 Everybody today, Snake and Steve are debating and we are certain right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for yet another epic debate. This is going to be a lot of fun. And if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we have a lot more debates coming up. For example, you'll see at the bottom of your screen this weekend, we are arranging a debate with Team Skeptic and Flat Earth Aussie. Also tomorrow, Darth Dawkins will be on with Red Venture. So that should be a lot of fun. We are very excited, folks. Want to let you know this is going to be, well, we'll let the debaters let you know exactly what the debate is about. But this time it's personal, folks. So they have brought their personal feud. It is here and it is, I know you guys think I'm gonna use that old joke where I say like Taylor is like Steve's son, but he's not. Come on, he's his stepson. And today they're sorting it all out. So this is gonna be a lot of fun, folks. Want to let you know I put both of their links in the description. So if you're listening and you're like, hmm, I want to hear more of this gent. Well, you can by clicking on those links that I put in the description for you. And this is going to be a 10 minute opening where you could say class will be in session. As Snake will be teaching Steve there. By the way, the thumbnail is a total joke between Steve and Snake and I. So it's not supposed to be pushing any idea. It's just a spoof, but it will be a real debate. And so we are going to let Snake start with a 10 minute flexible opening. Steve has the option if you would like to do that. Otherwise, if you'd like, we can just jump right into open conversation followed by Q and A. So if you happen to have a question fire it into the old live chat. If you tag me with at modern day debate makes it easier for me to put everyone in the list. If you do a super chat, that's an option at which you can make a comment toward one of the speakers during the question and answer. And it'll also push your question or comment to the top of the list for the Q and A. So with that, very excited to be here with you gentlemen. Let me first just say thanks so much for spending time with us today. Glad to be here. I'm looking at the outside. He has a bigger window than I do. Favoritism, all right, whatever. I'm like in the corner over here. I'm like at least small, but yeah, it's all good. Real quick, hit that subscribe button because YouTube is having issues with unsubscribing people. And you may not even know that you've been unsubscribed. So make sure you're subscribed. Check it. Stoked to have you, Steve. Thanks so much. Stoked to have you as well, Snake. So the floor is all yours for that 10 minute or so opening, Snake. Okay, I'm just gonna share my screen here. All right. So in true entity fashion, first and foremost is a little bit of joking around. So of course I'm gonna argue from I have longer hair and therefore I win. You cannot defeat this mane. But in all seriousness, I hope we can come to a respectful understanding here today with our conversation. I don't wanna spend too much time on definitions but I have to get to it first. And so here are the actual arguments. So there's gotta be a disambiguation between the proposition of a knowledge claim and a belief. And so typically it would be philosophically atheism is the proposition that a God does not exist in that specific context. And then in pretty much all other contexts including psychologically atheism is simply the lack of belief in a God. And so I think we agreed that this debate would be about whether agnostics are atheists and obviously it's that will have to depend on the definition of both of those words. So I don't wanna spend too much time on it but it is a necessity. So the first argument is that we're using the word atheism wrong and that no academic source will state otherwise and this is false. And then tons of academic sources state that atheist is a person who just does not believe that a God or divine being exists or lack of belief. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy states that it's either the lack of belief that God exists or the belief that none exists. The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology similar is one who lacks a belief or rejects a belief. The Oxford Dictionary of Atheism is a belief in the non-existence of God or more broadly in absence in their belief or existence. And it also says that negative or weak or soft atheism is synonymous with non-theism. And Steve has admitted in the past that agnostics are non-theists. So by this definition, atheism doesn't encompass agnosticism. And negative atheism is a legitimate philosophical position and to leave this distinction out is to be less precise, not more precise. This distinction helps us understand the reasons and the extent of one's beliefs or atheism. Negative atheism therefore by definition as a lack of belief being synonymous with non-theism includes agnosticism. And I know most people are not going to take Wikipedia itself as a source, but a cursory glance at this will give us a good idea of what is in normative and popular usage. And I don't think, it's just a good litmus test and a good way to decide which of our assertions is actually born out in the language, in the conversation. And I have a hard time believing that all the professional philosophers would just allow Wikipedia to misrepresent entire fields of philosophy if these were not normative usages and positions and categories. And it can get confusing, which is why there are so many categories and implicit atheism is what has agnosticism within it. It's a real category and it includes agnostics and babies even in academia. So, and then I also wanted to point out global atheism versus local atheism. And by this definition, Steve is also an atheist because he has denied, he's asserted that certain gods do not exist. So by this definition, he is a local atheist but still an agnostic. So if you deny that at least one God concept is false even the most pure most neutral agnostics are still atheists. So are all these dictionaries wrong? Or is this just a bad argument? Dictionaries are descriptivists. So if you disagree with the dictionaries you're prescribing a different usage of the word. And that's not a very convincing argument to me. Other than use value, I think you could possibly make a case but I don't think that case is here because the more categories you have the better the usage is. To a certain extent. Another of Steve's arguments is that one that I personally and bothered by is that atheism is being used politically to increase the ranks and numbers of organizations of people who are ostensibly just non-theists which again is synonymous with weak atheism. But if this is true then Google and all these other academic sources that I've cited are just in on some conspiracy. Is this true or is this just another bad argument? All these organizations are clearly using the correct term of atheism which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says there are many correct usages of atheism. Another argument is traditional usage and that would just be the etymological fallacy. And so if you're just using, if you're saying X used to be defined as something else therefore that's what it means that's a fallacy. And then another one of Steve's arguments is basically this is an argument from analogy and as we know arguments from analogy usually fail at some point because analogies are not, they're just metaphorical approximations. So he'll say something like let's define non-theist as dog and then we're looking at the question of theist or dog if you're not a theist then you're a dog and therefore anything else is either a theist or a dog. And I think this is a pretty weak argument because dog is not at all germane to the problem of theism and it's not even a proposition. So I mean, it's just a bad analogy. Again, there's more than one correct definition of atheism even within philosophy. So atheism I would say is best understood as an answer to the question is there a God or do you believe in a God? Those who answer no would be atheists but can include agnostics as well. Saying I don't know can be considered indirectly answering but is in fact not really an answer at all. So by all usages and definitions of atheists except one there is very specific usage in a specific context. That's not useful in most discussions and it's not even used in most academic discussions or not all academic discussions. So in all usages except for one agnosticism is atheism or in some cases it can be theism as theists can believe in a God but not claim knowledge. So this means agnosticism is belief without knowledge and this comports to the definition Stanford gives. Agnosticism is not lacking belief in either proposition which are in entirely different categories because this is a psychological state of belief category not a knowledge claim category. It is the belief that one does not have knowledge of either proposition. So it has no philosophical definition. So if Steve wants to assert his agnostic then he's using the psychological states of belief categories and thus has to use the softer umbrella term for weak atheism. The Stanford Encyclopedia argues that since atheism is a lack of belief it is defined by psychological states of belief therefore using term strong atheism to describe the proposition that gods do not exist is a category error since it no longer is a state of belief but a philosophical knowledge claim. And so it's a category error. However, the author of this article is in my opinion tunnel vision. So he doesn't understand that there needs to be a disambiguation there and that the claim to knowledge is that a state of belief one who can believe that they have knowledge. So it is not a category error and even if we can see that that it is a category error we can simply state that outside of a specific context of merely labeling God does not exist as atheism within the narrow philosophical context instead just a general language level then it makes complete sense to use the umbrella term categories. There's absolutely no reason to limit the definition to just this narrow sense and the article states as much and has no solution for the phenomenon of so-called new atheism it merely states that it's a problem which I don't think it is a problem as long as we use the categories of strong and weak atheism. Distinguishing between strong and weak, Gnostic or agnostic atheism is the easiest way to communicate these ideas across all fields with little confusion. Agnostic is to be used in the epistemological sense which is exactly what most atheists are actually trying to discuss and say that they disbelieve because we do not have knowledge about theism. Neither is known. Steve says lack of belief Steve says it's lack of belief in neither or both, but it's a psychological state. So using philosophical terms only is not a good idea. So I'll end with the point that epistemologically there is little difference between atheism and agnosticism they're unified by the fact that you should reject an idea if you have no reason to believe it and essentially what I'm trying to say is the debate between atheism and theism is not symmetrical. It is asymmetric. So epistemologically, if you don't have a reason to believe then the default is to reject it. Basically, you don't have a default of accepting the proposition. So that's what the asymmetry comes from. So let's see. No one asks whether you're agnostic towards leprechauns whether you believe that they don't exist or that you just lack a belief in them. So why is this distinction important in atheism versus theism either? So I guess I'll round off I'll finalize with just asking Steve why you wanted to debate me in the first place like what actually led to you requesting this and then we can just jump in right after that. Thanks so much, Snake for that opening win. Absolutely. And go forward with that. So the floor is yours. Awesome. Okay. So boy, by the way, I furiously took notes. I'm