 Theists justified in those debates on science, politics, and religion. If you'd like reminders of our controversial debates on coming up, make sure you hit that subscribe button so we have Canadian Catholic and Sal who are teamed up against Pagan and destroyer. This should be an exciting and we're looking forward to the discussion. But before we do that, I would like for our speakers to give a brief introduction about themselves or their channels. So who wants to, we'll go with the affirmative side, Sal and Canadian if you guys can give a brief introduction about yourself and we'll get going here. Can you guys hear me? You're breaking up a little bit of a static mute phrase, I don't know if it's coming through that way on the stream, but hold on here. Well, I'm going to read it. There we go. Can you guys hear me? Awesome. I apologize for the technical difficulties there, so I'm going to restart my introduction here. A little bit choppy. Yeah. Let's see here. Is it better now? A little choppy, a little bit, but it seems still choppy to me. Okay. Hello? Can you hear me? Hello. Hello. Yeah. Now, you're very choppy. Are you there? Yeah. Hello? Is it better? Hello? Is it less choppy now? Hello? It's less choppy for me. Yeah. Slightly less. Slightly less choppy. Yeah. All right. So we're just going to get going here. So welcome to Modern Day Debate. We're a neutral platform that hosts debates on science, politics, and religion. If you'd like reminders on one of our controversial debates coming up, make sure you hit that subscribe button so we have Canadian Catholic and Sal who are teamed up against pagan and destroyer. This should be an exciting one and we're looking forward to the discussion. But before we do that, I would like for our speakers to give a brief introduction about themselves or their channels. So we'll start with the affirmative here. And Sal in Canadian, if you guys want to give a brief introduction, that'll be great. Yeah. Yep. I'll go ahead. Thank you so much, praise. Thank you to Modern Day Debates. This is my second time being here. Thank you also to Pogon and Destroyer, two people I'm very well acquainted with. So I am, as my name suggests, an inhabitant of Canada. And you guys can check out my YouTube channel down in the link below. You guys can join our Discord where all four of us actually hang out from time to time. And basically this debate came about the following way. I was giving, I was trying to expose the dishonesty of a atheist activist and great a moron, Matt the LaBloviator, when Pogon decided to defend a person. And I challenged him to a debate rather than go back and forth, you know, doing video debates that seem to, you know, take a lot of time. So Pogon, very, you know, too, is credited to do this. And I was thrilled. And then we decided why not have partners since that seems to be much more easier for us. And that's how we're here. So I'm looking forward to the debate and I'll let Sal introduce myself. I'm Sal Vadur Kardeva. James asked me, invited me to be Canadian Catholics partner. I'm a molecular biophysics research assistant. Prior to that, I was an engineer in the aerospace, engineer and scientist in the aerospace and defense industry. I presently work in support of medical research through the study of proteins and molecular biophysics, but also use my professional work to support arguments for intelligent design and creation science. I have a YouTube channel, Evidence and Reasons. And also there is a website by that same name that's still under construction. I'm having an after show. I'd like to thank Praise. I'd like to thank Canadian Catholic who said it's okay for me to call him Josh and Detroit and Pogon. And I'd like to thank all the viewers. Great. Thank you guys for your interview. My name is. Go ahead. Is it all right if I go? Thank you. I'm Detroit. Nice to meet everyone. I'm familiar with Canadian Catholic Pogon and Sal. Thanks for joining us and modern day debate for hosting. You can find me either on discord. I have a link there will be included and I also have a YouTube channel called for my discord server. Not that there's much on there, but maybe that link could be included as well. I have a degree in philosophy and an interest in philosophy of religion among many other things. And I'm very looking forward to this discussion. Yeah, good to meet everybody. I'm Pogon. I have a YouTube channel. The link to which is in the description where I talk about various things, video games, politics, philosophy, that sort of stuff. I did in fact make a couple of videos about Canadian Catholic's appearance on atheist experience rather where he talked to Matt Dillahunty and gave some objections to the arguments that he was running, which, you know, clearly enticed him to challenge me to a debate and I grabbed up Detroit to help me out. Just as a quick note, I am six foot three. Canadian is five foot eight. Got it. I want to correct that. I'm not five foot eight. I'm five foot nine and Pogon intentionally while knowing that I'm five foot nine. Trace, do you mispronounce it? And by the way, his six foot three is a debatable claim. Sorry. Go ahead. So let's get, let's get going here. So we have, we're going to have two five in the periods for each person interlocutor. So we'll have Canadian salgo first and we'll have destroy it or Pogon go next. And then we'll just go into open discussion. So when you guys want to get going, the floor is yours. Okay. I will start with a brief introduction just setting the tone. I got the agreement from both of our current opponents that it would be okay for our side to go for instance, it's taken that we're making the positive assertion. So basically the theme of this debate was my idea. And the idea was to have something concrete debated. Okay. Rather than having debates that's not exist or our miracles good, something like that. I wanted something concrete, something like, um, are we are see us people who claim to believe in God. And I think for the sake of the conversation, we could in fact, even include deus in the conversation justified to believe in God. So our case is much more modest than what you would expect in other so-called God debates. We simply have to make a case that there is a reasonable case to be made for our belief in God. And that case does not need to be contrasted. We ought not to, we are not supposed to give reasons for why atheism, for example, is unreasonable. Neither are we supposed to show that the is more reasonable than atheism. Our case is solely concerned with giving reasons for showing that the is reasonable. Okay. So, um, this is basically what the tone will be. We're making this claim. And I ask all of the audience to view this debate in the context in which we've outlined. So I mean, if you are angry that your mother took away your phone during church service and now you're angry at the priest, this is not the right place to take out your anger rate because we're having a rational discussion about whether theists are rationally justified. Thank you so much. And I will defer to Sal to make his case for me. Please go ahead, Sal. If I could share my screen praise. Absolutely. I'll try to keep this to five minutes. The general argument is whether it's reasonable to believe in, in God. I will make some mention of the Christian God blaze Pascal said, I should not be a Christian, but for the miracles. And that's his characterization of St Augustine. And even his own beliefs, the foundation of religion. It is the miracles. Now Pascal experienced. Personal miracles. In the life of his family, his niece portrait of her there was healed in the name of Jesus of blindness. Now whether. That was a coincidence or not. This has bearing on the question of. Is it reasonable to be a theist. In the modern day, we have Charles Duke, the youngest man to ever walk the moon. When he returned from the moon, he was not a Christian at the time he became a Christian because he was having problems with alcoholism and all sorts of personal issues. He became a Christian that started to clean up in his life. He started organizing prayer meetings. There was a young girl there who was blind and he prayed over her and she received her site. So the question is what I'm pointing this out is we can't categorically say that it's unreasonable. There's certainly people in the world, certainly reputable people like Charles Duke, where we would have no call to say it's unreasonable for him to follow some sort of faith belief in God. And so I'm not going to even argue that it's that it has to be reasonable for everyone. One of the most prominent scientists, a Nobel prize winner, Richard Smalley was he was diagnosed with cancer. He began to reevaluate things in his life. He used a scientific knowledge to determine whether a biogenesis and evolutionary theory were correct. He's qualified to make that sort of ruling. And he just he realized it was false. It led him to believe that there is an intelligent designer and he became a Christian. So whether he's ultimately right or wrong is not the point of this discussion. The issue is whether his belief is rational. I played in casinos where the outcomes of some of my betting decisions weren't favorable, but mathematically in the mathematical sense they were sound and rational given the uncertainties of the casino environment. I eventually got kicked out for playing skilled blackjack because I was able to estimate the odds because of things like conditional probability. And so the issue of making rational decisions even if the outcome isn't exactly what you were hoping for, it's not an issue of whether we're looking for absolute proof. It's an issue of whether the decision making based on what little we know and our little sample size of reality is rational. I'll point to some books that scientifically argue for an intelligent designer. This is written by two Ivy League scientists. One of them was actually picked out. Changed Laura Tan by Nobel Prize winner George and she was the first to study this. By the way, these are some people from my alma mater who are scientists who believe in an intelligent designer. There are also a professor at my alma mater argued that straightforward interpretations of physics point to a god. And that's the reference there. And that was in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. And I'm going to look forward from physical law that God exists. And I'll just finish my opening by saying this is actually from an atheist agnostic. He said a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. To me, this is pointing, suggesting that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. And thank you. That's my opening. Thank you for your opening for the theoside. You guys were... Let's see here. You got about four minutes to spare. We could add that to the question and answering or if you guys want to have a concluding remark we can add it there. So now we have the atheoside or the negative, the negation side. Did you want to go first or do you mind? Go ahead, Detroit. I'll follow you. All right. So I want to make a brief comment on the framing and I'm doing so I'm going to disagree and respond to what Pagan Catholic said about that. So again, today's debate proposition is theism is rationally justified. And what does it mean for theism to be rationally justified? One thing we might mean and I think a plausible account of what we might mean is something like there is some there are possible evidence arguments given which an informed theism can be epistemically justified in their belief. Now what will count as such a demonstration or evidence will of course be in contention. I don't expect that much agreement will be reached here tonight. However, I'm content to leave the framing at that and let each side make their respective cases and have the audience judge which side has made the more compelling case. And so well one approach I could take to this debate is merely a skeptical one i.e. I could try to just refute whichever arguments or demonstration the opponents offer. I think something a little bit stronger can be said and perhaps will be said throughout the course of the discussion. But one thing I'll say at the outset is look, if theism is rationally justified then probably our opponents would be able to provide such demonstration and evidence in favor of theism. We have that expectation because they're relatively informed theists and they've tasked themselves with doing precisely that. However, it's going to be my contention and I take it that this would be born out throughout the discussion that they will not be able to provide some demonstrable evidence and arguments in favor of theism and hence by first Holden's argument it would follow that theism is not rationally justified. And you'll remove my time. Yeah, I'll just follow up on what Detreuer said there. He pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think there's a reasonable expectation that the proposition is going to imply that an argument or persuasive case is going to be given that makes the assertion of God's existence rational. I think that's what the proposition is