 Awesome. Thanks so much for coming to debate con for folks thrilled to have you here We're gonna get the debate started before I do I just want to give you a quick shout out and thank you to our promo or I should say our sponsor for this event in Particular manifold is a play money prediction Platform so it's kind of like predictive you heard about that, but you're not using any real money. Don't risk your own money It's just for fun. You predict outcomes including some of our debate con debates So all of our debates tomorrow We do have voting and we're actually gonna vote on one tonight because there's gonna be an inverse The in-person hand raise is how we're actually going to determine which side is more persuasive So more on that for the next debate, but do want to say huge. Thank you to manifold That's the as you can see on the bottom left of the screen there That's manifold right there. They're linked in the description as well But we're going to go without any further ado with Aron's opening statement Aron. Thanks for being with us The floor is all yours. Thank you very much Is naturalism true Question doesn't even make sense does it Because naturalism is commonly understood or often understood to be the study of nature Therefore it cannot be true or false. It just is But my experience has been that the intent of the question is not in good faith When Bonner Day debate asked me to defend naturalism. I said that the topic is annoying But that it might be fun explaining that to you the audience The reason it's annoying is not just that it's a stupid question, but it's also a fallacy one that I hear all the time You see in 1674 Matthias Knudsen probably the first person to publicly identify as an atheist Wrote a book in which he defined atheism as not believing in any God a century later Baron Dahlbrock the father of atheism declared the same thing adding that babies are born atheists because they have no knowledge of God And both men made up different words to describe people who not only have a lack of belief in God But who also have a belief that there is not a God They didn't agree on that part, but Webster's dictionary accepted and published the non-belief definition that both of them gave for atheism Then another hundred years after Baron Dahlbrock Thomas Huxley Invented the word agnostic and philosophers tried to use that word to redefine atheism such that instead of Just not having a belief in God philosophers said atheists must also have a belief in not God And then they went even further such that a denial of belief became a belief in denial and atheism was redefined again This time is a rejection of the proposition Rather than rejection of belief in the proposition that we see as an ill-defined unsupported absurdity The faith Conversely has been described as pretending to know things you don't know Or assuming things that are not evidently true and believing it anyway Where believers get to assert baseless speculation as if it was a matter of fact, which is logically indefensible In any application outside of religion that would be called lying Only faith gets to treat unsupported assertions as revealed truth, but it's still indefensible even there So defenders of the faith use this definition of atheism to shift the burden of proof onto the unbelievers as if We have the more difficult burden of having to prove a negative as if they don't have to substantiate their claim that there is a God But instead they found a loophole where it falls upon us to prove that there is not one The same thing goes for physicalism materialism naturalism Physicalism is the idea that everything is physical as opposed to not physical whatever that means Even thoughts and emotions are essentially chemical synapses. So even ideas are fundamentally physical Likewise materialism is the idea that everything is material though both of these can also be interpreted as the belief that there is Physical material and some of us though not necessarily all of us Except that there is a physical material world There are a frustrating view however Who like to pretend as if there is no physical material as if atoms don't exist not really because everything is essentially Imaginary as if reality is an illusion just an idea Where we are just a brain in a vat like the matrix or that what we think is reality is really just a dream of drama And that when he wakes up we will all cease to exist if you think therefore you are Then you side with most of us along with the overwhelming majority of scientists 85% who hold to non skeptical realism meaning the position that reality is real by definition Whether you believe in gods and miracles or not most of us except that there is physical material But the faithful propose that there is another aspect of the universe that is immaterial ethereal Spiritual mystical but again They can't substantiate a belief that they hold on faith in lieu of evidence and they won't admit that they don't have evidence for it either So to get around that they have defined these terms to mean a positive belief that physical material is all there is Again, they've shifted the burden of proof on to us as if it's our job to prove that there is not some sort of Uncertain undefined alternative reality in addition to the one we know Asking whether naturalism is true as much the same thing Presenting naturalism as a belief that everything is natural as opposed to supernatural Which is another word for magical when we talk about magical things. We're talking about supernatural things. They are essentially the same thing The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy says that naturalism is widely viewed in positive term as a positive term by In philosophical circles, we're only a minority of philosophers reject reality So most philosophers most scientists and most regular people accept that the natural world exists And that we're not just figments of some God's imagination Of course, it matters what definition we're using and that same article also says that there's no particularly precise or informative definition of naturalism that its meaning depends on the context and In this case tonight. I am part of that context Because I was invited to debate this topic and I most often debate science denialists especially intelligent design creation Scientists those who are explicit in what they mean by naturalism for example Don McLeary was a young earth creationist and the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education He famously objected to the collective testimony of 150 professional scientists endorsing that evolution should be taught as fact in public schools McLeary who was just a dentist himself not a scientist of any sort said that someone has to stand up to these experts McLeary was also taught in a Christian school Where he told his fourth grade students to keep chipping away at that objective empirical evidence and keep pointing out that their deductive Reasoning depends on the premise nature is all there is remind them they might be wrong His problem with naturalism might stem from the fact that Darwin and his contemporaries were not called scientists In the 19th century the people who studied science were called naturalists Thus many creationists conflate evolution with naturalism McLeary for example is a self-described proponent of supernaturalism He believes that the world is essentially magical and that's why he thinks he can dismiss objective empirical evidence as if it's meaningless Those are just facts. They don't matter McLeary's website quoted intelligent design creationist Philip Johnson complaining that Metaphysical naturalism or materialism or just plain old naturalism is the idea that nature is all there is Modern science today is totally based on naturalism in all of intelligent designs arguments against both Darwinian Evolution and the chemical origin of life. It is their naturalistic base. That is the ultimate target The important aspect of Darwinian evolution is its naturalistic claim that all life is a result of purposeless unintelligent material causes So by that interpretation Naturalism doesn't mean belief in nature nor the study of nature what it means is atheism Worse than that. It's not just a belief. It's not just an absence of belief in God It's a belief in the absence of God and worse than that. It's not just God It's everything supernatural mystical magical miraculous It's a belief or assertion that there is no magic rather than not believing in magic typical shifting of the burden of proof Philip Johnson is an attorney and one of the founders of the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture Which is as scientific as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is Democratic The Discovery Institute is called a think tank But what they really do is focus on promoting religiously motivated pseudoscience propaganda in an attempt to undermine science education In an internal memo that was accidentally emailed externally Johnson explained how the Discovery Institute seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies How does materialism have cultural legacies? Because materialism essentially means accepting that the material world exists But not also believing in the immaterial supernatural magical religion By their arbitrarily imposed interpretation if naturalism is true then magic is not real and neither is God since gods are made of magic and These religious fundamentalists think that whether you whether you accept evident reality or whether you prefer to make believe something else instead Either way they say that it's a matter of belief of choosing to believe which is not an option for all of us It's not for me But they say that beliefs are a matter of faith all of them and that faith is inherently cultural that everything you everything you believe is a matter of choice and And and and they say that if it's a religion somehow and that even a lack of religion is a religion and that a lack of faith is faith As if we can choose to believe whatever we want and they don't understand that some of us Don't believe that we that we don't make believe that some of us need a sufficient reason to compel belief and that we don't want To be fooled into believing anything just because anything that isn't evidently true So we're not going to believe impossible nonsense for no good reason just because you say so Don McLeary went a bit further in an article to the Austin American statesman wherein he clarified that he's not just against Philosophical naturalism. He's against methodological naturalism, too Which is essentially the scientific method Specifically, it is the premise that all postulations must be based on physical evidence and that all claims or hypotheses must be testable To see whether it's still supported or is potentially falsifiable because if it's wrong there should be some way to show that These requirements both keep science limited to what is natural or real because there's no way to test the supernatural or unreal well If magic was real There would be people like Spock Yandolph Obi-Wan Hermione and Dr. Strange who could demonstrate that reliably at least well enough to Show that there's a there there But of course in real life no one can do that No one ever has Not one person has ever performed well enough to show any sort of success rate Despite however many thousands of faith healers snake handlers tongue speakers prayer warriors transcendental gurus Weige board medium psychic adepts feng shui decorators reiki masters treasure divinators fortune tellers spellcasters and exorcists There are and have been all over the world since prehistoric times We still can't show that there even is a supernatural at all instead We know from neuroscience and so on that souls Don't exist and most of the important fables in the Bible and the Quran and all other supposedly sacred scriptures are just fantasy folklore With a few embellishments and so few legends and such thrown in there with little or no connection to history or reality otherwise and Every one of the supposed saints and all the miracles that the Catholic Church claims to have confirmed Ardubius at best if not already debunked and I say this as someone who was once a very spiritual person I Wanted to I used to believe in reincarnation of spiritual life force my actual religion sincerely for years Was essentially Jedi I Sincerely thought that there were people who really could do all that stuff. I Really wanted to believe that there was some truth to the paranormal I wanted to believe in UFOs astral projections mental telepathy ESP clairvoyance spirit photography telekinetic movement full trans mediums the Loch Ness Monster in the theory of Atlantis I Wanted to believe all that was true, but I didn't want to make believe I Didn't want to rely on faith because I know how inherently auto deceptive faith always is I Wanted to know what was true in each case and I wanted to show the truth of it The problem is there just isn't any of that that we can show to be true at all so in this debate I Will hope that my interlocutor and I already both accept the physical material nature exists And if he has any legitimate evidence of a supernatural aspect in addition to that such as someone certainly would have by now If there was any real reality to that at all then I'll be happy to see it But I will not accept shifting of the burden of proof I'll put that burden back where it belongs Nor will I attempt to prove a negative? I will not try to prove that there is not an undefined Indeterminable non-physical immaterial supernatural alternative reality Instead I will leave it up to him to substantiate his belief that there is one Which if he means to show that naturalism is not true, then that's what he would have to do anything All