 is a faith-based worldview and we are starting right now. He's in gentlemen thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. If this is your first time here at Modern Day Debate, wanna let you know that we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion, and politics. And we also wanna let you know, folks, no matter what walk of life you are from, Christian atheist, you name it, folks. No matter what walk of life, we hope you feel welcome. And so thanks for being with us tonight. This should be a blast and also wanna let you know a couple of channel hosts keeping things up front. In particular, if you haven't heard yet, you guys, we are stoked. We have a podcast and so we are super excited to see people downloading it and it seems to be useful. So we hope it's useful for you. And so we are working to get on every single podcast app or anything, we're almost there, folks. So pull out your phone. If you can't find us on your favorite podcast app, shoot me an email at moderndatabate at gmail.com and I will work to get on that app for you. And so with that, also wanna mention, folks, if you haven't hit that subscribe button yet, consider doing so as we have an epic debate coming up this Friday that I think you will find controversial, juicy. It should be a fun one and that is pictured at the bottom right of your screen. And so Nadir Ahmed and Apostate Prophet will be debating and it should be a fun one. And so with that, we're very excited to introduce our guests who we are thrilled to have here, folks, and they're linked in the description. So at any point, if you were listening during the debate and you're like, hey, I wanna hear more, you can hear more, you can learn more about our guests by clicking on those links in the description box at the very top. And so what we are going to do is introduce first time that we've had them here. We're thrilled to have you, Mike. And so I wanna ask if you'd be willing to share about the link that we can find in the description for you. So thanks so much. The floor is all yours, Mike. Yeah, so I'm not on social media in a lot of places but I am a product developer and we launched things on Kickstarter from time to time and that link takes you to a project we're working on right now. It's about to launch and it's made to help cut back on single use waste in the kitchen. So that's what it's about. Absolutely, thrilled to have you here and also thrilled to have you here, John. Once again, what can people expect to find your link in the description, John? Thanks for being with us. Yeah, I teach chemistry and biology and at the State of Clearly website you can find a bunch of animations and other tools for teachers for teaching those things in the classroom. So it's all really designed towards classroom use. So I work with the National Science Foundation and other groups to create these videos that teachers can use. Absolutely epic. And so we're thrilled to have you guys. This is an epic one. It's like, I usually, I gotta let both you guys, Mike and John know. I usually would joke. I would like to say, you know, tonight we have a father versus son and like, they're not really, really, you guys have an absolutely interesting story. So you guys, if you're watching, I mean, you probably already put it together. Yes, they are twins. And so you say the one who wins this debate gets the last brownie at dinner tonight. So this is gonna be a fun one. We're excited, you guys. They're gonna, basically, we're gonna kick it over and wanna let you know about the format for tonight, folks. In particular, it's a five minute opening, just kind of a general opening on their worldview for each person and then 12 minutes each to make an argument and then open discussion and then Q&A. So if you have a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate, it makes it easier for me to get every question in the list. And with that, if you might, I think, do I remember right? It was Mike going first. Yeah, yeah, we'd say I would go first. Thanks so much. All right, so Mike, the floor is all yours. Thanks again for being with us. Thanks, and also we're actually identical. I believe John's done the genetic testing on that to make sure, is that correct, John? No, but we haven't done the DNA test, but it's pretty certain that we're identical. I mean, we're the same height, same eye prescriptions, same everything. So, I mean, we just have different beards. Yeah, I'm fatter and like losing hair faster too, but yeah, other than that, we look pretty similar. I also think we think in kind of similar patterns, but obviously that changes over time. But the reason I wanted to have this debate is because the biblical idea of faith can be a really confusing topic from outside looking in because there's a lot of loud TV preachers that kind of make faith seem like a mystical power. And also a lot of atheists have noticed that faith can be used to manipulate people and it's a really effective tool to use manipulation when someone trusts you and use that against them. So, and on the other hand, faith is a really important aspect of Christianity. It's a really important concept in doctrine. And so because of those two things with atheists seeing the dangers of faith and with Christians seeing how important it is to them, it's a topic that ends up blowing up pretty easily in debates between atheists and Christians especially. And I have some faith that John and I can talk about this discussion and talk about this topic without getting too emotional about we can have a reasonable discussion on it because we've been talking about our differences in faith for a long time. I am a Christian and I actually was just recently baptized in October as a Christian, but my whole life since I was a child until just two years ago, I was a Mormon. So I was part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I was very active in it. It was a very large part of my life and a huge part of my life. And the reason I fell away from that faith is that I began to realize some things that, well, in short, I began to realize that Joseph Smith had been using the principle of faith that people place in him as a mouthpiece of God. He proclaimed to be a prophet. And he was using that faith to get people to do horrible things that he wanted them to do. And seeing that tactic that he did, at first I tried to see other ways to understand it and tried to find ways to make sense of it. The most difficult thing, the most difficult aspect of that was how he treated women, both his wife, and then he would approach women and have them marry him and have sex with them behind his wife's back. And then when she found out about it, he would use the voice of God and his revelations against you to threaten her with destruction if she didn't stay with him and go along with it. So it was a really difficult thing to make sense of from the perspective of someone who believes that this is a prophet of Jesus Christ. When you look at what Jesus Christ taught in the New Testament and that kind of behaviors is very different. Now, I believe in repentance and forgiveness, but I don't believe that forgiveness means that you trust, in Joseph Smith's instance, he was using his authority as the mouthpiece of God specifically to get people to go along with these situations. And for me, although I can forgive anyone, I understand people do horrible things and there's still good things about them outside of those horrible things they do. I can find forgiveness for people, but I can't trust him as the mouthpiece of God when I see him doing this over and over again. So it was a pretty traumatizing experience for me to lose my faith, to lose my grounding and everything that I thought was true. And then I spent some time though, not much as an atheist, but that concept never really caught that much hold with me. And then I was reconverted to Christianity after carefully reading the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five through seven. And maybe later on in questions we can go into why I found that so convincing, but I found it very convincing. And that in combination with remembering the experiences I had as a Mormon trying to follow Jesus Christ to the best of my ability. And then seeing the power that Christ had in the lives of good Christian friends that I have, that along with understanding Christianity outside of a Mormon or LDS or Latter-day Saint context. All those things combined, I was reconverted to Christ and was baptized, I believe in the trend. I believe that Jesus Christ is God. I consider myself a disciple of Jesus Christ. That's what I try to be. And I don't associate with any particular denomination or see myself as part of any particular denomination, but I understand the kingdom of God is being made up of all of those who trust in Christ as their Lord that trusts his God and they're seeking to understand him and follow him. And that's how I view Christianity in general. And because I understand really, really well the frustrations that atheists feel about the concept of faith, how frustrated I was with Joseph Smith and with the LDS church, because I can see that. And then on the other hand, I understand the safety and importance of faith, if it's put in the right places. I feel like I have a good chance of saying something useful on this topic. So John, the time's yours. All right, so I'm here because my brother asked me to be here. So I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about religion. I mean, the only time that I even remember that I'm an atheist is if someone asked me, right? It's not something that I spent a whole lot of time thinking about, but like Mike, I was raised Mormon and it's kind of hard to pinpoint like why it was that I left Mormonism and religion in general. It's kind of like a death of a thousand cuts, I suppose. If you ask me, like, which specific ideas that came to me that really helped push me over the edge? If you ask me that today or tomorrow, I'll tell you different things because there's so many different things that just didn't seem to make sense to me. But I was raised in the Mormon church and I was a missionary in Brazil. So I spent two years in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And one of the really important things that helped me come to the conclusion which I now hold, it's a tentative conclusion, but the conclusion that I now hold is that gods and demons are social constructs like we've invented them, they're cultural inventions. And the big, I guess, awakening for that was, I get to Brazil and I'm supposed to be a missionary there. And I just met so many people from so many different religions, like Brazil, Sao Paulo is the city of a thousand gods. There's so many different religions that people worship there and so many different gods. You've got the African gods mixed with native gods, mixed with Christianity. And it was just, it was super interesting to learn. And one of the things that I kept on realizing every time someone would tell me about the God that they worship is it was just obvious to me that that was a made-up God. And I'm like, well, okay, if like this person honestly believes in this made-up God, well, I honestly believe in my God, what is it really that separates this? I mean, they're getting really important things in their life from their worship of this particular God, whether it be like one of the water gods or the forest God or the God of war and rum. So it was just interesting talking to these people, hearing their experiences, hearing their spiritual, like why it is that they believe, the things that they believed. And it just kind of woke me up to this idea that if it's so easy to dismiss theirs, why am I not dismissing my own? And that was something that stuck with me after my mission. So after getting back from Brazil, I started looking into lots of different religions and I spent a lot of time actually with Southern Baptist preachers because I was living in Tennessee for a while. And I actually was a web designer at the time. And so I marketed to the Southern Baptist Convention and I got a bunch of jobs through them. And so I'd hang out with these preachers and we'd have super long conversations about it because they were all trying to convert me as I was building their website. It was kind of fun. But it just seemed like the same thing to me. It was the same stories that I've heard before, the same, it just my experience with my own self believing in Mormonism and realizing that that was fake. And then all the people that I saw, it was so easy for me to realize that their gods were fake in Brazil just as an outsider looking in. And it just felt the same way when I was listening to the Baptist. I looked into Buddhism for a while. It just seems like these are cultural constructions that have a tremendous value for people. I mean, they really do a lot for a community believing in the same God, believing the same spiritual concepts can be super bonding for a group. I mean, the community that I left when I left Mormonism, it was a huge really interconnected community that I do miss in a lot of ways. It's just that I couldn't stomach the claims that were made with so much certainty about things that you just can't be certain about. I see my world view is that I'm this being, I was born, my first memory was when I was three years old and I realized that the sun goes down every day. I realized that for the first time. That's the first memory that I had was when I came online and I've been slowly learning things since then through observation and talking things through with people. But just to claim that I know something, like I know what's gonna happen to me after I die. Like these things just seem like or to claim what happened, it just, these things don't seem like, I mean, we can deduce what we think might have happened by studying history and so on or studying geological formations, we can try and piece together how this particular rock formation can to be. But