 Everybody, today we're debating whether or not the demonic is real and we're starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This is going to be a fun one, folks, but want to let you know first, if it's your first time here at Modernity Debate, we are a nonpartisan channel focused on providing a totally neutral platform where people can come and make their best case on an equal playing field. People from all walks of life, and so we do want to let you know, no matter what walk of life you're from, Christian, Atheist, Democrat, Republican, you name it, we really do hope you feel welcome. And so it's going to be a lot of fun, folks, want to let you know a couple of things. 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If we're not, let us know and we'll work to get on your favorite podcast app. With that, want to do a couple of other quick things. One, before we get into the format, just want to introduce someone, you could say an enthusiast about this topic, but don't worry, he will be a neutral co-moderator. We're very excited to welcome Dwayne, as Dwayne has volunteered to kind of help handle some of the duties today, which it really helps, is there's a lot kind of flying through as we go. And so I do want to give a welcome to Dwayne and say thanks so much, Dwayne and his dog. Very excited to have both of you here. Thank you. And Dwayne, I know that you had mentioned you want to read like kind of like a hello and greeting, which we do really appreciate, because we want everybody, like I said, to feel welcome, no matter what walk of life you're coming from. So Dwayne, if you do want to share that, you're absolutely, the floor is all yours. Yeah, thank you. I just want to say hi, everyone. My name's Dwayne. I've been given the opportunity to co-mod today with James. So thank you, James. And I would like to welcome the debaters and wish them the best of luck in getting across their points clearly and concisely. So good luck, Michael and CJ. And I would also like to ask you, the viewers, to please subscribe to the channel and like if you haven't already done so. And please consider supporting the channel by becoming the Patreon of the channel. Thank you, everyone. I'll hand it back to James. Thanks, Dwayne. And Dwayne is a patron. We really do appreciate our patrons. We've got the Patreon is kind of growing and we're looking for new ideas on how we can hopefully make it a value to you. But the ultimate thing is the patrons who have signed up so far. I mean, they're pretty much like gag rewards. It's kind of like if you sign up at this tier, James will call you and insult you on your birthday or you'll get a swimsuit calendar of James. So they've really only done it because they believe in the vision. And we want to say thanks so much as we're excited about the vision of really trying to say, hey, let's have all sorts of views represented and let's have it basically be done on the most equal playing field possible. And so if you want to join us in that vision, we do encourage you consider joining our Patreon, which is in the description. And so with that, the format for tonight's debate, as this is a I don't think we've ever had this topic. Let me know if I have we ever done this in the live chat. Let me know. But very exciting if we have it's been a long time on whether or not there's evidence of the demonic. We're going to have the affirmative going first. So that will be CJ that you see who you see on your left. He is a Christian and then after his opening, we'll have an opening from Michael X, who is going to be taking the negation at least of the evidence. So it'd be interesting to kind of see if, you know, Michael's agnostic toward demons or if you would take the hard position of like, no, there are no demons. So with that, we will following that have open conversation and then Q&A. So if you happen to have a question, feel free fired into the old live chat. Super chat is also an option in which case you can make a comment toward one of the debaters or an objection or both debaters. And they, of course, will get a chance to respond. Also, it'll push your question or comment to the top of the list for the Q&A. And with that, really just want to say first thanks. So like, thanks so much for being with us, you guys, CJ and Michael X. It's a true pleasure just to have you guys. So thanks for being here. Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me. Absolutely, as well, James, my pleasure. And so with that, CJ, the floor is all yours. Alrighty, thank you very much. And Shalom to everybody here in the audience. I want to say this is a little bit out of my element in a sense. I'm typically talking about politics and religion, but I was certainly more than happy to address this topic. It does have a little bit to do with religion, a little bit to do with philosophy, things like that. So I think it's something that's not a hundred percent out of my element here. And it was certainly exciting to, you know, take on what I would consider to be a unique topic, I guess, I don't necessarily see a lot of conversations about this particular topic a lot of times. So very quickly, I want to briefly point out the definition of the word demon. This is according to the Oxford Languages Dictionary, which is the first one that shows up if you Google search demon. It's an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell. Now that, especially there, of course, is a specific kind of demon, but really that an evil spirit or devil is kind of the main part that we're looking for here. I would suggest that the real question is whether or not spirits in general exist or a spirit realm slash spirit world slash whatever you would want to call it exists because if there is spirits, logically, there is going to be both good and bad spirits, really, regardless of your ethical theories at that point, if, you know, if we're all being subjective, then somebody's going to find something these people are doing or these spirits rather are doing to be evil. And if it's objective, then obviously the likelihood that they're doing something wrong is just very likely. So the real question then becomes not necessarily do bad spirits or demons or the demonic exist, but do spirits at all exist? And if spirits do exist, we can logically conclude, I think that both good and bad and neutral spirits would have to exist as well. Now, there's a couple of things I want to briefly point out for people in the audience, which is just that for a lot of people, this question is kind of already answered by virtue of some other questions that you may not think are related, for example, a good number of religions, if you affirm them or if you consider yourself to be an adherent of them, you kind of already believe in things like spirits, whether you've ever actually acknowledged that or not, right? For example, if you're a Christian, if you're a Jew, if you're a Muslim, on a lot of cases, Buddhist, Hindu, etc., right? Even if you never actually thought, oh, I believe in the demonic, actually by, you know, extension, you do believe in the demonic, at least that's what your religion affirms. Maybe you have an issue with that particular affirmation, but that would be what those particular face affirm. Also, if you know, and this one kind of goes without saying a little bit, but a lot of people who would believe in things like, you know, the power of vibes or whatever, things like ghosts, so on and so forth, those people would also kind of already be presupposing the existence of spirits. And so we're not really here talking to anybody in those camps, because they kind of, like I said, would already be presupposing the existence of spirits, or at least we'd presuppose a worldview, which required the existence of spirits. So what would you say to somebody who was a little bit more skeptical on the existence of spirits, maybe they have some kind of an explanation, you know, while holding one of the views I previously mentioned, or maybe they just don't hold those views at all. Well, there's a couple of things that I would quickly point out. My first argument would be what I call the argument from animation. In other words, what is it that makes human beings and indeed any animal, for that matter, alive, right? If we were to look at something like a rock, right, a rock very clearly is not animated, it doesn't do the things that something that is a living does. Now, in technology, one of the things that we are able to do is build certain mechanisms, certain devices, right, power them with some sort of power source and get them to work properly in the way that they were designed. And one might assume that if the human body or the animal bodies were to work in that self same way, that we could just do the exact same thing. In fact, people did think this back in the early 1800s, and this was the inspiration for the story Frankenstein. If you put all the working pieces together, gets, give it some juice, then hypothetically, it should work, right? The thing is, it doesn't. Why do I bring that up? Well, because it implies that there's something missing once you have all the physical components together, there's something missing that makes that body alive, whereas now it is not, right? There is something that is no longer there, I would postulate that that is a spirit. I would also postulate, you know, a lot of philosophers have talked about the non physical mind and whether or not the mind is actually separate from the brain. I think in a lot of ways, philosophers have been forced to conclude that it is indeed separate from the brain. One of the things I would quickly point out from a little bit more of a scientific perspective, rather than a, you know, a philosopher's perspective would be Dr. Peter Fenwick's studies, one of which are many of which rather led him into the study of near death experiences. And one of the things that he pointed out, which I think is very true, is the very fact that somebody has an experience of any kind after their brain seems to be, you know, stopping it, ceasing its activity, right? And the heart seems to have stopped, seems to imply that there is something non physical occurring in the person which we may refer to as a soul or a spirit. You know, many people have pointed to things like creativity, morality, logic and other such non physical things, love and et cetera, as evidence of some sort of a non physical realm. Some people have called it platonic. Some people have called it metaphysical. Some people have called it angelic. Whatever you happen to call it, the point is there's been lots of arguments put forward and lots of evidence to support these arguments of the existence of some sort of non physical field. In fact, one of my favorite personal evidence is of this, not because I believe it so much, but because it's one that kind of fits into the secular worldview is Albert Einstein's theory of relativity when mixed with modern day quantum mechanics could suggest that with the existence of multiple universes, there could indeed be bleeding from one universe, bleeding for lack of a better term, right, from one universe into another or one reality into another, thus creating the appearance of apparitions or ghosts, which could be not necessarily the same thing, but sort of an explanation. You know, it's not quite the same thing as like spirits. It's not non physical, but it's interesting because it posits something that like I said, would be a little bit more palatable to the secularist mind mindset, right? But nonetheless, you know, there is that question there, right? What is it that makes us alive? What is it that has this consciousness? How is it that we have experiences after death and they can recount those experiences when resuscitated from death? The next argument I would say is an argument from just general experience. Roughly 18% of Americans alone, according to a Pew research poll done in 2009, believed that they have been in the presence of an apparition or spirit. To put that in perspective for you, a lot of people like to compare this to things like aliens or Sasquatch or things like that. So to put that in perspective for you, between 1921 and 2013, there were 3,313 total sightings of Sasquatch. That is a 92 year period. The grand total of sightings of Sasquatch would be roughly 3,300 according to the Big Foot, a Big Foot, excuse me, research organization. I simply point that out just to say when people compare these two things, they're not in the same category, right? One is significantly more evidence, at least significantly more believers and people who have claimed to experienced it than the other. Likewise, 0.3% of the population, according to a 1998 Roper poll, consider themselves to be abducted by aliens. So once again, it's a much smaller number when people say, oh, this is one of those crazy tinfoil hat kind of views. It's really not in the same field as things like alien abductions. Even sightings of UFOs, UFO sightings, which could be explained by a lot of natural phenomenon. It's only about 16% of Americans who claim that they have seen UFOs, which is still less than the 18% that claim they would be in the presence of an apparition. This is actually something that gets even more, the number here gets even more great when you go outside of the United States. In fact, it is the norm in many African, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc. countries to believe in things like spirits, apparitions, jinn, as they would say, in the Arabic cultures, and so on. On top of that, there is nearly, according to a brand watch blog, which to be fair, is somebody's own personal blog. So it could be some poor evidence, but it is some evidence that they did collect themselves. Nonetheless, you guys can check it out for yourselves. Claims