right. Thank you for your up to 16 minute opening So we're gonna kick it over to you David and floors yours for up to 16 minutes for your opening statement. Thank you James We're hosting this debate and another 487 debates every single month for the past five years are officially the all-time King of debate hosting and you're you always have a good crew there with you special thanks to Aaron raw for agreeing to defend naturalism although since he sounds like he Doesn't take it very seriously as a position. I'm not sure where this is going to go There are people who take naturalism seriously as a position. So I'm happy to respond to them and I think it's a good idea to have To address a position like this in debates like this. There's normally The theist defending some position and the atheist responding and challenging that position and guess what sometimes atheists hold Views to and there are naturalists and there are all kinds of various positions and it's good to ask Hey, why why do you believe in that position? But we'll we'll push forward and see where things go I don't know where things are going to go at this point because again our own doesn't sound like he adopts this position seriously Naturalism is you and Aaron's right Aaron's right that there can be different definitions But they're usually in the ballpark if you're not talking about methodological naturalism talking about metaphysical naturalism. It's a Roughly the claim that the natural world is What exists or what is real it would be contrasted with supernaturalism supernaturalism would be the view that yes, there's the natural world But there's something else that something else could be God or gods or spirits souls all kinds of things and Supernaturalism would usually include the idea that these things somehow interact with the natural world So in a debate on whether naturalism is true It doesn't make a lot of sense to not accept the burden of proof if the question is is naturalism true I'm actually Empted given a topic like this to Play skeptic like some of the popular atheists play skeptic I can just sit here and say well that there's no evidence for naturalism show me that naturalism is true and so on Prove to me that naturalism is true and play skeptic No matter what the position is There's a famous video where Richard Dawkins Who's asked something like if God did exist? If God did exist what sort of evidence could God give you that would convince you? Dawkins says that when he was younger he would have said God could just speak to him in an audible voice We heard a big booming voice. He'd say oh, okay. Yeah, I believe And that would be enough but he goes on to point out that upon further reflection an audible voice wouldn't convince him If he heard an audible voice, he would simply conclude that he was hallucinating He then agrees with Peter Bogosian who's having the discussion with him that if God wrote a message and the star Something like believe in me Richard Dawkins He still wouldn't believe in God because he could blame powerful aliens for the message written in the stars So Dawkins concluded that no matter what the evidence is it can always be reinterpreted and therefore that there's absolutely Absolutely nothing God could do to convince him that he exists The most interesting part is that Dawkins has spent a good amount of his career Challenging theists who provide evidence for God's existence even though at the end of the day He admits that he's going to reject the evidence no matter what it is Notice that anyone can do this any flat earth or Can say I challenge you to prove to me that the earth is spherical But just so you know any evidence you give me I'm going to automatically reject it That doesn't sound very rational and yet automatically rejecting the evidence is apparently a position held by several of the Popular new atheists so even if God appeared in front of us in glory started blasting people with lightning bolts Atheists could easily explain that away. Maybe we're dreaming wait. Maybe we're hallucinating Maybe we're in the matrix. Maybe powerful aliens are tricking us In the in the Q&A from earlier Matt asked why God doesn't just talk to us and tell us that Muhammad's a prophet But think about it if we suddenly heard a voice believe in Muhammad. He's a true prophet Does anyone think Matt Dilla-hunti would believe that and convert to Islam? I Don't I don't think Matt does either so why bring that up again? This Method can be used to reject anything. I could use this method to reject the existence of any atheist I could issue a challenge to every atheist in the world. I could issue a challenge to our own Rock and say I challenge you to prove to me that you exist In fact, I'll sweeten the pot if our rock and prove to me that he exists I'll agree to become an atheist tonight The caveat is that I'm going to use the method of people like Richard Dawkins and whatever evidence he gives me I'll say well, maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe I'm in the matrix Maybe a powerful aliens are tricking you or something like that If I were to use the methods that atheists use there's no way any atheists could ever convince me that he exists It's impossible to prove much of anything to someone who's using these kinds of methods Little side note by the way if the method you're using to reject theism could be used to reject any position No matter how solid it may be probably need a new methodology, but let's focus on naturalism One of the most catastrophically self undermining hypotheses ever some hypotheses are what I would call Catastrophically self undermining. What what do I mean here? Well? We can see it with simple claim if I say there is no truth Someone would quickly object David if you're saying there's no truth and the statement you're making Wouldn't be true either the claim undermines itself Let me give you a more relevant example In Descartes meditations on first philosophy Descartes famously Imagines what it would be like if an all-powerful demon were constantly deceiving him Descartes didn't believe this he brings it up as part of a thought experiment in order to see if there's anything people can Absolutely certain about an omnipotent deceiver. We're tricking me every moment of every day. Is there anything I could still know and Descartes says yes, there is as long as I'm thinking I can be certain that I exist. I think therefore I am It's impossible even for an all-powerful deceiver to deceive me about my own existence from there Descartes tries to figure out more things that he can't possibly be wrong about Again Descartes didn't actually believe in an omnipotent fever But some suppose you meet someone who actually is someone who actually does believe that Suppose you meet someone who believes that he's being deceived every moment of every day by an omnipotent demon This person's worldview should raise an obvious question namely if you really believe that you're constantly being deceived by an Omnipotent demon. How can you trust your beliefs enough to even believe that? How can you trust your belief in a not in an omnipotent deceiver if you can't trust your beliefs at all because you think you're constantly being deceived? Did the demon who's deceiving you about everything else suddenly give you accurate information about the fact that he's deceiving you all the time? In other words, if you take the omnipotent deceiver hypothesis seriously, you can't take it seriously I'm constantly being deceived by an omnipotent deceiver that I can't trust my beliefs But my belief that I'm constantly being deceived would be one of the beliefs I can't trust hence The hypothesis would self-destruct if you take it seriously, you can't take it seriously What I'm calling a catastrophically self undermining hypothesis But there's another catastrophically self undermining Hypothesis before us and it's called naturalism If you take naturalism seriously, you can't take it seriously And I hope we're going to agree on that today Because you can't treat the cognitive abilities that produce the belief as reliable when you're dealing with a hypothesis like naturalist Naturalism is a hypothesis about all of reality Naturalism were true and you received your cognitive faculties reason perception memory and so on From the naturalistic processes that are available to you Then you can't trust your cognitive faculties when you're dealing with a topic like naturalism They weren't made for anything close to that Explain why Human beings have the ability to reason for using it right now and we tend to trust our reasoning ability We wouldn't have discussions like this if we thought that our cognitive faculties the processes that produce our beliefs were unreliable But naturalists have a problem here Because they can only explain things by appealing to natural objects natural events natural causes Think about this for a moment You have you have beliefs Ultimately according to naturalism your beliefs must be the result of physical processes in your brain now. What's going on in here? Particles in motion chemical reactions neurons firing It's all physical governed by laws of nature not by some sort of commitment to truth So what really seems like careful reasoning to you is in reality straightforward mechanical mindless cause and effect a fancy Array of falling dominoes Illusions aside then You arrive at your beliefs via a process that has absolutely nothing to do with whether those beliefs are true or false chemicals couldn't conceivably air less if Naturalism is true and you believe in naturalism right now You were causally determined by non-rational particles obeying non-rational laws of nature By a process set in motion long before you were born to believe in naturalism If naturalism is true and you believe in supernaturalism right now You were causally determined by non-rational particles mindlessly obeying non-rational laws of nature By a process set in motion long before you were born to believe in supernaturalism The particles and the laws of nature that causally determined what you believe right now Couldn't conceivably care less whether your beliefs are true or false a false belief is every bit as determined By non-rational particle interactions as a true belief So if naturalism is true, what sense does it make to trust our reasoning ability or our beliefs or even our belief in naturalism None whatsoever But it gets worse Here's a quote from Charles Darwin Darwin is responding to William Graham whose book is a defense of design in nature Darwin writes to Graham You have expressed my inward Conviction though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done that the universe is not the result champ But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of a man's mind Which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or at all trustworthy Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind if there are any convictions in such a mind? Darwin says that he shares Graham's conviction that the universe is not the result of champ But he goes on to say that he can't trust his convictions because his mind has been developed from the mind of the lower animals One could argue that Reliable cognitive faculties would help organisms survive and reproduce and would therefore be selected in the struggle for survival But this response would be unsuccessful for several reasons First even false beliefs can help organisms survive and reproduce if you refuse to eat certain deadly berries because you believe they're poisonous And I refuse to eat them because they've been cursed by an angry wizard. We both avoid the berries and we both survive a False belief can often help you survive just as well as a true belief Second for purposes of selection False beliefs can sometimes be more effective than true beliefs You've got the hots for someone, but she's definitely out of your league and you're too shy to make a move But you call up the astrology hotline and the psychic tells you that the position of the planet Venus is just right for love Your false belief in astrology might give you the confidence you need to walk up to her and say hey, what's your name? What's your sign? You might be impressed by your confidence and she might love astrology and you might have ten kids together Your false belief can help you reproduce collection advantage Third the kinds of beliefs that help us survive and reproduce are usually grounded in simple observation and experience I gave mate Bag it died eating those berries, so I won't eat them But even the lower mammals are capable of learning by observation and experience How mice learn to avoid traps? Human beings obviously have more developed abilities, but not enough to push their reliability Far beyond the tasks. They were selected to perform at best Then we might trust our faculties and matters that involve finding food using a spear against an enemy or doing something to attract a mate Naturalism combined with natural selection therefore gives us almost no basis for trusting our reasoning ability when it comes to theology epistemology ethics or metaphysics as Patricia Churchland points out given a naturalistic interpretation of evolutionary theory Truth takes the hindmost in the struggle for survival Churchland writes looked at from an evolutionary point of view principal function of nervous systems is to enable the organism to move appropriately Boiled down to essentials a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the 4 f feeding fleeing fighting and reproducing Principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive and so far as Representations serve that function Representations are a good thing Getting things right in space and time therefore is a crucially important factor for nervous systems And there is