 Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for another epic debate. This is going to be a great one, folks, and I want to let you know if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, I'm your host, James Coons, and we host debates on science, religion, and politics. And we are a neutral platform, so we have no positions ourselves. We leave that to the debaters to make their case, and then for you, the audience, to decide which case was most persuasive. Also, I want to let you know, no matter what walk of life you're from, but we do hope you feel welcome here and want to let you know if you're like us, if you're kind of sick in the head and you like juicy controversial debates. I want to remind you to hit that subscribe button as we have many more controversial and fun debates to come. So for example, you'll see at the bottom right of your screen, that debate will be starring Matt Dilla Huntie and Dr. Josh Bowen against Stuart and Cliff Nettle, and they'll be debating biblical slavery. So that should be an epic one this month. And also, a couple of housekeeping-type things. I want to say thank you so much, folks. We are thrilled. Thank you for all of the people who have pledged to the Kickstarter to help us kind of take these bigger leaps and bounds as we are trying to start 2021 right. And so we appreciate everybody's support and encouragement in all the different ways you give it. Thank you everybody so much for helping make this happen. And with that, I want to talk about tonight's debate. The format is basically going to be 15-minute openings followed by 10-minute rebuttals, 10-minute cross-exams, one in either, or I should say both, one in each direction, followed by five-minute closings and 30 minutes of Q&A. So if you're one of those people that pledged to ask a question, please do submit that either through the live chat right now or if you want, you can do it through the Kickstarter inbox page and we will add that to the list and read those at the end with that. We're going to introduce our speakers. We are thrilled for this and so we're going to start with Mike Jones, who will also be starting for the actual debate in terms of his opening statement. But first, just want to say welcome, Michael Jones, for being here. We're thrilled to have you and also folks, both of our guests are linked in the description. So if you'd like to learn more about our guests, learn more about their arguments or ideas, you certainly can. And Mike Jones, what can people expect to find at your link in the description? Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, I run inspiring philosophy. I do a lot of videos, animation, graphic-driven videos, defending Christianity and biblical worldview. I also do videos defending theistic evolutionists I take on the Bible. So I have a lot of various different topics around mostly those two types of things. You bet. Well, thank you very much. And first time here, I would say one of the first kind of apologetics, you could say religion, atheism types of books that I read were from Dr. Michael Shermer. And so many of you, I'm sure, have read his books and if you have not, I encourage you as a very, I love your style, Dr. Shermer, in terms of your writing and so it's been fun to read your work. And what we want to say, thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Shermer. And the floor is all yours. If you'd like to share, we'd love to hear what people can expect to find at your link. Oh, well, yeah. Thanks for having me. And my main day job is publishing this magazine, Skeptic. This is our latest issue came out this week on work quarterly publication and of the Skeptic Society, which is a 501c3 nonprofit science education organization and I direct that. So that's my main job. The books you see behind me are from the last 25 years. And so I also write books and I teach at Chapman University and main website portal is Skeptic.com. And then MichaelShermer.com is my personal website. And Amazon has not only my books, but everything else on the planet to sell. So you can find them there. Absolutely. Well, we're thrilled to have you here. And with that, we are going to jump into it. So Mike Jones, thanks so much for being here. The floor is all yours for your 15 minute opening statement. All right. Let me know if you can see the presentation I have here. Yes, we can. All right. I will start my timer here. All right. Well, hello, everyone. I cannot tell you how honored I am tonight to be having this debate. And I've been looking forward to this for over a year, actually. I've been following Dr. Shermer's work since 2005 when I first saw a debate, the infamous Ken Hoven as we all know about. And I am quite honored to be able to engage with this giant and legend of the Skeptic community. So what sort of start sparked this debate was about a year ago. Dr. Shermer tweeted this out and it really caught my attention because I was about 90% sure of the studies he was referring to. Finally, James was able to set it up and I thank him for that. He's really good about that. So if Dr. Shermer wants to bring up any of the studies behind this tweet, I'd be more than happy to go over them, but let's focus on the main topic in my opening statement. So diving right in, I want to point out the topic is not our Christians dangerous. The topic is Christianity is dangerous. Anyone can list examples of Christians doing bad things. One only has to read the Bible to know that only God is perfect. But Dr. Shermer has agreed to debate the affirmative tonight. So you would have to show that Christianity necessarily is the cause of the bad things that Christians have done. And I will argue that cannot be demonstrated to show that Christianity necessarily is the cause of bad behavior. One is to show how it logically flows from Christian doctrine. So Dr. Shermer would have to show something like Bible verse says X. Dr. Shermer interprets X to mean Y. Most Christians also interpret X to mean Y and Y produces dangerous effects. So for example, in his book The Moral Ark, Dr. Shermer reads Matthew 10 34 to mean Jesus is acting like a tribal warlord and saying he didn't, he did not come to bring peace, but a sword rather than metaphorically as an ideological war as most biblical scholars do. Dr. Shermer would have to demonstrate most Christians agree with this interpretation and that it leads to horrible consequences in society. And I will argue that this cannot be demonstrated as it cannot be with most other ways that skeptics claim that Christianity is dangerous. And also I need to point out random examples of Christians doing bad things would not be sufficient. I could find numerous examples of humanists or atheists doing bad things, but it would be absurd for me to make the leap in logic that atheism somehow caused these horrible actions. Likewise, just because an atheist can show examples of Christians doing bad things, that doesn't mean Christianity is the cause. For example, there's one study which shows an association with atheism and autism, but it would be wrong for me to suggest atheism somehow causes autism. In psychology, this is called an attribution error when you unjustifiably attribute an effect to something. And one researcher specifically called out the new atheists for committing this fallacy quite often when attacking religion. So a lot of the arguments one could make can be pointed out as nothing more than attribution errors. Now, I could argue by just listing a bunch of nice Bible verses or nice things Christians have done, but I believe Dr. Schermer and I would be talking past one another. Therefore, I propose we look at this from an area of mutual agreement, which is science, because the fact remains numerous psychologists and social scientists have looked into the subject to see if Christianity leads to negative social behaviors or lower quality of life and the overwhelming consensus in the literature is a resounding no. Now, Dr. Schermer is somewhat aware of that studies have found these results in his book, The Moral Arc. He says that the reason religion is associated with positive benefits like mental health is because religion provides a tight social network that reinforces positive behaviors and discourages negative habits and at least a greater self regulation for goal achievement and self control over negative temptations. Another form of social capital that can be constructive, whether it is religious or secular. So I could be wrong, but I take this to mean Dr. Schermer believes the reason religion is beneficial is because religious groups create social parameters and good communities that encourage positive behaviors and the implication is one can have these beneficial communities without the additional belief in spirituality. But the research would challenge this hypothesis because scientists routinely distinguish between intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity. Extrinsic religiosity is when someone is religious as a means to an end. What is religious for being a part of a community or for social reasons? The extrinsic type turns to God, but without turning away from the self. So one doesn't need to believe in Christ or be spiritual to be extrinsically religious. You are there for cultural reasons, but intrinsic religiosity is when one is religious because they want to follow the core tenets of a faith. What is religious because they want to find God or a purpose is in the sense that he lives as religion. So two important points. One, Dr. Schermer is correct that the benefits Christianity provide just come from creating social parameters and communities than extrinsic religiosity should be more associated with the benefits, not intrinsic religiosity. And second, since intrinsic religiosity has been one as religious because they want to follow the core tenets of a faith to know if Christianity is dangerous. One has to look at the effects of intrinsic religiosity because that is how the teachings of Christianity would manifest in people not through extrinsic religiosity. But when we dive into the literature, we will find that numerous studies show intrinsic religiosity is actually what is correlated with overall quality of life and has been positively associated with increased ethical behavior. It is not extrinsic religiosity. Now there will always be studies that are exceptions to the rule. Some studies do show intrinsic religiosity can correlate to negative effects. But by and large, the consensus in the peer review literature is intrinsic religiosity is not only not dangerous, but it's associated with beneficial results in multiple ways. And so I'll mainly focus on meta-analyses which take into account all the studies published on a particular topic to see what the general trend is. So here is a study which looked at 60 individual studies and found that religiosity is a moderate deterrent for crime. Another meta-analysis found religion was associated with the physicalness of cancer patients, functional well-being, and improved physical symptoms. Another paper from 1997 found intrinsic religiosity tends to correlate with desirable variables like mental health, altruism, and religious commitment. And extrinsic religiosity correlated with that which was undesirable, like being prejudiced or cheating on your spouse. Another study from 2015 found that religion had an inverse correlation with delinquency and drug use. Another meta-analysis from 2003 analyzed 34 studies found that aspects of intrinsic religiosity was associated with better mental health. Now, maybe you might think 34 studies isn't enough. Well, here's another one that looked at 850 studies and found that religious involvement is generally associated with greater well-being, less depression and anxiety, greater social support and less substance abuse. Another meta-analysis found that religious priming has robust effects across a variety of outcome measures, including pro-social effects. Now, to reiterate, these studies are meta-analyses, which again, taking into account all the studies that have different results. They collect data from numerous studies to get the overall general trend, thus making their conclusions more reliable. Now, I swear I could just spend the rest of my time going through study after study. There was a wealth of information on this topic, but by and large, the overwhelming amount of research demonstrates positive associations of intrinsic religiosity. To claim that Christianity is dangerous one would have to tear down these studies and present their own work that shows intrinsic religiosity leads to dangerous consequences. And as far as I can see from the peer review literature, that claim would be unwarranted. Now, in his book, The Moral Arc, Schumer does cite the research of Gregory Paul to argue religion can be associated with negative results. Now, Paul looked at country-wide data and claims that the most religious countries like the United States are the most dysfunctional and the more secular countries display better results. But Paul's work is very limited its conclusions. Gregory Paul isn't really a social scientist. He's a trained paleontologist and all he conducted was a simple visual analysis of country-wide data. So he compared social desirable effects to essentially one thing, the overall religiosity of a country. He didn't distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic orientation. He didn't factor out cultural differences, political differences laws on the books, birth rates, mental health measures, et cetera. Whereas the studies I cite are multivariate analyses. They factor out these things so we can get a better understanding of the effects of intrinsic religiosity. For example, in his first initial 2005 paper, Paul tries to talk about a link between suicide and religiosity of a country. However, other research has shown the link with suicide is with extrinsic religiosity. To quote, these findings support that intrinsic orientation is embodied with positive outcomes whereas extrinsic orientation is embodied with negative outcomes. So the effects of Christianity manifest again in intrinsic religiosity. And that means Christianity, let alone all religion, does not lead to suicide. Paul didn't really differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic orientation in his visual analysis. Second, it