 Everyone having a good time? This is the last talk of the show. We're closing out the show, guys. I can't tell you how happy I am to be here. There was a point where I was worried if I wasn't even in the right hotel when I drove in here. And it wasn't until this morning when I was in the elevator, and I think there was two people in there, they're like, you're going to L? Yeah. We're going to hell, too. Yeah. They had shoes that had little shakes for their toes on them. I know it's like, I'm in the right place. I know I'm in the right place. Do you guys know this building doesn't have a 13th floor? Did you know that? The hotel has no 13th floor. I thought that was the perfect place for stuff like this. Anyway, enough random trivia, right? So, thank you for letting me be here. My name is Dr. Tyrone Wells Jr. You guys can just call me Ty. I have a hobby where I think I can talk to anyone about anything. I call that hobby street epistemology. Has anyone heard about street epistemology? Hands up. What? Whoa, that's awesome. Oh, man. Oh, that's fantastic. That never happens, by the way. So maybe just like two hands in the back and it's like, thank you, mom. Thank you. I appreciate that. So street epistemology, in my opinion, is a really, really complicated term for something that's really, really simple. And that's just talking to people without signing like a jerk. That's basically it. It's just an informal way of talking to people about why they believe they're deeply held beliefs and how they arrived at that conclusion. How they arrived at that conclusion is what puts the epistemology part in street epistemology. The street part just comes from going outside and having these conversations with people. I've gone to parks. I've gone to the arboretum next to UK. I've been on campus. I've done talks at political events, protests, churches, Sunday assemblies, you name it. And I'm mostly just interested in talking with people to try to give them opportunity to critically assess how they arrived at their conclusions, particularly on the God question. And the reason why I think it's important is because, and hear me out, just hear me out. And I'm an atheist too when I say this, we have a bad reputation with having these kinds of talks with people. It's pretty bad. In fact, if you go on YouTube and you search atheist, theist, have a conversation, you're mostly going to get people arguing and debating. And the thing with arguing and debating is you're not really talking to the person in front of you, your opponent. You're really talking to the audience if there was an audience. Or you're just throwing out logical traps that you hope they each other fall in or personal barbs. And you're not really focused on being open-minded or even changing your perspective. You're deep rooted and you're only hoping to have a combative battle of words with your adversary. It's not really a good option to change someone's mind or allow them to be able to change their own mind. So what's a better option? I think street epistemology will do that. I want to show you guys an example of what street epistemology looks like. I want to actually show you by the end of this conversation how you can do it yourself. And then some really cool tips from the stuff that I've been learning since doing this for a year. This clip is a collection of talks or like short clips from talks that myself and another street epistemologist named Reed Niswunder who has a channel called Corridual Curiosity did over the last year. Oh, okay. We got some fans. Nice. Okay. He's going to be psyched to hear that. Anyway, here we go. So, yeah, I just have this hobby where I chat with people about anything. Is there a particular belief you want to chat about? Is there what? A particular belief that you want to chat about. Something you really think is true. Christianity. All right. Anyway, yeah, Ty's my name. I've got a five-minute timer. We'll see if any two people can talk about anything. Is there anything that strongly motivates you? Anything that you think is true? God. God? Yeah. That's a heavy topic. You want to talk about that for five minutes? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I can talk about, I mean, I was, my background is Christianity. I was raised Southern Baptist. I believe in God. So that would be the thing I'm the most certain about. Okay. First, got to get a sense of your confidence that God exists. Okay. Say on a scale from one to ten. Aha, ten. Ten for sure. Ten. Existence of God. I mean, I am 100% certain that higher power exists. Okay. Um, 95. 95. Alright. Very confident. From like zero to 100%. 100%. 100%. You don't need any more evidence. You're absolutely closed on the position. You think that's absolutely true? Yep. Okay. 100%. What got you to that 100%? Oh, really? Well, um... So, I go to a Christian school and I've learned I've taken a bunch of classes on theories and all these different things and it just makes sense to me. It kind of like hits home. I, and for me, it's just a meditation thing. Okay. That I realize that it's just a full on total goodness of the earth, all the plant. Um, I believe that there is something that has been working on my behalf in this universe. Whatever is here had to come from somewhere. Okay. Uh, it's hard to imagine coming from somewhere without some sort of first cause. Okay. So, it's hard to think that, yeah. Okay. Um, how does something making sense to you relate to the actual truth of it? Like, could someone actually be mistaken about a belief that makes sense to them? Yeah, I think they could. Okay. That is a very good point. I would say... So, you, oh, that's an interesting perspective. So, you believe that, wow, I've never ever heard that before. Well, that's an interesting... We've come around to an interesting point that I never verbalized to myself before, but I do see that, you know, I'm starting to see just from this discussion. And the benefits I get from it? Right. Right. Right. That's good. That's a good perspective. I would like to believe it if it's true. Right. But because nobody can question it, nobody can prove it. You can't prove faith. You can't prove any of these things. It's like, why am I believing this? That's powerful stuff, man. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for that. That's really enlightening. I never thought of it like that. That's true. Right. That's a good way to look at it. I like to think about it that way. And anything that puts you in a more reasonable position. I try and I try. Well, thanks. Yeah? All right. Have a good evening. It was good chatting with you. Cool. Have a good evening. Have a good one. So what do I say? SC is a really great conversational tool to have these kinds of talks. And in a short as a five minute conversation, you can make more progress than you can with a person than you ever could with an argument or debate. I want to show you guys three tips on how you can have an SC conversation with anyone to really make some good headways as an option. For example, here are my main three tips. Oh, by the way, did you see the main difference between that and an argument and a debate? No fist punch, no throw, no drop kick, no table flips. Isn't that amazing? You can do that in America in 2019. Isn't that great? All right. So here's some important SC tips. I'm just going to give you three really important basic tips. First, keep the conversation positive. The reason why I say that is when you're done with a conversation, the person that you spoke to is going to reflect back on what was just said, the conversation that you guys had. And you want to have that reflection be done on their part with as little bias as possible. You don't want them to just completely dismiss everything that you just said or any kind of points that you guys made together is by going like, oh, he was a jerk. He just moves on. You want to be able to look back on the conversation with as little bias as possible. You want them to be open to having more conversations like this in the future, either with you or with someone else who's willing to try this method or at least just have an open minded conversation with them. If you keep that positivity, you're going to make them more inclined to be more critical of how they arrived at their conclusions. And that leads to good things, regardless, right? The second thing is you want to make that a conversation. By that I mean you want it to be a back and forth, but you also don't want to go into the talk thinking, well, I'm right. You're wrong. Let me tell you why you're wrong and why I'm right because that attitude is going to be reflected in the person that you're talking to. They're going to think they're right that you're wrong and they're going to try to explain to you why you're wrong and why they're right. You guys won't get anywhere that way. You have to be open minded to the idea that whatever vibe that you're presenting is what's going to be presented back to you. And if you go at this with the idea of, I'm not trying to understand, I'm not trying to prove why you're wrong. I'm trying to understand how you're right. Can we work on that together? Can we be on the same side and try to figure out why you're right about this? And if we can't get there even when we're working together, what does that say? It says a lot more than if you just told them they're wrong outright. Second thing or third thing, I'm bad with counting. Oh my gosh, I got a PhD and everything. Oh man, I feel bad now. All right. Don't tell my advisors. You got to let them think. Let them do the thinking. What I mean by that is there's times where your interview partner is going to need a moment to think about a question that they may never had asked or been asked before. And the whole point of this whole exercise is to give that person the opportunity to think. Give them the time that their pastors won't let them have. Give them the time that maybe a family member or a friend never really gave them the opportunity to. And that is to think critically about the things that they really deeply hold to be true. If you give them that chance without stepping in or throwing any options, in SC we call it the pregnant pause, you literally just do nothing. And you just let them grab that opportunity to come to their own answer. You can do some amazing things with as little effort as possible. So remember, keep that conversation positive and then allow them to think. If you do those, you're going to guarantee yourself to have a really productive conversation. It's that simple. Here's an idea of how I think SC works. Here's a model for it. That's a picture of me. I took the flash too high, but yeah, it's pretty good. You guys are a good crowd. I didn't know if I could put that joke out. The last time I did that joke everyone was like, do you laugh at that? Is that okay? So we tend to hold on to our conclusions in the same way we hold on to a balloon. And what I mean by that is if someone tries to pop my balloon with my pointed questions, the immediate knee-jerk reaction is me grabbing that balloon and holding it even closer to me. I'm like, no dude, don't pop my balloon. This balloon, I need this balloon because I don't know how to be a good person without this balloon. My pastor gave me this balloon. I inherited it from my parents. It lets me feel calm. I have a deep and personal relationship with this balloon. I don't know what will happen to me after I die if I don't have this balloon. People will be naturally defensive of their conclusions and if you attack them with questions, they're just going to hold on to them more tightly. Likewise, people don't like targeted questions pointing at them directly. It makes them defensive. What I find to be the better target is what connects the person to their conclusion. And that's that string that connects the two together. There's so much less ego invested in that string. And that string represents that reasoning, that methodology that they're using to go from themselves and their personal identities to an outside conclusion that