like back in school, this is by the way I write really quickly when it's not legible. You should have seen my notes from college. I probably couldn't have read in this day. So I am furiously taking notes here because I want to be educated in this because the reason why I asked you for the because I had actually reviewed the debate that I had with Duke and when I was reviewing it you were in the live chat saying that was wrong about everything. So I said, well, if Snake thinks I'm wrong let's find what I'm wrong about. And you have a whole bunch of stuff you've just said none of which I think it has anything to do with what I was arguing but I will take it at face value because I don't think you've actually showed that I'm wrong on anything. You've actually correlated exactly what I've been kind of saying which seems to be odd to me, but okay. So in my notes, you say that atheism is a proposition of knowledge, not belief. Is that, did I hear you right? And I'm not doing it opener. I don't need 10 minutes. I want to dialogue. So atheism is how it's a proposition. If the proposition of theism is God exists what's the negation of that? Well that would be hard atheism as I would define it. Sure, but what's the negation? What's the proposition though? Yeah, that's a specific context. So the proposition God exists or God does not exist. But okay, so the proposition of theism is God exists and the negation of that would be the proposition God does not exist. That's not a knowledge position. That's a belief position, correct? It can be either. No, it's, these are propositional. These are called dossastic states, right? So according to Rutgers philosophy 101 if you look at their syllabus it specifically says if you believe the proposition to be true then the proper epistemic status toward it is belief. If you believe the proposition is false it's disbelief. You think that it's neither you have no belief position either way that's a spending of judgment. So when we say that the proposition is true theists are making a belief position, right? They're not making a knowledge claim because knowledge requires other conditions other than just belief, right? I mean, and it would agree that the standard canonical understanding of knowledge is that knowledge requires the proposition to be true and the person has to believe it. And then after that there's justificatory issues, right? Like JTP has justification, reliableism has reliable means but there's, but in almost all theories of knowledge except maybe what's called causal, let's me on casual field of knowledge other than that most of them require certain conditions. Would you agree that if theists are saying they believe God exists they're not making a knowledge claim on that, right? Not necessarily. Okay, so that's a belief position. So you said most people are using this later usage which would be your lack of belief position. By the way, I really hated doing definitions but since you brought it up because I don't think it's relevant. None of this has actually attacked any of my actual core arguments but you get them out of the way. You said it's the most popular issues. Who do you base that upon? What do you just do? Because Oxford said it's not the most popular. Yeah, well, Oxford said it's not the most popular and Cambridge says your usages is not the most popular. Are they incorrect? Probably. How come it's in every single definition except for this one definition? It's not. I mean, if you go look at Mabir and Webster's learners go look at Oxford's learner go look at Oxford's hampers and atheism. They all say that. Stanford says there's multiple usages. There are multiple usages. Oxford defines both usages. But Google defines both usages. But what's the most popular is a question that you have as your claim, right? And I asked what do you have to substantiate that? Now I can screen share, I guess we're right. Now that works. Okay, so start screen share. I got two monitors, I gotta make sure. Okay, so this is Oxford's dictionary of atheism right here. It has the number one, which is the one you go by. And the number two, the belief that there are no gods arguably the most popular current usage. They're saying that the most popular current usage is the way that I use it. By the way, do you agree that the way I use it is pretty normative in philosophy? No. You don't believe it's normative in philosophy. Okay. It's normative in the sense that it's used, but it's not the only one. It's not the most common. So okay, so how many papers do you have that use it in your way as compared to how many papers do you have that don't use it your way and use it my way? I can produce, right now, if I have to, I can produce at least six papers instantly that use it the way I have. How many papers do you have that use it the way you use it? There's several right within the Stanford Encyclopedia. Okay, can you name one for me, please? That you, what was her name? Janine Diller. Okay, and her paper? I'll have to look in the bibliography. Okay, while you do that, we'll get back to that. So you agree on- She's talking about local versus global atheism. Yes, local versus global. Local atheism would be atheistic toward one particular God, but not toward all gods, right? And local atheists says that, I believe that God Zeus doesn't exist, but they're not global, meaning that they don't hold the position there are no gods, that the universe is devoid of gods. This is what Russell wrote in his paper, I'm on atheist or agnostic, right? And I believe it was 1954, if I'm not mistaken. This is what he was referring to, local versus global. I have no issue with that. I am a local atheist towards certain gods. Zeus does not exist to me, right? Now I know Ocean Keltroy will probably mess with me in five minutes, but I don't help, I believe that that God does not exist. Not merely, I don't believe, I believe Zeus is mythological, right? I make the claim that Zeus does not exist. But here, but you agree on Oxford here, it says really clearly, arguably the most popular current usage. You disagree with Oxford, right? Yeah, it says it's arguable. Oh, right, no, sure, sure, arguable. Okay, so I want to get another one real quick, so let me stop screen sharing, yeah. You know, don't want to show you too much here. I mean, I would be convinced if you took a survey of how many people believe it versus do not. And the way that I disambiguate that, the way that I am convinced is because one atheism or Wikipedia has these categories that are more in line with the lack of belief and all of the atheist organizations use that as well. And so I failed to see how a couple of papers can outweigh that. Well, because papers are what we basically, when you want to undergo, understand something you want to read about the topic, generally it's go to go look at the experts and what the paper says. So this is from Camber's companion to atheism. It says in all cases, we would use the term atheism rather loosely for those thinkers and people who've denied the existence of gods. Deny here in logic as means to accept negation. So Camber's here in the companion to atheism in the, if you read this, uses it in the positive epistemic status. Okay, so you're gonna say that Camber's is wrong on this as well, I take it, right? But you said you didn't want to argue about definition. No, I'm just, I'm getting a baseline. I'm the one who's saying that there are both definitions and you're trying to lock it to one definition. No, I'm saying what is normative. You said, I asked you in philosophy when we started, what you think is normative, you say it's not. And you say that your uses are the most popular. I took the note right here, claim. Most people are using the latter usage. And I asked you, did that apply to philosophy? And you said, yes, you don't think that's the case. So that's why I'm bringing these up. And I have one more. But you're trying to lock the usage just to this narrow philosophical context. No, I'm asking you if it's normative in philosophy. You answered, no, I'm giving you evidence that is on my behalf that is not the case, but you can take it for what it's worth. So can you read this as a show? Again, I'm not looking. Can you read this? It says, hang on, this is Cambridge dictionary of philosophy and it says, a strict sense denotes a belief that there is no God, which use has become standard use. So your claim that it's the most popular use may not seem to be the case because here it says standard use as most popular. Now, again, I don't really care what you think is most popular or not, but I think I've established that in academia, because I can produce multiple papers here if you need me to, you can go look at Burgess Jackson's paper, you can look at Dr. Malfast's paper on defining atheism and the burn of proof, or you can look at, well, Dr. Oppie's work, all of them use atheism in the positive epistemic case. Now, if you find one that doesn't, please let me know, but Diller does not talk about that because that's about local atheism. I asked for a paper that uses atheism in the weak case as normative, Dr. Paper, and I can't find one. But like I said, I can cite you a whole bunch that do right now, Dr. Burgess Jackson, Dr. Malik, Dr. Oppie, they all do. So I think that your claim on that is wrong, but we'll move on to that because that's like only one claim. Two, you said, you said, you talked about IEP, which is the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This was written by Dr. McCormick. Now, you seem to miss this one part here. What is atheism? Atheism is the view that there is no God. You disagree with that. That's one usage. Of course it's one usage. And even your source, Stanford Encyclopedia, I haven't got the Stanford yet. Hang on, I haven't got the Stanford yet. I'm dealing with you. You brought up IEP, right? Yeah, they all use multiple different usage. Which has been my argument for three years. There's no one correct usage. That there's multiple usages. And in philosophy, the most normative, the ones that use the most, is the positive epistemic case. That's been my argument. That's, I think, well-established. You're saying otherwise, which is okay. But do you recognize that atheism is used in the positive epistemic case in academia? Like here, right here, prove your paper. Atheism is the view that there's no God. Do you agree or disagree with that statement? I agree that both are used. I agree both are used. Is this a true statement? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, so okay. Both are used. Okay, so this is true. Why are you trying to just nail it down to one? Because I have people that are saying that atheism is never the belief that God does not exist, or the view that God doesn't exist. And that's simply not the case. You agree with that. That it is never the view that exists. Let's say it's only a lack of belief. If you go to American Atheist, it says atheism is only one thing. Atheism is not the belief, Atheism is not the disbelief that is in all of God's, which this seems to say otherwise. It is the Nile or to leave disbelief in God's, right? Atheism is the disbelief of God in this case, right? I don't think that's what they mean. What they mean is what I mean by atheism is that I'm only lacking belief. That's fine. They're not trying to say that this is the only usage of the word. No, that's what it says. Whether American Atheist is very pointing on that. It is one thing. Let's be clear. It's only one thing that atheism is a lack of belief. Now you agree that's not correct and if that's how you would be reading it. Would you say that's not true? I think that's an incorrect interpretation of what they're saying. Well, that's their position. I've talked to Pam Whistler on this. She's the editor-in-chief. So if you want to go talk to her, she thinks that it's only one thing. On Raw, I have a quote from him saying there's only one correct usage, which is quoting American Atheist from his blog. When he wrote a blog about me, Mr. Agnostic, he has in that blog, and I have the quote here. I can actually show it for you. I mean, again, find it for you. But Aaron Ross says that there's only one correct definition. Do you agree with him? No. Okay, that's good, because I don't either because I don't think there is one correct definition nor have I ever argued that there is one correct definition. There's always multiple uses for words. I totally agree. That's my whole point. These are policy-based words. And have you ever watched my video on how I have eight different ways you can describe atheism? I don't think I caught that specifically. Might want to check it out because that's actually my argument is that there are multiple definitions and that merely not believing in God is only one descriptive definition that people have used, which are allowed to use. But in academia, that is not the normative one, but it still exists, absolutely. But I choose to use the more stricter ones, right? The more sensitive stricter or strictism over them than Lato. Well, those go to the real core of the arguments which nobody ever seems to get into. Why using censor Lato definitions lead to what's called category errors and possible special plating. But those are different arguments which we can happily have a debate on those because those are, I think, the more important things to talk about rather than this preliminary stuff. But I'm glad that you brought it up, I am. But this is from Mr. Ra's blog here, okay? So this is right here from American atheists, okay? To be clear, atheism is not disbelief in God's or denial of God's, it is a lack of belief in God's. But whatever interpretation you wanna give to it, you do agree in philosophy atheism is the belief in God's. In some cases, in some papers, most, actually 99% of the papers out there. I would say all, but I can't read all the papers, but everyone I've read has always been the positive case. But can you read what he says here for me? If you don't mind? You want me to read the whole time? Yeah, please. So the dictionary definitions, I gotta get the drink. So the dictionary definitions match that of the movement itself, proving that the way atheists define themselves is the correct usage. Okay, and you don't agree with that because I certainly don't. That's a correct usage. No, no, is the correct usage. Like there's only one. I mean, that my usage is incorrect. If his is the correct one and only the correct one as it seems to be the argument, then mine would be incorrect. Would that be not logically correct? Within a very narrow definition. But you agree that my usage is or there's no, I don't think there's incorrect or correct to be had here, right? But would you agree that he's a prescriptivist in this? That he is saying that you, that this is the dictionary definition which by the way is descriptive. It gives usages, not tells you what, dictionaries don't define words prescriptively. You did mention something earlier. You agree with that, right? Possibly he could be, but I interpret this as him describing his usage. But I think this is prescriptive because I've talked to him and people have talked to Aaron. If you go listen to him, he is prescriptive about it. There was only one usage. If you listen to his debate with Ozzy, he says there is one usage, any other usage has been influenced by Theist, not a conspiracy theory that has been his words. Okay, so I think that is prescriptivism because I'm not a prescriptivist, never have been. Go read my blog. I give my points. I'm a prescriptivist. I do not say you must use these words. What I say are these words do exist in different context and that for years, atheists have been telling people there was only one way to use these words. Anybody who uses these words differently are wrong. That's what I've been arguing about against. That's what I've been fighting against for many, many, many, many years. And unfortunately, there's a lot of atheists and people out there that don't want to understand the actual argument being had. But let's move on here if we may. So I think as long as you use hardened soft atheism or any of these other subcategories that completely does away with any of the confusion between them, it basically synthesizes both viewpoints. So you agree that weak atheism is logically the same as agnosticism? I mean, there's some subcategories within that, but I would say agnosticism, agnostic atheism, weak atheism is basically- They're not the same thing. I mean, okay, first of all, if you use agnostic atheists, do you agree that, even Matt Dillahunty agrees with this, agnostic atheist and agnostic atheist in the weak condition is nonsensical. Would you agree with that? No. Okay, so if you're an agnostic with a G, atheist, and you're gonna use that, what's called an epistemic modifier for a Dostastic position, you're saying, hey, look, not just do I hold a position of belief one way or another, I'm claiming it as knowledge, okay? Because I took a survey in this in preparation for this in the Atheist Experience Facebook group and in other groups. And the most common way they held this is somebody who claims knowledge that they know God exists. A gnostic theist would be a God, they know God exists. And a gnostic atheist would be somebody who claims they know God does not exist. That is the most common users I've seen. Okay, I come up with 12 different usages for that, but that's the most common. Would you accept that? Arguuendo, at least? Not within like regular conversations, like most internet- Okay, what is a gnostic atheist to you? With a G, with a big G, not a G. Yeah, what is a gnostic atheist to you? Is someone who claims that there is no God. Just claims? Claims to know that there is no God. Claims to know, okay. So we agree there. So if knowledge is a subset of belief, in order to know that God does not exist, one must believe at first, correct? Under justified true belief as a canonical standard theory of knowledge, correct? Yeah. Okay, I agree with you. So how is it the case if you're using atheism in the weak case where you do not believe, are you then able to say that you know if you don't have the belief first? So how is a gnostic atheist makes any sense if you're using atheism the way that the American atheists use in the weak case or the atheist community of Austin? How does that make sense in that case? And by the way, Matt Dillonhutty agrees with this. He said it the other day and he acts, and I happen to agree with Matt on that. When Matt's right, he's right. I mean, contrary to what people think, I do not hold Matt to be a dumb person. He is extremely intelligent. And I don't know where he gets his impression that I think otherwise, but he's right on this. And you can't have a strong position, you can't have a knowledge position if you don't have a strong case on atheism, right? You gotta believe first. You gotta be a strong atheist, as you would say, before you can know it, right? Yeah, and that's why there are subcategories within weak atheism and implicit atheism. So what do you do with those categories? Are they just- Well, implicit is George, George Smith came up with implicit atheism in 1974 on his book, Case Against God, right? And all that is somebody who just doesn't explicitly say that there's no gods. But in this particular case, if you'd have gnostic atheists with a G, it makes no sense if you're using atheism in a weak case. Now, I'm not a big fan of mixing ontology with epistemological words that go with it. I'm not a fan of that. People know that, but if you're gonna do it, at least make sense by doing it. You cannot say gnostic atheist unless you mean atheist in the positive epistemic case or strong atheism. That's the only possible way epistemologically that that makes sense. Do you agree with that? Because knowledge is a subset of belief. You have to have belief before you have knowledge. If you don't believe, you don't have the precondition for belief to have knowledge. Okay, agreed? All right, all right. So if you claim to believe without knowledge though, what you're saying is that epistemologically, you just don't have a reason to believe. No, you haven't got a precondition for knowledge. Do you know what the necessary preconditions for justify true belief are? It's okay if you don't. Okay, it's simple. And by the way, you don't have to accept this theory of knowledge. It's a very canonical, it's just basic. But it's the proposition has to be true. You have to believe the proposition to be true and you have to be justified to believe that the proposition is true, right? Now, there are Gidea problems and there's some issues with that. Dr. Lindsey Zebsiecki, and I butcher her name every time, but I really like her writings, have determined that any belief first theory of knowledge will have epistemic issues due to what's called Gidea cases. I agree with that. I just talked to Dr. Carrier the other day about the exact same thing. He agrees with that. So I don't think it's that weird to say that there's not problems with justify true belief, right? But if we're gonna have a discussion on what is knowledge, I think that's a very good starting point unless you wanna argue a different theory of knowledge, which you can, but in justify true belief, do you agree that those three necessary preconditions must exist in order to have knowledge? Yeah. Okay, awesome. So if you don't believe you haven't met one of the preconditions, right? You have to believe the proposition is true or you have not met the precondition for knowledge. You agree then that if you don't believe, then you can't say you have knowledge of it. It makes no sense. It is like, it is nonsensical, okay? Cause you have to meet that prior precondition to have sufficiency enough to meet the three preconditions for justify true belief. That's why atheism needs to be in the positive case if you're gonna use things like Gnostic Atheist. If not, it makes no sense. Gnostic Atheism is the same thing. You need to use it in the strong case. And then it's just superfluous because it's no different than just saying atheist, right? An atheist is somebody who says, in that case, if you're gonna use it strong, I believe God exists, it doesn't exist, but I'm not making it as a knowledge claim. Same thing as Gnostic Atheist, right? So why is it defined as a lack of belief and what's the point of these categories? What do you mean it's defined by lack of belief? Those are just prescriptions. It's not prescribed, it's described. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's how a lot of people use it. A lot of creationists use kind of species and theory of speculation. I'm not here to debate what other people use. I like to explain the topic, right? It's not coherent usage. What? So you're saying it's an incoherent usage to define it as lack of belief? No, I've never argued that in my life. It's incoherent to use lack of belief atheism and then putting Gnostic modifier in front of it. Because then you're saying you have knowledge but you don't meet the prerequisite belief condition to have knowledge, because knowledge is a subset of belief. Yeah, but Gnostic Atheists believe that there is no God. Correct, and that's the strong case. There you go. And Gnostic Atheists will believe there are no gods, right? So that's atheism in the strong case. This is what I'm arguing, to have Gnostic Atheists make any sense whatsoever. And again, I hate junks opposing those things together, but this is what you do. The only way it would literally make sense is if you're using atheism in the strong case. So I think you've established that. All right, so back to my original question though, weak atheism and Gnosticism, you believe logically or synonymous, right? Because by the way, I agree with you. This is one of my main arguments. Weak atheism and weak theism and Gnosticism, I have a proof for on my blog, if you go look at my blog, I have a full structured logical proof that those are logically indistinguishable for each other. Now there are epistemic differences, but a weak theist and a weak atheist are logically agnostic. Do you agree with that? I would just basically, but I would say that the agnostic position is more like under the atheist's definition. If you're saying that atheism is a lack of belief, then that counts as agnostic. But it's also lack of belief. Yeah, but by the same token, a weak theist can say you lack of belief that God does not exist, right? So you're a weak atheist and you're a weak theist at the same time. You just mirror the proposition, right? I mean, if you have the proposition God exists and you don't believe that, you're a weak atheist. If you have the proposition God does not exist and you don't believe that, theist can go your weak theist or if not, that's special pleading. That is actually one of my main core arguments on my blog that has not been ever addressed by atheists, which I wish we could actually talk about those kinds of arguments, right? Cause I think they're far more productive than this preliminary stuff. But I am happy that you actually have brought the preliminary stuff. I really am. But can you read this for me too? This is on Stanford and Psychopedia, which you brought up. See here under, by the way, I think you did misread a little bit on your agnosticism here, but a couple of things. So here it says, I'll read it just fine. Therefore in philosophy at least, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist or more broadly the proposition that there are no gods. Do you disagree with Stanford, Dr. Paul Draper from Purdue on this? I mean, if you're going to limit it to a certain context, I don't disagree, but I disagree that saying that that's the only way you can define it. No one's arguing that. Okay. No one's arguing that you have to use words certain ways or anything like that. The argument is, he argues that if you want in philosophy, if you want to go read a paper on it, every paper that I found uses it in the positive case. So if you use it in the weak case, how will you understand that paper? Because that's not the way they're using it normatively. Yeah, but normally most people are not saying that they're omnipotent enough to know the entire universe and know that there are no gods at all. I'm not saying- You're conflating knowledge now. We're in dozastic realm. We're in beliefs. You're moving to knowledge. We're not talking about knowledge. We're talking about beliefs. You can believe God does not exist. Gnostic atheists is talking about knowledge. But I'm not talking- This is not talking about Gnostic atheism. This is saying right here, atheism should be construed as the proposition that God does not exist. If you're from that proposition, would you not agree that that is an atheist by any measure, any definition? If somebody says, I believe there are no gods, we're both gonna agree that's an atheist, correct? Yeah. Okay, so okay. Just the proposition God does not exist does include a knowledge claim. No, it does not. There's no knowledge claim there. I think you're confusing knowledge with information, right? Information about. You know about something which is informationally, you have access to that, right? But that's not what knowledge is epistemically. In epistemology, knowledge is a very specific predicate to a proposition. If I say I know P, that means I met certain preconditions like justified true belief, which we went through earlier, believes that true, P is true, and you're justified, right? It has very specific conditions. It's not that you know about the proposition. That's an equivocation error that you have. That's another fallacy called equivocation fallacy. You're using knowledge two different ways. We're using knowledge epistemologically to mean the disposition or epistemic status towards a proposition that you are saying that proposition has met those three criteria. That's what it means by when you see that, no, that P, you'll see it written that way, no, that P, that is what it means. It means that you have met those conditions. It doesn't mean you know about. So you don't have to have knowledge to have a belief condition, right? I can say, I mean, yeah, you have to know of it, but that's using knowledge in a different context. That's why you gotta be careful of equivocation. But there's one other thing I wanna read to you here. But I gotta find it real quick. But that's what I'm saying, it's asymmetrical, whereas some people, their epistemology is, I don't believe because I lack evidence. And so that's- Yeah, that's just a dry condition. That has no relevance to anything. That's a justification. That's actually what's more called evidential agnosticism, but that's a different argument. So right here, just again, Paul Draper says, an agnostic is a person who has entertained the proposition that there is no God, but believes neither that it is true, nor that it is false. Not surprisingly then, the term agnosticism is often defined both in an outside philosophy as the principle or any other sort of proposition that is attended as a psychological state of being agnostic. So agnosticism is a psychological state here because psychological states cannot be tested by argumentation. So when we say that you have a propositional state like atheism or theism, which is a position on a particular proposition, agnosticism has no position either way. So when it says, an agnostic is a person who has entertained the proposition that there is no God, but believes neither that it is true nor that it is false. Is Dr. Draper wrong on that? No, but that would be under the umbrella of negative atheism or- It's also the umbrella of negative theism too. So it doesn't, whatever. Yeah, it's non-theist. We all agree upon that. Theist or not theist, right? But that's not the question. The question is, by the way, Dr. Oppie makes it very clear agnosticism is no more closer to theism than to the atheism. So you would have to disagree with Dr. Oppie as well. And by the way, side note, when you cite somebody and you cite an authority in the field, that's not an argument for popularity fallacy, okay, or some of them from authority fallacy. That's called argumenting at Everkinium, which is a very proper way to cite things if you ever want to write a paper. I've never read a published paper, but I have written papers for college. You cite things. I took a whole semester in MLA format, which I'll never use. But yeah, when you quote an expert, that doesn't mean that you're right, right? A fallacy would be, hey, I'm right because an expert says I'm right. Never do that. That is a fallacy. But he says that is agnostic, means proposition is not true or false. What does he mean by that then? What does he mean by the belief that the proposition is not true or false? Well, yeah, if I say the sky is green and I say I'm agnostic on P, I'm agnostic on that proposition. What does that mean? It means that you don't believe the proposition. It's true and I don't believe the proposition's false, right? I'm agnostic on that proposition, right? But the proposition's all that matters in this discussion. Okay, but that's irrelevant to what I just said. If the proposition isn't proven, then it's like fall is logically. What do you gotta prove? Look, I believe that there's a lot of calculus proofs I can't prove, even though I believe that they're true. I believe aliens exist. I can't prove it. I barely remember how to prove square root two is irrational, but I could. But somebody can believe that without knowing how to prove it, currently not. And you don't even have to prove anything. I believe external minds exist. I don't prove it. Science doesn't prove anything. I believe gravity exists. I can't prove it. You don't prove scientific theories, right? Because you want the falsification condition. Yeah, the proposition is useless until you can demonstrate it. No, these are beliefs. These are epistemic dispositions. It doesn't care whether you can demonstrate or not. We're talking about whether you can justify belief or a non-justified belief. There's still beliefs. I can have a false belief. Why I believe something is important, right? I wanna know why somebody believes something that is true or false. But if I say the sky is blue, Snake, if I say the proposition sky is blue and you have no belief either way that you don't believe it's true and you don't believe it's false, would you agree? Typically, according to the Draper, that is called agnostic on P. I'm not labeling anybody. This is again, material facts, not label. Agnostic on P means you have no belief position either way. Sure. But if you reject the position, then under one of the... Be careful on the word he's doing, Jack. What do you mean by reject? Because reject can mean different things. I mean, you don't accept it to be true. Just for clarification, the Fregeach interpretation of rejection and rejectionism is the negation of the proposition. So if you say you reject something in logic, it means that you generally accept the negation, not just you merely don't accept. Gotta be careful on that. But I know what you mean by that. But I would say don't accept. I don't accept the proposition rather than reject because then you have ambiguity there. Okay? So let's move on to some other things. I think that kind of establishes the agnostic position. The agnostic says I don't believe there's a God and I don't believe there isn't a God, right? You agree with that, right? And that's one of the atheist positions too, though. It's one of, yeah. Well, it's not the atheist position. It is your use of the atheist position. You're making weak atheism to be normative for atheism, which you're allowed to do, go nuts. But that's not typical. Paul Draper says right here, that agnostic on the proposition means you just don't have a belief either way. And you agree that that's true. Now you're just calling that weak atheism, but it's also weak theism. If you're allowed for one, you gotta re-allow for the other words or special pleading. How is that weak theism? Because the theists will say that I don't hold the belief that God's don't exist. But they believe God does exist. Hang on, we gotta, come on. We have just enough time. I'll give a snake a chance to respond just because sometimes Steve gets excited and he talks fast. But you know. I'm drinking coffee. Dude, come on. I took all these notes. I'm only at four. That's a, I also though, I'm gonna mention that it might be a good chance too. We might be able to cover a little bit of extra ground beyond kind of the semantics or definitions in moving to other territory. We might have enough time, but I wanna give a snake a chance to respond if you had anything there. Sorry for cutting in snakes. Sure, go ahead. Kind of lost my train of thought there. Oh, that weak theism is the same as weak atheism? Yeah, logically. I have actual proof of this using actual logic you can go find on my webpage. Yeah. That has been vetted. I mean, the head of the Cal State Long Beach Mathematical Department, the chairperson, Dr. Bill Zeimer who I've known his friends, his wife went to school with me, high school. He vetted it. He thinks it's a really good argument. Not again, appeal to the argument of Arconium, but here's a logistician says it's a good argument. I'm not saying I'm right by it, but I mean, it's not like some BS argument, right? Well, I've seen it, but I forget the structure of it, but I don't see how can you say that someone who believes in a God is in the same category as someone who does not believe in a God? Same way, because all you're doing is mirroring it, right? Because if using these terms the way you do, which again, I like to discuss the issues if you use your terms that way. Nobody's ever argued you can't. Nobody's ever said that there's one way specifically to use things. I've argued for years, which a lot of atheists don't seem to want to recognize, is if you use these words in these ways, what is the ramifications? What's the baggage that comes along with it? One of the ramifications of this is a special pleading argument that theists could have when they say, look, normally we understand atheism as somebody who believes that God does not exist. If you don't affirm