often considerable evolutionary pressure deriving from considerations of speed improvements in sensory motor control Confirm an evolutionary advantage fancier style of representing is advantageous along as it is geared to the organism's way of life and Enhances the organism's chances of survival truth whatever that is Definitely takes the hindmost If human reasoning ability was selected simply because it helped members of our species get the body parts where they should be How can we have any confidence in the central claim of naturalism? As you would say we must be far removed from the smallest tendency to skepticism Not to be apprehensive that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculty They're just not made for this sort of thing So naturalism is true. You weren't made to figure out the universe. You were made to find Barry So how can we believe in naturalism when belief in naturalism undermines the reality the reliability of our cognitive faculties? Uh, I don't know what the evidence is going to be that we should take this seriously as a position And it doesn't sound like Arun is going to treat this seriously as a position that should be defended So we might actually end up agreeing If we're talking about naturalism versus supernaturalism The takeaway would be uh, since the topic is is naturalism is true Is that the real options aren't between naturalism and supernaturalism supernaturalism you affirm naturalism You can't seriously affirm naturalism for the reasons that I've pointed out and and several more so the If you reject supernaturalism You should simply say that you don't know so that you can avoid intellectual suicide real alternative to be supernaturalism for Don't know All right. Well, thank you for that introductory statement both of you for your introductions We're going to kick it into a nine minute rebuttal. So over to you Arun nine minutes on the clock Thank you. Uh, mr. Wood and I have violently conflicting views on evolution's effect on social species which is profoundly different than the selfish modes of other species that he's thinking of and uh, because we are a social species we are dependent on society and society this abstract concept is also dependent on us cohabitating productively And that means that we're not just looking out for ourselves We are looking the thing that set us apart over the other apes at one time when we lost the the muscular power that You know chimpanzees and gorillas retain Uh, when we didn't yet have the enlarged brains and genius that we eventually got when we when we already had reduced fangs We're very very weak except for one thing the one thing that carried us over Was something that we still have but we had then and we still have better than any chimpanzee does today And that is our empathy our ability to empathize with other people The type of social species that we are and you very rarely see this in other social species, but it happens on a case When the the slow or the weak will be singled out by the predator from the herd And sometimes the herd will turn And that's what happens in our case You fuck with one of us you fuck with all of us and that's Any smiley don can take out any any person from any time period, but you can't take on all 40 of us And we've got sticks and stones And we'll break your bones and that's what got us that's what got us to where we are So just as a matter of population mechanics The people who stood by their word who who Had a natural empathy for their family friends and fellows who who were the ones that you could depend upon the ones that we could rely on These are the ones who ended up being favored while there are people who were Selfish not empathetic not feeling toward other people and they tended to be Over the terms of generations of mathematics and in population mechanics These are the ones that tend to be ostracized from society either be being Banished imprisoned or killed So again just as a matter of population mechanics We end up admiring and praising and and preserving The people who kept by their word the ones that had a degree of morality And the the the type of morality that we have Extends not just to our tribe The more intellectual we are the more widened we become we the more or that the broader our perspective is so that we accept other people We even accept other species Now earlier today Mr. Wood I heard him explain a couple of times that when people make supernatural claims That he would automatically take that as a reason to view their claims with skepticism But maybe he only accepts that where it only extends this critical analysis when it's people of other religions I don't limit it You know I I consider that hey, but even my own position Has been wrong in the past. I might be wrong again. I'm always open to that possibility When somebody comes up with something that is unprecedented something that's undocumented Something that after all these years of research on my part in checking with the experts in every possible field Is there anything I missed now? So when he says that he that he that in order to take naturalism seriously I have to take the burden of proof to to prove a negative I don't think so. I think we're still at the situation where he Has a burden of proof to show that there is a supernatural aspect He's not going to do that So he wants to reverse the burden of proof on to me and he's going to strong end my position at the same time Now I don't understand how accepting what what he said before about accepting what is Evidently true and not also assuming what is neither indicated nor even possible He describes that as irrational as being as if being convinced by what is Not apparently even possible is somehow Rational he says that that that evolution would cause us to to work against our own psyche that that makes no sense to me But I've heard a number of his speeches when the way he talks about atheism and it is fundamentally flawed So I hope we can have some more discussions on that Now as far as approving a point. I mean when he he casts Uh the people who naturalists the people who don't believe in magic And he casts them in the same category as flat earthers and creationists I can prove evolution to a creationist I can prove that the world is physical to a flat earth It's just a matter of is it a good faith argument I've been in conversations with these people when they think that I've done that I've got them in a corner And then we'll find out whether the position is good faith or not In one case there was a flat earth or who somehow thought that I was a super mega rich guy And that I had an airplane that I had my own jet And I said look, this is something we could do you say that there's no such thing as at arctica We can go to at arctica We can we can go to the landing station that most people go to we could take off in a jet We could fly all the way around the island continent And you and just watch the whole shoreline as we go Watch all your gauges whatever and we'll land back the same place that we took off from Whereas if you were right and and at arctica there's a ring around the entire planet The plane would not have the fuel capacity to do that this idiot Thought that I had my own lear jet And thought that I was going to force him into this wherein he admitted that he believes what he does because he wants to But has nothing to do with what the truth is With some of these people you can you can take about to a weather balloon You can get them to hook up their own gopro to the weather balloon Send it up into the stratosphere Bring it back down their own gopro they set it on they turn it on everything If they were to try to convince their friends if they were themselves convinced They would be dismissed as being part of the conspiracy So there's a huge difference between whether you're good faith sincere and whether you're not Whether you just want to believe what you want to believe because that's what you want to believe Now I understand and I agree with dockins on this one point Don't agree with dockins on a lot, but I agree with him on this one point That a personal experience of god is going to be deceptive I personally know somebody who lives not two miles from me Who worships the egyptian cat-headed goddess vast? Because she appeared to him physically manifest in his house Visible tangible audible Bade him to become her disciple gave him a hug and of course he did Because when a topless cat-headed goddess appears in your house and says worship me you do That's that's you know, you just do and and so I know at george harrison famously made comments that when he when he chanced the mantras he and john lennon were saying that When they chunped the mantras to to christina that christina shows up Physically manifest in their house that you can see him talk with him laugh with him that they're that they're having a real conversation back and forth So it is so easy To deceive yourself and I used to be a neopagan spiritualist I've walked people through this path many times and the frustrating thing for me was That I knew a lot of hindus at the time I can get I can get bhakti to meet christina meet him Or I can get christians to experience the holy ghost or something like that I can get pagans to experience whatever they already believe you've got to already be primed for it I can't get I can't get a christian to see christina And I can't get anybody to see what they don't already believe and so I realized I'm all I'm doing is I'm just I'm setting the ambiance whatever is appropriate to that belief system And I'm letting their imaginations run So if god was going to communicate with me And he's only going to connect with me Then I know I've got an improbable tale to tell that nobody's going to believe it's going to be just like fucking mohammed Right, why would you pick out one guy and pick the least believable guy and then talk to that guy and then tell Him to go kill everybody else that doesn't believe him No, if god existed and wanted to communicate and really wanted people to believe and he's going to punish us forever If we don't believe then he's going to be able to communicate with all of us Okay and then I see if there's anything else I need to cover Uh, yeah, and as far as meeting the burden of proof for atheism because I don't just hold that atheism is a lack of belief The primary definition is But I am in that subset where I was for longest time. I was an agnostic atheist and now I've learned enough That I now hold a belief that there is no god on top of that And I will hold I will defend my position there logically rationally And I just want to say that i'm happy very sincerely happy that mr. Wood accepts that reality is real I always view faith as some degree of reality denial Like if you're gonna if you're gonna believe in souls when we have all this evidence against souls It's not just we don't have evidence for souls. We have evidence against souls We know that all the scriptures are false You know to to large degree all the important stories most of them are are completely false But when you when you hold that everything is an illusion then I have to think about Well, look at the explanations we have for why our eyes work Why our old factory works why why ears work all of this is from a god that wants to deceive us It seems to me that Descartes did believe that he was being deceived every day All right, we're gonna hand it over to you David nine minutes on the clock Maybe a little 30 seconds extra there Over to you buddy All right, so Here's one of my issues everything our own just said was according to naturalism a direct result of cause and effect Why should we take anything he says seriously? Why should you take anything? I'm saying seriously if everything we're saying is simply particles in motion I know it's not popular to actually think through this stuff that the point at the main point I'm trying to make here is this is a much more serious problem than people are aware of and people never bother to think about it But hopefully some of that comes out in this discussion Um, so anyway as far as like particles in motion like there aren't There aren't lying atoms and truthful atom You know what I mean? It's not like you're getting one or the other and one is going to produce a true belief And the other is going to produce a false belief. It's the same It's the same processes that are producing true beliefs and false beliefs And uh, I would like to understand this better if you're a naturalist and you believe that's the only That's where your beliefs come from how you think that you're being rational um And so anyway, we're in the odd position again of christians needing to explain the philosophical implication of naturalism to naturalists We're not making up the implications again. I quoted darwin. I quoted darwin darwin saw this He got it. He got the point. I can't trust my own conviction And so he's not even mind. He's not talking about the conviction like oh, there's a bottle in front of me He's talking about bigger things than that like we found looking at the universe and it seems this way to Rather than that way or something can I really trust that given where I got my cognitive faculties? He concluded no Aaron says that we have radically different understandings of Evolution and mechanics and so on he explains how we can develop ethics through population mechanics I'm not disagreeing with any of that here concerns for other members of a species and Help feeding the fore have speeding fighting fleeing and reproducing The point here is none of that None of that gives you Any reason to trust your cognitive faculties when you're dealing with these grand world view Developing a some sort of herd instinct to take care of other members of the species gives you no basis