really cashing out. So I think that expectation that Detreuer just expressed is perfectly reasonable. I wanted to quickly comment on a couple things that Sal said in his introduction there. It seemed like what he was essentially saying was we have a set of miraculous events and a set of people that believe in the existence of God many of whom are in fairly high tier professions and for that reason it seems like that would lead to the implication that the belief in God is something that's reasonable. I just wanted to make some quick comments and then I'll yield the remainder of my time over to our opponents. First of all, people believing in something does not in and of itself rather entail that the belief is rational. Depending on whether he's appealing to the number or appealing to the people particularly that would either be an ad populum or an appeal to authority straightforwardly. The case here is that it needs to be made abundantly clear that it is rational to hold the belief that a God exists and I don't think that will be sufficient to demonstrate the case. Further, it's unclear what he even means when he says miracle I think that'll need to be cashed out here. If by miracle he means an event in which the only explanation could possibly be the supernatural then I think there needs to be an argument for that. For those things not being explained by naturalistic accounts or non supernatural accounts. Clearly that's going to be a major point of contention here. I don't see the reason prima facie to accept that certain events can only be explained by the supernatural so I would need to hear a case for that specifically. But with that I'll yield the remainder of time over to our opponents. I look forward to a very interesting debate. Thank you. Great. Great thank you guys for your opening arguments you guys had about six minutes to spare so we can add that to your concluding remarks if you want. Now we're going to go into the open discussion and whoever wants to start her off I think Canadian Catholic would be the best candidate and let him start her off and we'll just let her go. So before I start I just need to confirm that my microphone is working because I've been getting a few complaints. You're a little muffled. Is this better? Is the microphone okay? Yes. It's a little bit better. Okay am I audible? Yeah that's better. Okay I'm audible right now right? Yep. Okay good. So am I, is it, I think I'm just going to say that's a fair expectation that we provide the case obviously. I just want to make sure what the case was but it's fair for people to say that I need to provide the case. So is it okay if I start with you Pogin if I start my questioning with you Pogin? If I start an argument it's not just questioning right? I'm not exactly clear why you would begin with questioning as opposed to just giving an argument. Also the question is up to the team. Yeah I mean if you insist on asking questions like to Troyer it absolutely can answer. Yeah but I have a question for you is that okay? Yeah if you want to ask a question that's fine. No I don't want to ask questions. I want to ask you a question is that fine? Sure. Okay this is just going to be for the first five minutes and then I'm going to let Sal respond to your so this is specifically me addressing Pogin not the team, you. We're an open discussion here right? Yeah we are but You're starting off the discussion. Yes but yeah of course I'm starting off I'm going to go on to Detroit as well but let's can As long as you don't have the expectation that Detroiters not going to answer if you want to answer that's fine. Of course not but I prefer to ask you a question right now. So Pogin you're not I'm just going to take it for the sake of this questioning I obviously don't expect all both of you to be on the same page so this is why I'm going to be asking you specifically I'm just assuming that for the sake of this discussion you're not a duxastic voluntarism. I'm not even clear on what that means in Canadian. You'd have to explain the concept to me. Oh that's fine. Duxastic voluntarism is the view that one chooses something that well some theorists hope to. I just take it that's not something you hope to do. Do you mind if I respond with a question because I want clarity on something. I'm not exactly clear on why my response to that question is even relevant when you agree. Please please let me finish speaking. You made it clear a couple minutes ago that you accepted the burden for you in this debate was to present an argument making it the case that it's rational to hold the belief in God. So that's the expectation. But I didn't agree in a so logistic form. I'm not asking for a syllogism, I'm asking for an argument. It doesn't have to be in proper logic form. It can be in natural language but you're asking questions. Can I go somewhere with the clarifying question? Can I ask you a question? Why is it so bad to ask a question? You're not a duxastic voluntarist correct? Given that I just understood the concept 15 seconds ago I'd probably say no. That's a reasonable expectation. It's also for the sake of this question assumed that you're a mind physicalist. You hold to the idea that our mind is purely material. I'm not asking you whether you're a physicalist. I'm not a mind physicalist. I don't think the mind is purely physical. Do you believe that the mind's operations can all be understood in terms of net well at least scientifically can be understood in terms of evolution. Do you accept that? I'm really not. I'm not clear on why you're just you're not clear on why you're pursuing these questions when again. Look, let me make something clear. You're not going to be derailing the conversation. I can decline. Listen to me for a second. I can decline to answer. Listen to me for a second please. I can decline to answer the questions on the basis that again, I'm just going to remind you of this. You agreed it was reasonable to expect you to present arguments, not necessarily in prop logic, but definitely some sort of argument demonstrating that it's rational to hold the belief. My views are not relevant to that in any capacity. I'm getting to presenting a case. I think you're just being evasive. I'm not being evasive. I just need five minutes of questions to demonstrate to make a point. Is that against the rules? Nobody said anything about rules. Okay. Well, again, I'm making a case. You're not going to get out of this just because you realize you're already losing and you're just trying to weasel out. It's not going to help you, right? Everybody can see that you're just cowering. You had a lot to say on the video and for some reason you're evading your questions. Why? So the question is... Because you agree that it was reasonable to expect you to provide an argument. I will provide an argument in a second. Can you tell me this then? Do you think it bears any significance to your argument what my views are? Yes, it does. Why is that the case? Okay. Because you're evading the question again. No. Evading the question isn't an answer to that. I'm asking you why it's relevant to the argument to clarify what my position is. I want everybody to notice how Pogon is evading direct questioning. Again, this is because he knows he's going to lose. So why don't you show me, Pogon, that my alternative hypothesis that you're afraid is false by allowing me to question you for the first five minutes and then you can question me. That's just well poisoning, right? I'll remind you of a couple of things. When you started this line of questioning, I responded immediately by saying, you can ask me these questions, but just so we're clear, the expectation here is that either you or Sal has some sort of case demonstrating that it's reasonable. I'm not done speaking. Demonstrating that it's reasonable to believe in God, which I've been waiting for. I'm still not finished. If you're not interested in doing that, we can defer to Sal and have him present the case. But my positions do not bear any significance to you presenting an argument for God. No, I'm more than prepared to do that. Okay, then present the argument. No, we're not going to be deferring. I have the right to question you. Why is that so hard to question you? Because this isn't an argument. I'm going to be presenting an argument. Nobody says that it's only arguments that should be presented. I want to ask questions, and then I'm going to move to a propositional argument. You are preparation set up. There's nothing against the rules between me asking you questions. You're not in violation of the rules. I'm just interested in the argument. I will give an argument. Can you give the argument now? No, I want to start with my question. Can you tell me what the significance of... Look, at this point, you're just wasting time. Can you tell me what the significance of the questioning is? Because I'm interested in the argument, and I think Troyer is as well. I understand that, but if you're going to be evading, this is going to be a very short debate. It's a discussion where I have the right to question you about things. Okay, moderator, you have to step in. Am I in violation of any rule by asking spoken questions? No, but I would like to have less over talking. I'd also like to get Sal in this conversation as well, if we can try to put them into the conversation. This is just him chickening out. He knows he's going to lose in an open discussion. Yeah, you're free to ask the questions. You can continue. The only clarification I was seeking was that... No, I will. So if you have an argument, you can continue with the questioning. Okay, I have an argument. I have a propositional form, and I will prevent it. So I will continue with questioning you for the first five minutes. So the question is, you believe there's a couple of axioms first. You're not a dexastic philanthropist, and you believe that the mind is a product of evolution, but natural processes. Are we clear on those? By the mind, you're not referring to the brain, presumably, because I already told you I'm not a mind-physicist. Oh, no, I'm not referring to mind-physicism. You believe that evolution completely counts for the physical parts of the mind, correct? The physical parts? Referring to the brain. You're asking me if I think evolution accounts for the brain. Yes, that's correct. I think that's a reasonable thing to believe based on evidence. Okay, so then my question is... Okay, so here is where we move into my next section of... If you're not a dexastic philanthropist, presumably you believe that beliefs are selected for by natural selection. Would that be correct? I'm not really clear on that. Okay, you believe that you do not choose your own beliefs. That's what we established by you conceding that you're not a dexastic volunteerist. So then the question is to you, would that not entail, and you also accept evolution by natural selection, obviously, would that not commit you to saying that beliefs are also a part of the natural selection? Yeah, I'm not clear on that either. I'm just not understanding the entailment, I guess. Okay, what entailment are you not understanding? You seem to think that there's some commitment I hold to where I think beliefs are selected for, and if I recall correctly, maybe I misspoke, maybe you misheard, both of those are possible. I think I was just unclear in what the term you were using meant, dexastic volunteerism. Dexastic volunteerism is the view that you choose your own beliefs. Yeah, I don't have a commitment. If that's what you're referring to, then I don't have a commitment whether one way or the other. Let me ask you a question. Do you believe that evolution is responsible for selecting our beliefs? I'm unsure. No, I don't have a position for that. Okay, then, okay, how do you believe police are originating? I don't know, nor do I need to know. Okay, so you don't have a position on whether evolution is responsible for selecting our beliefs? Can you repeat that? You were hard to hear. Okay, I apologize. Okay, good. So, yes, I hope the crowd is seeing the powering. Wait a minute. I'm cowering because I don't have a position. Okay, mute your microphone. Okay, now, I hope clear on why you think I'm cowering. Okay, somebody needs to start monitoring. Yeah, so, come on guys, I kind of want to direct this to Sal and Destroyer if they could get involved here. I'd like for them to also become involved in this conversation. Before we jump into this, which I assume is evolutionary, I can make this naturalism. No. It's not that. Okay, I just wanted to make a couple of brief points from the opening statements, and which probably should have gotten to at the beginning. But one thing Canadian that you said was that you don't need to show that theism is more justified than its negation or to show that it's racially justified. I take that as nonsense, right? To say that some belief is racially justified is to say at least that there's some positive reasons to think that it's true, right? Of course. But let me clarify that. For example, there may be some others to say that there are positive reasons to hold atheism, but there are more positive reasons to hold to atheism. So I'm not going to be commenting on that. My point here is simply to present a case for theism. Which you haven't done. To present a reasonable case. But the point is that the balance of the evidence should come out in favor of theism. This should be in your video. You're running away from it. You should be in your with video. Okay, sorry. I don't know why you keep doing this well-placed thing. Just mute them. If you're saying or at least admitting that the balance of total evidence might come out in favor of whatever it is evidence you have in favor of theism, ignoring the rest of the evidence, then you're just, you're not showing that there's some justification for theism. You're cherry picking evidence that suits your position and neglect it. No, I'm giving a justification for me being a theist. What I want to make clear is I don't have justification. Hold on, let him finish. You just asked. Can I, I'd like to make a quick. Sure. I'll let you go. Okay, come on. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Now, Detroit, can I go to the questioning? Absolutely. Yeah. Finisher, we have to see it. Are you a dexastic volunteer? I guess I lean against at least direct versions of it. You're a direct dexastic autism. Of course, true. Yes. So, I was just assuming. I hope I'm not to mistaken. And you're also a mind physicalist. Correct. Sure. But I don't see the relative to the debate. Okay. Do you believe that our beliefs are selected for by natural selection? Um, can I make a comment? Yeah. No, you got humiliated. No. There's no need for that. I was asking the mod if I can make a comment after Detroit is done. Yes, go ahead, Pogon. Yes. OK, Detroit, go ahead. Yeah, so I'll say first in comments of meta, maybe this is what Pogon might have in mind. I'm not sure what relevance my conviction about the selection of our releases to the success of your argument. If you can make the argument. I'm not presenting it's a logistic argument. I'm asking questions to go on to make a further point. Is that OK with you? Well, the request was that you present some argument. I will present an argument. I have two. Well, look, I just wanted to make my comment before you move on, CeCe. You can continue your questioning in a moment. But you asked me a series of questions, and I answered to the best of my ability. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm familiar with every single philosophical view. First of all, no question. At some point, I'd like to. Can I finish my point? Let Pogon finish. Let Pogon finish. The point is the point is the burden is not on me to demonstrate any of my views to you. All of my views could be completely irrational or internally contradictory. It wouldn't establish that you've presented a case for theism, specifically a case that it's rational to hold the belief that God exists, which, as you agreed like 15 minutes ago, is your burden, right? Both Detroiter and I are sitting here anticipating that you're going to give some sort of argument or case that holding the belief is rational, as we've reminded you several times. So I could grant you something like maybe it is the case that all of my philosophical views are internally contradictory. Maybe I don't have any coherent views. That could all be possible. And you still wouldn't have fulfilled your burden, right? I expect that you assured me that you had an argument during the questioning, but I didn't hear such an argument you instead moved the questioning to the Troyer. So can you, since you claim to have an argument, can you just present to us the argument? Okay, I'm not going to be dictated how I will conduct myself, okay? I said that I will present an argument, but I have a case to make through questioning. You cowered out, that's fine. Now, let me talk to the Troyer. So, the Troyer, can we- I didn't cower out, I ask- Hold on, yeah, so Canadian, can you make your case, Canadian? Somebody read them. Yeah, so Canadian, can you make your case? And Sal, I'd like to incorporate you as well into this because you have not really weighed in yet. So Sal, could you, what's your point of view as well? I will make an argument and- Sure, thank you, Sal. You guys really all friends, this is amazing. I wouldn't talk to friends like that. So, the Troyer and I do have a cordial history and interaction on the internet. The argument, just to clarify, I'm not saying that people of high tier believing in God means that the belief is rational. The point was, and just to clarify, and I'm glad Poget brought it up because it gives me a chance to clarify. If, hypothetically, any of us were in that position and I know that there are people in the audience who feel that they have experienced miracles, the decision of whether it's rational belief in God is up to you. We don't have to pass it by anyone else because you're the one who experienced the miracles. You're the one that has the evidence. Yes, it may be a mystery why God would heal one person versus the other, but we don't have to justify it to anyone else except you just justify it to yourself. That is my argument. I'm appealing to those people, especially that either have had loved ones, friends, or even themselves experienced miracles. Do you mind if I respond to that? It's rational. There are people here that may not, and I sympathize with their willingness to be skeptical and question it, but I'm just like, okay, you have someone like Charles Duke, if you're a man who landed on the moon, you come back home to earth, your life's a mess, you start praying, going to church, your life cleans up, you have a prayer meeting, a girl gets tealed. How are you gonna live your life at that point? Is it, would it be irrational then to keep pursuing that path? It's just as simple as that. So that I briefly showed just a slide where it was a title for Francis Schaeffer's book, How Should We Then Live? That's the real question. How should we live rationally? Is it rational that when it seems that God is reaching out to your life and you just close your eyes? So I'm not saying that this is for everyone. I totally respect that there are people out there who've prayed and they've not heard God. Audibly or experienced your miracles. I totally respect that. But, and I'm not, and I wasn't arguing that we have to justify rationality for everyone, but I am always specifically saying for certain people. And so I was saying then, basically the argument, if there are miracles, there must be a miracle maker. I gave some allusion to that in terms of the miracle of the origin of life, also the origin of the universe. I could go in more detail, but so I provide my argument. Sure, do you mind if I respond to that, Sal? Oh, if that's all right with everyone else? Yeah, but I just wanna make... I don't think there's an issue in saying something like... Let Pogon talk. Yeah, I don't think there's an issue in saying something like people could hold, yeah, people could hold to the belief that God exists in virtue of some personal experience or perhaps they've heard from other people that there were a series of events that they personally feel are indicative of God's existence. But I think what the proposition is assessing out, and I want to Troyer to clarify further on this, the proposition of the debate is assessing out some sort of like rational justification for the belief in God. And the key word there is gonna be rational, right? Whenever we use rational in a philosophical context, it implies some sort of argument or induction that would show even absent the sorts of experiences that you're talking about, there is good reason to hold that the belief is true, right? So that's kind of where we're coming from in our request for an argument. Now, nobody's gonna contest, there are people who have experiences in which it sort of leads them to believe God exists. But we're assessing out like a rational account of that, an argument or an inductive case, but Troyer can follow up on that. Yeah, so of course, what's gonna matter is, so look, it's one question whether someone might have warrant for belief in God based on the experiences that they have, and we can discuss those. It's another, whether you can present a case for the rationality of theism here. And so on the former, suppose we're taking one of those particular examples, someone prays and has some unusual event occur. I don't know, a loved one recovers from some disease and they attribute that to God. Now, is that a good reasoning, right? Based on the evidence available to them. My position is that it's not, right? Look, there are uncommon natural events that occur all the time. People recover from illnesses, things happen that you may not have otherwise expected and people often find patterns in things that aren't significant and attribute agency to that when it's not so justifiably attributed. And what we don't observe, I think frequently if at all, except for this perhaps the disputed cases, is the supernatural intervention in the world. And so comparing the two accounts of these occurrences, it seems that the rare and perhaps surprising natural occurrences on a space a little bit more plausible and perhaps far more plausible than the attribution to divine intervention. But if they have particular cases or a further argument for thinking that there is divine intervention, we could explore that. So would the theos like to respond to that now? Yes, so, please go ahead. Well, I totally sympathize with it. I mean, if God were as evident to our senses as the year we breathe, we wouldn't be having any need of this discussion. But there are a lot of things in science where we have to dig to find out something true and then it becomes more apparent. We have a very small sample size of reality that we move forward with incomplete knowledge and we could be wrong. But there are situations where there are people, they're just dying and they may have heard of a miracle of someone. I think it's perfectly rational to cry out to God because when you have no options left, you have nothing to lose by praying and some people have been healed. Whether it's a coincidence or not, the question is, is it rational to keep pursuing that? So I mean, a question, just a rhetorical question that I pose, put yourself in the position of that blind girl or put yourself in the position of that blaze Pascal's niece who is blind, looking at the prospects of never seeing again or that blind beggar in John chapter nine. You have no prospects. Is it reasonable to even try or suspect? Because you have nothing to lose at that point in everything to gain. And that's why I would say it'd be rational. As far as absolute proof, even in mathematics, we adopt axioms because we can't actually prove the foundations of math. That's a very interesting topic. And that moved me to the idea of that at the root of a lot of knowledge is we sometimes have to believe first and then we see that it's true. The fact that mathematics has been so successful despite the fact we can't prove it gives a lens credence to the fact that it is true even though we cannot formally prove it. So I mean, I get it that it does, and I would argue it does seem and it is true that God is mostly hidden, but I would argue he's not completely hidden if we're willing to investigate. So the question of personal arguments for rationality versus a more general argument in the philosophical sense where we might have a whole bunch of people independently confirming some ideas, I would appeal to the origin of life. It looks to me and Hume made a very good argument even though he's not, as far as I know an intelligent design proponent. He said that in the person of one of the characters in one of his essays, that it looks like life is machines and they're better and more intelligently designed than anything humans, biology does that exceed anything we can do, synthetic chemists, engineers. And that's why this whole intelligent design argument is starting to move forward among academicals they're seeing it. And I would say that's the evidence that physical evidence that there could be a God. I'm not saying it's absolute proof. The burden that we were saying is it rational? And I pointed to these scientists, I'm just like, well, but it's certainly rational to me because I'm an engineer. Or when I see something that is better designed than anything I can make, I'd say an intelligence made that. And I would just by way of implication that would be someone with a skill set of God. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't, so a couple of things. First of all, the fact that there are scientists and people who work in academic fields that hold to the belief that God exists doesn't mean that their belief is rational, right? Because you seem to imply, well, they seem to think it's rational in virtue of the fact that they hold the belief. But that's not necessarily true. They could hold the belief that God exists for a variety of reasons, many of which wouldn't have anything to do insofar as how it would be interesting to hear sorts of explanations that you don't hold to, that you presumably think are wrong or are rational being wrong or irrational. That would take the form of another argument and would at least lead some level in holding the belief that you do. But absent either some sort of positive argument showing it's reasonable absent those considerations or an argument dispelling with atheistic or naturalistic accounts of those things. I do think it's still the case that no rational justification for holding the belief that God exists has been provided. But I want to try to follow up on this if he's interested. Yeah, I'll comment first briefly on what Sal said about the sort of personal miracle experiences. And he asked a couple of questions like, well, suppose this happened to you, what would you do? What if you had nothing else to do? And so it sounds to me like this is a question either about pragmatics, right? I mean, maybe what I might be concerned with believing for some purpose or engaging with some activity like prayer for, because I think it might be helpful. And maybe it's just a fact about my psychology that that's the sort of action I would take. But that is tangential at best to the issue of whether the belief that I come to would be rational in the epistemic sense, right? And that's the sort of thing we're looking for when he asked whether it was justified. So I may or may not have the sort of arguments or evidence that would warrant that belief epistemically, even if I don't know, I have some strong pragmatic reasons to have it or my psychology is just such that I would be apt to develop that belief. And so some more would have to be shown that the belief is in fact warranted in terms of the arguments. And as Pogen pointed out correctly about pointing to well-educated people who hold these beliefs, the question is not, of course, whether there are people that, intelligent people that hold these beliefs is whether they have good evidence and arguments in favor of those beliefs. And if they do, or if it's your contention that they do, well, I'd prefer that you point out evidence and arguments that they have instead of just merely gesturing at those people to guessing if they might have it. And finally, you mentioned life or the origin of life is a miracle. There's quite a few issues here to bring up. I'm not sure how much I wanna get into at the outset. Not sure how deep we're gonna go into that. But one concern that I think was Pogen's is that, well, how do you rule out the possibility of some natural explanation for the origin of life? Or at least show that probably there is no natural explanation. And second, even if you could show that, how do you show that probably the explanation for the origin of life is God-like being? Because after all, those aren't exclusive and exhaustive categories. And, yeah, I guess those would be the two main concerns there. And there's some others I have against the theory in general. I think it's a very, the miracle maker theory of the origin of life is a very poor theory. And I can get into some of my criticisms of that as we get to it. I think also there's other evidence against miracles in general. But those concerns we can get to if the time comes. I just had just a quick question. And so does the epistemic sense take priority over the pragmatic sense? That's just both rhetorical. You don't have to answer that. I'm just throwing that out there because for a lot of the viewers out there, this is a very personal thing. It's not just a philosophical issue. I mean, there's... Yeah, with respect to the topic of the epistemic sense. For me, I've never even thought about the epistemic sense. As you know, I'm in the engineering field. It's like, no, I don't even think about things in terms of epistemic proofs. It's like... So I think there's some reasonable confusion and DeTorre can follow me up on this. When the proposition was initially given to us, the operative word rationally was used, which in all likelihood is going to imply some sort of epistemic grounds of the discussion. Like I said a second ago, if it's already the case that you think people can hold to their own reasons to believe in God, be those anecdotal experiences, be those... Somebody telling them about an experience, they had anything like that, right? That's one thing. But I think given the context of the debate and what we discussed initially when we started the stream, it is reasonable for us to request some epistemic account of believing in God being justified, which it seemed... I mean, Canadian Catholic alluded to having an argument which unfortunately he seemed uninterested in providing. So I think what would be more interesting is you don't have to give like a formal argument or anything along those lines. Just give some sort of considerations that would lead somebody like us to think it's reasonable to hold to the existence of God. But Detroit can follow me up on that if he so chooses. Yeah, that all seems good. I mean, we could explore this further. I think what I said in brief response to Sal's question is, well, it's gonna depend on what we mean by priority, but with respect to the debate topic, of course the epistemic notion is gonna take priority because I think when we're talking about justification here for some belief, we're talking about epistemic justification. And if that's not clear, I don't... Well, that there is some confusion. I thank you for clarifying and you are certainly putting interesting things on the table. In science, we have things called working hypothesis. That means that we may not have absolute proof, but there's enough intuition to drive us to think about something. And so from the epistemic sense, I thought I provided at least something to spark interest. One reason I did appeal to some of these people rather than going into the details is the details would be ours. I'll point to the viewers to a series by a world-class chemist. By the way, he had converted to Christianity, an atheist who I showed a picture of is Richard Smalley. James Tour was his employee and he's now giving a series on abiogenesis. And many people that see that kind of see what I'm seeing and what a lot of other people are seeing in the epistemic sense. And this is beyond personal anecdotes. So as far as positive evidence, I would actually say, yeah, I totally respect that you'll say that there's no positive evidence. What do I mean by positive evill where you could like say, I flip the switch on for a light bulb and it obeys my commands. And I can believe then that the light bulb exists and the switch is working, I totally get that. We tend to believe what we can understand and control and that's perfectly fine. But if there's a divine being there who's not gonna be subject to our whims and our experiments, then okay, so I get the point that there could be a sentient being who's not gonna be beholden to our whims and decide to show up when we want, how we want and according to our demands. And so if that's what would count as positive evidence for you, I respect your viewpoint. That's just not for me. Maybe we can circle this out. My understanding is that working hypotheses are- Yeah, I just wanted to get you in the 80 and go here. You're gonna really explore that. Yeah, I'm interested in him delivering the argument. Well, as everyone saw, in my first case, I wanted to make Pogon unfortunately didn't have the particular fortitude to engage with. So it doesn't require your interaction because you do not have the particular fortitude to interact with me. So maybe I will present an argument. Well, I asked you to deliver an argument. Do not open your mouth when I'm in the middle of a sentence. Well, I asked you to deliver an argument. Okay, look, right in my part of the country, you don't open your mouth- You're just making personal- Look at India, hold on, Pogon, look at India. Finish what he has to say, then we'll go back to you. Okay. So yeah, just, I wanted to make an interactive case, but Pogon just chickened out. So we're going to do it without it. So basically the argument I'm going to present will be a more modest form. I do not know if it's like the first one I was making, obviously they didn't let me get in because Pogon knew he would get destroyed. But on the second part, I will make an argument that people can respond to. That's the position I plan this on. So basically I'm going to be arguing that theists are justified in believing in a necessary existence that explains all contingent beings. So we begin with the assertion that contingent beings exist. Well, the premise, I guess. I do not expect this premise to be challenged that contingent beings exist. And I just want to draw your attention that this is not the standard principle of sufficient reason, which says that all contingent facts have an explanation. This is that all contingent beings, contingent beings exist. And the second premise, which I unfortunately anticipated is that all contingent beings that exist must have an explanation for their existence. Denial of this premise, I argue, will commit my opponent Pogon to empirical skepticism. Not that he knows what that is. I'm just saying you ought to jot down this note. A premise three is there is an explanation for contingent things that exist. Again, my comment that denying this would commit one to empirical skepticism, because then that means that contingent beings can come out of nowhere. Premise number four is going to be contingent beings are explained by themselves or by something else per premise three. Premise five, contingent beings are not explained by themselves because that would be illogical. And if anybody wants to challenge that, I will go into why. Premise six, contingent beings are explained by some other being per premise four, premise five. Seven, the other beings that explain, the other being that explains the existence of contingent beings must be either contingent or necessary per premise six. The other being that explains the existence of contingent beings cannot also be contingent because more contingency by itself will result in something existing inexplicably which conflicts with premise two. Therefore there must exist at least one necessary being that explains the existence of contingent beings. And this I will argue gives me justification to hold to this view. I yield my time. What's the argument for the premise that all contingent beings that exist must have an explanation for their existence? Denial of it commits my opponent to empirical skepticism. Why? Because then you're committed to the view that all beings can pop out of nowhere. No, I'm not. Okay, what? I'm asking, look, if I deny the premise, or I take it this is just a variation on the principle of sufficient reason. You're just replacing contingent facts. You're just replacing contingent facts. You're just replacing contingent facts with contingent names. But it's still a formulation of the PSR in a sense. So can you explain to me why that particular premise is justified? Because denying it commits you to a self-defeating philosophy. That's not a justification for the premise, nor do I accept that empirical skepticism is something. What's your argument against empirical skepticism? How can you make knowledge claims with by being an empirical skeptic? Let me, let's just get some clarity. Why do you run away? Including that you're chickening out. You're chickening out because you have no, you know you're gonna get manhandled in a conversation, so you're chickening out. Why? Let's just get some clarity on what the premise is saying. You're getting embarrassed on live TV. Let's just get some clarity on what the premise is saying. Include this part in your video. Let's just get some clarity on what the premise is saying. Hold on, let's stop with the insults and hominins right now and we'll just try to have a free flowing dialogue, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Let's just get some clarity on what the premise is saying. What exactly is referred to by the phrase contingent being? Existence that's contingent. Well, I guess- So that's gonna include contingent facts then? No, not really. I guess it's a fair and germane question. So basically I could explain this in Aristotelian terms, but I prefer not to since I am a philosopher in the quieting and electric tradition. So let me try. Yeah, try to, oh I'm hearing, I'm hearing a lot of that. Is that from me? Yes, though. Shouldn't be much. Oh, no, it's better. Okay, no, it's better. No, it's much, much better. Okay, good. Yeah, okay, thanks. Yeah, so I just had one quick question and then you can respond. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you initially began to justify the premise, you said a contingent being is something that exists and has an explanation. But I take that, I'm almost done. I take that to encompass contingent facts, which is the sort of thing that would be addressed by the PSR. No, that's a fair question, yeah. Yeah, so I think it's reasonable for me to take what you're saying to just be a variation of the principle of sufficient reason. Yeah, that's a fair question. And thank you for that question, folks. So the explanation is what is a contingent being as this thing's been a contingent fact? I'm hearing somebody googling stuff. I know that you guys need to Google what I'm talking about. Oh, sorry, I was typing notes. Oh, yeah, that's what, that's why it's understandable. I mean, so, okay, so Pogon, a contingent fact. Okay, so let me try this. A contingent fact needs to be contrastive in explanation, okay? So for example, a contingent fact is something like why doesn't agent do A rather than B? Okay, sorry, no, that's a non-contingent fact. So facts include more in them. Beings are... What do you mean by contrastive? Okay, contrastive is one, basically think of it like a zero sum game. If you give an explanation for it, it directly gives you the explanation against it. Against the other position. But you're supposed to be telling me why it's the case that we couldn't have contingent facts that don't have an explanation. I do believe that we can have contingent facts that don't have an explanation. Then that premise is false. I didn't give that premise. My premise was that contingent beings that it was. But the point is, Canadian, when I asked you what a contingent being was, you gave a definition that is identical to that of a contingent fact. I was about to correct it. Can I ask something quickly? Yes, I'd like to get destroyed. So when we say something like... Yeah, so when we say something like all contingent beings that exist must have an explanation of their existence. I take you to be saying something like all contingent existential propositions must have an explanation for their truth. Anything that says there exists something that's correct as per your other. I must have an explanation for its truth. Whereas I'm not taking a position whether it's some thing, some facts related to that are also contingent. Yes, go ahead. Okay, but a fact... What is a fact pick out? Does it pick out a particular state of affairs? And if it picks out a particular state of affairs... Yes, facts pick out. Yes, facts pick out a particular state of affairs, as you said. And facts need not have essential properties that beings possess. So contingent beings, I am a contingent being. I don't see the distinction between beings and facts under your interpretation. Yeah, because if facts pick out a particular state of affairs, that state of affairs could be captured under an existential proposition and it might be contingent, right? So if I have some fact that states I don't know, whatever, whatever sort of fact that you might think wouldn't count as an existential proposition as a being of itself, I could say, well, there exists that state of affairs that is picked out by that fact. Why is that not collapsing your principle of sufficient reasoning to the more general one? Right. Sorry, you cut out at the last part. Could you repeat that? Look, the idea is just something like this, right? If the fact is just picking out some state of affairs and that's true of every fact, then it just seems that I can, and your principle of state is something like, all contingent existential propositions must have some explanation for the truth, then it seems that I can just straightforwardly say for whichever fact that we're talking about and whichever state of affairs it picks out, there exists that state of affairs and that's contingent existential proposition and that therefore falls under your principle. It seems to capture all facts, not just those which seem to be about being themselves. That's not correct. I'm gonna give a more, I guess I should have given a better definition. So a contingent being is a being that if it exists, it could be a state of affairs that it could not have existed. Yeah, that's the same as a contingent fact. No, it's not. A contingent fact is a fact that's, I guess, yeah, in that case, you're right, but the problem, the difference- And yes, so you're just affirming the PSR. I'm gonna be allowed to finish. All contingent facts have an explanation. I'm differentiating all contingent facts from all contingent beings because contingent facts are more inclusive than contingent beings, right? As I'm giving an example, I am a contingent being, whereas for example, something like morality could be a contingent fact. Yeah, sure, but Detroit already explained why that sort of account of a contingent being is just going to be encapsulated by what the principle of sufficient reason talks about when it refers to contingency. And if it's the case, if it's the case- And if it's the case, what Detroit said? Well, look, I'm just pointing out- You don't even know what he said. Look, I'm just pointing out that I'm just pointing out, that there's no point in what he said. It doesn't seem like- He doesn't know what he said. What is the point of this? I don't understand what this has to do with the argument. Look, the point is if it's the case that what you're talking about when you refer to a contingent being is encapsulated by what the PSR is talking about when it discusses contingency, then an argument presented showing that the PSR is false will show that that premise in your argument is false and then the argument doesn't follow, right? So you need to give us some reason to think that what's your mean when you talk about contingent being is sufficiently distinct from a contingent fact such that it wouldn't be threatened by a tax to the principle of sufficient reason. And you haven't done that. And can I just point out something at this point, even though it's not entirely germane to the specific point? But my other main criticism of the argument as you presented it was that the conclusion is not the isn't, right? The conclusion was something like, well, these other beings that explain the contingent beings must be necessary, but the conclusion there is that there's at least one necessary being, right? Something that exists necessarily, but not that what exists necessarily has any of the other divine attributes, perhaps, until that it's mine. So some further inference from that conclusion, if you could demonstrate it, which is not granted, to the theistic conclusion, which is presumably what you're using this in support of, would be required. So I have two criticisms to say. Prey, do you remind me if I'm just going too much because I don't want Sal to feel like he's right? Right, yeah, I want to get Sal here, too. Yeah, but actually I was listening intensely to you. Yeah, I'll just take four minutes and then Sal can take over the whole debate. I don't want to come off as a guy who's hogging the whole time. I try to, I don't want this to seem like I'm taking all the time, but I'm just gonna take four minutes. So my first criticism of Detraer's earlier point, which Pogun couldn't remember hilariously, is that Detraer's equivocating on existential propositions as contingent beings. I'm going to go into that in a little bit, just give you a minute. And my second distinction is going to be a contingent fact is one that obtains in some possible worlds, okay? So a fact, so a fact's existence happens in some, no, not facts existence, but it being obtained only happens in some possible worlds if that's proper language. A contingent being on the other hand is the one that exists in some possible worlds. That's one distinction. Now a little bit more on Detraer's equivocation of existential propositions. As I think somebody in the chat pointed out a state of affairs can very well be stated as an existential proposition, right? But contingent beings are entities where a fact can be an infinite set of relations between these entities, which I thought was ignored. But, oh my gosh, some of these, I think. But yeah, I take it either Pogun or Detraer would want to. He has gone on Detraer. I do quite catch what you said there. Like you said something about relations between these entities that might be obtained and those could be facts but not beings. Is that what you were saying? Well, I was saying that you're basically equivocating on existential propositions as contingent beings. Because a state of affairs can, for example, be stated as an existential proposition whereas contingent beings are entities, wait, let me phrase that correctly. Contingent beings are entities whereas a fact can be an infinite set of relations between these entities. But I'm trying to understand why whatever you're committed to existing when you state that fact cannot be construed as an entity itself, right? It's after all, it can be something. But that's just a debate. It can be something bound to a point of fire, for example. Yeah, but that's just a debate of the philosophy of language, right? We're already getting, that's just about whether things can be stated that way. I'm saying that there's a distinction between a fact that abstains in some possible worlds and a being that exists contingently, okay? So this is a, I guess I wouldn't consider- But why would contingent beings under that understanding not be encapsulated by what the PSR is suspecting out when it talks about contingent? A state of affairs can be stated as an existential proposition, which is true, but contingent beings are entities whereas a fact can be an infinite set of relations between these entities. What's your response, Pogun? Yeah, I think that's the sort of thing that would be encapsulated by- What did I say? What did I just say? I don't, I'm aware of what she said. I don't even know what I said. Yeah, I think that's the sort of thing that would be encapsulated by the PSR. Is there a reason to think? Let's put it this way. I just gave a reason. Is there a reason to think that the distinction- Is there a reason to, look at this point, you're just over talking, you need to relax. Is there a reason to think that the distinction is strong enough such that it wouldn't be encapsulated by the PSR? I just- Because I haven't, you're still over talking. What, what, what? Because I haven't heard a reason. But what Pogun finished really quick. I said two minutes ago. You're still over, you're still over. Yeah, Canadian Catholic, let Pogun finish here. We'll come back to you and Sal here in a second. Okay, okay. Yeah, so my understanding here is that I haven't heard, and maybe Detroit can comment real quick, but I don't think he has heard any reason to believe that the understanding of contingency that he's evoking when he talks about contingent beings is sufficiently distinct from contingency with respect to facts such that it wouldn't be encompassed by the PSR. So we can, we can deliver an argument and I can provide that argument if you're interested. Though I should add this is, you know, an argument that you need to defend in order to justify the proposition. But regardless, there's an argument that I can deliver against what you're talking about with respect to the PSR such that it would show the PSR to be false. So yeah, go ahead Detroit. Yeah, thanks. So I just wanna reiterate how I drew that inference that the principle that you're affirming does seem to collapse that one because, and let me restate how I interpreted it, right? Yes. Your principle was something like all contingent existential propositions must have an explanation for the truth. And it seems to me that all sorts of facts, right, that are picking up states of affairs in the world, including relations that obtain between entities, whatever else, they're all facts, they're all states of affairs in the world could be encapsulated under an existential proposition. That's just so satisfied that principle. But you're wrong, right? The set of contingent beings is necessarily less than the set of state of affairs. You're ignoring this point and that's our equivocating. And at this point, Pogan is completely lost. He doesn't even know what the debate is about, right? I think the, I think you can show this. Look, the two, look, the two of us, the two of us have said a couple of times. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Well, so I think what I was gonna say was, yes, I think we can show that there is, in fact, an equivalence between those sets, but I still think that the first premise is objectionable even without that assumption, right? Even if this doesn't suffer from some of the criticisms that a full blown PSR does, I think there are reasonable criticisms to this principle that don't commit us to something, whatever you said, skepticism. Empirical. Right, so like, I'll just point out at two views that we might be contrasting. We can talk about that or maybe move back on to this point, although it doesn't seem to be progressing very far. So I'll say, suppose that this is one person's view. There is a bunch of contingent beings and there's some necessary being or beings which ultimately explain those contingent beings. Well, we'll assume that this is consistent. I think there's some case being made that that's actually already inconsistent, but suppose that's consistent. Yeah. Now, let's compare it to someone else's view, right? They think that there are a bunch of contingent things in the universe and maybe they're explained by more contingent things and ultimately there's some brute beings that exist but perhaps didn't have to exist in the universe. One final thing before I finish, praise, if that's fair. I think, even though I don't agree, I think as a final moment, it would be fair for a Pogon to give an argument against the principle of sufficient reason and for me to give a response to that. And after that, I think we can go to Sal. Is that okay with you, Pogon and praise? Yeah, sure. We've established that your understanding of contingent beings does in fact collapse into the sort of contingency that the PSR discusses. So I'll deliver the argument that I was alluding to earlier and you can run an objection against it if you so choose. So if all contingent facts are explained, then the explanation is either itself a contingent fact or a necessary fact. If the explanation is contingent, then the set of all contingent facts is explained by one of its conjuncts. The set of all contingent facts is not explained by one of its conjuncts. The explanation is not contingent. If the explanation is necessary, then all contingent facts are necessary. Not all contingent facts are necessary. The explanation is not necessary. The explanation is not a contingent fact or a necessary fact. So therefore not all contingent facts are explained. Now, what's interesting there is that obviously the argument was written dealing with the iteration of the PSR that specifically deals with facts, but that argument still can hold given that and like I said, I think it's been made clear in virtue of what I've said and what Detroit has said that there's no reason to think your understanding of contingent beings does not collapse back into the sort of contingency that the PSR is talking about when it refers to contingent facts. And if I may, that assumption isn't even required, right? I think you can run the argument as you presented against without even this assumption that it collapses into the more general PSR. Can I respond to Pogon's criticism of this? Yes, go ahead to Canadian and then we got to get to Sal here. And then also we have to probably conclude this because it comes to the 90-minute mark. We got super chat, so go ahead. Yeah, so that argument against the PMJ was just looking over at my notes. So Pogon, you're incorrect with the PSR because there is no set of all contingent propositions to see why, assume to the contrary that there is a set of contingent propositions. Call that set C. Since C is a set, C has a power set which we will denote by C in parentheses. That's how I put it. Here's the crucial part. If C is a set that there cannot be an injective function from PC to C, a consequence of Cantor's theorem as you're aware, we will now generate such a function. Let F denote the function that maps each element, SI of PC to the unique proposition. All the elements of SI are true. Call that unique proposition PI. In short, FSI equals PI. PI is a contingent proposition because each element of SI is a contingent proposition. And so there must be at least one possible world where all the elements are false. That's PI is in C. If SI does not equal SJ, then the proposition of all elements of SI are true. I'm not really following this. Can you try a different explanation? Okay, well, all it is. All it is. Okay, maybe I'll give it in a propositional form. If C is possible, then PC is possible. This is the set theory axiom. If PC is possible, then PC is greater than C. This is Cantor's theorem. Here, PC means the size of PCI. So PC is greater or equal to Cantor's theorem. I couldn't hear you, sorry, can you, oh. Yeah, what is Cantor's theorem? I couldn't hear you, can you prove that? Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can. What is Cantor's theorem? Well, it's a result basis of the set. So for any set B, the set of all subsets of, or A, of A, let's say the power set of A denoted by PA, is put in the subset. Go ahead. It's just that any power set is strictly larger cardinality than- Sure. It's larger, one number. Sure, go ahead. Can I continue my objection to your argument? Yeah, make it pithy. We gotta get back to Sal and we gotta, we're gonna conclude this and wrap it up. Yep, so premise three is that PC is greater, less than or equal to C. PC is impossible, therefore conclusion two, C is impossible. Here, C is the set of all continuing propositions. Therefore, this is an argument against PCCF. Pogun, how do you respond? So- We're asking Pogun, no, wait, I was asking Pogun. He was the one that gave the argument against the PSI. Well, I don't understand the objection. Pogun isn't particularly familiar with this. Oh. Yeah, I don't understand the objection, but Detroyer is gonna be more familiar with set theory, so I'd like him to respond. Yeah, so there's a few things to point out here. One is, yeah, so what he did was he provided an argument from set theory for thinking that there's no set of all continuing propositions or set of all truth. Yeah, take suggestions, yeah. You're right, exactly. Now, what some have wondered is, and I don't think we're gonna have enough time to get into this now, is whether there are any ways to construe that big conjunction without using standard set theory. While using classes doesn't work either, but the question, and some have argued, including planning and this is a dialogue with Grim that there's perhaps some other tools we could use to construe such truths. But supposing that there is no set of all contingent propositions, I don't see what that has to do with Pogon's objection. Yes, Pogon's objection is the modal fatalism objection that was given by Peter Van Inwijk. Right, but suppose... We deny premise four and five of the modal, well, not his version, but the modal fatalism as of this point. Which just to clarify, which premise in the argument that I gave are you denying specifically? Well, I'm denying the modal fatalism. You're presenting a different version. I have a modal fatalism on somewhere. No, what I mean is like in the argument that I render to you, which of those premises do you deny? Well, I deny that BCCF exists, obviously. You deny that what? That BCCF exists. That's the argument against the BCCF. I don't understand what that means. Are you denying there's a set of contingent facts? Yes. I don't see why I should accept the set of contingent facts. The basic idea is that there's just too many sets that count as applying. That's great, but because Kentris theorem says that the sites of the power set is greater than the set itself. So that's the BCCF must be fault. But yeah, and the idea is that the power set by given what its members are would also be a contingent. Hey, but if you're familiar with the modal fatalism. We're a map technician. Why are you not familiar with this objection problem? I don't understand what my familiarity with the objection has to do with whether or not the objection holds. I just asked for clarity because I didn't understand the objection as he rendered it. And Detroit is going to be more familiar with the minutia of set theory anyway. Presumably you just want an answer to the objection if you're being intellectually honest rather than just like sussing out how familiar I am with set theory. That's why I asked you which premise of the argument that I rendered you use specifically. I disagree with the idea that BCCF exists. Yeah, meaning that you deny. Meaning that you... What are the semantics for thinking we can talk about? Meaning that you deny there's a set of all contingent facts, correct? Just a second. Yes, but what are your semantics for thinking that we can talk about BCCF without sets? Look, we're not even talking about the BCCF. And I think there are some plausible accounts, but the question is just this, right? Do you think there's some necessary being or fact or whatever that explains... Existence. I formula it's necessary existence. Right, some necessary existence, but that's something that necessarily exists that explains all the contingent things that exist. That's the PS... I don't hold to the PSR. I just simply wanted to show that Hogan's case against the PSR is flawed because he maintains that BCCF exists. I don't understand how it's flawed. Because the BCCF cannot exist. Right, but I didn't mention the BCCF. And if you think that this account relies on committing to the BCCF, especially as a set or whatever, then maybe make that clear. But look, the only idea is that this, and I think this applies whether we're talking about all contingent beings or all people on that. So I'm gonna interject here really quick. I think we're just talking over each other and in-pass. So I'd like Sal to actually finish up here with what he wanted to conclude with. And then we got to go to super chats and questions. Thank you gentlemen. It's been a compelling discussion. It's nice to hear people talk about Cantor. One of my degrees is in mathematics. So it was refreshing to hear this. I'm gonna point out the question of what rationality is. This is a quote by Hall Dane and it's been echoed by Platinga. It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere byproduct of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. It hints that I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. Platinga took this and extended it and said, there's an inherent problem with even defining rationality in a purely naturalistic worldview. And I know that there are probably some subtleties where we have atheists who are not naturalistic. I know they're all sorts of flavors. But the question is then does rationality, the term rationality even hold in the naturalistic worldview that rejects God? I mean, you're gonna have to have some sort of alternatives. But if you're gonna admit alternatives like to God, like say, panpsychism or some other non-naturalism, then if that's rational, then it's rational to also believe in God. Yeah, I mean, I personally don't hold to the view that naturalism is true. So, I mean, you kind of alluded to that already. You acknowledge there are going to be atheists that don't assert naturalism. But Detroit is a physicalist, so I'll let him respond directly to what you said. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things we can talk about there, especially what Plantinga's talking about that in respect in regards to you, but I'll just say in brief that whatever, I presumably have some common notion of what it means for something to be, I believe to be rational, for someone to behave rationally, right? They're doing so for reasons, perhaps reasons of a certain sort, perhaps with evidence and arguments in support of some belief. And that seems to be neutral on our theory of mind. And the question of whether we can think that the chemistry that results or constitutes in our reasoning is sound logically as opposed to chemically as the most merely chemically, well, I'm not sure what it means for it to be sound chemically, but, and there's a lot to be said here, but it just seems pretty obvious that our brains are pretty successful thinking tools and that we're, that are pretty effective at navigating and perceiving and thinking about their environment and beyond. And so yes, there's some arguments to be discussed against naturalism with respect to rationality and other things, but I don't think much of that was provided here. And it's beyond, I think, the scope of the discussion anyway. After all, as Pokin mentioned, the non-theist is not committed to naturalism. And so why would some argument against naturalism demonstrate theism? Right, I mean, I mean- I mean- In favor of theism, not against a particular non-theistic one. I was just saying then if we're gonna, argument against naturalism makes possible theism. I'm not saying it proves it. It makes it a rational, it makes it a rational proposition in terms of like, say, working hypothesis is rational. There are lots of hypotheses that we don't have formal proof of, but we consider them rational until falsified. May I ask you a question about that? Yeah. I, alluding to the point about atheists not being committed to being naturalists, let's grant that you show through some sort of argumentation that naturalism is false, right? At that point, what is the reason to accept that the hypothesis that God exists is going to be more parsimonious for explaining things in the world and generating novel predictions than any other sort of hypothesis, such as some non-naturalistic hypothesis that an atheist such as myself would hold to. Because I think at apps and something like that, there's no reason to accept prima facie that theism is necessarily going to be any more rational than some non-naturalistic account of the world an atheist would hold to. The issue is not even make, as far as the debate topic, holding a rational belief doesn't, we don't have to put it to the standard that it's absolutely informally provable. In fact, probably in the most fundamental things are not formally provable. So you can put objections there and that would be totally respectable. But then as I pointed out when we look at the physical evidence, we have evidence of someone that has a skill set that we would call God, something that could fine tune the universe. I mean, what are the alternatives that they're multiverses or that it just created itself? So it leaves these open questions. And then we see biological systems that have capabilities that exceed anything a synthetic chemist or engineer could build. Even if we were given the blueprint of life, we could not, Adam by Adam, construct something of this complexity. So for me, that's parsimonious enough and it's parsimonious enough for a lot of what I would consider rational people. For an engineer, if someone sees a design that's complex that resembles what he builds, but it does it better, that's parsimonious enough for a lot of people. And so I'm sorry if it doesn't satisfy your epistemic requirements. And I respect that. There's a whole body of people that don't use this fancy philosophical language that can see it. I mean, it's plain as day to them that there's a design there. Well, I'd like to respond to the fine tuning thing very briefly and then I'll hand it off to Troyer because I think he has some more detailed notes regarding it. Well, yeah, we gotta wrap this up as in the next few minutes, guys. Okay, would you like me to respond or do you wanna go ahead and do? Yeah, you can go ahead and respond and make it pithy. We gotta jump to superchats here, but go ahead and make it pithy, Poggin and then to Troyer and then we'll go to superchats. Yeah, I think the fine tuning argument or the fine tuning explanation invokes an idea of God's actions which are going to be a matter of chance or necessity. But I don't think it's clear why an atheist couldn't in the same way appeal to chance or necessity to explain why the configuration of the universe is such that the conditions are right for the existence of life and the growth of organisms and such, which would mean that insofar as fine tuning is concerned, it seems absent any other considerations that atheism is just as parsimonious to explaining the existence of life and the conditions of the universe than fine tuning is. But Troyer has some more detailed notes on this that I'd like him to go into. Yeah, so I do have more to say about that. However, I think it's, we didn't really discuss fine tuning at much depth or they didn't really make much of the argument. So instead of getting into those details more precisely, I think I'm just gonna more generally say why I think the the hypothesis as an explanation for fine tuning, but also for some of the other things that were mentioned like miracles, the origin of life and so on, is just a very bad hypothesis. And some of those reasons are as follows, right? It's a very vague and ill-defined and malleable theory, right? Another issue, it has very little explanatory depth, right? That explanation is the best very surface level, right? It explains all life exists, but it's not gonna give you much detail. It's not gonna explain why life is this particular way rather than another way with much depth at all. Third, the theory makes little or no novel empirical prediction which might confirm it. It's not really what we're looking for on a good theory of how the world is the way it is or how a particular thing is the way it is. And according to the theory kind of takes the form of a just soul story, right? That is sort of unmotivated and untestable narrative explanation for some phenomena. It's just we have this data and you're saying, well, it's that way because God made it that way. God desired to make it that way and that's why it is that way. But it's not really much more than that. And accordingly it leaves little to no room for a sort of progressive research program. Like in science that I'm sure Sal is quite aware, what you're looking for with some theory is some way to build on that theory, to test it, to collect data that might confirm it or help make new discoveries and so on. But this is, I think, quite clearly not the sort of theory like that. It's just a story that's vague and ill-defined. It predicts very little and not a very good theory overall as a result. And so I think, unless we wanna talk a little more of fine tuning, but I think we're gonna move into closing statements. Yeah, we're not even there. Yeah, we're just going to call it there and we're gonna go right into super chats because yeah, we're kind of going up on time, getting late on time. So we're gonna start the super chat from Grimlog for $2, thank you Grimlog. And how will we do is that whoever it's addressed to, they get the final answer or how they wanna address that. So that's how we usually, the format we usually do for questions or super chats or questions and answers, whatever it may be. So Grimlog, thank you for $2, modernated bait, a bloody gladiator arena where everybody is a splashstone. Here, have some money. So we can go the next one, I guess that's for both of you guys or both sides. So Mark Reed for $5, thank you for your super chat. This is for Sal. Why do you only present theist scientist's opinions and do not present non-theist science opinions? Why is this not cherry picking? I presented theist science opinions to show that there's not 100% consensus, that there is dissent and to inspire people to maybe hear the dissenting voices because some of them could just get told that they're all stupid and I'm just trying to correct that perception. So it wasn't my goal to cherry pick, I will admit that we're in the minority but in academic circles, we're finding that there is a little bit of movement. And the other side, the non-theist scientists are actually getting back into the corner because their account of particularly origins, abiogenesis and evolutionary theories is looking to be more and more bankrupt and it's being defended with what looks like either delusional assertions or even borderline fraud. Thank you for your answer. You can have a quick response to Troyer Poga but it has to be very pithy. I don't have a, I don't have a response to that. So this one's from Amy Newman for $5. After show tonight at the YouTube link for both theists, is there anything that you could falsifiable your beliefs and make you stop believing? Thank you, Amy Newman, nice to hear from you. If abiogenesis were solved, I don't know anyone else can answer that. So nice to hear from you, Amy. Thank you for your answer. Let's see here, we got one from first. So there's some, okay, Tom's chair for $2. Thank you for your super chat for $2. Sal, do you believe in other religions, miracles? I believe other religions have miracles. Even the Bible gives account of Janice and Jambres and it's been prophesied false religions will have miracles. By the way, thank you for the super chat and I'm sorry I missed your name but thank you for the question. All right, sorry, I accidentally disconnected from the conference. He was trying to escape. So we have, appreciate the answer. So we got Alonzo Muncie for $2 question for debaters. What makes a belief rational? Some sort of deductive argument or cogent inductive case presented for the belief such that in the case of deduction it would show necessarily that the belief is true or in the case of induction that we are reasonable in virtue of the evidence to believe that the belief is likely true. Yeah, presumably there's other sorts of explanations or justifications in terms of like abductive reasoning and perhaps other sorts like that. Something that, and it's gonna be of course contentious what will count as such reasoning or a good argument. Right, because you might question us while the premises of the argument's used. But how far we go along then? It's gonna be just part of the dialectic. Gotcha, so we're gonna go to... Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Quick comment. Since Detroiters re-joined, the YouTube thing got messed up where on Detroiters place we have Sal and on my side we have Detroiters and on Sal's side we have me. That's my apologies, that's my apologies. No, that's fine. Someone's screen shot it. Okay, let's go to the next one we're trying to do both here. Okay, so then go ahead. Do you mind if I make a quick comment, Bryce? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, so D'Arth Dawkins, who is a pretty famous presuppositionalist has been challenged to come on this platform a couple times, modern day debate and has consistently refused the offer despite being presented with an offer for about $300. And has called a couple of us, me and Jack Engstrich included, sawfists and idiots. So if you're watching tonight, D'Arth, I'd be very interested in you challenging either of us to a debate and explaining exactly why we're sawfists and idiots. That's the comment, please continue. Great, so we have one from C.G. Frato-Sarabia for $2. Atheist went based on C.C. not having arguments. Sorry, Sal, super chat. You can respond to that. Was there a question it broke on the spot? No, no question. Who owns the question again? It was just a comment. And they were saying, it was from C.G. They said Atheist went on C.C. not having arguments. Sorry, Sal, super chat, so. That's unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, could I comment on that briefly? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, if you recall, part of what I think the opposition's case was, as I laid out in the beginning was, that on the assumption that the Isamism fact were actually justified, you would expect that our opponents would be able to present that justification. Now, it's my contention that looking back on the debate that they have not succeeded in doing so, and hence that counts as evidence against the Isamism being actually justified. Of course, I'll leave it to the audience to judge that. Yeah, I would take some of that. I think that we made our case that there is irrational reason to make the case. All right, go ahead, Praise. Praise, are you there? I'm sorry, is that mute? Yeah, for $5 from Mark, we appreciate your super chat for Sal. I'm sorry, Sal, but it sounds like you are saying we don't have to provide justification for belief in God. Then why come on the debate? I thought I'd provide, by the way, thank you for the question in the comment. I thought I provided it. If it's not something that resonates with you, then it doesn't resonate with you, but it does resonate with other people who've studied the matter, and especially who study origin of life. I know of scientists that were atheists as the more that they studied it, they converted. And I've seen their arguments and I felt that they're very strong, that there is an intelligent designer. Thank you for your answer there, Sal. We're gonna go to CREPTIS for $5. Does anyone else wanna respond to that before we go to the next super chat? I'm guessing not. No, go ahead, you're good. Okay. So we got CREPTIS for $5. No one cares about your imaginary. Hello? Hello. Yeah, do you guys hear me? Hello? Yeah, we can. Hello? Okay, yeah, so we should be good there. Seriously, we can hear you. Yeah, go ahead. I can hear you, yeah. Okay, so this is for CREPTIS for $5. No one cares about your imaginary friend until you start trying to legislate what you think they said and force it on everyone. No justification for that. So I guess that's for the theist. Well, the person who's writing that is a moron. I'd like to thank you for the super chat and the comment. I'm not here to force beliefs on anyone. I am here to encourage Christians, especially those who think that they've seen a miracle, that I don't think that that, I think there really is a miracle maker. We can make that argument in terms of the miracle of life. So this isn't about legislation enforcing beliefs. These are, this is about the higher question whether God exists and whether we'll face him on judgment day. That's a far more important question. Gotcha. Yeah, we got. Yeah, so just, I was just going to say in closing, although the main points I think I've reiterated enough, but I'll just like to thank again, Pogan, Canadian, Catholic and Sal and the audience for coming to watch the debate. It was a pleasure. Thank you all. Thank you all again. Yeah, I'd like to thank modern day debate for hosting. I'd like to thank Troyer, Canadian, Catholic, Sal. Thanks everybody for showing up. Yeah. Have a good time. The audience, thanks, and. Awesome guys. Yeah, I agree. That was a, it was a thrilling discussion. It was really impressive. Some of the points you guys are making. So we'll go to Duke of Saheb. Sal, why doesn't God allow these miracles to occur in repeatable lab conditions? Doesn't God want us to objectively verify his miracles? God is hidden so he can humiliate some people that are very arrogant. You can go to this in First Corinthians chapter one. It says, God has picked the off scouring of the, of the world to make, to humiliate those who are in positions of power, knowledge and wisdom. And so that's the explanation, at least in the New Testament. And I know there's certain levels of troubling to this, but there are explanations that are offered. I'm not saying that you need to accept them, but that's, I've had peace about that. Because it has bothered me that God doesn't answer everyone's prayer. In fact, very rarely does he do it, but it's happened enough, especially even people close to me, that I can't deny it. I can't walk away from that at this