appears Paul relied on a visual inspection instead of using a mathematical calculation like Spearman's Rail or Pearson's R. And if you're going to do that, you have to pass the normal probability test, also referred to as the fat pencil test. Essentially, you should be able to lay a fat pencil across your graph and you should be able to cover all the data points to have any sort of meaningful trend. Some of the scatter plots, a fair amount, do not pass this test. Third, from scanning Paul's paper, it really kind of appears like he might, maybe might be cherry picking some statistics. For example, he's got two graphs here, gonorrhea infection and syphilis infection. Okay, but why not all STs? Why just these two specific ones? This is kind of a red flag for me. He also cites abortions in Europe as compared to the U.S. but fails to mention that most European countries have actually much stricter abortion laws than what we have in the U.S. To show how easy it is to cherry pick data from just using country-wide data, I grabbed the rape statistics from the U.S., which Paul says is one of the most religious in Sweden, which Paul says is one of the most secular. But between 2003 and 2015, the rape rate in the U.S. was on average 31.6 per 100,000. And in Sweden, it was around 50 per 100,000. Now it would be silly and erroneous for me to look at this and go, see the more a country secularizes, the more evil they become and the more likely they are to rape. I think Dr. Schermer would want a little more than just looking at some cherry-picked countries and assuming it means anything. Shouldn't we look at atheist, Christian, religious subjects directly, not country-wide data before we make this kind of assumption? Yet a lot of atheists tend to do this with Paul's limited papers. To quote Dr. Schermer, it is easy to data snoop studies to support one's conclusion or the other. Also, we should be careful with this kind of generalizing because I've seen racists do this kind of thing. They'll take data from Europe and Africa or America and then try to show the more white areas or less dysfunctional. And there is no evidence having white skin leads to more social desirable effects. I'm sure we all agree on that. When you just look at country-wide data, you can pick whatever variable you want to account for the correlations. It's not as scientific as studying subjects directly. In actuality, two things can both be true. Intrinsic religiosity can lead to social desirable variables and people in dysfunctional areas can be more religious. Why? Well, the reason probably has to do with this article that Dr. Schermer tweeted out a few months ago by Ronald Engelhardt. To quote, as unexpected as it may seem, countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than more religious ones. Needless to say, religion itself doesn't encourage corruption and crime. This phenomenon reflects the fact that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure, starvation once pervasive becomes uncommon, life expectancy increases, murder and other forms of violence diminish, and as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious. So the idea of some skeptics conclude that religion leads to a dysfunctional society is unwarranted. The correlation probably is more of a reversal link. People in dysfunctional societies tend to become more intrinsically religious as it provides more hope and comfort in difficult times. That helps to contribute to making a society better and as societies get better, people feel less of a need to be religious. Europe is prospering and people naturally move away from religion when life is easy. That's just a natural tendency. Now briefly, what about wars and religion? Dr. Schumer strongly implies religion, including Christianity, has led to all types of wars throughout history, but I'll argue there's no evidence Christianity promotes war. Vox Day went through the encyclopedia of wars and found that less than 7% of all wars were religious and factoring out as long that drops under 3.5%. William Kavanaugh also notes that wars that are categorized as religious, like the Thirty Years War, the divisions between war and factions were more frequently drawn on secular lines than religious lines. In other words, there's a lot more complexity with regards to these wars. Douglas Earl did an analysis of medieval texts and he says there's no evidence the Crusades were ever cited or no, there's no evidence that Joshua's conquest was ever cited as justification for the Crusades. Scholar Thomas Maiden says the Crusades were an every way defensive war. The cause of the Crusades was very complex and relied on multiple variables. It's not as simple as some skeptics pretend it is and it's unlikely the teachings of Jesus caused the Crusades. And more importantly, as we noted earlier, there's no evidence intrinsic religiosity leads to violence or crime. Additional studies have shown intrinsic orientation decreases aggression, violence and counterterrorism. So it is odd to suggest Christianity would lead to violence and therefore more wars. Now, there are so many other issues I could cite to briefly cover one issue. I want to draw upon this idea. Why are there fewer Christians in science? It's often argued that somehow Christians are holding back science. Well, there was recently a study done which showed that there might be some actual bias among scientists towards Christians. Christians also tend to be more attracted to helping professions according to their research. And also there has been some evidence that atheists can display prejudice and discriminatory attitudes. However, I also want to note that Elaine Howard Echolland did a really more a very extensive survey of scientists in the field, more than the sort of the informal surveys. I see a lot of skeptics site and she found that 65% of all rank and file scientists are Christians. This is a much more scientific approach than what you see with these informal kind of surveys where they just sort of ask people to email them everything. She found that actually atheists and agnostics only basically about 25, 24%. There's a lot more I could cover. But once again, if you want to claim Christianity is dangerous, there needs to be some evidence. It flows from Christian doctrine. And given the meta analytical data, I would say this is unlikely to be true. Thank you. And I'll turn it over to Dr. Shema. Can't wait to hear recess. Thank you very much, Mike Jones for that opening statement. What we're going to do is switch it back into the discussion boxes. And thank you, Dr. Schirmer for being here. The floor is all yours for your opening. Well, thanks. All right. That was very interesting, Michael. Thank you for taking the time to read my book so carefully. I always appreciate that. You make some really good points. Let me by a way of background tell your listeners who are not familiar with my work that I was in your chair at some point for seven years. I was a born again evangelical Christian. I took Bible study courses. I went to Pepperdine University, which is Church of Christ school and, you know, I did the door to door amway with Bibles, you know, witnessing for Jesus and the whole thing. And then, you know, after seven years or so, I ended up giving up my Christianity and I became something of a born again atheist and then, you know, going door to door and telling him I take it all back. And then I became what I now call militant agnostic from a bumper sticker. I saw that said, I don't know and you don't either about God's existence. And so now I am I just call myself a religious skeptic. Of course, I don't know that there's no God, but that's not what we're debating tonight. Just by way of background, I know a lot about Christianity from from having lived it and studied it. And the answer, my answer to the question, is Christian Christianity dangerous? My answer is it depends. I would say Christianity like religion is good when it does good and it's evil when it does evil. It reminds me a little bit of my libertarian friends who debate, you know, is government a force for good or evil? It depends. It can be a force for good. It can be a force for evil. And so it's the actions that I care about on on the one hand, you know, as long as religious people including Christians follow the fundamental principle of liberty, which is as I write in the moral arc, the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose. So long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. The problem that religion has is that it's it has built into it, baked into it as it were a belief in absolute morality that if others don't accept it, you know, the world will not be right until every knee is bent and submission to that one particular religion, at least historically, that's the way it's been. Obviously Christians are not nearly as as dogmatic about that as they were centuries ago, but that's the built in inherent problem in in religion. That is, it has a belief in an absolute right and wrong, a kind of tribal, you know, we're the right tribe. We have the right we're the right religion. We have the one true religion, the one truth, belief in the one true God and so forth. And the problem is that there's no method by which, say an anthropologist from Mars coming down to study earthly religions could tell which is the right one or which is the wrong one. And so this gets me to a distinction between empirical truths, things that are just true because we can test them and so on through science and mythic truths to truths that are true mythically, metaphorically, you know, something like what you you get from reading literature, fine literature, like Shakespeare, Jane Austen or whatever or the Bible, which is a great work of literature from which you can derive metaphorical truths or mythical truths and and that leads me then to distinction between personal truths and empirical truths and and that is to say and this is something similar to Michael's point about intrinsic religion versus extrinsic religion. So if somebody says to me Christianity makes me a better person. I feel better about my life. I have better goals. I'm more generous cooperative. I'm nicer. It helps me get through the night. Life is hard and my religion is works for me. That's one kind of truth to which I say good. That's great. Whatever gets you through the night. I'm in favor of that. Life is hard. But that's not what we're talking about here. I think we're talking about empirical truths. That is so I hear Michael. I think the extrinsic religion is what we're talking about not the intrinsic the claim that not that Christianity works for me. It's the claim that Christianity works for everybody or it works in general to make the world a better place. And there I think it's it's quite debatable first of all why Christianity why not Judaism Islam Buddhism Hinduism or any of the other dozens or hundreds of main large religions and thousands of of of sex within those religions you know which is the right religion and so on that that's kind of a different subject. And so to their to that extent so I'm glad you brought up Gregory Paul study and and I did make a distinction in the book you didn't cite but I'm sure you came across it that my sighting of all those correlations that is the more religious a nation is the higher they have the social ills STD rates abortion rates pregnancy rates and suicides homicides and so on. I was pretty strong in making the point in there. I'm not claiming that Christianity or religion causes those things nobody in their right mind would in social science would make such a claim. My point in that is that if you claim that religion makes not just individual people like you are like when I said I'm a Christian it makes me feel better. It works for me that's when I'm talking about that the claim that religious nations that is when most people or the vast majority of people are religious in a nation or Christian in a nation the nation will be better off. Well apparently not it's not whatever it's doing it's not doing that it's not a great prophylactic moral prophylactic against say promiscuity that leads to teen pregnancies and STD rates and things like that. It's not working for if it's supposed to you know control moral behavior and aggression and violence. Apparently it's not working but again I mean say say gun violence homicides and so forth. Now of course it isn't that people are Christian therefore they use guns the guns are the this is a different debate guns are the problem. There's other reasons for gun violence but whatever Christianity is doing it's not curtailing those particular social ills and and those correlations are super obvious. I mean you don't even need a fat pencil. You can just just list the top 20 industrialized democracies in the world and just look at you can just eyeball the rates the rates go just sky high to in the United States and we are by far the most religious of those top 20 industrialized democracies anyway but the point is that it's not working for that respect again you it may work for you personally but intrinsically but we're not talking about that we're talking about this extrinsic this you know kind of collective action to solve a problem as for individuals intrinsically you know you listed a bunch of studies I have a bunch of studies in there you know that Christians are no more likely to stay married and less likely to get divorced and non Christians or religious people versus non religious people or and so on. I think it's a debatable point though I recognize the power of meta analyses but but again even I don't think the consensus is there but let's let's go with your assumption that the consensus is that religion makes people live longer healthier they're more moral or whatever but the problem is there is the operational definition of what the causal vector actually is for me as a social science to religion is too broad a word it's too big a category to pinpoint what exactly it is that's happening to get somebody to live longer say seven and a half years or whatever it is between religious and non religious people in terms of longevity it's not a magic you know it would just be magic to say it's religion or Christianity makes them live longer that that's not a causal vector magic what exactly is it well as I talked about in the