okay? And so I do love your guys' enthusiasm. I love your positivity. Because sometimes it's like people are like, ugh, this Kickstarter idea is stupid. And I'm like, hey, say what you want. Like, I got thick skin. I'm going to keep going either way. But you know what? I love the positivity. That's the kind of cool stuff. I'm like, I appreciate that. Like, why don't you want to see big things happen? Like, I think it's a win-win. Like, everybody wins if we get to host these monstrous debates. And so anyway, thanks so much. Appreciate it, folks. We will see you next time. I have to go. I wish I could stay. And so I'm excited to see you tomorrow night, though. So hopefully we'll see you back here tomorrow night. If you have not yet, hit that subscribe button. Please do, because then you'll have reminders of all of our debates that are coming up. And so thanks for that. We will see you next time.