point in my life. So thank you for the question. That is a difficult question. It nearly, that question nearly made me walk away from the Christian faith, until I had a satisfaction, you know, satisfactory answers for other things. So I really do sympathize with the question. I think that's a great question. Yeah, if I may also make an announcement. For those of you who care about these discussions, we sell to the lesser degree, because it doesn't seem to like a discord interface, but we host these discussions intellectually on multiple servers. So the ones that are active now, one is mine. That's given in the description. You can click on that. It's philosophical checkmate. We have another one. It's my other server called friction. You can join that one. And we are hosting well-known philosophers and these kinds of debates. You can continue. You can also check out Pogan's server. Although I can't say how good it is since I'm still banned, but you guys can check these three out and we can continue a discussion there. In fact, after this finishes, we can pop into any one of those and we can continue and tomorrow we have professors of philosophy coming almost every other week. So please pop in and get to discussions. Yes, in someone complained, I didn't answer the question. I tried to answer it to the best of my understanding and apologies if it didn't satisfy you. To that end, I also will have an after show. I'm planning an after show on my channel. I might be able to elaborate a little bit more on first Corinthians chapter 126 to 30 that I do think addresses that question and why God does not show up in our experiments. Thank you so much. We're gonna go to Mikey Q922 for $5. Thank you for your super chat. Sal, Canadian Catholic, what are some of your favorite apologetic books and have they influenced you? Sal, do you wanna go ahead? I'll let you answer first because I have so many books. It's hard to pick out a favorite. Well, I don't know if, I presumably the type of books I read are mostly philosophy related. So I mean, I don't know if that's directly tied. Like, I mean, I'm the type of person who would rather go to the encyclopedia of philosophy rather than 15 reasons to accept Christ. So I guess in that sense, I would obviously say the Bible is my favorite book by far as I mean it should be. But yes, I love encyclopedias as you can see philosophy books. So if there are like favorite philosophers I have and their words, I would name a couple. Some have been an influence on me. Kwein is one famous influence, though he was an atheist. My other influence are Peter Van Inwagen, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig to a lesser degree. And yeah, I would consider these people a huge inspiration for me. And from the older ones, obviously Aristotle, Plato and Descartes. I would consider Descartes a future influence. And last but not least, Spinoza. Spinoza is also a really good influence even though he was critical of Christianity. Please go ahead. Oh, thanks. Now I had a chance to sort through my list. I would put number one, The Stairway to Life by Change Tan and Rob Stadler. Change Tan is a professor of molecular biology at University of Missouri. She had been an atheist. She became a Christian and then a creationist. Another book would be Genetic Entropy by John Sanford. I've had the privilege of working with him for seven years. He's a famous geneticist. Contributed a lot to genetic engineering in the 1980s and 90s. He was an atheist, became a Christian, became a creationist and then Walter Brown's creation science. In the beginnings, the title of the book. So thank you very much for the super chat and for asking the question. Great question and great answers. Siji, Frito, Serabi for $5. Thank you, Siji. Atheist, would you, should you figure out what's Protestant, i.e. scripture versus tradition or faith over works? Is Catholic versus Christian before debating atheist? Don't bother. Oh, they're coming at ya. Yes, I'm going to address that. We, me and Tom all have a reasonable disagreement. I am a, so I don't think that's a secret, by the way. Though some people would have to question that, but you know, and Sal is a person who has left the Roman Catholic Church, although he tells me he has many family members that are a part of it. And we agreed that we have some differences, even though for today's discussion, we would put those differences aside and try to concentrate on our case for theists, which is again, something that we can do. We can still collaborate with people and fight not agree on everything with us, right? I mean, there's a bunch of atheist intellectuals that I respect and there is a bunch of others. And obviously, Sal is a Christian, not of the Roman Catholic conviction. I am, I'm a Roman Catholic. And you know, it's just a difference of opinion and some matters of faith, which we should not have to go into every time we collaborate. Yeah, in the same way. Thank you, thank you for the, thank you for the super chat and the question in the comment. I'd like to have just such nerds. Wait, speak for yourself. Are you saying that I'm not getting showered with tension? Oh, I'm just joking, I'm just joking, I'm just joking. So thank you for your answers. We got creptis for $10. Thank you for your super chat. At C.C. Canadian Catholic life, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then has heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Beautiful. That's from Macbeth, my favorite plate. One of my favorite plates. Who was that from again? Who was the person's name? What was the person's name? Creptis S. Creptis S. I guess the person knows that that's a line I know on memory. I mean, it's something, I love Shakespeare. I mean, I have a ton of books, but Shakespeare is always, I drool over Shakespeare. I mean, Shakespeare is like my pornography. So basically I'm like, I'm so grateful for that reference to Creptis. Please go ahead. Awesome. So we have Sun C for $5. Thank you for your super chat. Spa Z for $5 at Detroyer. If you're a contextualist, how can you say something is unjustified without qualification? How do you rule out theism being justified in some context? Right. So this is the sort of conversation that I could have had. I could have tried to speak about myself as a contextualist about knowledge or after some justification and gone on from there, right? But I felt like it was probably too disconnected from the intention, like intended sort of discourse on arguments for theism. But I think it's quite plain, right? The way to go forward from there. The approach would be to sort of establish a common sort of epistemic context, sort of what things are gonna be taken for granted in an epistemic context, what sort of things are permissible as evidence. And then there's gonna be squabbles over what sort of things are permissible for evidence. And that's the sort of thing I hinted at in my opening. But that could provide sort of a rough outline of what sort of the epistemic context is and we could move on from there. But as I said, this is sort of an extra layer of philosophical discussion that seemed a little outside what the intended discussion was gonna be precisely. And I don't think it would have helped to frame it much better than it actually was. But thanks for the question. Thank you for your answer. And that concludes our super chats for tonight. And I guess we could give a little bit of end here for your concluding remarks. Just make it, you know, within a few seconds, we'll be kissing and then we'll call it a night and wrap it up. Sure, can I go ahead? Sure, yep. Yeah, I want to thank once again, but ensuring Pogun, people I'm very well acquainted with for agreeing to do this. See, the thing is I have something positive to say about Pogun. And I mean, obviously I have a lot of things to say about Pogun. I love Pogun. But other than that, I think that however bad he might have done in this debate, this is like miles ahead of Matt the LaBloviator, who is even scared to even open his mouth in the same room I am in, right? So I mean, from that perspective, Pogun, congratulations on winning this debate because Matt the LaBloviator is scared of this. And at least you're not. So yeah, please go ahead, everybody else. Yeah, I'll just directly respond to that. I think we were muddied by a lot of unnecessary character attacks and evasion on Canadian Catholic's part. I thought he spent the majority of the debate attacking my character rather than actually giving some sort of argument for it being rational to believe in God. We basically had to struggle to get an argument out of him. And by the time he finally did, we rendered several very good objections to said argument. My opponent, Troyer, who is obviously extremely knowledgeable on a variety of things explained in pretty excruciating in detail why that sort of argument he provided wouldn't hold, obviously. I gave a counter right off the bat. I had an argument prepared, expecting him to give that. Sal was a complete gentleman, conducted himself very admirably. I obviously disagree with him on a number of things, but I greatly appreciate his demeanor and his professionalism. Special thanks to the moderator. I think I thought you did a great job, kept it fairly cordial. Yeah, I mean, I'm on YouTube. If you guys like my stuff, if you like that sort of content, be sure to check me out. Other than that, I'll just go ahead to Troyer and Sal. I see. You're muted, Sal, if you weren't on the talk. I didn't realize I was muted. Thank you. I almost one time gave a whole talk muted if people didn't tell me. I'd like to thank Praise for hosting this and running the show. I know that since I know how difficult it is to host the show and just press all the buttons. I'd like to thank my partner in debate here, Canadian Catholic, Josh. Thanks for the opportunity. I'd like to thank Dave for, I mean, not James. James for contacting me and saying, hey, Sal, will you be a tag team partner? I'm just like, okay. And Pogen and Troyer, it's been a pleasure meeting you and you have very sharp minds. You raised very good points. We probably don't agree on what would count as evidence and that's probably a fundamental disagreement there. I do have an after show that I'm planning on my channel, Evidence and Reasons. You can Google Evidence and Reasons YouTube channel. I may have a short after share we'll see and I'll try to talk about some of the things that we talked about today. And I'm really grateful for the chance to articulate my views. And I really wanna thank the audience for giving me a chance to stay. So thank you. Thank you so much, Sal. And I thank you for being in my corner and backing me up, obviously, someone with your expertise was a great asset in this sort of a debate. And I think it helped our cause greatly. Thanks so much. You've got a pleasure. Yeah. And as everyone else did, I'll reiterate the thanks for both my modern day debate and praise for hosting and all of the people involved, Logan, Canadian, Sal. And the audience for watching, especially the people offering super chats. And I'll just kind of at the end and closing just reiterate with the negative case. Look, if you look back on this discussion and analyze the arguments that were presented, the stuff from miracles to the whatever it is that Canadian was trying to present near the beginning to the stuff about life and that sort of cosmological argument, amended version. And the criticisms that were level against these, I don't think a good case. I'd always made in favor of these. And now there's a lot more discussed that was left out here, but I think that the negative case came out stronger. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just add one quick final comment before we completely wrap it up here. Once again, Darth Dawkins has been making the rounds online recently, making a couple of challenges to myself and Jack Engstrich. So once again, just final consideration here, Darth. Myself and Jack are both open. There's $300 on the table. If you're interested in defending your views, not calling us idiots and soft-fists, feel free to do so. Otherwise, we'll just take it that you are expressing a great amount of cowardice. With that, take it away. Awesome, guys. Yeah, I think so. Go ahead, Keneal. Let you finish there, and I got a wrapper up here. I'm very well acquainted with Darth, and I mean, we disagree on some things, but I think that since $300 is involved, and I mean, it's obviously going public, I think that it would be really good to, you know, see this because, I mean, Darth gets money, prize money due to participation alone. He doesn't even need to win over any kind of crowd. Simply by participating, he will own, he will make good amount of money. So I definitely think you should take this challenge. Sounds good, guys. I appreciate the feedback. Great, great interlocutors tonight, and I think James will be pleased. Thank you. I enjoyed Sepiga Damani tonight, but also we have our brother SFT out there. He has a big debate tomorrow. Nef vs. Nef, check it out on this channel, SFT, and we're going to call the night, keep sifting.