book you know having you know we know that having you know someone who loves you and that you love having a purpose in life having a meaningful life whatever it is it can be religion but it could be any number of other things you could work for charities and nonprofits you can you know help the poor you can man the soup kitchen whatever there's a thousand things you could do to bring meaning and purpose to your life that's what drives people to live healthier lives less likely to smoke and drink and if you're in a marriage you're less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior if you're have a family that loves you and that you love you're less likely to engage in unhealthy diets and so forth okay so statistically speaking what we're looking for there is the specific causal vector that is why are you engaging in less risky behavior or engaging in worse diets or or or you know the things that that cause you to live you know shorter lives versus longer lives okay so religion may be a factor but it's too big a word what exactly about and which religions you know maybe Mormons are healthier because they don't drink you know and alcohol does chip away at your longevity and health and so on so but there's nothing magical about about Mormonism that leads people to live longer lives are healthier lives you know it's specific things like that that I want to focus on now so okay you went through some of those issues historically I want to make this point let me check on my time here that you know we're talking about current religiosity or currently current Christians modern Christians versus historical and so my argument the moral arc is that not that Christians today are engaging in things like endorsing slavery and torture and and so forth but that they they and along with the rest of us have all been pulled up the moral arc by these enlightenment values of just super simple stuff like all people should be treated equally under the law no one should be enslaved no one should be tortured all people should have autonomous control over their bodies and so on and so forth and so my argument is that you can count on religion and Christianity to do the right thing eventually and so you know the slavery thing yes of course the Quakers were on the cutting edge and and William Wilber force agitating for the abolition of the slave trade yes all true they were Christians but who were their primary opponents in in the abolition of slavery it was their fellow Christians almost all Christians believe that slavery was the way God made the world it was perfectly acceptable I have a whole chapter section on this in the moral arc about you know reading from religious doctrines of the time and sermons you know that most Christians were totally okay with slavery and justified it not just biblically but they had their own arguments that derived from biblical passages and and so but eventually now of course not not a Christian on the planet who would say yeah I think slavery is okay right so and and even so even in the 20th century something someone like Martin Luther King jr hero of my book you know he was a pretty liberal Christian he wasn't a literalist his idols or his mentors in in graduate school were liberal theologians and by liberal I mean you know socially politically liberal and Gandhi with nonviolent agitation for non nonviolence for change and and then finally since just have two minutes a more current example because we live through it is gay rights same sex marriage and so forth you know it was all the polls showed for the last 25 years all the way up until 2015 that that the vast majority of Christians were absolutely against same sex marriage and gay rights along with pretty much everybody I mean both Obama and Hillary said they were against same sex marriage all the way up till 2011 or so when the the polls shifted the other way that's what politicians do but but Christians resisted it absolutely and and they had their arguments biblical arguments and then other arguments that they derive from is not natural and this is not the way things that God want to have Leviticus 1822 thou shalt not lie with mankind as abomination and so forth and yet today most Christians not all you know we're not there yet you know they're no longer talking about that they're just saying yeah of course gay should get married whatever we believe in marriage and in another five or ten years pretty much every Christian on earth will go oh yeah gay marriage totally okay with that and and that's how moral progress is made and it's not driven by Christianity or religion religions behind the wave and you know and so that then I would credit enlightenment values secular values of which of course most Christians totally embrace now today but not historically so I'll stop there and then we can move into the next phase. Thank you very much Dr. Schermer we will jump into the rebuttals indeed and so I've got the timer set for you Mike Jones ten minutes in the floor is all yours. Oh I think you're on mute still Mike you're right sorry about that I just want to share the slide on I have on an intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity again. Can you see that one there. Okay I just want to reiterate what these terms mean we're not talking about like extrinsic like out of society and intrinsic as in personal these are different types of orientations and individuals so it's someone who has extrinsic orientation is an individual but they're a Christian for cultural reasons. They're a Muslim for cultural reasons. There is intrinsic religiosity this person is religious because they want to follow the core tenets of the faith. So what will scientists will do is they'll give someone a religious orientation scale like a little questionnaire to find out what they are in the West subtle questions. So if like someone was asked they ask why do you go to church someone will say well because my family goes to church or just the way I grew up they're going to gravitate more towards the intrinsic category. If someone says I go there because I want to feel the God's purpose in my life or feel the Holy Spirit around me they're going to gravitate more towards intrinsic. There's another orientation called quest religion. You can think of them as like the people that are saying I'm spiritual just not religious. So there's actually three orientations. So I think there's some confusion here in these are not separate types like extrinsic is not like for a societal level. These are different types of individuals and the correlations tend to associate with intrinsic religiosity. It shows there's more to turn to crime associated with physical health desirable variables like mental health altruism etc. All these types of things. And so as far as I can find the researchers tends to be the consensus. For example the psychiatrist Andrew Sims the advantage is the advantageous effects of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. I really would like to see if there's some sort of data to go against this because as far as I found this tends to be the consensus of what we find in research. He talked about how there's a built-in problem with religion that you there is this idea of objective morality. I can stop sharing my screen now. So that somehow there is this objective morality and everyone must be submit to it submit to the one way. Well that's just not the case when it comes to Christianity Matthew 1514 Jesus says just let them go let them believe what they want Matthew 10 says if you have time rejects you may throw you out dust off your sandals and move on. We don't see this idea of like submission to the one thing allows people to make their choices and if they reject God let them go kind of an attitude. So I want to make sure we get that out clearly. So yeah I want to reiterate Schumer did not say in his book the moral arc which is a great book I encourage people to get it and read it a lot I agreed with in the book a lot I disagree with but he did not say that Christianity causes these bad effects he did cite the Paul study and I want to address it because it's always starting my face when I'm bringing this topic up. So he does say that a nation will be better off if it's more secular. Well once again correlation is not causation we have to look at what the actual data shows and the article you cited by Ronald Engelhard who studied and done polls in all these countries with regards to religious individuals says the correlation seems to be more reversal. Again the meta analytical data shows that intrinsic religiosity does lead to good social desirable effects and that would obviously create better people and as history would show that it seems to create better societies but as societies get better and more comfortable the next couple generations tend to leave religion that's what we should expect to see comfort. Why are you going to seek a God to get through hard and difficult times that tends to be natural tendencies for humans to do. He says Christianity cannot contain curtail the social ills well. I mean that's just sort of like saying well because doctors can't get rid of heart disease how do we know doctors are a force for good. Well they're doing a lot of really good stuff even though they can't eliminate the problem entirely religion does a lot of good and eliminating some of these social undesirable variables even though cannot fully cleanse the human spirit or the human soul however you want to refer to it that doesn't really flow from that again if we look at the actual evidence from intrinsic religiosity there's plenty of reason to think that it leads to good social desirable effects and this has been studied across multiple studies. I will say though as a caveat a lot of studies have not really studied secular or atheistic individuals extensively why will the new atheists the atheism sort of growing at a rated as is not really happened in our history up until about now so we've not had a lot of time to study to see what the effects will be let's check back in a hundred years on that so I also want to say I'm not saying the benefits of intrinsic religiosity come from magic I'm definitely not saying that we're talking about this as an entirely scientific question that is a metaphysical one so of course and I also will acknowledge of course there are multi factors that go into every individual this is why these studies are so important which try their best to factor these things out the study on religious priming is a very good one because that's where they directly study they'll take religious individuals and they'll prime them with religious sayings or sermons and then study their social desirable effects or how they plow out in certain games to see if they cheat or whatnot and those overwhelmingly show that religion tends to make people far more altruistic throughout those types of experiments so as I was saying it doesn't come from magic the argument in the studies that comes because people have an internal sense of the purpose and meaning feeling of forgiveness having hope for life after death that gives people a sense of security and hope and makes them want to do good or be better people you can't get that with extrinsic religiosity that's why we don't see a lot of the social desirable effects with extrinsic religiosity for example there was a meta analysis came out a couple years ago on racism and religiosity but what they found in the study was the correlations to racism and prejudice aligned with extrinsic religiosity and not with intrinsic religiosity or Christian orthodoxy it was more aligned with extrinsic and they also noted that was declining over the several decades possibly indicating it was more of a cultural phenomenon so moving on he talks about how historical critic Christians believed in slavery well again I would want to argue how that actually flows from the Bible just because you can find a verse to justify it that doesn't necessarily mean it flows from it for example I could look at atheists of the past like for example David Hume was a pretty racist person okay I could say the exact same thing Dr. Schumer said that you'll you can count atheists to do the right things eventually look I can go to the past and look at all sorts of horrible people that were atheists I'm not going to bring it about and say see atheism clearly causes bad behavior that would be fallacious in my reasoning you actually have to show logically how it would flow from that specific belief likewise you need to show how it flows from Christianity like I could find a verse and I could use it whatever I want to justify whatever I want but that's not the Bible causing my behavior that's me having a bad impulse and trying to find justification for it I don't need to share my screen but I will talk briefly about the Old Testament here because I'm sure anyone could go to the Old Testament and bring up verses and say look see look at all this bad verse of the Old Testament but this can easily be addressed from a Christian standpoint in four easy steps step one Matthew 5 20 Matthew 5 17 to 20 Jesus says he came to fulfill the law and it shall not pass away till it is fulfilled step two John 19 20 to 30 Jesus bowed his head and said it is finished to fulfill the scriptures step three Hebrews 8 13 says the law is passing away and is obsolete step four Jesus and Paul said what Christians are now commanded to do is to love one another John 15 12 relations 5 14 so when people say Mike do you follow any of the 10 commandments I say no because those were fulfilled in Christ and I don't there are some commandments that are stated in both covenants but I don't follow the the commands of an older read agreement and I have a newer read agreement just because some of the same stipulations can be in both that doesn't mean I have to follow the old read agreement there are some commands that are in the old are also the new but we're under the new covenant so I don't follow any of the 10 commandments I follow the Royal law the command of Christ which is to love one another so I'm not much more to say there I think I've addressed just about everything I wanted to address um well I do want to read over again I do and that did enjoy the moral arc I encourage people to read it a lot of good points in there I did agree with um so yeah I think I'll