 Hey, everybody. Today we're debating whether or not veganism is morally required and we are starting right now with Vegan Gains opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us Vegan Gains. The floor is all yours. Yeah, so I'm not a moral objectivist. I think morals are a relative thing that require a mind. So there's no way for me to say in a mind independent manner that it's required for you to behave in a certain way. But if you do have certain moral values, in particular the value of human rights, if you believe that humans should have inalienable rights, then by logical extension, you should believe that animals should also have those same human rights, unless you're willing to take away certain human rights. The reason for that is I have yet to see any meaningful distinction between humans and animals where someone can actually demonstrate traits that are unique to animals, or traits that are lacking in animals that are not lacking in human beings to where you wouldn't have an issue with taking away rights from humans. So I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this. It's called name-and-trade. So my challenge to my debate opponent is name-and-trade that is lacking in animals, that if lacking in human beings, you would be comfortable with taking away rights from human beings. And since we're talking about animal ethics, that would mean you'd be okay with turning human beings into hamburgers. So again, you may end up biting the bullet and finding certain traits that are lacking in animals, that if lacking in human beings, you're comfortable with taking away rights from human beings. But you are going to have this sort of moral issue where you either have to grant rights to animals, the same rights that humans have, or you are going to have to take away rights from human beings in order to justify meat-eating. And I do think that is an unavoidable consequence of justifying meat-eating. So that's my opening statement. You got it. Thank you very much for that opening statement, Vegan Gains. We are going to kick it over to Dr. Jay. First time here thrilled to have you want to do a couple of quick housekeeping things first. First folks, if you didn't know, we're only 14 days away from modern-day debates. Baitcon 4, our debate conference in Dallas, Texas. Let me know in chat where you are right now. If you're in one of the Texas cities or somewhere else, we are going to kick it over to Dr. Jay. Thanks for being with us. Dr. Jay, the floor is all yours. All right. So I want to talk a little bit about whether veganism is morally required, and I have this little presentation here. So the first idea, you know, I just define veganism. I don't think this is going to be an issue or an argument or whatnot. Sometimes it can be in debates where people can't agree on what you're arguing about. I'm not super sure that is an issue. But the practice of eating only food derived from animals and typically avoiding the use of other animal products. So my understanding of veganism normally does involve not using animal products as well. Is veganism morally required? You know, that's what we're discussing tonight. And so I don't think this is controversial, but most moral or ethical systems sort of start out with the idea that humans have freedom. So, you know, are you allowed to breathe? Well, yeah, of course you're allowed to breathe. Are you allowed to, you know, whatever? Yeah, you're allowed to do it. And then what morals normally do is cause restriction, you know. So, okay, well, you can't murder someone or you can't steal and they take restriction down a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. So sort of my default position, I think the default position of most moral theories and maybe all, I obviously don't know them all in depth. But I think is that you sort of start out with people are free, people can do what they want and then we restrict those. So I think that most ethical systems start with human freedom and restrict those freedoms. So, you know, how do we understand restricting human freedom? What are the ways in which we restrict human freedom? Well, one of the ways is, you know, you moral theory of utilitarianism. And so this is the idea of, you know, max good versus max bad or, you know, there's different versions of utilitarianism that, you know, kind of have different ways they do it. But it's a very practical way to try to say, hey, what does the most good in the world and, you know, what limits the most bad. I realize you can get in tricky situations, the trolley problem and all that or whatnot. But anyway, utilitarianism, the general idea, then you have deontology and that's sort of a universal good. Sometimes people might call this Contianism and, you know, maybe that's a way you do it. Social contract theory, great and everything, it's going to get very complicated. But that's kind of another way to try to set moral norms and the others define divine command theory, which of course just says you have some sort of deity or text or whatnot in order to say that your way is right or not. So my view would just, I think going to be kind of boring and not super interesting debate as I would take the divine command theory. But my moral basis doesn't really matter much because I'm not trying to limit human freedom. You know, I think that we should be free unless we're told we can't be free. And so I'm basically saying do whatever you want, unless I have a moral reason to stop you from doing it. And because I'm not in this debate trying to restrict human freedom, I don't have to sort of say why I'm letting you be free. You know, free is the default. So if my moral basis is wrong and my divine command theory and where I get my divine commands ends up being silly or dumb or inaccurate. And I assume nobody wants a theist for atheists or whatever debate tonight. That doesn't really matter because I'm not really trying to restrict human freedom. And secondly, I'm willing to accept another moral theory and assume it's true. So tonight I don't need to defend my moral theory. I think a vegan gains is going to have a moral theory. He's going to suggest what it is and he may very well be right in that moral theory. And then in that moral theory, he should be able to explain to us why he thinks that veganism is wrong. And he may be very well be successful now. I know he's done a number of these debates and I'm sure he's thought through this well. But what I'm going to suggest is I think it's hard if not impossible to have a consistent practical more theory that does include veganism. And so I am going to try to demonstrate that it is not really possible slash practical to have this kind of moral theory that includes veganism. And so just as a little final statement, we should not consider veganism morally required to restrict human freedom based on that requirement. And so if human freedom includes animal freedom in that, we would need a demonstration that human freedom and animal freedom are the same thing. I don't need to demonstrate or not demonstrate. I'm just saying human freedom is the default. So that's kind of how I look at this issue. And so I look forward to continue to talk about whether this human freedom should be restricted or not and for what reasons you got it. Thank you very much for that opening. Dr. J want to let you know, folks, I just mentioned it. Debate con four is in two weeks on Saturday, November 15th and Sunday, November 16th. As you can see, a sample debate from that conference in Dallas, Texas is at the bottom right of the screen. There's a link in the description box where you can grab tickets for this in person event. Don't wait. We expect to sell out. So do grab your tickets early. Hang on. It's really James. I'm far. I can't make it. I'm not anywhere near Texas. We have a crowd fund that's also linked in the description box. That fundraising thermometer on the right side helps fund the venue costs. You can get things like a signed photo of your favorite speaker stuff like that. That helps us cover the speaker's costs in terms of flights, et cetera. So check that link out as well. With that, thank you very much, gentlemen. We're going to jump into the open dialogue. The floor is all yours. All right. Well, the first thing I wanted to point out is you defined veganism wrong. Veganism isn't a diet or an idea that you need to eliminate animal products from your life. Veganism is defined as animals having the same rights as human beings. So just wanted to clear that up. Happy to take that definition. Sure. Secondly, you claim that you believe in human freedom. Do you believe in human rights? What does it matter whether I believe in human rights or not? I'm not trying to restrict people's freedom. Do you believe in human rights? I mean, you've got to prove to me. I'm just, well, I want to know your ethical values. So do you believe like I should have a right to rape your mom? So my, I explained, and I can explain it again. But I think you're trying to convince you, convince everybody that your moral theory is right without actually demonstrating you have a moral theory. So I would love to hear yours, but I'm happy to give you mine. Well, in my, in my. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Didn't mean to cut you off. In, in my, in my presentation, I said divine command theory, which I'm sure you're aware of is that, you know, a deity says that this is right or this is wrong. And so in my theory, the deity says that humans are made in the image of God. And therefore, because they're made in the end of God, there's something special and there's something unique to animals. Now that could be wrong, but I'm not trying to restrict people's freedom. So, and you are. So this is where, why I would have a distinction between the two. But you need to provide a distinction between the two or a non distinction between the two in order to demonstrate that, you know, that everyone's wrong or not everyone, but that people are wrong in trying to say that veganism isn't shouldn't be required for everyone. It might be a good idea or it might be healthy or it might be have a lot of positive attributes or whatnot. But, you know, so is not smoking or so is, you know, exercising every day or whatever. Okay, so it sounded I have two questions for you. It sounded like you sort of named a trait there. You said humans are made in the divine image of God, but animals are not. That's, that's your belief. So divine command theory means you get your morals and ethics from the Bible. And so that's what the Bible says and or it doesn't have to Bible could be any religion. So therefore, if you reject the Bible, it's okay, but you seem to not be willing to recognize my premise here that I'm not retrying to strict people that you are. And you're somehow trying to use my ethical theory in order to prove your ethical theory right, which is kind of backwards. You have to prove that your ethical theory is right, whether mine's right or not. Okay, well, the only way to really debate morals is to test logical consistency, in my opinion. I don't understand your and your pressing morals on other people, right? You're you're putting on people that I'm not. No, I'm not. So do you not. So you have no issue with somebody. So sorry, you have no issue with somebody say like murdering an entire village of people. I explained this already with divine command theory. But in this particular issue, we're not debating whether it's moral to murder people. We're debating whether veganism is moral and because we're debating veganism or you're trying to put that moral on to other people and saying they are immoral by not doing it. You're the one that needs to be able to press upon us why that is the case. And you shouldn't have to use my moral theory in order to give your reasons for my more theory is irrelevant to this particular debate. You're the one trying to make us do things. Right. So like if I were to tell you that I believe I'm the only person in existence that matters. So I should be able to murder whoever I want steal from whoever I want. They're like, there's no real way to argue against that sort of moral theory, unless you try to test somebody's logical consistency or point, like point to say maybe holes in somebody's logic. So you could say, well, I get my, you know, my moral ideas from God. I could just say, OK, that's great. I don't. Where do you get them for? Because you're trying to make me, you're trying to make us do something. I'm not. So I'm trying to understand what some of your ethical values are so I can actually test your moral framework