we can't, you just, the amount of certainty that I would hear people talk about with their religion, I just couldn't agree to that. So I just, my tentative conclusion is that yeah, gods and demons are cultural inventions. And I spent years and years searching and that's the conclusion that I came to. And that's the conclusion that I'll stick with and tell, I don't know, something I happen upon evidence to the contrary. So that would be my general statement. Thanks so much, John. And wanna remind you folks, before we go into these 12 minute argument sections, both of our guests are linked in the description at the very top. And with that, we'll jump into the 12 minute argument sections. And so thanks so much, Mike. The floor is all yours. Yeah, yeah, thanks. So I think I agree a lot with John on the frustration of the certainty that people have in all these different things because growing up in the LDS church, that was a big thing. You always talk about what you know. You always talk about how you're certain about everything. And there was a talk written by Boyke Packer who was one of the apostles of the church, one of the leaders of the church. And he said that if you don't have a testimony, which is what we talk about being as, have this knowledge that these things are true. If you don't have a testimony, then say you do and you'll find your testimony as you're saying it. So he's encouraging you to just be dishonest about it, say that you know it's true. And then if you do, then you'll feel that you really do and then you'll know. So that view is frustrating. It's frustrating to me as it is to John. And the LDS church is actually making big changes and just in the culture in general, and people are in their fast and testimony meetings, it's a lot more common and a lot more acceptable and a lot more than normal to hear people say. They don't know, but they have hope in these things. And what I found in Christianity is that it's all about having faith and faith isn't specifically having a knowledge. So faith is simply having a trust in a person. Thing or concept without requiring first the certainty of empirical evidence. And so Hebrews 111 says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Like that's the general principle. That's what it is. And then faith is trustworthy according to Christianity if it's centered in Christ or a promise that Christ gave. James 2.17 says that faith itself, if it doesn't have works as dead. So Christianity, the important things in Christianity are faith and a faith that's living. And it needs to be based in God because God is what's trustworthy. But faith doesn't mean denying reason or being illogical. It can be used that way because it's just the principle of uptrusting something before you have all the evidence. So it can be used to be illogical or unrational but that's not the idea behind it. There are four important points about biblical faith that I thought I should go over. One is that it's only a virtue if it's placed in a specific promise that God has made. It's not a virtue to have faith in whatever I feel like having and then putting the name of Jesus on it and saying if I have faith in it enough, then I'll have it. That's not what the Bible encourages. And some people think it does. A lot of TV evangelists will say that that's what you need to do. A lot of just secular motivational speakers will talk about that too but that's not how the Bible talks about it. And then Jesus always gives some sort of evidence or reason before expecting anyone to have faith in what he's saying. He doesn't just demand faith. Christian scriptures contain many cautionary examples of people putting their faith in the wrong things, trusting in riches, trusting in dead rituals or government or their own wisdom, things like that. And then Christian scripture does not command us to have complete faith in other people. It never commands that. Instead it asks us to have forgiveness for everyone but to test their claims and worked at Detecting Fraud. And there are some real dangers in faith. John talked about some of the great things about different religions. And when I went on my mission, I was in Finland and everyone there is Lutheran typically. And then there are some other people that we met from other religious backgrounds but when I went to China, I used to think China was all Atheists but when I started going there for business and I realized that there's actually a lot of religious diversity there. Lots of Buddhist temples and they have shrines to various gods like in their houses that they're worshiping. And having faith is, it's dangerous when it's placed in people. It's dangerous when we place our faith in rumors that's very dangerous. And when we place our faith in false philosophies or ethics that becomes dangerous too because our faith largely determines what our presuppositions are. And it doesn't matter how good of you are a logic or a reason, if you start with the wrong presuppositions you can end up with catastrophes. So, but the reason faith is important and the reason the faith is a source of safety is that when you don't have conviction in anything you're setting yourself up to be led by whoever has the most charisma or whoever has the most power around you. So it's very, very beneficial to have faith in something that is solid, that it's true, that's harmless, that is good and that's why Christianity values faith. That's why Jesus Christ spoke about faith so much and encouraged faith in God. Now, we're talking about faith in relation to atheism and I believe that atheism is a faith-based worldview and I understand that a lot of times when a statement like that is made the claim is that an atheist is someone who is convinced there is no God to the point that they have no interest in investing any further or they just don't think there's enough evidence to believe in a God and so they don't believe and in most cases when you don't believe in something you aren't expressing faith and not believing and so it can be a frustrating statement to hear an atheist say that it's a common thing I've heard Christian apologists say and it's a common thing that I've heard just talked about and every time I've seen quite a bit of frustration especially from atheists to spend a lot of time talking about atheism but the reason I think is accurate is because atheism the word atheist is a dichotomy word it's an either or so you're either an atheist or you're a theist and something interesting about the question of atheism is that we live in a universe where there's stuff like there's something instead of nothing and I don't know if you guys have ever had this experience but I was at I was actually in line at Arby's I don't remember exactly when this was but I distinctly remember the experience because I was at line at Arby's in the drive-thru and I was asking myself it started out as an instant question like why not Arby's? And then led to me asking like why is anything and it was a really strange thought and it's hard to recreate that sort of experience but when you've had it, it's a really, really weird experience to look at your hands, look around you look at everything and wonder how is everything how is anything at all? And if you're an atheist and you're saying there's no God, what you are saying if you also recognize that there is something instead of nothing, what you are saying is that it's more reasonable to think that all of these things can appear out of nothing than it is to think that they can come from God. And so there's a number of questions that you'd have to believe that life can come from non-life that rational minds are a freak result of exploding stars. You have to believe that things disappeared out of nowhere by themselves or maybe they've eternally existed in some sort of perpetual motion system that we don't comprehend. Other ideas you could have or that maybe we're in a matrix system but of course it's still bringing back to how was how did that come into being? And even if you're agnostic you have to have faith and conviction about what things are valuable over other things. So if you're agnostic and you find it highly valuable to not commit to any worldview even a little bit unless you can empirically prove it then you have faith that that's an important thing to do. And so I believe that no matter what our worldview is it relies heavily on faith. And I believe that if we aren't conscious of the fact that we are relying heavily on faith if we don't recognize it then we're not in control of it. We're not deciding what we put our faith in and we're susceptible to being pulled around hopefully not by anyone with bad intentions but that's always a possibility and basically it leaves us in a weaker position. But in a weaker position and if we recognize that we we have to exercise faith in things because we can't understand the empirical universe and there's so many unanswered questions and we have to take those those leaps of faith. So I yield my time if I have any left. Thank you very much. Two minutes left and we'll kick it on over to John and so thanks so much John the floor is all yours. Yeah. So there's a lot that I could say about this but let me just start with something instead of nothing. So you think it takes faith to believe that God didn't create the universe because there's something instead of nothing. I'm also not. I also don't know how something exists instead of nothing. The only difference is that I don't pretend to know that God did that. And in fact adding God to it is even more it just complicates the issue. I know that things exist and so that's already something that needs an explanation then to add a God on top of that that created all the things that just adds another explanation and another thing that needs explaining. So I don't feel like adding a God to the mix makes things simpler at all especially when you realize how many different gods there are and that they're all mutually exclusive. You can't believe in the Brazilian the gods of Ubanda and also believe in the Catholic version of Jesus Christ that's sanctioned by the Pope. The Ubanda religion actually believes in a version of Jesus Christ but it's Jesus is like a character that he's an avatar for a different God that originated in Africa. I mean, there's a bunch of different gods. Nobody has evidence for them. And so I think what's better to do when you see these questions like why is there something instead of nothing is to just admit that you don't know and then that's something you haven't figured out yet and just if it's something you're really interested in try and study it I suppose but I think we're so far away from ever figuring out why there's something instead of nothing that might be a kind of a dead end to try and study that but I mean, I really just see myself as I was this kid who came online when I was three years old and realized that the sun goes down every night and I've been slowly building from there just and then I'm gonna die eventually and maybe I'll disappear maybe I'll go to hell maybe I'll go, I'll figure it out when it happens and I'll just continue adding to my world if I survive my death and I'm in like some spirit world well, that's just another thing to add to my world view. Mike, can you tell me what your definition of faith is again? I don't know if you're muted but... Yeah, my definition of faith let me go back to it so I worded the same the first time. Faith is simply having a trust in a person, thing or concept without requiring first the certainty of empirical evidence. Yeah, so how would atheism... How would my... How I've described atheism how would that fit that definition? If you're ruling out God then you're leaning towards the other things which you also don't have empirical evidence for. The other things, which other things? Everything existing for any other reason other than it was made by God. Well, the thing that I'm trusting in is that I don't know I don't know what the answer is that's the thing that I'm trusting in, I suppose. I mean, and I know that I don't know cause I just don't know it. So that's the thing that I'm trusting is that I actually don't know what started the universe. That's just the thing that I'm trusting. I think maybe like the... If I were to pull this away from God so it's not so triggering for people. Mike, last night I had a dream that underneath your garage is a giant golden nugget. If you were just to rip open the garage floor get a jackhammer tomorrow morning and just open up the garage floor right underneath the cement is a giant golden nugget that is worth $200 million. Tomorrow morning, will you cancel all your projects go to Home Depot and rent a jackhammer or whoever rents them and open up your garage floor? Will you do that tomorrow? No, I definitely wouldn't. Is that because you have faith that there's not a gold nugget underneath your garage? Yes, I do. You have faith? So you think that if you don't believe someone's lie you have faith? No, no, so because that's explainable and so many normal ways that we do understand. So we understand that humans dream all the time. We understand that human dreams almost never make sense. And so we do understand the reason why it's very, very, very unlikely that we would go under there and look for a gold nugget. But what we don't understand is... We don't know that there's not a golden nugget underneath your garage. You might be there, right? No, no, yeah, it might be there but the odds of it are really, really low because we do know about dreams. We do know about how gold... We do know that gold is not usually near the surface. We do know that someone who is pouring the concrete of my house right on top of a giant golden nugget would probably look to think, oh, hey, look, there's a golden nugget there. So we know all of these things that make complete and total sense and we experience them every day. Exactly. And because of that, because of that, we can know that it doesn't make much sense