they've reached. Is that path that they used reliable? Can we talk about that together? Is someone believes in God because of a gut instinct? And they're 100% confident that this God exists based on this gut instinct. Can we agree that gut instincts are 100% reliable? No? Then why are you 100% confident? What else is getting you there? Because it's obviously not that string. You just cut that string. What other strings do you have that ties you to that balloon or that conclusion? If you don't have anything else, maybe you've just freed yourself from having a really bad conclusion. And it's nothing that I did. It's something that they did themselves just by recognizing that they don't have a way to connect themselves to that idea anymore. That's the idea of street epistemology. I'm not targeting the conclusions that they've reached. I'm not attacking them personally. I'm strictly talking about the epistemology, the method that they use to write their conclusions. And I'm working on that with them to see if that method is reliable. If it's not reliable, they will recognize that themselves. I don't have to show them. I don't have to tell them. I don't have to do anything. Aside from help them get from point A to point B. And if we can't get there together, that's much more telling than me telling them outright that, hey, maybe you could do something better than this whole volcano explosion thing Are you sure about this? Zeno thing? All right. Anyway, I want to show you guys an example of SE from beginning to end. This is a clip that I did with a cool guy named Jacob. We did this in the Arboretum, literally just about maybe four miles from here. This talk is one that typically deals with God. I post something like this on my YouTube channel once a week. But there's a bunch of people all around the world who are learning more and more about SE and applying it. And you can see all of our videos on se-playlist.com. I'll also be available to give out cards so you guys can get access to those as well. Anyway, here we go. That should be flashing. So hi, Ty. Hi, Jacob. Nice to meet you. So I got a hobby where I set up a table and talk to people about whatever they want to talk about. I think it's really cool to show that, you know, any two people can talk about anything, regardless of the color, whatever. Big size, how rich they look, doesn't matter. Normally the conversations that we have are really cool when they're centered around what someone really strongly believes or a philosophy they have or something they wrap their lives around. If you want to talk about that, we can talk about Marvel movies or your favorite junk food. All right. But is there anything that you really strongly believe is true or something you're confident about? That's a big... Can I also fit something and ask your name again? Oh yeah, Jacob. Jacob, I'm Ty. Ty. Jacob. That's a big question. Wow. Well, I'd say I'm a Christian. Okay. So that's probably my biggest belief. I'm not. There are a lot of beliefs that you share. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Did you just say like the Christian God exists, maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I believe in one God and that is... This is a really heavy topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, yeah, yeah. They're a middle school class, by the way. Okay, yeah, yeah. All right. How confident are you that Jesus and God exist? All right. I'd say 100%. 100%? Yeah. I wanted to find 100% and just let me know. Is this a number? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't care. But 100% to me is like... Like no doubt? No doubt. There's no way I can be wrong. I'm not asking questions anymore. I am certain close-minded on the position. I'm close on the position. 100%. Let's go 98%. 98%. Yeah, just... I mean, everybody has this period of doubt, right? I think so. And I think it's actually healthier to not be absolute about what you believe. What got you to the 98% confidence on this God? And Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Or like on the existence of the Christian God. So I'm actually a medical student and I found a big interest in biology when I was in high school. There's like one big hypothesis out there called the RNA hypothesis. RNA world theory? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that because RNA can act as like a catalyst and also as a way to store information, biological information, that might have been what was initially used as protein and DNA. Right. But like when they... Do you know the Stanley Miller experiment? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So they show that if you put like... RNA and 1-2 can make it rapidly produce itself. It can make like a little tiny monsters of itself. Well... Simplified versions of RNA. The one I'm thinking of is that they put a whole bunch of... Nucleotide. Sorry for my interrupt. Well, you know you're fine. I'm just... It's been a while since I've read it. So like they tried to recreate the... the oceans of the Earth and like this... in this small environment and then they would like zap it with electricity. Sure. To kind of simulate the... Simulate the... environment and atmosphere of the Earth four million years ago. Right. And they show that they can actually make some molecules that are essential to life. Some amino acids. Right. And like urea, formaldehyde, stuff like that. However, the amino acids that they make are only like lysine and very simple... Sure. Non-polar amino acids. So they haven't shown that they can create more of the complex amino acids that are needed to sustain life. And they also never showed that they could create DNA or RNA. Can I ask you, how does this get you to the God-belief? Like how does... So... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so like... I just... I don't see a way of life spontaneously generating. And I don't see a way if you like if you were to talk to my astrophysics pal. Sure. And if you talk to him, I cannot see a way of the world or the universe spontaneously generating. Jacob, can I ask you a question? Yeah. I'm wondering, so you have this you have this theory that's presented in the scientific model. Uh-huh. And it sounds incredible. And you say, that sounds... I can't see how that's feasible yet. Uh-huh. Therefore this... This must... Completely other thing. Uh-huh. How did that... I wouldn't say that's my foundation. That's just like part of... Or how does this being hard to believe make this 98% confident? Like how... Oh, okay. How did that become the alternative at a 98% confidence level? Like was that the reason why you're 98%? Uh-huh. I think that's just part of it. And I think if you look into other parts of my faith... So like it's kind of hard to explain and it's kind of all feeling right from a skeptic's point of view. There's some things in your life that you just kind of... You have a gut instinct. Gut instinct? That you know it's true. Are gut instincts ever wrong? Oh, all the time. If they can be wrong all the time, does it justify supporting a 98% confidence? From a logical standpoint, no. What is getting you to that 98%? 98%. I'd say... So a belief in certain things in the Bible. So one of the big arguments in apologetics is why would 12 people who followed Jesus around heard what he said and then saw him die lie about him coming back to life only to know that they were going to be persecuted and put to death for saying that. Does that get you to that 98%? That's kind of like the main thing. It's like the biology aspect and then that as well. I'm just going to test if that is actually your main thing. I'm going to ask you a question. If it turned out, this is kind of weird. I don't go ahead. Again, I'm just stimuli in conversation. If it turned out that there was substantial evidence to a criteria of your satisfaction, they were in fact lying. Would that reduce your confidence? From 98% down to maybe 70%, maybe a lower than that. Probably. Okay. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, go ahead. Say I had a... I don't know. I have a cat. I do have a cat. And he's a really good cat. His name is Vinny. Vinny. And I walk him on a leash and he's a black cat and he's super, super cool. You walk your cat on a leash? I walk my... So listen, I used to work overseas for a while. It's very common over there in Sweden. Everyone's walking their cats around. In America, they keep them locked up in doors and they're like, that cat wants to be outside. That's what's on the window. And if you leash train them really young, they're super, super cool about it. But it's not so much the leash training. It's just, would you believe me if I told you I had a cat and I showed you a picture of the cat and like I'm holding the cat? Yeah, yeah. Okay. If I told you, I actually have a tiger and his name is Marshall. And he's a full-blown, full-blown, Bengal tiger. And I have a picture of him and it's me and the tiger. Would you believe I have a tiger then? It'd be tougher. It'd be harder to believe. If I told you I had a purple dragon from Jupiter that came and visits me in a time machine and I had a picture of the purple dragon and there's like a DeLorean in the background. And it's a picture. It's the same picture. Would you believe that? I'd say it's Photoshopped. It seems like the more incredible the claim, the better the standard of evidence or the standard of evidence improves. Would you say that God is more incredible than a purple dragon from Jupiter? I would, yeah. So the thing isn't so much that I think the apologist's angle is, hey, what's the likelihood of these 12 people lying? It's like, maybe it's not even that they're lying. It's just that that's a really low bar of evidence. It's basically 12 people saying, Tyrone has a cat. You believe that. Tyrone has a tiger. 12 people say that. Maybe you'd believe it. Maybe not. 12 people told you, hey, Tyrone has a purple dragon from Jupiter. You don't believe in that. You need more evidence to support that with. What if it is a case of not so much that they might be lying, but that just may not be enough evidence to reach that conclusion as a definitive claim for at least 98% certainty that a God exists since it's way more incredible than a purple dragon? What do you think about that? Can you restate that question? Yeah, it's kind of a long question. Do you have enough evidence to justify 98% confidence in God? And if it's not on a 12 Apostle story, what else is getting you to that level? What else? I'd say I can't answer that just right now. I'm totally fine with that. Can I fill one last? Oh yeah, go ahead. If I had a coin, it's a quarter. It's not a trick coin. If I flip it and I catch it, put it on the back of my hand, I don't know if it's at your tails. Do you know if it's at your tails? No. That's the best answer. Yeah. Until we have better evidence. Jacob. Alright. Wonderful talking to you. Nice talking to you. That was really cool. Yeah. So, explain to me what you do. Cool. I'm glad you guys like that. Thank you. Thank you. Whatever I told you the best secret is anybody here can do that. You don't need a YouTube channel. You don't need chairs. You don't need a setup. You just need the willingness to start a conversation with somebody or jump into a conversation that's going on or at least be able to respond and where you can keep the conversation positive. We let them do the thinking and you really do make sure that you focus on what led them to that conclusion. Like what got them to this 98% confidence. The gut instinct, the personal feelings, the argument from incredulity. There's some really, really fun times to be had, especially as an atheist. When you realize that the best way, or one of the best ways to completely dismantle a really indoctrinated mind is just asking them, how did you figure that out? It can be as short as a five minute conversation. Again, I do street epistemology. I think you guys can too. I think this is a great method for anybody to talk to anyone about anything. The only thing we have to do to do it is to do it. Thank you guys.