 Hey everybody, tonight we're debating whether or not anti-theism is rational and we are starting right now with our opening statement from the anti-theist team. Rage and Amy, the floor is all yours. Thanks for being here. Thanks James and thanks for having this debate. Anti-theism is a specific thing with a specific meaning that even anti-theist will get wrong sometime. I was one of those someone who spent some time demonizing the term because I felt it somehow implied in a rational bigotry against theists. It does not. It simply means to oppose theism or to think theism is harmful and by theism I mean the religious doctrines of a god or gods and since our interlocutors this evening are the Christian faith I will be using their beliefs to explain why I am opposed to their faith in their god. Explaining to you why I am an atheist would be easy enough. The metaphysical claims made by religions are not true and derived from the infancy of mankind. Humans simply didn't know a lot of data we now take for granted. For instance, humans in our infancy had no way of knowing germ theory which would explain disease. They didn't know that the earth revolved around the sun couldn't have known that earthquakes were the result of living on the crust of a cooling planet. It is easy for me to see that in this ignorance in this absence of knowledge myth can be born or if that isn't reason enough the absolute lack of evidence that would compel me to believe in any god. No theologian has ever been able to conclusively show that a creator or an ultimate designer of the universe has ever existed. The closest they come is inference putting it into natural arrangements that we as human beings are capable of observing. But explaining my anti-theism to you well that's even easier and in relation to the theology or yeah the theology that both our interlocutors have a no-brainer. If the Christian god claimed were to be in fact true what you would have from the very first breath you would ever take in this existence would be a permanent unchangeable inescapable unchallengeable dictator that would require around the clock surveillance and supervision of every single waking and sleeping moment of your life. It requires you abolish any illusion of privacy even in your own mind and in your most private thoughts. We are talking without a doubt the most complete form of totalitarian dictatorship that could possibly be imagined. The mere notion of such a figure is indecent if one were to just stop and think about it. Every time you shower the dictator's eyes widen just in case you get a little frisky with the soap. Every single time you use the bathroom god was there in all your glory you know just to make sure you touch your junk in the right manner. Every dream you have ever had must be observed for sinful lusts or any deals with devils. Every time you scratch your I think you guys get my point and it is even worse than that in the dogmatic belief system of Abrahamics because this dictatorship will not only last your entire living life but throughout eternity as well. From what I have gathered Abrahamics offers the two possibilities in your afterlife one an eternity of praise and civility to a being that just did his job by creating you or two an eternity of the most painful torture imaginable for the crime of carrying out the design of that creator. You know we are created sinners after all. So as I said opposing such dictatorship is easy and a no-brainer and I'll just concede the rest of my time and throw it over to Amy. Well thank you so very much and welcome everyone to anti-theism on trial. Tonight my purpose is to make clear that theism is more harmful to people and society than beneficial. I say more harmful because like most subjects in life this is not black and white. However before I get ahead of myself what exactly am I opposing? Theism is the belief that a god or gods exist. Within the past thousand years or so a definition or modern usage has arose which believers call classical theism which often prescribes some sort of Abrahamic faith. A being who often wants a personal relationship with his worshipers and has qualities like being all knowing all seeing and all powerful. With these definitions on the table let's start to talk about why I believe that this belief system of theism is more harmful than good. I'm going to begin with what some believers would say are the good qualities of theism and hopefully show why even these traits have dark sides to them. The first positive that most believers and even atheists will agree on is that theism gives people a sense of community. You can see this in religious circles who refer to each other as brothers and sisters. If you're a Baptist in the United States you could pick up go almost anywhere in the country and instantly find yourself with a familiar set of family-like members. While this kind of moral support is wonderful there is a flip side of this equation. Being inside the in-group is fantastic but being on the outside of many of these faiths isn't always so pleasant. This is especially true of apostates many of whom get shunned from their community for leaving their faith or sometimes even questioning tenets of their holy texts. Worse some leavers of their faith are harassed, threatened, or even murdered in the name of leaving their religion. Even now there are 16 countries in which being an atheist is punishable by death. Though the hate isn't always aimed at the atheists with each schism of a religious organization comes with it the puritans of the old ways who despise the new. Different sects oftentimes hate each other and we could see this whether it's Protestant or Catholic or Sunni and Shia. It's true that wars would still exist even without religion. However entire genocides could have been avoided if people weren't trying to spread their version of a holy book. Hell we could have avoided an entire civil war. While many theists will point out that there were theists pushing for the abolition of slavery that didn't stop a giant portion of other theists from pushing their divine right to own other humans as property which is another one of these horrific artifacts of these faiths. Many of them developed thousands of years ago in a brutal world. It may have been common place back then but the endorsement deals that slavery gets multiple times throughout the holy text is clear. The second benefit is alleviation of the fear of death. Believers of an afterlife believe their loved ones are in heaven and that they too will go there someday. While this may seem like a good short-term benefit the long-term effects can be devastating. This is how horrible atrocities like 9-11 came about. The terrorists believed that after they died they would go to a better place. The perverse thing about religion is that these men committing these horrible crimes may have been decent people twisted from a fundamentalist ideology. However we don't need to go that drastic. If we think life has a second chance we may not do everything we want in this life. Who knows how many things we do or don't do or people we harm but didn't seek forgiveness in this life because we waited for the next one. Of course this moves us into things I think are just overall harmful. Being against the earth getting warmer that human evolves from a common ancestor or that the universe started with a big bang can sometimes come in conflict with a religious belief. Instead of resolving this issue in the side of science what religion often has people doing is starting with their answer and going on an adventure to make their beliefs fit which is why we often have cultural wars about subjects like gay marriage. A new believer who may have been a supporter of homosexuals can convert to their new faith and must now face the dilemma of adopting the old style beliefs that can fit with our modern values. The last thing I want to talk about is that religions often share their cultish roots. Joe Rogan once said that the difference between a religion and a cult is that a cult leader knows he's full of shit and in a religion that guy's dead. The notion of profits or giving power to a person who supposedly has direct command to God seems emotionally and logically wrong. Instead of these places and people absorbing so much of their followers money we would be a lot better off investing that same time and energy into helping our fellow human beings. Thank you. Thank you very much for that opening statement from our anti-theist team. I want to let you know folks if this is your first time here modern day debate is a neutral channel hosting debates on science religion and politics and we are very excited to let you know that no matter what walk of life you're from folks we really do hope you feel welcome and so thanks so much we are going to kick it over to Maddox and Sal for the defense. The floor is all yours. Hi I'm Salvatore Cardova. I have my screen share. I'm going to argue that even if we can't prove God is we have even if we don't have 100% proof that God exists anti-theism is still irrational. I'm going from the definition of anti-theism there it refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity and you know I respect that other people may have slightly different definitions. I'll point out one thing that came up by an atheist Randolph Richardson who debated my partner here John Maddox and at an open mic Randolph Richardson who's an atheist said this atheism does not doesn't provide answers to anything. Atheism doesn't provide answers to anything so now of course the atheist made debate whether Randolph Richardson is correct or not but that's also part of the problem. If you can't decide what's right or wrong there's a problem and what's harmful. A good example of this is Peter Bogasi and he came up with a manual for creating atheists and there's an account in the book and also in his speaking sometimes his speaking engagements where he gave an account of his mother who is a Christian presumably Catholic and she was dying she was dying and holding a crucifix in her hand he couldn't bring himself to try to dissuade her about her beliefs couldn't pull that crucifix out of his mother's hand and some even some atheists said you know that's just like good on him that he didn't do that because that's like denying a patient anesthesia when they're terminally ill so you can't you know even there's a case there with it even one of the most militant atheists that I know of couldn't bring himself to just oppose belief in something when it when push came to shove he said you know maybe I can't bring myself to try to destroy my mother's faith at the time of death and there are other examples like Jeff Henderson who comes to mind he had been a cocaine dealer went to jail for 10 years and his Christian faith helped him recover and he became a cook I actually found out of his story because he was on the food network and I said that's a beautiful story do we have the right to just say for sure that he's wrong and that is a problem with anti-theism you have to be sure first that there's no god how can you be sure that there's no god unless you're omniscient and pretty much omniscient omnipresent and omnipotent and then by definition you're god so there's a logical problem of insisting that you're right that there's no god because yeah you actually can't prove it so anti-theism in that sense is a faith statement and then there's the problem of black swans I totally get it that a lot of anti-theists haven't experienced miracles in their life and I get that I mean I've prayed and you know they're prayers that haven't been answered and I said Lord it'd be really meaningful if you work a miracle or appear I get that but we can't extrapolate our experiences to all reality we can't insist that everyone has never experienced a miracle because I've certainly met people that have incredible witnesses and I can't I can't establish for sure that they've not experienced a miracle one of them was James Ture he's a famous scientist he was instrumental in the conversion of Richard Smalley he was a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry James Ture had a had a visitation of Jesus sometime in his early life it's not my place to say whether that's a hallucination or not it's not my place to say oh well because I didn't experience it therefore that wasn't true or because we can't establish it scientifically I mean my conscience would bother me because he's become a very good citizen because of his Christian faith but beyond that because I have studied physics and now also biology there's a statement in one of my there's this F. J. Bell and Fonte who is