just yield the rest of my time at that point very much Mike Jones we will kick it over for a 10 minute rebuttal from Dr. Schermer thank you so much the floor is all yours oh I think you might be on mute you're muted you're muted Dr. Schermer yeah I got inspired by that from you and then I forgot to turn on like you did okay uh I will stop that and reset and try again okay uh that was very interesting um uh expanding on the extrinsic intrinsic let's think about that for a minute in terms of how we come to any of our beliefs of course most people uh the best proxy for what religion they are is what religion they were raised in uh now of course there's tons of exceptions but just as a generalization that's true so uh it's one thing to say yeah that's extrinsic but that's pretty normal you know you get it from your culture I mean if you and I were born a thousand years ago in India you know we wouldn't be Christians um and uh so what you're talking about with intrinsic maybe we can explore this a little bit more in our uh next section um but this idea that these are people that want to be Christians well okay what about people that want to be Jews there are uh you know people that convert to Judaism because they think you know it's a it's a better system than Christianity or Islam or any of the others uh okay so it would be interesting to talk about studies of those people you know how they make this transition from this kind of extrinsic the way most of us get our beliefs from our surroundings our family our peer groups our mentors our culture and the media and so on versus I sat down and I went through all the major religions and laid out the facts and I determined that that's the right one and therefore I'm going to follow those tenets or maybe they don't say the right one maybe they say I like the tenets of this particular religion they gel with the way I think the world should be structured or how we should treat other people something like that and since you emphasize that then the question would be you know would you then propose that as a say a social scientist experiment that that people say countries or nations in which more people are intrinsically Christian they're going to see a decline in crime and violence and rape and homicide suicide STDs abortions and so forth well we can't run that experiment but but the experiments have been run for us and these are called natural experiments and you can use the comparative method in in statistical analysis of comparing nation so we we know for example since the Second World War religiosity has plummeted in most of the Europe Northern European countries and yet these are some of the best places on earth to live they are amongst the safest and and they have you know extensive you know universal health care they take care of of women when they're pregnant they you know they have maternity leave they have extremely low levels of child you know infant mortality and and and on and on and on these are great places to live and and contrary to what you hear on Fox News say you know these are not socialist countries they they are capitalist countries they have mixed economies just like we do they've just adjusted the dials in a way to make them healthier better safer nicer places to live and they are not religious now again just to be clear it's not that they became more secular that was the magic it's that they did specific things you know policy wise in terms of public health and laws and and you know economic regulations and so on that makes it a better place and in a way it doesn't really matter if the people are religious or not I would even just take religiosity out of the equation doesn't matter but as a consequence and so maybe we can discuss this as well you know why have they become so much less religious and you know one argument is that they just don't need it anymore I mean religion served a role of taking care of the poor people and you know manning the soup kitchens and you know and and and kind of giving a sock to people that were suffering and giving them support but if you know all the boats are rising in the rising tide of you know of these kind of enlightenment values that make for better living you don't really need religion anymore and so as a consequence you know most of the you know the churches are lots of the big churches in Europe are closing they're just not needed anymore and so that intrinsic thing about you know living a healthier better life or whatever is kind of irrelevant in the larger scale that we want to talk about in terms of you know how healthy society should be and so you know there I would ask you to then explain I'd explain these northern European countries that are so successful living such healthy you know having helped people that are you know having such healthy long you know fulfilling deeply meaningful lives without religion you know now the your proposed experiment I think we can run this sooner than a century from now that is the rise of the nuns the people that tick the box for no religious affiliation on surveys as you know that's about 25% of all Americans now about 33% of millennials people born after 1981 now they're not atheists right I'm quick to point this out to my fellow atheists friends you know they're not they're not reading Richard Dawkins and and and and Christopher Hitchens right maybe they're becoming devotees of Deepak Chopra you know that kind of Western Buddhism or their followers of Tony Robbins you know in other words they're finding other places to get meaning and purpose and drive and all the things you talked about are absolutely important you gotta have a reason to get up in the morning get around have goals and that are beyond you just you so there again no magic as you as you acknowledge it's that what specifically is it that some religions are doing that are so inspiring to people and and really this is pretty much how the self-help movement has evolved in America over the last half century they started off kind of following the you know the kind of positive thinking principles of the prosperity gospel preachers and then you know just took the God part out of it and just it took the basic the principles the rules of what to do to live a meaningful purposeful life you know get up in the morning and start off by making your bed you know and say something nice to your spouse and and get a good workout in and have a meaningful job and career and and develop some friends and talk to your neighbors and and and make donations to the local charities and you know and and on and on there's like 20 things you could do and you know whether or not religion gets the credit for some of that you know Norman Vincent Peel and the early self-help gurus they you know they started off they were kind of religious but you know the religions kind of been taken out of that because again it's too broad a word you know we want to drill down and find exactly what I can do tomorrow to live a better life and you will say well you should become a Christian okay maybe that's one way but maybe there's other ways and so in other words it's not Christianity that's the causal vector it's something underlying Christianity and the other systems that work quite well in these say non-religious European countries apparently people can do everything you've described without Christianity without religion at all anyway so I'll I'll yield there we can move on to the next section thank you very much Dr. Shermer so we will jump into the next section indeed and that is 10 minute cross examination so we'll start with Mike asking or I should say Mike Jones asking question toward Dr. Shermer and then switch it for another 10 minutes in the opposite direction so with that floor is all yours Mike Jones to ask questions sure so I want to just get some clarification on some of the things I just heard so do you think like the religiosity level would be like the only variable I mean it I kind of I was kind of getting some mixed feelings I mean you're acknowledging like religiosity variable religiosity level is not the only variable that contribute contributes to Europe's you know growth and explosion of social desirable effects correct yeah well okay so we what we're seeing is that again just religiosity is plummeted in the last 50 years and many of these northern European countries and they have you know become healthier wealthier better places to live you know the average per capita GDP is very high in these countries pretty close to what it is in the United States and on and on now it's not I'm not claiming they gave up religion and that's how they became better societies I'm saying religions just irrelevant right so then I mean why why would we even bring that up if we're acknowledging this is merely a correlation and there's no actual causal factors there well because we're well we're debating whether Christianity is dangerous in and as I said at the start it depends it's good when it does good it's evil when it does evil or whatever here I think we're getting to the point in the history of civilization where it's just not needed anymore we're figuring out what we need to do to make the world a better place and for people to have more meaningful lives and again you if you personally Christianity does it for you okay good but it isn't a factor that we you could generalize and say you know it'd be better if you know more countries were Christian in the same way I in in the way I would argue democracy is a better form of governance than autocracies and theocracies and and authoritarian governments and dictatorships and so on and that has been proven out pretty pretty strongly and the same thing with free markets you know at least mixed economies with a strong free market capitalistic ethic and system built in place is better it's better for the citizens it's better for the country it's better for everybody you know so that's why a lot of politicians and economists think we should spread democracy and free market economics but I would not then say and Christianity right but that wouldn't show Christianity is dangerous for example we could live without broccoli and we could have all the great health benefits that wouldn't mean broccoli was dangerous that's right of course you can eat broccoli and you can eat and you can eat Christianity to that that's right yes that's right yeah sure again I'm just trying to see all the correlations in Europe would actually lead to the conclusion Christianity is dangerous I mean sure it is entirely I would not say that yeah yeah I am conceding the point that it may not be dangerous when it's replaced by something else historically it has been again you know this same sex marriage example or slavery or whatever most of those almost all those rights revolutions were generated not through Christian agitation for change although some of the people that did it were Christian but it was something else underneath that and again most of the people resisting those those revolutions were Christians well I mean I could say the same thing about atheists of the past they were very racist they promoted eugenics I mean that wouldn't mean that those ideologies like humanism not everybody almost everybody right so if it was everybody how can you claim it was just coming from Christianity it seems like it was more of a cultural effect than anything else oh it's not it's not it's not but Christians had no problem justifying those beliefs that almost everybody held through religion so again it's not that it's not that Christianity or the Bible directly made them racist you know the racism was rampant everywhere but again if it's such a great force for good in the world then you know why were they so behind the eight ball on this why did it take so long for Christians come around and go you know what I think it's alright if you know gays get the same treatment under the constitution as everybody else in the country that you know that took a long time to get well to get not just Christians but everybody but Christians are supposed to be the you know the party of the book right that you know we're the moral party you know we're on the cutting edge here no I would say that's the exact opposite I would say the Bible is pretty clear Christians are depraved they're still sinners are not going to be perfect but let me ask you this I mean like we've had doctors for centuries and doctors are still fighting disease I mean if it's such a force we're good haven't they got rid of disease that okay that's a good analogy well alright so again I guess I would answer that by saying the if you can if we can extrapolate the good parts from Christianity and spread those principles around then okay I'm alright with that like for example you know there's kind of a distinction in the last couple of decades in Christianity between the sort of what prosperity gospel Christians versus the kind of social justice Christians you know you get the Joel olsteins and in the Reverend Ike's you know God wants you to be rich and and you know and so forth and then you got the kind of social justice you know well you know Jesus told us we're supposed to take care of the poor and help the needy and you know and so there's this kind of division in Christianity well I would say you know the prosperity gospel guys you know this is probably not that good for morals and so on and that's a little greedy and selfish and you know the Senate social justice I don't like that word because it's affiliated so much with the far left but understand but but but but Christians who think well we it is our job to take care of the poor we have a moral obligation to help people who can't help themselves to which I say amen brother. I want to move on to talking about intrinsic and extrinsic you talked a little bit about in your rebuttal about how like you could replicate this ideas about having a purpose. I'm having meaning in your life through a secular means but it really sounds like you're just trying to substitute intrinsic motivators with extrinsic motivators like having meaning finding meaning and purpose in your culture and your community. That just moves it right to extrinsic religiosity and that's a good point it's interesting orientation is very much like I get meaning because I love God I want to follow God I want to follow I want to feel the Holy Spirit