and demonstrate to you that in fact, with your own moral values, you should value the lives of animals. Yeah, I agree. That's what you're trying to do. And I think you have it backwards because you're the one trying to make everyone do something. Okay. Do you believe my logical consistency is important? Of course. But it's logically consistent that you're the one that needs to demonstrate your moral theory is correct and that you and that it fits the veganism. I'm even willing to accept your moral theory. I'm not even going to argue on whether utilitarianism or Contianism or whatever. I'm willing to accept it and we can decide whether it's correct or not. But if you're going to try to say my moral theory is going to somehow prove your moral theory, we've got this backwards. I'm not saying your moral theory proves my moral theory. What I'm saying is. Okay. What I'm saying is what I'm saying is based on your own beliefs, either you have to accept the idea that animals have value and should have the same rights as human beings or you believe humans should have fewer rights than they do already. I just want to understand. Even if you prove that that's true, which I don't necessarily think you can, but even if you did, it wouldn't demonstrate that you have sound moral reasoning and you seem to be unwilling to give me your sound moral reasoning. You want to prove your point by asking me questions about my moral theory, which is backwards. Sorry. Wait, wait, wait, wait, you're making a claim. You're making a claim that I don't have sound moral reasoning. Could you point out a contradiction in my beliefs? You need to demonstrate. Wait, you just said I don't have sound moral reasoning. Can you point out a contradiction in my beliefs? I certainly did not ad hominue intentionally. So what I would like to know is you think that animals and humans should, and I'm just clarifying out of my accusing with these questions, I'm clarifying. So I just want to know the answer. Do you think that animals and humans have the exact same human rights or whatever or the exact same rights or are there tears or explain how that works? So I believe humans and animals should have the same rights. And the idea is I believe in human rights. The current human rights code we have right now is quite robust and for the most part, I agree with it. So I see granting rights to animals as a logical extension of human rights. So I don't see a meaningful difference between humans and animals where it would justify taking away rights from animals and still granting rights to humans. So you said I don't have sound reasoning. Can you point out a contradiction? I did not quite say you didn't have sound reasoning. I just said we needed to find out whether you're reasoning sound or not. So I didn't say you did not have that. So you think that humans and animals have the exact same rights? Well, no, not currently. That's why I'm fighting for their rights. Yeah, I'm with you. You think they should have the exact same rights? Yeah. So in a situation where like the people in Alaska where they are like the Inuits or people in Northern Alaska or maybe Greenland or Canada where they might live, cannot live on a plant based diet because it's snowy there. And they live on fish shore or whales or seals or whatnot. They are morally deficient. Is that what you're arguing? Yeah. So most of their food is actually imported. You can be vegan in Alaska. I've known people who are. But let's say they couldn't be. Because it doesn't matter. They have to move. Right. They have to move. So you would argue that in all of human history people have been immoral until very recently? Yes, certainly. And in a situation in which you build a house and so you destroy animal habitat and maybe you kill some living things doing it, was that immoral or not? Kind of depends. So when it comes to building a house, you may be displacing wildlife, but you're not necessarily killing them. If you actually look at, say, like logging, tree cutting, animals just leave very rarely are they ever killed. And you're just reducing their territorial range that may cause a reduction in actual biodiversity or the amount of animals within a given species. That's not necessarily a bad thing. That also means there's less predators. And that means there's less animals that can be actually killed and murdered. So it's a little nuance, but I don't see an issue with, say, building home necessarily. I see. But if you lived in the tree and I came and destroyed that tree and said, just move 10 trees over, would that be a violation of your rights? No, not necessarily. So again, we have homeless people who may set up a tent, I don't know, in front of a store. Moving a tent or moving from one tree to another tree is much different than, say, me asking somebody with an established home who has a job in a certain area that has many items of ownership, a family to up and leave and find a new home. That's a lot more. So we're talking about like a claim to ownership. Animals have much less of a claim of ownership of a tree than, say, a human would when we have like these complex systems of ownership and much more complex systems of just living where, you know, we have jobs, we have a society. I see. So if it's really inconvenient for us, then it's not okay. But if it's not too inconvenient for the animals, we can destroy their home. That's not what I said. And well, it's clearly not what's going on. The animal doesn't a tree that we cut the tree down and they have to move. You're saying it's just not that big a deal for them to have to move that we would never accept that situation for a human to say it's not that big a deal that you have to move. It's not that hard. Yeah. So we do actually do that. Yeah. We do that homeless people who set up tents in certain areas. These people. They're told animals. These animals aren't homeless. They're not on other land. They've been living there forever. If they were humans, they would have land rights. So the animals that are on the lands that have been there for hundreds of years, every court in the country would agree that if they had human rights, those would be there. They'd have squatters, right? If nothing else, and if those people were humans, they would not be allowed to have their houses ripped from them and their land taken from them. Yeah. They may live in a tree, but they don't have a home. Again, I'm not really interested in talking about what constitutes ownership or what constitutes an actual home. I'm talking about the rights of animals. I mean, you're just ripping these homes out of these animals. I mean, that is not right. Yeah. But what I'm interested in is whether or not you actually value the rights of human beings. And from the sound of it, you seem to be concerned with, say, ripping away a home from an animal. So how do you justify killing an animal? I take divine command theory, which is how I justify it. But you're saying that animals and humans have the exact same rights, and it does not sound like you're super consistent in that. And that's the trouble because you want to make all of us follow your morals. I don't. I'm not making you, not in this case. So therefore, you have kind of the onuses on you to demonstrate that animals and humans have the same rights. And it does not sound to me like in the case of where people live, they do have the same rights. Do you only care if it's about life or death? So you just said you justify eating meat with divine command theory. So like God says it's okay to eat meat. That's basically why you think it's okay. Yes. And even if I were wrong, it wouldn't matter because I'm not pressing morals upon other people like you are. And well, you certainly are. You said you believe in the Bible. Do you not? So should I have the freedom to kill you or kill your family? So you don't believe in freedom. So you believe freedom should be restricted. Freedom is the default. I've already said that you're starting to restrict your freedom with veganism, which is what we're debating tonight. And so we're trying. I'm trying to discuss it. So you believe in restricting freedoms. You wouldn't be in favor of, you know, say Hamas going over to Israel and, you know, murdering innocent people. So I think that every moral theory starts with maximum freedom and the restricts. I totally agree with that. And mine does that as well. And so it's yours. And where your eyes differ is you want to restrict one more thing than I do. And I'm trying to decide, we're trying to decide tonight if that one extra restriction that you have that I don't have is legitimate. Right. Okay. So it sounds to me that you've you've already stated that humans are unique to animals in the way that we're made in the image of God. Correct. Yes, that would be the divine command theory deal there. Yep. Okay. And that's why you're not okay with say turning human beings into hamburgers, but you're okay with turning cows into hamburgers. I'm trying to just sort of use like super emotionally charged language to try to get me to say something provocative. You can't. I think we all know what I mean by divine command theory and that God says that that humans are unique compared to animals. And I'm not sure why you need to go into it anymore. You're not really bolstering your point on why we need to be vegans because you could make me look as silly as you want. I could be just low be made to look like a few fool. I could have picked a religion that no one believes in. It is ridiculous. It's a religion and you could prove it wrong, but it still wouldn't demonstrate that we should be vegans. Right. Okay. So you're again, I'm just asking you, it's a yes or no question. So humans are should have these sorts of rights, you know, the right to, you know, not be killed on the basis of being a unique divine creation from God or being made in the image of God. You would agree to that? Mm hmm. So if we were to say, find out that black people were not made in the image of God, you'd be fine with killing them and turning them into hamburgers. So it seems to me like you're once again trying to make me look silly. And what your trouble is, trying to make me look silly isn't going to help you much. I'll make even similar one. I have the Dr. J religion. And the only thing that my Dr. J religion is true is that veganism is wrong. And you can ask me a hundred questions about my Dr. J religion. You're going to, I'm going to look foolish, but it still doesn't mean we should the rest of us should be vegans because you're trying to get us to restrict human freedom. Well, what if I told you I follow the vegan religion and God told me that veganism was right? Like this doesn't really get us anywhere in the conversation. You totally could do that. You totally could do that. And the people. So this doesn't really get us anywhere in the conversation. I'm trying to argue against your own moral beliefs. So I'd rather you just stick to your own principles rather than fabricate and invent some. Sure. But I am not the one trying to change people's morals. And I think you probably agree that we start with freedom and then we strict from there. And because I'm not trying to restrict, it's not me that needs to tell everybody, why do you have to do what I say? Because if you, whether you do what I say in this particular station doesn't matter, your behavior is not going to change. You're trying to say everybody's a bad person. I'm not. You're trying not everyone. Do you believe we should be logically consistent? Yes. Okay. So if you believe the reason humans shouldn't be turned into hamburgers is because we are made in the image of God. And we discovered that certain humans say black people were not made in the image of God. Would that not mean that you would then believe it's okay to turn black people into hamburgers? It could be. But I'm also just might decide that that particular religion's incorrect and switch. Okay. Well, we're talking about the religion you have now. You're talking about my moral theory, which once again, why are you trying to prove your case with my morals? I don't see any better way of convincing somebody that their own moral principles are either wrong or need to be changed than by pointing out a contradiction. I see. But you're trying to make people do things, which is why I think seems to make sense the way you normally debate is when you try to assert something, the other person sees what's moral consistent. And then therefore you're going to demonstrate your perfectly moral consistent. And then I'm going to go, well, shoot, I couldn't shoot anything down. Your thing that you're pushing on everybody's right. And I'm wrong and they're going to go. So again, based on your own moral principles, would it not mean if black people were not made in the image of God, you'd be okay with turning them into hamburgers? I think I would change religions. If you found out that black people were not made in the image of God. Okay, so what religion would you change to? What does it matter? Well, I'm just curious because it sounds like you have motivated reasoning. You're not just curious. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It sounds like you have motivated reasoning. You said that you're getting your commands from God. Well, if the commands that you're getting from God don't align with your moral principles, you're saying you're changing your religion. So it sounds like you have completely motivated reasoning and your reasoning isn't based on a commandment from God. It seems like it's based on your own personal set of preferences and you change what God you believe in or what religion you follow based on those preferences. So when you say, I believe in divine command theory, I think you're completely full of shit. Yeah, you're right. If I switch religions based on morals, you're correct that I would not actually believe in that command. Well, do you know what motivated reasoning is? Would not disagree. Yeah, totally. I would agree that if I switch religions every time I didn't like what my religion said, that would be motivated reasoning and whatnot. But I'm really trying to get you off of trying to use my morals to prove your case. Which seems, I don't see why you don't see that's like that's a problem. Can you show me a better way of convincing somebody against their moral position than by pointing out a contradiction? I am not trying to get anybody to do anything. You are. Right. And could you show me a better way of trying to convince somebody away from their moral position than by pointing out a contradiction? Absolutely. The way you should be convincing me that your moral position is correct is say, these are my morals, which I'm going to let you have utilitarianism, any of those that you want. You lay it down. You demonstrate why it's ironclad and that why it's absolutely correct and that there's no contradictions and that I should change my mind and switch to yours. I'm not trying to convince you in divine command theory here tonight. You're trying to convince me of whatever it is that you know. Well, you just change religions so it wouldn't really matter, right? I won't change religions anymore necessarily because you're totally right that I can't change religions based on the fact that the morals change. You agree? I was just trying to get you to realize that I'm not trying to convince people of people things and you are. And therefore you can you can demonstrate logical contradiction in my theory all day long and it won't matter because I'm not trying to force morals upon people. You're trying to force a moral. Do you believe so do you believe that we should be logically consistent? I can answer it again. Yes. Okay. So then why would you say it wouldn't matter if you can point out a contradiction. You just said because I can be wrong. My my system can be logically inconsistent and it still wouldn't prove because that your system is correct. Well, it would. Well, in this case, it would prove that yours is right. Well, in this case it would. There's 100 moral system and you prove 99 of them are wrong or 98 of them are wrong and the 99th one's right. But 90 the 99th one demonstrates that veganism is incorrect and it's okay to, you know, not be a vegan. Then the fact that you showed the other 98 are wrong doesn't actually demonstrate that you picked the between the 5050 of the two that are left. Yeah. So if you value something like logical consistency and I point out that based on your moral beliefs, you'd be okay with turning black people into hamburgers. But all you're doing that for is to try to create a big moral. You're trying to make me look like a jerk. You're not debating in good faith. Yes. That's kind of the point of, you know, pointing out logical logic. Yes, but we all know that the divine command theory I have doesn't say that. So now you're going to add things to the divine command theory that I don't agree with in order to try to make me look foolish. So you're not arguing in good faith. Sorry. How am I not arguing in good faith? Because you are adding things to my divine command. I'm not. That don't exist. What did I add? That aren't there that you were saying that black people aren't humans. Well, that's a hypothetical. That's not adding a... Right, you're creating a hypothetical that makes me look... That's not adding a premise to divine command theory. It is, you're adding your... No, that's testing your own moral principles. You're adding a command to the divine command theory that's not there. But the reason you chose the one that you did was to try to be provocative to make me look dumb. So let me ask you this. Are animals made in the image of God? Like our dogs made in the image. So it's entirely possible that God could have created certain human beings that were not made in the image of them, correct? Like it's logically possible. Like he's created other creatures that aren't made in the image of God. So he's created other creatures that aren't made in his image, correct? Yes. So it would be logically possible that there are certain human beings that aren't made in his image? No. What's the logical contradiction? Equals image of God. What's the logical contradiction? The equal image of God. So if you... If you... There is no... That could exist, but that would be a different set of divine command theory that I agree with. Wait, wait, wait. Human equals made in the image of God? Yes. So if you say someone's human... So you wouldn't have your chromosomal... Sorry. If there wouldn't exist, there would be no humans? Do you want to have a religious debate, or do you want to tell everybody why they need to become a vegan? Well, I'm trying to see if there actually is a logical contradiction here, because this is... You're trying to tear down my religion instead of arguing for veganism, which kind of is making me feel like you don't have a lot of good arguments for veganism. All you have is arguments for anti-non-veganism, which is probably a double negative than that. Can you define what a human is for me? Like, what would... How would you define human? Made in the image of God. Made in the image of God. Okay, so if you were wrong about God existing, humans wouldn't exist. Like, there would be no species called Homo sapien. Yeah, if I'm wrong about all that, I'm a fool. So tell me why I need to be a vegan again. Well, I don't think you've actually demonstrated that my hypothetical is a logical contradiction. You're trying to get me to... It's like, if I said, can you demonstrate to me why you should be able to breathe? Why? That has nothing to do with what I asked. Because you are trying to get me to say some human freedom. I have to prove a human freedom is okay. Yet in every other part of your moral code, you start with moral freedom as the basis, and then you restrict, but in this particular situation, you seem to want to start with the idea that veganism is correct, and then go from there. And that's backwards. You start with freedom, and then you restrict. And you would do that in every other aspect of your life. I do that too. I do that exact same thing too. So I start with the idea of freedom, and then I consider that there are certain actions that somebody can commit that restricts other freedoms. So in the interest of freedom, you may want to restrict certain freedoms. And that's basically how we come up with the human rights code. And from there, I determined that animal should also be included in the human rights code. Right. But again, the issue I see here is that if you're going to say, humans are unique to animals because we're made in the image of God. And on that basis, it's okay to kill and eat animals, but not humans. If you were to come across humans that were not made in the image of God, you would therefore logically have to be okay with killing and eating humans. Or you would have to admit that animals should also have human rights. You have those two options. And so far, you haven't shown that there's a contradiction with that hypothetical I proposed. You created a false dichotomy, I think. Those two are not the only options because you didn't create a false dichotomy. You said there was a human that wasn't made in the image of God, which I think already said is an impossibility in my system. So I'll ask you a few questions. Wait, why is that an impossibility? How is that impossible to have a universe where God doesn't exist but humans also exist? Just before we go too far, I've wanted to give a lot of autonomy to you guys. This is maybe going just a bit far into the philosophy of religion space. I have to draw the line somewhere. So I do have to say it might be good for us to return. And I do think that there is something too, maybe even temporarily, if Dr. Jay, if you're at all interested in taking a shot at the name the trait, what would you call it? Well, he's already named the trait. The trait is being made in the image of God. This isn't really a religious debate. It's still about veganism. It's just that that's the trait he named. We're not really debating religion. That just happens to be the trait. Right. It seems almost inevitable that it turns into a debate on religion. I'm not trying to be difficult. So I'll defer to you guys. Well, I'm trying to not talk about religion at all. But if he's going to continually ask me why I want to not restrict human freedom, and he's going to ask me religious questions, that's it. But I'm trying to figure out why we're restricting human freedom, and that should be a completely non-religious debate. Well, it's not a religious question. Like, again, the trait you named is being made in the image of God. Right. So you haven't actually shown that the hypothetical I proposed is a logical contradiction. So based on your moral view, if black people were not made in the image of God, you should be OK with killing and eating black people, just like how you kill and eat cows. Right. But you can see how it sounds like you're not comfortable with that idea. So that's a contradiction. So either you have to agree with the idea of taking away human rights, or you have to grant rights to animals. I'm not comfortable with a sound bite, right? That's what I'm not comfortable with. And this is what I'm not comfortable with in that example. Does that make sense? So you're comfortable with killing and eating black people so long as they're not made in the image of God. I don't care if it's not a comfortable sound bite. That's your belief. So you think there are humans that aren't really humans. You would be comfortable with killing them. That's what you're saying. No. Yes, it is. I reject the idea that you're not human on the basis of not being made in the image of God. Like again, you have shown it as an impossibility. So whatever it is that humans have, that you also give to animals, it's not logically impossible that there would be another person that didn't have whatever it is that you think they have, and you would be okay with killing them. That is the situation you're giving me. It's silly. It's silly. I wouldn't even give you that. I wouldn't even ask you that question because it would demonstrate that I'm not arguing in good faith. I'm just trying to make you look bad and trying to get you to kill people. Okay. I think I see what the issue is now. You're arguing about a weird semantic issue. You're just changing the definition of what a human is, rather than just accepting we're talking about the same thing. You're just defining it differently. So is it logically possible that if God doesn't exist, we would still be here? Lots of things are logically possible. I would even say not having a God is logically possible. So you acknowledge it's logically possible if God did not exist, we'd still be here? The same way you'd probably say it's logically possible that it's okay to eat animals that you don't think it is. Well, yeah. It is logically possible to have a moral framework. So how does this argue for veganism being correct? Right. So if you acknowledge that it's logically possible for humans to exist without the existence of a God, then if your basis for granting humans rights and not being okay with killing and eating them is being made in the