to look for gold. Exactly, that is perfect. So I know that humans invent religions. I know this because I saw a bunch of people... You can go back in history, you can read the history of Joseph Smith inventing a religion. You can see that he's using it to get women and money. You can see that this is what religions are doing now is that they're... Well, one thing that the religions do is they provided all sorts of social cohesion but they also make preachers rich. There's lots of things that religions do. I know what the project is. I understand it. I was a part of one. I realized that it was fake. I've seen a bunch of other ones that are definitely fake. People, a lot of times in Brazil, they'll do these seances and get possessed by a demon and they'll say, oh my gosh, I was possessed by the God of War or whatever. And they'll start talking to each other and give advice from the God of War or something. But they're not doing... You can tell it's pretend. It's like they're just... They're freaking out. They roll their eyes back in their heads and they're flipping out and having a good time. But you can tell it's not beyond normal human behavior. You can speak gibberish. You can speak in tongues. You can flop on the floor. These are things that normal humans can do if they get excited. So I know for the same reason that you... It's not faith with this golden nugget. When you have faith, you're inspired. If you look at how faith is used in the Bible, faith is inspiring people to make sacrifices. I'm going to dedicate my time to Jesus or and so on and so forth. You're not making a sacrifice. You're just not gonna bother digging up your garage to find the golden nugget because you know enough about how the world works to know that this is probably BS. And that's it. I know enough to know that it's probably BS. What we don't know, like all of these things are, the idea of God, we don't know. We do know that things exist. We experienced them all the time. We know that things come from other things. Everything that we experienced came from something else. We know that we know where galaxies, well, we think we have a pretty good idea of where galaxies come from, how they form and clumps. We have a good idea of all of these things, but what we don't know is how anything came to be. And the point you brought up is something that a lot of people do bring up that adding God to the picture just adds one more extra thing. Why would that help even look at the question? And it's actually- You also have to specify which God, because there are literally hundreds of gods. Different cultures have invented and we know that they're cultural inventions. I mean, do you believe, do you have faith that Yamanja does not exist? She's the water goddess that can bring you fish if you are a fisherman? No, no, I don't, because I have faith in a God that has a lot more evidence than Yamanja does. So you don't have faith that she does not exist. You just don't believe that she exists. No, I have an understanding of what's much more likely to exist. Okay, so that's not faith. You don't have faith that Yamanja does not exist. No, because I have confidence in what's much more likely to exist. So I don't have faith that God does not exist either. I've seen what gods are, they're cultural inventions. All of them that I've been introduced to are just, it's clear to me that they're cultural inventions. And so I've stopped being interested in trying to adopt one of these to be my thing. I don't pray it to Yamanja. I mean, I don't fish very often, admittedly. I don't fish very often. I guess I could worship Oshosi because he's the God of craftiness. He's the forest God and he helps you invent new ways to capture animals. And I need to find crafty ways to teach science so that students are interested in it. So maybe I guess I could, maybe it would be wise for me to start worshiping Oshosi, but I don't find it compelling. It doesn't seem like that God is real. And so I'd rather just do other things like study and pay attention to how it is that students learn and try and get feedback from students and go that route. I don't feel like we need to invent a story to explain stuff that we just don't, we just put a question mark there. I don't know why there's something instead of nothing. And I just don't know. I don't need to put anything there. I don't feel that need. Now, an atheist is someone that leans towards dismissing any idea of a God. Would you agree with that? Yeah, well, my conclusion is that God's are cultural inventions. So all the gods that I've come up with, just like your conclusion is that there's not a golden nugget underneath your house. However, if you were digging around on your backyard and you found a golden nugget, you wouldn't keep believing there's not a golden nugget underneath your house, right? And likewise, if I stumble upon a God in my day-to-day life, then I'll look, there's God, I was wrong. I'm fine with that. My conclusions are tentative. This is the part of being a being that is, I woke up when I was three years old, my first memory. And I'm slowly trying to gain information about the cosmos, mostly about the world right in front of me, but I'm just slowly trying to gain understanding of this. I'm slowly building a picture of how things work. I don't see, I don't find arguments for gods convincing or arguments for demons convincing. And I don't see them as even being helpful, except for the fact that it's helpful to build a community around a religion. But I've found other ways to do that even. So I don't, I just don't, it's not appealing or convincing. And I just see them as cultural inventions. Sure, so that, I mean, that makes sense. You have other things you wanna do with your time, then keep chasing after something you chased after for 20-something years as a Mormon and as a missionary. I dug up the whole garage and there's nothing underneath it. People tell me, well, maybe you just need to dig further. Well, okay, at this point, there's no point. Yeah, well, so I have to say you did miss out a lot by jumping from Mormonism to atheism because the problem that you brought up, like God is one more thing that we have to then understand. It's actually the opposite of the problem. So my view, I understand the idea of people not being convinced that there's a God, but the idea of being more convinced that there's not a God than there is of being a God, is what requires faith. I'm convinced that people's gods are fake. People's gods are cultural inventions. Yeah, that doesn't take faith. I completely can see that point. That would not take faith to say, hey, this doesn't add up to me. Maybe Christianity doesn't add up to me. Buddhism doesn't add up to me. Well, Buddhism sometimes atheists too, but to say these things don't add up to me, I think that's completely fair. That doesn't require faith to say that. What requires faith to say is that I don't think there's a God. I think that there's another better answer without actually having empirical evidence of any other better answer. So ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, and reality. And one of the most famous ontological arguments, and I can't remember who kind of says this, but if the universe is a system of contingencies and contingencies are things that are subject to chance. So if the universe is a system of things that are subject to chance, the entire system itself is a contingent phenomenon. And what is it contingent on? The end, in the end, it must be contingent on absolute being because anything less than absolute being would be contingent on something as well. And I don't claim to really understand all the different arguments to go back and forth, but classical theology for a long time, before Darwin, in fact, the theory of evolution, which I believe in, by the way, I believe in it and I can tell you why I do later, but the theory of evolution, I think what it did is it bolstered people's confidence that, hey, we can find solutions to things that we thought were impossible to find. And that's faith, that having faith in the concept that we can keep finding solutions to things that we thought were impossible problems. But before the theory of evolution was bolstering people's faith, which I think was doing, before it was doing that the main skeptic view for someone in your situations, like all the gods are social constructs, it was deism. So the idea that God created this thing, it's as important to him as your first grade art project that's in mom's attic. He created it and hasn't thought about it since, maybe he wasn't thinking about it much when he created it, but it's there and that's deism, we are on our own and there is a God, but he's not there. And the reason that idea has so much weight is because when you start to look at the problems of being of existence, like they're really, they're really strange problems. There's no way to come to a sure solid answer from logic and reason, just because we don't have enough detail, but yeah. Well, okay, let me clarify. So I don't have faith that I'll somehow know, someday know all the answers to all things. It's what I do know is that when people die, they stop being alive. I don't know if they actually go to some other realm where they can continue learning and growing, but maybe they do, maybe they don't. If they don't, then I definitely don't have confidence at all or faith that I'll learn all things or I'll someday learn why there's something instead of nothing. I'm gonna die way before that would be possible because it seems, I just, what I know is that I don't know the answer as to why there's something instead of nothing. I don't have to make up a God to put there. There's just a question mark and that's okay. I'm fine dying, not knowing why there's something instead of nothing. I mean, it'd be nice to know, but there's other more immediate questions that I'm more curious and exploring that actually do have better chances of me actually being able to figure out. And I love, by the way, the reason that I teach science is because I absolutely love figuring out how things work and just the feeling you get when the aha moment, when it finally clicks, you finally understand it. And the reason that I teach biology and the reason that I teach chemistry is because I've had so many wonderful aha moments studying these things and I wanna share that with students and get them excited as well. So that really is, I mean, it's, my job is my passion and my hobby because I just love figuring out how things work. But to figure out this, why is there something instead of nothing? That just seems like a question that's way too far away for me to even start chewing on. So I just don't. It's, you know, someday maybe, someday maybe, but right now it's, I'm interested in looking at how snail eyeballs work and other things. Like, you know, how it is that amoebas crawl. Like those are things that are really cool to me as of late. So. And that makes perfect sense. I was, I was telling our other brother that one of my kids, like what I'm not saying here is that atheists have to exert a lot of faith and trust in these things. But what I am saying is that if you're a leaning atheist, you are, whether you know it or not, whether you're aware of it or not, you're making a claim that you believe in a set of principles over another set of principles, even though you don't have any empirical evidence to do so. No, no, no. I have empirical evidence that people make up gods. Like there's too many, there's too many gods that exist and they're all mutually exclusive. They can't all be correct. And if I, yeah, I definitely understand that. So that is, that is observable evidence. And, you know, it's not like I've observed that there is absolutely no God. I'm sure that like I said before, if I, if you're digging around in your yard, you find a golden nugget, you're like, oh man, John's dream was right. There is a golden nugget in my yard. And the same thing, if I'm looking at, you know, if I'm going around in life and I meet God, I don't know what that would even look like. You know, maybe it's, maybe it's, maybe it turns out it's Yumanja. Yumanja is usually depicted as a mermaid goddess. But, you know, if I meet Yumanja, like, what do you know? There's actually a mermaid and she's magic. She has magic powers and she can tell fish where to go and she can call them the storms. That's awesome. I'm not gonna just like discount that and, oh no, I'm an atheist though. I have faith in atheism. I'm just, I just don't know the answers until I see them. And right now it is a conclusion that God's are cultural inventions, but it's not a faith-based conclusion. Great. So, one of the things that I think brings frustration and I think is bringing pushback on this point from you too is that, so I believe in Christianity, it's a specific set of beliefs, of beliefs about God. Whereas you're an atheist, which is a very broad belief that there's no God. And you feel like I'm saying that these are equal in the amount of faith that they require. And as far as the number of things that an atheist has to have faith in, like we can argue that maybe there's a lot more. I mean, an atheist would have to believe that explosions can happen that create everything that we see. Well, Mike Reynolds, you already said that you believe that Yamanja does not exist and that your belief that Yamanja does not exist is not faith-based. You already said that. It's based on my faith that Christ exists, that the Trinitarian God exists. Okay. So my belief that Yamanja is fake is based on the idea that I've never seen her and people make up God's. That's what mine is, those aren't, it's not faith, like these are observations. Well, I guess the fact that I've not observed Yamanja is not an observation, it's a lack of observation. But then there's, so there's a lack of observation and then there is the observation that people make stuff up. Right, so disbelieving a specific God like that, that doesn't