kind of thing. I don't see how you could replicate them from a secular perspective in these studies. You got to know I know I think you can't but I take your point. People are going to be more motivated to take action if they really believe it the principles of the group whatever it is. Versus, you know, your idea of extrinsic they're just kind of going along with it, you know, whether they really believe it or not you know maybe maybe not. You know you're far less likely to act on that. So do you some current examples like, you know this. So I'm thinking about this distinction of different kinds of belief. So, you know this idea that this pizza, you know that this the Democrats are running this ring this crazy conspiracy theory. You know, how many people really believe that well you know the survey showed you know Republicans conservatives a lot of them seem to believe it. I don't think they really believe that, except the one guy that went to the comet ping pong pizzeria with a gun. He believed it, because that's what you would do if there was a pedophile ring next door you'd go do something about it right. So I don't think people really believe that. And, you know, even the this week last week of the, you know, hacking and all that stuff. I don't think most of these Republicans that said they were on board with Trump. I don't think they really believed it. I mean their own Justice Department their own AG said no, no, no fraud, fair election and so the ones that were hanging on like Cruz and so on. I think there's that's a kind of a mythic belief or a metaphorical belief like I'm a, I'm a Republican. I'm supporting I support the team. I'm going to just say I think it was rigged because my boss says it is. I don't think they really believed it. I think on Wednesday we saw the people who did believe it. They really, you know they marched to the Capitol and they stormed into the broke the windows went in into the, into the dome. They believed it that that's what true belief in genders. So here it matters whether it's true or not. Right, because that's not true so they shouldn't be storming that and you don't have to go to the comet ping pong with the gun because there's no basement and there's no So it really comes down Michael I think to, to the, to what extent you can show that your doctrines are right and true in the empirical sense which I know you've done debates with with other atheists like Dilla huntie at Dilla huntie is very good on this about those particular things that's not what we're supposed to be debating but I think you've just identified the the idea that to go from extrinsic to intrinsic, you have to convince those doctrines that we believe that you should believe are you should believe them because they're true. And here I think you have the problem of making the transition from saying someone like Jesus really existed. And he was really crucified. I think there's enough evidence, even by secular the Bible historians and so on minute left, like Bart Ehrman that a man named Jesus really existed. So the Romans they crucified everybody for anything so yeah he was probably crucified. But that you can put on an empirical truth basis basis but to make the next step. He was resurrected. You know that's that you know that's 100 billion to one odds, you know 100 people have lived and died, and none of them have come back. We're about to wrap up. I'm sorry, I'll give you some time to understand this. I mean, even if Christianity is false you can still pragmatic benefits there's a difference between pragmatic and true for example Ptolemaic astronomy is pragmatic even though it's not true it's useful for now ancient navigators. So we can understand it's still pragmatic even if it wasn't necessarily true. Yeah, right. Yes, I agree on certain issues. But it seems to me you're arguing and maybe we can transition to now I'm talking to you in my 10 minutes that to make the transition from being an extrinsic Christian, where you're going along with it because you know your parents were Christian and your friends are Christian and your spouses Christian and on. And you kind of yeah yeah I guess I believe it but you know you haven't really thought deeply about it, and I would put in that kind of mythic truth category yeah yeah that's that's my team yeah yeah I think it's probably Jesus was resurrected he died for my sense yeah okay. But you want to say no no it the intrinsic it's the intrinsic part where you know somebody really studies it and thinks about it and thinks yes yes I actually think that's true I've gone through the arguments I read these books and that's the one. You know so there then now now this whole debate kind of turns on yeah but is it really true is that is it is it really made the transition from mythically true to empirically true like we can definitely get consensus that Jesus, not just died, but came back from the dead. You know that that would be an extraordinary claim do you have extraordinary evidence and then now you're down the rabbit hole of that debate, which is all another debate you know did the resurrection happen. To me my one minute into the cross. Yeah, go ahead Michael. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, let's let's compare with Judaism because I don't believe you know modern Talmudic Judaism is true but nonetheless a lot of these studies on intrinsic religiosity look at most I mean they they're mostly studying the Judeo Christian West so they do include a pretty fair sample of Jewish subjects, even though I've seen the majority seem to be the various Christian denominations. So I could look at someone and say like yeah they are intrinsically religious in their sense of Judaism they really think it's true and from those benefits flow from that benefits can flow. Yeah. So I don't have to agree with them that their Talmudic Judaism is true. I use it but still there's going to be a lot of benefits from that intrinsic orientation they have there. Would you say that to with Muslims. There's actually a fair amount of studies that have looked at Muslims, especially in the Judeo Christian West and if they're intrinsic oriented. Some of the studies I said at the end on violence did look at center and some Islamic countries and they found that if they're more intrinsically oriented they actually decreases aggression violence. That may be but the portions of the Muslim world that embraces Sharia law, their treatment of women and gays is pretty abysmal. It is. And the more they really believe it, the worse it is for women and gays. I mean they're throwing gays off the top of buildings now in 2020. Right and I would try to argue now I'm not an expert on Islam I want to clarify that but I would probably try to argue that you could make a pretty good case that could flow from Islamic doctrine. That's why I don't when I do these things I don't say I'm not going to defend other religions I'm just going to try to focus on Christianity, mainly all of Christianity Catholicism orthodoxy evangelicalism etc. Okay, here, here you're making a move from saying that, you know, intrinsic extrinsic intrinsic and you can't comment on the intrinsic value or, or I should say validity of Islamic doctrines. But but you can on Christian doctrines well there it does matter which is the right one. Right, which is the right holy book. And you know, and you believe that I don't know what you believe about the Quran but obviously you think the Bible is probably more inspired divinely inspired or more correct or I don't know what or reliable term I use more reliable yeah well as you know most Muslims would disagree with you. So how could I am anthropologist from Mars coming down and go whoa okay I got you and I got this other guy over here and who's the right one. You make your arguments he makes his arguments. I can't see how we could determine which is the right one. That would be a separate debate but I think the anthropologist from Mars could determine which was actually far more beneficial just by study doing the types of studies that I went over in these various cultures. Most of the studies I said I mean most of the men analysis, for example, or centered in juja of tradition, west or in America, Western Europe, very few are going to be done or conducted outside of those areas because of, you know, it's very easy for a social scientist living in New York to do a study there versus flying to like Kenya setting up finding subjects there it's much harder. So they're going to be more centered in the west. Yeah. There are about say South American countries that are heavily Catholic, their Christians, they believe Jesus died for their sins and the whole thing and let's just give them the benefit of the doubt that they really believe it. They're not just going along with it. And yet you know they're the quality of their lives are considerably lower say than the United States or in these northern European countries rates of violence and, and, and homicides are pretty high and a lot of these Christian countries and standard of living, pretty poor and a lot of them. You know so there's lots of these kind of both historical and current examples of Christian nations that don't kind of have the benefits that you're talking about. So yeah, let me address that. So for example for one we need to focus on the fact that there's a multi factors coming in these countries I'm sure a lot of the problems in Venezuela right now are more political than religious. So if you guys within Catholicism on a global sense there's a lot of intrinsic religiosity in that sense, people are religious just because that was their culture and that is something I discourage because in the studies, I find that I would see things like racism prejudice cheating on your spouse tend to correlate with extrinsic religiosity I would want to see extrinsic religiosity, either decrease because it's always seems to correlate with social undesirable effects. Argentina or Bolivia, we would have to check and see if the fine subjects in the country find the intrinsic and the extrinsic and kick and compare the social desirable effects in that same sense, we just can't look at religious country and go religious problems. Well, what type of religiosity is really dominating that country. Yeah. So if you want to thought experiment you went to one of these countries and the studies show that they're mostly extrinsic Christians. What would you do to ship them into intrinsic Christianity. I would tell him watch my videos, because by your books. I mean, that's what I want to collect that I mean, I would do it is the way that you know the pastors like Tim Keller or CS Lewis that you teach them the truth of Christ you get them excited about Christ so the same way a Muslim Christian apologizes to get him excited about you get him excited about a lot. Well, I mean, you know I may not agree about that but I mean like the Christian would say you got to get him excited about Jesus you got to get them to actually love Jesus and want to do good things because they love Jesus. How do you explain that Jews do not accept Jesus as the savior in as much as they know all the arguments you know you know you can just take these rabbis that are spent their whole lives reading nothing but all of this material. And they're not convinced. I would refer people to a great debate that Michael, Dr Michael Brown who is Jewish had on the Sid Roth show with a Jewish apology several years ago and I think that was a pretty good debate a lot of it I would say I would defer to Dr Brown he's more of the expert on that, but a he's very dominated by Talmudic thought that there's an idea with pervasive and Judaism the Talmud was sort of like the oral it's supposed to go along and that's how you interpret the Old Testament in that sort of sense. So I would probably use with that would that be that then be extrinsic Judaism versus intrinsic. Not necessarily, because they truly, when we're talking about extrinsic intrinsic we're talking about a person truly believes that religion is true, or if they're just there for the cultural reasons. I'm sure there are plenty plenty of how many Jews that truly believe Judaism is true, and they truly believe that God wants to give them purpose and meaning and they want to please. They want to please Yahweh. I don't doubt that at all. So no I would say they can be intrinsic and fully believe the Talmud the Old Testament stuff. And here I would, you know, point out that in the Jewish culture. I mean most Jews today are pretty secular, you know they're sort of cultural Jews, and they get the they get the benefits though I mean they you know they encourage a highly educated, they help bringing of their kids and they teach the morals and values and they have customs and you know the, they follow the holidays and so on even though they're not. Most of the ones at least that I know they're they don't even believe in God, you know there's kind of a cultural Judaism that I think has the benefits of your intrinsic Christianity, because it's those components that they're teaching. And by cultural diffusion say in the Jewish community that's giving them the benefits that you're talking about any of the, any of the beliefs. One minute clarify because some studies do find positive associations with both forms of religiosity and some find a positive associations with quest orientation as well. The most benefits though tend to come with intrinsic, and there are some negative variables that are associated with extrinsic like prejudice racism. And just because there's cultural Judaism that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to have all the benefits of the intrinsic orientation, I would depend on the look at each individual subjects is why I focused more on the studies and not necessarily these hypothetical type of scenarios. Well, this is why I want to push that point about making that shift from extrinsic to intrinsic for you, you know it's highly focused on Jesus as the savior, and accepting a measure savior, because he died for our sins and was resurrected and so on. And Jews just go I know the arguments I read all the books I saw your videos and so on. I don't believe it. I just don't. And yet I'm, you know I read the old, they're people of the book it's just the Old Testament book is not the New Testament. Okay. So, and now we're