mentioned in my statistical mechanics and thermodynamics book by Pathrie and Bill and I'm surprised because Bell and Fonte said this we thus see how quantum theory requires the existence of God of course it does not ascribe to God defined in this way any of the specific additional qualities that the various existing religious doctrines ascribe to God acceptance of such doctrines is a matter of faith and belief if the elementary systems do not possess quantitatively determinate properties apparently God determines these properties as we measure them we also observe the fact unexplainable but experimentally well established that God in his decisions about the outcomes or our experiments shows habits so regular that we can express them in the form of statistical laws of nature this apparent determinism in the macroscopic nature has hidden God and his personal influence on the universe from the eyes of many outstanding scientists now there obviously will be scientists who will disagree with Bell and Fonte but the point is we can't absolutely say that there is no God and therefore act in such a way so anti-theism is based on faith statements that can't even be justified by the assumption of atheism if we accept Randolph Richardson's claim and I'm almost done here so this is my claim anti-theism is a faith belief it cannot be justified even assuming there is no God or he's simply expressing a lack of belief so with that John thank you I'll yield the rest of my time to John I appreciate that so I think you know obviously you put forth you know structure to the concept of what is theism what is anti-theism and if for the audience is if you're paying attention to our opponents you actually notice that they weren't actually discussing anti-theism they were whining about things in relation to religions man-created religions that they didn't like and different things done by individuals under a variety of dogmas that have negative consultations negative ramifications for people but to make that claim necessitates the suspension of guilt for anyone who has not done it under a quote-unquote religious perspective done evil things under a dogmatic talking points faith statement is sourced framing it or just a creed unless you're willing to apply the same guilt factor to those people then you can't really equate anything that's ever been done in the name of religion in to the guilt of God and you know I find things such as oh we had a civil war in the united states because some people twisted different things okay fine we've also had no less than 62 million abortions in the united states in the last 30 years so we had 500 something thousand people dying the civil war but 62 million I think it was 11 million last year there's over over a billion lives have been terminated globally in the past 50 years so if we want to go and that's just from abortion that's before we even talk about the genocides that have happened around the globe are there humans who do things that are evil wrong and genocidal and ultimately criminal absolutely but you have to consider which side has the more likely expectation really in this from a rational perspective to countering those things is it the side who claims there is no ultimate accountability factors the side that claims there is no absolute truth is the side who says oh let's just do whatever is right in our own eyes because there is no accountability tomorrow well I would say that is the anti-theist position because as that was mentioned I think by Amy oh well you guys just view it from there's something going on in the next life and we have nothing but this one well there's much bigger picture if you open your if you open your mind for one second and look beyond the myopic closed-minded narrow blindfolded worldview that is the necessity to be an anti-theist and really just consider perhaps perhaps there is more to my existence than the finite here and now perhaps there is more that I can do in order to make the world around me better and perhaps instead of allowing myself to be completely overrun by a desperate attempt to avoid the obvious you can actually reach a rational conclusion and I would put forth in the course of this discussion you will for the audience for those who have open minds will be very easy to conclude that a the desperation of anti-theism is not actually the rational worldview and it's not the rational conclusion about how you should lead your life that yield very juicy so thank you very much we are going to jump into the open discussion portion so this should be a blast folks we're very excited for it and want to let you know as well on the bottom right of your screen we are pumped for this upcoming debate it will be starring dr. josh and jim majors against dr. boys and jonathan sheffield the title of it is the book of daniel prophecy or forgery you don't want to miss it folks so hit that subscribe button and that notification bell if you haven't already and that way you can see it live as well as it's going to be a good one and that's coming up next week so with that we are going to kick it over to the open dialogue as mentioned the floor is all yours gang amy if you'd like to go ahead and respond you can go first i guess no one's gonna talk so sir rage you were saying i was muted i just realized that um so sal you were saying even if we could prove god exists i would say this isn't about actually proving whether a god exists or not because um i would switch my position if a god was real but i wouldn't worship them i would become a theist but i wouldn't worship whatever the god has proven i'm actually speaking of theism as the belief system like just the overarching i believe that i i could show the theism is harmful in the here and the now i wonder if you or jon or so you're on mute you're on mute so i did the same thing i did the same thing amy um i wanted to say that uh the bad behavior of people which is really reprehensible uh doesn't you know it may reflect that their beliefs um in the practice of their theism are wrong it doesn't necessarily mean that there's no god their understanding of the practice of the beliefs so um i try to separate that and coming from it from a scientific perspective where it's really you know at this point it's hard for me to believe that life was not created by some super intelligence the more that i study this uh and and i mentioned earlier richard smally was a Nobel prize winner in chemistry he was an atheist as uh james tour talked to him and also he ross he changed his mind he said that there's a creator so even though he might be still like in the minority position um you know from a scientific perspective is it wrong for him to believe now he was dying of cancer i don't know exactly when the sequence of again if i may pick up on that i can't i can't go on amy oh no it's just um one of the points you brought up also was that should we be sitting there and telling people on their death bed there is no god i think that's a tricky business because there's a difference between the lay spear and the debate sphere i don't think atheists should be knocking on doors literally i don't think they should be going into churches and say you know how stupid your religion is or going into hospitals and doing the same thing to me it's anyone who's coming into a debate sphere or looking uh intellectually open-minded those are the people that i want to win over but i don't want to make people cry like that's not the uh the goal if that makes sense well i appreciate you clarifying that because uh there are some anti-theists i do get the feeling they have a different attitude and i mean i i heard some horror stories where um they would go in shopping centers and just scare the kids and just like what's that about so you strike me as a very nice person and i'd expect you to be respectful of people's feelings so well that may be a that may be the case of Amy perhaps um rage um i know that you've publicly endorsed um not being nice so what's your position i think that there's uh times to be nice and times not to be nice um you know i i'd like to respond to a couple things sell it said as well and reiterate um one of the things that Amy just drove home is anti-theism is is opposing theism and opposing god believe in opposing and especially with um certain gods it would be really easy for for those gods to be proven 100 true and still oppose those gods if they're anything and like their holy text especially when you're talking about the god of Abraham you know that that god could be proven completely true to me um and i would still would oppose that god if it reflects what's reflected in the bible um you know i i would respond to some of the things that you had put out during your opening but it was mainly just a bunch of gibberish whining man-made religions civil war abortions two sides rational claims you know my opera clothes might a narrow world be there's really nothing to respond there um so i i'm not really surprised at god that the theists have a misunderstanding of anti-theism so your entire opening was but you specifically stated yours was about your opposition to the abrahamic gods and i respond yes sure directly in relation to concepts that were brought up by Amy and brought up by you and your response to that is what you just stated yeah it's a bunch of gibberish wow so you it's a bunch it's a bunch of gibberish pretty much okay so um did you condemn a atheist for converting to islam the other day no you didn't on your own channel you didn't really i talked about a atheist i mean if you want to make this debate about me that's why i mean you kind of predicted you would i guess i'm a prophet right before this one can i respond did you just ask me a question well because you're being a liar right now is what's happening well i was going to actually respond you literally just did a stream to convince your followers oh i didn't mean for you to go and harass him don't go and harass him well i mean i'm not the reason he's being harassed for one um i put out a video saying this okay for atheists to question um a conversion but i've never endorsed harassment never have um this this isn't a debate about me though maddox it's a debate about anti-theism i understand you don't have many arguments so you have to try to make this personal but i'm not here for that well i mean so what is your position on the column i think it's silly i mean even if you can derive um a creator of the universe you can't derive any individual god from that argument and there's a lot of assumptions there i mean basically a column argument by a physicist and not not everyone will agree with it but that's that's the problem if if if one is an anti-theist you have to if what i'm pointing out is you're you have a faith you have a faith position you're saying that we you know it's not good to believe in something that could possibly be true because if you're gonna assert that uh this is not true you have to prove it and you've not proven that it's not true i mean no i theists have been making god claims for thousands of years and i have never proven them true i just don't believe in the claims and i have sufficient reason to because of the bible no i respect that you don't believe that there is no known cause for the earth for the planet to exist hmm is it your position that that we don't have to cause i do hate to jump in guys but just how is this related to a debate on anti-theism we're quickly moving away from the topic in terms of whether or not anti-theism is rational so you just want to bring it no actually i have a direct point about this james if we're talking about whether or not theism is rational or irrational and your position is that there is an absolutely no reason to conclude that a god exists while simultaneously suspending logical analysis of the evidence that by definition would be irrational and i would just say i think it's a pairing i think it is it's not only that we don't think that a god exists we think that the belief systems that doesn't matter if it's islam or christianity or hinduism i i don't know what do you guys think of the notion of prophets i'm starting it's becoming my pet peeve um i don't think i think they're a unhealthy toxic relationship it's one of the reasons i dislike religion and don't think that it should be around this notion there can be a guy that is the direct connection to a god so congratulations on reaffirming the point that i was making about you guys being focused on anti-religion versus whether or not anti-theism correct okay so is theism the belief in a god or gods yes or no uh yes that's okay so that's the top level right okay so is a is that have to be established first before you can uh go saying oh i just can hate i'm going to suspend i'm going to impose any concept of theism because i don't like this religion both but i'm not even going to look at whether or not there is a god and if there and prayer you've got both of y'all's admission if it was proven that there was a god you would categorically refuse no no we'd become theists you stated you would know that god exists but you said you would categorically refuse to uh satan is a theist okay satan in your guys's view believes that god is real i'd become on his team i'd become a satanist a literal one it's technically we'd be theist um and i i i quite clearly stated that i would oppose the abrahamic god if that was proven i did not say that i would oppose every god if you know if one of those gods were proven so which god if they were proven to be to exist would you comply with um there's actually a couple um but i mean that's not really the point we're here about it we're here about my opposition to to theism and and the theism that i'm surrounded by the theism that affects my life on a daily basis is christianity dude you just said that you wouldn't be opposed to there's certain gods which ones wouldn't you be opposed to if you prove to if that the existence of wonkin tonka the great spirit of the universe um was proven to me and the red road was proven to me and i would walk that red road and i would believe in that god and i would follow that god i wouldn't oppose that god sure i mean it has less to do with believing them oh what were you gonna say sound i was just gonna say i i appreciate your forthrightness about where you'd stand um uh it's actually been um maybe i've been naive but only in the last few years have i actually gotten it out of people to say okay would you follow jesus if you had all the evidence and i've actually been um surprised at at some of the statements so i wanted to you know just and i will say it just to piggyback off that i mean it totally depends on who is put just like the raging atheist was saying it totally depends on who is put before us if it turns out it really is this like all loving up guys they got that whole killing gaze they're wrong i really think you guys are awesome and like we have a good time then i then i guess we could be friends or or have a relationship of some sort but i mean it depends on the actual religion but that has nothing to do with i disagree with the overarching uh the top category top level now just one thing that um you said amy was about how they treat apostates i actually can relate to that because i was treated as an apostate for just expressing doubts or asking questions in church and um when i talked about the reprehensible behavior of people that practice religion i mean even though by and large i respect the pilgrims but i did hear that they would whip people who deny the scriptures i have a problem with that you can't you can't whip someone to believe something that's violating what they don't believe i mean that's not how you mean faith and that's how i felt i was treated in the church so i just wanted to say that but um going back to the topic about anti-theism whether it's rational i wanted to point out that i i still think that it is a faith statement it's not something that's derived from i mean i can't start from like right what randolph richardson said atheism doesn't answer have answers for anything and so that i think that has to be a faith statement than anti-theism is it does have answers for something it answers one specific question that's it and that's all what's that and what's that question what's that answer does a god exist and the answer is no and i would say it has to be that way because once you start layering once atheism starts answering questions it moves away from what it's supposed to be which was the negation of a belief um the whole point is that you could be a conservative you could be a liberal you could be a flat earth or a round earth or you know you could be whatever and you could still be an atheist um it's just a single notion morality everything else like ethical questions you then need to come through with another system it's why many people are atheists are humanists and things like this there's a there's a difference between atheism and anti-theism just because you're an atheist doesn't make you an anti-theist and just because you're a toxic a toxic atheist doesn't automatically qualify you as an anti-theist either if you actively oppose theism if you actively oppose religious dogmas then yes you are an anti-theist whether you take that label or not it's just it's it's got a very basic definition to it so rich yesterday in one of your videos you called yourself an agnostic atheist are you now an agnostic atheist anti-theist well i mean when you say agnostic atheist agnostic is about knowledge and i don't sit here and say that um you know uh something wasn't there to to create or design this universe i've always been very uh uh honest with my answer my answer has always been i wasn't there i don't know i don't pretend to you're the one that does so i grant the possibility and granting the possibility is not acknowledging the existence of it's just an honest answer a minute ago you just said that god does not exist yes i i haven't met a human um uh interpretation of god that i believe does indeed and exist i i when you speak i don't say you can't know and now you're saying that you can know because you haven't met it you know i can grant the premise that you don't know so i can also grant the premise that it was pixie's shitting the universe is out of their ass i mean it doesn't make a difference i answer the question do i believe in any gods no i do not i mean i'm sorry it's too complicated for you medics so you just contradicted yourself and you don't realize it i'm the one that's a hundred years old as well i think you had something you're gonna say sal i just had a question so do you believe antitheism proceeds from atheism or not um i think the answer is no but i wanted to hear it from you guys is antitheism a consequence i mean is it an inevitable consequence so i think theist can be anti-theist i mean when you when you look at conflicts between religions i mean christians can sometimes definitely be anti-theistic towards the theism of islam it depends on how you look at it but atheists don't have definitely don't have to be anti-theist uh we fight amongst that ourselves and i mean technically speaking i mean i guess you could be a theist saying you're against religion because i'm really against that is what i'm just saying just well well technically i am against certain deities too being a christian i mean in the early christian church uh they were fighting like the greek gods you know they were actually it's funny because the christians were called atheists well i do believe yeah uh if i'm not mistaken one of the reasons that jesus uh got murdered is because he was pissing off the old faiths so the conservative of the pagan religions were like give sacrifices to the old gods and he was like no and they're like okay we can well hang around and think about it that is basically what i uh got of that i'm not sure if you know i just wanted to throw out just a few things and i'll yield the time to the rest of you i i think one of the things that i found that um we can't be jumping to conclusions fast stuff about a biogenesis evolution in the big bang even in my school there were professors that were openly resisting the big bang in a very prestigious journal that professor put forward his name sister roi and he's questioning it so i'm just saying you know the stuff you know just the majority dogma doesn't dictate that one view is right and so the idea of being free thinking uh you know just say you know maybe i'm not going to oppose the belief until i'm much sure and and that's that's the thing that kind of surprises me about this anti-theism because uh atheists were associated with the whole notion of free thought and that just doesn't seem to be consistent with the spirit of free thought and sal can i ask though if you weren't a christian would you be a creationist i don't know i do know i mean that's a good question and i'm i'm sorry i can't give you like a straight it's an honest answer i think i would yeah i think i became i turned i nearly left the christian faith i think i've said this before publicly i just i became a creationist first coming back and then a christian and that parallels the story of richard lumson who was an atheist he became a creationist first and then some months later there have been a few people that have my story is not quite as dramatic as his i think i became a creationist first um then a restored christian i'd been a christian if people asked me was i christian all my life yes except i had a serious bout of agnosticism about 20 21 years ago and um it was the creationism that brought me back when i started to ask questions about the complexity of biology and i started to study intelligent design and um in my search to confirm this and arguing and studying both physics and biology and that's why my um i'm a molecular biophysics research assistant um i've gotten more convinced that a mind beyond anything that you know has created life and that conviction grows with each day and by the way i do hope i get to debate someone like dav farina on this topic that would be a fun debate so that's all i had to say um just interesting that i don't that actually that actually surprises me but see yeah you this is how you learn uh i would have thought it would have been christian and then creationist i would have thought that you go to the religion um and then i'd say i'd say most most creationists are that way i mean if you listen to ken ham it's like the authority of the bible and you start with that as your worldview and that wasn't because i i felt that was circular reasoning and i said well i mean that is i mean i guess i i don't know if i want to say the word wish but one of the reasons why i am an anti-theist is because i think that oftentimes religion i know you don't just think this out but religion and science seem to go head to head and the believer in that struggle will often take the religious side over the science side and to me it's where we get a lot of these cultural wars that we're still fighting i think you have a dramatic misinterpretation of what uh maybe you're using the wrong word there's academics and atheist academics who claim that uh science and uh creation have our theism have some kind of a massive conflict and the i know from sal's perspective mind many others it's and well before uh you know as the scientific method was being developed there were many um who took the exact opposite position and they publicly stated they were searching to discover the thoughts of the divine mind that created and the engineering principles that were used to create uh life and nature and all these things they just they searched for them and there's still people that do that um to this day and there's many many things in relation to cosmology as an example that people are having to come up with extraordinarily creative uh quasi unprovable uh explanations to account for things that in any other context would be inferred to be evidence for that uh creator and i mean it's it's not something i'm making up there i mean it's directly stated by many that uh that's well that's you know if we didn't have you know the many worlds interpretation then it would make sense that there would be a creator i mean that's that's stated um and south can expand on that even more than i can but that that's continuing to be an expanded position that people are being forced to take the more and more that we discover about uh nature in of itself and the in many of my interactions anyway folks at least you're online uh there's a lot of people who either claim ignorance that claim consent quote unquote consensus uh while simultaneously refusing uh to go and do investigation for themselves into the uh the concepts uh to determine uh using their own critical thinking skills to find out if what they are being told is true necessarily is what should be accepted beyond all doubt and it supports the point that sow was making in relation to anti-theism and atheism actually being face statements rather than uh substantiated positions other than that's really awesome i mean um you know we all know that you love to twist science to fit your your your creator um um you know propaganda but uh it literally has nothing at all once again to do with the debate that we're talking about um you know anti-theism again once again is opposition to theism your your particular brand of theism represents a god and that god is represented in a holy book and that's all i need to be opposed to that god you know like what god did it to job reason enough to me you know god destroys you know you're so worried about abortions it was in your opening statement god destroys the fetuses of those that do not worship i mean literally orders the israelis to rip open pregnant women of samaria um you know like easily a god i would probably want to oppose god approves a massacre of peaceful people so one of his tribes the danites could have a place to live i mean i mean there were like a mixed race couple is murdered by a godly priest and god rewards that priest i mean surely surely there's reason enough to oppose such a god and then after he responds i just want to make a point or if you want to respond well i just wanted to say that just a little bit of pushback i actually think the more we learn about biology and the more we learn about consciousness the harder it's going to seem that a consciousness doesn't require physical medium that you need some sort of substrate for all this to be happening and i don't understand i i actually don't understand even fundamentally why why this god exists that might that's more atheism versus theism but then we take this on and then it gets to all the other beliefs if i could respond to raging atheists i didn't mean to ignore your comment there i didn't really have anything to respond to you amy but uh if we go further to uh other doctrines of christianity like hell it's like you know by comparison the the things that god commanded in the old testament are nothing to what's going to happen in the end and i have had even worse well so i'm glorified genocide of non-believers yay but i've had to come to terms i said if this is the question is if if this is real even if i don't like it the there's a saying the truth hurts and um there have been times i've wished that's not true because i will tell you i've had friends or people that i admire that were not christians and they passed away i i cried inconsolably for them and i hope that i'm wrong but i don't think so i think the christian god's real and a lot of us have to face the possibility of judgment day i'm sorry to be breaking up my camera but wouldn't you say you may not like it and i can't say that i like it either but so again like i'm sorry about my original question my original statement in my in my opening statement is you know um you know people being sent to hell and tortured for eternity and one of the most painful um forms of torture burning throughout the course of history um is is is atrocious it's it's you know i mean we are carrying out the the natures that that god created us to be which is sinners and if i could just say sal even though i don't think it's real i just want to say that i agree with you in that i share all that i want to know is the truth that's really all i'm searching for one thing i do just want to redirect us a bit just because we oftentimes go toward the topic of whether or not theism is true or christianity but one thing i mean there's a lot of really interesting stuff in terms of like the research on whether it be correlational or experimental in terms of whether or not religion or lack of religion might have some sort of influence on our morality all that question to ask what do you guys think of of the muslim terrorists because i think the worst thing because all atheists talk about that it's the talking point and here i see the sigh but my point about the terrorists is that the craziest thing is that they may not have been evil people that's the crazy thing is that they may have been twisted by they may have been feeding their uh their mom and dad and helping an old lady cross the street one day and they have now taken a literalist interpretation of their religion which has now radicalized them to the point where we get atrocities okay so i addressed this earlier in if you're going to take the position that because somebody was convinced to do something under a creed dogma or a religious concept does that justify anti-theism across the board and the because if you're going to apply the premise that because somebody did something bad therefore anything in remote category should be categorically opposed then you can apply that same logic all over the place and that is just a this is why i talk about very anti-theist wearing of blindfolds or blinders and going down these these paths it's like okay if you're going oh what do you think about a muslim guy that went nuts and went and blew somebody up or maybe they didn't think they were nuts but what they did was evil it's like nobody's questioning whether or not the it was a horrible act but there's all sorts of people that have done bad things i mean you can just take the same claim about uh all sorts of different things that have happened in history that weren't done under the auspice of a theistic model so i mean that's just i don't understand how that has any relevance to the overall piece other than should we look at what is the actual correct um concepts and how are things being manipulated to in order to justify those kinds of things and are there are there small subsets of humans that are attempting to manipulate people and i would say that has been a well-known fact in all of written history there's always been a few who have leveraged psychological tactics in order to achieve their own ends many times at the expense of human life and so i would just say i agree with you that humans do bad things and there's a multitude of reasons why people do bad things the reason why i that use that one specifically is because it comes from the alleviation of the fear of death which is something that religious practices offer and i cannot think of any other reason suggesting that no ramifications post death have not had any bearing on atheists who have gone out and done things i mean i'm suggesting that when you don't believe don't don't make this don't make the case in that frame it in that context if the reciprocal of oh there is no ramification hasn't had a uh reciprocal negative outcome in documented cases as well so my whole point is the trying to argue the uh underlying minutiae versus the macro level uh concept is this is what i see anti-theist getting tied up in all the time i hate something about i don't like something that was talked about in the old testament therefore everything about the concept of i'm talking about rage right now therefore anything to do with uh the god of the bible i'm going to reject categorically because of x versus looking at everything from a uh from a macro level i'm using as an example but the same logic can apply in a plethora of uh scenarios and then we get into this oh well let's only apply any kind of critical thinking to this little thing that i'm categorically rejecting but if islam didn't exist with 9 11 have happened okay so you're just continuing to perpetuate the point till i get my the answer i'm looking for yes because i don't feel like you're answering i feel like you're avoiding it i'm not avoiding i mean do i think that manipulation of muslims resulted in yes i do but i'm not really sure what that has to do with uh whether or not all theism is uh equivalent it's not it's not about an equivalency okay so if you had your object if you had your uh what you desire would all religions be wiped from the planet uh religion would be reduced intellectually to where flat earth is now okay and for anybody who still believes in uh god would you attempt to deride reduce them uh publicly to absurd insane people who deservedly locked in the padded zone i mean i don't do that with flat earthers so i wouldn't do that with two i think it's okay so what are the uh what are you gonna do to try and minimize people from believing it because right now right here baby right here right now the vast majority of the planet thinks that you're the outlier so what are you gonna do you're the minority if you become the majority what are you gonna do them it's it's fluctuating uh i think the atheist and secular community are putting a bow on christianity i think we have them i think islam is the up-and-coming target that we're gonna be working on next but i think it's actually trending in our direction i think that there will come in i think united states is the one of the last first world religious nations yeah that's true but your data is wrong on the from a global level so yeah well the third well so is wrong on a global country obviously number one like most people on youtube you're focused on western civilization as the only thing that exists and ignoring i covered both bases i said the first world that you don't let me use first world third world where countries where where poverty is the highest religion is doing fantastic where poverty is going down religion is superseding so sidebar and you're i think it was in your opening statement you say i think you talked about the would you say 16 countries uh don't allow atheism so that's like eight percent of the countries on the planet so if that is a extreme minority why are you even bringing that up could you imagine 16 countries in which you could be killed for being a christian uh there's countries right now where people christians are being killed at which point are they 16 are there that many but but i mean like look like it is in the law system you can't be a christian i i actually think in muslim countries i'm not trying to specifically target any which one but in that point where it tends to be majority muslim countries they actually have so the atheists and the everyone they get to be third class the uh the the the jews of the christians are a second class which which what's the largest country that is officially an atheist country the largest country there's officially an atheist country i guess is china officially they may be officially an atheist country there's 1.4 billion people so uh what is that three uh four and a half x the population of the united states uh that's uh more than two x the population of europe and the united states combined and that is uh an officially atheist country which we know beyond all doubt is currently executing christians muslims uh indus and a variety of other subset religions like this is a documented known fact the we've known that in previous atheist officially atheist countries the exact same thing has been perpetuated the you're like off topic again dude no i would just say atheism is brought up i'm addressing something that's brought up by your a debate partner range maybe you should pay attention the point i'm making then bro you clearly got baked before you came on this so you could remain calm can you hear your voice the the prophecy of weed this whole premise of uh somehow we're either religious are attempting to suppress and not be nice to atheists is i mean it's it's another straw man because you just stated that oh we've been putting the bow on the christian countries in the first world and countries are getting more money they're becoming more and more atheist so if that's the case then where is this supposed uh suppression of atheism that's being done by theists 16 muslim countries as you said okay so it's in a in a in eight percent of the world you are actually not even in the world eight percent of the countries in the world the uh there's a okay so i'm not i'm not i'm not justifying it but my point is you're acting like somehow theists are actively you know you didn't normalize atheism because theists are trying to keep you down once again where religion didn't exist where in the majority of the planet is this occurring but you'd agree if religion didn't exist they wouldn't be killing the atheists right where in the world is from majority there's always gonna be out there always gonna be outliers uh they're outliers i don't think 16 countries is an outlier it's only an outlier when you're now including the entire world is it an outlier in the so eight so it's eight percent an outlier or a majority in a commonality uh it is not the majority eight percent is actually a fairly big majority that would overweigh all the the jews and the united states but i feel like you just tried to minimize it's like it's only it's only 16 countries that kill them if you tried to make an outline this is the the majority that's having on a global level which is obviously not the case when 1.4 billion people live in a country that is officially atheist we have to your per your own admission we have growth in europe we have growth in the united states of the uh acceptance the normalization uh etc etc of atheism so but then you're going to try and bring up oh there's you know we're totally winning which is eight percent um that are not being nice therefore not being nice is justified because there's some outliers that are being mean and that's like saying that if uh the chinese government is is executing religious people that's not a greater percentage in terms on a global level than the combination of the 16 countries you're referring to because i would wager that just china is greater than all 16 countries that you're referring to put together and so we should just ignore the fact that 16 countries execute people for their belief system and it has no connection at all to do with theism or religion it's just this one or two outlier countries 16 okay so you're so are you just trying to dodge the point that's being made or are you not comprehending the point that's being made your point is there an outlier which i i don't agree 16 countries what is the point of this of tonight's conversations it's supposed to be about whether anti-theism is harmful and i'm trying to show you the harm and you're like yeah they died but who's no i'm not i'm not justifying the killing i'm saying in the context from macro view of your objective which is to be a staunch anti-theist and to ultimately reduce theists to the equivalent of flat earthers and be extreme outliers basically viewed as nuts on a global level because i know south smart and i'm not going to sit here and be like oh we're talking about your macro objective and the and the supposed evidence that you're bringing forth to defend your position the point i'm making is that you're using an outlier that does not even remotely actually exist in the majority in fact the opposite exists in the majority of the world so you're saying justification for anti-theism is not rational because you're relying on an outlier the polar opposite of which is the actual is becoming actualized in the majority of the world so how are you now saying that theism is somehow a threat to you personally i didn't say that it was a threat to me personally especially the muslim i don't have sure the war is not coming here well because it's one of the most terrific acts and it was committed in the name of religion it only would have happened for religion if you had removed religion 9 11 would have never happened that's like saying atheist uh in new zealand who went and shot up a mosque who was an atheist um let's like saying that if he hadn't been an atheist he wouldn't have done it no because he could have been a question he could have been something else so you can't make that thank you for making my point he could have been an atheist he could have been a muslim he was an extremist who had been manipulated in order to go and do something that was uh evil we agree that it's evil uh killing people is evil and you could be an atheist and go around killing people my point is that good people did bad these these 9 11 hijackers i do not think we're insane i do not think they were crazy therefore all other people who believe in god should be actively attempted to be uh their minds need to be changed on a global level religion can make good people do absolutely terrible things therefore we should oppose it because it does more harm than it does good more harm you say that more harm please please justify that justify that how does it do more harm okay how do you feel about the homosexual community uh i don't think we should be going around hurting them what's your point well because it tends to be that those beliefs and being against them are really tied to many of these apro hammock monotheistic religions okay i'm really i'm still you said more harm than good so let's get more harm let's go back to more harm now again you're going for a outlier position of an extreme subset so you for again more versus let's go for more versus are you for gay marriage we're not going we're not going on this rabble i'm asking or i literally just stated i don't have a problem if you want to do their thing that's fine i'm asking me in the context of what we're discussing right now you just stated that religions do do do more harm than good justify your position not with an outlier with a common premise that says religions are hurting more people than helping the inquisition 9 11 trying to get creationism in public schools all these things that are harm than good again you're using mine minute subsets of very of microcosms i find remotely remotely relevant on a macro level even the good stuff almost all has dark sides even the community has dark sides to it and even the uh the believing in heaven and all this stuff once again that i believe has links if you believe you're going to heaven it doesn't matter if you die it doesn't matter how many people do you think died under the spanish inquisition i don't know how many uh 32 000 uh how many people did we talk about last year were aborted in the united states it's i'm glad you brought up abortion i'm a middle ground on abortion and so i actually just on the topic of abortion why do you think how should i wear this does god have the right to take us out like kill us does god have right yeah yes why does he have that right um well if you are the creator of the whole show then ultimately you have the power to do whatever the heck you want right so following that answer the question do you have the power do you continue do you have the power to do whatever you want yes or no for this argument i'm gonna say yes okay so then if you can i ask the follow-up hang on i'm okay i'm countering now if you have a moral objection to something and you have given opportunity to stop that uh you've given something the individual in question the opportunity to stop their action and they categorically refuse not only do they refuse they defy they state publicly very similar to what you and rage have been doing tonight about how even if you knew that god exists you would categorically right like the first then you're gonna whine complain and be like oh i might be punished at some point though i know but there's a point we're going back to rationality of anti-theism i know he had a question as well but but john so when the first born egyptian sons died did god have a right to do that that is really my thing because they didn't do anything wrong so did he have a right to do that yes had god given yes had the egyptians been uh told to let the people of israel go many many times he did in fact the pharaoh was about to let them go and then he hardened his heart from the and from the plagues that had preceded this had there been many many warnings of let the israelites go or there will be even worse ramifications and he let them go the god hardened his heart whoa when did he let him go uh midway through the story but then god hardened his heart what what what had occurred before he let him go a few of the plagues like three or four all the way up to which one um it was passed i think locus they were he was getting he was directly in relation to the one that you're referring to right now no no no that's not what did it that's uh that they they uh he was having he was getting his megyptians uh he was getting his magicians at first they're like well god can do magic tricks will do magic tricks god can make locus will make locus but then it kept on getting worse and and eventually um pharaoh was going to let him go and god said i cannot let him go because i have not been glorified he had he wanted to be glorified and so he hardened his heart actually counted five times in the Passover story that's either neither here nor there i just want to know it's a very simple question does god i have to say oh sure and and i'll let you guys finish i have plenty as well because i just need the yes or the no so i can answer up the actual follow-up i just want the yes or the no does god i answer this question or okay i'll take it yes i'll take it yes okay taking that god is the creator and thus he can remove his creation what do you have wrong with abortion well i mean i don't want to go i don't know why wow are you actually asking that question in the same context are you god uh i'm not not okay then why did you ask a dumb question like that uh i don't think it's a dumb question okay so in the in the context of what we were just talking about was there preceding reasons that led up to this action that you're referring to yes god was a dick there was no reason okay that's from your perspective okay were there preceding actions prior to this occurring yes or no were there preceding actions yes okay so in the context of i know you don't have any kids but let's say you did um and they are categorically refusing over and over and over again to do something or eventually are you going to punish them yes or no and myself mute um yes you're eventually going to try and teach them okay now if there is somebody who is threatening your kid or do you have a brother or sisters i have a brother sister and niece and nephew okay so we're gonna have to kick it over to sal and uh rage thank you um i wanted to throw out some data points about why i think antitheism is irrational there is a book by peter hitchens who's the younger christian brother christopher hitchens and christopher hitchens is known in the united states peter both of them are actually rather well known in the united kingdom peter hitchens wrote the book the rage against god how atheism led me to faith and one thing that he pointed out is that um it's easy to scapegoat religions and say okay if we eliminate this we're going to improve the rationality and the opposites happened at least observationally especially when he started being a reporter in the soviet union and then these other countries like say north korea he realized oh my goodness you know when humans are the final arbiter of what is right and wrong the people are in power will decide what's right and wrong they'll just say well it's the state and usually it's just for the people in power and the point that he began to realize it's like oh um maybe maybe belief in a higher morality that is handed down from above was probably a good thing because when humans can be the final arbiter of what's right and wrong it doesn't end well we don't have a lot of good evidence that people will suddenly start adopting being nice as a policy and that's what we're seeing now so you can take christian north you can take christian south korea and compare it to like non christian north korea and we have so many comparisons of this that had influence on peter hitchens um who was once an atheist becoming a christian because uh so the so the idea of immutable morals even if you may not like a moral code that is handed down by the creator it has an influence i mean it's a separate question whether there is a god or not but just the idea that it's like okay let's just get rid of religion and we're going to suddenly start acting rationally no that doesn't work that way and what what i wanted to if i had time i'd go into this whole thing about malsey tong and he was giving mangos to people they ended up having this very this whole thing about oh they're you know the propaganda against the mangos and one chinese dentist said it's just a mango they shot him in the head so does it mean that oh once we eliminate the idea in a higher of a higher power in a moral code that comes from it that things are going to get better more people died under these communist regimes and horribly and they exterminate probably a lot of atheists in the process and it can be tied strongly in peter hitchens opinion and i think it's a good historical question to answer how many people died because people lost their sense of their moral compass and that's one reason i think anti-theism is irrational you don't think it's i get this impression that you think there's going to be a utopia once if people start believing stop believing in some higher power i don't see it all right well i mean and that's the claim again like a rational um and that's kind of like what i'm trying to find against here um i think amy did about as good of a job as you could do when you have a maddox taking us all over the place and taking us so far away from what this debate is actually about i mean and still we're kind of caught up in communist china and and this conversation and totally ignoring state atheism replacing a god figure forcing the replacement of a god figure with the state itself um none of that's being taken into equation because it's not designed to and this is not a debate about really any of that it's a debate about anti-theism and why you should oppose anti-theism and we almost got there for a moment because you know we we we got there i mean maddox was trying to pretend like he doesn't understand that christianity has a direct influence especially here in the united states on people's lives directly when it does because you know christians have made it a political thing and they vote according to their religion um i clearly asked when did i say when did i say i tried to ask you if you were for gay marriage when you made the statement um we've been all over the place you finally got to abortion and i have to say like again um you know hosea 13 for you shall acknowledge no god but me you are destroyed israel the people of samaria must bear their guilt they will fall fall by the sword their little ones will be dashed to the ground their pregnant women ripped open i mean god clearly has no issue with it um he's monstrous um and yet you still follow this god and there's so many other different you know just reflections of the god himself that you could you know rely upon to make a decision on whether you should follow or oppose and i think the more rational decision would be to oppose such a being and i don't think that i think this god that uh is a god to be feared and one thing that's really unfortunate i think in kind of the american implementation of christianity is it's been like oh god has a wonderful plan for your life in the new testament it was taught that because of the terror of god we persuade men and this god that is fearful should be reverenced and bad things are happening and i think there's evidence of intelligent design and also a world that's cursed and has a lot of pain in it why should we be fearful of something that's never been proven to to exist never been proven to your satisfaction but for some of us do you have evidence i mean i'm i'm well i articulated some considerations it's not a hundred percent proof do you want to gamble that i'm right or wrong unless you i think i made that game a long time i'm trying to point out is you have a faith-based system here and you're you're you're you are opposing this and you don't have a hundred percent proof that you're right that's a gamble to take and i just want to make a 99.9 percent i just want to say i don't think that everyone will just start suddenly being rational like i don't i don't want to act like uh because it's not a delusion it is we have a we think you're wrong you think we're wrong that's that's really what it comes down to and i at the cruelest i think religion is a superstition just like knocking on wood i think it's better not to have them but that being said i think humans are generally good i think sal and john are going to live good lives being good people it's um and that leads me to i am very much against utopic thinking i'm not coming into this trying to think or even this mindset that we are going to make some utopia i think even a thousand years from now humans are going to be human in and up just like with all of our good and bad right now i just think it's one more layer of gets in the way of things like i don't i think like the raging atheist and i pushed so hard on things like the homosexuality thing because many christians don't care in fact we're getting to the point where probably the majority of christians don't care my concern is say well my concern is that a new convert who is trying to be as literalist as possible could now have their views their whole political spectrum switch because going it says it in the book it says stone gaze it says it right there it um okay so again the point that has been stated by sal and myself over and over again is you are looking at minutiae versus big picture and the as rage just i was talking about that he is 99.9 percent sure there is no evidence for god and if the it's like oh i don't like what was said in the bible but you know what i'm 99.9 percent sure that god doesn't exist so so um let's go back to uh one of the things i was asking you earlier in relation to uh cause of existence do you think that there was a cause for our planet to exist what no what cause would that be so you don't think there was a cause for a planet to exist i mean surely uh so like if you if you're referring to like you know um you know gravity bringing particles together and and plan is formulating sure gravity i guess would be a cause okay so why in your video the other day did you say that that logic does not apply to the existence of the universe huh dude in your video you did multiple videos on the column in the last two days and you literally went off on a tangent about this about how we don't know where animals all the animals came from again we're like off topic once again my video was on the was gravity cosmological argument have no bias to what we're talking about here really the cosmological no has no relevance to what we're talking about right now we're talking about anti-theism not the column right so if the okay so if the cosmological argument it let's just let's say hypothetically speaking that that's valid then does that mean that it is now a hundred percent rational to be completely against like why would i why would we assume that it's it's valid like that that it's a valid argument hypothetically if it is why would i hypothetically assume it's a valid argument your position still be rational huh like why would i assume that that you inferring that god is there at the beginning of the universe is a rational argument okay dude that's not what i just said i said let's assume that the column is correct yeah i mean the column infers that it goes there at the beginning of the universe if then statement okay i mean like can we please talk about anti-theism addicts dude we are talking about james i just say we're not you have you reject theism we are not you're an anti-theist because you think a couple days ago that's correct huh did you or did you not state that there you think it's 99% that god doesn't exist i i jokingly said 99.9% i don't believe in absolutes okay so and i did earlier admit to granting new premise of a possibility of something existing we're talking about we're talking about rational analysis and to reach a conclusion of anti-theist you are this my dude so oh really so um do you think that there was a cause for our existence yes or no for our existence yeah sure we we for for humankind i'm sure our cause from what i have been able to observe in my existence on this earth i think the cause for humankind is to screw up the world he's asking about a biogest i know i'm not i'm not going that we're we're having a debate with anti about anti-theism do you think um john we're having a debate about anti-theism john maddox we're not having a debate about how about the things i say on my youtube channel so we're we're finding out if you're rational so you're the one that's here to defend anti-theism so we have to figure out if you're taking actually taking a rash i literally i mean you're talking about videos literally predicted this would happen do you think that humans doing things up is the cause of our existence i should i should make i should go into the profit business do you think that the cause of human moderation please that's what you just said go ahead James do your thing i'm calling it i'm asking you a direct question about something you just stated all right go ahead and ask it again i stopped listening a long time ago we are going to go into q and a shortly folks want to encourage you if you haven't have a question we've got a pretty good list but we still probably have time to get more questions in so any final thoughts from sal or rage we haven't heard from you very much but also john or emi if you do as well um make sure if you're interested in my thoughts on the column cosmological argument feel free to go to my channel and check out um my recent videos on it um uh i'm going to have a more in-depth video but i mean like anti-theism i think is you know once again just the rational thing i i'll concede the rest of my time i have some i have some closing thoughts and it relates to since both john maddox and i have been uh visiting a lot of casinos we have certain views on gambling odds and i taught emi a little bit about card counting that's one of the more fun things on our show and one principle that this whole idea of risk versus reward we see it insurance actuary of science richard docan's kind of gave the same answer as raging atheists he said uh you know if you put me on the scale of one to seven we're seven is you're definitely sure there's no god and one you're a hundred percent sure there's a god docan's put himself at like six point nine and i said you know that's that's what a few percent odds that god could exist would we go out if we had loved ones and they wanted to go out in a in an ice storm and they didn't have to and you could kind of guess that there's more than a few percent chance that they're going to get an accident when you try to discourage them and that's the thing is if there's even a risk that the christian god's real that has to be a consideration and what's happened with me is just like what randolph richards and said there's no answers in atheism that tipped the balance from because i did have a religious experience as a 15 year old i had a vision and i'm like okay it's an hallucination or not so i said well you know i have that to go on and then i have like there's no answers in atheism obviously i got that from randolph richards and recently but that's kind of what i was getting from the atheist community i said you know i'll take one little scraps of evidence and faith i have and go with it because at least there's a possibility that um there's eternal life and i also was afraid there seems to be this world that looks both intelligently designed and cursed and i that's not a bit bet i would want to make when you're risking your soul that's not i wouldn't bet my soul on a one percent probability i'm wrong because that's you know that's like inviting you know going out and having a chance that there's a one in a hundred chance you're going to get uh seriously injured or killed um that's not anything and for that reason kind of on that basis i think anti-theism is is is being very presumptuous and for that reason i call it any rational bet based on expected value we are going to jump into the q and a want to say thank you very much folks our guests are linked in the description including Amy's after show so highly encourage you you can check those out we do plug after shows go ahead Amy what oh sal also yeah Amy and i agreed i'll have i'll have a separate after show for kind of the christian friendly audience and i apologize to Amy in advance i said i'd not dissing you this time just for my viewers but no but she's welcome to come welcome to meet some other time okay that sounds good you're always welcome on my channel too gotcha and thank you very much uh we are going to link that new after show in addition to Amy's in the description so very excited and that includes if you're listening to modern day debate via podcast is we're really excited folks if you haven't folks pull out your phone find your favorite podcast app and look up modern day debate so that way you can listen to modern day debate on the go and want to let you know if you're listening via podcast we also put the debaters links in the description in the podcast description box so want to let you know about that and with that we're going to jump into the q and a so thanks everybody for your questions james i think someone else's um uh after show is in the description as my oh it's not is that not your sorry about that let me i don't think so let's see well you're right whatever it is i just like plugged okay i thought answers and atheism gave me the link to your after show so i will correct that sorry love speed though giving a shout out to speed go check out speed of sounds channel answers the atheism and sebastian thanks for your first question which is which observation could falsify the hypothesis of your god and what is the formal argument constituting the inference to the existence of your god since i think that was directed the theist i'd say if someone were able to show that random processes could create something comparable to life so basically solving the a biogenesis problem got you and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from dal says my question is written in invisible ink thank you very much clever i've never seen that and i'm sorry wilson thank you for your question as well says well it was so yeah they there was nothing else written it was just a joke but i'm sorry wilson says well i don't believe in the abrahamic gods would i still be an anti theist if i could still accept a god such as as a thought is that for us i guess i would say like a rhetorical question yeah can you ask that question one more time is that for us well i don't believe in the abrahamic gods would i still be an anti theist if i could still accept a god such as well it will just say zeus that's it seems a little confused i would say that even though we talk about the abrahamic faith so much it actually it should be it should be top level it should be above that we shouldn't just be picking on the christians and the jews and muslims but um you know it depends on your version of theism if you are against the spread of religion i would say you're an anti theist god just so you just made that concession but when i made this i called you on the exact point throughout the debate you acted like that wasn't the case maybe i misunderstood what was your point that you were trying to make wow let's go to the next one man that's amazing i wait what was the point either you've had a point or you were just making trying to pull a stunt right now what was your point okay so throughout this debate multiple times to both you and rage i kept making the assertion that we need to talk about this from the top level you guys kept going back to oh well we had 9 11 we've had this we had that and i kept saying what are we talking about this from the top level theistic anti theistic perspective and then you just in response to that question you just did oh we need to make it about i think on the top level and religion in general yeah that's a bait and switch the the top level is which i literally i literally called you out on this both of you out on this multiple times throughout the debate and now in the q and a you're going to concede the point that that would have been the more rational focus versus once again just be the next one once again they did bad things because of their religion its top level religion and islam and christianity are the specific religions the 9 11 hijackers were theists it doesn't matter that they were muslim they were theists and they did it in the name of their religion it's all tied together don't know what the problem is we must go to the next one from migellan says theists cannot demonstrate any absolute morality and therefore they have no quote unquote standard to live life to any live life to any more than a non theist what do you think of them apple sal what does he mean by demonstrate mean 100 proof i had just shown that the anti theists position is faith-based as well and even in atheism there's no all morality in atheism is also faith-based but we have we have historical observations of where it ends i i would much prefer to have lived in the united states with all its problems through the last 400 years then live say in the soviet union so and that is because they accepted a transcendent moral thing even if you can't demonstrate it and either can the atheist demonstrate that they have a a moral standard both accept their moral standards based on on faith premises so the idea of even trying to demonstrate it because i think i found out we can't we can't there's no scientific answer to what's right and wrong united states is a secular nation we have a secular constitution and we're not a faith-based nation um so i mean i think that point is moot no i i disagree and it'd be a very interesting historical question we're we're just discussing the majority for your opinion the majority of the constitutions of the states are as specific in relation to being subject to god and the power is derived and therein this one comes in from flat earth guy who says when is the next flat earth debate you have so it's probably gonna be a while since we've had a lot this uh last few weeks probably in a few weeks james that three on three debate was ridiculous that turned into that was epic jonathan and want to let you know flatter day saint who is brian steven's favorite debater we're excited for that he will be back debating t jump though sometime before the end of the month so thanks very much for your question matthew steel has thrown his hat into the ring he says for everyone regardless of the truth of theism shouldn't it be a separate issue for how society is structured isn't compromise inevitable for all i'll start by saying i wanted to be secular because i want religious people to be able to be religious like the last thing i want to do is come to a gun and be like time for some time for some atheism whether you want it or not well if we're looking at the united states i mean we the government's not allowed to establish religion so i'm not really sure what the point of that question is since now we're not a theistic or a uh i mean i'm not really sure why you're asking that question in relation to where the majority of us that are having this conversation that's we're not trying to go back to them juicy and want to let you know folks because we've had it this is a regular challenge for us but it's a normal challenge that we accept because we are a debate channel so it's always going to be rocky out there want to let you know we uh we lost you no sound coming through i think you actually might have pulled cord out i think he was getting excited the hand motion let me know you're gonna okay cool so basically we uh as a debate channel we have all sorts of uh sometimes it's a rough and tumble place in the live chat so want to let you know folks that we have several rules one is we do want to ask that you would not harass the speakers we'll give you a warning if you for example make fun of you know i mean it could be a lot of things like john's haircut maybe his clothing i don't know whatever it is uh we will give you a warning at first but if you keep going then we'll kind of say like hey uh we're just going to block you know the other thing is what is hate speech yeah i uh it's like we have all these like philosophical geniuses who point out the the fact that a conceptual analysis of hate speech is challenging just like it's challenging for virtually anything so we would say that hate speech for practical terms or practical usage is the way that youtube defines it i'm going to look that up because i know that there is like a lot of gray on that i'm fixing my mic arm so two seconds there's gray on that but i'm going to look it up if somebody can find the way youtube defines it before i do feel free to share that link with me in the live chat and also for anybody who's going to complain or cry uh very sad to see grown adults cry over type things like this but anybody who's going to cry over it want to let you know obviously we're going to defer to youtube because they are our main platform and they recommend our videos to people like all the time so why would we saw off the branch that we're sitting on by being like no we're just gonna say screw youtube so that's that and thanks for your next question this one coming in from majelin says every time theist claim the negative aspects of their faith are due to a few bad actors it reeks of the no true scotsman fallacy is that true john is that no um it's a obvious common sense point and if you're going to try and argue no true scotsman fallacy of it's claiming that's the defense i mean i mean it's like saying anybody who says they're x uh but does things pull her opposite i don't even understand why people make this moronic uh attempts to uh to play games on basic common sense and and i think that ultimately and no disrespect and by the way thank you for the for the question and the super chat um and i forgot to express uh gratitude to the people that are contributing the channel um i think it's ultimately irrelevant does god exist or not that's that's the question of theism and do we believe it or not the bad behavior of some people i mean if you look at especially the whole testament a lot of the god's people behaved really badly and god wasn't happy that didn't affect his reality of him being the creator and and and i i tried to point that out we have indications in the sciences from what we're observing now in the 21st century that there's a mind that is beyond anything that um we can even comprehend that has put the chemistry together to make life and and so i don't focus on that and i've already said i've been treated badly in the church myself for asking the sort of questions that atheists ask and i didn't like their bad behavior but that's not what based that's not their behavior was not what my faith was based on god you think you and want to let you know thanks i don't know if this person is being facetious or not because we hope you've heard that we're on podcast and twitch i forgot to mention we are on twitch and so if we ever did disappear from youtube for some reason i think it's really unlikely we try to be careful to keep our presence here however if it did happen folks i am putting our twitch link in the live chat right now and that way you can easily find it there and then of course as we had mentioned you can find us on fine podcasts everywhere and so thanks so much for your let's see majelin or matthew steele says maddox and sal can you accept that the column cosmological argument requires a presupposed belief in the necessary finite cosmos for it to be applicable they're actually the column necessitates the beginning of something um and it's a rather well uh the evident and sal can expound this but the the concept of the beginning of the cosmos is a relatively well established concept in cosmology so if the column is relevant to the something that has the beginning and our universe has the beginning then obviously would have relevance in terms of the argument it's not a presupposition it's an evidence based premise well thank you for the the question first of all i don't use the column because i have the i have physicists that have given physics arguments which i think are a little bit more rigorous than the column cosmological principle i gave one example fj bell and fonti but there are others like um richard conhenry uh from my alma mater at johns hopkins university he's a professor there at their school of physics and astronomy there's also frank tipler and john barrow these are respected physicists they may be in the minority of their view but uh i haven't and ironically with barrow and tipler they actually believe that there could be many worlds but they're still a god uh the multiverses doesn't negate the ultimate need of some ultimate mind that uh collapses the wave function so we keep seeing this pop up and um that's where i was saying that some of these questions are probably outside of our ability to formally prove or disprove one way or the other and that's why i think antitheism is not rational because you can't you have to prove that there's no god to exist to prove that you're right and i have problems with that but thank you for the question inference to the best explanation based on the evidence i mean it's and let's see i'm looking for oh here it is thanks sandy pigeon for that reminder i am putting sal's after show in the description and that way you can get right to the after show that's in about a half hour and thanks for your question from carissa avalon our fellow moderator carissa we hope you're doing well thanks for all your help moderating and says sal would you consider theistic evolution i uh first off greetings carissa you moderated our my debate with t jump so hope all as well with you and yours and i have i used to be a theistic evolutionist i used to be a theistic evolutionist but i i began to study the evidence and that's what changed my mind so when i earlier said that i'd become a creationist first before my return to christianity that's a little bit of that so i have i've have considered it and i also want to go on record i think someone can be a christian believe in evolution and that was the case in my life at one point too so i have considered i don't think it's scientifically feasible gotcha two seconds this next one coming up from chris gammon good to see you chris says sal your justifications for your god belief are weak life is complex does not equal god exists being unable to prove or i'm sorry being unable to disprove god does not equal god why should i be pro theist if you can't prove your claim give your best argument i'm not here to prove to anyone everyone makes their decisions and what's true in fact i engage in these discussions to see if you can persuade me and what an atheist ironically is atheist fred well said trying to expect a tornado passing through a junkyard to make a 747 is just absurd the kind of machines that we see in life exceed all the technologies collectively on the earth we found that out really in james tour's last talk and by the way he spoke before the united states congress on graphene chemistry because he's so respected as a chemist and he he showed rather indirectly even though he didn't say it explicitly that the um the mind that put together life is far beyond all of our capabilities because we can't do synthetic chemistry like god did and if you don't accept that that's up to you but you can't persuade me that this can happen through random chance because all that we know about chemistry and physics shows that they're disorganizing principles in the molecules that make life it is unreasonable to expect that it will assemble to be something so intricate it's even worse than assuming a tornado can pass through a junkyard make 747 god you and this one coming in from majelin there are 1.5 billion chinese people 500 000 our buddhist or basically atheist and then they say 129 million japanese people are atheists and then 764 million europeans are atheists i don't know why they cited those numbers i'm trying to remember i know that we discussed whether or not atheism is increasing but i can't remember i feel like that's a half of a point like they were just about to i'm not sure but so i think they're saying there are many atheists out there that's my ballpark estimate for now maybe tisha thomas thanks for your question said for the two atheists don't you think anti belief in god is suicidal and therefore irrational suicidal i i don't know ranging atheists are i think that you have to be careful of people who are suicidal and also religious because you don't want to take a social safety net that already exists without also having another social safety net but i'm not sure where the tying to suicide i i just want to care about the truth uh from for me and everyone around me your thoughts i've been an atheist for a long time i've never considered suicide i i hope you're not stating that if for some reason you woke up tomorrow and discovered you'd lack of faith and a belief in god that you would be suicidal i would encourage you if that is the case you might want to call somebody god john thank you very much for your question this one coming in from sebastian says even if i grant you that the bible is true how can i reliably infer intentions to your god since his nature is consistent with many interpretations of the bible i won't read it again so they're saying even if i grant that the bible is true how can i reliably infer or kind of under come to understand the intentions of god since his nature within that bible you know even if we grant it is true is consistent with many different interpretations of that bible i think they're like long story short they're asking like uh how can we know the intentions of god through the bible given there are many interpretations of the bible i'll i'll take that i don't think we can reliably do that unless god helps us and um because there are a lot of passages there that are very hard to figure out and um i'll just leave it at that i think i think we really do need a lot of help to understand what the bible says we need to i would say to an extent but i think there's also the aspect that a large number of people don't actually go and read and study for themselves they are told they rely on somebody else telling them what they should think the bible says and rather than going and actually interpreting it for themselves and i find it very fascinating the the number of times i hear somebody go off on a talking point and i'm like where did you come up with insert you know x y z and then oh here and go and like open it up and i'm like it doesn't even remotely say that how did you come to that conclusion oh well that's what i've been being being taught oh okay so you didn't actually go and look for yourself and i say this in the context of people who are claimed to be religious claim to be christian claim to be whatever religion it is the vast majority of them don't actually go and do research for themselves and the same logic applies to atheists of they have all these talking points to this view but when you actually ask them to go below the surface level the vast majority of them don't have a clue about whether there's evidence for against whatever position they're taking they're relying on somebody else telling them what they should think got you have this one by the way that was a great question so thank you for it what have i done two seconds oh there it is okay thank you very much for your question this one coming in from fair and salas thanks for your super sticker appreciate the support buddy and then also jatheus jones says great show amy newmans the real mvp so you got a channel hey jay sendin hearts out and then megellan says sal i appreciate your candor however have you considered you may be punished by the real god for being so irrational in believing the christian god i think they're kind of it's almost like bringing up the many god's objection to pascal's wager no i i i appreciate that and thank you for the good question i have considered it and uh just applying gambling theory we take the probability of us being right and weigh it out and weigh it against our the rewards and we do mathematical calculation i have no evidence that would right now make me think that and that's why i assign it a lower probability work out the math the the wager on the christian god for myself in my estimate of the probability said to go with this is the bet gosh and thank you so yes short answer yes i've considered it and i am not wagering my soul on that outcome gosh and thank you very much for your question big difference between gambling on a slot machine and counting cards and blackjack table this one's from i'm sorry wilson who says i'll debate nokah if pineapple goes on pizza nokah are you there you've been standing incredibly still yeah i i i mute so people don't hear me cutting over everybody um i i i take the position that uh pineapple on pizza is unnatural and i would debate that with anybody got you on long nights youtube and says is it rational for god to kill 42 chastising kids with two bears because of bruised feelings for being called blind so if i remember right that's the prophet elisha and elisha and it was elisha was it elisha or elisha it well elisha s h thank you uh prophet elisha where basically for being bald kids were like laughing and then uh two bears came out of the woods and mauled them so that's what they're referring to in that passage and then you say theism suggests that it is rational for god to kill those 42 children using those two bears why is that well he's god and by the way that's one of my favorite passages in the bible just because it's so outrageous and sorry to say that uh because it makes you think and i've been trying to say the christian god's not that nice you ought to be kind of scared of how he does business and and that's that's an example and and the christian god his wrath is going to be way worse than being mauled by a bear in the end so how is that rational i don't think in human terms we can explain how how how the christian god could have such levels of wrath because we would never do that to children we can't judge what's right and wrong ultimately uh of what god decides based on our our wants and desires i mean i have a lot of pity for little children and i think an atheist said it really well i said why would god create a allowed child to have childhood cancer and everyone has tragedies in their in their family that's something we wrestle with so i you know but thank you for the the question i wish more people i wish actually more christians would consider that passage doctor this one coming in from azian says thank you amy for your politeness and says amy won the debate in my opinion i am still not anti theist but only atheist but nonetheless you got a fan out there amy so and faran oh let's see best in show thanks for your super chat said sal or john do you agree with deuteronomy 13 6 if your own brother son daughter wife or friend entices you to worship other gods other than god like the true god they say i e the atheist uh maybe the or they say they're saying or if a friend you could say brings you influences you toward atheism then show no mercy and kill them do you agree with that yes or no i don't agree that it's anymore it's it's in force anymore it was in force back then and that is not the christian way it's it's almost like atheist the new covenant it's exactly that's why that's nice it's like atheists in at least modern times don't comprehend the premise of multiple uh eras that are clearly delineated in uh scripture we're in the new covenant we're under the mercy and grace of god in this current time and it's like it's it's clearly stated i mean christ talks about this it's discussed all throughout the new testament the the whole perp one of the main reasons that christ came was to fulfill uh all the requirements to enable the era in which we live to uh exist and then we've got people such as amy and rage and whoever just asked that question that wants to get compartmentalized in something that's clearly stated to no longer be the uh the case and then by default we're going to reject the fact that god has given us uh opportunity um for salvation it's it's amazing how uh how blind people are in this amazing i'm sorry jthias jones says who said amazing i would never i was gonna say that's like usually that would have been me who has a surprise of what else did it i'm on mute jthias jones said so what or sal what variables factor into the tornado analogy it's it's not it is the um what goes if you're talking about how it applies to the origin of life the the things that we observe is spontaneous for like you know i have to use technical terms spontaneous isomerization creates lots of contamination and then we have other things that will contaminate and you get connections that are very um will prevent the the emergence of life and that's actually i mean this is chemically observed facts that uh if you just leave uh non-living organic chemicals out there they they become quote unquote asphalt's just useless chemical mixtures in fact there's a paper that calls that the asphalt paradox so um the variables you know we can model it but we can also see it experimentally where it goes uh if you put like say a frog in a blender it's not gonna reassemble into a frog and you can see that all the way down at the cellular level once the chemicals are just kind of splattered out there they're not gonna reassemble so there's not really a big need to be modeling the variables so you could just see okay let's just say let's just randomly scramble a cell it's not it's not gonna end well for the cell gosh yeah want to say thank you everybody our guests are linked in the description i'm so sorry i have to go but i honestly feel terribly uh ill like i'm okay but i i just i'm like oh i've i've got a go like i feel but want to say uh so we will probably not have a post post credit scene i do want to encourage you to check out the links of our guests we really do appreciate them and so we want to say a huge final thank you to maddox sal raging atheists and amy it's been a true pleasure to have you and then again folks they're linked in the description and that includes if you're listening to modern day debate via podcast we put their links in the description box there too one last question from mcella and says maddox why does guy consistently get so many things wrong that he or she needs to constantly start over try to give a straight answer and not filibuster uh i okay so if things are defined as this is going to be what happens this is the parameters this would it must be accomplished prior to next stage happening those things are fulfilled next stage is expressed how is that getting things wrong if you're literally doing what you say needs to be done if you don't comprehend that i don't know how much more simplistic it can possibly be but you can uh we can you guys might can't see it but james's eyes are looking weird we need to let it we need to let wrap this up let him uh let me go you can see something in his eyes right now uh if you don't mind i just want to say uh i'll be running an after show tonight at midnight and you could come find my channel at amy newman and sal is also going to be running an after show so go check sal's after show too so okay you got it so thanks everybody keeps everything out the reasonable from the unreasonable we'll be back monday night if not earlier so thanks everybody for hanging out with us and have a great rest of your night