require faith because you have other explanations for it. Writing off God in general requires faith because there's only the only other options that everything just randomly happens. You're acting like God is a thing, but there's a thousand gods. So you can't write off God as like, it's just, there's a bunch of stories that people are telling me and I don't believe them. That's not a faith-based statement. I just don't believe these stories. Okay, they're not credible. So I'm comparing theism to atheism. So theism is the idea that there is some sort of absolute being that all the things are dependent on. Atheism is the belief that that's not the case. And there's a thousand kinds of theists, maybe millions, I don't know. As far as atheists go, there's lots of different kinds of ideas out there for atheism, maybe the vacuum of space is so unstable itself. Maybe pure empty space is so unstable that matter can just appear and it can over time accumulate. Actually, I have, I think I'll find it, I think. I have a Stephen Hawking's quote. His idea is that because there's a loss of just gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing. It's why the universe exists, why we exist. And I'm not saying this is silly or rational or stupid. I'm just saying it's a faith statement and it's the best that I've read. I mean, it's the best of the explanations for these things. And so whether or not- Well, hold on, let me say, I don't accept his statement there either. It doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like those are non-connectable observations. I honestly just think that I don't know why there's something instead of nothing. I just don't know that. And I'm not gonna pretend that I do or I'm not gonna pretend that it's because God made it or it's because Stephen Hawking's vacuum of space made it. It's just, I just don't know. Well- And I'm okay with that. That makes sense. That's, if you're stating, so there's different levels of atheism too. There's atheists that really care about this question that are really, they're adamant there's no God. There's atheists that, like one of my sons who's, he talks about God quite a bit unless he's playing video games in the Stanford prayer and then he's an atheist because he doesn't want to stop his video games to say, you know, prayer or dinner. And, you know, there's all levels of atheism. There's all levels of theism. There's, you know, a Catholic monk that castrates himself because he doesn't want to have to worry about his sex drive anymore. There's the guy whose parents are Christians as he's Christian and, you know, that's kind of all the thought he gives to it. So yeah, people are exercising faith in things all the time. People have a faith-based worldview who aren't intentional about it. They don't think about it, they don't. But if you look at how faith is used in the Bible, it's always used to inspire someone to make a sacrifice. So people who had faith in Jesus Christ would not betray him when he was, you know, when they were arrested. People who have faith in Christ, they stopped fishing, you know, that the apostles would put down their fishing nets and follow him, they use their faith. It's this active thing where you go and you said this before that faith without works is dead. Like there's not, there's nothing about atheism that has works involved in it for me. Like, yeah, I know that there are some atheists that go around like they have YouTube channels and stuff. And so they talk about atheism all day. But if you look at these people and talk to them, they've all been hurt by their particular religion. If I told you that there's gold under your garage and you spent all your time digging up your whole garage and then I ran away, you know, because you're gonna be mad at me. And then you find out that I'm telling your neighbor, hey, there's gold underneath your garage. Aren't you gonna be angry and wanting to go and, you know, if I start a huge movement and everybody starts ruining their garages, you might be so angry after you ruined your garage that you're gonna start your own YouTube channel and you're gonna be an anti-gold nuggetist, right? So that's not faith either. That's like I'm angry at this real person who's really doing something that's really hurting people. And this is what I see the vast majority of like YouTube atheists, they're frustrated with this thing. Like Richard Dawkins, I think is a good example. He's tried to teach biology his whole life. That's how he started out in his career. He wasn't, if you look at his early stuff, he wasn't going around writing stuff talking about God all the time. But if you teach biology, there's all these amazing things that you wanna share with your students and they all just give you garbage, like these garbage responses that they learned in Sunday school. And it's easy to be like, okay, Sunday school is the problem here. And you go and attack the beliefs of Sunday school, which is what Richard Dawkins has decided to deal. But I don't see that as like his faith-driven quest. He's super frustrated because he can't teach the thing that he loves to talk about. And he's going and trying to cut down the tree at the source and like, instead of trying to modify, instead of trying to prune this tree, this religion tree, he's, it's gonna go try and cut it down at the base. I do not share his view. I think I don't have an issue with people believing in God with people's religions. I don't think that we should try and convince, as a science teacher, I think it's gonna be super inappropriate for me to try and convince people that they need to give up their religion or their belief in a God or demons or whatever so that they can understand science. Like I just wanna teach them the science. And so I work, I've actually done work with Biologos, which is a Christian organization that helps Christians find ways to accept both the science of evolution and maintain their faith in Jesus Christ. And I'm totally happy with that. I support them. I've even done projects with them. They use my videos in there in some of their classes that they teach. So like, I'm totally happy. I'm not at all like anti, I'm not an anti theist. I'm not against religion. I just don't find these gods convincing. Some people have said that I would qualify as an agnostic because of that, not an atheist. But I do actively hold a belief that gods are cultural inventions. And so I think by most people's definitions that does make me an atheist. But it's not like I have certainty or faith that God does not exist. It's just all of the gods that I've been introduced to seem to me to be quite obviously fake. They seem to be invented for particular reasons. They help this band of people stick together. They help with, this belief helps with raising children and helps with coping with death. There's all sorts of things that a belief in God helps people do, whether it be Jesus or whether it be the gods of these African cultures in Brazil. Like these gods help people cope with the pains of existence. And I'm not like, I don't wanna go like who on everybody's party? Like I'm just saying that I don't find that convincing. It's not, it was actually, I was not happy to leave my religion. It was not something that I wanted to do. It's just like, I can't believe this anymore. I just really can't. It just does not seem reasonable. And none of the versions of God that had been introduced to me since then have seemed reasonable either. So I, here I stand. Yeah. Well, okay, let me bring you to another thing too that it's not particularly religion because I think even if you don't have a strong, if you're not like, I know there's no God, right? That's, there are only a few people that say that I know there is a God. Other people say that they have faith, they have hope, they have a conviction that there is. But to bring it to a different subject it's like less controversial for us. It might be more controversial in the comments. I don't know, but I trust that there are not aliens from outer space that are monitoring our earth or visiting us. Now, I trust that. Just like you with God, I'm completely willing to change my mind if I meet one and I have an interaction with one, but I trust that they're not here. I don't know what to say. You have faith that there are no aliens? Yeah, I actually don't though. And here's why though. Here's the difference. I have a commission on there, but here's why I don't. So I've actually seen evidence twice of aliens of what a lot of people would think is good evidence. So you and I were actually in the car once when we saw something really strange in the sky. It was a, there was a really tall cloud. It shot out a bolt of lightning and out the top of the bolt of lightning there was a blowing orb that bounced around the sky for, I don't know, maybe 30 seconds. And so that was evidence, right? There's evidence presented to me that there are aliens watching us. I still don't believe it. Is it because I'm exercising faith? No, because we know about natural phenomenon like ball lightning. We know about natural phenomenon. I as an everyday person encounter things that I don't quite understand about nature all the time. And so it's not in the least bit unusual or difficult to explain or hard to understand why I could see something that's spectacular and strange and could be considered a UFO. But the reason it's not likely to be that is because there's so many things in nature that could be and there are 7 billion people on this planet who are all quite inventive and there's a very good chance that if it was an actual craft or something in the sky it's much more likely that humans would have made it than that some creature that's staying hidden from everyone traveled however many light years away and was flying above that cloud I was looking at at the time. So it's- Likewise, we know how cultural inventions work. Like this is not a mystery that cultures invent gods. Like obviously cultures invent gods. You believe that cultures invent gods. So all I'm saying is that, you know the God that I was raised with and all the gods that exist are probably cultural inventions. Like we just, we don't, there's not other evidence. There has to be, we know that this phenomenon exists. We know that cultures invent gods. And so in order for me to be convinced that there is a real God I have to be convinced that it's not just a cultural invention and no one has even tried to do that. Actually in the Bible, there's a, what is it? Elijah who calls down the fire to burn his, he has all the priests of ball try and call their God. And then he makes fun of them when they're trying to do it. It's like the first instance of sarcasm and written in history where he's like oh, maybe your God's sleeping. And then he calls on his God and his God comes in and lights the thing on fire immediately. Like no one's trying to do that these days. It's like everybody's just worshiping ball. Like everybody's God's are asleep. You know, it's, it's a, it just seems fake to me. It just, it seems obviously fake to me. And it also seems weird that other people can't or aren't seeing the same thing that I am but it just seems obviously fake. And it seems obvious that if there's a mystery likewise or something instead of nothing that you should just be like, whoa, there's a mystery instead of invent a God to explain that mystery. It doesn't, does not make sense to me. Why would we do that? Right. So what, what's different though about this scenario is that I understand, I understand and know how to explain all of the phenomena about it. If, if I were to see evidence every single day of aliens and still say, yeah, I don't believe in them. I don't believe that they're even possible. I don't, I don't believe they're, they're, they're I don't believe they're a likely explanation but I was seeing them every day and talking to them every day. And they were abducting my neighbors and- Yeah, I saw evidence of God every day too. I would, I would believe in God, but- But you, you see evidence every day of phenomena that's completely unexplainable and you, you've written off the idea that it could be God. No, I see things that I don't understand but I also don't understand how that would be, how that would be God. Like, so are all the things that you don't understand, someone could say, well, it's aliens, you know? How did, how did the pyramids get built? It was aliens. Why is there something instead of nothing? It was aliens. Like, why, why don't you put aliens instead of God? Like, why did you choose God instead of aliens? That is what people say. Yeah. So, but, but Mike, why did you choose God of the Bible instead of aliens to explain that there's something instead of nothing? Like, you could have chosen aliens. I've chosen the God of the Bible because of the evidence. So, I was talking earlier about, well, we're talking about witnesses. Like, Joseph Smith claims to be, was claiming to be a prophet of God. He's claiming to be a witness of Jesus Christ. But what we kept seeing is that he was using the authority of God to do things that generally guys who are kind of sketchy like to do. So, it was obvious that, it was obvious in that case that he's not what he's claiming to be. But when you read through, first of all, the evidence for Jesus Christ is, we can argue about how convincing it is, obviously. And I know you don't find it convincing. I do having looked closely at it for a long time, but the evidence, the general evidence you'll hear from the big thinkers on Christianity is there's eyewitness testimonial evidence. There's historic evidence. There's fulfilled prophecy evidence. There is the empty tomb evidence, which is kind of eyewitness evidence again. There's the effects that faith in Christ has on people's lives in general. And there's a few other lines of evidence that people use. And I understand that people will say, well, those things aren't convincing at all. But when I see, when I understand, yeah, no, I