that proposition, you are. I mean, the atheists will say, if you don't affirm that proposition that God exists, you're an atheist, right? Atheists will say God exists. And if you don't affirm that, if you don't accept that, you're gonna call that atheism, correct? Yeah, as long as I just reject theism. Okay, fine. Now, this is because this is just a weird thing of language what we describe atheism in these ways, but atheists could come along and say, look, snake, the proposition of atheism as Dr. Draper has pointed out and other places has pointed out is the proposition that God does not exist. If you don't affirm that, you're a weak theist. And I'm just gonna call weak theist atheist. If you don't allow them to do that, it's by definition, special pleading. You're excluding something that you're allowing yourself to do that somebody else does not do without any kind of justification for it. I mean, I think you're flip-flopping between a knowledge claim and a belief claim. I'm not talking about knowledge. Did you hear me? You mentioned the word knowledge. This has nothing to do with knowledge. This is all desastic. What does this have to do with knowledge? Because the weak atheists do not affirm that they believe in God, but the weak theist. But that's a belief position. If you believe God or God is not knowing. But the weak theists do affirm that. No, the weak theists, no, again, as soon as you start bringing up knowledge, you've just moved from, you just moved out of the realm of ontology, which is God existing, right? Because we want it, I'm a non-theist, right? You're a non-theist. We want it, we want to have an understanding of what is factual. We want to understand the reality of our universe, right? And the God existing or not is an ontological question. Does God exist or not? Is there, it's a binary, right? It's an economy. Does God exist or God does not exist? Right, right, I mean, simple. I mean, the question's meaningless unless you can show that it is. So it's not symmetrical. So there's the non-theist and there's the theist. Right, but anybody, okay, there's also atheists and non-theists too. If theism is used in the strong case, right? For somebody who believes there is a God, then there is a cemetery there where atheism would be the case that believes there are no gods. And anybody who doesn't affirm that, the theist can go, you're a weak atheist, I was maybe theist, and I'm gonna call that theist. Dr. Oppie, have you read Dr. Oppie's atheism and agnosticism? Cause it's a really good book. It came out in 2017 and it's a PDF and it used to be free. I don't know if it still is, but if it is, go check it out. He makes it very clear that atheism and agnosticism, and by the way, he's a well-established atheist philosopher. This is not some kind of conspiracy stuff. Cause you mentioned that earlier about putting everybody under the umbrella, being conspiratorial. No, go ask David Silverman. He wrote Fighting God. He talks about it. Go ask Pam Wistel from American Atheists. She told me this explicitly, verbatim. If you don't believe me, go ask my producer, Bull. This is political. I'm gonna have Dave on probably this week, Dave Soman. And we get along really well, believe it or not. Even though we diametrically don't agree on anything, we actually happen to get along. I don't know why, but I'm gonna have him on and we can talk about this. And we'll talk about the political things if you want because it's not conspiratorial. This is what they do for demographics. They want more people to join American Atheists. They want more voting power. This is the same argument that, one second, and I promise I'll turn it over to you. This is the same argument that genetically modified skeptic uses as a utility argument to have more power to change things. It's not a bad argument. This is why you never see me go after genetically modified skeptic, right? Because he and I have had this discussion. I understand what he means. He understands what I mean. And he has a utility argument, which I think more Atheists should use that argument. They're already feeders for it, but it's still better than what they have. And especially when you say, they're not trying to change things for political gain. This is Anthony Flu's argument in 1972 on the presumption of atheism. This goes back decades. This is standard, but go ahead. I'll turn it over to you. Well, my utility argument is that it's just much more clear to say things like strong atheism, weak atheism, and agnostic atheism, because people, I mean- Well, I've already established that's not the case. I mean, agnostic atheism is, I literally on my blog, I came up with 10 different ways you can interpret agnostic atheists. Like 10 different ways and logically speaking, right? So I don't think it's more precise. We don't have knowledge on God, but we don't believe in God. Wait, okay. Can you tell me what you've been by knowledge because you keep throwing up knowledge and I don't think- I'm not trying to be the meaning, I'm not. But knowledge means that you've met those three conditions, right? So when you say, we don't know God, I agree. I'm not claiming knowledge of God, right? But atheists will say they believe God exists. Almost no atheists will actually say that they have knowledge, but there's no- Why are you back on knowledge? Again, atheism is not the knowledge claim. Atheism, normatively, again, in philosophy, if you read most of these things, they generally use the positive epistemic state. And that is the belief that God does not exist. Not the knowledge claim, huge difference. You're taking it on the one, and you're moving into the epistemology rather than from ontology. I'm gonna do the T-Jump thing. You're conflating ontology with epistemology. In this case, it happens to be the case. Or they do not believe in God. Okay. I don't believe in God. So what? That's not a knowledge claim. You said that then agnosticism is atheism. Weak atheism, which is weak theism. Atheism, agnosticism is no more close, agnosticism is no more closer to theism than it is atheism in the philosophical context. Now, let's do this for clarification. Do you agree, and even if this is argumento, do you agree that when you read these things, these texts, and you read the Stanford, you read the papers, that the way they're using it, these words, are how I generally use them. Would you agree that that's the least the case, or do you want to disagree with that? Some of them. Okay, like what? Like some of the paper, do you want me to list them off? Well, I mean, like bird guess Jackson. I mean, he wrote, was it, he wrote about Anthony Flew. You know what, let me just pull it up real quick. And he actually put out the same logic I put out. Now he used a different predicate, or obviously a different proposition, value, variable, but the principle holds. Well, let me see if I can find Bergus Jackson's paper. I usually have it handy here. So let me throw this over here. It's got to be thinking of the proposition of presumption of atheism. And by the way, the presumption of atheism is really bad, and Flew, he actually didn't even believe it later on in life. He became a deist. So this is from, I believe this was 2017, from Dr. Keith Bergus Jackson. And if you go down here, and by the way, yes, I have read these papers. This is why I know about them. He makes it very clear right here, and I can probably make this larger if I need to, if you guys can't see it, my apologies, but if we let G be the proposition that God exists, we get three jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories. This is what we'd be dichotomous, right? I mean, if you have, well, a dichotomy is too mutually exclusive, right? Here we have three mutually exclusive, meaning any element of one cannot be in the others. Atheism, believe that God exists, BSG, which means subject here, by the way. Some people you might see it as A, agent, but BSG means believes, subject believes G, but G is the proposition. Why he used G here, I don't remember, but because above he uses P, and that's probably a reason for it, but I don't remember why. But atheism, believe that God does not exist, BS, not G. You'll see me writing like this all the time. Agnosticism, the conjunction, which is and, of non-belief that God exists, or not BSG and not BS, not G. And you'll see me write it the same way, not BP and not B, not P. You'll see me write it all the time like that on Twitter. And by the way, I've been doing that long before I read this paper, this came out in 2017. Is Dr. Jackson wrong for using lies in this way, or do you at least accept that in papers, this is generally how it's normatively used? I accept the label for P is for not P. Can you repeat that? I'm sorry. I accept that you can have the label atheism for not P, which is God does not exist. That's fine. Yeah, that's weak atheism. But you also accept that again, when you're reading these papers, if you wanna go learn the topic and learn a little about epistemology, if you go read these papers and you read, then the usage is you have like for atheism and agnosticism, these papers are not gonna make any sense to you because they're not utilizing it the way that you are using it or the way that the ACA uses it or that American atheists use it. I mean, it just wouldn't make much sense when you read agnostic, right? Sure it does. If agnostic means, wait, how is that possible? If agnostic is understood as the position, you don't have a position either way on the proposition and you're looking at agnostic and saying it means with knowledge or something like that, you're not reading what the context of the writer. It means basically the same thing. It's just that the term atheism is a more broad usage. So agnosticism would be the same thing with my interpretation of it. We have no disagreement there. The only disagreement is that basically I'm just using atheism as non-theism. Yeah, I recognize that. If you read my blog, I make that very point. And you brought it up. This was point, my notes are not too methodical, but decent enough. You made the point of asking about dog, I believe it, right? Dog, theist or dog, right? Right? That's called a disjunction. If you only provided two categories, right? Theist or dog, not theist, therefore dog. That's a disjunctive syllogism. You're eliminating one of the conjuncts, right? The disjuncts, I'm sorry. You're eliminating one of the disjuncts, right? If I only allow you to, and this is what I would call a conceptual dichotomy, right? I have never seen anybody be able to make a logical dichotomy of theist and atheism from first principles. I can from theist to not theist, right? Because you just take the law of non-contradiction, right? So you have not parentheses P or not P. You can then say P or not P, which is true, which is a negation rule. And then you just say instantiate with theist or not theist. So from first principles, I can get you to theist to not and not theist. You're not a theist. You know, if theist or not theist, not not theist, therefore theist, right? But you can change the word, not theist, anything you want. And it's just a semantic argument at that point. You can say, well, I'm gonna make it atheist. Theist or atheist, not theist, therefore atheist. This is where Matt Dillon, he comes in and says, you must be one or the other. But I have a whole blog on that being not a metaphysical necessity, because it's not from first principles. In the atheist community of Austin, how he uses those words, he's limiting your choices by one or the other. And that is a dichotomy. Fine, go good, whatever. But I can do the same thing and say, theist or dog? Not theist, therefore dog. It is semantic, because you're just taking that word, that signifier of dog, and you're changing it instead of having not theist. Because the theist and not theist is the actual set, right? You have theist and they have the complimentary set. Anything not a theist is in the non-theist set. That is a semantic problem, right? Does that make sense? Well, it's not a problem if you use non-theist