at all Again, there are other animals that can do that. We just we're a little better at it How do you say? Well, we're a little better at it. Therefore we can discover The the truths of the universe. That's that's kind of the question Aaron says he rejects the the burden of proof It kind of says something about naturalism. That's naturalism is a popular position He's right. There is atheism that you can define that as just a lack of belief in god or so on But there is a a narrower position that is called naturalism that is held very seriously by many people And that's the claim that the the natural world is is what's real and What else that there is nothing else? Um He says I I claim he claims I said that an evolution would undermine our own Psyche's uh, no evolution combined with naturalism. That's the point if you If you believe in evils if you believe that you got your cognitive faculties by the mechanisms available Given naturalism in other words, there's there's no point to it There's there's there's nothing being added to it you end up with some problems again I'm not the one who came up with the problems. I'm telling I'm just I'm just reciting what the problems are So some of them again causal determinism it's particles in motion everything you believe was decided According to causal determinism before you were born We normally take it as a problem if we say oh the real reason you hold this belief is is x The real reason you believe that is because you were raised to believe that and that's considered a problem for you Believe well if the real reason you believe something is because Non-rational particles determine that you believe it. How is that not any sort of problem at all? That's the question um a sort of a follow-up to that issue is a very popular position in philosophy of mine is epiphenomenalism Aaron mentioned thomas huxley earlier thomas huxley is the one who popularized this view Epiphenomenalism sounds fancy kind of is huxley gave the famous Example of a train because you've got a train It's got all the working parts and then those working parts make the train go down the track. But then there's the train whistle The train the the train affects the whistle, but the whistle does not affect the workings of the train Whistles real you can hear it, but it plays no causal role in the motion of the train According to huxley your physical parts are the train your mental states are that whistle Your mental states are not playing any sort of causal role your thoughts your belief There's kind of a weird byproduct of physical processes that are going on in you So if again if non-rational physical processes are what are putting your body in the right place helping you survive and Reproduce and so on and then you have this weird byproduct that is your your mental states Why do we take those seriously? That's the question and it's like it or not. It's a problem for naturalists Then we have of course have the unreliable cognitive faculties if your faculties are selected Because they help survival and reproduction. Yes developing a herd instinct something like that These can all help with that. None of this gives you gives you reliable faculties that could be used for determining Again grand cosmic theories like like naturalism or I would say for rejecting a supernatural claim You're not you're not made for that either He says he can prove the shape of the earth to a flat earth or if it's a good faith discussion I actually agree there. I actually agree. So there are good faith discussions and they're bad faith discussions But that's that's that's exactly the point I was making when Richard Dawkins says That no matter what the evidence is he can just reinterpret it as If he needed to powerful aliens again, god could appear right here blast us with start blasting lightning bolts Could we say these are powerful? This is just a powerful alien trying to trick us. Absolutely Other people have made the exact same point Michael Schermer. He made the point. He called it Schermer's last law He said sufficiently powerful aliens would be indistinguishable from god And of course, therefore god would be indistinguishable from powerful aliens So if god appeared, how do you distinguish that from powerful aliens? But what if it says i'm god? Well, how do you know that aliens aren't just messing with you? So these are these are not rare positions. Peter Atkins the the oxford the great oxford chemist and atheist He said if he died And woke up outside the pearly gates and he sees peter there and he has all this stuff. He said he still wouldn't believe So I don't know what his this is what I mean by bad faith If you're saying give us the evidence and simultaneously saying no matter what the evidence is We will reject it if god appeared if we woke up if we woke up in heaven If we heard voice no matter what it is We'll just reinterpret it as something within uh as something that's caused by something in the natural world like aliens or something Is that a good faith discussion? I don't think it is The uh iron says that personal experience can be misleading. Yeah, that that is absolutely no disagreements there So you would you would have to be careful if you if you heard a voice telling you to do something Then you would you would definitely need to be careful and you you would want to make sure you have some sort of confirmation Or some sort of outside confirmation, but that's not that we weren't just talking about hearing the voice It would makes it would kind of make sense for richard docking to say hey if I walked outside and I heard a voice I think it's a hallucination I probably think it's a hallucination too by if I just heard some some random voice something like that Uh, but there are other things suppose a million people all hear the same voice You could still you could still explain that some other way powerful aliens or something like that um Usually when we say Again, usually when we say that that someone Came to their views in some less than rational way We conclude that that belief is somehow under investigation There are multiple ways a court if you if you accept naturalism and how we got our cognitive faculties Given the tools that are available within naturalism There are multiple multiple reasons That our our beliefs should be under investigation um But here if no one wants to actually defend naturalism and say why naturalism is the correct view to hold I'm totally fine, but it looks like we would agree the alternatives are not supernaturalism and naturalism The alternatives before us are supernaturalism or Who knows I just don't know And so I don't know I regard that as progress All right, we're going to go into a mini rebuttal period four minute rebuttals over to you arne Okay, well, I noticed that I I did state that it's naturalism versus Supernaturalism and whether I take the shifting of the burden of proof or not He still has the burden of proof in this debate to show that there is a supernatural aspect of the universe If I take the position that The natural world is all we know and we agree on that And I don't also assume things that are not indicated where he does Then he should justify his additional assumption He chose not to do that And he's seen made no attempt to there to show that there is a supernatural at all No reason to believe that there even is something else Instead he pretended to explain to me what I already explained that I clearly understand Including a couple of things that I already explained to him For example, God if there was one Would not only speak to me and certainly not at one time It would be like it is for practically anything else we can verify to be true It's independently objectively verifiable would God would have some way of communicating with all of us Regularly it would be something that we could we could update our information We can confirm and test and prove by many different ways just like we can with evolution And if the supernatural was real I can think of many different examples of what kinds of things we could do to demonstrate that As as somebody who I didn't come from a christian background like most people did. I mean, I was christian for a minute I was I was even a reborn christian once upon a time Fortunately that didn't last long But I had a much more enriching spiritual experience as a neopagan occultist that went on for years after that As I tried as I went to all manner of exploration. I wanted to know what the truth of these things were I tried transcendental meditation. I tried to do the astral projection. I've done seance after seance of different types I realized that it is really easy to trick the mind But I saw how it was a trick. I was even able to do demonstrations I could show other people And even convinced a few other people By building up psychic energy in the palms of your hands for the point Where you can't actually touch your fingers together anymore because you've built up this psychic energy And you can feel it pulsing and then you release it And it goes off and you can feel it get that other person and when when you're in the faith You will see all kinds of things you can read or is when I release that psychic energy in the person I hit it with the hair blows back. It's amazing. It's just It's amazing what you can be made to believe When you rely on faith, which is my biggest problem then faith When I realized that that people are seeing that people under my care are seeing Are experiencing Christianity, which I don't believe in or they're or they're meeting Krishna, which I don't believe in Or they're fucking meeting vast Which I don't believe in then I'm not showing any of these people anything that is actually true I'm just letting their imaginations run and so It then all I'm doing is letting them fool themselves It occurred to me that it was possible that I could be fooling myself And then when I re-examined the very thing that I was using as a demonstration for other people When I looked at it skeptically I realized Fuck I am fooling myself I realized how I tricked myself into believing a thing that was never even true The sad thing and the alarming thing for me was I wanted objective verification because I want to know the truth of these things So through the power of the internet I meet the people who were who shared these psychic experiences back in the day with me I met the two most important people for these past experience And not only did they not remember these shared experiences the same way that I did They didn't remember them at all They were complete rationalists. Don't believe in anything supernatural anymore And so I realized that I didn't even I couldn't have remembered it. It never happened All right, thank you Aaron. Over to you David four minutes on the clock Would you say four minutes four minutes? Yes. All right Aaron again says that he rejects the burden of proof here the topic isn't Naturalism or supernaturalism which is the truth the topic is whether soup whether naturalism is true And so I don't know There have been thousands of debates on does god exist do miracles happen Is there a soul we get these debates all the time? But one time we asked atheists to actually defend a a comprehensive worldview. It's no we're not doing it Aaron says He warned us that your experiences can be misleading then he spent the last few minutes describing his experiences And his experiences are supposed to be relevant to the rest of us Your own your experiences can mislead you but not the rest of us apparently Um, just let me give let me give a little example here as far as as far as uh We're obviously seeing things very differently here on the issue of of naturalism. So let me give a kind of parallel or an analogy You've got metaphysical naturalism to claim that the natural world is all that exists um That that's it A parallel would be solipsism metaphysical solipsism A metaphysical solipsist believes that he's the only thing that exists So if I were a metaphysical solipsist, I would believe I am the only thing that exists Well, what happens when I see everything around me? Well, I interpret that as just something going on in my own mind All that exists is my own mind and I kind of invent the world around me To keep myself entertained because i'm the only thing that exists And you can kind of experience this when you're dreaming. That's not that's not stuff that's actually around you your brain is Producing these things. That's what's happening when your brain is like, you know when your mind is like on low level In your conscious waking state You you you see a world around you now Suppose you're talking to a metaphysical Uh solipsist someone who believes he's the only thing that exists and he says prove to me that you exist A metaphysical solipsist asks you for proof that you exist What proof could you give to a metaphysical solipsist that he could not reinterpret as his own mental state? Exactly. There's nothing you have constructed a worldview that is impervious to refutation I can interpret absolutely anything that you could do or say you could punch me in my face a thousand times I can interpret that as just my mind, uh inventing you to keep myself entertained I could do that Just as Richard Dawkins can say anything any evidence that you could possibly give I would reinterpret it as something within my world of metaphysical naturalism So here's here's the here's the question if someone tells you hey, I'm a metaphysical solipsist I'm the only thing that exists the burden of proof is only on you To prove me wrong Would you would you take that seriously? Or would you kind of say I don't know if you're saying you're the only thing that exists Maybe you need to be proving something here to maybe we should actually have a debate on whether you are the