know, I know. But when I understand the details of those arguments first, and then when I understand that every single day, there's something instead of nothing. And when I understand, at least a little bit. The idea that there's something instead of nothing is completely irrelevant. That's just a mystery. You've taken a mystery and assigned it to Jesus. That's, there's no connection there. There's zero connection. There's a mystery. And then there's this cultural thing called Jesus. And you've connected the two and said that the Jesus explains the mystery. But that's not, that doesn't make any sense to do that. There's just a mystery. No, what I'm saying is that the mystery itself makes the most sense when you think of a God and Jesus Christ makes the most sense of all the gods out there. But when you look at- When you look at- How does Jesus make more sense in the flying spaghetti monster or like a giant invisible origami peacock? That's why there's something instead of nothing because the giant origami peacock made it so. Like there's not, the only difference is that there's a bunch of people that believe it. And if you go to a different country, there's a bunch of people that believe something totally different. And that belief is inspiring their lives and helping motivate them to do good and helping motivate them to get, helping inspire them when they're suffering through a death. It's just like, it's a story that helps people cope with the painful aspects of life and to be good people and to be good members of their communities. Like this is what religions are doing. And I am a little bit worried like how much work is religion doing and how much extra work are we putting on ourselves as we become more and more of a secular society? That is like an open question. But I don't, well, let me just conclude here and then maybe you can conclude real quick. Let me, I wanna open up to questions. Let me quickly just address that. And I would say that that's a different topic, I think, than what we've been having. So the evidence for Jesus is a different topic than what we've been having. But I think there's been some recent debates on this channel about that. And I mean, there's tons of good debates, but maybe we'll come back and talk about it. I don't know, but yeah, say your final point there. Well, yeah, I just, just in conclusion, though I don't have issues with people who are religious and I certainly don't. Yeah, I'm not at all trying to be like an atheist preacher or anything. But I just don't believe that I'm just not convinced that these, the gods that people believe in appear to me to be cultural inventions. And that is the tentative conclusion that I've accepted and will hold until shown otherwise. So. Okay, yeah. So, and it's not, it's not based on faith. It's based on my observations. Sure. Well, in conclusion, from my perspective, because faith is, it's a confidence and there are different levels of confidence. You can have it something, faith is it's a confidence of things not seen. So things that we can't fully test. We have confidence in them. If your worldview is that there is no God, then you're relying on confidence in things that you can't see. And for that reason it's- Our worldview is that the gods that have been taught to me are obviously cultural inventions. Right, okay. So if your worldview is that you think there's no God and it sounds like that's not your worldview. It sounds like you're being completely agnostic about it, which is totally fine. Like, and being, so if you're being totally agnostic about that view. I'm not agnostic. Like the gods that have been taught to me are cultural inventions. Like that's, and I don't see any reason to think that there is a God. I don't see a reason to think. So, and agnostic would be like, oh, sure. Either way, in my opinion, you know, there are different ways to define these things, but like the fact that I am convinced, I really am convinced right now. It is a tentative conclusion, but I am convinced that gods are cultural inventions. And that's what everybody tells me, well, that means you're an atheist. And actually your definition of an atheist also says that you're convinced that there's not a God to the point that you stopped looking for a God. Yeah, that was your definition of an atheist. Yeah, that would be me. Like I'm convinced that there's not a God to the point that I'm no longer looking for one. If I happen to stumble upon one, then sure. If I meet, I have to keep looking up her name because I keep forgetting. Yamanja, if I meet Yamanja when I'm snorkeling, like I'm gonna believe that Yamanja exists and I might ask her for a free fish or something. But until then, I'm going to assume that Yamanja does not exist, nor do any other gods until shown otherwise. The worldview that says I'm convinced or I feel like it's more plausible there's no God is stating that it's more plausible that everything that exists exists for just by itself. And that's not irrational, that's not crazy. I mean, but it is a statement of faith because we can't prove it. Empirically, we can't find any evidence for it empirically. And it's simply not possible. And so it is a faith statement. But maybe we should open up to... Oh, the last thing I was gonna say is that I think it's important to prove all things, to be open-minded and to hold fast to the things that are good because we do rely on faith. And if we don't understand that we rely on faith, then we're mistaken and we end up putting our faith in just kind of whatever comes our way. And so I don't think that anyone's like an engraved danger for not claiming to understand or not exercising their faith in any particular God over another. But I think that they are, I think it's important to test things, to look at things critically and to hold fast to what's true. And I guess I'll conclude with that. You got it. Thank you very much, gentlemen. We will jump into the Q&A. And so, wanna remind you folks, our guests are linked in the description so you can hear plenty more if you'd like to. And here's the first question, really interesting one. J.G., I appreciate this. They said, hypothetical. For both, if it was possible to choose your belief, so directly, you could just flip it on like a switch. And you were forced to choose a single belief that both of you had to live with together forever. Would you stick with your belief or switch for your brother? Okay. If I could choose which belief to believe in. That's right. If you were forced to choose a single belief that both of you had to live with, that both of you had to hold forever for the rest of your life, would you stick with your belief or switch for your twin? Well, okay. Like the guy who wishes to, for more wishes from the genie, I would say that the belief that I would choose to believe in is to be able to follow the evidence where it leads. So, and then accept what that evidence is. So that's the belief that I would choose and it happens to be the belief that I currently hold. So to follow the evidence where it leads. You got it. And Mike? I have to say, I can't quite understand the question about flipping on a belief and switching with my brother. So I'm, can you say it one more time? For sure. So it is a challenging one. Frankly, I'm a little confused myself, but if it was possible to choose your belief and you're forced to choose a single belief that both of you would therefore have for the rest of your lives, would you do it or would you not do it even though you're supposed to be forced to do it? Yeah. Well, I wouldn't choose to force my brother to believe in a particular way. So yeah, I guess I would choose a belief in agency where we get to choose for ourselves and follow the evidence, that's what we see too. Gotcha. Thank you and Barry, Barry, thanks for your friendly super chat who says, Atheists, if there is no God, then how did tonight's debate start on time? Checkmate. All right, yeah. I can see, I can see. He must have gotten here late because we started late, but thanks for that. My favorite YouTube comment I've ever seen along that line says, if there's no God, who tangles my iPhone cords whenever I put them in my backpack? Farron Salas, thank you for your question said, for Mike, what can't be believed on faith then? Anything, so these are like kind of mixes of questions and comments, they said, so what can't be believed on faith? Anything and everything proposed can be believed on faith. How do you discern truth from falsehoods? Right, so discerning truth from falsehoods is a different story. So I don't know if I did that great of a job in explaining what faith is. Faith is just a concept, the concept that we trust in something even before we have all the evidence. And the reason faith is important to like recognize that we have it is because, because yeah, we can put our faith in anything. Like faith is just the ability to believe something even though you don't have all the empirical evidence my other eyes want. So recognizing that we live by faith day in and day out and all the little things we do, but also all the big things that make up our ideas of what's important and what's not important, what's moral, what's immoral, what's like our faith is the foundation of all our presuppositions but it's also what makes us decide I'm gonna go to work today so I can earn a dollar because you don't see that dollar in your hand yet when you go to work, you see it after you've worked. So yeah, faith is just a principle of acting before you have all of the knowledge you'd like to have and it's central to Christianity because because it's important. Christianity is about our attitudes towards each other and our attitudes towards God and relationships require faith, whether it's with God or with our fellow man and that's why it's talked about so much by Jesus because Jesus, everything you taught about was about our attitudes and our relationships but sorry, to answer the question, yeah, you can have faith in anything. It's just a general principle. Yeah, so even I guess you said earlier that a lot of atheists don't like the word faith. I'm fine with the word faith. Like I would say that when you say that if you go to work you have faith, you're gonna get paid. For most jobs, it's not the case because in most cases, if your boss doesn't pay you, you sue him or her. So I mean, we have a whole legal system based on the fact that you don't have to have faith. You can just sue somebody if they don't pay you. So I mean, I think, but definitely. So I would say that when I was first starting my business and I was spending tons of hours and all of my money starting it and I had no clue if it was gonna actually work. I would say that that was a moment where I had to have faith in myself. And like the people around me had to have somewhat faith. I had to convince them that it was worth the fact that I'm not spending time with them. I'm doing this instead. So the people around me had to have a little bit of faith in me as well in my idea. And ended up working out. So that's good. But there was a little bit of evidence it would work. Not a whole lot. But so I do still use this word faith. But when I'm using the word faith, I'm saying that it's an active belief that I'm holding that inspires me to make a sacrifice. And this is what I see when Jesus is talking about faith. He's saying, have faith in me. Stop being fishers of fish and be fishers of men. Come follow me. It's like a, it's a belief that motivates you to do something hard without knowing if it's gonna be worth it. And that word I think is super valuable. We shouldn't just erase that because we're atheists or something like I have faith. I had faith in myself. I maintain faith in humanity so that I can keep hoping that we're gonna be doing better stuff than we are right now. Even in actually in spite of evidence many times, right? Evidence to the contrary. And that's to help me stay positive. So I don't go crazy. But the, I would say that these are ways that I have faith, even though I'm an atheist, but I don't have faith that God does not exist. I just don't believe in God's. It's just like, it's not something that inspires me to make sacrifices. I just, I'm not gonna dig up my garage to look for gold. It's not an act of faith. It's just an act of, I don't think that there's gold underneath my garage. It just doesn't seem plausible. And same with God's. Sure. Well. I can give you the last word, Mike, and then we gotta move on to the last one only because it was originally directed at you. Yeah. Well, not to say the same thing over and over again, but well, I do think we've already said it. So faith can be a powerful motivator or faith can just be, you know, acting on something without quite knowing. So you can have great faith to start a business or you can have the little bit of faith that it needs to get out of bed and like put your pants on and go to work. Like, I mean, it's the same principle. It's just magnified. There's, you know, dead faith would mean you aren't doing much about your faith. Maybe you think about everyone's well once brought up. Living faith would be, you're making great sacrifices. You're acting and changing the world. So Jesus Christ asks us to have living faith. You're right. But the principle of faith itself, there's all types of levels to it. So all right, next question. Next up, thank you very much for your question from SJ Thomasons. She asks, I think it, I mean, she had asked, what do you think of Galatians 1-8? I can read it. I don't know if it's for both of you that she's asking. So I'll assume that, but Galatians 1-8 says, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel, contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. Do either of you have any thoughts on that? Oh, yeah. I would just say that this is Paul. And this is another interesting thing. This is a verse that was brought up to me a lot on my mission. John, did you hear this verse on your mission when you were Mormon? No? Okay. Well, I