image of God, then therefore if we found out that certain humans weren't made in the image of God or God didn't exist at all, would you be okay with killing and eating humans? Repeat that one again. If your basis for not killing and eating people like you kill and eat cows is humans are made in the image of God, that makes them unique to animals, to where humans deserve rights, animals don't, then if say a God were to exist and he only made certain human beings in his image or God just didn't exist at all, he made no humans in his image, then you'd be okay with killing and eating those humans, correct? In the same way that if we found out that white people weren't really humans, you'd be okay with killing and eating them, yes. So you would be okay with killing and eating, say black people if they weren't made in the image of God? As would you if you found out they weren't really humans. No, I wouldn't. Yes, you would. I'm vegan, I won't even fucking kill a worm. What if you found out that white people were really plants? Would you eat them then? No, because they're sentient. Yes. No, because they're sentient. But you eat plants? Yeah, they're not sentient. But what if we found out that white people weren't really sentient? You say that's a stupid, you say that's stupid. Okay, well then if they weren't sentient, I would be okay with killing white people. Okay, and in that sense I'm agreeing. Yeah, if they were robots or some sort of machine that didn't think or feel, then sure. In that sense I would agree with you, but in the same way my question doesn't help. No, that's totally different. No, it's not totally different, it's the same. Well, that's the value of, well, wait, wait, wait, that's the value of sentience whereas you're valuing something else. But then you make up a scenario which is just absolutely wild and then say, see? And then I come up with a scenario that's absolutely wild and you think, boy, this is kind of dumb which is what I'm exactly thinking of. I want you to demonstrate that yours is consistent. You let me ask for a little while and you've been dominating asking me questions for a very long time and it seems like your system of trying to prove veganism is by trying to attack other people when you are the one that actually has to demonstrate it's right. Not other people in a hominem way but attacking other people's moral systems. Moral systems are very difficult. Moral systems are very complicated. It's extremely hard to be consistent. Extremely hard. Clearly your moral system isn't all that complicated because you just say, Great, great, mine's wrong. Now prove to me that veganism's correct. Right, so well, I've already printed that mic down. Again, what I stated, so wait, wait, wait, wait, what I stated at the beginning of the debate is there's no way for you to justify meat-eating without taking away human rights. And I just demonstrated that. So my point was proven. You did not demonstrate it. The only way for you to justify killing and eating animals is by also being okay with killing and eating people. You have said that humans and animals have the same rights but you will not give the same rights to animals that humans have. Therefore, you're inconsistent but the problem is that you're inconsistent compared to mine. Wait, what's the consistency? You will not give animals the same rights as humans. Yes, I do. No, you don't because if you take their house, even if it's their house only because of squatters rights, you would be okay with it and that's not granting the same... Yeah, no. Same, so therefore that's inconsistent and the problem with your inconsistency is you're trying to make people do something. You're trying to put a moral burden on that they don't have before. You're not trying to put a moral burden on them before so you have to demonstrate to animals all the same rights as humans. I've given you one example that I think you're incorrect that you're giving them equal rights and I think I have some more if you would let me have a chance to talk about them but for some reason you think that tearing me down is somehow going to help you. Yeah, so if there were human beings who were, say, living in a tree sort of like how a bird lives in a tree, it wouldn't have a problem with forcing those humans to move to make room for, I don't know, like a condo. So where is the contradiction? What? So if I decided to build a tree house on land that I was there before you were hundreds of years... Tree house is a lot different than living in a hole in a tree or having a bundle of sticks in a tree. There was a giant wedwood tree that I dug it out, lived in it and me and my ancestor who lived in it for a hundred years. You would say it's all totally cool for you to come rip it out and build a condo on my... Instead of my tree... Yeah, a hole in a tree is a... It lacks a claim of ownership. It does not. You don't even have to, like, have a house as long as you have, you know, you have some kind of place that you're living. Squatter rights alone, right? I mean... Yeah, I don't necessarily believe in squatters. So you don't think we stole... We didn't steal the land from the Indians because they didn't have buildings on them? That was all free reign? Yeah, so... Well, the Indian issue is different. How? We took... We didn't take their land according to your definition of land. They didn't have houses on it. Well, again, the... The Indian issue is a bit different. Those people were completely displaced. You're not necessarily... So you're not necessarily... They're not displaced. They have a tiny little bit of land. They have a little bit of land. Well, they were displaced and genocided. They were displaced and genocided. That's the issue. The genocide isn't the part I'm talking about, which I agree. But you're saying the genocide was bad, but the taking of the land was okay. If we wouldn't have killed... If the settlers wouldn't have killed anybody, then it would have been okay because they didn't have an official house on it. I don't think you're giving the same rights to the animals that you would to humans. So, again, in the human context, there are certain pieces of land that are arable and non-arable. There are certain areas that you have to live in so that you can actually exist. You have to be close enough to a water source. If you're displacing people in a certain way where, yeah, you're going to actually affect their ability to live, again, it's a lot more complicated to move human beings than to, say, move a bird from one tree to another. Just like the level of inconvenience seems to be the issue for you here. Yeah. Well, essentially, it might... No, I think the American Indians didn't care how much they were inconvenienced or not inconvenienced. They wanted all their land that was theirs, and when it got taken from them, I think most people would agree that's a violation of rights in the same way that when you take the grazing land of animals to build your house, you're taking away their rights. Well, not exactly. I don't want to get into a whole Native American history. So, there were agreements to actually take land or, you know, take... I agree some of that happened. I agree that getting in the debate of all that and you're talking about people who didn't really have a complex understanding of ownership and contracts and stuff like that. That's why there's the term Indian trader. So, yeah, so you can take animals' lands because they don't have a complex understanding of land rights? Well, again, the issue I'm seeing is animals are not developing the land and have a requirement to live in very specific certain areas where they can really make a claim to ownership. It's sort of like when you find homeless people who've made an encampment in a particular area, telling somebody to move a couple blocks down the street and set up shop there is a lot different than getting somebody to literally move a home that they've purchased. They've set up an entire lifestyle there versus a bird living in a tree that just needs to grab a bunch of sticks and put them in another tree. But if you could move to and live in a place that didn't displace all those people, that would surely be better and be a more moral decision. But I don't think... Are you arguing that we should only be building houses in the place that only displaces the least amount of animals as possible? Maybe. Well, maybe, again, the other issue is wild animals do live in conditions that are extremely difficult, especially when you're considering that you're predated upon by other predatory animals. And if you reduce their territorial space, you are going to reduce the number of these wild animals and thus the number of these animals that are going to die very brutal, violent deaths. That's another consideration I make. Right. I'll switch directions because I think we're probably good on that question. You are okay with owning a cat if they... I should just ask. Are you okay with owning a pet depending on the conditions? Yeah, so if they're rescued and you're feeding them a vegan diet, then I don't see any issue with it. The number one cause of bird deaths is by domesticated cats. So they are a predator. Don't let them outside. It's immoral to let your cat outside. That's correct. Okay. I have a cat. I only let him outside when he's on a leash. I do walk him and stuff. And I feed him a vegan diet. Right. And so when you see a cat outside, you're saying, boy, whoever let that cat outside is immoral. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Not only is it not in the best interest of other wild animals like birds, it's not even in the best interest of the cat. Cats get killed and eaten by coyotes. They get run over by cars. They can collect diseases, fleas, mites. So I don't see, unless you have like something like a catio, where you have an enclosed outdoor space where other wild animals can't get to them and the cat is safe. I don't see any ethical way of just letting a cat free roam outside. So what about in situations like poor situations where they have a cat or they have a situation where it's either the human lives or the animal lives? Which are they equal? So for example, if you and I were both on a desert island and I don't want to be sound crazy here or make it sound something really, what I was unappreciative of you do, what I thought you were doing or whatever. If there's an animal and there's a human and one of them needs to die, do you see them as just totally equal or do you have a preference one or the other? Sure. So I may have a preference one way or the other for who lives who dies. I would consider say how long one being is going to live. So let's say if it's two humans, one human I know is very elderly. They're going to live like maybe two, three years after they get rescued by sailors or something versus somebody who's much younger. I'd probably prefer the older or sorry, the younger person to live, older person to die. So when you're talking about like an animal, animals don't usually live as long as human beings. That might be a consideration I make. Might also consider like future well-being. The types of experiences that a human can have are much more well-being than the types of experiences an animal may have. You see that in the same as humans though, whichever human, like if they were someone that you thought could, you know, assume you wouldn't make that distinction. I think you're talking about something slightly, so I think you're talking about something slightly different than I am. I think you're trying to ask like, would it be okay to kill and eat, you know, like an animal or something like that in a survival situation? I would say no. The ethical thing to do would be to starve. Okay. Let me ask you this. So let's say there were two people starving on a deserted island. They're waiting to get rescued. One human being was made in the image of God. One human being wasn't made in the image of God. Would you be okay with the human made in the image of God killing and eating the human not made in the image of God? Well, that is like a totally made up scenario that isn't real, which obviously I wouldn't hate even ascribing something to because it's not real. But of course, if there was someone who is a human and someone who would be considered not a human, that would be okay. Well, no, no, no, no, you're changing the hypothetical. They're both humans. But I see humans and the image of God being the same thing. So you want to rip them apart. No, no, no, no, no. If you're going to call them human, I'm saying they have to make the image of God. So that's not true. We already covered this. You're using a different semantic definition of human. You already admitted that it's logically possible for humans to exist without God. It's logically possible. Right. So if it's logically possible, then we're both talking about the same being. So a human and a human, one human is not made in the image of God. One human is made in the image of God. Right. Because it's logically possible that it can happen. Doesn't mean it could happen. Right. And we're talking, and we're talking about the hypothetical. We're not talking about the world you believe you live in. And I already granted you the hypothetical. No, you didn't. You altered the condition of the hypothetical where both humans are made in the image of God. Or sorry, you rejected the hypothetical and you said it's not possible. I don't reject it. I grant you the, I just clarified that, not the hypothetical can exist. The hypothetical can exist. But the actual thing, I don't think would exist if it did. Well, that's fine. My whole, yeah, right. And in the hypothetical, yes. So in the hypothetical, you'd be okay with a human killing and eating another human. So long as they're killing and eating a human, not made in the image of God. Well, yes or no. Yeah. Okay. This might be a good time to go in the Q&A. Yeah, sure. And your last thoughts, gentlemen. Okay. I want to say, folks, thanks so much for all of your questions. Move through these as fast as possible. And want to give you a reminder, modern day debates, debate con, Dallas, Texas. Folks, if you are in Dallas, Texas and you're listening right now, I hope your ears perk up because this conference is going to be in person. It's going to be huge and it's going to be in two weeks. It's going to be right next to DFW. You don't want to miss it. Pickets are linked in the description box. And there's a crowdfund linked in the description box that helps us cover costs, such as the venue and in order pool perks. So for example, like a signed photo or an emblem page from all the speakers for the day. Check them out. That helps us with those costs. And last but not least, our guests are linked in the description box. Do check out our guest links right now. Dr. J, I don't think you have a link right now, but maybe in the future. Probably not. I have, I do a podcast, but it's on a very wildly unrelated. So I don't know if it would be helpful or not. You got it. Check out Vegan Gains down below. Dang up. Fan dance says Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that meat eating is of the, I don't know if I pronounced this right, of the Guna G-U-N-A called ignorance. Is Vedic scripture a legitimate source to draw morality from? I'm not sure what it's for. I think it's more for J. Yeah. Some people think it is maybe and some people don't. I assume people don't agree on that. Well, the issue I see is if you're going to say morals come from, like, a divine commandment from God, well, people believe in different gods. It becomes a religious debate at that point. Correct. So you would just argue that their religion is wrong for X reason. Right. In the same way someone might say all religions are wrong for X reason. Yeah. So that isn't something I believe in. I base my moral beliefs based off the idea of human rights and I work out from there to see if other conscious creatures should also be included in the umbrella of human rights. So I read the, what is it called, the expanding circle a long time ago. Do you agree with the expanding circle? I hate to put it on you because it's a long enough time ago that I don't quite remember all the details. I've never read that book, so I don't know if I'd agree with it. Okay. You got it. This one from BAA. Thanks for your question says, where do both of you draw the line between pet food and food? And why? I would protect my dog with my life, but I eat chicken. I think, yeah. So I think you're saying you need to feed your pet meat. So, but they would protect their dog and they feel kind of hypocritical for feeding their dog meat. But these animals aren't much different from their dog. All my animals are fed on a vegan diet. We've gotten them, we rescued them all from once they were like really little puppies, very young. They've been on a vegan diet their whole lives. And as you can see, they're all healthy. Even my cat. I got my cat when he was about six to eight weeks old. He's three years old now and he's been on a vegan diet. So you don't have to make that decision between having a companion animal and feeding the meat or not having a companion animal and not killing other animals. You can just feed your cats and dogs a vegan diet. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Contrary in 420 says, Dr. J, all carnivores eat raw chicken. Or no, they say all carnivores eat raw skin, blood, organs, bone, muscle, fat, etc. Love their kills. If a man is a carnivore, why eat only cooked muscle and fat? I didn't say that I say that was required or they're arguing that that's what's required in the Bible or? I think there may be, the only thing I was thinking was that they're meaning that it was maybe arbitrary. Like that it's wasteful if you're just going to eat the muscle and the fat even. Oh, that maybe it's like, I think they're making a claim that it's not natural for us to eat meat. Thank you. Something like that. I think you're right. It's more that about that. You know, if it's a lion eating something that it eats everything that it can. And humans do it though. It's just this day. I think they're maybe alluding to this potentially precious. We just eat the meat and the fat. Yeah. I don't think that's a good argument against meat eating because cooking is just a unique practice to human beings. We also cook a lot of fruits and vegetables too. So yeah, I don't think eating meat is good for you. I don't think we really evolve to eat meat in particular. So you could maybe make those arguments from a health basis, but just the fact that we cook or have certain preferences when it comes to eating meat, I don't think that's a good argument against meat eating. It would have to either be from an ethical standpoint or from a health standpoint that you should argue against it. Yeah. I think being against has the, I obviously don't quite agree, but I think he's barked up the exact right tree and whether he probably shouldn't use the word expanding circle because that is a book and neither one of us can remember all that's in it. But the idea of, I think he's provided the best argument he can give and some of the other ones I have not found convincing. It's healthier. It could be even if you're a hundred percent right. It's healthier than every other type, you know. We don't have moral claims that you have to be healthy. And if you're not doing the most healthy thing for yourself or whatever, you're an immoral person. I don't think vegan gains, he obviously didn't make that argument tonight. So I assume he doesn't feel that's the strongest one. Gotcha. This one coming in from Ziggy Sigwald says, did he just describe eminent domain? It's earlier in the debate. I can't remember whether it matched. I think they're talking about the land rights argument, eminent domain, I think is some of the arguments for when people are on a place for a long time. It's called eminent domain. Gotcha. This one from you to have IQ says to vegan gains. Do you support hunting of feral hogs? They say these hogs are going around destroying ecosystems in the US, endangering numerous native species. So feral hogs are coming from the pig industry. So if you're against feral hogs and having them, you know, destroy natural native wildlife, then you should be against the pork industry. That's where all these feral hogs are coming from. They're just escaped pigs coming from these different farms. And then they're going to become wild. You could kill as many feral hogs as you want. You're never going to get rid of them because you haven't gotten rid of the source of them, which is the pork industry. But they like, given that we are dealing with that problem now, I am in favor of killing feral hogs. They are omnivorous. So they'll eat both plants and animals. So to prevent rights violations, I would be in favor of killing them. You got it. This one coming in from mad though says being gains. How do you feel about consuming crops such as coffee that turn or that unlike food crops are not necessary for human survival. These lead to needless crop death. Yeah. So the crop deaths argument is pretty poor, especially with coffee beans. I don't think there's any associated deaths with coffee beans. I'd have to see the data, but even with things like corn, the amount of animal deaths that it can be attributed to is virtually zero. It's surprisingly low. And with something like coffee beans that are picked by hand, I would imagine it's practically zero. And coffee beans, they basically produce their own pesticide. Insects don't like coffee beans. You got it. This one coming in from, folks, I always forget to say this, but I want to say folks, if it's your first time here at modern day debate, I'm your host James, modern day debate is a neutral debate platform. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from. For real folks, whether you be vegans, not vegans, we hope you feel welcome. And we also hope that you give a sincere listen to the other side. Maybe rather than tackle and like, this is only 1% of people out there, but it is the internet rather than heckle or, you know, mock. We do really hope that you give the other side a genuine listen to really try to understand it. This room from Siggy Sigwalt says, the religious approach is weak, especially coming from the monotheistic three. You see humans were created in God's image and everything on nature is there for us humans to use as we see fit. I'll give you a chance to respond. Dr. J. I think it's intended for you. Yeah, I mean saying everything is used for humans to see fit. And then, you know, stewardship says is tied in there. And so I, if you don't believe in a monotheistic God, it's an absolutely horrible argument. Obviously, I don't, I assume that's what they're suggesting. I wouldn't disagree. If you, if you, if you would reject any kind of deity, then it's a bad argument. This one. Well, I have something to say to that. I don't think there's any monotheistic religion that says the earth is, is for ours to use as we see fit. No, I don't believe in any like, I don't think there's any monotheistic religion that says it's okay to like create these massive factory farms where we destroy, you know, natural native habitats and just torture and murder animals en masse, giving them horrible lives before they die. Usually when, when it's mentioned in like, say Christianity, that you have dominion over animals, to me, it suggests that dominion should be used in a way that you should take care of animals. Like Jesus was a shepherd. He cared for animals. He didn't, I can't see Jesus working in a factory farm or, you know, mowing down just thousands of acres of forest so that he can make grass grazing cattle and then just torture and kill them all and turn them into hamburgers so that he can sell them at Burger King. Doesn't seem something that Christianity supports. So I don't know of any monotheistic religion that says you can do whatever you want to animals and nature willy-nilly. Yeah, I tend to agree with that. I brought up the idea of stewardship and so anything willy-nilly. As a matter of fact, it would have been a significantly tougher debate for me to argue factory farming is a good idea, right? So, you know, a vegan game is a more difficult thing and he doesn't have to just argue that factory farming is bad, which he might be able to do that even more effectively than he argued tonight. But he has to argue that all, you know, argue for all of veganism. But factory farming, I would say, is like the non-vegan idea that is significantly harder to fend in and of itself than just, you know, talking about veganism as a whole. You got it, this one coming in from. Appreciate your question. You say we're all free to do whatever it is that we're capable of. We restrict those liberties to be able to coexist in a more fair way. I don't have a natural right to live. Nothing does. But by changing our understanding, we inevitably end up challenging our morals. I don't think killing animals for food is good. Ideally, we should find a better way. Any thoughts? Yeah, so rights have to be granted and you do have to have enough people to agree on certain principles to grant rights. But I see that as a good thing. Just because there's no way to protect certain people or certain animals just based on your own moral views. That doesn't mean we shouldn't move towards a world where, you know, we do have governments and systems to protect the rights of individuals, including humans and animals. You got it. Dr. Jay, any thoughts? I agree that, you know, probably not. It was a long statement. I think vegan gains did fine. Ziggy Siegwald also says that statistic about cats basically driving like 30 species of small mammals and birds to extinction in the UK is mainly talking about domestic cats abandoned in the wild. So I think they mean like when people keep them as pets. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I'm pretty sure it's domesticated cats that are allowed to free roam because I've seen some of the research cats can actually roam an incredibly long territorial distance, domesticated cats. They can travel something like, you know, 60 kilometers in a single day around like a square area. So it's probably a combination of domestic and feral cats that are causing the species extinction. Gotcha. Ozzie in talks says, vegan gains, why are you OK with enslaving sentient beings on a leash? Name the trait. Why, you know, I think they're saying like they're not OK to put humans on a leash and treat them as a pet. Why is it OK with animals? And they say they don't exclude humans or just cats. Yeah, so if there were human beings that had the same cognitive capability as say a cat or a dog, I would be in favor of the same treatment of those human beings. If it's in the, like a very mentally incapable human's best interest to put them on a leash that they don't run into traffic or don't eat something or eat something that could make them really sick, then I'd be in favor of putting humans on a leash. So I don't see a contradiction. Parents put humans, their kids on leashes, right? I'm not on their neck, obviously. There's my vegan cat. Put their kids on leashes in a way. I mean, I wouldn't see that as an inherent problem necessarily. Got it. Joshua Wooden, thanks for your super chat. I didn't see a question attached, and I could have been a debate if you meant to. Rackens. Oh, thank you. Says why would you rather kill a kitten or an 80 year old man? I'd rather kill the 80 year old man, probably I really like kittens and the 80 year old man probably at stake, so. You got it. This one from, lj says there is nothing that will compare to biting into a fresh warm lamb chop, and they say serious question if we live on a globe, okay, no, we're not doing that. Mo, I'm sorry, LJ, but we're just, Mo says, Dr. J, if you think a dog owner is morally wrong for abusing their pet, but you will eat a cow or a pig, do you accept you are simply morally inconsistent? Choose one. That was directed at you. So it's okay to eat a cow, or it's okay to eat a cow, but not torture your dog? Well, I think they're asking, if they're presuming you're not okay with killing and eating dogs. So why would you not be okay with killing and eating dogs, but you are okay with killing and eating cows? I don't know that I would make a distinction that dogs are more special than cows. We obviously get more emotional attachment to certain kinds of animals, but people get emotional attachments to their cars, and obviously we don't think attach any morality to that necessarily. Okay, so if a person abuses their pet, like they hit their dog, they kick the dog. Right, yeah, yeah, so if you abuse a cow, if you think it's wrong to abuse a dog, can you abuse a cow? And the answer would be no, you cannot do both of those, which is why I probably wouldn't have taken a debate on factory farming. So you wouldn't consider, say, slicing an animal's throat open to be inherently abusive? Like that's how they're killed. So beating a dog is not what the question was. He said beating a dog. Yeah, but like I consider murder to be inherently abusive since I haven't seen a friendly way of committing murder. If killing a dog were murder, which I know you think it is because you think that humans and dogs have the exact same rights, I don't think that they do. So therefore it's not wrong. Well, whether we kill it, murder, call it murder or killing, we're talking about the same thing. I haven't found a friendly way of committing murder or killing. Well, murder and killing are not the same thing. Someone comes into your house and you shoot them, you're not gonna say you're a murderer, you killed them. Well, right, and a cow wasn't breaking into your home. So like we're talking about, so we're talking about the same thing. Yeah, so if a cow were a person, then it would be bad. And if they're not a person, then it doesn't mean it's not necessarily bad. So you made the right kind of argument, but you have to demonstrate that. If somebody were to shoot their dog in the head, you wouldn't consider that abusive? I would not consider shooting a cow or a dog in the head as any different. Right, but you wouldn't consider it abusive, I would. Yep. So you would not consider it to be abuse to shoot a dog in the head and shoot a cow in the head? No, because I don't see animals and humans as having the same rights. Right, but you recognize there is such thing as animal abuse. Right. Yeah, so how is that not abusive? Like you're committing basically the ultimate harm that can never in the future experience any longer. In the same way we're allowed to maybe have different rules on how we treat people, but we don't have to necessarily do everything we can to keep them alive. I mean, if you're in the hospital, there's no requirement that if you can't afford your treatment, we let you die peacefully. And we don't find that at all. That and moral too, I believe in like socialized healthcare, but... I do too, but it doesn't mean that if something costs $800 million to perform the treatment that would keep you alive a week longer, it doesn't mean you're gonna get it even in a socialized healthcare system. Right, okay, but you're still talking about killing an animal for something as unimportant as just taste pleasure. Like how is that not abusive? Like just because you could turn your dog into hamburgers, you think that isn't abusive. Right. Okay, so you're not against the idea of killing and eating dogs. No, I don't see a difference between many other cultures that don't have the emotional attachment to dog, kill and eat dogs, they do it in China, it's... How could you kill something like this? Like they're sweet and cuddly and they feel love. How is that not abusive? And other animals can be just as sweet and kind and cuddly as dogs. Birds are sweet and cuddly and we take their homes from them on a daily basis and we don't mind. This one from Joshua Woodin says, what are both of your opinions on it's illegal to destroy and or transport eagle eggs to yet abortion? I mean, you know what I mean, is legal and very encouraged? They're saying, do you think that there's, where do you guys stand on this? Are you consistent? Well, eagles are predatory animals. So I'm in favor of culling predatory animals because they kill and eat herbivorous animals. So I would rather live in a world where eagles don't exist. Gotcha. And then you're against abortion then as well? No, not as long as the fetus is not sentient. Oh, the wind is it's becoming... Oh, sorry. Maybe you should have asked that in the bait if I really wanted to know all those answers. I would say, I think the reason that we save eagle eggs could be various reasons. One of, it wouldn't be necessarily that it's immoral or immoral to not have them. It's just, maybe we'll find out the saliva of eagles is the key to curing cancer someday. So getting rid of biodiversity is probably just a poor idea. It doesn't have to necessarily be a moral good or a moral evil. It can just be something that people think is a good idea on whether it is or not. I guess we could all argue about. You got it. Con the stoner, Lynn says, how can you say don't eat meat to prevent animals from being killed but not say don't buy computers to prevent kids from being enslaved? Okay, I don't think computers are enslaving children at least not yet. So yeah, I don't see the... If they have batteries, they might have cobalt in them might be where they're going at that most, you know... Oh, I see, right. So there is actually an organization that most major manufacturers use that prevent things like slave labor and cobalt mines. So there is an international interest to prevent things like child exploitation in these mines. So yeah, if we could have a world where children aren't enslaved to produce cobalt, then I'm all in favor of it. You should have maybe mentioned lithium batteries. But... That may not be what he meant, but that was my best shot. Yeah, so I'm against child slavery and there should be ways to eliminate child slavery from any industry. And I didn't argue this line because even if vegan gains, we found out that he actually ate meat every day. It wouldn't actually make him wrong about vegan being right or not. Does that make sense? Like his consistency on whether he follows his moral code doesn't make his moral code wrong or not. So I was just trying to figure out whether there was moral... Whether he did it or not, or but whether his arguments were consistent and actually thinking he should treat animals the same in humans. But finding out, trying to find some sort of moral deficiency in the person you're arguing with me to me does not make the moral system incorrect. And I'm not even sure it's very nice to try to pick on someone and say, well, you're a moral, you're a bad person, whatever. I'm not sure that's the direction these debates should go. You got it. This one coming in from, do appreciate it. Only a few more left here. Gibson says, vegan gains, you know that there are situations where people hunt to help alleviate money struggles. There were many year, were a deer, tepidus, fed. Yeah, I don't think murder is justified just because it personally benefits you. The Nazis also benefited from stealing money from the Jews and killing them, taking all their wealth and property. I don't see how that justifies murder. I think they're trying to make an argument. I get what you mean in terms of broadly speaking, but I think they're trying to say that different from the Nazis, they're trying to say sometimes a person needs to hunt deer, let's say, to survive because financially, things are just so hard. I think they're saying a vegan diet's just too expensive, they're gonna go into poverty and suffer. What are your thoughts? Okay, well, let's say there are situations where somebody can't follow a vegan diet or else they'll starve to death. I would say, yeah, the moral thing to do would be to starve to death. I don't see a meaningful distinction between humans and animals, so I'd ask them to name the trait. Name the trait that's lacking animals that if lacking in a human being, they'd be okay with killing and eating human beings so that they could, say, survive or be financially well off. You got it. This one from Daft Mantis says, Dr. Jay, if two people share an identical moral standing aside from veganism, i.e., let's say both people are as good as each other, is the vegan person morally superior, inferior, or neutral, relative to the other? Oh, I would say that would depend, meaning like there could be situations depending on how the veganism practice that they were more moral, maybe even immoral, that would have to make me really hard to think about it. For example, if the person that were vegan were, the fact that they were vegan was, you know, saving the lives of other people or something like that, then that person would be a possible moral. So the only differences they don't eat, the only differences they don't eat, you'd say the vegan's morally superior? Could be, possibly could or possibly not, yeah. So there are situations that the vegan, that the results of that veganism could end up becoming, meaning they're morally superior. Well, the only difference is they cause fewer animal deaths. Oh, that's the only difference that no, the vegan would not be morally superior. Even though they're causing less suffering and death by not eating meat. That's right. This one coming in from BTF Wayne says, vegan gains, my teeth tell me I'm not a herbivore. And then they say, Y-D-M-F-W-S, what does this mean? Is this some sort of young people slang? I don't know what that abbreviation or whatever meant, but if you look at your mouth and compare it to a lion's mouth, there's a pretty big difference. And if I punched your fucking teeth out, I think you'd only be eating soup. You got it. This one coming in from, thanks for your question, Jasmine Wilder says, so for animal abuse laws, is Dr. J for the abolition of those laws and protections? The reason you might have animal abuse laws is because you could argue when some people become used to abusing animals, it could lead to them abusing humans. So there could be reasons for having animal abuse laws, even if you don't think that animals have the same exact rights as humans. You got it. Gerald Frost, thanks for your feedback on my audio. I was a little bit low. And I had one more question that somebody earlier I had put in this little list over here. And folks, last call for questions. Otherwise, we're gonna wrap up right after this one. Let me just, for some reason is not pulling up for me. Give me two moments. In the meantime, I wanna say, folks, if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button. We have many more debates coming up. And give me one second. I just wanna make sure I get this in because I know they were excited to ask it. Here it is. Zayamara Moo. Thank you very much for your question. Said, I have a question for vegan gains. If you are poor and in front of you, a deer is hit by a car. Is it moral to butcher it for food? Or is it moral to instead go hungry? Say the animal is already dead. Yeah, so if it's already dead, I don't see how eating it would contribute to a rights violation since it died from an accident. So I don't see an issue with that. I wouldn't even necessarily be against killing, or sorry, eating a person who had died from some sort of accident. So yeah, I don't see a moral issue with that. Or eggs that you would know would never hatch or something like that. Yeah, like if you were to find eggs that were unattended, that weren't fertilized, that will never hatch, yeah, something like that. If you say you'd be okay just to be sure, I'm only asking because I have a question for you guys because I've seen this in a movie. You said, I think if a person died by accident, so you didn't kill them, you'd be okay with the person eating them. Is it true? And I don't know, because this is a movie, this is why I'm asking. I think it was maybe the book of Eli. Is it true if you eat people, you would get like shakes, like tremors in your hands? Does it have any sort of effect on you? So it's a prion disease, and it's, I think it only affects a certain culture. And I'm pretty sure it's because they eat brains. So I think that's what it's from. It's a prion disease where if you eat somebody's brains in particular, you get kuru, that's the disease. Oh, okay, gotcha. Thank you for that. And this, we had a question just come in. The headed kamikaze says veganism is about reducing harm, quote, as much as possible. Unfulting. Therefore, desert islands, us or them, arguments don't apply. Dr. J, why are you trying to insinuate it's only worthwhile if it's all or nothing? So if the debate were, is veganism a good idea for Americans? That might be a different discussion, right? But this was not a discussion on whether veganism was a good idea for Americans or wealthy people or whatever you might wanna say. The discussion in vegan gains a very good job of this, of saying, is it a moral command? So if this person's saying, all I think veganism is is lessening harm, that was not the definition that vegan gains and I were going by in this debate. I assume he agree with that. And I'd love to comment if he disagrees. I would disagree with that premise that veganism is about reducing harm. The debate would be a fair bit different. I believe veganism is the idea that animals should have the same rights as human beings, not about reducing harm. Gotcha. Headed kamikaze. Thanks for your, when we got that. Captain Crunch said ask vegan gains to clarify the human, that's still human but not made in the image of God. When he believes humans, they put in all caps, are made in the image of God. Yeah, so this was a semantics issue. He was defining human as being made in the image of God. I define human differently, like say being of a certain genetic makeup. We're talking about the same thing though. So just because you're using a different definition, it doesn't mean you're not talking about the same exact thing. And therefore it's not a logical contradiction to make a hypothetical that there are humans not made in the image of God. You got it? Let me just check for any, LJ strikes again saying Tarzan would never think earth is a spinning ball. Thank you for that. I have to admit it is in all the flat earth debates when they've said, well you know, when you walk outside your door in the morning, like would you, if you hadn't been told it was a globe, would you think that it's flat or that it's a globe? And I think, you know, the intuitive answer is that it's flat, although that's like one point in a 100 point game. So I'm, but it's interesting. The last one came from, I think that's it. So I wanna say folks, our guests are linked in the description, check out our guests. We do appreciate them. They are the lifeblood of this channel. So we do appreciate them. Vegan Gains and Dr. J, it's been a true pleasure to have you on with us tonight. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. My pleasure. Folks, stick around. I will be back in about 18 seconds to give you updates about upcoming debates. So don't go anywhere. I'll be right back for a quick post-credit scene. Stick around. Thank you. Amazing. My dear friends, I wanna say thanks so much for coming by. I am excited. As you had seen on screen just a moment ago, modern day debate is having our first in-person, or I should say not first ever. This is our fourth conference, which by the way, it's like, holy moly, like time flies. I can't believe that this is our fourth conference. It is in Dallas. Let me know in chat where you are. I'm just gonna quick adjust these little boxes here in the old OBS. And I wanna say thank you guys for all of your support. We are excited about the future. There are big things coming here at modern day debate. And I've gotta tell you, it's been crazy that seriously, thank you guys for all of your support. Modern day debate has been blowing up lately. We've never had this kind of growth ever. In other words, in the last week, we've had like 4,000 subscribers, which is insane. We've never had that kind of growth. So I do wanna say thank you guys for your support. It means more than you know. I also look up how many shares we have. So for example, if you click the share button and let's say you have a friend who enjoys these topics, you're like, oh, I wanna share this debate with them. You can click that share button below. And I've checked in the stats. I always get a kick out of the stats in the Creator Studio. 1,000 shares per week. So thank you guys for sharing this channel. That helps us grow a lot as well. So thank you. Thank the speakers. They're the lifeblood of the channel, as I mentioned. And this conference coming up. Let me know, I see in the chat, Dario from Massachusetts. Thanks for coming by Dario. The 40-year-old vegan from Toronto. Wow. I am in Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm gonna put that in the old chat right now in Fort Collins. Anywhere near, anybody near me? Fort Collins, Colorado. And, oh, Scotland, chilly ING. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate you staying up late with us. I know it's late there. Belgium is where the world, where is the world going to? Is from Belgium. Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate that. I gotta tell you, I am excited about the future. Vancouver, BC, Canada from Projects. Thanks, Projects, for staying high. Chairman Meow, says from New Zealand. Wow, thanks for being with us, Chairman Meow. My sister's keeper, thanks for being with us, is from Georgia. Anybody in Texas, there's gotta be. Come on. I know that, I mean, there's, what is it, 250 people almost that are watching right now. I know that somebody has to be in Texas from the chat. If you are from Texas, I've gotta let you know. DebateCon4, it is linked in the description box. You can check out that link where it has all the details for this conference, but I'll give you the gist of it. It's gonna be five debates per day. So, Saturday, November 14th in Dallas. All the religion, atheism debates, and then Sunday, November 5th. So, the 4th, November 4th, two weeks from now is the first day, and then the second day is Sunday, November 5th. So, this is only 14 days away. That's how close the conference is. For real, folks, it's huge. Conrad says, I'm in Texas. Glad you're here, Conrad. Thanks for coming by. And, BTF Wayne says, Minnesota, wow. I lived in Minnesota for eight years. I wanna say, this conference is gonna be huge. You can see one of the debates shown on the bottom right of the screen. Has the left gone too far? These are two, I don't know, maybe leftists. I know Leo would be more leftist. Chud Logic, I don't know. Is he? You guys can let me know. But they're gonna be debating whether or not the left has gone too far. Chud's kind of like, I don't know. Is he like, it's fair to say he's in the middle? Chud Logic? But, as you can see at the bottom right of the screen, tickets for the political day of the conference are linked below. So, check out those tickets. And also, though, you might be thinking, oh, James, what else is there going on here? So, you mentioned there's some other cool stuff. Well, let me show you some of this other cool stuff. I just noticed that I've got this little, what is, that's weird. But let me show you on here the little screen here. This has both days for the conference. So, you can see here on the left side, debate con four, that's our promo poster for the religion debates day. By the way, thanks for your support. If you haven't yet, hit that like button. We do appreciate that. Seriously, it means more than you know. My sister's keeper says, James, you have siblings. I do. I have older siblings. I'm the baby of the family. And, as you can see on the left side of the screen, these are the debates for the religion and atheism day. Matt Delonte versus Andrew Wilson of the Crucible on Christianity versus Secular Humanism, which provides a better foundation for ethics. You don't wanna miss that. David Wood versus Aaron Raw. On whether or not naturalism is true. You don't wanna miss that either. That's gonna be a big one. Those are two big name guys who have never crossed swords before. So that's gonna be huge. Then below them, you can see Eric Hernandez who's going to be debating Leo on whether or not there's a soul. That's gonna be a great one. I'm excited about that. New topic, by the way. And Issa, beer. So you can see there on the second from the very bottom on the right hand side of that poster on the left. Issa is gonna be taking on David Wood on whether or not Muhammad was a prophet. That's gonna be controversial, believe me. That's the kind of stuff where I'm like, do we have to hire security? Then on the left, bottom left, I should say. Whitsett Gitzett is going to be debating Leo on whether or not, oh, actually, basically it's on creationism versus atheism. New topic there. You don't wanna miss that one. It's gonna be huge. And then on the right side of the screen, these are our political debates on the political debates day. Destiny versus Sean Fitzgerald. Actual Justice Warrior. This is the headline debate for the day. Trump or Biden, who is better for America's future? That's gonna be awesome. Then you can see Leo versus Chud. We've already talked about that one. That was the one on screen. Has the left gone too far. Then Notso Eridite and PWF, Alex. Versus Pharah and Destiny on whether or not only fans is the exploitation of lonely customers. Wow. That's gonna be juicy. You don't wanna miss that one. And then on the bottom right, you can see there, Cypher. It's gonna be taking on Actual Justice Warrior on whether or not the left is soft on crime. You don't wanna miss that either. It's gonna be huge. We're excited about this conference. It's going to be huge for us. Thanks for all of your guys' support of our events. Yeah, Hooligan says who let James out of his dungeon. He needs to finish assembling the chairs for debate con. It's only 14 days away. It is, and it's gonna be amazing. We wanna say, folks, I am beyond excited about the future. We're continually improving things. I've got my little audio box over here, a little mixer, because we are constantly trying to figure out how to improve the audio. Last time, we had a tough one. Our software that we usually