only thing That exists and we should we could see what your evidence is that you're the only thing that exists That would make sense to me. You're holding a position. You've got a position here And so if we could say that a metaphysical solipsist Who holds that position shouldn't be able to say well the burden of proof is only on people who are going to tell me things That i'm going to reinterpret as my own uh my own mental states Well, why can't we say hey if you're saying that the that there is no supernatural Realm or something like that or that the natural world is all that exists Why why can't we say hey, why don't you why don't you give us your case for one just one? But we can't have that What we can't have is faith Aaron has condemned faith a lot But if we have all of these problems with the reliability of our cognitive faculties and yet we're treating them as very reliable here Seems like there's some faith here a1 all right, we're going to throw it into open discussion so Feel free to jump in and get your thoughts out there Jensen Yeah, I gave my case and then you told everybody that it didn't give a case I explained how some things if there is just if they're down to personal Experiences they can be if they're entirely personal if they're subjective Then they can be deceptive, but if they're objective well now you've got group confirmation I gave an example of when I tried to go for objective verification and that objective verification failed Showing that I had subjectively deceived myself You said that you can define you can interpret absolutely anything such that you don't have to change your worldview And I think that says a lot about yourself, but you're you seem to be projecting on to me a bit um No, you're you're saying here here are my experiences. I went through I investigated these things and This is what I concluded after all of this So a couple problems here one there are other people who've had Very different kinds of experiences and if someone says hey, I looked into this and uh, you know I saw someone who was miraculously healed or something like that You would think there's something wrong, but this person was somehow that this person somehow Uh got something wrong or was misled. Uh, there was that there was that few study a while back where they uh investigated One pristine denomination in 10 countries to add up how many people believe they had witnessed a miracle Yeah, and they were in I think 200 million people in 10 countries one christian denomination If you kind of multiplied that so what if it was every country and every Denomination of every religion or something like that It would seem like you're you're probably going to be in the ballpark of a billion or two billion if you got 200 million just off A just off a poll so The point is so that that's one issue it's you've got all of that And we're willing to conclude no all of these people must be wrong and it's because your experience Says something different, but the real issue i'm pointing out here is That if you have uh, if you hold to naturalism And I can see all the problems with the reliability of your cognitive faculties given an adherence to something like naturalism And you're saying hey even given the problems with my cognitive faculties I think I can Actually speak to the unreliability of everyone out there This mutant berry finding ability is starting to sound an awful lot like omniscience Like I know everything about the world and I know what uh that all these people are somehow wrong and I know the correct position and so on And i'm basing this on a on a mutant berry finding ability that that's kind of the problem sounds weird Yeah, because I didn't say anything remotely like that So I wonder where I pointed out where where you were when I was talking or what you were listening to Because I said nothing like that Um, I don't understand what the what the problem you imagine with the with naturalism if I don't assume If I assume that the natural word from past experience again objective past experience confirmed by a whole bunch of other people that there's never been Any demonstration that we can actually verify that there is a supernatural if there was there wouldn't be just one There'd be several of them, right? But there'd be something when we'd be able to I would be back where I was When I was in high school when I thought there was Verification verification of this that there were people that were demonstrating telekinetic abilities or telepathic abilities or that that that Parapsychologists were actually finding ectoplasm and that we could examine the chemical Constructive ectoplasm when I thought that all of that shit was real But one by one by one everything falls apart and now i'm asking As someone who would actually holds to and takes seriously The naturalism position, which is That the people who believe in magic the supernatural have consistently failed to show that there's any truth to their position at all I give you the position I explain That I will hold to my my part of the the the burden of proof I explain the kinds of things that would convince me which is entirely different than what you described about doc And says entirely different what than what you paraphrased about me. I said what I would accept what we should all accept what we should expect This is what I used to believe This is what I used to think is the truth And if it was the truth and then then all of these things would have been confirmed I wouldn't have constantly only shown that everything is frauds falsehoods and fallacies and nothing beyond that You would at this point not be pushing everything on to me to tell me that I need to prove a negative You would be presenting a positive You'd be showing that there is a supernatural you'd be showing some way to objectively verify that not just one way But several ways, but you haven't produced A way Nothing at all You have said a few things that are that have mischaracterized my position entirely and that's literally all you've done Can you do better than that, please? Well, the topic is not uh, aron raw's personal belief topic is nor did I say so Is naturalism true, right? Which is not my I said I will hold the position that naturalism is true I don't have a problem with that, but it's not my personal belief. We're not here for me personally We're talking about objectively as I've specified many times Can you show that there is A supernatural addition to this natural world other than making false statements that Not assuming impossible nonsense for no good reason is somehow natural or excuse me rational was the work you used Which by the way that is Absolutely the opposite of rational by definition um, so so Look it up. What rational Assuming impossible nonsense for no good reason. That is not rational are our atoms rational Are they assumed for no good reason? No or is an atom rational is an atom rational To accept that atoms exist. No is an atom rational An atom itself a rational thing Okay, so normally that would involve if I if I break down a cell phone is any one component of the cell phone an entire cell I'm getting I'm getting at the point like do you believe all your thoughts are determined? I'm not sure. I don't want to I don't want to misrepresent you do you believe your your thoughts are determined by by straightforward, uh Are they causally determined by physical process? I'm not entirely sure So you might be you you be open to supernatural. No what I'm saying. I'm not that's not what I'm saying, okay I am open to Whatever might be true. If you can show me that it might be true. I would be open to that Now, they're not really naturalist. You're just you're saying. I don't know. I don't know if naturalism is sure That's not what I'm saying I'm saying I'm holding the position that there's no there is no supernatural Because no one's ever been able to demonstrate that Fraud's falses and fallacies are not evidence and that's all I've ever seen. No, that's that's that's not what I'm saying I'm saying if Do you have anything more than that? I'm not I'm look I do debates if you want to debate the existence of god Or if you want to debate whether supernatural you're in a debate coincidentally right now Do you have something to show that there and I would I would regard that as off topic if you want to debate Is supernatural isn't true? I accept it on this topic. I ask you if you can debate this topic and you said it's off topic We're in a debate titled is naturalism true Can you show hell if you hell is not true or am I on the wrong side of the table? Listen if someone if our debate was is metaphysical solipsism true And I just sat back as a metaphysical solipsist. I believe I'm the only thing that exists and I say you prove to me You prove to me That you exist or that things exist outside of me You're saying you wouldn't say no if you're if you're defending metaphysical solipsism Then you present your case. I would have imagined you to say that your case your case can't be Your case for metaphysical solipsism can't be well. Nothing anyone else is saying is proving Uh proving Some other position to be true. It would be is your position true All right So you can make up another debate that I wouldn't participate in in which you could win because I wouldn't participate in that debate But in the debate, I would I would I would participate in a debate called is supernaturalism true But I wouldn't if you oh, I'm sorry if metaphysical whatever In the other in the hypothetical debate, I wouldn't be participating in that one But this one I'm okay with and I'm expecting you it's a it's a parallel I'm expecting where it's we I'm taking the position that naturalism is Which is ridiculous things still because it is a shifting of the burden of proof But I'm still here for that Because it's that the burden for you is the same either way You still have to show that naturalism is not true The only way to do that is to show that there is a supernatural aspect You have not even attempted to do that. No, that's false. I'm open to that the way to the way to reject Naturalism is not necessarily that would be proving supernaturalism would be one way to do it Yeah, I've chosen a philosophical response, which again goes back. I mean Demonstrates my position that you can't show that there is a supernatural aspect Again, I started off by pointing out that there are catastrophically self-destructive. Did I win this easily? Because he's shown that naturalism is true. I haven't seen I haven't seen an argument other than his personal experience Has he shown that it is not? I gave the criteria. I showed what it would take Yes, I gave many different options that you could present I gave you multiple reasons to show that if we take your worldview seriously, we can't that's not that's naturalism I'm not misrepresenting that naturalism. You mischaracterized my position a number of times. You said I didn't I don't know what your position is. I mean if I know and I just presented it I'm responding to a I'm responding to a philosophical position called Naturalism or metaphysical Right naturalism that is a claim that the natural world is all that exists Right and as I follow up to that there's a question of how you would prove something like that False the other issue is is the worldview coherent? I'm saying it is incoherent Okay, so it is it is it is it's not it's not the same as Thinking that you're being constantly deceived by an all-powerful deceiver or something like that If someone came to me if someone came up to me right now and said David my worldview Is that I'm constantly being deceived by an omnipotent deceiver prove me wrong It would not cross my mind to say well, let me go through all the evidence and prove to you that there's no omnipotent deceiver My response would be if you take that seriously, you've got some problems Here are the problems that you have you cannot coherently hold that position So now I'm saying that with a position like naturalism again It's not the exact same thing as an omnipotent deceiver But you're dealing with fundamentally non-rational causes for everything you believe You're dealing with cognitive faculties that have no business dealing with a question dealing with a topic like naturalism Again, it's feeding fighting fleeing and reproducing It's not made for anything beyond that and you're applying it Again, this is darwin. This is hum hum talks about going far beyond what our faculties are made for And you're judging the entire universe. So I'm pointing out those kinds of problems, which again All you have to do is say, okay, I don't affirm naturalism. I don't know what the case is But I'm not a supernaturalist. That's it. That's it But that would notice then we would agree that we we have no real reason to believe in naturalism But but no yet and hum described why we should because we have no choice But but to accept as a beast would or as a baby would that what our senses perceive is the truth of the matter We don't have a choice in that we have to accept the reality of these things No, I I note that you came up with a second hypothetical debate In which you would win that one because I wouldn't even participate in that one either But that second hypothetical debate still shows that you can't meet this one The one you're in right now Where you're trying to prove that naturalism is not true because I can accept either side of this I can accept that I I either hold the position that there's just the natural and there is nothing else In which case you would have to show me that there's a something else Or I can say hey look, I realize that this is a shifting of the burden of proof I believe that there is a natural world. Please show me that there's something else in either case You still have the same burden