was in a Christian country and some people bring this up all the time. The claim was Joseph Smith is teaching a different gospel and so he should be accursed. And basically what Jesus Christ called his apostles to do was to teach what he had taught them. He wasn't telling them to be innovative. He wasn't telling them to teach something different. He was telling them to teach what he taught in, but he did tell them to adjust things accordingly Paul had problems that Jesus never actually talked about about marriage and things like that. And so Paul would say things like, I don't have a word from Jesus on this, but this is what I think. And so yeah, Paul was very adamant that we don't teach anything other than what Jesus Christ already taught us. So I think that's what that verse means, but. Don't you? And John, if you have any thoughts, otherwise we'll jump into the next one. I don't try to interpret scriptures for people. You've got it. And Jesse Schodl, thanks for your question, asked Mike, how did you determine the likelihood of God existing? Well, the likelihood of God existing is, I guess I would have started. So I started believing God, like just not to put any pretense there that aren't there, but I grew up believing in God. I spent a little bit of time as an atheist and nothing really made sense. The classical theist arguments, and they aren't given by Christianity actually per se. The Greek philosophers were, they believed in Zeus and all these other gods, but they had this idea that, there's all these little gods, but there has to be something greater. There has to be an ultimate being. And it's not spelled out super clearly in Christian scripture, but the idea of an ultimate being really makes a ton of sense. And as far as it making more sense, just on itself as any other idea, I don't really know, but the reason I think theism does make more sense ultimately is because I find Jesus Christ convincing. And there's more evidence for Jesus Christ than there is for things appearing out of nothing. So there's that. Gotcha. Next, appreciate your question. This one also coming in from S.J. Thomason. Says, does John think Jesus is a cultural invention? Well, Jesus was probably a person, but he invented a religion. Or maybe the religion was invented later by the apostles based on some of the things that Jesus had said. So, yeah, I mean, the Christian God is a cultural invention. Jesus Christ himself was probably, Jesus of Nazareth was probably a person, right? But I'm not a historian, so I don't know the details of that. It's like I'm pretty sure Muhammad was a person, but I don't know if Allah is, Allah seems like a cultural invention, right? Gotcha. And thanks for your other question, S.J. This one again for you, John. She asks, has John read Psalm 82 on other spiritual beings? I've read the whole Bible several times, so probably, but I don't remember that particular one. Gotcha. And, Brian F., thanks for your question. Said, Mike, what would you suggest, John or any Gentile to do to find God? After reading the Bible, three months I had a revelation, all my problems were not obeying. Sorry to say that last part, all your problems were what? Not obeying. I'm confused by that too. I had a revelation, all my problems were not obeying. Maybe his problems were based on not obeying or something, or because it was not obeying, maybe. Maybe. I would definitely, so, when I was going through my faith transition, I was being kind of private about it, but I was talking to a friend of mine, I was trying to do missionary work with him. I was the ward mission leader, and so I was in charge of missionary work in my area, and so I was kind of trying to do missionary work with him, but I was also having a lot of doubts myself about things, and I asked him what he would suggest someone do, and he just said, read through some of the Gospels, and that's what I ended up doing much later, but that's ultimately what converted me was reading the Gospels, seeing the strength of what Jesus taught, because it's one thing to say that Jesus is a cultural invention, and it's another thing to understand what he taught, what it meant to his disciples to teach that. Jesus Christ's disciples, what they taught was not self-serving, not at all. They're teaching that to be a leader in the kingdom of God means you make yourself the servant to everyone else, and then they exemplified that, exemplified that by serving the rest of their lives through persecution and death for what they saw. It's one thing for someone to die for their beliefs, people die for their beliefs all the time. It's a very different thing for people to die for something they claim they actually, they witnessed, and to live for it, and to gain nothing for it, what they're living for, they're making them claim. September 11th is a great example of people willing to die for their faith. I mean, we have people do that. People die for their gods, even though you don't believe that those gods are real. That's not evidence that a god is real, just because they died for their faith. These people believe that they were on a mission for God when they hijacked the plans and slanted them into buildings. That was a very real thing for these people, and- They trusted people that they saw. The apostles trusted that they actually saw the resurrected Christ. It's a very different thing. And I- I don't think it is. I mean, these people were willing to die, literally die and kill other people, which I'm sure they weren't murderers aside from this mission, right? But because, apparently because of their faith in their God and in the doctrines that they were taught. You and I were willing to go on missions for two years and do exactly what the church said, no matter what the church said, because of our faith in the leaders that were there, right? That's very different than you making up a story and then having the faith to die for that story you just made up, that you know you made up. It's a very different experience. But yeah, I've lost track of the question. Oh yeah, I would say read the scriptures. Like I know it's a really boring dumb answer, but I would say keep an open mind and read the scriptures. That's what I would say. Read some philosophy. Dave Bentley Hart has just really interesting ideas on the philosophy of God that I think are really interesting and reading the scriptures is above all most important. But. Next up, Farron Salas, thanks for your kind support. I said I wanted to buy modern day debate a beverage of your choice, cheers. Thanks for that Farron. Double minded, thanks for your super sticker. Appreciate your support and lyingforjesus.org. I don't know if that's a real site folks. And nowadays you never know. Mike, they say though, Mike P. Atheism is a quote not guilty, oh okay, sorry, I didn't realize, okay so, you're saying Mike. Positive atheism is a not guilty option, not an innocent position. To date, no deity has provided sufficient evidence to be guilty of existence. No, okay, I'm so sorry, I screwed this one up you guys. Okay, so, the P wasn't for positive, I'm sorry. I was okay, so there's the Mike P. Atheism is not is a quote not guilty position, not an innocent position, you know, like a verdict in court. To date, no deity has provided sufficient evidence to be guilty of existence. Okay, okay, I think I understand that. So, basically what he's saying is that atheism is the null hypothesis. You're going to assume that atheism is correct until proven otherwise. And I think that's accurate, like every religious person assumes that all the other gods are fake until proven otherwise. And that's how I would say it, you know, I am going to assume that all the gods are fake until it's, I'm proven otherwise. That takes faith in dozens of presuppositions though, that you can't test. Like, why would you take that view over? Because I know from direct observation that people lie about gods and people believe in fake gods and people invent gods because I know that gods are mutually exclusive because the people who believe in them tell me that they are. They say that this is the one true God and the other people say this is the one true God. Obviously there can't be two one true gods. That would be silly. That doesn't make sense. Therefore, one or both of these gods is fake. I'm going to assume both are fake until proven otherwise. But you also know every day that from every experience you have, you know that everything depends on something else in the universe that we can see. And that is absolutely unrelated to fake God claims that like has nothing to do with any claim about God. There's a mystery, that's a mystery. And there's God claims. I'm talking about the ultimate claim of theism over the ultimate claim of atheism. So atheism is the claim that, well, my atheism is claim that these gods are not real. So John, a lot of times you conflate, you compare atheism to Christianity or Hinduism or these other gods. Atheism is the opposite of theism. It's not the opposite of Christianity. And so- I do not actively believe in a God. So I'm not atheist. I'm an atheist. Because I do not actively believe in a God. I actually believe in no gods. Then in fact, I actively believe that the gods that people believe in are cultural inventions. Because everything exists, because we don't, if we didn't exist, then we could say they're both on even playing ground. I think it would make sense that- Well, we wouldn't be saying anything. We wouldn't be, that's the problem. But we- I'm saying that's irrelevant. I'm saying that that's completely irrelevant. The fact that there's a mystery has nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus does not explain the mystery of existence. Right, and you're doing it again. You're comparing atheism to Jesus. Or theism in general. God does not explain the existence of stuff. God is just another thing to be explained. Like it's not, it helps nothing. As far as the mystery goes, it helps nothing. It helps lots of things as far as like coping with death and stuff. Like I don't disagree that God is helpful to people. But it doesn't help with explaining this mystery. It's still just a mystery. So in Mormonism, and maybe this is where you're getting this from, God would be another thing to explain. Abraham chapter three, which is the scripture that Joe Smith came up with says- A God that can make everything requires an explanation. Like how does that God, how is there a God? Why don't you just stop at everything? If there's everything, plus a God, that's more than just everything, right? Right, if you're thinking of God as an extra thing, but he's not, God is being. That's the concept. That's the thesis concept is that God is ultimate being. He's transcendent. And everything comes from God. So you're not adding to your- Why don't you just say that everything exists? Isn't that the same thing? Why don't you just say everything exists for some reason? We don't know why. Shortly, we'll have to go to the next one. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Gotcha. Snake was right, thanks for your question. Said Mike, did people require faith to not believe Zeus through thunderbolts, even though they didn't have a more likely explanation for lightning? Um, I don't think they would have to because it's part of the natural phenomena that they see around them every day. Gotcha. They, like, you know, Plato who believed in Zeus, I don't know how thoroughly he actually believed in Zeus, but he's the one that came up with, he's the one that is famous for realizing the problem that at least as far as I know, I could even say on that, but there has to be an ultimate, there has to be an ultimate being for Zeus to exist, right? So Zeus could be explained a lot of different ways, the lightning bolt could be explained a lot of different ways, but the fact that anything exists at all can't be explained any other way, according to Theos philosophers. Gotcha. And thank you for your question. This one coming in from Kron Staro says, Atheists and Theos are two sides of the same coin. Both believe in, in nonsense, it's like slap to both of you. I said, both derive their knowledge from books and men, both are blind to truth. Wow. So both of you may have words for this Kron Staro fellow. We'll give you a chance to respond. I'll just say, well, what's, what's the alternative that he's proposing? Yeah, we'll give you a chance to respond, John. Oh, and someone can say meaningless words if they would like that. I don't feel like responding to meaningless words, but. Gotcha. And Duke Davidson, thank you for your question. Yeah, like a, well, I don't wanna gang up on this, but Duke Davidson, thanks for your question. In ancient Greece, most believed lightning came from Zeus. If someone of the day did not accept that, that's strikingly similar. Was that, it is a different question though. They said, in ancient Greece, most believed lightning came from Zeus. If someone of the day did not accept the conclusion, would it also be a faith position? Wow, that's like the almost the exact same question from two different people. So I think you guys, we got that covered. John, another question comes in from Tasha Thomas. As she asked, if you truly want to know the truth about God, then you need me. Try hired reality. I don't know if that was a shameless plug or what, but very, very, thank you for your question. Said, how do you distinguish between faith and gullibility? So faith is just the concept of trusting in something that you don't have all the evidence for. So if there's zero evidence for something, but you believe it, then that's being gullible. If there's some evidence for it, then that's less gullible. If there's better evidence for it than the alternative, then that's not being gullible. So it'd just be the level of evidence you have to support your faith, I guess. Gotcha, and this one comes in from Experiments in Prebiotic Chemistry. He says, if you can't demonstrate a mechanism for how the