instead of dog, because that's actually- I'm a non-theist, you're a non-theist. We're both non-theist. But that doesn't make me atheist. It doesn't entail you must be atheist, right? All atheists are non-theist, but not all non-theist are atheists. Would you agree with that? Sure, but it depends on what usage you're using. I agree up there. Hey, debate over, we agree. There we go. That's all I've been saying for three years, man. That's all I've been saying. That there are usages out there. There's the usages that these atheist groups use, some of them. The ones that the more academics use. I choose to use the academic ones because they do make more sense to me because they lead to less problems, like category errors and special pleading, like I've told you. And I've ever asked people to understand that because they've atheists have been told for years there's only one correct usage. Aran Mara says there's only one correct usage, right? And that is merely a lack of belief. But as you pointed out, and I applaud you for it, that it depends on if you use their usages, which I deny, I'm not a member of the ACA, or if you use academic standards. I use the academic ones, which is more normative. Doesn't mean the other one doesn't exist. It just means it's far less used. And- They both exist in academics. I'm not claiming otherwise. What I'm saying is what's more normative, meaning what's used more often and what you ought to use if you wanna understand these things, right? Because I've never read a paper that uses it in the weak case. I don't recall one. If they exist, send me one. I'm not saying that they don't. But I read a lot of stuff and I've never found one. Even Anthony Flew, paper, he specifically says it is the case that atheism is held to be the position that God does not exist, but I wanna change that, is paraphrase. But that's what he says. Atheism is the belief that God does not exist. He wants to change it to negative atheism. That was his argument, and he had the presumption of atheism. Anyways, James looks like he wants to... Can I just hear it? Sorry. Are you just eating your mic or you wanna say something? I was thinking about saying, we just to hear if there's anything I appreciate that you've had coffee. And so, if there's anything Snake has- I'm walking fast for the reason. We only got another half, 20 minutes or something, whatever. We can hear that. And then, when you guys are ready, you can go into Q and A. We do have some questions. And so, that's something that's up to you guys. I haven't got any questions. I'm just focusing right now on you two and my notes. I'm not even bothering with the Q and A. No offense, Elijah. I wanna focus on you guys here. Anything else on here? I like it. I took a lot of notes, but anything... Now, I think we got over most things. I think that he kind of maybe agrees with me now. I don't see what the argument is. I don't see what the debate is. I still, by the way, I still don't know what I got wrong on the debate with the Duke. You haven't pointed out anything I've gotten wrong. Can you do that for one minute? Then we can go to Q and A? The best question was, what I got wrong with the debate with the Duke. I don't even remember what I was saying in that. But yeah, I didn't know what your grievances was before the debate. Fair enough. Because I didn't wanna start it up on Twitter or anything before. Yeah, that's fair enough. Like I said, you might wanna go read my blogs on this because I've had these things for years and I misrepresent it all the time. I've read it. Okay, good. Do you find any logical... Just out of hand, do you find any logical errors because I had the gumballs in God? One that's in the video description for this video. I'm trying to explain that a little bit better, I think, because a lot of people use that argument, the gumball analogy, and I really want people to look at the gumball analogy and really understand what's being said by it. And I thought I did a pretty decent job. So far, I've always found a problem with it. Did you find a problem with the logic or anything? Is that the argument that there's either an odd or an even number of gumballs? Yes. I mean, I have a problem with it as an analogy to atheism versus agnosticism. Because the analogy I would use is there's a box that you can't see in and the question is, is there a gumball in it or not? That would be... You don't like Matt Dillon has a gumball thing, then. Because, I mean, this gumball analogy gives you a middle ground. That's the whole point. People say there's no middle ground where there is a middle ground. You don't believe it the way. Believe it or not, you don't believe it the way. That's three positions right there. And there's more. It's like, I don't care. That's apotheism. But that is the middle ground. Now, he is right. I mean, when you say the gumballs must be even or odd, right? That's an ontological state that is dichotomous. God exists or God does not exist. So either odd, there is no middle ground to be had there. You either believe it or you don't believe it. Matt Dillon has absolutely freaking right on that. But that's what my blog points out. People conflate with the no middle ground that they claim that does exist between beliefs, right? You believe P is true or you believe P is false, right? But in between those, there is a middle ground. That's where the agnostic lies. Says, look, I'm not believing either way. So as long as people understand how I'm using these words, Matt Dillon, he's a little big on that, right? He says, hey, a lot of people understand the words you're using. Great. Why don't people understand the words I'm using when I'm explaining it very well? I'm not forcing them to use my definitions. I'm not saying they're not atheists if they use lack of belief. Never have. This has been one thing that has been hugely distorted. I have never gone around saying, you're not a real atheist. That's no A to Atheist fallacy. And I think that you got caught up on that because if you go read my positions from 2018 that I wrote, it very clearly says in there that I don't hold the position that words have intrinsic meanings and that if you wanna use in the lack of belief, you're still an atheist to me. I'll call you an atheist. Yeah, right, whatever. But logically, you would probably have to recognize that you're still agnostic on that proposition, but you're not using it as a label. I get that, right? But I won't define you, don't define me because when people tell me I'm an atheist and I'm logically able to show that I'm agnostic on the proposition in an academic type sense, that is intellectual dishonesty, right? Because they're forcing, prescriptively forcing their usages onto me and then projecting onto me that I'm doing that to them when I don't do that. Anybody who follows me, anybody who's been following me for years, I've been on YouTube for eight years. Anybody who's been following me knows I don't do that. They say they do, but it's like three men in, was it, what am I gonna say, three men in a tail, I think three men in a tiger, right? You say something enough, people start believing it, but go ask them for evidence of when I've ever said, you're not a true atheist. Come on, but anyway, I'll turn it over to you. I'm sorry. How do you get to Q&A? Well, on the Gumball analogy, I like it for demonstrating that there's the I don't know category, but I think it works just as easily if you're saying, well, there either is a Gumball or there isn't a Gumball, and I think that's a better analogy because if we don't know, then there's no difference between it being not known and it being false. Like, you still don't have access to a Gumball. Well, that's, I mean, but I don't know as an systemic, ordinary doubt, right? When people say, and I began another blog that I wrote on this, what people mean by I don't know, it's just an expression of ordinary doubt. It's not an expression that they don't have knowledge per se, right? What it is more means that we understand these things in general parlance is that I don't have a position on it. If I give you, hey, multiple choice, A, B, or I don't know, means that you don't know whether to choose A or B, right? So in the case with the Gumballs, and I have no reason to choose A even or odd, right? I have no information either way, right? The smart thing to do is not take a position on it, right? Because you can't justify saying that they're even if you have literally no reasons to say that they're even. At that point, it's a guess and guesses are never justified. The agnostic says, I don't say they're even, I don't say they're odd, period, that's it. God exists and God does not exist. There you go. Now, I know people have misused that analogy, but whatever, I mean, this is why I wrote my blog on that. Any parting thoughts from Snake? Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's how most atheists are saying is like, you can't know everything. We can just say that we have no access to this knowledge and therefore it's not justified to take the proposition and therefore we're opposed to this proposition. Why do we have to have access of knowledge to have a belief? Beliefs can be true or false, it doesn't matter. Access to knowledge has no relevancy to whether we believe or not, absolutely none. Well, it's just not a justified belief. Well, no, you don't have to, but it can, no, it can be a justified belief. You don't need knowledge for justified belief. You need knowledge for justified true belief. You're misreconditioned there. Then the belief can be false. So you can have justified false beliefs, believe it or not. I can be perfectly, I can have a belief that's going to be 100% justified, right? And I mean that little hyperbolic, but I can be justified to have a belief but completely false, it can be wrong, right? That's called a justified false belief. So they do exist, but a justified true belief, then that has to be something that is true. So I don't know why you think that you require knowledge to have beliefs. I mean, again, you can go into, hey, look, I need beliefs to build beliefs upon. That's called foundationalism, right? You believe something and then you believe upon that and then you build upon that, right? If you go read Socialist Paper, The Wrath from the Pyramid, he talks about that if you inject in classical foundationalism, you have these beliefs that you have, right? Properly basic beliefs or basic beliefs. And then you start building on that with other beliefs, but these beliefs up here are inferrable from the ones below, but the bottom ones that the ones that you start out with, right? Your axiomatic, properly basic beliefs or basic beliefs, those are unjustified and unwarranted assumptions or presuppositions, right? Like reality is real is an assumption we make. We have no way to determine what that would even mean if reality isn't real or that external minds exist or that induction will work day to day. These are properly basic beliefs. Those are by which we will then be able to build a framework to have beliefs on, but that doesn't deal with knowledge though. Anyways, go ahead, James, you got questions or? Thank you. Got you, we, well, let's see. I do, just in the interest of, we've given you a good amount of time, Steve. Yeah, he was. So if you're okay with me giving the last word, I know that you'll, you've always got a round in the barrel ready to fire off, but if we can give us, Slatter me. Snake the last word and then we will go into Q and A. If you had thoughts on that last one, Snake, you don't have to if you don't want to. Yeah, well, what I'm trying to say about like the utility of the usage is that atheists are trying to kind of this epistemological honesty where they're not saying, because it's dishonest to say that you know that there are no gods like completely across the board without basically omniscience. So it's just an attempt to be more honest and basically come to the belief that theism is false because it lacks any evidence supporting it. And there's little difference between