of proof either way. I gave you the criteria I gave you the many different ways that you can meet that and all you could do is mischaracterize my position and come up with hypothetical debates that you apparently you wish you were in right now Um, no, these are all men as examples to illustrate some of the problem And by the way, hum is a perfect example presented a problem human hum is a perfect example right here And this would be an example of of what i'm talking about right now If you ask hum is naturalism true, hum would say why the heck are you asking me? How would I know? How the heck how would I know that? How would I know? How would I possibly know that you go to darwin? Hey, darwin, does the does the does the universe look like it formed by chance? Do you think the universe by chance? No, I don't trust myself to talk about things like that So you can you cannot eat you don't even have to be a supernaturalist You don't have to prove supernaturalism. Oh again, I've agreed if you want to have a debate where that's the topic Then i'm happy to do that if the topic is is naturalism true You don't have to be a supernaturalist to to reject naturalism. You can say I don't know. I'm not made for this Why would you even think? Why would you even think given my cognitive abilities that i'm capable of making a decision like that? If you agree with that then good we can go home We actually agree on something and i'll give you at least that So you you can make some points and I agree that darwin wouldn't have argued about the origin of the universe I've seen creationists because you know, that's what I usually argue with creationists have Criticized darwin for believing in big or for inventing big bang That darwin was an evolutionist. So he must have invented the big bang and there you know Excuse me darwin was a hundred years before the big bang. He didn't he'd never heard of the big bang He didn't think that the universe he didn't come up with that. We agree. We agree darwin did not come up with that Yeah, so I mean there's a number of things that we actually agree on but we still have the point that If I take the position that the natural world is all there is and we both agree that there is a natural world It then falls upon you to show that there is a supernatural alternative Now if I take the point that that this is all there is and this is my belief is that that it all there is Well now it's up to you to prove me wrong Either way You still have the burden of proof if all you can do is tell me that I can't prove that there's not magic That tells me that you can't prove that there is And notice you the group you admitted that you would not debate someone on whether metaphysical Solipsism is true, right because I don't want I don't want to pretend that I've imagined everybody in the room Yep, and it would be too easy to win that. No, no, no, I'm saying I'm saying if a matter I could just have dreamed you up if a metaphysical solipsist said I challenge you Uh to a debate Is metaphysical solid am I the only thing that exists and I challenge you to a debate and then I say the burden of proof Is on you to prove that something outside of me exists But just so you know, I'm going to interpret everything any evidence you could give me as my own mental states Uh just trying to entertain me understood and in the hypothetical debate that you are not currently in because you can't apparently debate The one you're currently in this is an example It's exactly what's going on in the one that you've just invented. That's called an analogy to make a point I understand and then the answer that I gave you that apparently you didn't hear My answer to that would be that I would have imagined you to say that So in the debate that we're actually in On whether naturalism is true if I take either of the two positions because I'm good with either one Can you show me that there is something other than the natural because you can you justify any of the false statements That you've made about my position or me or any of that? I'm not aware of any uh false statements about your position I'm talking about I'm talking about naturalism here and Uh, no the if they if a topic is is naturalism true Yes, one way would be to demonstrate supernaturalism. I said I'd be happy to debate supernatural I'm totally happy to do that if the topic is is naturalism true The there's not one way to go about that you can show that there are problems in Internal to the position that make it incoherent and make it such that no one Can rationally affirm that position who is aware with some who is aware of some of these problems You're not dealing with any of the problems. You're just saying you have to prove to me some alternative is correct I'm saying it is a fundamentally incoherent Position and you failed to make that multiple you made an assertion about that you made an assertion about that Be a fail to make point You you said things that did not make sense That if naturalism was true that that would be these these these conclusions that that are non sequiturs They don't fit what so the ones I got from from garland and hum and patricia churchland and so on Yeah, those things would exclude excluding uh, church when you get them from the 19th century So is that is he wrong? I don't hold 19th century scientists. No, no i'm saying i'm saying Darwin is saying hey Yeah, the universe looks design Now you could say hey, we know more about the way more about the universe than we did back then But I have no reason to think that someone couldn't do couldn't hold the exact same position If you under if he understands he's not saying that based on how much he knows about the universe He's saying that based on his view of where he got his cognitive faculty So i'm saying a person right now Notice if you said hey, there's a big bang and a you know a a a theist would say ah, you see that's how god created the universe and an atheist Cosmologists would say something completely different It it seems entirely plausible that someone could say If someone's a naturalist and believes that he arrived at his cognitive faculties in a certain way would just say How am I supposed to know whether that has something to do with god or not? I don't know I have no idea So i'm saying if you look at where according to naturalism How you arrived at your cognitive faculties your your reasoning abilities how you got them what the purpose of them is Especially if you consider some of the some of the issues like epiphenomenalism where where your mental states aren't even playing a causal role in In what your body is is doing and they're just a weird byproduct It makes perfect sense to say I cannot affirm naturalism. I'm not going to affirm anything else I'm not going to say anything else is true. I'm just saying how in the name of common sense But I think that I'm made for this kind of thing. I'm not therefore. I don't know that seems to be darwin's position And given his view Of how he got his cognitive faculty He seems entirely right even if he knew way more about the universe and way more about the world and way more about the laws of physics And so on it's still given Given that belief it still makes perfect sense to me to say how that how would I know and that seems to be humus position And I think hum could learn a lot more about the universe He could have learned a lot more about the universe. You could let hum know everything we know right now He's a he's a genuine skeptic. It looks like he would say I'm not made for I'm not made for any of this stuff given my world. I'm not just not made for this stuff How would I know and that would mean you you you can't affirm that naturalism is true, which is a big topic Yeah, and so I don't have any contest with the 19th century or indeed the 18th century view Of this question. I don't have a problem with that at all But as I have explained in either of the positions that I take It falls upon you to show me that there is an exception Something that is not rational and what you've given me are arguments that are not rational Excuse me. That's I didn't say that something that is not natural something that is that is supernatural And what you've given me is arguments that are not rational that we are not rational simply because we're natural simply because We do not assume things that are not evidently true nor even possible You said that was rational that we should assume things that are not possible or not apparently possible I would grant that Darwin thought that the universe looks designed Dawkins has said that the universe looks designed I've seen things myself that look like that looks like there's that there's a reason that there was this this was devised And I can figure out the the population mechanics the natural selection Whatever that would would lead to something like that appearing to be designed is something I call incidental design I get where these people are in earlier decades would have thought something like this But the question now is Is the universe just natural or is there something more? You can't show that there's anything more All you can do is point to me and says that I can't prove a negative in this case Okay, maybe I can't prove the negative in this case a negative that was never indicated For which there's not even a possibility to consider Um Can you so you're talking about these guys being in the 19th century? Again, I see no reason that a person right now wouldn't hold the same position. Uh, so imagine someone like Richard Dawkins Wouldn't it make would you would you be Would you be shocked to see someone who has like the the knowledge the scientific knowledge of Richard Dawkins? Sitting back saying, you know, I've thought about this for a while And I've thought about what my cognitive faculties are for and how they were selected for and what they were meant for And then how i'm applying them now and yes, they work really well for certain things But when it comes to the you know, the the universe and what something that could be beyond it or souls or spirits or something like that I I just have I just have no idea. I I don't I don't trust my cognitive abilities to make rulings on this sort of thing I've I've already seen Dawkins say things where I wouldn't trust his cognitive abilities on that Okay, but that that's all I can say why are atheists turning against rich? Because we don't have authority for one thing. It's all based on the data. That's what I care about I don't care about personal experiences. Your personal experiences are meaningless. My personal experiences proved to be meaningless I couldn't trust myself. I wanted objective verification You're unable to give me that you can't even recite the things that I told you You can't even get that right you turn around and say that I didn't make a case when I clearly made a case And you say that I won't I won't accept the burden proof when I clearly did Uh, we're gonna do five minute closings and uh, you know how I did this last time So uh, over to you David five minutes on the clock with your Canadian system That is weird the person who started should be the you never noticed I always do that on the show All right, over you David. Notice every all the Americans agree all the Americans are where are we? Are we in Ottawa? You're good. You're good. You're you're you're you're you're show you make all the rules no matter what anyone else all right, so All right, so again just to uh, just to recap Naturalism is it true? Uh, I I made an argument in my opening statement that if you You can look at this in multiple ways. You can look at it Uh, just from the perspective of what your cognitive faculties are if the natural world is all that exists It's all particles in motion again If you tell it it's very common to say to the christian. Oh, you you were raised to believe in god And that's why you believe in god. You were just raised that way. Well, well, guess what? So you're you're Raised by other people with functioning minds to believe in something that's considered a you know A justification for dismissing it Like if you were just raised to believe in something that doesn't that doesn't make it true or something like that Imagine if the reason you believe in something is completely Mindless particles in motion the reason you believe or don't believe the reason you believe in god or you don't believe in god Is all just a series of particle interactions and this was decided for you long before you were born because everything is causally determined Do you think that might be a problem? No, it's not according to our atheist friends. It's no consideration whatsoever If you take again very popular position Uh, it's the position of thomas huxley epiphenomenalism that your mental states are actually just a weird Byproduct of the physical processes that are going on the physical processes are proceeding exactly according to causal determinism Your mental states are like a train train whistle chew chew That's it. That's all that it is it plays no causal role in what leads to those beliefs Do you think that might be a problem for treating your your uh assessments of all of reality As valid I certainly would I certainly would and then you have if you're talking about how you Got your cognitive faculties. Where did you get them? What was the process? Well, our friends our atheist friends can lay out exactly what exactly how it happened How do we get these beliefs? They were selected they were selected and the processes that gave us our cognitive faculties are the exact same processes that gave the Tiger its claws and the baboon its colorful rear end Why would you think that you could take an ability like that and use it to determine all of reality or to say Hey, this person says he witnessed a miracle this person