supernatural does anything, then it is imaginary mechanism, please. For example, they say, what is the mechanism by which the soul leaves the body at the moment of death? Yeah, so saying something's imaginary if you can't demonstrate is a faith statement. So it's a faith statement that I don't believe. I think something can be unexplainable, but still not imaginary. Gotcha. You have faith that things can be unexplainable is still imaginary. I do, I do. See, Christians don't have a problem with having faith at all. I don't either. I do think it's weird. So I also think it's weird, like, so first of all, the way that you're using faith is not at all, it's not even close to how Jesus would use the word faith. Like always faith was an, it was inspiring someone to make a sacrifice. That's what faith was. That's how I use the word faith today. I would say that I had faith in myself to start this company, but you're saying that anything that anyone accepts or anything that anyone thinks without absolute proof is faith. It seems to be what you're saying. Like you're, well, actually you're not because you said that the gold thing underneath your house does not faith. So anyway, maybe we should get to the next question, but it faith is having an assertion. This is how the Bible defines it. And no, I completely understand where you're coming from because people who, the word faith gets thrown around that way. And especially if you're watching- By Jesus, like in the Bible. No, faith is a conviction of things not seen. That's all it is. That's what faith is. Faith in Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is all powerful, you can have faith in major things. Well, so my atheism is not a faith in things unseen. I don't see these things. And so I don't believe in them. That's literally what atheism is. I haven't seen God, so I don't believe in them. That's like the opposite of faith. There's an unseen thing, and I don't believe in it. Therefore, I don't have faith. By not believing God, you're believing that mechanisms can just appear out of nothing. No, I'm believing that I don't know what the answer is. That's what I believe. I believe that I just literally don't know. Right, but if you're leaning towards God's not behind anything, then the answer you're leaning towards. No, I'm leaning towards whatever ends up being true, whatever is demonstrated to me, I will go ahead and believe, but nothing's been demonstrated. So I'm just putting a question mark there. I'm just putting a question mark there. I don't know. Okay, well, then you'd be completely agnostic about whether or not there's a God. People don't consider me agnostic because I actively believe that the gods that have been preached to me are cultural inventions. So I actively, so there is a guy like Steve Gray, no, no, no, no, that's a different guy. Steve McRae, I think, who thinks that I should be considered an agnostic and not an atheist, but the vast majority of Christians would call me an atheist. And I'm just kind of going by what other people say because I don't care what people call me honestly. If you don't have a conviction that there's no God, and I wouldn't say you're an atheist. Well, I do have a conviction that all the gods I've heard of are fake. So I do have a conviction of that. They're obviously cultural inventions. But you don't have a conviction that theism, the idea of an ultimate being is ridiculous. Well, it's absolutely ridiculous to claim that without evidence. Yeah, to claim that a God exists with no evidence is ridiculous in my view. More ridiculous than claiming that everything appears out of nothing. If you're going to claim that everything, so the claim that Stephen Hawking made, I would say that that's equally silly. It's just, he didn't actually explain it. He just made something up. It's what it seemed to me from that quote at least. Maybe there's more to it that I just don't know because I haven't explored Stephen Hawking's views. But from the quote that you read, yeah, his claim seems as ridiculous as the claim that God made everything. It's just, I don't know. I'm not going to pretend to know. I'm not in the business of pretending that I know stuff. That's not interesting to me. Sure, so as I would understand that, then you're agnostic. All right. Most people who I've talked to say that I'm an atheist according to my belief that gods are cultural inventions. But if you want to call me something else, then that's fine. Well, I believe that gods are cultural inventions too, except for the ultimate being. I don't believe it is a cultural invention and I believe that Jesus Christ is part of that ultimate being. But this question in from Mike Q, except there wasn't a question attached. So Mike in the chat, throw it in there in case I missed your question. And let's see, if we have another question, this one coming in from Clay Corbin says, who was born first? Mike was going to be born first, but we were actually like, our heads were locked like this. So they had to do an emergency C-section. So I came out like seven minutes earlier or something between two and seven minutes earlier, technically. But yeah, he was headed out first, but it would have killed us both. I was going feet first. So it wasn't gonna work out. Wow, that, well, we're... We would have been dead if it weren't for modern medicine. Yeah. We're glad you're here. We're thankful for modern medicine. And we do have started acting funky, but... Yeah, I said it one more time. We have a couple more questions if you guys have time. One of these is, it's juicy. So, but we're willing to go there. So, brother John asks, Mike, do you believe that your brother is going to hell? So, short answer is no, not in the way that you would think so. How do you know what he thinks? Well, not in the way that a lot of traditional Christians think so, I would say. So I believe that just really quickly, I guess, there are three views on hell that Christians hold that are all supported by scripture, but also all have problems in supporting them with New Testament scripture. One of them is the eternal conscious torments where people are tormented forever. The other is annihilation, just like the same thing in atheists, believe it's like, those that are outside of Christ, they just, you know, they go to sleep. Or maybe if they were bad, they'll be tortured for a while before they go to sleep. That's the similar part of that view. And I'm not doing justice to these views at all, but then the other view is ultimate reconciliation for all. And in that view, Christ isn't conqueror and less, he actually did save everyone. And that won't happen by any other means, but through Christ and it won't happen right away. There will be punishment and learning after this. But I would hold either the latter two views because I think there's a lot more support from the things Jesus taught for the latter two views than this idea that people are tormented forever consciously. So. Super interesting. And thank you for your question. This one comes in from Sahih Luke, asks, for John, since you are not present at the beginning of the universe, nor ever have seen lions give birth to hyenas, why isn't your belief of how the world began to your current human nature one of faith? I can read that again if you need. Well, okay, I think I explained this. So I like to explain my worldview as, so you got all knowledge of reality or the cosmos. Do you imagine that as a giant sheet of cloth or something? And my understanding of the world would be like ink dripping onto that and slowly spreading through it. I don't know very much. I came online when I was three years old. I've been learning since then. I've been able to connect a bunch of things since then. I've been able to connect some dots, observe some things, talk things over with people. I'm slowly building an understanding of the world and eventually I'll die. Maybe that'll be the end of me, the end of the whole project of trying to understand. Maybe I'll survive it and I'll find myself in hell or in heaven or some other spirit world. I don't know, but I'm slowly just building, expanding outward, learning how things work by interacting with people, by seeing things, taking things in through my senses, which I also have been able to observe aren't actually accurate in every aspect. You know, you got a blind spot and all sorts of other little issues. But yeah, I don't pretend to know things that I can't. If that answers the question. You got it. Thank you very much. And that is it for our questions. So what we're going to do is wanna let you know, folks, I'll be back with a post-credits scene where we will basically all run across the future upcoming debates, which we've got a lot of exciting new topics coming up. And so I will be back in just a few moments, but wanna say, folks, our guests are linked in the description. Hey, now is a great time to check out those links at basically very top of the description, super convenient. And so we wanna say thank you very much, Mike and John. It's been a true pleasure to have you. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight. Yeah, it was really fun. That was cool, thanks. Did we clarify anything? I don't know. I managed to see in the comments, was there any insight that you didn't have before that you do now? Was anything clarified or was it just made more confusing or more frustrating than it was before? My help is that you can talk with your atheist or Christian friends without as much frustration understanding what the concept of faith is. But thanks for having us. Thank you. The pleasure has been all ours. And so thanks everybody. We'll be back in just a moment. And so appreciate everybody. And again, those links are at the top of the description. Be right back. So I'm super encouraged. I just, it was such a one thoughtful, like you have two insightful gentlemen, but also so friendly. They've got a great relationship. And so we really did appreciate these guys coming on, both John and Mike are linked in the description folks. Want to let you know that. And also want to let you know about a couple of other things. So in particular upcoming debates, ooh, Mike Q, so sorry man. I think I, oh, okay. Well, in case Mike and John are still listening. They said, thanks, Mike and John. Question for John. Oh, so sorry that I, like I didn't see your question in time. Mike Q922, seriously sorry about that, buddy. But we totally appreciate your support. And so we want to say thank you all for your support. Thanks for just hanging out with us. I don't know if you guys know this. This is honestly just a blast for me. I love hanging out here. And so we really do appreciate you guys. The more the merrier. We hope you feel welcome, Christian, atheist, agnostic, Democrat, Republican, you name it. No matter who you are, we really do appreciate you. We hope you feel welcome. And so we are excited folks to tell you about a lot of upcoming debates. You're seeing right here, you guys. See that right there? I'm pointing to this poster. That debate is happening this Friday. It's going to be controversial. So you guys, you don't want to miss that. Make sure you have that little notification bell clicked so that you get notified when we go live. Cause it's going to be epic, you guys. We're really excited about that. And also want to let you know, you guys, we've never hosted this topic that I'm about to mention. I want to let you know. I won't even say the word. If you happen to identify, if you happen to be among those in the group called I-N-C-E-L, we are looking for debates on that topic. And so please email me at moderndaydebateatgmail.com if you happen to be a person who is I-N-C-E-L. In other words, if you happen to be of the Black Pill, we want you to let us know via email at moderndaydebateatgmail.com if you would like to debate. We are wondering on whether or not the Black Pill should be a topic on this channel, up for debate. And hey, we always say we are willing to have anybody on this channel. And so we mean that. And so yeah, we'll really even, we'll host that topic. It'll be controversial. There's no doubt. And so we do want you to let us know if you happen to be I-N-C-E-L. Moderndaydebateatgmail.com. So modern day debate. Marina S says, why do you spell it? Like it's a swear word. Oh man, it's just that it's a controversial topic. It's a very, it's a community that some people would say, hey, that's pretty controversial. So if you Google it, you can know, if you just type in Black Pill, you'll learn what it is. And I don't say that in particular word, I-N-C-E-L. Cause I think that actually might be one of those automatic demonetizing words or phrases. But Lenny Cash says, oh, Dave Gar too says, Dave Gar says, I do have the bell clicked. And Lenny Cash says, I'm subscribed to the atheist in that next debate. He's a destroyer of Islam. Wow, that is, it's going to be controversial folks. So hey, this Friday, you don't want to miss it. It is going to be epic as we are excited to host those two gentlemen. Toy Freddy, glad you're here, says LOL, good topic. Cron Staro, thanks for being with us. Eric Nelson, we're glad you're here. Orient Express, we might be able to have that topic. I don't know, it depends on the context because we want to be careful. Mark Reed says, oof, juicy. You're right about that, buddy. Tiffy Bear says, Mark Reed, you too. If you're on Discord, you can message me. Okay, that was meant for someone else. But yes, Jesse Schodl, thanks for being with us. And Mike Q922 says, never heard of it. Oh, you will, Mike. And Clinton Roche, we're so glad that you are here. Says, doing hard time in the self-service lane at the gas station of love. I don't know if I want to know what that means. But Planner Earther, we are so glad you're here. Thanks so much. Said, oh, that is good to hear. That would be a scream. Yes. So, hey, I mean, I know a lot of people don't maybe mention if they, or if you know someone who happens to be, I-N-C-E-L, and you're