rejecting theism because it's false and rejecting it because it just simply lacks supporting evidence. And I think that that unifies agnosticism and atheism even by the strictest definitions as more closely related than he is. So I know you have the last word I want to clarify. Do you think theism is false? Well, kind of. I think that it's, I think it lacks supporting evidence. And so basically it's false by default. Okay. Or there's no reason to. That's strong atheists, by the way. But anyway, okay, Q and A, let's do it. What do we got? If you want, we can give you another last word today. I'm sorry. I had to clarify that. We're gonna be here all night. Yeah, basically I just think that it's a better usage of the word to have these qualifiers saying strong atheism, weak atheism, things like that. And using atheism in the broad sense is better than using just non-theism because one, that's lame, no one uses that word. And two, it just allows us to break down like the epistemology of it. It's like I'm not rejecting it on the basis that I think it's false necessarily. Although I would think the vast majority, if not all of us are rejecting at least one God concept but that we're just rejecting it on the basis of lack of evidence. Gotcha, thanks so much. Appreciate it gentlemen and wanna let you know folks, couple of things, one, as I mentioned, both of these gentlemen I have linked in the description so that way if you're listening and you're like, ooh, more please, you can have more. And also wanna mention, this is something that a friend of mine is in med school and she said, she'd like me to share this survey. So basically I will read this out loud. It's in the description right underneath Steve and Snake's links. In particular, this is a survey about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it's affecting you. So this is a real genuine right out of the University of Colorado research study and partnering with the University of Utah and you can help researchers understand how it's affecting you, namely the pandemic is and then all data will be anonymous and you were invited to share the survey with your own social media networks if you would like. That link is in the description. So I want to highly encourage you to consider doing that if you want to kind of give a little help to science and in everybody's small way that we do it. So thanks so much and we will jump into those super chats. So thanks so much, Mathura J. Disco who said, the only difference between Steve and Darth is, that was all they said. I'm right and Darth's not. Gotcha. Well, he'll be on tomorrow. That would be a fun one folks. Steve McCrae and his dear friend Darth, I don't know if you know this, they're brothers. They could be good ones. That's my boy. Yes. And Jesus Islard, thanks for your super chat who says congrats James on the success of the channel. Thanks so much. It is because of people like you and the debaters that make it fun here and so I just really enjoy this. So thanks so much for everybody hanging out with us and Genius Tracks, thanks for your super chat who said, weak theism is an oxymoron. Being a theist already implies a belief in the affirmative. That begs the question. Not a neutral belief. That just begs the question though. I mean, atheism is generally in the positive too. So it's the theism. If you have one in the positive, you can have the other as a positive. That is mirroring. So you're just begging the question by saying, hey, theism is the belief that God does not exist. But I'm gonna sign atheism instead of being a belief as a lack of belief, right? So that just begs the question. That's just, that's a suit. The only reason atheism is the way it is is because we frame it that way, but you can mirror it just as easy. Atheist is allowed to do that if not, that is special pleading. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Anne, appreciate it. Does Snake wanna dress that? Yeah, it's a snake if you'd like, you can. What was the question one more time? So they said weak theism is an oxymoron. Being a theist already implies a belief in the affirmative, not a neutral belief. Well, I would just say that, I'm not sure where he's going with that, but I would say that's what distinguishes weak theism from weak atheism. Gotcha. Yeah, okay. They're accepting the belief. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's, yeah, exactly. I mean, the we, the proposition that it's true, and if you don't believe that, that's the weak case. Yeah, he's right. Okay. Gotcha. Jesus is lard. Thanks for your super chat who said, if coronavirus is P, then dot, dot, dot. I think they're making fun of you, Steve. I can't tell. I don't know. Okay, well, I think- I think Corona beer is P as well. You know, there are people that won't buy Corona beer for that very reason. That's pretty sad. Not that I like Corona anyways, but whatever. That's all them in debate. It tastes like P. I'm an IPA person. Next up, Steve's old friend and arch nemesis. The Duke is the man. Thanks for your super chat who says, hey Steve is, let's see. Our claim and belief, are those words synonymous? A belief is the position where you hold that the claim or what's called the propositional content to be true. Now, I usually sort of say the beliefs are claims, but that is not technically correct. And I'm aware of that. I've always said that. Look, this is one of the times that it's called a heuristic approach to understanding. But when you say that I believe a proposition, you're saying that the propositional content is true. So that is a claim. I believe God exists is a claim because you're supporting the propositional content to be true that it is the case that God exists. So theists are making a claim when they say that God exists or it is true that God exists or that they believe God exists. Because remember, in deflationary theory of truth, it is true that God exists and God exists mean the exact same thing. There's no distinction and difference between them. Saying God exists is a truth claim in deflationary theory that saying it is true that God exists adds nothing to it. So those are claims, yes. Does that make sense? Gotcha. You got it, thanks so much. And thanks for your super chat from the Chad who says, in all caps, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, can we get a team up of... One second, it's loading, that's embarrassing. A team up of... I'm not gonna make any good expectations, what? Can we get a team up of Steve and Snake versus Theus? Please, in all caps. They would like to see a tag team between you guys. If you guys are the Theus, you think I'm gonna talk to Netflix free? You gotta be out of your mind. I would rather poke my eyes out with pencils. Darth Dawkins, actually. They're both so fun. What about Darth Dawkins? Hey, no, look, hey, okay. First of all, I've known Darth for a long time. When Darth came over and he started doing presuppositionism, it was a bunch of us that got together and we've been discussing that for years now. I've had many discussions with Darth and he seems to like forget them, but he will never go on my channel. He's never been on my channel. He refused to go on any platform where it's not heavily moderated. Why would I go? I'm not gonna do anything with Darth unless he mans up for a change and goes on my channel because I've been on with him on MK's channel when he had it. I was on with him on Nadia Yvette Chambers channel and I was on with him with Antonio Fletcher's channel. He needs the man up and start going outside his little sphere of influence. I got on here, which is a very neutral platform, right? And he'll go on here, but he won't, that's it. He won't go on my channel, even though I've been on things that where he had mod control. So yeah, I have no interest in talking to Darth because Darth is a fraud. Gosh, thanks so much for your super chat from Taliesin. Mr. Naked, did you have something to add? You wanna defend Darth? You wanna defend Darth? I'll give you a whole different debate. Your old, your nemesis from, I think you were the last person that debated him. Yeah, no, I'll go for round two. I've got a couple of clarifying statements. I'll consider it. If Darth does it on this channel, and I may consider it, but that's iffy right now. But I'd love to have Darwin on my channel where I can actually talk to him like I would any other person. Why does he get any special dispensation? I have people coming to my channel and he won't, okay, whatever. Should make a deal, do an MDD debate if he'll come on your channel. He'd probably like both. Next up, thanks for your super chat. Taliesin Oberlander, who says, Steve learned logic from his pal, David Earl Worden. I don't know who this is. Is this a applause for Steve? No, it's somebody that I had on my channel a long ago that keep trying to bring up as some kind of character assassination. The Duke is the man. Thanks for your super chat. Who says, are rocks agnostics? No. Gotcha. Next up, thanks for your question from our dearest friend, kilodoggy one, who says, what is your definition of believe? I am not looking for an example, just a definition. To hold the proposition status to be true. Gotcha. And it says in records, if you hold the proposition to be true, then the proper epistemic status is belief. That's pretty much what it says. Gotcha. The Duke is the man strikes again, Steve. He's coming at ya. He says, are rocks agnostic, Steve? I just answered that. No, to be agnostic, you have to suspend judgment, right? If it says in SEP, the agnostic, it tries to evaluate God existing and then decides no either way, right? You don't believe it happens in either way. Rocks don't make a decision. Rocks don't suspend judgment. Rocks don't try to evaluate. You can't say rocks are agnostic, makes no sense. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Would you say the same for a lack of belief? I mean, you want to get spandantic, then yeah, rocks lack a belief and you want to say rocks are atheists, knock yourself out, but I think it's kind of foolish, don't you? I think either way, you have to either state that either, if you lack a belief in both, a rock can be an agnostic or you have to state that atheism would have to be able to analyze the statement. So rock. Yeah, if you can't be an agnostic unless you've had a chance to analyze. If you go read Dr. Jane Freeman from New York University, she wrote a paper called Suspending Judgment, which she makes it very clear there are different ways to approach agnosticism but the agnostic tries to evaluate it and then suspends judgment. This is what the epistemic status of suspending judgment is. Believes P, disbelieves P, suspends judgment on P. Believes P is that we believe the proposition is true. Disbelieves P means you believe the proposition is false and suspending means that you don't believe either way, right? Those are the three primary epistemic statuses. We do have, I want to mention this because I always love giving shout outs to debate challenges in the chat, in particular, T-Jump and you Steve did not get to debate in Los Angeles, which is very sad. I was all ready to go, by the way, how'd you pin that? Is that something new? Oh yeah, you just like, click on the three dots to the right of their name and you can pin stuff. New stuff. Yeah, I was actually going to go to LA before the Vosh and Destiny debate, hang out with them and I was going to guys debate or discuss with T-Jump, some of his positions because they make absolutely no sense to me. And so I was going to travel to LA, it's not that far from me, it's about two hours, but unfortunately he was sick and he canceled, by the way, which is a really good reason not to go. If you're not feeling well, so he didn't check it out or anything like that. No, he just wasn't feeling well, totally get that. Gotcha. So maybe if you guys want to open for, we might have a huge event at the end of the month. If you guys want to be the opener for it or maybe like right after it. Why read the main event, Mofo? No, I'm kidding. Well, I know- Yeah, I'll go to