use for our mixer was not negotiation, it just wasn't working. So we switched to a new software. An audio expert told me, he said, yeah, this is gonna be way more reliable. Believe me, your audio is gonna be much better. So we are excited about that. We are always working on improving ourselves. Modern day debate has lots to improve, that's for sure. But that's only exciting to us, because that means we have so much potential. Look at where we can go. It's gonna be big, my friends. We appreciate all of your support. Thank you guys, we love you guys. Sajonab in the chat says, middle of nowhere, George, what's up, James? Good to see you, Bob. And Sajonab in chat is also no joke. A huge reason, I'd say the reason. He was a necessary condition, his helping out with debate con one, which was at the beginning of 2022. So we've been doing this for almost two years with these conferences, and Bob was there to help get us off the ground, because it just never would have happened if it wasn't for Bob. He did so much to where it's exciting, but wanna say, BTF, Wayne says, hot debate topic, Jim Jordan is a good candidate for speaker, juicy indeed. But wanna say, I've gotta get some rest. I wanna say, I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. Thank you guys for being here. Goat, I see you there in the old live chat. Chris Hamburg, good to see you there, as well as Fallen Merrick, happy to have you with us. LJ, thanks for coming by. Simon Allen, glad that you're here. It says, good night all, good health. Thank you, Simon, appreciate that. Also wanna say thanks for all of your positivity, folks. We love positive people. One trait, because I'm getting my PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology, one of the topics we study is leadership. There are some traits that are culture-specific in terms of desirability in a leader. So for example, like more Western cultures, they tend to like more extroverted leaders. But if you're in an Eastern culture, that's not as important to be extroverted as a leader. That culture doesn't, they're not like, as in my opinion, I'd say here in the West, we go a little goo goo gaga over it. In the East, they're kinda like, yeah, you know, it can be good. But there are some traits that are cross-culturally desired in leaders. Couple of them, not surprisingly, honesty, all the truth, fairness, so people being, let's say, kind of rewarded based on merit, things like that. Also, no joke, positivity, seriously, positivity is, you know what it's like when you're by someone who's a downer and they always criticize, ooh, this is bad, ooh. Nobody wants to be around those people. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. So I'm gonna tell you, it's so important. We appreciate you guys being positive in the old chat. And in the comments, positive people make for good leaders. It's at least a huge contributing factor. And like I said, that's cross-cultural. So in other words, across the whole planet. If you, if an alien species came here and said, hey, tell me one trait of leaders just across your whole planet, like what's generalizable in terms of traits of leaders? You say, hey, it doesn't matter the culture. People want positive leaders. People who are excited, they're looking to positive, brighter things. And they are not complainers, whiners, or trying to, especially trying to tear people down. So do you wanna say we love you? I would appreciate you guys. Thank you guys for being with us. Chili ING, glad you're here. Copper, in quarter, glad to have you with us. As well as Richard Ammerike, thanks for coming by. And Iron Horse, good to see you. Glad that you are with us. As well as Dave Hill, thanks for coming by. Let's see here. Jacob Emanuel, glad that you are with us. Joshua Wooden, thanks for all of your support. Frolicking in grass, we are glad that you're with us. Thank you for being here. But yeah, seriously, you guys make this fun. Dario, thanks for being here. Appreciate you. Where is the world going to? Thanks for being here. Appreciate your positivity and memento. Thanks for coming by. Appreciate you. Robin Hoodstah, thanks for coming by. We are glad that you're here. V. Thomas, thanks for being here. We do appreciate you. Glad that you were with us. Thanks for hanging out here. It's an eclectic mix of people here. One thing is, sometimes people say, man, there's a lot of fighting at modern day debate. Because yeah, there's a lot of debating and stuff like that. Sometimes people get a little fiery, but not a big deal. It's like water under the bridge. We don't try to get excited about it. We do want to say we are excited about positivity, but we're not going to try to browbeat people when they are too hard, too hard on each other. One thing about that is modern day debate is. It's true. There's a lot of fighting in comments and live chat and things like that. Some people, oh, you know, there's a toxic chat. Some people are A-holes, I agree. This is a small percent. It's like a 1%. But in terms of all the debating or the fighting, whatever you want to call it, is we're also a very diverse channel. Like there are vegans in the chat right now and there are non-vegans in the chat right now. And on debates when we host religion, there are Christians, Muslims, atheists, you name it. Like there's everybody across the board. This isn't an atheist channel. It's not a Christian channel. It's not a Muslim channel. It's, we've always had the goal of being a neutral channel in the sense that. I mean, you guys know like some of my personal beliefs, like you've asked, you know, I'll share them. But I don't want to use modern day debate as a vehicle to like, unless I'm debating. Like if I'm in debate and there's someone moderating like Ryan or Justin or Converse or then, okay, sure. Then I'll try to, you know, make my case for something. But otherwise, like if it's just me like a post-credits scene, I don't want to, you know, push my views where there's not somebody to give me pushback, right? And likewise, I don't want to do like these and I'm not trying to criticize essay type videos. That's what most YouTubers do is they have, you know, it's like a one, like, I don't know, to some extent a one-sided video. And I'm not slamming that. I think that's good for YouTube. You have all sorts of different takes and stuff and you can go wherever you want and you get a more, a deeper, more comprehensive case for that. Because in, you know, a debate, you've got limited time. You got to bring your very best arguments and you've got to make them concise. You know, I got to squeeze them into a little 20 minute opening statement. But I've got to say one of the reasons we have a lot of fighting here, I think, is because it's an eclectic channel. Like it's let everybody's watching. It's not, because if it's like, if you had just everybody, let's say, we're vegans tonight, yeah, they disagree on some things. You know, vegans still disagree on some things, even within veganism, maybe. Or if you had all non-vegans tonight, you know, like, yeah, they disagree on some of these. But they generally agree. They'd agree an awful lot. But when it's, you know, when the topic is being debated and you have both sides present, like, yeah, they're going to fight, they're going to debate. Sometimes they're just going to a little heated. It's not a big deal. You know, let's treat it as water under the bridge and not, you know, worry about it. So we've got to say, I think it's a beauty that modern day debate is able to do that because few channels are able to do that. But yeah, Chairman Miao says, why some comments not appearing? Good question, my friend. It's one reason, and I guess this is what I would guess it is. There are certain words that YouTube, they even, if you put it in your chat or comment, they won't show. YouTube does it. It's just the algorithm that like, there's a computer that sees like your comment. And if it has certain controversial words, they just won't let you put it. So that might be it. And sometimes remember there are some words that were kind of like, wait, what? How is that controversial? But you know, YouTube, that's just the way they are. So that really is, for real, that's probably why they're, if you had a comment that didn't show, that's probably why. Cause we try to be pretty like easy going here about like, you know, people say what they want. We're not, we don't like ban swear words or anything. Let's see, the head of Kamikaze says, James, would you debate one of the other hosts? I don't think you'd make for a very good show. Only because, don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're good debaters. I'm okay, I feel like, you know, I guess statistically, I should guess that I'm like an average debater. You can see some of my old debates they're on the channel if you go back far enough. But I just don't think it'd be very exciting. Where one thing that occurred to me today, I had an epiphany, we have to get back to what made modern day debate big. They're like, what's that, James? Like, well, what's the goal? What's the strategy right now? Cause we are always kind of like thinking about, what's our strategy for how we're gonna grow modern day debate and expand. I think we've become too focused. And don't get me wrong, we're thankful for when people subscribe. But the biggest thing that I'm like, you know what, I get it that we wanna grow in that way. We wanna have more people hear about us and more people subscribe and like kind of grow modern day debate outward. But the biggest thing that we have to refocus on, this is like an epiphany for me today is we've gotta give value, like good debates that people are excited about. And that's something that I gotta be honest with you guys. Like tonight was really good. I wanna say, I wanna be clear about that. It was really good. It was very deep and it was articulate and it covered different arguments. It was interesting. It was like, okay, I haven't heard that before. We have to do more of that. I think we've gotten a little complacent and we've gotta fix it. I think the modern day debate has seen, you know, we've seen like, whoa, we've got over a hundred thousand subscribers now. And now it's like, oh my gosh, like a week ago we had 125 and now we just hit like 130,000. It's crazy. But the thing is subscribers in a real way can be a vanity metric. I've seen YouTube channels, it's not uncommon. I've seen them with like a million subscribers, sometimes even close to two million when they get the same amount of views as modern day debate. And the reason is they just haven't done a good job of I think a big part of, there's different reasons I think, like one is cultivating a community, which you could do better at that too. But another thing is to not be complacent and start putting out quantity of content and to instead focus on quality of content. Like it's gotta improve as you go. That will keep your subscribers engaged and that'll keep non-subscribers engaged too. So that's something that we do have to work on. We, I think we've gotten complacent, modern day debate, we're gonna get back to it. Now, like I said, not all of our debates are bad. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that like tonight was great. I was very happy with it. But I am saying that it's true that some, where I'm kind of like, we gotta lift our standard up. We've gotta get back to where we used to be hungry. It's like Rocky in Rocky through, was it, it was in Rocky four, where he was kind of like fighting this complacency and he didn't want to be a fancy boy. And he wanted to say, I'm gonna go work and train in the barn. That's what modern day debate has to do right now. And that's going to kind of keep us moving forward like a locomotive. So I wanna say thank you guys for your support. We're always working on improving. We appreciate all your feedback. I love you guys. Thanks for kind of, for thanks for being here. Thanks my sister's keeper. James, you really have leadership character. Seriously, that means more than you know. I really do appreciate that. Thank you for real. We're excited about the future. We're gonna figure it out. We're gonna make our way. And we are always going to strive to provide a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case on a level planning field. That's what we're doing here at modern day debate. And we are excited to have you be a part of it. Thanks everybody. We'll see you the next one. And like I said, check out those links in the description box for debate con four coming up in two weeks in Dallas, Texas. You don't wanna miss it.