like, oh, I know they love debates. They'd be willing to come on. It's pretty hard to find a person who is black pill and who wants to debate the topic. So, it's been tough. Ben says, thanks for hosting the debate. Thank you, Ben, for your kind words, buddy. Appreciate that. That makes it fun for me. Like, I do this as just like a fun hobby. While I'm doing school, and oh, man, school can be exhausting. It really is tiring, but this channel honestly makes me so happy and it's just so enjoyable. And Jacob is triggered because he misunderstands the cartoon and the bottom right of the screen. So, I even got an email of someone who's like, man, that's R-A-C-I-S-T. And I was like, that's the guy's logo. It's not meant to be that. So, you guys, I would, before accusing things of being R-A-C-I-S-T, I would think a little more or just do a little more investigating because it's kind of like, I don't know if you realize it, it's kind of insulting to call somebody R-A-C-I-S-T. So, I was just saying. I mean, I'm like, man and massy. Thanks for being with us, buddy. Said I don't really understand. Yeah, yeah. He seems to also be one of those people that jumps to conclusions. But we're glad you're here nonetheless, buddy. And so, yes. Cron Starro, glad you're here with us as well. Bruce Wayne, we are so glad you were here. Yeah, that's what I thought too, Bruce Wayne, is like, everybody oftentimes here. So, here's the thing. I am in agreement that R-A-C-I-S-M is wrong. I think we're all in agreement on that. I hope so. We're all in agreement on that. I think some people out there jump to calling virtually everything R-A-C-I-S-M. And it's like, ah, you probably don't wanna do that. You should probably reserve it from when you're, we have like, oh yeah, that actually is R-A-C-I-S-M. So, probably would be intelligent and people would take you more seriously if you didn't call everything R-A-C-I-S-T. Now, I think there is such a thing as R-A-C-I-S-M. Like, yeah, it's real and it's wrong and it's like, well, we'll do our part to say like, yeah, let's oppose it. But, and that's why we don't allow hate speech in the live chat. And so, but yeah. We, Jan Willam, appreciate you. Thanks for being here with us and Spicy Roads. Thanks so much for being with us. Says, I don't go looking to be, to being offended. I think it's a great philosophy that you have there. Namely, saying like, I've got a thick skin and yeah, so let's see. Clinton Roche says, content of character and behavior matter. The rest is varnished. I couldn't agree more. Our goal, our vision at modern day debate is we want to host people based on their debate skill and integrity. And so like, we appreciate people coming on to debate. And so, we would say, hey, we don't care if you're Christian, atheist, Republican, Democrat, black, white, gay, straight. It doesn't matter. No matter who you are, we'd be happy to host you looking at those things, namely like debate experience, things like that. And so, we never discriminate. We're happy to have everybody on and we really do want to have everybody on from all walks of life. So, want to say thank you guys though. We really do appreciate you. Thanks. We love all your support. Love all of your encouragement. Thank you guys. You guys make it so fun for me. And so, is there anything I can do to make your guys's day easier? Like, for real? Appreciate you guys. Mashi M, good to see you again, buddy. But yeah, let me know if there's something that I can do to make your life easier to support you. And so, we do appreciate you guys, seriously. Thank you guys for being awesome. Thanks for all your support. And we are absolutely determined to fulfill the vision, the goal, the outcome, namely, that everybody would have a fair platform to debate on through modern day debate to make their case on a level playing field. That's something folks that, hey, no matter what walk of life we're from. Christian, atheist, black, white, Republican, Democrat, you know, you name all the different groups. We all agree on this. Equal, fair debates are a good thing. We value that. We're excited about that. We are going to continue to fulfill that mission in the future. And so, we are excited and we encourage you to join us as we do fulfill that mission in the future. And also, wanna let you know, we are excited. We know you all agree on this. No matter what walk of life you're from, maybe you're an atheist, maybe you're a Christian. One thing that we did just this Saturday, and we do it once a month, namely, we hosted a charity stream in which 100% of the super chats went to, in this case, it was Save the Children, which is a charity organization with a great charity watchdog rating. They're phenomenally rated. They do a great job of actually using the money to help poor people, impoverish people who need help. And so, long story short, thank you guys so much for all of your support of this channel. That's kind of part of our vision is we wanna make the world a better place. And even if it's just one charity stream a month, like, hey, that's awesome. I think it was like 140 bucks that people put into super chats on Saturday morning. So, Saturday morning's debate was when it happened where we had vegan gains. And the professor. And so, it was an epic debate. But yeah, I'm also excited and just encouraged. It's like, hey, those are people donating all together in one clump, no matter what walk of life they're from. Christian, atheist, black, white, gay, straight, you name it. And so, we believe in two things for sure, that we all value, no matter what our background is. Namely, one, we all value fair debates. And two, we all value helping those who are less fortunate. And so, thank you guys for partnering with us on those charity streams as that's a super encouraging and fun thing to do. It's just like, it gives me so much joy and like, it's a meaningful, fun thing to do together. So, Masheem says, nooks, thanks buddy. Orientexpress says, hey, maybe. So, Orientexpress, I'm open to it. If you email me at modernatedbate at gmail.com, that's where I organize most debates. So, let me know, I'm open to that. And then Squatch Talk says, let's talk more. Discussion is important. Thank you, I appreciate that Squatch Talk. And I have seen your email, so I appreciate your email. And, yeah, we do appreciate you guys though. Mark Reed, Spicy Roads, Clinton Roche, Tippi Bear, good to see you after a long time. Secular Rarity says, gotta say, always really enjoying these after-show talks with James. Thanks buddy, I seriously appreciate that. That means a lot. Seriously, it means a lot. We are pumped, you guys, about the future. I seriously, I'm excited, you guys. I seriously appreciate you guys. We are starting a new series this Saturday. It's gonna be controversial. Woke Wars will be starting this Saturday. And it's probably going to be quality versus equity for the topic. If our YouTube channel is gone on Sunday morning, you'll know why. But yeah, I'm just kidding. I think it'll be fine. We've never, and people complain about YouTube a lot. We've never gotten one strike. I gotta be honest, I'm pretty happy with the fact that it's like, we've never gotten a strike. At least that I know of. Maybe I missed an email. But it's an encouraging thing. It's an awesome thing, because it's like, YouTube is pretty tolerant of our channel. You gotta give them credit. We appreciate YouTube. And so we are excited, though, about the future. And also, yeah, I wanna give you a friendly reminder. If you love listening to Modern Day Debate, if you're like, you know what, I just love having something on in the background. And you just kind of enjoy that stuff. Hey, we're on podcast. And so you can download, and it's obviously 100% free, it's on podcast. And if you like listening where you're, maybe you're on the road, or you don't wanna use your data, you can just download it straight to your phone. And you can listen on your favorite podcast app. That could be Apple, Spotify, podcast addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts. We're on all the big ones, baby. And so we hope that's useful to you. And so, yes. Marina says, yeah, because you spell everything. I do. Yeah, oh, you're right, you're right. That's why YouTube is so easy on us, is because we don't, we spell any like possibly naughty word. We just spell it out. But yeah, I'm gonna put that link for our podcast in the good ol' live chat. And so if that's useful to you guys, we hope it is. Highly encourage you to check that out. And wanna say thanks everybody though, for just being with us. It's always fun. And so you guys, and Eric Church, thanks for your kind chat who said like and share everybody. I agree, thanks for that, Eric Church. And yeah, we're excited. And like I said, I just put our dank podcast links in the chat. And so highly recommend. Oh gosh, it keeps doing it. We're like, ugh, I keep failing. Okay. I'm gonna put it in the live chat one more time. Our podcast. And I'm saying, trying to tell, I'm telling this typing machine, what is it, keyboard? I'm telling it how to, I'm saying space it out so that the links actually work. You're embarrassing me in front of everyone. Okay, it should have worked. So you can at least copy and paste those links if you wanna check out the podcast that way from Apple and Spotify. Otherwise, yeah, if you just pull out your phone and your favorite podcast app, we're on there, baby. And so we hope that's useful and we're excited that a lot of people like really encourage a lot of people seem to have found that useful. So thank you guys. We hope you have a great rest of your night. We will be back tomorrow. Now, oh, I didn't tell you guys. Oh, wait, so we also have Darth Dawkins on Thursday against Mark Drizdale. Poor Mark, it's gonna be awesome. The other thing is, 24, thanks so much for saying hi, buddy. Said, James, I joined late. Gonna watch this debate now. Wanted to commend you on this channel. Been following for a year. Even the wackos are worth it, but I won't tell you which is which. Thanks so much, 24. Seriously, you have no idea. That really does encourage me. I appreciate all of your love and support, buddy. So that means a lot. I appreciate all of your guys' love and support. Everybody in the chat really does mean a lot. Kenny Hornickson. Glad to have you here, buddy. Rand Redd, glad you're here. Joe Evil Scizor. Thanks for being here with us. Oh, thanks for your kind words too. Says, come on, peeps. Give James some love. Thanks, that means a lot. I seriously appreciate that, Joe. I seriously totally appreciate it. Experiments in prebiotic chemistry. Thanks for hanging out with us, buddy. Appreciate that support. Squatch Talks says, great channel. Thanks so much, buddy. Seriously, that means a lot. You guys make it fun. And that's why I'm here is it's just a blast. Like, I enjoy it. I started this in my first year of the doctorate. And it was just kind of like, yeah, that'd be fun. And I had my buddies that were the very first debate. We deleted it because we were afraid he was going to get us in trouble. It was just a debate on immigration, which now we're not worried about at all. But long story short, the point is, yeah, we're pumped though, you guys. We started it. So it's been about, it's been over two years. It's been about two years and five months. Crazy. And I just started just to be like hanging out with my friends and stuff. And the first debate was with my buddy Logan and my buddy Mike. And they debated. And it was like, it's come a long way. I remember I told them as a joke. I said, whoa, you guys. We doubled our live audience, which we did. Because we went from two live viewers to four. That was a big one. So yeah, thank you guys so much for your support. Seriously, it means a lot that you just are super encouraging and just hanging out with us the more the merrier it is fun. But yeah, Eric Nelson, glad you're here. Orient Express, happy to have you. Jesse Schodl, always glad you're here. And Experiments in Prebiotic Chemistry, talking some, he's doing some debating in the chat, but want to let you know tomorrow. Thanks, MG, for being here as well. I see you there in the chat. Tomorrow, we really are excited, you guys. And thanks, Joe, for your kind words. It's a seriously great channel, James. Seriously, Joe, it means a lot, buddy. I totally appreciate that. It seriously does encourage me when you say that. So that means a lot. And I just pinned our podcast to the top of the chat, but want to let you know tomorrow. We are having a debate. I've got to make the thumbnail yet I'm a little behind. It is on whether or not homeschool is a good thing. And so that should be something different. We're really trying to mix it up, have a lot of new topics, new ideas. And tonight was a fun one because we had Brother versus Brother. It was a familial civil war. And so that was really fun. We loved it. And so appreciate these guys. But yeah, Larry Letts, glad you made it, buddy. Says, wow, guys, just got service back. I'm not sure what happened. Well, we're glad you just got it back, man. And so thanks for being here with us, Larry. Thanks for thinking of us. We hope you have a great night, everybody. We have so many epic debates, though. I'm excited about it. And thank you guys for all your support. We're going to do it together, folks. Believe, we have big aspirations for modern day debate. We're going to do big, big things in the future. Believe me, it's just going to keep getting better. And so thanks, everybody, for all of your support. We're excited about the future and fulfilling the vision of giving everyone that equal platform to make their case on a level playing field and to make the world a better place. So thanks, everybody. We love you. I love you guys. I hope you have a great night. Seriously, you make my day better. You make my night better. It's always fun. And so appreciate you. Love you guys and have a great rest of your night. And I'll see you tomorrow. It'll be exciting.