back to empirical truths, how could we decide I mean, maybe they watched the video you just suggested and go nap, you know I'm just the problem here and the step three, he made this move and I'm just not following it. I don't accept that Jesus is the savior and the story I'm still a Jew. And, oh, so it does come down to what's really true. And if we can't determine what's really true then, how could you really be an intrinsic anything. We're at time, other than it's really just kind of metaphorical truth or something sorry, go ahead. Mike if you Mike Jones if you have a really quick pithy response since the question was posed to you, we can give you a short response and otherwise we got to go into closing statements. I'll just go I'll just flow into my closing from the jump. Yeah, it sounds good. Yeah. Yeah, so I would simply point out that again when we're looking at intrinsic it's not whether it is true it is that the person believes it is true regardless for five minutes. It's really good. So it's about it's about that they they true these these tomato juice really do believe that they really do believe that that that religion is true and then from that belief that it is true. They flow it doesn't necessarily have to be true it's still pragmatic and useful. So I want to reiterate that basic idea that both benefits are coming from intrinsic religiosity. And from that it would simply flow scientifically there's no evidence Christianity is dangerous it leads to harmful consequences in society. And I would invite people to give me actual evidence that it does and I have been studying this topic for probably over a decade now at this point, first on my own and then eventually on my channel and various aspects. There's just no evidence that Christianity leads to these dangerous consequences that so many skeptics imply they do that Dr. Sharma. I was actually surprised you even agreed to the debate topic tonight because I never really thought you were the one who would say those types of things I've seen. I have a lot of respect for your work and I know you don't think Christianity is necessarily dangerous. So I just want to make sure I put that out there so people are aware. But I mean I do see a lot of other skeptics do argue from your work or from the work of like Gregory Paul that Christianity does lead to dangerous consequences. I mean you put out that tweet last year which really got my attention want me to start this debate where you said like studies show that secular people are more on average less racist less ethnocentric less homophobic less likely to hit their children. I mean I was a little that's when I was like all right let's have a debate because the study that cited on hitting your children is actually a very tiny study of just 3000 religious parents in the LA area, and it differentiates between both corporal punishment and actual physical abuse and just says that you know people that attend religious services are more likely to invoke corporal punishment, but there doesn't correlate to actual physical abuse. So we need to be very careful about types of things we say I could go through every one of those different aspects and go into the actual data to show it including the homophobic one. I did a study done a couple years ago on homo negativity and 79 different countries and found that it's a mixed in a lot of like post communist countries more religiosity specifically intrinsic religiosity correlates with lower homo negativity. So the idea that it somehow causes the Christianity through intrinsic religiosity is causing these types of bad behaviors it's just unwarranted. And again I want to reiterate one of your biggest arguments which is historically Christians have been bad in the past, and they'll get better as on they're being dragged into the future. But I would say all humans are being dragged into the future by people that are trying to do the right thing. There have been Christians have been trying to do the right thing. There have been Christians who have done the wrong thing. There have been atheists who are doing the right thing and there are atheists who have done the wrong thing. We can look at atheists that promoted eugenics in the past. We can look at Christians that promoted eugenics in the past. We would not say that either of those ideologies cause eugenics. It just was bad people doing bad things. And we cannot argue that necessarily either your worldview or my worldview is causing all those bad behaviors. We need to look at the actual science the meta analysis are going to be our best game in town to study the effects of religiosity specifically intrinsic religiosity, and we cannot make correlation causation policies we need to look at the data as best we can. But with that I don't have much more to go over. I really did enjoy this conversation. This has been a dream of mine to debate Dr. Schermer ever since I first saw him on the stage so I am quite honored. And again I do enjoy reading your material. I need to get that issue that issue you coming out because that looks interesting. So thanks for the help send you one. Perfect. I will make you an honorary member of the skeptic society and skeptic magazine Michael. Because you're obviously into science and I love that so yeah again on the studies, you know I think it's it's debatable I mean I have piles of studies that show, you know the opposite of what you're saying. I think the meta analysis is probably the way to go. Let's say it's true. Again, I want to me, religion is too big a word as a category of like what's the causal vector at work. It matters to drill down and figure out exactly what is this Christian doing tomorrow that makes them live a longer healthier happier or meaningful and how much of it is intrinsic that is you got to believe the, you know, the doctrines of that particular religion and not the other religions. And there that always worries me because that sets up a kind of them and us tribalism that taps into that deep. And as part of our nature, one of the inner demons, I would call it a xenophobia and tribe tribalism of people that are different from us and religion as a pretty, you know, strong track record of being divisive historically. And most Christians today are not like that, you know, is a testament I think to the other factors that went into the moral progress things like democracy and rule of law and property rights and, you know, and the, and the ideas behind, you know, this, we're, we're all, you know, born equal under the law that that is whether it's the creator or nature or whatever, wherever, you know, natural or wherever we get these rights. You all get them, we all get them just by didn't to be in human and, and we're born and you have to live in a country that honors that, and we're going to defend that and on and on. The fact that Jefferson and company had slaves or they, you know, they refused to write into the Constitution that, you know, we won't allow slavery, even if some of them wanted to do that. You know, and on and on that that was part of their cultures, the fact that this moral progress has happened where pretty much nobody thinks like that anymore. And everybody pretty much accepts that all people should be treated equally under the law I think can't be attributed to Christianity or any one particular religion, even though some of them were religious people or Christians who agitated for those moral causes. And to, you know, put a fine point on it again. It was mostly their fellow Christians that were against it. But my larger point is that, you know, we should all work together toward these values that we seem to pretty much agree are the ones that we should be working toward. That is, in the West, most people agree that these are values that we should hold sacred. And, and so kind of culturally, societally, progress wise morally, that's the way to go personally, again, you know, whatever you do or this person or that person does to, you know, leave it need a better life. Okay, good. And, but if you want to spread that you want to say okay we want to publish a study and show these are the 12 things you should do to lead a longer healthier happier higher quality, more meaningful, happy, you know, more purposeful life. Here they are. Well there are studies like that. And, you know, one of them is having, you know, kind of a sacred purpose in life, something that's beyond you. And so okay the kind of Christianity you're describing, you know, sounds like it could fulfill that. Even though I don't think a lot of Christians do that, but in any case, if that's the case fine but there's a lot of other ways to get there. And so I would also be in favor of any other way you can get there. You know, without joining some crazy cult or something but you know other religions or just other movements, anything that you know gives you that kind of sacred value in your life or reason to get up in the morning and get out and have, you know, a purposeful existence and just doing a podcast about Ayn Rand the other day with somebody and, you know, Objectivism and Rand's philosophy kind of became that, you know, for Objectivist. Now it had a lot of flaws but my point is that it gives one of the reasons Atlas Shrugged is such a popular novel amongst 15 to 30 year olds is it gives this kind of sacred value purpose. This is it. Go. And it's very inspiring to a lot of younger people. So I think we need that. We need that in our lives. And, you know, the kind of Christianity you describe okay that may be one way but I don't want to go so far as to say it's the only way. In fact, I would say the opposite of that. So to that extent then I bid you good night. Thank you very much. And thanks for the debate. Now that was good. And thanks. Thanks for, again, Michael for the thoughtful commentary and for sticking to science. That's good. And for reading my book. I appreciate that. Thank you very much gentlemen and thanks everybody for your questions. We'll jump into that Q&A right now. I want to remind you our guests are linked in the description so that you can hear plenty more or read plenty more where that came from as we really do appreciate our guests. And we'll jump into that Q&A. The first question coming from Dr. Seigart said for Dr. Schermer. It appears that you're saying that Christianity is no longer necessary or useful, but not necessarily dangerous. Is that correct? Again, it depends on what we're talking about exactly. You know, had you asked me, I don't know, 50 years ago about women's rights, I would say, you know, Christianity was dangerous for women, women's rights, that is, to, you know, more recently, you know, Christianity was not good for gay rights, same sex marriage rights and so forth. You know, but that, again, they've changed on that, thankfully, but for other forces outside of Christianity. Gotcha. And thanks, Vin, for your question said, what do you feel are the best ways? I think this is for Dr. Schermer. They said, what do you feel are the best ways for those leaving the faith to replace the valuable elements found in the church, such as a focus on community reflection, music, temperance and social support? Right. Well, there's books about this and, you know, and it's not so much replacing like, okay, I need you to get rid of this. To get rid of this and do that. It's whatever it takes to get that, you know, so again, having a reason to get up in the morning, having a job, having a relationship, marriage is good. Having kids is good, building a family, having friends, having extended family and friends and community, being actively involved in politics, your local politics or the society, the community, joining and working for nonprofits and that could be a church, it could be anything. But, you know, the point is, is having a goal or purpose that's not not just you, of course, you have to take care of you and yourself, right? You got to have a job, you got to make money, you got to pay your bills, got to be responsible, you got to work out, you got to have a decent diet and so on. That's about you. But, but beyond that, you know, your spouse, your family, your friends, your community also matter just as much. And so you got to work toward those and I was just trying to think in the name of this book of this guest I had on my podcast. Basically, how to live to be 100. Well, you know, it turns out exercise and diet is, you know, not the, not the primary way to get there it's having family and friends and caring about other people and having a sacred purpose in your life. This appears to have salubrious effects for health, longevity, happiness, and so on and, you know, meeting and greeting your neighbors every day and being friendly and having meaningful relationships being in love. You know, these kinds of things, again, Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on that. You know, seem to work for everybody. And there's, you know, lots and lots of studies we didn't get into that about that show that Just on a side note real quick. The first guy that asked the question that's Dr. Seigard. Great guest for your podcast biochemist. He's a theistic evolutionist like me. He wrote a book on how he was a scientist went from atheist to Christian. You were the opposite. You were a Christian scientist Christian and you became a scientist became atheist might have a good conversation like a, you know, reversal. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, by the way on that that that can science Christians be scientists of course they can and they are and in the 65% Okay, the distinction is between you know rank and file scientists studies done like say members of the triple AS or whatever, which is a huge body that you know it's more representative of the general population. There. Yeah, I think the 65% was right. The other study you referred to was, you know, of members of the National Academy of Science. So these are like the most elite scientists. And they're the numbers plunged to like 7% were Christian or religious or something like that. But of course, as you know, Francis Collins is the head of the NIH. He's one of the greatest scientists of our time. You know, the human genome project and so on. I know him. He's a great guy, super smart guy, very easy evangelical Christian I encourage people to read his book on evolution. You know, he accepts all the tenants of evolution, all of it. And he makes one of the most passionate defenses of evolutionary theory I've ever read as good as anything Dawkins has written. And in fact, I encourage religious people to read his book Francis Collins because he's on their team. So I know they'll be more receptive to what he has to say, because that's how it works. And so I'm glad to hear you're a theistic evolutionist if you mean it by the way the same way Francis Collins means I do I would probably be more close with Steven J. Gold. I don't know how evolution happened. But yeah. Thank you very much, gentlemen. And we'll jump into the next question. This one coming in from Jack. Thank you says, do you think secularism, atheism or agnosticism create the same same kinds of zealots or radicals that religion sometimes does? I'm not sure who this question is for sure be for Dr. Shermer, but I suppose it could be they didn't specify. So we'll start with certainly can be after. Yeah, there was a kind of a big split in the atheist movement, initially after Dawkins book in 2006, the God Delusion. And I noticed that I was getting hammered a lot for not being more militant in my atheism. And it's like, what are you talking about? I'm a publicly known as an atheist. No, you know, it's not enough. You got to get out there and evangelize for atheism. It's like, what's there to evangelize for it's atheism isn't even a thing. It's not a worldview. I just don't believe in God will stop. You know, I mean if you want to talk about humanism or secular humanism or democracy or civil rights. Now I'll talk about all that and promote those things but you know atheism isn't anything to anyway so there was kind of a split in that in the movement. I don't know around 2010 2011 or so there was another split over what was called atheist plus the plus is social justice. You know, which sounds like a good word but you know we know what that means now it's kind of far left progressive politics. Well, I'm not that you know I'm very critical of a lot of that so then I got hammered for that it's like, oh my gosh this is you know this is like what the iron ran objectives went through and what the feminist went through and the Marxist went through it's like this is what the social movements do they splinter and fall apart because people get too fanatical and then they purge their own kind right instead of going after the other group that we don't like you know those Democrats or whatever you know they end up destroying themselves from within and that's not that's not healthy for anybody I think so yeah that does happen but that happens to all social movements. Thank you very much. And Chris gammon appreciate your question, said, wouldn't any belief that is wrong be dangerous on some level. Does that just make the question quote is Christianity true. So the question seems to be, if it's untrue does it not make it dangerous in some way, I mean, it depends. I mean we really have to be careful here because what are we talking about we talking about dangerous for society for how individuals function, for how individuals function, not necessarily for the quest for truth well then yeah it would be dangerous for the quest to truth if a belief is actually untrue. But I mean we have to acknowledge there are numerous beliefs that you don't have that I don't have that people in various parts of the world have that are perfectly fine and work with pragmatic societies. I would like to say that no no no oh the best benefits come from Christianity. I don't know if I can say that from the studies alone I'm trying my best to just stick to what the science says. And there is plenty of evidence like if you're intrinsically religious and Talmudic. Or if you're a Mormon. If you're a Muslim in many of these Western countries where the studies are performed. There is a lot of benefits from these religions just for a societal stance just for understanding how societies function or for the overall general well being of an individual. Now with regards to the overall quest for truth well sure if it belief is untrue it's going to be dangerous for the quest for truth, but that's a debate for another time. And thank you very much for your question. This one comes in from Brian Stevens said to both when it comes to science. Have you noticed a link between religion and denying science such as climate change. Well there no. It's not religion in that example it's politics there that the best predictor for who skeptical of climate change is is your political position and we all know what that is so conservatives slash Republicans are far more skeptical of climate change than liberals Democrats now. Most studies show that neither one of them. Yeah, okay good that neither one of them knows all that much about climate change. So when people publicly acknowledge that they accept climate change, or they don't. What they're really saying I think they're signaling, you know, I'm a member of that tribe. And I think this can be tracked back to Al Gore's film and inconvenient truth with which kind of bundled climate science with liberalism with political party. So conservatives and Republicans, you know they just the moment they see the word climate science or global warming their brain auto corrects to liberalism. Democrats control of the economy and socialism and you know just down the rabbit hole you go. And so it's I don't think religions a good predictor for that unless you want to lump conservative Christian something like that but it's a conservative part I think that's at work there. There's an interesting study done called political conservatism religion and environmental consumption in the United States, and they what they found is the strength of religious identity and regularly of a religious attendance religious practices appear to increase environmental friendliness in conservatives. So what the quote they said we can assert there is no evidence that any of our measures of religiosity intensified the negatives of political conservatives. In fact they found the opposite if someone was a conservative and deeply religious to became more environmentally friendly versus one of you just That would be nice if you could, if you could package that and ship it out there to all those conservative Christian, you know, Republicans who, you know, think that climate changes a hoax and so forth telling you a lot of forward is just convince them nuclear power and we'll all be on the same page. Well, you and I would agree on that. I remember a few years ago Ed Wilson tried to capture that idea of conservative ism should also be in favor of conserving the environment. And he made some headway with some Christian groups with that. But, you know, but but politics has become so divisive now that it's it's hard to even have that conversation. Next up, thank you very much for your question. This one coming in from smoky saint says for Dr. Schermer was it the Bible that instructed the European slave trade to treat Africans like animals or was it the evolutionary theory that taught that Africans were lesser evolved than whites. Oh, that's that's an easy one. Yeah, no so evolutionary theory is pretty late in the game. You know slavery's been around for thousands of years before Darwin. So I had nothing to do with that. No, it was just kind of this general underlying racism that most groups have about other groups that are different from them. You know that appears to be this kind of xenophobia of which racism is just a part seems to be built into our nature and for probably for good evolutionary reasons but you know that's another, you know, 10 minutes of talking. You know, I think it had nothing to do with it. There were social Darwinists who, you know, kind of bundled Darwin's theory with the kind of traditional racism that was already there and justified it and, you know, that ended up disastrously in the eugenics movement, which has now been largely discredited. So, although you can still find in some far right circles discussions of Darwin and eugenics but you know they're kind of on the on the outs now. So, anyway, yeah. So I would also add real quickly to that that I can't remember exactly but I remember hearing it from a lecture by Dr Joshua Moritz, but the some of the prominent biographers of Darwin would have noted that he was not know, he was not. He was very much this idea that he wanted to use the theory of evolution to show that we're all connected that we're all one big giant family he was very much an anti racist. He was an abolitionist. He protested with the abolitionist he was very much an anti racist. And so he was when he broke forward his idea of evolution he's saying look guys we're all we're all in big family. It's not fight like and so no the anti evolution would promote racism. Others would could take that idea and corrupt it but that doesn't mean Darwin wasn't like the more you studied it from the professional historians on Darwin. I mean you know he always wasn't perfect man but he didn't do so a lot of his stuff is taken out of context. Thanks for your question this one coming in from Jay Mixon kind of wanting to get a big picture from the debate said I'm not hearing this from the Conver me read it from its entirety just so they said is either speakers stance that Christianity is dangerous. I'm not hearing this from the conversation I'm hearing that Christianity is potentially or contingently dangerous, which is a stance I don't think either would necessarily disagree on. Is that true. Yeah, agree on that maybe. Yeah, well I mean I would I think I mean contingently I mean depends on what we mean I would say in certain contexts is there have been bad Christians who have done bad things and use Bible verses a justified. I would make the case that that's not necessarily Christian because in that. I mean just because, like I just mentioned with the excuse of evolution some people can use evolution to promote all sorts of horrible things like that the aboriginals are not as fully evolved with us therefore it's okay to treat them unfairly. That doesn't mean Darwin was a racist I mean Darwinism promotes racism. It just means there's bad people who can take things that exist and use it forever they want I don't I don't know that necessarily means that it's the actual worldview or the actual underlying doctrines of something or necessarily evil we could be very careful with distinguishing correlation and causation. Gotcha. Thank you very much James W for your question said, so we see every day the world becoming more and more secular Bible prophecy has done nothing but fail. This is more of a statement but we'll get to this has done nothing but fail the God of the gaps is always getting smaller and smaller. So, now the only place God has to hide is the origin of the universe and origin of life or some alternate dimension. We could never actually access to see he isn't there. What's the end game to Christianity in 50 years 100 years will be a small message of what is today, or will it evolve and stay somewhat relevant longer. So I can say three things on that first of all I refer you to the research of an evolutionary biologist Michael Bloom who has pointed out that religion isn't going anywhere because it's of its reproductive benefits most of the children. He and his work have shown to come from religious families and so more people secularize less children they tend to have naturally into societies. So I don't think it's going anywhere. The only thing prophecy is failed depends on what prophecies if you would be someone like a futurist when he believes in a rapture what not. Yeah, it's failed but I reject that kind of stuff I am a partial preterist. I think most of what we're talking about the element discourse happened in 7080 and I'm a post millennialist and I believe there's a future anti Christ or tribulation I believe the world is going to keep getting better and then that's going to be the millennial kingdom. I'm very optimistic about the future long term. Most people who were hold to this sort of future problems. They are pre millennialist they think Jesus coming before the millennial kingdom. I'm a post millennialist. So I'm more in line with people like Tim Keller or the old preacher Jonathan Edwards. And the final thing of the God of the gaps argument will go over to the capturing Christianity each channel. I will be debating apostate prophet on God's existence on the 20th for right now unless there's any more complications but so stay tuned. You got it thanks for that and it's interesting. Michael do you think the middle one there that you said no the last one do you think that you know when Jesus talked about you know heaven or you know that what's coming it's here on earth. He's talking he's talking about making the world a better place here, not anticipating it's coming in this other world. In other words, it's heaven is heavens on earth. Exactly. Well that's where the end goal for Christianity is always the resurrection. And I've talked about on my channel my eschatological views are that the resurrection will happen and it will be our job to turn earth into Eden and then the whole universe into Eden. So people say, why is there a big universe done enough life I say well it's going to be there we just have to start you have to get to work. And we have another question from Megan say Tana's appreciate it. This one, pardon my delay on asking this Megan thanks for your patience said for Mike Jones did Jesus not say to uphold the laws of his father and of the Old Testament I think that it's a reference to a passage in Matthew five. He's talking about Matthew five I talked about in my passage so the actual quote is a like do not think I've come to abolish law I've come to fulfill a law for not one jotter to tell shall pass away until all is fulfilled. And so he says to until clauses one is up heaven and earth one is until all is filled. So certain scholars have noted that the first one until heaven and earth is dominated by the second and the Greek grammar. And it's more like saying until hell freezes over this ain't going to pass away until it's all fulfilled. And so yeah, he Jesus upheld and kept the mosaic law for us because we couldn't we're imperfect. That's what Paul's talking about a Romans three. We uphold the law through our faith in