LA. Steve is YouTube, okay? So we, but well, I'm sorry, Steve, I know this, you may not like this. It would be online. We'll talk about it, sure. Gotcha, thank you. Next up, appreciate your super chat. The Duke is the man. He's coming after you, Steve. He's swinging. He says, do rocks hold not B, not P and not B, P? Asked and answered. I mean, look, if you want to call, you want to put a label on a rock, knock yourself out, right? Rock has not suspended judgment, right? I mean, if you want to put these epistemic dispositions with respect or proposition to a rock, have fun with it. I don't, but I don't, I can think it's silly to do that, right? Rock has never tried to evaluate anything, right? We're talking about epistemology. We're talking about beliefs positions. Rocks don't have a belief. And so just like rocks are not moral or immoral, right? They're amoral. The sign morality of a rock like T-Jump does makes no sense to me, right? So yeah, I don't know why anybody would want it. And by the way, I've had atheists argue. Rocks are atheists, right? There's a very prominent atheist YouTuber that's been around for years. Atheists, yeah, rocks and atheists and quarks are atheists and stars are atheists. I'm like, look, if you want to bloat your ontology where you make the term atheists be that watered down and meaningless, okay, I don't know. Has anybody ever read anybody that does in the academia field? I totally screwed up the Duke is the Man Super Chat. This was one before. He didn't ask our rocks atheists. I screwed that up. I had just a slip of the tongue. He asked our rocks agnostics. No. Okay, thanks for your super chat from the Duke is the man who says, Steve, ultimate challenge in all caps. Yes or no in all caps is claim, like our belief in claims synonymous only yes or no, not please or... I've already answered that. I don't know how much detail he can get. I mean, even Snake, would you believe, Snake, would you agree that a theist, when a theist says, I believe God exists, they are making a claim that is the case ontologically. There's a something they're calling a God that exists in the universe. Would you agree that's the case? They're making the claim that they believe that it's the case. We assume that they, yeah. Look, I think when somebody says they believe something, I'm going to try to comment their word, unless they clarify later, that's maybe not what they mean. We've had that happen where we probably don't believe something we say we believe. I get that. But when somebody says, look, I believe there's a God, would you not say they're making a claim that somewhere in the universe is a God that somehow in reality God exists? That's of course making a claim. That's a positive case. To me, the claim would be that would be have to be a knowledge claim. Why? Why does it have to be a knowledge? Again, I really don't, and I'm not trying to be demeaning, but I don't understand we keep bringing it back to knowledge. I don't know God exists. The thesis is not saying I know God exists, I'm due. But they don't have, I believed it's not a knowledge claim. It's a DOS-astic claim. It is a position of belief, not a position of knowledge. And you keep on switching between the two and I'm not quite sure why. Well, it's because if you're, for the gumball example, you can say, you claim that you know, I know that there are X amount of gumballs. Okay, and that's a knowledge claim. Just to be like, I think that there's probably X. Yeah, I think there's even, there's belief, right? We're not saying I know, right? But you're not claiming that it is X. You're just saying, I think that it might be, right? Yeah, no, look, if I'm telling you, I'm telling you, by the way, you can go research this. If I say I believe it's the case that God exists, that is upholding the propositional content to be true. There's a verity to be had there, a truth to be had, that that proposition is true. That is the claim that God exists. Theists are claiming God exists. I mean, how could you say that theists are not claiming that? Of course they're making that claim. That's what a weak atheist is not accepting. They're saying, hey, theists are making the claim God exists. I'm not accepting it. Now you're saying that theists are not making a claim, because that's weird to me. I think they accept the claim, but they're not making it themselves. That's a stronger case. I don't see your distinction. Say, somewhat like your wife asks you, did you do the dishes? I think so. Like you believe it, but you're not saying yes. That's an ordinary doubt thing. No, that's a different thing. Now you're talking about an ordinary doubt, right? But I think of kind of... Yeah, I think that the weak... I know it's weird that I've never heard an atheist argue that theists are not making a claim God exists. This is relative to you. I think it's kind of fuzzy because there is some doubt there. You're saying they accept it, but there is doubt. Yeah. Gotcha. Thanks so much. Appreciate your super chat from just flew in concept hut. Appreciate it. They said, a strong tomato is not a weak pineapple. Thank you. I'm watching the live chat now. That's why I saw the pin thing. Cause I was like, this is weird. I've never seen this before. It's very, it's like new tech, you know? That's what we're all about. That's the opposite. I like the thing. But we're trying. Okay, Dwayne Burke. Thanks for your super chat who said, T jump the child of Steve McCrae and Carol Baskin. Hmm. Possible. Steve is not a muse, Dwayne. Okay, thanks. Thanks for your super chat. Jesus is lard said, didn't we come from rocks? No. No. By the way, when it comes to evolution, I'm sure Snake and I probably agree whole heartedly that younger creationism is BS. Like, that's by the way, that's my claim. I don't just say I lack of belief that younger creation is a BS. I might say it, it's bunk. I know it's bunk. I can demonstrate it's bunk using evidence. It's a knowledge claim because it is true that the earth is not 6,000 years old. That is knowledge. I will defend that and I'm happy to do so. But I don't know why people are so afraid to make claims. I don't get it. Make a claim. If you think it is the case that the earth is not 6,000 years old, then stand up for it. Don't just, I don't lack, I lack of belief. No, you think, you think creationism is BS. Say so. Come on, man. You know you do. But then wouldn't that be local atheism? No, that has nothing to do with local atheism. That has to do with the proposition of the age of the earth, right? Well, but you are denying that specific God that made. Well, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Hey, look, I will go on record. I've even said this many times. If the younger creation is God is contingent, which is weird because usually a metaphysical necessity. But I mean, if you're gonna argue that that God is contingent upon the earth being 6,000 years old, that particular God does not exist. I don't merely lack a belief in that particular God. That God has been falsified, done, over, right? And I'm not afraid to say that. I'll take very hard positions, but we never get that far in those conversations. But I am very adamant that that particular God, if you were to say that that God is contingent upon the earth being young, does not exist. It's been falsified. Thanks so much. I wanted to ask this. Unless it's, are you gonna address the original question, otherwise? By the way, do you agree with me on that? Does it, Chris? I mean, Snake, do you at least, would you want to go with that? Yeah. I just wanted to ask that Jesus Lizard's question of whether we came from rocks. I think he's probably referring to the Montmorellini clay. That's Montmorellini's type of clay, but that's actually a breeding ground, right? I mean, that's where the complex carbon started to come together to form single strand RNA and stuff that has nothing to do with what we came from as far as evolution. Evolution started after there was life. Yeah. I don't actually join the nucleotides or the amino acids. It's just a holding substance, like a scaffold. I think it acts as a catalyst, right? An enzyme that made the reactions go faster if I remember correctly. Yeah. I think that Snake may have a friend who would love to debate you, Stephen. His playground buddy, Standing for Truth, might want a piece of you, Stephen. Who, me? That's right. Standing for Truth has been invited on my channel a dozen times. He always finds out something else. He's always like, I can't make it. I've invited Standing for Truth. I think he might enjoy debating you I'm not going to debate him. Steve. Not debating creationism any longer, but I find it a fascinating topic, but the reason why I don't debate creationism is because people like Standing for Truth and FM3 blow v8 ad nauseam. All right. They're not here to defend themselves. We've got to keep moving. We've lost, that's how we lost Hovind. We let somebody talk about him when he wasn't here. Hey, hey, look, I brought Hovind back in the community if you remember correctly. Okay, so I'm just kidding. I told you people, Steve is YouTube. I never had that Hovind R in debate. Even though it was great and Arvind, Arvind did it fantastic, but God, that was just... You think that Kent Hovind won that one? You're kidding, right? Gotcha. Thanks for your super chat from the Duke. The Duke is the man. He is still here. We love you, Duke. I love Duke. I honestly have a really good memory. I remember that was a time of like, I mean, the channel, it's still like, it's exciting and mystical wonder, but that was like, there's like a mystical wonder that that debate had especially a lot of. When Duke is the man and Steve went against each other, I can even remember the theme music that we played at the start. And just how I think it was. I loved it. You guys were passionate. So he says though, thank you, modern day debate. Steve couldn't say yes or no. I love it. Okay, Steve, go ahead. I mean, it's just, you have to ask the question incorrectly. You know, it makes sense in your questions. But by the way, Duke for a year has been just stewing in his juices about that debate. He can't get over how bad he got schooled. And it's pretty, and I don't, you know what? And I don't think Snake's going to do that. I don't think he's schooled me and I don't think I schooled him really. I mean, whatever. He learned, hopefully he learned some stuff in here. I don't think he at all showed I was wrong in anything, but he's not going to for a year go on. I don't think like Duke has, cause Duke has to got over that beat down. Next up, we've got to go really fast because I do have to wrap up in like one or two minutes. So we've got two more. Thanks for your support from Steven Steen, who said, I'm not convinced the God of the Bible is not real. Next up, thanks for your super chat. Jesus is lard. They said, I taught high school science and math for 15 years. Okay, all right. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. And with that, we will wrap it up folks. I'm sorry, I wish I could stay longer. This is honestly a blast, but I do have to rock and roll. And so we want to say one last reminder. I put these guys links in the description. So that way, if you're like, I would like more of that. Well, you can have more of that by clicking on their links that I put down there for you. And as mentioned, there is also that survey down there. If you would like to help further science just a bit by taking that survey on how the pandemic has affected you personally. So thanks so much for being with us though, folks. Hopefully our producer is out there. Probably after show on my channel, very coming up here by the way. You got it. I'm doing an after show. This is here. So we will link Steve's after show in the description box. If Snake has a description show, eventually we'll put that in the description box too. I mean, what I meant to say is if he has an after show, we will put it in the description as well. So thanks so much, folks. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. Take care. Stay safe.