roughly 900 ghost sightings in the United States between January 2016 and October of 2016, which is a pretty large amount, I would say. I would also point out that this can be expanded to be a kind of 2a in the argument, which is universal experience. There is no culture in the history of the United, sorry, in the history of the United States. That's kind of ridiculous. My bad. There is no culture in the history of the world in the history of human civilization that has ever had a majority, that has ever had a, excuse me, let me rephrase that. There was no civilization in any history that has ever not had a majority of its population believing in ghost spirits or spiritual things at at least one point in time. The only examples I can actually find, interestingly enough, are modern cultures like modern-day UK, modern day United States. But even then, like I said, with a lot of those beliefs that presuppose things like spirits, a lot of people, even if they don't think they believe in demons, do have to affirm the existence of demons because of their beliefs in Christianity or so on and so forth. The point being here, though, every single culture in the entire history of the world without exception claims not only to believe in these, but also to have experienced these spirits. And in many times experience these spirits en masse, right? There's, of course, examples that we can name specifically, like people claiming they were met by apparitions of angels or so on and so forth, like Prophet Muhammad or William Branham or what have you, right? But then, of course, there's the hundreds of thousands of examples that you could use all throughout human history of somebody saying they saw an apparition or something along those lines. And that universal experience, I think, is a big deal because for the most part, most things that all humans universally experience, I think you have some sort of basis in truth, right? The third argument that I would make that I think supports the existence of a spiritual realm and therefore of some sort of a bad spirit would be just the documented instances of supernatural experience. Of course, there's all the holy books myths and histories that populate the entire human history. But on top of that, we have a lot of modern day cases that are actually pretty noteworthy. For example, there's, you know, of course, the tons and tons of photos and videos all across the internet, some of them a lot more fruitful and a lot more, you know, convincing than others. There's even more documented cases than that, like the Warren cases, the cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren who claimed to have multiple different experiences with apparitions and indeed documented a lot of their experiences with apparitions, which by the way, that's the famous couple from the Conjuring Annabelle universe. If you're looking for the actual facts, that is a horrible representation of what they actually believe 30 seconds. But and then, of course, you know, I mentioned Peter Fenwick earlier Peter Fenwick studied nearly 300 near death experiences, one of the things that he actually pointed out when he studied these near death experiences was the fact that every single time it happened, it appeared that the exact same sorts of things would happen. People would go and meet some loved ones. There would be the sort of light at the tunnel sort of thing, right? They had what you would, you know, what you might call an out of body experience, or what some people might call astral projection or something like that, right? And it seemed to be relatively consistent, despite the fact that they had different ages, genders, beliefs, religions, cultural experiences and so forth. And the last thing that I would kind of point out as some more miscellaneous points, I think 10 seconds I can give you. Alright, sorry. So first things first, information can exist in the form of electromagnetic waves. We know that because of the transmission of radio waves. We're currently experiencing that right now. You can see audible and visual information of me, even though that is having to pass through electromagnetic waves. So we know information could be carried over electromagnetic waves on top of that. We know energy cannot be created nor destroyed. And I think that gives us two more kind of miscellaneous points that could point to the existence of the spirit. Gotcha. Thanks so much, CJ for that opening. And now we will kick it over to Michael X. So about 13, maybe 12 or 13 minutes, Michael X. Take whatever you need. And the floor is all yours. Thanks for being here. Awesome. Well, the topic for today's debate is whether or not there is evidence for the demons. And as CJ said, this could be, you know, demons doesn't necessarily have to be a good or a bad type of spirit. You know, we can we can broaden the scope out a little bit if you want. I think many of the arguments that apply to one could apply to the other. There might be a need to draw some distinction there. But for the most part, I'm going to grant that. So just for some basic, you know, mental housekeeping rules, if you're going to suggest a claim is true, you're going to make an active positive claim, then there are two components necessary for that claim. First of all, there has to be a methodology, some type of mechanism by which you can work with. It has to be reliable, one if you want to be believed. And the second is that there has to be proper evidence that is the result of this methodology to support the claim. And my contention here is that I do not think CJ has either. I do not think he has a proper methodology by which to support his claim. And I do not think he has proper evidence to support his claim either. And so those are the two primary contentions I'll be making in my opening here. So let's go ahead and start off with my first contention about the methodology. Most of the time whenever claims about the cosmos are made, no claims about reality, the scientific method is appealed to. And I do not think the scientific method is going to be of help to CJ in this instance. A few reasons why one of the primary not necessarily assumptions but principles made in science is that of methodological naturalism, which is a procedural necessity that we appeal to natural laws and theories whenever investigating natural phenomenon or phenomenon in reality. And the thing here is that the thing that would be investigated in this case is distinctly supernatural. The idea of spirits, demons, angels, these are not natural phenomenon. And so it is very difficult for science to operate within these grounds. We see, you know, if you rewind the tape of history long back enough before the philosophy of science had really gone the methodological naturalism, there were many instances wherein people would assert, you know, volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, you know, we think these are supernatural, we think in cause, we think that there are demons or angels or gods behind these things. And as individuals became more and more knowledgeable and understanding of these phenomena, we understood that they were actually naturalistic and cause that North cakes, earthquakes were caused because of the shifting of tectonic plates and such. And so the need for this type of assumption of the supernatural became smaller and smaller in the scientific field. And as a result, methodological naturalism was reached at. We have a procedural necessity for the supernatural to be excluded in scientific inquiry. Another reason for this is because of the type of principles, other types of principles you find in science. There's that of, you know, explanatory. I hate to interrupt. It's just for some reason, it's like I've got you about as high as we can get you in OBS. If you're able, maybe, maybe speaking closer to the camera or something, or the mic, just because it is for some reason a little bit hard to hear you, even though I've got you about as high as we can in OBS. Oh, I'm sorry. That's OK. Yeah, I could try I could try getting a little closer, maybe speaking up a bit. Yeah. Yeah, let me let me let me know if you have more problems hearing me. I'll go I'll go ahead and move forward. Got you. So as I was saying, I lost my train of thought there for a second. So one of the principles behind scientific inquiry is the idea of explanatory and predictive power, a type of stability, you know, the ability to separate the good from the bad evidence and the assumption or the introduction of the supernatural like demons, angels, spirits into this scientific inquiry is very difficult. It throws a wrench in the type of inquiry that we are able to arrive at to to use to arrive at the kind of civilization that we exist in today. And so the assumption or the introduction of these types of non-natural phenomena into science is very difficult. And so I do not think for these reasons that the scientific method is available to CJ in his inquiry. And so the next question becomes, well, what is CJ's methodology? What then can he use to arrive at his beliefs about the supernatural, about the demons, about these angels, these different spirits existing? If the supernatural introduced into the scientific method is so difficult, it makes things so hard for us to inquire about that what is available to CJ and I would posit, I have not come across another methodology other than the scientific method to arrive at these types of claims, not to say that there are none, but that if there are any, I am not aware of any. So I guess that's a standing offer to CJ to identify the type of methodology he uses and to to explain why he thinks it's a reliable methodology. So the second component here that's necessary to talk about is evidence, the type of evidence, even if CJ were to identify what type of methodology he wants to work with, why he thinks it's reliable, why I do not think there is sufficient evidence to arrive at the claim that there is demons or what demons exist. And my argument here would be actually quite similar to some of the topics that CJ talked about, you know, that general universal experience these documented instances. And my claim here is that I just find it very ironic that there's really just two different categories, in my opinion, for the types of instances that people interact with this alleged supernatural world with demons or angels. There's the types where we find out that people just can't, they falsified information, they want attention, they're making things up. So I mean, those are obviously not true. I'm pretty sure CJ and I can agree. Some of those instances are the case. And then the second instance would be, you know, those instances where it's very difficult to say one way or the other, you know, they're positioned in such a manner so as the evidence is not forthcoming. You know, you can't say really one way or the other about whether or not there is support for or against the proposition. This is a sort of thing that you'd expect to find if there really were no demons, if there really were no spirits, good or bad, that you'd only have these two types of evidences, you wouldn't have the evidence to actually actively support the claim being made that demons exist. And so this is what leads me to believe that it is improbable that demons do exist, that there doesn't seem to be good evidence for this claim, our expectations about what we would think to be true if demons do exist simply do not match our observations of what is the case. You know, we have these general experiences, people have these, these instances where they think they have interacted with the supernatural and it's simply too easy to explain, you know, using Oculus Racer, the unnecessary multiplication of entities that we should avoid that, it's too easy to explain that using already well verified principles like hallucination, mind altering substances, simply, maybe they're dreaming, maybe they're really tired, there's just too many instances of that being the case with these people who have claimed that they have interacted with this dimension. And in the end, many of these instances, we just have to take their word for it, there's no way to verify without just believing that that's the case. And this is not an example of proper evidence in the scientific community or any other type of valid methodology for arriving at truth claims is necessary that it can be verified without just believing the person and trusting that they're not fabricating something they're not under the influence of some type of confounding variable at the time. And so this is why I do not find the instances of the general experience to be very convincing. You know, CJ talked about how there's similarities between the experiences that are given, how they all seem to kind of agree on certain types of elements of these experiences. And I would pause it, but the simpler explanation for that is that there are similarities between humans. Obviously, the study of psychology, while rather young has identified similarities in the way that humans react to things. And so it's so much simpler to say, not that there's something out there that we just haven't been able to document yet to be able to support, but that there's just similarities and how humans react to things and how they fill in the fill in the blanks with somewhat unexplained or confusing interactions that would explain that would account for how they react in similar ways. He also brought up the near death experiences and how this might be evidence for the non physical. And my response to this is is very similar. It's very easy to, you know, read these books with these documented instances. And, you know, a lot of times, like I said before, some near death experiences are made up. Some of them aren't actually what we would want them to be to support our claim. And many of these others are very easily accounted for, you know, using Occam's razor and oxygen starved brain, attempting to make sense of its surroundings. It's simply not necessary to appeal to any type of supernatural or angels or demons to account for this type of experience. And so by Occam's razor, we shouldn't. It's unnecessary and needlessly complex. Now, another point that CJ brought up was actually related to his first point, his first line of evidence about animation. And he talked about the universe bleeding theory, the idea that we could, you know, have some type of apparition that could sort of transition over into a different type, you know, the universe that we're in, which, you know, could account for ghosts and many other supernaturally appearing types of entities. And I sort of think this demonstrates kind of a problem with many of the arguments he brought up. This is the possible, therefore probable fallacy. You know, it's technically possible that something could be the case, therefore, it's probably true. And there needs to be more evidence in support of CJ's examples here in order to fill in the blank between this type of example. We need more than just a logically, technically, could be true before evidence of this type can be accepted. And so these examples of the reality bleeding, and also with regards to the near death experience, you know, it could be true. You know, since we have some stories in a book that we talk about, you know, maybe one or two bits of corroborating evidence, perhaps depending on the author that you're referring to, it could be true that something of this level could be best explained by the supernatural. But without further evidence, without further, I would think you need scientific evidence. But if CJ has another methodology, like I said, for him all years, it's very difficult to arrive at the actual probably true claim. So in conclusion, I do not find the evidence for demons to be convincing or even the general claim of spirits as a general rule. I do not think that what you would expect to be true if these demons did exist is what we observed to be true. I do not think that it is at all obvious that these instances that no one seems to be able to verify in terms of general instances of interaction. These stories you hear sensationalized on the news all the time, I do not find these to be very convincing. There doesn't seem to be a way to verify these stories without taking their work for it. And this simply is not what you'd expect to be true if demons were indeed existent and able to interact with humanity. And so for these reasons, I do not find the evidence for demons to be convincing. Thank you. Gotcha. Thanks so much. We'll kick it into open discussion mode. So the floor is all yours, gentlemen. All right. Thank you very much. So there's a couple of things I wanted to note here. So the first thing, because I think it's definitely the biggest thing, you went from saying there was a reduced need for the supernatural to kind of flipping that around saying there was a need for the supernatural to be pushed out. If you're assuming, though, that the if you're assuming the nonexistence of the supernatural in order for any methodology to work at all, though, doesn't that kind of make it impossible to prove any supernatural argument? So what I was saying there is that if you're going to use the scientific method, then yeah, that's kind of how it works. And there's reasons for that methodological naturalism. I went to the history behind the inquiry. But if you want to use a different methodology, that's fine. I would just, you know, like to know what that is and why you consider it to be reliable. Okay. And so and then just to clarify, so what you would be saying, just to kind of make sure I understand you, is that using the scientific method, there'd be no way to properly study any of the supernatural. Correct? Yes, I think I think the supernatural is too big for the scientific method. Okay, so I'm glad to see a clarification there. So I do want to challenge that a little bit, though, because I did actually quote. Now I will grant you at least one of the documentations that I quoted, i.e. the Warrens would probably be considered to be a little bit more shall we say iffy, I guess, in the scientific community, right? I know there's a lot of stuff that Ed and Lorraine Warren said that maybe a lot of scientists wouldn't be, you know, particularly fond of. But with the other gentleman I mentioned, Dr. Peter Frenwick, right? That was actually a repeatable study that he was doing, looking at 300 different near-death experiences. And one of the things I'd like to point out was that when he was actually doing this study, he was waiting until things like the heart and brain were no longer working and then being resuscitated. So when we say like a brain being starved of oxygen, it appeared that the brain was not working at all anymore, as long as as well as the brain and the other organs there, right? A, I do think that he did show an example, you know, continuously testing it over and over, having a hypothesis, proving that hypothesis with the evidence he collected, right? That did seem to be an example of using the natural to at least infer what definitely sounds like the existence of the supernatural, right? Because I mean, I would like to see your personal explanations of it, but I personally think that the, you know, his idea of the existence of an experience in general when your body is not working, and then even being able to recount that experience with good memory once your body is working again. That seems to be pretty good evidence to me for a detachment of the mind from the brain, as well as good evidence for using the scientific method to actually deduce evidence of the supernatural. So I'd be interested to hear what you want to say about that. There's a couple things there. I talked before in my opening just about the methodological naturalism principle. It's not necessarily excluding the supernatural out of logical necessity. You know, it's possible technically the supernatural could exist, but out of procedural necessity. And the reason for that is because the scientific method is grounded in the need for explanatory predictive power, the stability that gives the scientific method something of like its fuel. And so I guess my point would be that if we start allowing for the supernatural, you know, if we find a problem, it's a hard problem, we don't necessarily know the answer right away. And before we'll be delving into the topic and seeing what we can find, we throw up our hands and say, well, OK, fine, maybe demons, maybe something supernatural. It just doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would have been able to give our civilization the development and sophistication that it has through the scientific method. And so when we have near-death experiences, you know, when we talk about consciousness, when we talk about, you know, other very sticky topics like origin of life research or origin of the universe, I'm not I'm granting you. It's a difficult topic. Scientists may not have enough information at their disposal to arrive at a conclusion right away, but that doesn't mean that methodological naturalism and the need to refer to that, which has been established as sound so many times over in the past just goes, you know, throws right out the window. That's what I would say there. Well, while I certainly do understand an objection like that, I do think that there is a little bit of a faulty assumption in there. And I'd say with all due respect, but just as an example, right? And of course, this is not what we're talking about, but just to kind of use and to redact you out absurdum, right? If I could show you, you know, let's say I had a camera and 15 different cameras from 15 different news organizations so that we know there's no bias, right? And we record it every time I prayed for a waffle. It manifested in front of me, right? That would be an example now, obviously, like I said, that's redact you out absurdum, right? But that's an example of clearly you can use, you know, repeatable evidence to show that something supernatural is going on. And in this particular example, you know, we are postulating certain hypotheses and theories, of course, to prove why Dr. Friendwick or to explain rather why Dr. Friendwick had the information he did. But it doesn't seem to me to be that it doesn't seem to me that there's any better evidence than what he himself postulated, which was the idea that and in fact, again, I would question how does one experience something when one's body is considered to be dead? OK, so with the first point you were talking about with the reductioid absurdum, I guess what I would say there is that if we are able to use a scientific method to arrive at a conclusion about what allegedly was a supernatural phenomenon, I would say that now becomes a natural phenomenon. So I would say that, right. And so when we talk about demons and spirits, I mean, those are typically referred to as supernatural and spiritual phenomenon. If we come up with a working understanding of how all that works, that's not supernatural anymore, at least in my opinion. Second point, what were you referring to? Could you refresh my memory about what you're saying with the new death experiences? Yeah, certainly. I'm so what part of just what we can we can keep going in that direction. But I my hope is that we won't go too far in it just because there were some of those more kind of concrete arguments that CJ that you would put forth that I think are, you'd say more germane just because this one, I do see it's relevant. But at the same time, I don't want to spend too much time because there are a lot of other topics that were brought up too. Yeah, certainly, absolutely. And I'll make the kind of re-explanation here very quick as well. So what Dr. Friendwick had suggested after he had done these experiments was that the only thing he could think of that could logically explain experience, a personal experience for a person while the body of the person, the existence of some sort of a detached spirit of some kind, right, some sort of a non physical entity that makes up that person, i.e. what we call spirit or soul, that was separated in some way and still living in some way after the death of this body. Now, to be fair, I do want to point out, I think I might, I don't know if they were completely brain dead. In fact, I don't know if it's even possible to come back once you're completely brain dead. So I do want to point that out as a little asterisk in this study. But nonetheless, that was kind of my general point is what is it that could cause somebody to experience something if their body itself is not actually functioning anymore, if it can be considered by all medical accounts dead? OK, my question for you there would be, do the consensus of relevantly trained professionals agree with his explanation or is it kind of just him? Well, so I would actually I'd point out two quick things. The first thing just to briefly answer your question, it's kind of not as black and white as we'd like. From my experience, scientists have a lot of skepticism about the supernatural for sure. But especially when it comes to things like consciousness and ghosts and stuff like that, it seemed to be a lot more open than the existence of things like gods and things of that nature. That being said, I would not claim by any stretch that his opinion is the majority, by which I mean strictly like 50.1 percent. Certainly, I certainly wouldn't make that claim. But I would also point out just one thing very quickly. I don't necessarily believe that and I want to be clear. It's not that pure review and scientific consensus is irrelevant because it's certainly not. But I do want to be clear that I think there's sometimes a little bit of a confirmation bias in peer review. A lot of times you have a lot of people who just agree with the hypothesis being given anyways or disagree with the hypothesis being given in any ways. And it appears at least that there are significant amounts of bias in a lot of different papers. And I think we see that, my favorite example, even though to be fair, it is 300 years old. It's just my favorite because it's so obviously wrong is the John Snow example back with with cholera in the 1700s. You know, they're like, he's pretty simple. Don't, you know, don't go to the bathroom in the drinking water. Everybody said you are completely insane. I don't understand why that would be a problem. And he got run out of town and even I think arrested at one point in time. And it just goes to show that the scientific consensus, once again, I understand this story 300 years ago. But the scientific consensus can certainly be incorrect. So granted that it is certainly not something that is the majority opinion by any stretch. I would still say I wouldn't necessarily, I wouldn't discount that but I wouldn't want to put too much stock in it either. OK, my next question for you would have been, is it peer reviewed? Point taken about the consensus of peer review but does it happen to be peer reviewed? I'm going to be honest with you. I believe it is yes. But I have to be honest with you. I'm questioning myself right now. I wanted to say a definitive yes and I kind of stopped myself because I guess I'm not 100% sure if I can say that. OK, that's fine. Forgive me. I'm sorry. Just one time. In the most nonpartisan way possible, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts, both of them, both of your thoughts on some of the arguments in particular, one that you had brought up, CJ, that allegedly you had said these cases scattered all across the world. You said seemed to have some sort of converging similar theme or story, which Michael acts. We I don't know if you would address that in your statement, but opening statements, we usually people don't use those for addressing or rebutting. So that's a topic that I was like, oh, that's juicy. We'd love to hear both of your thoughts on that. But like I said, forgive me. I know that I'm kind of steering the conversation. But just because I thought that one might be just people might get a really big kick out of hearing you both talk about that. OK, I did talk about that in my opening, actually. I referred to the study of psychology and I said that that seems to be more simply explained by reference to similar reactions. You know, we react to things and things that we don't necessarily understand or experiences that we've had in similar ways, even if the thing that we interact with isn't necessarily anything more than what's in our head. So I would just account for that with similarity with humans. Gotcha. Thanks so much. And I would I would kind of want to, you know, expand a little bit on the idea because the idea I originally by the way, I've been calling Fennwick, it's actually Fenwick, no R, but nonetheless, I pointed that out originally because, you know, the same doctor, Dr. Peter Fenwick here actually pointed out that when he was studying near-death experiences that the near-death experiences seem to be very, very similar in the sense that the things that the people were experiencing seems to be the same general things. For example, conversations with past loved ones, a sort of astral projection sort of experience, right, where you appeared to be outside of your own body, watching your own self, you know, the idea of like lights at the end of the tunnel or some sort of other like metaphysical light place that you would be going to, which although to be fair, I think that's the most explainable of the examples he listed. But then also I wanted to expand on that to kind of point out that this rule of the similarities in these kinds of stories does actually expand past things like near-death experiences. For example, you know, it is interesting to note that almost universally all cultures understand spirits to be the reanimated dead in some way, right? In other words, they're seeing people who they claim to have been alive previously, not necessarily seeing like, you know, like what you would see in a horror movie with like demons with their big old mouths gaping and that kind of stuff, right? But actually people who were alive and associated with the region at some time, for example, in Tombstone, Arizona, the apparitions that people claim to see are very often people who died in the shooting at the OK Corral, which would make sense if demons did actually exist, right? I mean, I don't see any reason why if spirits exist and spirits are what continue on in some way, shape, or form after the physical body dies. I would not see why we would actually be seeing anything other than people who actually existed. And it could also explain things like why, you know, certain people seem to feel affinities, quote, unquote, for certain spiritual apparitions. Although I don't want to get into that one too much because that's way more antidotal than I'd like to get into. But that is something I'd want to point out is, you know, a lot of these experiences people have with ghosts or spirits or things like that, they tend to be similarly centered around people who were alive, similarly centered around certain places, right? Very, very rarely do you just see ghosts at the local target. It's pretty common on the flip side to see ghosts at the place where everybody said that there was ghosts, for example, the OK Corral tombstone, which seems to me once again to be something I would expect if some sort of an apparition did exist. And I'm being a little bit long-winded, so I kind of want to just toss it back there so you can get a little bit of your own opinions there, Michael. Yeah, sure. So I'll reiterate what I said before, you know, obviously humans have different personalities. We're going to be different in certain ways. There's going to be tweaks in it. But there are also similarities in the way we react to things. You know, you got the basic template there. And so there are some notable exceptions. But when presented with things that humans, you know, you and I, everyone else are having difficulty understanding, we're going to react to them in similar ways, which will account for the reports that we're seeing about tombstones and people that, you know, once were alive, seeing them, you know, reanimated sort of. It just makes sense. And it seems to be a lot simpler of an explanation to referring to, you know, previously peer-reviewed psychological research, as opposed to positing something extra on top of that. You know, using Occam's razor, the conjunction fouls, you know, the more things that have to go right in order for your explanation to be correct, and the less probable it is overall. It just seems too easy to refer to it using naturalistic reasoning. Well, if I may, that's actually another point I did want to kind of challenge as far as methodology was concerned. You know, I do think that while Occam's razor, you know, it is certainly a useful tool, and I understand where you're going with it. I don't actually think this would be necessarily a violation of Occam's razor. In fact, you know, it's interesting. I have been accused in the past, and I'm just using this kind of as an antidote to make my point. I've been accused in the past of being too simplistic in offering supernatural explanations, because in other words, it kind of, it negates too many other things that we do have evidence for. And while I'm not necessarily giving any credence to those arguments, I do think that there is a little bit more to be said for that particular line of reasoning, because it does seem to me that the only thing I actually need for the existence of things like spirit or for people to have similar experiences at the OK Corral and in the Suicide Forest in Japan or what have you would be the existence of spirits. I mean, if that one thing can be shown to be true or at least probable, then I think that those kinds of, you know, those kinds of similarities and things like that can be explained by that one thing. It seems a relatively simplistic hypothesis to me, I guess, is the point that I'm trying to make. OK, now I see where you're going there. I guess my argument here would be I think you and I can both agree that like some natural effects have natural causes. I think we can. And so to say we have the natural causes and to take a step beyond that to say not only do we have natural causes, but there's also this fundamental supernatural entity or entities that sort of infiltrate at all. It just seems to be more than necessary. It's an extra step. And if it's an unnecessary extra step, then I think it violates Occam's razor. And I think that's kind of an example of what we're talking about here. Like we can refer to psychology. We can refer to peer reviewed research to explain these sightings and these reports. And so to say there's anything more than just inside the head of the very similar heads of the people they report them seems to be needlessly complicated. So I sympathize with that, actually, that's a that's a pretty that's a pretty good explanation there, actually. But I would, you know, I want to point out quickly what about the times that it's outside of the head. What I mean by that is, you know, we have this, you know, I use the OK Corral example. And it's such a famous example that it'll be very useful for a lot of the different examples we could mention. There's actually, you know, photo evidence. Well, photo evidence, to be fair, all right, I will I will point out, you know, quickly that it is something that's not universally accepted, whether or not these are true, I get that. But there is, you know, photographs, sometimes videos, although I like to trust the photographs taken before the time of video because less of a possibility of being tampered with, you know, of ghosts who we would kind of expect to see if following these previously established antidotes that we had. In other words, so you have somebody in the OK Corral who is shot in that, you know, that little fight there. And then you have somebody who commits suicide in these suicide forests of Japan. And according to what I've been putting forward here, so far about similar experiences, we would expect both those people since they died in those regions to be tied to those regions. And if anybody would be able to, for example, take a photo of that person in that region, that would seem to suggest a little bit of credence to the idea that there is and I don't want to quite compare it to the stone tape theory, because it's not exactly what I'm talking about here, but some sort of a common theme here as far as entities being sort of tied down in a way to areas where they had ended their physical lives. And we can find precisely that, right? There is actually quite a bit of photos of specific apparitions, which are seemingly tied to a certain place. And then we see more photos of specific apparitions tied to another place, which if that's the way that apparitions act in one place, we would expect them to act that way in all places or at least in most places, right? So what I guess would be your response to something like that? That's basically all I'd have to say on it. So the people taking the photos, the people that are reported to have observed these reanimated dead apparitions, whatever we're calling them, they're obviously thinking like you are in terms of like, hey, somebody died there. Therefore, they're going to stick around there, right? That's the expectation. Definitely, I would assume so, yeah. OK, so it just seems to me like the naturalistic explanation there is people are more likely to observe what they expect, whether or not what they expect to observe actually is there outside of their own head. It just seems to be the simpler answer. Well, and certainly sympathizing with that. But let's say that we actually have the photo now. And me and you can, you know, let's say hypothetically speaking that James is the one who went and took the photo. And he's like, you know, he doesn't say anything because he's all, you know, because he's nonpartisan. But he comes up like, oh, guys, check out this photo I took. And me and you take a look at it, right? I mean, if it looks a lot like some of the figures who are being mentioned here, right, then at that point it's it's a little bit less likely that this is just something that an individual is making up, right? Like if we can examine the photo and, you know, say, you know, such and such a individual. I can't remember the exact names of the people who guided the OK crown. It's really bothering me, honestly. That's fine. Yeah. You know, such and such an individual is, you know, here's a photo of him and we can see this kind of photo of this apparition and they appear to be the same, right? That would seem to be a little bit of a counter to somebody who might just, you know, make it up in their own mind, which I certainly would sympathize with, because that's something that we could obviously, like I said, it is the expectation that you're going to, you know, encounter something or someone who died there if you believe in ghost and expect that you're going to encounter any sort of apparition at all. But wouldn't the actual photo itself kind of be a counter to that? Because we can look at the, you know, the facial features and stuff like that. So what I would say there, you know, I am not 100% convinced that my position is the correct one. So for me, it comes down to a matter of probability, you know, which explanation is the most probable. So the common evidence here is that we have photo documentation of one person that looks kind of like another person that happened to die in that area. And what I'm saying is that it just seems to be more probable that it's a coincidence we happen to have a person that looks kind of like someone else than that person actually did die and then is evidence for the supernatural in this way. It just seems like we have an empirical basis for people looking similar in similar areas than, you know, we don't seem to have much in the way of as much at least priors on people supporting supernatural evidence that way. Seems less probable to me. And I got a question for you because we did talk a little bit about the scientific method there. So you can feel free to respond to what I said before and then answer this question if you want. But are you saying that you think the scientific method is sufficient to explain your evidence or are you referring to a different methodology or maybe are you using both? I'm curious. Certainly both. So I didn't get to the second part of this. But I was going to kind of make a double pronged point. The first point being that I do think that there is not only potential examples but also previous examples of using the scientific method to and while I will grant they don't definitively prove the supernatural. I do think they very strongly suggest the supernatural. But also I would quickly point out that the scientific method is actually not the only method that we use to deduce evidence in numerous instances. For example, forensic methodology when looking over something like a crime, a lot of times can actually be completely counter to things like the scientific method. A lot of times you have to rely on things like eyewitness testimony and things of that nature. So it's not something that obviously is devoid of any science. That's not what I'm saying. But it's not something that would be strictly following the scientific method per se. I think the historical method is an even better example of that. Because a lot of times just as an example, Julius Caesar's Gaelic Wars. Well, how do you know Julius Caesar wrote the Gaelic Wars? Well, because Julius Caesar and some other guys said that Julius Caesar wrote the Gaelic Wars. That's really what it boils down to. The book says Julius Caesar and some other guys said it was written by Julius Caesar. And that's kind of the best we got. But at the same time, we understand it's pretty unlikely that a book that can be reliably dated to Julius Caesar's time is actually using the name Julius Caesar and getting away with it if it wasn't written by Julius Caesar. So there's other ways we can kind of establish, for example, in this case, authorship of a ancient text. And I think using different forms of methodology here can certainly help us. For example, in the case of the historical methodology, I would say, you know, we do have a massive body of antidotes. Don't get me wrong, but I can't remember who it is, but somebody did famously say data is just a collection of antidotes. And, you know, there is a lot of antidotes all across the world of spiritual experiences. Many of which, to be fair, I fully grant her bogus and I understand that. But I don't think the likelihood that all of them are bogus is high. The forensic method I kind of just use as an example to use other methodology, but I don't think really using the forensic method. There is ways you could use the forensic method and things like this. For example, you know, if some sort of a, I don't know, a vase broke and you can rule out all naturalistic possibilities, then I guess that's using the forensic method to, you know, to deduce some sort of a supernatural experience. But for the most part, that is, you know, stuff like the Warren files and things like that. And whilst I certainly, as somebody who agrees with this, might take that seriously, I definitely understand that somebody who doesn't agree with this or is a little bit more skeptical might not take it as seriously because it's the most easily forged out of three. Absolutely. So I'll go ahead and clarify with what you're talking before. I fully acknowledge there are other methodologies other than a scientific method. I'm not a positivist or anything like that. But what I would say is that if we're going to claim that the scientific method, which is normally used to establish things, you know, in the cosmos like demons, you know, I would want to know what other methodology would be used. It doesn't seem as though the historical method or maybe forensic sciences as maybe readily lentable to that exercise. And so that's kind of what I was getting at Barry. Oh yeah, I totally get, you know, you got the historical method. There are other methods. I would just want to know which one you're using and like why you think it's reliable for your purposes is what I was asking about there. Yeah, certainly. And I'd say it's a combination of scientific and historical for sure. I do think that, you know, obviously I referenced Dr. Fenwick stuff and to an extent, even though it's more forensic, I do think the Warrens do have an example of, you know, as scientifically specific as a lot of demon hunters, quote unquote, ever actually get. But the historic method I do think is an important part in the conversation because it's my experience with things that very rarely do you find something that is universally accepted amongst humans that does not actually exist. Now there are certain things that are questionable for sure. There are other things that like, for example, people often point out, well, what about giants? Well, I mean, Shaquille O'Neill exists and when everybody in the world is five foot four, that appears to be a giant, right? People say, what about vampires? Well, there are people in weird cults who do weird kind of, you know, demonic looking stuff who drink blood. Once again, there's a kernel of truth there that explains. And while certainly in both of those examples, I think I almost hurt my argument in a sense because none of those things are directly what people claim they were and I fully understand that. But the point I'm trying to make is that when we see things that are universal amongst the human species, it's very rare that that thing is completely false. It might be partially false in some way, shape or form, but it's very rare that it's actually just not true entirely, you know what I mean? So question for you. I asked you before earlier if, was it Fenwick, his studies there, whether that was part of the scientific consensus. And you said maybe not because there were plenty of people that were maybe more skeptical in a scientific community about those types of claims. So would that not be a variable you'd have to take into consideration before claiming, you know, universal acceptance of this type of phenomenon? You know, people who are more educated and have, you know, done their part to contribute to the scientific method maybe don't necessarily agree so much. Well, I would certainly point out that that is a good, a very good argument, but I would also quickly point out that modernity or excuse me, secularism and skepticism of the supernatural is an example of the educated modern, not necessarily of people in the past as a perfect example, you know, very often in scientific discussions between Christians and atheists, the Christian will very often say something along the lines of all of the different people who invented the scientific method and the Renaissance and all that yada yada were Christians and this is of course true. And the reason that that's important is because it's making the point that skepticism of the supernatural as a whole amongst the educated and the intelligentsia is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. And it's not recent as in the last 100 years, although in places like Britain and the United States it certainly started roughly 150 years ago, but it's actually kind of recent as of the last like 20 to 30 years that it's become like the majority of scholars who have skepticism towards this. I would point out, and though I understand biases are something that are kind of unavoidable in a sense, your worldview dictates a lot of what you believe and I get that. There are a lot of pseudo science fighters quote unquote, like King Crocoduck or Michael Shermer or Richard Dawkins or what have you, who very often run into an issue of just being outright stubborn, right? Like they just refuse to actually accept that anything possibly could be supernatural and explanation and what my argument would always be to somebody like that is, well, number one, if you're not actually willing to examine the evidence in a way that's unbiased, perhaps, and I'm not accusing you of this by the way, but perhaps you're not a particularly good person to be discussing this in the first place, which to be fair goes both ways, absolutely. But secondly, and much more importantly, there is no possible way to get past that level of skepticism. I mean, you can't even convince me, you Michael X, the person I am talking to right now online, if I am really going to be so skeptical that I refuse to believe you exist, cannot prove to me you exist despite the fact that I am talking to you and looking at you in the face. You know what I mean? Because that level of skepticism is just irrational. It doesn't actually lend itself to academic dialogue. And I think a lot of people on all sides are guilty of that. I don't want to just accuse one group of that, but to kind of bring it full circle as to what I'm talking about here, I think that there is a lot of people in the modern world who immediately, even if they can't maybe find their own explanation for it, they'll posit their own hypotheses, whether or not they're a legitimate one or not, of course, is a different question, but posit their own hypotheses specifically because they presuppose that the supernatural can't be an explanation. Okay. One thing I do want to give you a chance to respond, Michael, and then what I want to do is let that be kind of the last word for this. And then I had one other thing I wanted to bring up before we go into Q&A, just to hear both of your guys' opinions on. So go ahead, Michael, I'll give you a chance to respond, and then we'll get to that point. Yeah, I was just about to kind of respond to something you said, CJ, about how people have like, you know, assumptions against the supernatural and whatnot. And in the scientific community, what I want to point out about that is something that I brought up in my opening with reference to the history that naturalism has about supernaturalism. You know, you rewind the tape of history long enough and people used to think supernatural caused everything, but the evidence proved them wrong. Time and time again, the naturalistic explanation was indeed the correct one. And so I'm not necessarily certain that these people are being unnecessarily skeptical here or overly skeptical. It seems justified given the prior probability that claims like these being the case. Yeah, there was probably a long time before people realized that volcanoes weren't the gods fighting each other. But then again, it turned out the naturalistic explanation came in to save the day, even if it took a little while longer than maybe people would have liked. And so I think there is a certain amount of credence to resistance to the supernatural explanation, not only for that reason, but also for the reason, you know, that this gave rise to with regards to the principle of methodological naturalism. You know, you introduce supernatural thought into the scientific method and it corrodes the predictability and the explanatory power that is necessary for proper inquiry because the supernatural is so traditionally unpredictable and elusive. And you know, the rules are always changing. It's very hard to do science properly when you allow that sort of variable to be introduced into the equation. And so specifically with regards to scientific method, you know, that kind of ties back to why I don't necessarily think it can help you. And you know, with other methods, if you want to use the historical method, that's fine. I mean, I was kind of talking about that myself when I came to the history behind naturalism and supernaturalism, but I guess I really wanted to bring the point home there. I do not think that many of the individuals who disagree with Fenwick with regards to his near-death experiences in the scientific community, I am not convinced that their skepticism is unwarranted given the history that these types of claims have. So that's where I'd leave that, I guess. Thanks so much. The last thing we'll talk about before we jump into the Q&A. CJ may be frozen unless he's standing, he's just really thirsty, I don't know. But CJ, oh, we lost him. Okay, well, don't worry, folks. We've been through this before. He'll be back, believe me. We are going to jump into the Q&A soon. However, someone in the chat had an interesting question. So we'll get the speaker's opinion on it once CJ is back. Do you want to mention a couple of housekeeping-type things for the channel? We are excited about a lot of what's to come. We're working on a lot of ideas. There are so many different ideas in terms of how we can kind of improve and grow and just kind of pursue that vision of hopefully giving everybody a platform to make their case. So that should be very exciting. Keep an eye, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. We're getting ready to throw some major Hail Mary. So we're gonna start reaching out to a lot of new speakers that we've never had on before. Some of them pretty controversial and that's coming from both sides. So that should be a lot of fun. In particular, we do this Friday. I'm excited that I have to check. I think it's, let me check just to be sure that I don't screw this up. While we wait for, I'm looking for CJ still. He hasn't clicked back in. Hopefully his computer didn't die, but even then, he'll be back in a minute. Gotta recharge it or start it back up and let me see if I can get to this. How embarrassing. I'm gonna pull it up right here. Dwayne has not been asleep, everybody and that is not funny. Look at him, he is, I can assure you he's been awake this whole debate and so we appreciate you being here Dwayne as well as Michael X and CJ especially just getting in the hot seat. It's always fun to get to listen to these and so let me just peek in here because I do wanna talk about upcoming debates as we are excited about what is going on. So thanks so much for your positive feedback in the chat, seeing a lot of love and we totally appreciate it. You guys have no idea, believe it or not. It's, I mean, I sometimes just am exhausted but your positive feedback, folks for real, that encourages me so much. So it's like, I just, I had gotten a letter the other day and it was honestly just, you could say I put the wind in my sails of somebody just saying that this channel is like a community for them where it was like in this kind of like these isolating times he had mentioned. He's like, you know, it's like with the pandemic, it's like things are different right now and the channel has just been kind of a place that I can be and it like takes my mind off things. It's just fun and it's spontaneous and it's just kind of like things are happening. And so that honestly means so much. And so we really do hope you feel welcome here, folks and hope you enjoy your time here. And we are excited, as I mentioned, with just different ideas or kind of mulling over in terms of topics and new guest speakers. I will say I'm super excited. We are in talks with, if you know who Mr. Reagan is, we are in talks of getting him on for a potential debate. We're looking for like potential opponents. We've reached out to Peter Coffin, really busy guy. So we don't know if we're gonna hear back from Peter, but we're looking for different people. And so that's one in particular where I've got to say huge thanks because that was actually just somebody who was like, hey, I know Mr. Reagan. I'll ask him if he wants to come on. Like we're kind of tight and that's how we got connected. So if you know anybody out there where you're like, oh man, I love this YouTuber. I'd love to see him come on. Like feel free to run it by him, say, hey, is there a topic? You know, if you know that they'd love to debate a topic, run it by him and if you help us connect, that really does help a lot. CJ is back. So I might have to scramble these pictures two seconds. CJ looks so different. Oh my goodness. So give me one second. Hey, can you guys hear me? I've got to rearrange these pictures. We can, we're glad you're back. What happened? I honestly have no idea. I suspected at first that my Wi-Fi turned off and then I suspected that it might be something with you but I went into the live chat and you guys were still on. So honestly, I don't actually have any idea. And I apologize for that greatly. Nobody knows. That's okay though. We're stoked you're back. And so the last topic, we were just about to get into the last topic before we go into the Q&A. In particular, someone in the chat brought this up and I was like, ooh, that's juicy. I know Dwayne's just dying to hear an answer to this one. Is there evidence for demons in these exorcism stories? I don't know if you guys ever check out like, it's funny, if you ever check out Drudge, Drudge used to be a more conservative leaning political, kind of like a web. It was basically like a news site where they would just tag other news sources. I think they've moved centrist or maybe lean more politically left now. It's hard to tell. But they are a hugely popular site and they oftentimes talk about these exorcisms. And is there anything to these exorcisms? Did you guys look into this where there's anything especially compelling or maybe on Michael, on your perspective, maybe you'd say there's especially something that's barely, I don't know if discompelling is a word, but something where you'd say, this is pure baloney. Here are the reasons why. We just love to give both of your thoughts. Is there anything to this? Or maybe CJ, you're like, I wouldn't use that either. So I haven't really familiarized myself with Drudge before, but the whole idea of exorcism, the part I'm familiar with at least, people get tied to crosses and they get starved and deprived of water for days or they try to get the demons out of the people. This just seems to be the type of anti-scientific nonsense that I was talking about before. Like the scientific method isn't going to help you if you want to make this type of claim. You're going to have to refer to a different type of methodology. And when it comes to these exorcism stories, this seems to be a classic example of adopting, this type of anecdote, personal experience, the sort of thing that just doesn't count as proper evidence, especially when it comes to sensationalized. You know, like I said, I'm not really familiar with Drudge, so I'm not sure how it's presented, but no, this doesn't sound very compelling to me. This sounds, yeah. What do you think, CJ? So the interesting thing about exorcisms is actually that the group that you might expect to have the best evidence for it, i.e. the Roman Catholic Church, only has roughly two to 300 cases in their entire 1700 some odd year existence that they will stand by. They're interesting, certainly. I, being a believer in Christianity, do think there is something to be said about the idea of demonic expulsion in a way, but it's a lot more, I think, complicated than what the Catholic Church would actually have as what we would consider the traditional exorcism, just as a perfect example. I don't think anybody can find me a single solitary example, and I'll grant you the 22 apocryphal books as well as the 66 books of the Protestant Bible. I don't think you can find me a single example in any of those 88 books of the Catholic style of exorcism, where you're tying a guy down and throwing the holy water on and all that kind of stuff. The best evidence I've ever seen for that, honestly, is Ed and Lorraine Warren and some of their evidences. And interestingly enough, it's actually the only modern, and by modern, I mean 21st or 20th century, exorcists that I know of that the Roman Catholic Church will stand by. But even then, honestly, I find it to be kind of ridiculous. I think a more reasonable example for what Jesus would have meant when he would perform what we might consider to be an exorcism, for example, when he cast the demons out of Mary Magdalene. I think that that is more of a spiritual experience. The realistically couldn't be proven, honestly. I think it's the kind of thing where say somebody who maybe is a sociopath or something along those lines feels that they have an intense religious experience and all of a sudden starts being empathetic. And honestly, I wouldn't try to prove that scientifically because by definition, it relies on antidote, I think. But yeah, that'd be kind of like my two cents on that. Gotcha. So with that, we will jump into the Q and A. What I'm going to do is send a list that I have here to our dearest friend Dwayne. Look at him there, that epic beard and hairline. Good for you, Dwayne. I am so happy for you, okay? So give me a sec, I'm going to e-mail this over. I will start reading the Super Chats in the meantime. Want to say thanks so much for your Super Chats, folks. We're going to start these right now. So appreciate it. First one, coming in from Rodney Falberg, thanks for your Super Chat said. Oh, Gabrielle Case, sorry I missed yours. Said, there is a bad spirit behind you, James. Jim Beam. I don't get it. Okay, Gabrielle, let's see. Rodney Falberg, thanks for your question said. Have either of you read Frank E. Peretti's books, This Present Darkness, and Piercing the Darkness, although fiction are interesting on potential demonic presence and human interactions in everyday life? I'm not. Same here, I haven't read it, I've heard of them, but no, I haven't read them. Gotcha. Next, Gabrielle Kay, thanks for your Super Chat said. Death is a hazy line. Hard to say when it occurs. This is, I think, going back to the near death experiences. Clinical death is not cell death. After death, your hair grows for weeks. Also, upon clinical death, your body releases a ton of neurochemicals. How do you like them apples, CJ? I would say, actually, to an extent, that is something that I would consider to be kind of an evidence for my side. Let me kind of explain why. There's a lot of things, biologically speaking, that when you get down to the really, really, really nitty gritty particulars are a lot less black and white than we initially think. For example, the difference between a live human and a dead human would be intuitively obvious to a 12-year-old, and yet at the same time, a 12-year-old and a 32-year-old with numerous PhDs and so on might have a difficult time explaining to you what exactly biologically speaking death means. And I think that the reason for that is because there is a certain level of mystery that we have not yet figured out, which at least potentially could be this nature of the spirit. Now, I wouldn't argue it definitively is. It's a little bit more of a theoretical idea than anything else, absolutely. But it is interesting, right? There's certain distinctions, such as the distinction between what is properly alive and properly dead that science doesn't necessarily have a concrete answer for all the time. Although to be fair, I think in the modern day we've answered a lot of those questions, especially the death one. Gotcha. And next up, Dwayne, are you on Twitter, Dwayne? Oh, that's right, I muted you earlier. So sorry, let me unmute you. Tasteless joke on my part. Okay, I can't unmute you, Dwayne. You've muted yourself. Okay, are you on Twitter? No, I'm not on Twitter, no. Gotcha. Isn't, you know, Dwayne, I'm excited for your, this is, I'm gonna send you these questions, but I'm excited that you're at least on Facebook, right? People I want you to know, you can find Dwayne on Facebook, okay? Look for him. But I have not mentioned both of the, I should say Michael X may have a channel or a link in the future. And so that may be something that I add in the future if he sends it. And CJ Cox already has his link in the description. So if you're listening, folks, and you're like, hmm, boy, you know, I want more of that. Well, you can hear plenty more where that came from by clicking on the link in the description. And so give me one second, Dwayne. I'm gonna get to the next question and then still try to get those questions over you, Dwayne. I'm having trouble off the computer, but thanks for your question coming from Smokey Saint. That's right. You remember him, folks? Controversial man says, great job, both debaters. Michael and I have talked. He has a sharp, well-smoken young man. James U Rock, Dwayne, you inspire me with quote, beard envy, unquote. And he said, CJ, you're the most attractive human I've ever seen. I made that part up. But you don't worry, CJ, he's still a fan. Red Knight 821, thanks for your question, said, had a pastor who worked on the Rosebud Reservation, all demon possession accounts talked about being in a dark place with a dark figure watching them. My pastor didn't believe it until he went. Thoughts? So this is kind of what I was referring to before with reference to similar reactions. Humans generally have the same reaction to similar things, whether or not that thing is in their head or in reality is something to be demonstrated. But just because there's a similarity in the way with which humans tend to describe certain things or report them, doesn't mean that things and they report by definition have to be true. Gotcha. And next, anything, CJ? All good? Well, I would just briefly say that I do agree with Michael, but I also don't think it's to be necessarily discounted. I think the similarities are important and they do certainly indicate at least something about the shared human experience. They could potentially indicate something about the supernatural, but it is certainly true that especially with an example that is kind of vague like that, that could certainly be chalked up to common human psychology or something along those lines. Gotcha. So you and CJ, or I'm sorry, you and Michael X are fairly aligned. Michael Dresden, thanks for your super chat, said, thanks guys, this is nice, I like the variety. Glad to hear that. Michael, thank you. And drama, Lama, thanks for your super chat, said, near-death experiences equal dreams right before waking up? Well, honestly, I wouldn't wanna comment too much on that just simply because the nature of dreams ended up themselves is so, it's just, what's the word there? Questionable, I guess, right? Philosophers and scientists alike for thousands of years have been trying to figure out, and religious figures alike, and magicians alike and so on and so forth have been trying to figure out just what the deal is with dreams. And I am absolutely in no place at all to tell any of those people they're right or wrong because I just simply don't know. Gotcha, Michael, any thoughts? Yeah, I concur with what CJ said. I think it's a little too subjective to make a definitive inference one way or the other. Gotcha, and wait, by the way, this also makes me think of, if you guys heard of sleep paralysis, I did see this come up in the chat as well. Any thoughts on how this could have any sort of crossover on the topic? Well, I guess I've never necessarily considered what the impact of sleep paralysis would actually be on the question of the supernatural or of things like near-death experiences. Well, let me read you this super chat again. I'm not trying to pick on this super chat. It's just an interesting one that they do have commonality. So one person, red knight, eight to one, I totally appreciate this question. So it's an interesting one where, I'm not saying it is naturally explained, but it is interesting that they said that it's in a dark place with a dark figure watching them. So apparently nearby to where they can see that it's watching them and that sleep paralysis, it's a regular occurrence that I used to have it. So you have a thing in the room, sometimes even sitting on you, that's what you imagine. And so your body's like still under paralysis like when you're in REM sleep, but you're basically mentally awake and able to see in the room. So anyway, that's where I was kind of like tying it in, but any thoughts in addition to that, Michael X, or Dwayne as well, if you have thoughts. I'm so sorry about the show. I had sleep paralysis and there was an entity in the corner of the room and it was Darth Dawkins. Darth Dawkins indeed, definitely. By the way folks, we are working on getting Darth Dawkins back. Dwayne Burke at gmail.com. Dwayne thanks so much for your patience. Sorry for that super long delay is I was having trouble getting into my own email. So Darth Dawkins, we are excited to hopefully have back. I do reach out to him. I say, Darth, the people want you back. They want you back, but he won't do it. He's been reluctant. We'll see what we can do. Okay, thanks for your, this, let's see, next super chat from Gabriel Kay says, what is life or death? No one knows. Maybe the question is nonsense. Is a computer alive? If not, when will it be and how can it die? That sounds like poetry from Edgar Allen Poe. I really like that. So I can ask those questions again if you'd like, but if you guys would like, you can jump on it. Yeah, so I would kind of agree to an extent with the sentiment, but also kind of disagree in a way. It's, like I kind of mentioned earlier, it's not always as black and white once you get down to the really nitty gritty details. Just as an example, I think right now people, the commonly accepted medical consensus about when death actually occurs is brain death. But hypothetically speaking, if we find a way to bring somebody back from brain death, then what will it be? And of course we don't know if that's gonna happen, but there was a point in time when everybody felt the same thing about your heart stopping. Oh, that's when you're dead, the heart stopped. Well, now that's not when you're dead as it turns out. So it certainly is an interesting question. I do think the definition of life itself is a little bit more of an interesting question in a few different ways. I've heard philosophers ask the question, scientifically of course, grass is alive, but is grass alive in the way that you mean the word alive when you as a human being typically say the word alive, probably not, right? And that's an interesting question in and of itself because it does kind of go back to that, what does life mean? I would personally argue that from a philosophical standpoint, life means some sort of sapience or sentience rather, sapience would be reserved for humans and consciousness, the likes of which we see in animated creatures like cats, dogs, mice, dolphins and human beings. Whereas scientifically speaking, you could be a little bit more broad with it to include anything that consumes and disperses energy while constantly growing and having the potential for reproduction. That said, I would not be surprised if there's some details missing that would lead us to eventually change there. I would also point out, as a Christian, I have a lot of theological and philosophical thoughts about what we might call the breath of life referenced in Genesis and that in and of itself is a can of worms that could be an entire new two hours of conversation. So I kind of want to stop there before we get too deep into the topic. Thank you. And last one, what maybe what we'll do is, Dwayne, are you awake? Yeah. What we'll do is if you want to read a question, we'll alternate. I've got a super chat to read after your first question. So if you got that question list that I sent via email, feel free if you want to read the first one from it. If you haven't gotten it yet, I can read the next question that I have in front of me. Yeah, I haven't got it yet. Have you sent it to an airport at hotmail.com? Oh, no, I did not. That explains it. Okay, give me one second. I'm gonna work on this. Thanks for your question. Gabriel Kay says, sleep paralysis has made a lot of progress in science, James. Look into it. Yeah, I think you guys might have misunderstood. I was not, if anything, I was worried that you guys were gonna think I was taking a naturalistic bias of like trying to shoot sleep paralysis down. I was not trying to say sleep paralysis is like a demonic thing. But thank you, I appreciate. I just saw some people in the chat. I think that maybe there's a little misunderstanding. But Spark344, thanks for your question says, statement for CJ, nothing gets STEM, oh, okay, this is, said nothing gets STEM field scientists more excited than being able to prove something wrong, not much of a confirmation bias, though it is difficult to buck consensus. What are your thoughts, CJ? Well, I mean, I would honestly say that the phrases not much of a confirmation bias and difficult to buck consensus are almost self-contradictory. Honestly, it has been my experience when studying people's peer review that throughout history, regardless of the topic, virtually everybody defaults to the consensus. And in fact, like I kind of said earlier, it's caused me to be a little bit of a skeptic on the whole process of peer review in the first place. Because to the best of my knowledge, a lot of the best discoveries were actually attacked by the peer reviews, whether it's Galileo and what he had to say, or a lot of the things Louis Pasteur had to say, or a lot of the things Isaac Newton had to say, you know what I mean? It just, one of my favorite examples, right? Leonardo da Vinci, he, in his personal journal, wrote down what we could consider to be the first documented evidence that somebody had discovered things relating to heart attacks like to build up a plaque and fat and things like that. We didn't discover that personally, because we didn't actually find his journals until much later, but we didn't discover that in the medical community for another 400 years. Now, why is that relevant? Well, because a lot of the time, Leonardo da Vinci would go and talk to people about his experiments, and people would be like, oh, you're a quack. You're just, you're somebody who paints. Why do we need to listen to you? And they did it to John Stowe and they did it to Louis Pasteur. And the people who they don't do it to tend to be people who were kind of confirming the biases that they already have a lot of times. So for example, Charles Darwin had a hard time getting his theories to get any sort of a common consensus. But now that they are the common consensus, people who are trying to go out against Charles Darwin get the exact same problem. Somebody like Stephen Hawking doesn't have a big issue with being chastised by peer review because a lot of times his theories kind of back up what the peer reviewers are going to be agreeing with anyway. For example, there'll be theories that might contradict the existence of a God or their theories might have something to do with dark matter, keeping the other universe and all these other kinds of things. And, you know, I may be kind of representing it poorly in my language, a point being, you know. So sweet. Yeah, there's a little bit more of a bias, I think, towards keeping the status quo. And I think that's a common and not strictly scientific thing. Gotcha. And Dwayne, you said Dwayne A. Burke? Yeah. Awesome. Okay, I'm sending it. But wait a minute. Is Dwayne Burke at gmail.com also an email address of yours? No. Oh, that's funny because when I sent it, like Google, like I just pulled it up now and Google loaded up like a picture with it of like a son, which means it's a real Google account. So I just sent the questions to like some random Dwayne Burke out there. That's funny. Okay, so Roy Stigal, thanks for your question, said, the Warrens were shown to be frauds several times. I mean, it's fine that people believe that. I've seen a lot of the evidence that people try to use to claim that the Warrens were frauds. Honestly, a lot of times it resorts to ad hominem and attacks on Ed in particular. So I would just kind of believe that there, you know what I mean? If you have anything that is not ad hominem attack and that is something we can legitimately look into, then I'd consider it. But a lot of the times, it seems to me that to be ad hominem attack and ad hominem specifically levied against Ed, which to be fair is warranted that has nothing to do with his profession. Gotcha. And Dwayne, if you've gotten those questions, I can kick it over to you. Thanks for your patience. Just loading them up. You got it. Gabrielle Kay, thanks for your other question, said, I can always restore my operating system. So could we AI ghosts? I'm not sure if they're saying could we become artificial intelligence ghosts or could we have it such that we make ghosts into artificial intelligence? I'm baffled. How did you interpret the question? Well, so I do think there's a lot of people who think that that's possible. I know guys like Alex Jones and Stephen Benune and some of those more conspiracy theory centered news shows a lot of times talk about technology that might transfer consciousness and things like that. And they certainly believe that there are people in governments who believe that, whether or not that's true, I guess is a different conversation, but I'm skeptical of the idea. This kind of goes back to the Frankenstein theories that I was talking about earlier, right? Where a lot of people did think back in the early 1800s if we put all the working parts together and give us some juice, it should function. And we proved pretty definitively that that is just not true. And considering the fact that the thing that we were missing in those experiences is the very thing that makes you alive, which would be the same thing that would house your consciousness and things like that. I find it skeptical. I find myself skeptical rather that we could actually take that thing, which we don't even know, which we don't even know if it exists quite frankly and then actually store it somewhere. You know what I mean? It just seems like a pretty far fetch, I guess. Gotcha. All right, Dwayne, the floor is all yours. Thanks for your patience. Good morning. A question from Spart344, thanks for your super chat. It states, question for CJ, two seconds. James, you might have to read it because it's something's going on with me. Not a problem. And want to say thanks for your question from the one I have, let's see here. Brandon Burrow says, CJ smuggling demon in with the acceptance of spirits is an equivocation error. Is it not? No, I would simply say no. To be honest with you, the idea that spirits would exist but bad spirits would not exist is completely absurd to me. Whoa, go ahead, I'm sorry. Clearly. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you with something else. So I was just simply, you know, whether or not you take a subjective, a consequentialist, an objective ethical theory, whatever it happens to be, there is going to be spirits that fit into what you would define either, like I said, objectively, consequentialist, subjective, whatever happens to be as evil if indeed those spirits do exist. The assumption that all spirits would be good is not backed up by anything that we know at all. None of everything, none of anything at all has a 100% good, perfect, flawless record, right? It just doesn't happen. Gotcha. And Gabriel Kay, thanks for your other question said, what's alive? You have no answer. What's alive, was that the? Yeah. Oh, well, you know, and we have kind of, you know, had to hit that topic a few different times. Like I said, I think that the conversation is a little bit more in depth or should be a little bit more in depth than we'd be able to do in a Q and A because I do think the scientific and philosophical definitions of life are not really the same thing. But, I mean, that's fair. I guess I cannot definitively tell you what makes something alive or what makes a life more valuable than certain things. I have certain intuitions, like for example, I think nobody on this entire planet has ever felt the same way about cutting it down a tree as they did about cutting down a cow, right? I have a feeling that, and if you did, may I posit that you might potentially be psychotic. You know what I'm saying? Like we understand there's a difference between the cow's life and the tree's life, and yet scientifically speaking, they are both defined as a life. So I mean, I agree with the sentiment to an extent. Gotcha, and thanks for your question from Nathan Foster says, please ask them. If they have ever looked into the Skoll experiment, everyone must look at this if they need any evidence. Even skeptics couldn't debunk it. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Michael, go ahead, what's your response, Michael? What type of experiment? I didn't quite catch the descriptor there. Yeah, I'm not sure what it is either. I've never heard of it. They say it's the Skoll experiment. It's spelled S-C-O-L-E. It's new to me. I haven't heard of that before, so we'll have to look into it. CJ, do you know what it is? I don't actually. I've never, at first I thought he said soul experiment, but no, I don't think I've ever heard of the Skoll experiment. Hm, I'm looking up. Gotcha. And thanks for your, appreciate that'll be interesting, I'm sure, and Nathan Foster, oh, we got that both from Nathan Foster. There was one from Spart, but I feel like I, did I erase this? And, oh, there we go. No, we did read that one. That was about the STEM field one. So yeah, I think that is all the questions. Did I miss anybody's question? Let me know if I did. I could have sworn there was maybe one that I missed. Sorry about that. It was before Kharag Night Wolves. In the meantime, I might read Kharag Night Wolves if I can find it. Let me see if I can find that one. We got two. Where'd it go? Kharag Night Wolves. You don't email them to me like you used to. Kharag Night Wolves was on the ball. Used to email me questions before the debate was start. Good to see you, Kharag. Thanks for your question. He says, can you ask CJ if, I'm just trying to guess how he would say it. If he can say scientists are being biased to the supernatural, can we also say you have a bias against the findings of scientists or lack thereof? Not only can you say that, you should say that. And let me kind of put forward what I think should be a universally accepted rule. Everything you ever hear from anybody at any time needs to be taken with the grain of salt that that person has certain philosophical assumptions and theological assumptions and so on and so forth. I have a skepticism towards science, not necessarily science as it stands today, but a skepticism towards basically, I guess authority would be a better word, not so much science. Cause a lot of people who are skeptical towards science in general would might posit things like flatter theory or anti-vax and that's nothing that I would put forward. But I do have a sort of natural inclination towards being skeptical of authority figures and being skeptical towards consensus is quote unquote. And you should know that and should check my sources as a result because I'm going to present this evidence to you via a bias. And I don't want to pretend that I'm not because quite frankly, I'm here taking an affirmative position for a reason. I am indeed a biased person. So always I think always check up your sources because I think every source is going to be biased towards their particular worldview, including the people who don't have much of a worldview, right? There's a lot of people who kind of have a general, I don't really know idea. Well, there's something that you presuppose and you're going to be biased towards that presupposition. So yeah, absolutely. I would certainly say I am presupposed towards, believing certain supernatural things or being skeptical. Amazing. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Next, appreciate your question from Patrick Weingarner. Thanks so much, bro. Glad to have you. Says CJ, I think you are the conspiracy theorist twin of Jason. Maybe I'm pronouncing this wrong. Maraz? M-R-A-Z. Is this true? Are you brothers? Well, no, I'm not anybody's twin here. So don't worry about that. But I mean, I guess you could accurately describe me as a conspiracy theorist. I'm sure anybody here who is over from watching my watchdogs would certainly describe me as a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. But I wouldn't put myself on the level of like, people like Alex Jones or David Ike. Of course, I wouldn't put Alex Jones on the level of David Ike either. David Ike is just completely insane. For the record, as I had mentioned, we are like throwing some Hail Marys in terms of trying to set up some debates. One of those might include an email to Alex Jones. I don't know if we'll get him. It's not likely. I'm offering an honorarium. We're trying to put your super chats to work. And that's controversial. I know some people are probably gonna be pissed if we do offer. That's the tricky part. But you know, we offer different people different things if they're big, you know, big-nameers because we're trying to kind of grow. And so let me know your thoughts on that, folks. We do wanna know. Feel free to give us feedback because we have not paid any of the, don't worry. We haven't paid any of the, how do I say this? We'll just say nationalist. We've never paid any sort of nationalist person to come on. But we have made offers to like, I think it just, I requested, who was it? I can't remember. Someone who leaned strong to the left. But I can't remember their name at the moment. But yeah, I mean, that's a touchy one. But I do wanna be transparent. Like that's where your support, like we're trying to kind of reinvest into the channel's growth in terms of inviting these new big names on. So let me know, we do want your feedback. And Roy Stegall says, don't tell James what Pogg means. Well, I have news for you. Tioga already taught me what Pogg means. And let's see. Next question from Nathan Foster says, CJ actually, let's see. I don't know who even Peters. Are you even, do you know who even Peters is, CJ? They talking about the guy from American Horror Story? Gotcha. I think he's an actor, yeah. What are they? Is the claim that I look like Evan Peters? American Horror Story, I've never seen it. But that's what they say, yes. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. That might be the like 1,000th time I've heard that. That's awesome. Okay. Stupid horror energy has entered the building. She says, I am Pizzazu. I don't know if anybody here watching is old enough to know that from the Ghostbusters movie. The Demon and the Ghostbusters movie, was that Pizzazu? I think it was, was it a Zool? I don't know, honestly. It's been a long time. Some of my favorite movies. I'm on the younger side. Let's see. Thanks for your question. This one comes in from Lazarus Crane says, any paranormal experiences to share? Curious, do either of you have anything? No. I guess it depends. Sorry, go ahead. I would just say no. But I would add to that, if I were to be convinced of the demonic, that would probably be how I would be. Just the personal experience is so much more personable and convincing than obscure scientific, theoretical statistics or whatnot. But yeah, go ahead, CJ. That was just an add-on on my part. Well, I would say that when it comes to things that I would classify as like demonic in nature or something like that, absolutely not. Things that you would consider paranormal, definitely. And obviously people have their own assumptions, but just to be short and sweet with it. I firmly believe I have witnessed healings in action and I am also a firm believer that I have, and I know everybody. Every Christian says this, but I believe I have literally experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, do with that information, which you will, but that's my belief. And I guess I would describe that as paranormal. Gotcha. Thank you. And also someone said get Jesse Ventura on the show. He's a character as well. So we will see. Oh my goodness. Is he your favorite? Say that again. Is he your favorite? I, let me, the fun facts for you. My first like a dive into politics was 2008, Ron Paul running for president because I watched YouTube videos about Jesse Ventura talking about how great Ron Paul was for a conservative. And so those two were literally like the very first steps I ever made into politics were Ron Paul and Jesse Ventura. Gotcha. And so- James, go ahead. You could wrestle him. That's so true. I think now that he's like a hundred, I would stand a chance, but probably not, I don't know. But I- Check it off. The movie Predator is one of my favorite movies and he had a pretty awesome role in that. I mean, I've got, you know, some respect for him. And- Two governors and a gubernatorial candidate. Isn't that crazy? Cause Schwarzenegger and Ventura, right? We're both governors. And then I can't remember the last guy's name, but not Carl Weathers, one of the other military guys that actually ran for governor, I think in Arizona. Huh, I did not know that. That's funny, but you're right. I hadn't even realized that Jesse Ventura and Arnold, I had known that and thought of them as like the two movie stars that became governors and also like unusually ultra alpha Dwayne Burke type movie stars who went into politics. But I didn't put it together that, oh yeah, and they also had their own movie where they were in there together. But that's interesting. I don't know yet. I'm trying to remember the name of Billy. So Billy was kind of the big dude, kind of like mysterious and wise. Anyway, if you haven't seen Predator folks, you really should. So- The Predator will be a governor next. Huh? The Predator will be a governor next. Down. Could be. And thanks for you. Okay, Dave Langer says Gozer. Oh, Gozer was the name of the demon in the movie Ghostbusters, not Pizzazzu. Man, get your story right, stupid horror energy. Okay, thanks for your, let's see. I always, I just tease her with that. I know it's not. Custer Survivors, thanks for your super chat. Appreciate it. If you meant to attach a question to that, let me know and I can read that for you. Wait, was Pizzazzu a good guy in the movie in Ghostbusters? I gotta be honest, I've never seen Ghostbusters. Oh, no, no, no, wait. No, Pizzazzu's not in Ghostbusters. It was the Exorcist. It was an ancient, is actually a real ancient deity from the Near East. So in other words, people used to actually in the ancient Near East worship a god that was called Pizzazzu. And Pizzazzu was said to protect pregnant women from miscarriages. So it was like an idea from real life that they used in the movie The Exorcist. Good to know. So thanks for that. Dave Langer, let's see. Oh, that's right. Jesse Ventura's famous phrase. I ain't got time to bleed. And I'm looking for any last questions. Otherwise we're gonna say goodbye. We really wanna say thanks. I've got, go ahead. I've got a super chat, just come in. You got it. A super chat from Daft Dawkins. Does James wear socks to bed? That's funny. And of course I don't. I wear basketball shorts and a normal crew shirt. Like this. So yes. But no, I get so hot at night. What about you guys? Definitely. I'll leave the windows open. Definitely. And I'm trying to, okay, wait, that's right. So folks, you don't know this, but I have to say it, cause I think it's so cool that Michael X is like, Michael, you're probably like an hour. If I spent down I-25, we'd probably be, we're like an hour away from each other. Oh yeah, I'm in Denver. Yeah, so really close by. That's pretty hip. I'm always wanting to meet people that are nearby. Like, what do you mean is nearby? Jimmy Snow, Mr. Atheist is nearby. Oh yeah, Jimmy. I don't know if he wants to meet me, but so I hope he's doing well. I've got no grudges. Let's see, but yeah. So it'd be cool to meet all of you. I'm trying to think. Oh, shadow dancer. I don't know if you've seen shadow dancer on here. She's in Denver too. Oh, cool. But Dwayne Burke is in England, right? And not New Zealand folks in England. I'm amazed. Dwayne Burke, it's 9 p.m. for us Colorado folk. And then CJ, are you on the East Coast? No, Idaho. Idaho, okay. Okay, so you've got an hour behind us, right? I believe so. Yeah, you're central, right? No, I'm mountain. Are you mountain? Yeah, I am also mountain. Oh, okay. We're us three are the same. And then Dwayne Burke is in England, which is, it must be two in the morning there. Four. Whoa, Dwayne. That's hardcore. Dwayne, are you just an external? Do you always have this laid? I'm doing this for you, brova. Oh man, I didn't know. Well, we're glad you're here, thank you. And so yes. Thanks, Dwayne. We just had a new question. Stupid whore energy says, Jean is not only sleeps naked, but goes commando all day long while he listens to Nickelback. That is more true than you can possibly imagine. Oh, Gabriel K, you're right. I did miss your super chat. So sorry about that. By the way, I'm gonna read this, Gabriel K. I thought of a new idea. If I ever miss a person's super chat, what we can do is I'll give you like a super chat for the next one where it just like send me a normal chat and be like, bro, you missed my super chat on the last one, remember. And I'll be like, oh, I do remember. Sorry about that. Cause I was like, oh, that's a good idea. You just like pay it forward. Like we appreciate that support. And Gabriel K, but I did, you're right. I do have yours right in front of me. So let me read it right now. This computer is slowing, really slow. Thanks for your, oh, let's see. Got that one. Gabriel K, appreciate it, asked. They said, dude, a PC, quote, AI driven virus can evolve and act upon survival. Is that alive? I'll stop here. I do agree with your politics though. I think they're talking to you, CJ. They agree with your politics. Nice, I appreciate that. Out of my apologetics and politics, most of my time is actually spent on politics. So it's probably a good thing. As far as the question, I think, I don't know. There is a distinct lack of, I guess, true consciousness in an AI that I think would be. Now, even that though, cause I wonder at some point, if somebody establishes a consciousness, like something from iRobot, right? Am I going to change my opinion as to whether or not that's alive? And I got to be honest with you, I don't have any idea how to answer that question because it almost breaks my brain. Like what exactly does life even mean if you can create consciousness at that level? Now, I don't think you actually can. But if you can, we're gonna have to be like, coming up with a lot more philosophical theories as to what exactly constitutes, not only being alive, but like, what is a human being or a person, you know what I mean? Gotcha. And thank you for your question. Oh my, Flat Earth Aussie just told us that he sleeps naked. Well, thank you for that. That's excellent, really important. Definitely needed that. And I thought I saw one last question come in. That's it for the question. So I want to say thanks so much, folks. If there's one thing that you learned tonight in this interesting debate, it is that Flat Earth Aussie sleeps naked. So don't forget that. Reminding stuff. We really appreciate our guests. These guys are awesome. You guys, the debaters make this fun, so we can't thank them enough. CJ and Michael Axe, truly an honor to have you. Appreciate you hanging out with us tonight. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, James. It's a good first time on for me. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always happy to be on with you guys. You know, hopefully I'll be able to stop by once again in the future. Who knows? I think what, like four or five times now in the last six months, James? Yeah, you've been partying here a lot. It's been pretty hot. Oh, I dig it. It's been off the hook as a stupid horror energy would say, so. But yes, it is also a pleasure to have our dearest friend, Dwayne Burke, epic hair and beard, as I had mentioned, among many other things. Terrific guy, really supportive of the channel. Always a positive guy. We really appreciate it, Dwayne. Also good sense of humor. Dwayne, thanks so much for staying up extremely late with us. No, thanks for the opportunity, man, it's good. Absolutely, so thanks so much, folks. We hope you have a great rest of your night. We will be back this Wednesday. I'm gonna pull up this picture just really quick. In case you have not seen this, folks, we're pumped for it, bottom right of your screen. Tom Jump and Rick Delano are going to be going at it. So that should be an interesting one. We hope that we can see you there and with that, hope you have a great rest of your night, folks. Always fun to have you and keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable, folks. Take care.