doesn't know what he's talking about this person's wrong Why do you think he's wrong because my particles in my mind determine me to think like that So the point here is Again, it's not it's not naturalism versus super naturalism You could have a debate like that if the topic is whether naturalism is true if the if the position is simply incoherent and itself destructs Great take that into account then you can investigate whether supernaturalism is true But we don't have a we just don't have a good reason to think that naturalism is true You can say i'm agnostic about it or I don't trust my cognitive faculties But you have no reason to just say that this position is correct Now so I would say if you understand all of you understand what your mental abilities and your mental states and your cognitive faculties are according to naturalism If you still trust your cognitive faculties after that either and you're not really a naturalist or you're just a terrible and inconsistent naturalist um So I just wanted to point out lots of times we Uh, we show up to debates to attack other people's positions And we want to say hey attack that other person's position Occasionally, occasionally We're trying to understand other people's positions And yes, I like the attacking part. I do but but I would like it if everyone at least understood at least understood The thinking going on here Um, if you ever want to understand what's going on in my head when we're having a discussion like this, it goes something like this This debate And every debate we have And every debate we have And every debate that's ever been on modern day debate if i'm looking at that It makes way way way Way more sense to me that we're having these kinds of debates if we're using faculty That have some other origin other than just mindless processes and particles in motion So it really looks to me like something else is going on here Um, and I defend supernaturalism happy to do that uh our own happy to happy to have that discussion But as of right now even in this even just having this discussion All I really hear out of you the entire time is Don't take natural All right, thank you for your closing statement there five minutes on the clock for you iron Well, that wasn't remotely what I implied in any way at all Despite the grotesque mischaracterization at the very end. I want to thank uh, uh, david wood for being Uh, what I what I suspected would be the case. I've seen a number of your previous debates and when I've seen you argue against muslims It very cope very coherent arguments very well thought out and done And so I realized when I accepted the chance to debate you that it would be a a more challenging debate than the last several that I have had and I I'm being completely honest but that said, uh it still occurs to me that And I always want to understand the other person's position Even when I'm even when I'm talking to a muslim or a flatterer there I want to know where they got to where they are I really really do and sometimes it's completely mystifying the problem that I have with believers like yourself Is that all of you collective seem to have this terrible problem understanding the concept of emergence How something can happen with it with an appearance of implied or inherent or excuse me incidental design That was not intentionally designed It's like you have this perspective that everything has to be governed from the top down When really it's emergent from the bottom up and we've got lots of indications that this is the case and nothing whatsoever To imply that it was dictated from the top down that that just doesn't happen How much time do I have? Okay, thank you. So all the claim Absolutely all of them for all the supranatural spit You can you can find everybody has their own supranatural stuff You can find clergy that have volumes of supranatural claims Not one thing can be verified lots of it can be falsified. There is no truth To any religion nothing we can show to be true Nothing that any religion can show that they're any more accurate about than every other religion And every other religion is all declaring that they're the Absolute truth and the revealed word of the one true god even when they can't agree on what god that is if they have a god Because some of them don't some of them have something different But they're all professing their personal experience. They're all expressed They're all expressing how they have this personal evidence And if this whatever it is that drives them to this belief I want to understand it I just can't I'm sorry that I don't have a problem understanding how population mechanics can lead To implicit or excuse me inherent or what was the word I used incidental incidental appearance of design Because it just naturally would I never had a problem understanding that believers Constantly have this issue and then you retort by telling me that it is irrational This is the part that I'm having a problem with you tell me that it is irrational not to assume Things that are not implied or things that are not indicated things that are not Possible that I should assume these things that I should have that I should accept that this Is the probability when it's not even a possibility that I have a problem with that You have to show me that it's a possibility first then show me that it's a probability then show me that it's a fact We can't get to the first step Because there is evidently no truth at all to anything supernatural whatsoever. There's no souls There's no god. There's all the scriptures are are Made up folklore fantasy folklore, you know Missing legends and all of that is a compilation. There's just nothing else That faith healing doesn't work faith healers don't work in hospitals. I mean all we have frauds false. It's fallacies That's it. That's all that's the entirety of it You can come tell me that you're a reiki master. You're no different to the pope. It's all make-believe bullshit I was hoping from someone of your caliber that I would get something better than that I'm done All done. All right. Well, we're gonna kick it into a q&a guys So if we want to make a line for those who are here before you know what to do If you haven't been here, we're just gonna make a line go into the back of the room there over towards the door If it's too long Thank you everybody And thank you to our speakers, of course All right your first question Yeah, do you have a reference to that? Dawkins Or the discussion Yeah, you could you could probably just you could probably They're not that many with uh, you you could talk to me afterwards. I can yeah, I can verify I don't know. I don't know how many discussions they've had so I've heard dawkins ask that same question And that's not the The answer I've heard from he says that he says that he yeah, he says that he's yeah, you can talk to me afterwards I'll find you exactly but he has said that his position has changed He said that his position has changed over the year He said when you know a younger dawkins would have said hey All kinds of things god could do god could talk to me god could do and he said I've since come to realize Yeah, I'll give it to you afterwards. Yeah, we'll look it up. We'll just look it up You you can you can kind of you can kind of I can kind of tell by what they're wearing So they're wearing the same thing and in the picture I I showed Yeah, then that's that's the one. Yeah, there's there's a section there They start that they start earlier on and they're talking about fine tuning and stuff like that And then they get into what would actually Okay, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, you can show it to me and I'll tell you Yeah, was there a water over there? Uh, hang on. I saw right. Oh, thank you so much. Never mind. He's he's got on the one over I should have taken two when you offered to Are in By the way, is that a real name or is that like it's a slander Wow I was I was in I was in a restaurant in Iceland and I said here. Let me show you I have a table full of friends. I've write my name down. I've the waitress comes over Blonde, of course Like how do you say that name? It was Arran even rolled the R. See I have a question for David, uh the natural universe At least appears to be in principle consistently measurable Is there a method or process that you can think of that would Allow us to consistently measure the supernatural or the non-natural world? um No, I don't know how you would uh consistently measure the supernatural it's been pointed out that If something supernatural occurred it would kind of immediately fall after that it would kind of immediately fall into the natural world Right like if I'm if I'm if I'm dying of cancer and I just get miraculously healed Someone says the name of Jesus get better and I get better From that moment everything is completely natural over again And and that that's that's kind of that's kind of the issue because there is something That Dawkins is right about you can always interpret anything that happens As natural if you depending on how far you're willing to go So like I can say look here are a hundred doctors who all saw this guy and they verified and here are the stands And he had cancer and some guy walked up and put his hands on him said in the name of Jesus be healed You can always say I think they're all making it up or they all misread something or someone's playing a trick or There are there are cosmic, uh, you know they're aliens and so uh for me it's kind of a Not not something I'm going to explain in a in a In a q&a period, but it's kind of You're looking for a certain pattern Uh looking for a pattern to the to the supernatural Yeah, and this is going to sound strange, but I disagree That if magic was real it wouldn't necessarily be natural. We would have discovered supernatural So when Gandalf, you know does the incantation and the crystal on the end of his staff lights up It's because he did the incantation. So there's some there Magic is defined the same way miracles are it's the evocation of supernatural forces are in these Control or forecast natural events and ways that are inexplicable by science because they defy the laws of physics, right? So when you do incantations when you have psychic phenomenon telekinetic movement and that sort of thing The psionics what all I would be opened and I was for the longest time open to all kinds of things that I would have accepted as Supernatural if the word magical is offensive just go supernatural which would include psionics and so forth I would accept that there was a whole another world to that And it was increasingly frustrating that I couldn't find scrap one of that alternate world All right your question Oh, I just wanted to say first off. Thank you guys both for coming by and debating. It was very cordial I wish me and my friend from Singapore were as cordial as you guys it usually gets pretty hectic But my question is either way works. Yeah well my question for It could be for both of you guys but mostly for Aaron is that that you claimed earlier that there was no proof of supernatural or that it any kind of proof that was in history Has been debunked Yet there have been many instances. I said it was either dubious at best or has already been debunked right exactly But I was specifically talking about the miracles that were supposed that were claimed as confirmed by the catholic church Okay. Yeah, because I was actually getting I was about to get into something one of those by the way Was a bleeding statue or was it a statue with tears? Right and people would come up and lick the tears off the feet of the statue And then a friend of mine from india found out what that was. It was a backed up toilet elsewhere in the temple That was causing this leak to come down the statue. I thought I saw that scene in south park with the bleeding Yeah The funny thing was when he revealed what the truth is you would think That the people who were licking human feces off this statue would be appreciative Of the fact that that now they're aware of what there's this terrible thing that they're doing But no they wanted to kill him For disrupting their fantasy Well, I mean look on the bright side at least now we know what E. Coli is All right, so yeah, we'll have to get that question out because There was a curb your enthusiasm after stuff like that. Yeah, so um Anyways, but to what I was saying was um, there have been many instances of uh, supernatural and religion You know being intertwined with our world, uh, almost like 2000 years before the birth of jesus, uh, the zoroastrian religion prophesied that uh A chosen one that they called a sociant would be born out of a virgin woman And then within 30 years the world will know who he is and he will rid the world of evil Be careful about those because there's a lot of those kinds of Prophecy that we get in in popular culture That unfortunately I went to go verify a bunch of these like in in I can't remember his name. There was a guy that wrote wrote about 16 of these Christ and I can't remember the author's name right now, but 16 crucified saviors and it turned out I was only able to verify two of them But what I was going to go with was that um, even at his birth Three wise men, which were also called magi's who were the priests in uh, persia. They also Admitted or they also went to see him and then not only that but in the book of isaac. Um, they met He prophesied that king syris would uh save The jews and this was written 200 years before syris even came to existence. So with all that being in in mind Could you really still make the argument that all of that was uh, not supernatural in any way and if david if you Knew about this or didn't if you want to put in your input as well There are a lot of prophecies and not just with the hebra religion But but but you know zoroastrianism and hinduism I've seen examples like we're in hinduism. For example, they have retrofitted their prophecies into where the sixth incarnation of vishnu came back as buddha to deceive the atheists And this was all written after the fact So a lot of these prophecies are coming in after the fact they're written after they're supposedly fulfilled And then some of them that the view that we can verify actually were prophecies and actually did occur before the event Failed spectacularly And matthew seven is a perfect example of that where that the child will but by the The maiden is with child by the time she At the time the child can choose current honey over curds You will realize the king you will realize that your enemies are no threat Before that happened The enemies were a threat and they wiped him out So I mean it failed every way that it could fail. Are you a question? Uh, well, he said that was for for both of us, but uh, yeah, I'm not I'm not I'm not really gonna, uh I'm gonna give you a A perspective of a theist. So I I believe in the supernatural. I believe in uh miracles and so on Uh, if you also do doesn't mean you have to believe every miracle claim comes off Yeah, so notice if you got Again, let's say a billion people who believe they've witnessed um miracles and you go to certain places Then it's like 70 percent of the converts convert because they believe they've witnessed some supernatural healing or something like that Um, Aaron and I might look at some of the same ones go. Yeah, I'm not I'm not buying that Uh, and other ones you'd say I don't know could be could be either way Like you say hey, you're really sick and you got better or something like that Okay, maybe something weird happened and your immune system got turbocharged or something like that And then but then so the the question is do you act now notice? Here's the here's the only thing I wanted to point out Uh, you let's say you have other ones where really really look you've got plenty of witnesses This person was really sick and then just instantly got better when someone put the hands on or was blind and then could see or something like that Notice there you'd obviously have a better case But even in even in the ones where it's uh Hey, I was sick and then a guy prayed for me and I got better Even that doesn't have to be a miracle, right? So it kind it kind of depends on the it kind of depends on the situation But there are some where you could say okay. Yeah, uh, I don't know could be a miracle or could not in there other cases where Yeah, that looks like it's fake or someone's misinterpreting something and then other ones where I don't know if these guys are telling the truth Then sounds like but anyway, yeah So the point there is you can believe in the supernatural not believe that everything every story that's told Is true. All right We're gonna have to try to be a little quicker here just because we have the next bait coming up So we'll uh, you want rapid fire. Yeah, well not quite rapid fire But you know, I'll give you an order line rapid fire. No, yes, australia 1942 I'll try to make it quick. Go can all right. So I am a naturalist I do understand that people have problems with cognitive functions. You're a 19th century scientist I'm sorry. I am a 21st century person not a scientist. Anyways, you said you're a naturalist I'm a naturalist. I do understand that we do have problems with cognitive functions We can actually measure that we can see that between various peoples I have problems with my own ability to understand the external world and we The way we get around that is by collaborating and come Confirming that what we're experiencing is true or not It seems to be like you're claiming that ration and rationality Is a supernatural sort of claim and I want to know how you know that is true Um, it's not it's more along the lines of and by the way, I'm saying this I'm saying this because I'm thinking If I were a naturalist, this would be my position If I were a naturalist and I believe this is how I got my cognitive faculties And this is what my mental states actually are I would be pretty skeptical in the sense that I would say how how would I know how would I know what How would I know what's true about the universe or not beyond what what can be verified? But if you're talking about whether there are things beyond how would I how would I know any of that? I'm saying that that's because that's my position But what what I would say is that If we can say Here's what your cognitive faculties are according to Naturalism specifically combined with how you got those cognitive faculties if that's what if that's the state of our cognitive faculties Given this world view And then we treat them as something like they're way they're way more reliable than that It seems like we're treating them as if we're rejecting as if we don't really believe in naturalism Right, so that's kind of that's kind of the position your question Yeah, so there's many testimonies about miracles happening And so we would assume that is a supernatural phenomena And there is one case that I find really compelling and such is what your thoughts about it There was a pastor and he is preaching a sermon about healing But he had gotten an infection and he had a lot of damage to his vocal cords So his voice was very distorted and very difficult to understand And in the middle of his sermon you hear in the recording it just goes completely back to normal And there is a lot of medical documentation showing that he had these medical issues And he went to the specialist and he can't give him any kind of explanation because this Was scar tissue and there's just no way that it could have just disappeared And so if you were to see that documentation What what would you think about that would that make you consider? Miracles of possibility or the supernatural possibility. I don't automatically dismiss Something just because it doesn't agree with what I already hold I know that faith based arguments will automatically dismiss whatever But I always try to keep open the possibility that I might be wrong on any point If I were to see documentation that backs up what you're saying I would be forced to consider it My expectation going in is that it probably won't because whenever I've looked for that documentation Every time I've gotten into a debate with a creationist They say that this scientific paper supports this or proves that or whatever When I get a chance to read it. No, it fucking doesn't it says exactly the opposite every single time So I will have doubts But I'm not going to be unreasonable All right your question So you both seem to agree that the natural world is real, but I'm really glad about that Yeah I hate that argument But you're asserting that there is more than just the natural. No, I'm not I'm not in this debate I'm not I believe I believe there's more, but I'm just saying I don't know what if I stick to a topic. I'm sticking to a topic is naturalism true again. I pointed out that There are two ways to reject naturalism one you could say, okay Here's here's proof that that there's something supernatural. The other is to say it's incoherent. Don't affirm it It doesn't mean it doesn't mean the opposite. It doesn't mean so Based on what we're talking about here Rejecting naturalism does not mean that supernaturalism is true It just means you don't have the cognitive faculties to affirm it So you can't affirm that it's that it's true with respect if I if I stopped being Atheist right now if I stopped being a christian if I in other words if I were an atheist right now If I became an atheist I I probably still wouldn't affirm naturalism. I'd just be like, I don't know how would I know I'm not made for that We gotta let him ask this question here Although it seems to be the case that as was evident there that instead of Substantiating that there is more than the natural world your primary evidence throughout the course of this discussion has instead been that The alternative to your Mindset is that we would be forced to live in a deterministic world I'm not sure how that follows because even if we assume that it's true Which it doesn't necessarily follow that if we live in a purely naturalistic world We're all living in a deterministic world But assuming that that is the case How would that be any different from the world that we already live in when determinists are stating that Everyone is walking around thinking that they have free will but free will and determinism look the same It's just a matter of perspective The only difference seems to be the confidence that you are applying to Free will and i'm not sure why that would create any more confidence than us living in a deterministic universe As far as determinism is true. It's kind of If you're a naturalist, it's kind of the only game in town I mean even people who argue that something at a at a quantum level Wouldn't be deterministic and so on that doesn't help your reasoning abilities at all In fact, it seems like it would make them less reliable if random things are happening and and causing thoughts As far as as far as like a a theistic view versus A naturalistic view You've got a couple things once you can have other things involved other than particles and motion But you also could arrive you could your cognitive abilities can have a different source source beyond Just what natural processes in other words you're you can have a higher purpose For your cognitive faculties in other words, uh, if you believe you're created in the image of god You can look at the universe and say hey, I was made to figure this out If if you're if you're stuck with naturalism, you can't say you were made to figure this out You weren't made for that. You were made to find berries. You were made to survive and reproduce. That's what you're that's what we're made for All right last question critical base theory. Glad you made it out. Thanks I is there To david is there any reason why you would doubt the reliability of a fully deterministic machine that's programmed To be rational like it's it's fully deterministic But it's programmed to be rational You said that you would doubt our ability to be rational if our brains were deterministic and just molecules in motion But would you have any reason to doubt a rational machine? If something was programmed to be rational then you can make a case that it's rational the point is we're not programmed to be rational You think you're programmed you think you think you're programmed to be rational If something is pro Something can do what it's programmed to do like I would I would trust this I would trust this laptop to do what it's programmed to do It's not then it's functioned. There's something wrong. It's not functioning properly You can you can trust something to be to do like I If you're programmed to survive and reproduce and and your cognitive faculties are meant to age you in that Guess what you can have reliable cognitive faculties for those kinds of things It's again. It's the same thing that hum said once you go far beyond What your cognitive faculties are are fit to do You you trust it less and let you can trust your cognitive faculties less and less and less And so a a grand theory like naturalism would be like a a paradigm case of something that is like massively beyond What your cognitive faculties are are meant to do now. I'm not a philosopher I I've never had the time to study philosophy much which is a lament because I would really like to But my understanding of determinism And rationalism both conflict with the descriptions that you're giving I don't believe that that reality is deterministic and nor do I see I think your arguments failed when you said that it is that you can't take naturalism seriously or you can't be rational because None of this All of it contradicts the definitions that I understand mind you. I'm not a a full on Philosophy student wish that I was question I just want to be clear if you're if you're I don't know what the alternative for a natural I don't know what the alternative to determinism would be apart from like again Like quantum events that aren't aren't supposedly causally determined But if you if for some reason you have some view that i'm not aware of then I would I would drop that point for you I would drop the I would drop the deterministic point. I still think there are other I argued that natural selection was deterministic in that That that uh that it ends up heading for something that is going to be better refined for doing whatever it does That made that argument then other people come in and say no In philosophy determinism means that it can't be any other way Well, everything that evolves can be other ways There's lots of options. So I can't use the deterministic label anymore. Like I said, I don't study philosophies So you believe in in the final sort of what's called the principle of alternative possibility that If you could somehow rewind the clock like from right now If you could rewind the clock back an hour things could play out differently And they wouldn't be determined if there are if there are other variables If you if you don't just wind back time and let it be exactly as it was if there's anything If you change something then well, yeah, of course if you change a bit But I mean determinism is if if nothing is if you just let everything play out without the changes Then everything is just going to you could rewind the clock a thousand times the exact same thing is going to happen Unless you're gonna have to in essence in essence. Yes Um, we're gonna have to wrap it up because we do have the next debate starting in just a few minutes So, uh, that's okay. I know him. He'll be cool