Christ. So again john 1928 says Jesus about it said saying it is finished to fulfill the scriptures and that's why Hebrews eight says it's passing away it's obsolete. And it was and so and then what do we do we uphold the other royal law of Christ the covenant with Christ which is to love one another. So no we don't have to keep Old Testament laws. Those were filled in Christ. Also with my view of scripture it's progressive. It's this idea of there was a God is gave the mosaic law to people in the ancient Bronze Age because they were really morally corrupt but he couldn't give him the perfect law he wanted to give them right away. So God is progressively making us better culture over time. Gotcha and thank you for your question from Adam more of a statement. Adam Elville says please share my love with both of the speakers. Also let Dr. Sherman know I enjoyed his guest appearance at Dr. Roy. I know I'm going to mispronounce this bear with me is it Roy is Yassavich Yassavich's channel who is an Israeli theist hope seeing some more like that. Right. Yeah okay well I'll talk to anybody. Excellent and thanks so much for your I just want to know it's true. You bet and thank you for your question this one coming in from oh by the way folks we will always we will always let people know if there is an after show no matter what side of the debate they're on and tonight Smokey Saint is hosting an after show and so we will be putting that in the description as well as I think he's been putting it in the chat and so do want to let you guys know about that and I'll throw that in the chat in just a moment. James James the apologetics is going to have me on I think sometime tomorrow for just a post debate review. You got it. Absolutely and we're happy to link that as well so I appreciate that and so let me just check I think there was one question forgive me for my delay on this one because it was asked earlier and things have been moving fast. Though this question from comes from Tigera Hitman or Hitman says question for Dr. Shermer when is enough scientific evidence enough and yeah I suppose that's a they're saying like the scientific evidence that Mike Jones had argued for. Right. Okay, that's a great question. Here I would recommend Naomi Oreski's book instead of one of my own. Why trust science at all. Well it has to do with the kind of consensus amongst experts in a particular field when they have reached a certain level of confidence that the particular hypothesis or theory or claim under examination is probably true now true because there are no 100% conclusions in science and so how do you know like say since we talked about climate change. Well there's this kind of consensus people have heard this term that climate consensus what does that mean. You know I got this guy over here that who says he doesn't believe in he's a professional scientist well by consensus we don't mean every single scientist working except that there's always somebody that doesn't accept it. I still hear it occasionally from Big Bang skeptics and are people that don't think HIV causes AIDS and so on there's always, you know, kind of outliers, but at some point the people working in a particular field, kind of come to a conclusion through conferences and conversations and peer review journal articles and meta analysis and, you know, they talk amongst themselves you know what do we know how confident are we that and at some point it just kind of reaches a certain point and like okay that that one's pretty much done let's move on to the next problem and that you know that sounds kind of messy and it is but it's it's how science works. In a way if you don't do that with you know a lot of research a lot of studies and a lot of debate and disputation you end up with a replication crisis like we've had in the social sciences and the medical sciences where a lot of these research major significant research projects or studies are not replicable when people try to replicate them they can't and it looks like maybe half of published peer reviewed published papers and respectable journals are probably should have never been published. Okay, so that's what I mean it's a messy process and you really got to grind through a lot of studies that's why Michael talked about meta analysis you really got to do that. You got to do studies showing this or that you know coffee is good coffee is bad. You just can't draw any conclusions from the single study so that that's what we mean by that. Gotcha and thank you very much for this reminder. This one came in from James W and logical plausible probable John Maddox said Amy is also hosting an after show that will be in less than two hours so it will be a late night after show at midnight. We'll add that to the description as well for the list of after shows. So stoked that people have got a gotten a kick out of this. And so I'm going to just quick skim the chat before we do go into the thank yous. In other words just looking for any last questions and want to say we really do. Oh, that's right. Okay, so we do have someone said that they had one last question on Kickstarter and I want to say just a quick reminder folks that our guests are linked in the description. If you'd like to hear more if you'd like to read more you certainly can. And so we'd certainly encourage you to do that. And then two moments while I open up this question. Thank you very much. Oh, lay who by the way lay we appreciate you so much for your support for the Kickstarter as a lay it must be for in the morning there so we do appreciate you being a huge fan and so they had said my question is with the recent capital riot as a clear example. Trump claiming to be Christian mentioning God and faith in his speeches knowing he has a large Christian following. This is evidence in favor that Christianity can be used dangerously to help push a negative dangerous agenda. Wouldn't you agree. And they had said similar to Nazis wearing the word God with us on their belts. I'm happy for either debater or both to answer this. I mean, yeah, I would not deny it cannot be used that doesn't mean I mean you could twist anything you want to be used for evil I mean, examples and evolution in the past evolution was never intended to be racist people twisted and turned it into something racist. You can use whatever you want for evil I would never deny that. Yeah, back to my discussion about what do people really believe something. I don't think most Christians really believe Trump's a Christian. You know I think they kind of went along with it like yeah yeah that's our party is supposed to be religious or whatever. And you know I mean, nobody could possibly think he's a serious Christian is just not possible there's zero evidence for that he just mouth you know mouth the words because he had to get the votes and I think that's pretty obvious so and the stuff we saw at the Capitol had that and nothing to do with religion or Christianity that that's just, you know, really it's kind of insanity but more specifically believing a falsehood that is, you know if you really believed that the Democrats stole the election, and your boss says go over there and do something about it, because they're meeting right now. Then, you know that's that's not completely crazy. You know they if they really believe that again it's like the pizza guy. You know he really thought there was a pedophile ring he's going to do something about it. Right. So, you know trying to understand why people do things. And I think it's going to come down to these you know false beliefs. By the way, I want to comment Michael on back to this pragmatic truth that that could apply to some things like you know free will or God's existence maybe can never be proved and it's you know okay and it's sort of a pragmatic sense to say, I act as if I have free will even if the determinists have the better arguments, because it works for me you know some people make that argument and you know that they're, you know, like I have a chapter in my book. Giving the devil is due on Jordan Peterson. You know who's a kind of a superstar amongst intellectuals who maybe is a Christian, but it's not clear. You know, because you know he talks about Jesus, you know bearing his cross and we should all bear our own cross because the world is hard and suffering is, is common and so forth. There he's speaking kind of metaphorically about the resurrection, but of course Michael you would probably not go along with that you think it actually happened empirically it's true, not just metaphorically or mythically right. So there I think that those distinctions matter. Gotcha and thank you very much for your question. This one coming in appreciate it. Kevin had asked given that it is Christian societies which have led to the Enlightenment, scientific revolution in the modern secular and scientific ethic and Christian societies are the most prosperous and among the most secular today. Do you think, let's see in Christian societies are the most prosperous and among the most secular today. Do you think it is possible that Christianity is the quote least bad of the world's religions for Dr. At least bad that's one way to put it. I guess it'd be a slight twist on our debate topic. Well, I don't think I'd characterize it quite like that. I mean, you know the history of science you know there's many factors at work in what led to say the Copernican Revolution and then Newton and in the Enlightenment application of scientific principles to other fields and so on. Yes, certain aspects of Christianity were probably better for that than the other religions at least at the time. Although as we know you know Islam, you know had a very rich scientific tradition, you know in centuries past. And you know, so now the big question amongst Muslims colors is what went wrong. You know how did they you know kind of lose the civilizational race to modernity when they were ahead and you know medieval Europe was you know basically a backwater swamp. You know so the answer that question is very complicated and you know the religious factor is just one of many. Thank you very much. And then I think this is our last question. Joshua, thank you very much for your question said for Dr. Shermer G K Chesterton said quote, it was no flock of sheep. The Christian shepherd was leading but a herd of bulls and tigers. Remember that the church went in specifically for dangerous ideas. She was a lion tamer. His point being that Christians are dangerous because humans are dangerous. Christianity tries to tame the lions when it fails. Who should we call dangerous the lion tamer or the lion. Wow. Okay. Very interesting. Yes, it's quite the metaphor. I don't think I'm buying that. Again, I want to I would want to look at what's making people tame their inner demons. Here I like Steve Pinkers book the better angels of our nature where he invokes the civilizing process is a book called the civilizing process in which the author tracks all the different things that we're operating in late medieval or early modern Europe. To keep people from being so violent and from being so crude and and just out of control and it had to do with self control that is elements in in society like this he tracks. His name is Elias. He tracks these books of manners and customs and you know how to behave properly that all the way down to you know you should not use your fork to pick up a piece of meat from the plate and put it in your mouth and then use your fork again, you know, double dipping so to speak. And like hundreds of these rules like don't urinate in public, and, you know, and make your bed and and don't treat people this way and don't pass gas in front of other people and on and on and on. And so this has nothing to do with religion but just just kind of principles of self control that then trickled up, you know, up to the to kind of high culture and then got passed along through literature and so on and then we all kind of had our, you know, that all our boats rose on that tide of of civilizing behavior, you know, of which religion is one that that does that but but other sources as well. Thank you very much. And with that, we are going to jump into the thank yous thank you so much everybody for making this possible. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Mike Jones and Dr. Michael Shermer for being here with us today. It's been a true pleasure and want to say thank you. Thank you everybody for your questions as well. We do have a shout out. Thank you list as we do want to say thank you so much for helping me this event possible. Jay Mixon, appreciate it. Sam Mitchell, Don Fulman, Pete. I want to make sure Pete thanks for giving me the spelling of it. Dr. Ruby, thank you very much for your support. John Buck, Jason S. Barrios, Jeff Schwartz, Frankie Winters, forgive me anybody if I mispronounce. Anasim Petruscu, thank you very much. Top Dog Shaddick. Good to see you again and thank you. Sarah Rodriguez, we appreciate it. Chris Gammon, thank you very much. Paul Kamish, thank you for your patience with my misspelling of that. I appreciate that, Paul. And Adam Albilia, Michael and Amanda, thank you as well. Farron Salas, thank you. Barry Berry, good to see you again as well and thank you very much for your support. Benjamin, thanks so much. Oliver Katwell, thank you. Trevor A. Stroop, thank you very much for your support. Joshua Alec, thank you very much. And Smokey St, thank you very much for your support. We really do appreciate it, folks. We really do. We want this channel to be a level playing field for people to make their case no matter what walk of life they're from. We hope everybody feels like they were treated fairly and they were treated well. And so we really do appreciate our guests who are linked in the description, folks, as I had mentioned. And so we do want to say one last time, thank you very much to the Modern Databate Community for being here with us, being so supportive and buying into that vision of giving everybody an equal platform to make their case on. And so thank you very much for your support in the chat, everybody. And thank you once again. One last thank you to Mike Jones and Dr. Michael Schirmer for being with us. Thank you, gentlemen. Good evening. Good evening. Take care, folks. Keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable.